SPEAKER_00: We're uh in week two of a series that we kicked off last week that we called God Never Said That.
SPEAKER_00: And we have been talking together about things that have kind of become commonplace, things that we've accepted even as followers of Jesus, as the church, going, Oh yeah, this is true, or maybe this is even in the Bible, and yet it's something that God has never actually said.
SPEAKER_00: Last week, if you guys remember, we talked about the truth that many of us say, and or at least purport to be truth, which is God will never give us more than we can handle.
SPEAKER_00: And talk together about how quite the contrary, that oftentimes God gives us more than we can handle.
SPEAKER_00: His promise is that he'll never give us more than he can handle, right?
SPEAKER_00: And he's even given us each other as the church to support.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so today we're gonna be dealing with the second thing uh together that God has never said, and yet we hear often, and it's something that is kind of deeply ingrained in us from the time that we are young, and it's this follow your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Follow your heart.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be in 1 Kings chapter 11 today.
SPEAKER_00: If you guys want to turn there with me, reading about the greatest one of the great wise kings of Israel, King Solomon.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Kings chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: For all you Bible scholars, 1 Kings comes before which book?
SPEAKER_00: 2 Kings, excellent.
SPEAKER_00: And 2 Kings comes before what?
SPEAKER_00: Not 3 Kings, 1 Chronicles.
SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
SPEAKER_00: I was testing you.
SPEAKER_00: Didn't know.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Kings chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, common question, right?
SPEAKER_00: Common question when we face a big life decision or need to figure out what to do and aren't really sure what to do.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of times you'll be talking with someone seeking counsel, and maybe they've given you that advice.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what's your heart telling you to do?
SPEAKER_00: What is your heart saying?
SPEAKER_00: My hope and prayer is that by the end of our time together today, if you're ever facing that situation and someone says, What is your heart telling you?
SPEAKER_00: that you immediately respond, what does that have to do with anything?
SPEAKER_00: The question is not what our hearts are telling us, it's what is God telling us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't want to understate the importance of our heart.
SPEAKER_00: We're not talking about the organ that's vital and pumps blood throughout the body, obviously, not the physical heart, but this this immaterial heart that is so often referenced that we think of.
SPEAKER_00: Uh scripture talks about it as well.
SPEAKER_00: According to God's word, when they talk about the heart, they're talking about the center or control center of a person, right?
SPEAKER_00: At the core of an individual, the center of our emotions, the center of our desires, the center of our will and what we what we determine to do.
SPEAKER_00: So the heart encompasses what we feel, what we want, and what we're determined to.
SPEAKER_00: And so it matters.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very important thing.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we need to make sure that as followers of Jesus, the heart has its proper place in the pecking order of obedience.
SPEAKER_00: And let's talk about that in a moment.
SPEAKER_00: But first Kings chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: Let's read this about the wise King Solomon, who was a great king of Israel, uh, incredibly wealthy, and as I mentioned, known as the wisest of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He he just knew and what to do and how to solve problems.
SPEAKER_00: He had so much wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, here we read about a major problem uh with the king uh King Solomon.
SPEAKER_00: First Kings chapter 11, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, you shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for they surely will turn away your heart after their gods.
SPEAKER_00: Solomon clung to these in love.
SPEAKER_00: He had seven hundred wives.
SPEAKER_00: That is a whole different sermon, so you know, who were princesses and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned away his what?
SPEAKER_00: His heart.
SPEAKER_00: For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.
SPEAKER_00: We can learn a lot here from King Solomon.
SPEAKER_00: Now please keep in mind and understand that God in no way was being racist, in no way was was trying to indicate anything else but what God knew to be true, that these foreign nations neither knew God nor feared him nor walked after him, and they worshiped demonic spirits and false gods and idols.
SPEAKER_00: And so God knew if there was this intermarrying, that those those people would pull the hearts of the men of God, God's people away to worship and serve idols, which would bring destruction and damage, devastation to them and to their families.
SPEAKER_00: And so it was God's protective heart for his people that that resulted in this command.
