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Now, in this chapter, there's lots of stuff here you notice in the book of Proverbs, there's a lot of things tied together here in a chapter that a lot of times don't seem to even be associated with each other. What I'm going to be focusing on is verses one and two. The Bible says, Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermedaleth with all wisdom. A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself. The title of my sermon tonight is, A Fool Trusted in His Own Heart. This is such a common teaching today, which is why I want to preach on this. You hear all the time people say, follow your heart, discover who you are, discover your own self and your own heart, and be true to your heart, and all these different sayings and phrases. You hear that, and it's probably the most commonly taught in self-help books, and in that area of literature and philosophy. Which is exactly why I want to preach about it, because the Bible says it's something different. It doesn't tell you to find your own heart and search your own heart out. It says, A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself. This is something about someone who says, I want my heart to discover itself. I want to just see what's inside of my heart, and just whatever is there, that's what I'm going to go with. A lot of the self-help stuff that teaches you this thing to try to find yourself and to find what's in your heart, it's not true. And essentially, it turns into a false religion in a lot of this stuff. It teaches you to trust in yourself, and trust in what's inside of you, and trust in what's in your heart, than to put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. It might not seem that way out of appearance, and it never does. I've never seen one where it's just real blatant. See, the thing is, deception and lies and what Satan does, it's always very subtle. One of the ways that they'll use is they'll try to use philosophy to give you a slightly twisted view of what's right. And oftentimes, this stuff sounds really good, especially on the surface. You could read it and be like, hey, they're just trying to help. This is something I could use. This is something that's good for me. But if they're teaching you, whatever it is, I'm being pretty generic right now. I don't have a specific, this self-help book is one that teaches this. I don't know, but I just know from seeing a lot of different books, a lot of literature, that they teach this type of mentality, this type of philosophy of finding yourself, finding your own heart. And on the surface, like I said, it looks pretty good, but don't be deceived by that. Let's look at these. I'm going to kind of dissect these first two verses in chapter 18 a little bit, because we can get a lot of wisdom, even just from these first two verses. So look at verse number one, through desire a man. So this is saying, you know, obviously a wanting, a willingness, you have a desire. A man having separated himself, so this is someone who's already separated himself and was somehow separating. You're separating yourself from sin. I mean, you're separating yourself unto God. You might not even always understand why you shouldn't do something maybe from the Bible, but you're doing it, right? That's the step of faith that we take. See your Christian life, you're going to, you start off getting saved, right? You get the Holy Spirit, you're saved, you're sealed. Now it's time to start growing and learning. And you're going to be hearing stuff, preach, you're going to be reading the Bible, and you're going to see some stuff, but you're not going to have all the understanding. Nobody does. I mean, I don't have all the understanding, but you gain more and more and more the more you grow. But you are going to see commandments and you're going to see rules, you're going to see some things, and it's going to be pretty black and white, it's going to say something. Now you're going to be able to decide, even if you don't understand something and say, well, I don't quite get that, that doesn't make any sense to me. Are you going to obey it? Even if you don't understand it, or are you going to wait until you understand it? See, the separation and just obeying and taking God's word by faith, I believe you're going to grow a lot faster and God's going to give you that understanding when you have already settled your heart and say, you know what, I don't have to understand everything, but I know this much. I know this is God's word. I know that's what He has for me. And I'm going to just obey it and I'm going to look at it and read it. And if it says it, then it's the truth because His word is truth. So I'm just going to take it as such. I might not understand everything, but I'm just going to obey it. And I'm going to go with that. So the Bible says here in verse one, through desire, a man having separated himself, so he's already separated himself, he's already been obeying the commandments, seeketh and intermeddle it with all wisdom. So the result of that, the result of that faith, having that desire, you start off with that desire, you start obeying the commandments, you start separating yourself, you're going to see, you're going to have this wisdom, you're going to start gaining the understanding and God's going to reveal a lot more to you the more you obey. Listen, and then in verse two, he kind of contrasts this with the fool. So verse one obviously is the positive thing, that's what the wise man's going to do, you're going to desire to seek God's word, you're going to obey, you're going to separate yourself from the world, you're going to separate yourself from sin, and you're going to seek an intermeddle with all wisdom. The fool, on the other hand, the fool has no delight in understanding, he doesn't even want to know. It's not a joyful thing. I love learning new things, it's a delight for me. When I find something and I'm like, oh man, I never saw that, last Wednesday, I was looking at X, there was that one thing that I learned and I was just like, that's awesome, I was super happy when I saw that and I learned that. But the fool doesn't have a delight in that, it's not something that they care about. It says, but that his heart may discover itself. So the lusts of the heart is what's going to drive a fool. Fool or no restraint made on the wicked lusts or the thoughts from the heart, rather free reign is given so that the heart