What your heart will follow

Tonight we’re going to discuss what your heart will follow.  When Job was professing his own righteousness before his friends, he said, “If my step hath turned out of the way, and mine heart walked after mine eyes, and if any blot hath cleaved to mine hands; Then let me sow, and let another eat; yea, let my offspring be rooted out,” Job 31:7-8.  Notice the phrase, “If… mine heart walked after mine eyes.”

As surely as the sun will rise in the morning, your heart will follow certain things.  No matter how much you resolve otherwise: 

Your heart will follow: what you look at

Job 31:7 – your heart will go after your eyes.  Eve saw the fruit and she ate it.  David saw Bathsheba and he took her.  Samson saw a woman in Timnath and he married her.  Samson saw a harlot in Gaza and he went in to her.  This is why pornography is so powerful.

The advertising industry understands this principle, if you don’t.  They know that if they can get you to look at something they’re selling, they can get you to buy it.  You may not buy it the first time you see it.  But they’ll get you eventually. Internet marketing is directed to show you what you’ve been looking for.

When you keep looking at something over and over, your heart will go after it.  That’s why you must protect your eyes.  You must resist the temptation to look, when you see something you like that you know you’re not supposed to have.

What you think about

Jer 3:17, 9:14 walk… after the imagination of their evil heart.  Our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, Jer 17:9.  So, the stuff that comes into your imagination is usually way off of what God wants you to be thinking about.  

No matter what, the stuff you think about is going to be the stuff you do, at some point.  “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he,” Prov 23:7.  This is why we must get our thoughts to obey Christ with the mighty weapons of God, 2 Cor 10:3-5.

What you covet

Ezek 33:31 their heart goeth after their covetousness.  Covetousness is idolatry, Col 3:5, Eph 5:5.  In Ezek 20:16 their heart went after their idols.  Solomon’s wives “turned away his heart after other gods,” 1 Ki 11:4.

What you want is what your heart will go after.  Count on it.  Book it.  Take this to the bank.  It’s going to happen.  People do what they want to do.  

And what your friends do

Ezek 11:17-21 your heart will go after the Lord or after their detestable things and their abominations.  God said that he will gather Israel from the people among whom they will be scattered in the Tribulation.  In these nations they are exposed to abominations. This world is into some sick and detestable things these days, like back in the days of Noah and Lot, Lk 17:26-30.  And if you hang around with the world, your heart will go after their detestable and abominable things.  Sitting here tonight, you can’t imagine that you would go after those things. But if you keep hanging around people who are doing them, you will be, too. It’s just a matter of time.

However, it you hang around the people of God, with the new heart God gave you in salvation, you will go after the Lord.  You’ll walk in his statutes and ordinances, gladly.  Prov 21:15 says, “It is joy to the just to do judgment.”

Conclusion

Make friends of God’s people in church.  Watch your eyes.  Control your thoughts.  Constrain your covetousness.  Walk with God’s people with a new heart. And your heart will go after the Lord.