SPEAKER_00: Do not intermarry, because they will turn your hearts after other gods.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Solomon was the wisest man to have ever lived, and yet he did the dumbest thing he could have done, which is to follow his own heart, his own feelings, his own desires, instead of following God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Now, our world today, I think most of us would agree with this, that our world today would read something like this, and they would not only correct Solomon, they would give him kudos, wouldn't they?
SPEAKER_00: Good for you, Solomon.
SPEAKER_00: Way to follow your heart.
SPEAKER_00: If you loved all these women and just really had a heart for them, that's what you need to do.
SPEAKER_00: Man, you gotta go where your heart tells you to go.
SPEAKER_00: Let your heart tell you what to do.
SPEAKER_00: This is the messaging that is ingrained in us and has been ingrained in us from the time we were children.
SPEAKER_00: It's the movies that we watch, it is the music we listen to, it's all of the romance and love and literature and all these things that we just have consistently bombarding us.
SPEAKER_00: It's what I refer to as the disnification of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: There's always that happily ever after, and the way to find that happily ever after is to follow your heart.
SPEAKER_00: I think back to when I was growing up, I think my favorite Disney cartoon was The Little Mermaid.
SPEAKER_00: Love that movie, and you know, we used to watch it all the time.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you guys have re-watched that movie as a grown-up with kids of your own, but things change, don't they?
SPEAKER_00: Because I used to watch that movie, and I'm not going to unpack the whole plot, but the father of the Little Mermaid, Ariel, King Triton, right, he was this big old jacked, like really buff like guy, and and uh the merman king of all the mermaids and stuff, and and and he was trying to prevent his daughter Ariel from going to the surface and interacting with humans.
SPEAKER_00: And Ariel fell in love with a human prince, and so all she wanted to do was follow her heart and go have a relationship and start a family with Prince Eric, this human, even though it was forbidden.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember watching it growing up, going, hey, what's wrong with that old crotchety mean King Triton?
SPEAKER_00: I don't understand.
SPEAKER_00: Why is he trying to stand in the way of his daughter's true love?
SPEAKER_00: I didn't get it.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm a dad of two daughters.
SPEAKER_00: You know how old Ariel was in that cartoon?
SPEAKER_00: 16.
SPEAKER_00: She was 16 years old, like I'm my own woman.
SPEAKER_00: You're a child.
SPEAKER_00: You have no idea, fish girl, what you're even saying.
SPEAKER_00: And so I used to look at King Triton as the one that was wrong, and now you realize, no, Ariel, kid, listen, do not follow your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Follow your father.
SPEAKER_00: He knows and wants what is best for you.
SPEAKER_00: Dads, can I get a single amen?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: So passionate about this.
SPEAKER_00: Solomon's heart was turned away after other gods.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, hear this.
SPEAKER_00: Because he first made a God out of his heart.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: He chose to idolize and devote himself and submit to what his heart was telling him to do as opposed to what his God had told him to do.
SPEAKER_00: So Solomon made his heart an idol, a God, and chose to follow that, which is why his heart then deceived him and went after idols and brought destruction into his life and into his family and legacy.
SPEAKER_00: Today, our world, our culture has made an idol of our hearts, of our feelings, hasn't it?
SPEAKER_00: We bow down to and worship the God of our feelings.
SPEAKER_00: How I feel in any given situation is the most important thing about that situation.
SPEAKER_00: It's not what's real, it's not what's true, it's not what actually is happening, it's what I feel about what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: It's not any longer perception is reality, it's my emotion is reality.
SPEAKER_00: My feelings supersede everything else.
SPEAKER_00: Any kind of external factors, any kind of objective or transcendent barometer or gauge that we can tether ourselves to, my feelings transcend that.
SPEAKER_00: My feelings transcend logic and reason.
SPEAKER_00: Something can be entirely illogical, completely unreasonable, but if I feel it, then that is what is true and right.
SPEAKER_00: Something that I feel transcends even objective truth of some kind.
SPEAKER_00: It transcends history and precedent where we don't learn from past mistakes anymore because I feel it's going to be different this time.
SPEAKER_00: My feelings even transcend science and biology about my identity and who I am.