may discover itself. That's what a fool does, is that, I'm just going to do, and basically what this is, it's all about the heart discovering itself. You're just looking out and searching out what feels good to you. It's kind of like an appetite for your flesh, just whatever my heart wants, I'm just going to go with that. And that is the wrong, that's a foolish attitude to have, because we need to have some kind of restraint. God didn't just give us a heart, he gave us a mind too, and he wants us to use the mind to help direct our heart and our spirit. You know, a lot of people still, because this is so prevalent today, a lot of people want to be saying, well I still don't see what's so bad about following your heart. And part of the reason you might be thinking that way is because we get bombarded, practically on a daily basis, with this type of philosophy all over the place. I mean, I can think of just about every love song or whatever, I talk about following your heart. I mean, there's a lot, I don't even want to repeat them because they're kind of stupid songs, but if you just think about a lot of rock songs, a lot of ballads and stuff, they talk about just following your heart and doing what your heart wants you to do. Even in the movies too, it's the same theme, it's a common theme, and it's something that happens, it's just pumped in your head over and over and over and over again. And before you know it, you just start thinking that way, like, oh yeah, because you heard it so much, you're just going to start repeating it. And on the surface, it doesn't even sound that bad. I mean, it's not like it sounds like, hey, it's not even saying like, hey, go fornicate or something, like that's pretty obvious. This is just saying, hey, listen to your heart, your heart's a good thing. And you can think of, the other thing is, you can think of a lot of good things in your heart, right? So I'm not saying don't ever do what your heart wants. It's don't give your heart that control of following your heart, right? So like, a lot of times, especially if you have a good heart and you want to do good things and you can have some good things coming out of your heart, to follow that, but don't let that lead the way, have the restraint from your mind. Turn to Genesis chapter six, if you would, Genesis chapter six, because there's this philosophy where it says, you know, discover your own heart and find out who you really are. And that's what they tell you, that in order for you to know who you really are, you need to just follow your heart, let your heart be the guide, and it's not what the Bible teaches. We see this in Proverbs 18, but there's a bunch more verses we're going to see about the heart, and the Bible basically is calling people fools in Proverbs 18, that to let your heart just discover itself. In Genesis chapter six, verse number five, this is the first time the word heart is even used in the Bible. So we're going to see what the Bible says about the heart in its first usage, Genesis chapter six, verse five, the Bible says, and God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. This is right around, you know, the time of the flood, and God sent the flood to wipe out the whole world, and he said that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The biggest problem is that we have hearts that are made of flesh, and they're going to naturally desire things that are fleshly things that oftentimes are sinful things. Not always, but it's up to our spirit, or our own will, our minds, to help subdue some of these fleshly desires that we have, and these fleshly desires of the heart, and bring them into subjection, and to get our hearts right. That way we can set our hearts on that which is good. The whole point of this is we need to be able to set our hearts in the right direction. Don't just let your heart discover itself. We need to have some kind of guidance, some kind of control over our heart, and to give it the direction, look at chapter 8 of Genesis, we're still in Genesis, look at 8 chapter 21, because you see we were born into a sinful world, we're born into this flesh, we have a sinful flesh, and the Bible says that the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. Look at chapter 8 verse 21, it says, and the Lord smelled a sweet saber, and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground anymore for man's sake, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, neither will I again smite anymore everything living as I have done. So here we're saying, look, the imagination of man's heart, it's evil from a child. Over and over again we're seeing this now, this is the third scripture reference we've turned to, and let the word of God have its proper weight, I mean if he's saying that the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, do you really think it's a good thing then to just say, hey, just follow your heart in anything that it wants to do? No, of course not, it's naturally wicked, however, again, that does not mean that we cannot overcome that natural wickedness, that we can't set our hearts aright, if it were impossible to control our hearts, then the Lord would not have said in 1 Chronicles 22, 19, it says, now set your heart and your soul to seek the Lord your God. Arise therefore in building the sanctuary of the Lord, God, to bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord and the holy vessels of God into the house that is to be built to the name of the Lord. So he's saying here, set your heart and your soul to seek the Lord your God. So you have your heart, it has its own imaginations, it has its own things that your heart wants to do. You need to set your heart on the things of God. You need to focus your heart and put it on things that are of God and have that type of control. You don't let your heart control, you don't let your heart just lead you wherever you want. Oh, it's in my heart, so I'm just going to do this. Use your brain, use your mind and your spirit to help guide them. Make the decision to set our hearts to do right. There's a lot of verses, you don't have to turn to any of these, but I'm going to read through these. Talking about setting your heart or not setting your heart on different things, in Psalm 62 verse 10, the Bible says, trust not in oppression and become not vain in robbery. If riches increase, set not your heart upon them. So the Bible tells us, look, don't set your heart upon riches. That's