SPEAKER_00: It's what I feel that constitutes that.
SPEAKER_00: We regularly set aside all objective truth and suspend reality in order to cater to the supremacy of our subjective feelings.
SPEAKER_00: This is the world we live in today.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, I know a lot of us we can point a finger going, yeah, that's ridiculous.
SPEAKER_00: Why do, why does culture do that?
SPEAKER_00: This is a message for us as the church.
SPEAKER_00: Where so often this godless culture and its influence infiltrates our thinking, our way of reasoning through things, and the way that we live and function as God's people.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, consider how often in our lives we go along with something we know isn't right, we know isn't true, and we do it for one reason to spare someone's feelings.
SPEAKER_00: And this is not a message to say, unleash the fury of hell and truth on everybody who is thinking incorrectly and go be jerks to everyone.
SPEAKER_00: You guys hear me?
SPEAKER_00: That's not it.
SPEAKER_00: The truth must always be spoken with love and with grace and with compassion for the person that is believing a lie.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we remain silent too often and say nothing, even though we see them walking this path, this road, where we know scripture says it is gonna lead to destruction.
SPEAKER_00: It is separating them from God, and that is their entire reason for existence.
SPEAKER_00: And we know they're doing their own thing and living their own way.
SPEAKER_00: But man, if we said something, I mean they may be offended.
SPEAKER_00: They may not think that we're being kind, and so we don't want to make things awkward or uncomfortable, and so to spare their feelings, we cost them their soul.
SPEAKER_00: Can we agree that there are far worse things in life for people than hurting their feelings?
SPEAKER_00: I think parents, we all understand this, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: Any one of you who had a toddler or has a toddler and you see them sprinting out into a busy intersection, in that moment, are you gonna look and go, Oh I'd go grab them, but I don't want to hurt their feelings.
SPEAKER_00: As you see your child with a metal fork walking toward the light socket, does any parent care about their kids' feelings in that moment?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00: How often do you correct a behavior or protect them from something that was going to cause incredible harm, and you do it at the expense of their feelings in that moment?
SPEAKER_00: And do they get their feelings hurt?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: They cry, they're upset, they kick, they scream, they do whatever they need to do.
SPEAKER_00: And you, as the parent, go, that's fine, I just saved your life.
SPEAKER_00: There are far worse things than feelings being wounded or hurt.
SPEAKER_00: Again, to reiterate, even as we do speak truth, it needs to be done with love, it needs to be done with grace, but it needs to be done.
SPEAKER_00: The follow your heart mindset is rooted in a worldview known as secular humanism.
SPEAKER_00: Secular humanism, it it basically puts out there that man is the center of all things.
SPEAKER_00: Mankind is at the center of existence.
SPEAKER_00: Everything you see around you, everything in this world, everything in the material universe exists for us.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's all about us as humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is quite the contrary to what this tells us, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Theism says in scripture tells us that everything that is exists for whom?
SPEAKER_00: God.
SPEAKER_00: This is his story, it is his creation, and he is at center.
SPEAKER_00: And so we exist for him, not the other way around.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of us need to actually take a good close look at our our thinking, our mindset, and just how often humanism creeps in.
SPEAKER_00: Just how often I begin to convince myself life is about me.
SPEAKER_00: And God exists for me and what I want from him.
SPEAKER_00: And we put ourselves at center.
SPEAKER_00: And so now all of a sudden we're questioning God and wondering, how could God do something like this?
SPEAKER_00: Well, that doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_00: God shouldn't do these things, and we start becoming judge and jury of the creator of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of reminding ourselves that God is at center and we don't question who God is and what he has told us.
SPEAKER_00: Secular humanism says that man is the center of all things, so it makes sense then, and it would follow, if man is the center of existence, then the center of man is where we must find our understanding about this existence.
SPEAKER_00: So if man's at the center of everything, then the center of man is where we learn about everything.
SPEAKER_00: And so we start looking within for the answers that we want and need.
SPEAKER_00: Humanism says a couple of primary things.
SPEAKER_00: Let me cover a couple of their primary postulates.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, our feelings are the ultimate source of truth and reality.