something you don't want to have in your heart. Now, naturally, we might want to. We might want to be like, hey, I want more money. My heart's saying, go get yourself some more riches and go get yourself some more money. That would be a natural thing, too. I mean, naturally, in your heart, that makes sense. But the Bible's saying, no, set not your heart upon the riches. See, we have control over what we desire and what our heart's going to be set on and what we are focused on and even where our joy comes from. Psalm 78, 8 says, it might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright and whose spirit was not steadfast with God. Again, I mean, another reference to setting your heart right. And the Bible has many of these words telling you, look, you need to set your heart right. You need to don't set it on this. You need to set it on this. Joshua chapter 24 verse 23 says, now, therefore, put away, said he, the strange gods which are among you, and incline your heart unto the Lord God of Israel. Again, you need to set your hearts on to God, on the Lord. And 1 Kings 11, 4 says, for it came to pass when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods. And his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. Here's another thing, don't just assume that because you're saved, that your heart now is always going to desire the right thing. That's not the way it works. You don't get a new heart. You have a new spirit. And I'm going to preach another sermon on that kind of explaining and outlining the new man versus the old man. But you have a rebirth inside of you when you get saved, that's a new spirit. It's not the same as your heart. We still have the fleshly heart. So don't fall into this thinking that like, well, because I'm saved, I'm naturally going to want, you know, my heart's going to want to do what's right. That's not true. Solomon was saved. And this is Solomon. This is King Solomon much later in his life. I mean, King Solomon had like a thousand wives. I think it was like 700 wives and 300 concubines. Yeah. Try to wrap your mind around that a thousand. Like how is it even possible? I don't know. The Bible says that his wives turned away his heart after other gods. I mean, this is King Solomon who he, he spoke with God way, way, way, way early on in his reign is when he started taking over the kingdom, when, when he was put in the place of David, his father, you know, God came to him and asked him say, you know, what basically, what do you want? He's asking the Lord just opened up to him and Solomon asked God for wisdom and understandings and look, this is a great people. This is a great responsibility. I just want to be able to know how to do this, how to come in and go out before the people. I need to know how to manage and how to rule this people. He was seeking wisdom. And God said, since you, since your heart was set, you know, set on wisdom and understanding and being able to do this, God blessed him for having the right heart and having our attitudes that I'm going to add to you the things that you didn't ask for. He said, you didn't ask for the life of your enemies. You didn't ask for riches. You didn't ask for length of days. You didn't ask for a long life. He didn't ask for riches. God gave all that to him. God made Solomon the most prosperous, the most wealthy King that had ever been in that land and the King of Israel. I mean, he was, he was more powerful. He experienced peace. He had a long life. He had everything from God. And it's a shame to see what happened at the end of his life because his wives turned away his heart from God to other gods. Yet Solomon was still saved. Solomon was a man of God yet. I mean, he finished his life foolishly and his heart was actually able to be set on something else where it shouldn't have been. In 1 Samuel 7, chapter 7, verse 3 says, And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, If ye do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtoreth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the Lord, and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines. So this is something that Samuel was saying. He's getting conditions and look, if you set your heart on the Lord, if you come back to get rid of those false gods, and here's the thing, and this is a good promise too, if your heart ever gets away like King Solomon did, if your heart ever gets away from serving God, he's saying, look, this is what he said, if you set your heart to right, set your hearts back on the Lord, to serve him, he will deliver you. God can bring you out of anything, but he wants you to have your heart set on him and to follow the things that he has for you. Second Chronicles 12-14 says, And he did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the Lord. A heart is important, a heart has an influence on what we do, right, and on all of us. I mean, kind of what your heart wants to do, oftentimes, if we're not careful, can lead you into doing things one way or the other, I mean, whether they're bad or good, we ought to have enough restraint to be able to say, to judge, is what my heart wants to do, is that right? And if it's not right, hey, let's set it on the right thing, let's set it on serving the Lord. The Bible says that, you know, in Second Chronicles, that this king, he did evil, and the reason why he did evil, the reason why he did bad, is because he prepared not his heart. Let's prepare our hearts tonight to serve God. And that's something you have to get settled on your own and say, do I want to serve God? I mean, is this something that I want to do? Well, prepare your heart to do that and kind of set your heart and get focused on doing those things. The Bible provides many warnings about just following your heart. Proverbs 28. Are you still in the book of Proverbs? If you are, oh no, we turn back to Genesis. If you're in Proverbs, go ahead and turn to chapter number 28. There's a couple more verses in Proverbs we're going to turn to before we wrap things up tonight. It's going to be a shorter sermon than normal. But Proverbs chapter 28, look at verse number 26, it says, he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool, but whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered. We ought not to just be trusting in our own hearts and say, well, if it's coming from my heart, then it must be good. And I'm sure now we've seen plenty of scripture, a lot of verses that kind of explain that and we'll back