SPEAKER_00: Because if the answers are all in here, then we've got to learn and discover and understand what's in here so we can know what is true and what is real and what is right.
SPEAKER_00: Our feelings are the ultimate source of truth and morality.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need God.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need God to tell us what's right and wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Does that sound familiar, by the way?
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter 3, the first man, the first woman, bringing sin into the world the first time, and what does the serpent, the devil, tempt them with?
SPEAKER_00: No, if you eat of this tree that God said not to eat of, you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
SPEAKER_00: Defining morality for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: So humanism says the same lie.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need God for reason, for morality, for ethics, for purpose.
SPEAKER_00: We can find these things within ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We have self-autonomy.
SPEAKER_00: If I feel something, it must be right, it must be true.
SPEAKER_00: So I need to stop questioning that and follow my feelings.
SPEAKER_00: My feelings shape my identity, who I am, and how I perceive myself, and it shapes my reality, the world around me.
SPEAKER_00: Because there's so many of us who are being shaped by our feelings and how we feel about ourselves instead of what God has said about us.
SPEAKER_00: Even as his kids, we still walk around defeated, no hope, discouraged, tail tucked between our legs, just kind of shuffling our feet, going, Man, I'm the worst Christian ever.
SPEAKER_00: I know all the things I should be doing, but I'm just failing at every turn, and I can't ever be good enough, and I'm nobody, and I know that God is probably just done with me.
SPEAKER_00: He's fed up, probably just ready to kick me out, and and I don't even know if I should keep doing this.
SPEAKER_00: And the enemy of God, the father of lies, just continues to speak those lies instead of us reminding ourselves of what God has said.
SPEAKER_00: You may feel that way about yourself, but what God has said is that if anyone is in Christ, his son, he is a new creation.
SPEAKER_00: Old things have passed away and all things have been made new.
SPEAKER_00: That there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, that we don't need to remain in the muck and mire of our sin and the guilt and shame that comes with it.
SPEAKER_00: It tells us that we are children of God, sons and daughters of the King of Kings.
SPEAKER_00: We are a chosen nation, a royal priesthood, God's holy people.
SPEAKER_00: But I don't feel that way.
SPEAKER_00: Who cares?
SPEAKER_00: It's what God has said about us.
SPEAKER_00: Are we living in to that identity?
SPEAKER_00: And isn't it interesting how the Father of Lies uses those lies to reinforce through our feelings the opposite of what God has said?
SPEAKER_00: Because if he can get us to believe that through our feelings, then he keeps us stuck there.
SPEAKER_00: And we have nowhere to go.
SPEAKER_00: We're trapped in this place of despair and defeat.
SPEAKER_00: The problem with following my heart and feelings is that if feelings are the ultimate source of truth, why are they so often proven false?
SPEAKER_00: You guys experienced this?
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever felt something you were convinced was true and right?
SPEAKER_00: And then shortly thereafter went, what was I thinking?
SPEAKER_00: Man, if I'm the only one who has gone through this, I'm feeling really bad about myself right now.
SPEAKER_00: This is a shared part of the human experience.
SPEAKER_00: I love my dad, used to always talk about what he referred to as uh the gas pain syndrome.
SPEAKER_00: Let me let me explain.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Yeah, imagine you're in a situation where you're you see a group of people and you look across that group, and there's someone who's there, and you kind of make eye contact and you know them, and so you kind of haven't seen them in a little bit, and so you smile and kind of like give you a little smile.
SPEAKER_00: And in response, they kind of look at you and they go, and immediately in your mind, what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: We go, well, I feel hurt by that look they just gave me.
SPEAKER_00: Why did they just look at me that way?
SPEAKER_00: What did I do?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I remember there was a get together that they invited me to, I couldn't go, but I had a really good reason for not being able to go, and I told them plenty in advance.
SPEAKER_00: I might think I told them like three days in advance, did they need more time than that?
SPEAKER_00: Why would they need more time than that?
SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why they're upset at me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm trying to do my best here.
SPEAKER_00: Did they even know why I couldn't go to their thing?
SPEAKER_00: I had something else going on with a sick relative in the in the hospital, I needed to go visit them.
SPEAKER_00: How dare this person be so angry with me when I was going through all this stuff?
SPEAKER_00: They weren't there for me.
SPEAKER_00: I hate them.
SPEAKER_00: Ever done something like that?
SPEAKER_00: And we don't realize that in that moment, when we smiled and they went, it's because they got a gas pain right in that second.
SPEAKER_00: And it rumbled and stabbed, and they went.
SPEAKER_00: And you created an entire reality based on your feelings and what your heart was telling you, not based on what was true, not based on what was real that we can't always know.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, feelings are very real, always.
SPEAKER_00: Your feelings are real, but they are not always true.
SPEAKER_00: They are very often not right.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so grateful for living in a day and age where therapy and counseling and mental health, these things are talked about, they're discussed.
SPEAKER_00: It's recognizing that part of who we are and who God has made us.
SPEAKER_00: Because there was a day where you know no one would ever go get help in that regard, right?
SPEAKER_00: You just had to suck it up and figure it out on your own.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so grateful for the strides we have made in that area.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm grateful for the fact that we can unpack roots of these things, and and and and God uses this, bringing it back to his word, uses this stuff to bring freedom.
SPEAKER_00: I'm grateful.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, hear that?
SPEAKER_00: But can we also acknowledge that there's a double edged sword with all of these things?
SPEAKER_00: And that oftentimes we fall off the other side of the horse.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we've seen is problematic in some areas with an increasing therapy culture where we're so obsessed with other people validating.
SPEAKER_00: My feelings, that we never stop to verify them.
SPEAKER_00: We don't ever step back to go, are my feelings true?
SPEAKER_00: No, you just need to validate them because they're my feelings.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: But are you verifying them?
SPEAKER_00: Are you actually taking them back to this to say, is what I'm feeling aligned with God's created order?
SPEAKER_00: With what he has revealed to us in his word.
SPEAKER_00: Experience shows us that emotions are powerful and yet they are also volatile and fickle and entirely undependable.
SPEAKER_00: Our emotions are at odds, not just with other people's emotions, they're even at odds with later emotions that we're gonna feel, aren't they?
SPEAKER_00: So to make our emotions our source of truth is a recipe for disaster.
SPEAKER_00: It is a lesson in perpetual frustration because our emotions are always changing.
SPEAKER_00: We can't even agree with ourselves five minutes from now, based on how we're feeling.
SPEAKER_00: We need a different standard.
SPEAKER_00: Truth, by definition, is transcendent, it is exclusive, meaning if something is true, then other things are false.
SPEAKER_00: Truth has to be objective outside of ourselves so that we align our lives and our feelings with it.
SPEAKER_00: We don't determine what's true by what we feel.
SPEAKER_00: Truth is objective.
SPEAKER_00: There is no your truth and my truth, which I know is big today.
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of how we agree to disagree.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's your truth.
SPEAKER_00: I have my truth.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, there is no your truth, my truth.
SPEAKER_00: There is only truth.
SPEAKER_00: And God has given us the truth of his word so that we can live our lives in alignment with that truth.
SPEAKER_00: And when we deviate from it, that is when things start unraveling.
SPEAKER_00: The results of living by our emotion is a life where we experience no peace, stability, or consistency.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's actually an entire group of people who are completely controlled, completely governed by their feelings and emotions.
SPEAKER_00: You know what we call them?
SPEAKER_00: Toddlers.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Any parents of toddlers right here?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
SPEAKER_00: Anybody?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, God bless you guys.
SPEAKER_00: You are raising little humans who are following their heart every day.
SPEAKER_00: And whatever they feel is the only real that they will ever know.
SPEAKER_00: And they insist it must be done.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't the mark of maturity growing out of the toddler face?
SPEAKER_00: When we look at our world, how many examples of grown-up toddlers do we see?
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's social media or people around us who are ranting and raving and name-calling and angry and just losing their minds.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because my feelings were hurt?
SPEAKER_00: Because I feel a certain way?
SPEAKER_00: When the mark of a grown-up and maturity is the fruit of self-control, that's the fruit of God's Spirit, is being able to take what I feel and subject those feelings, make them subservient to the truth that God has revealed in his word.
SPEAKER_00: Because we need to grow up.
SPEAKER_00: Humanism not only tells us that truth and morality is determined by what I feel, humanism also tells us that man is inherently good at his core.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: This is why we can trust our feelings, because everyone, deep down, has we are good at the center of who we are.
SPEAKER_00: If you look to the deepest parts of man, all you're gonna find is sunshine and rainbows and flowers.
SPEAKER_00: We are good at our core.
SPEAKER_00: So we can trust ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Our deepest feelings and desires, we can trust those.
SPEAKER_00: We need to seek those for counsel.
SPEAKER_00: The answer is within us, right?
SPEAKER_00: So look inside yourself.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to respond to this statement, this hypothesis with a question.
SPEAKER_00: Has your heart proven trustworthy to you?
SPEAKER_00: Has it proven a trustworthy source where it will always guide you and never let you down?
SPEAKER_00: Or has it gotten you into some serious trouble that you've had to see the Lord undo?
SPEAKER_00: How often does it lead us astray?
SPEAKER_00: Guys, Jesus gives us the reason for this.
SPEAKER_00: He exposes what is actually inside of us and inside of our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Mark chapter 7, verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says this for from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.
SPEAKER_00: All of these evil things come from within, and they defile the person.
SPEAKER_00: So look within.
SPEAKER_00: Man is good at your core.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, actually, if you look at your core, what you're gonna find are all of these evil, horrific, selfish, sinful things.
SPEAKER_00: Good luck with that.
SPEAKER_00: God reinforces this.
SPEAKER_00: What does God have to say about our hearts through the prophet Jeremiah, Jeremiah 17, verse 9?
SPEAKER_00: The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.
SPEAKER_00: Who can understand it?
SPEAKER_00: We know it is sick and broken with sin.
SPEAKER_00: And so it is contrary to all who that God is and all that He desires.
SPEAKER_00: That is our sin nature that we're all born with and born into.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine if I told you, hey, I know you're going through some rough stuff.
SPEAKER_00: I want to refer you to someone who's a therapist and they're gonna really help you out.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, oh, that's great.
SPEAKER_00: Can I get their info?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no problem.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the info.
SPEAKER_00: Just keep in mind they lie a lot.
SPEAKER_00: And so they they really deceive, they're very deceitful, deceptive.
SPEAKER_00: So just be on guard for that.
SPEAKER_00: And then also they're they're desperately sick, really ill, and so they're not always there and kind of locked in, but they're amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Here's their number.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone like, yay?
SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna seek out counsel from someone that has that description, and yet that's exactly how our hearts are described apart from Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The prophet is here pointing out how God's people constantly, persistently trust their own heart, trust in themselves instead of trusting what God has said.
SPEAKER_00: And they hear what God has said, but they do what they feel like doing instead.
SPEAKER_00: And he's trying to wonder, to ponder, why is this?
SPEAKER_00: And this verse 9, that's his conclusion.
SPEAKER_00: It's the heart.
SPEAKER_00: They're being deceived by their own wicked hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of trusting in God and what he has said and patterning their lives after his word.
SPEAKER_00: How does the prophet describe those who do that?
SPEAKER_00: Two verses prior, Jeremiah 17, 7.
SPEAKER_00: Let's read this.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He is like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and it's not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but I want to be like that tree.
SPEAKER_00: That no matter what is going on in my life, no matter how hot or difficult things get for me, that I am rooted in the waters of life that God has given to us.
SPEAKER_00: Rooted in Him and His truth.
SPEAKER_00: And so bring on whatever trial, whatever I'm going through, I am steadfast and firm and unshakable.
SPEAKER_00: I am immovable because I have built my life in the truth that God has given to me.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to be this kind of a tree.
SPEAKER_00: Are we choosing to follow our feelings or follow what God has said?
SPEAKER_00: Are we trusting in the God who sees and knows everything we don't and can't see and know?
SPEAKER_00: This is something we've got to remember too, that we we keep trusting our feelings.
SPEAKER_00: We know how limited we are, right?
SPEAKER_00: We don't know what's gonna happen, not just tomorrow when we leave here.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know what's gonna happen the next second.
SPEAKER_00: I could say anything.
SPEAKER_00: We have no idea what's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: It is all laid out before our all-knowing eternal God.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, not too long ago, about a month and a half ago, Tracy, my wife and I, we went and picked up my daughter and her new husband from the airport, LAX, from their honeymoon.
SPEAKER_00: And they were coming back, and so we picked them up at LAX.
SPEAKER_00: It was on the 4th of July, and so we picked them up around nine o'clock.
SPEAKER_00: That's when they got in the car, and we start driving back home.
SPEAKER_00: The cool thing is, if you're gonna pick somebody up from LA, July 4th is the day to do it.
SPEAKER_00: No one's on the road.
SPEAKER_00: So we're just driving, just no traffic at all.
SPEAKER_00: It was great, and we're on the freeway that's elevated a little bit, and we're kind of looking down into LA and all the surrounding suburbs of Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, it was the greatest display of fireworks I have ever seen in my entire life.
SPEAKER_00: Because it wasn't just one fireworks show, they were happening everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: We were surrounded by 50 firework displays.
SPEAKER_00: Every time we take a curve, we'd be going into a new one.
SPEAKER_00: Like, ooh, ah, it was incredible.
SPEAKER_00: Highly recommend.
SPEAKER_00: Highly recommended.
SPEAKER_00: And as I'm looking at all this, I kind of felt like the Lord was just kind of giving me a little glimpse of what it's like to be him.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, little glimpse, very finite and trivial.
SPEAKER_00: But I could imagine being an individual sitting and watching one of those fireworks shows, thinking to themselves, wow, this is the best fireworks show ever.
SPEAKER_00: And here I am driving, seeing all of them, and I could respond, nah, there's like 12 that are better all over here.
SPEAKER_00: Because I could see everything going on.
SPEAKER_00: This is who God is.
SPEAKER_00: He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: All of the inhabitants of the earth are grasshoppers, says the prophet Isaiah, compared to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's the limit of our IQ and our understanding.
SPEAKER_00: Is a grasshopper to us, so are we to God.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't exist, it's not there.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we still trust ourselves, not even trusting this, but trusting this.
SPEAKER_00: Our hearts do not need to be followed.
SPEAKER_00: Our hearts need to be transformed.
SPEAKER_00: They need to be healed, they need to be redeemed and restored.
SPEAKER_00: Now the problem is we can't do that for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We can't change our own hearts.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've tried to, it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: You can sit, you can discipline yourself, you can just sit there and just over and over be like, I'm gonna change how I feel about this, I'm gonna change how I feel about this.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We can't change our feeling that way.
SPEAKER_00: We can try to coerce or manipulate, but that doesn't last.
SPEAKER_00: We can change our behaviors regardless of how we feel.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us have gotten pretty good at that.
SPEAKER_00: And so we start convincing ourselves we're really changing and transforming.
SPEAKER_00: Even though we want all the same things we used to want, we've just learned to control it better.
SPEAKER_00: And now, you know, we just kind of are bitter.
SPEAKER_00: But we're better, morally speaking.
SPEAKER_00: And when we just modify our behaviors, but the heart remains unchanged, as there's a certain level of hypocrisy to that, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: That inevitably will become exposed.
SPEAKER_00: And scripture also calls that self-righteousness because we pride ourselves in the fact that we picked ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
SPEAKER_00: And look at this.
SPEAKER_00: We used to be this, but we changed, and now we're look how good we are.
SPEAKER_00: What's wrong with all of you schmucks?
SPEAKER_00: Why can't you do that?
SPEAKER_00: And there's a pride now, a moral pride and superiority that scripture says is self-righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: That's exposed in our heart.
SPEAKER_00: It just adds to the disease of our heart, to the deceptive nature of our heart.
SPEAKER_00: We can't change our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: The good news that God not only has done for us, but told us he was going to do hundreds of years before Jesus came into this world.
SPEAKER_00: Through the prophet Ezekiel, Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: Let's read this.
SPEAKER_00: God says, this, and I will give you a new what, guys, heart, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, right?
SPEAKER_00: The heart that is hardened against God, hardened against everything that is right and true and good.
SPEAKER_00: And I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
SPEAKER_00: So our hearts are diseased with sin, but God promised a heart transplant for us, and he sent his son, the great heart surgeon, to do that work.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what we see Jesus came to do.
SPEAKER_00: It's what he said about himself, that he came to put his spirit, God's spirit in us to do that work of heart change.
SPEAKER_00: John chapter 7, verse 38.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, This Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.
SPEAKER_00: Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive.
SPEAKER_00: For as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
SPEAKER_00: You see the change here?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus in Mark 7 said, Hey, here's what's inside your heart evil, terrible, sinful, despicable things.
SPEAKER_00: And yet I came to give you my spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And when my spirit is in you, now from your heart will flow rivers of living water.
SPEAKER_00: My spirit in you, changing you, transforming you, your will, your desires, your feelings, your emotions, all of these things change from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: When we put our faith in Jesus, He gives us a heart that wants and desires the things that God wants and desires for us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is not to say, so when we become a Christian and we have the Holy Spirit, now we can follow our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Now our hearts can finally follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Right now our will can finally be subjected to His word and His will for us only through faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's when the heart begins to change.
SPEAKER_00: This is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, to follow Him, to submit every area of our life to His leadership and Lordship.
SPEAKER_00: That includes our emotions and feelings and everything that our heart contains.
SPEAKER_00: It's living according to what He has said, not according to what we feel, having that idol of our hearts and emotions.
SPEAKER_00: It's where we learn that loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us really is the best way to walk in freedom.
SPEAKER_00: It's where we learn that forgiving each other as often as they wrong us really is the best way to not have that bitterness consume us in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: It's where we learn that if someone strikes us on this cheek, turn the other to them to strike that one too.
SPEAKER_00: Because as we don't retaliate and don't seek revenge, we can know joy because vengeance is God's and we can entrust it to Him.
SPEAKER_00: It's where we experience, man, when we do things the way of Jesus, we understand why it is the only way and truth and life, and no one comes to the Father but through Him.
SPEAKER_00: What are we still clinging to today?
SPEAKER_00: Because back to King Solomon, that's what we read, didn't we?
SPEAKER_00: He knew what God had said, and yet his heart clung to his love for these women that were pulling him away from the true God.
SPEAKER_00: His heart pulled him away.
SPEAKER_00: He followed his feelings, clung to those, not to what God has said.
SPEAKER_00: What are you still clinging to today?
SPEAKER_00: And I pray the Lord is bringing something to your mind right now.
SPEAKER_00: Something you've been holding on to where you know what he said.
SPEAKER_00: And yet everything in you feels like you want something else.
SPEAKER_00: And you've been fighting it.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, my question as we close is what is it gonna take?
SPEAKER_00: How much more proof?
SPEAKER_00: How much more evidence do you need that following your heart leads to destruction?
SPEAKER_00: This is the path to life.
SPEAKER_00: There's no other way.
SPEAKER_00: Trust him.
SPEAKER_00: Try it his way and see what he does in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Can we stand together?
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for us.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We want to follow you.
SPEAKER_00: God, we recognize that our hearts they are deceitful.
SPEAKER_00: They are desperately sick.
SPEAKER_00: We cannot understand them.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we continue to follow them.
SPEAKER_00: God, thank you that you came to give us your spirit.
SPEAKER_00: We ask that your Holy Spirit will fill us, take full control of our hearts, transform, change.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, completely radically undo what needs to be undone.
SPEAKER_00: So that we can follow you.
SPEAKER_00: So that our hearts can desire you above all else.
SPEAKER_00: Set them free.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, free their hearts to trust in you.
SPEAKER_00: Knowing that you love them.
SPEAKER_00: You can and you will care for them.
SPEAKER_00: Better than they could ever care for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Jesus, for meeting us here.
SPEAKER_00: In your name.