that up. Now again, that's contrary to what a lot of philosophy and a lot of, especially again, it's in this like the self-help type of atmosphere and areas where people are trying to tell you, you get to discover yourself, get to know your own heart and your heart's right and your heart's good and just follow your heart. Watch out for that because the Bible is telling us something different. The Bible is telling us, look, if you trust in your own heart, you're a fool. The devil's very, very tricky and he's a great liar. He's the father of all lies, the Bible says, and he's going to try to spread this notion of listening to your heart any way that he can. That's why he uses music. That's why he uses movies. That's why he uses literature. That's why he uses all these different things just to get in there and it's not always going to be apparent. The books that are out there, especially the self-help types, they're really popular. They make the best seller list. They're out there. A lot of people are reading this stuff and buying into it, but do you think that the Bible teaches us to be concerned about our own well-being and happiness? The self-help type books, they completely revolve around you, like improving yourself. Again, I've got to be careful because there's nothing wrong with improving yourself and getting better. There's nothing wrong with that. So let me choose my words carefully. You shouldn't be, okay, self-esteem is I guess what I'm looking for. People teach you to esteem yourself really highly and be focused more on yourself and your own self-worth than on other people. When the Bible teaches exactly the opposite, the Bible teaches us to put in lowliness of mind, let each esteem other better than themselves. There's nothing wrong with having a view of yourself that is appropriate. God says that we're kings. God says that we're priests. You're valuable as we preach this morning, the value of a soul, the value of a human being. You're valuable in God's eyes. So I'm not saying that you're worth nothing, but you've got to be careful with some of these help books that teach you to be self-esteem, to where you can get caught up in esteeming yourself overly, too much, where you're putting too much thought and emphasis on yourself, when you really ought to be putting emphasis and thought on other people and esteeming others better than yourself. It's a subtle thing to get caught up in because in every lie there's always some truth in it. You always have that truth because that's how you sell a lie. If it was just completely all just false, it would be obvious. The lie's got to be mixed in there with some truth and with some kind of goodness to get you to swallow, to get you accepted. And that's why on the surface a lot of these ideas sound pretty good. But one of the reasons why it is because the philosophy's been masked to try to trick you and it's just spun out there to deceive you a little bit. We ought not to have a proud heart or a proud attitude where we're thinking we're better than other people. We need to esteem others better than ourselves. And the Bible teaches us that our hearts are right, so let's get our hearts in the right spot. Look at Proverbs chapter 12, I know we're in like 28. Turn back real quick to Proverbs chapter 12, we're almost done. And see, when this philosophy is taught, a lot of times people are using a lot of enthusiasm and they're speaking and it sounds great and they might get you rolling and get you worked up. And you might even give them a lot of credit and credibility because maybe they believe in it and it's something that they're excited about. But it still doesn't make it right, the ultimate philosophy. We have to compare with what we're being confronted with, especially from the world. Does it line up with the Bible? Anything you do, because there's so much information out there from the world, right? And I'm not going to say it's all wrong, there's reasons you go to look at stuff and you do research on things and you learn about stuff. But if you're seeking help, if you're seeking advice, and maybe there's something in your life that you're trying to fix and get better, compare everything with the Bible and stand on God's Word, because God's Word is the truth. And it's so easy to be deceived by so much in this world. Proverbs 12, 15 says, the way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he that hearkeneth on the counsel is wise. So the foolish person thinks that, I mean, everything's right in their eyes. Everything they do is right. You can't teach a fool, right? There is no learning, because everything I do is right. And that's an attitude, if you have that attitude, you're a fool. I don't have that attitude, I mean, I try to stay away from that. I know that everything I do isn't right. Everything I do or anyone does isn't right. I mean, we're all sinners, none of us is perfect. If you're able to hearken unto counsel, the Bible says, then you're wise. If you can listen to reproof, if you can listen to what the Bible's teaching and be counseled with God's word, then you're going to receive wisdom. So be aware of a lot of these tactics. We need to be vigilant about that and compare everything that we read and everything we're confronted with with the Bible. You're in Proverbs 19, the last place we're going to turn to, look at Proverbs chapter 19. This is a few pages back, Proverbs number 19 and verse number 20, the Bible reads, Hear counsel and receive instruction that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end. There are many devices in a man's heart, nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand. So the Bible says in verse 20, it says, hear counsel and receive instruction. We ought to open up our ears to the Bible, to God's word, and when you do this, when you're opened up to that, when you're ready to receive instruction, in your latter end, you're going to be wise. That's going to give you the wisdom that you need. God's word has the counsel, God's word has the instruction for you, and it says in your latter end, it's not going to be immediate, in your latter end, you're going to be wise. But you need to take God's word for what it says, and when you see things, if something else that you see contradicts something in the Bible, the Bible's right. You need to be able to take that counsel from the Bible and apply it to yourself. Very similar to the first verses that we looked at is verse 21 here, about, you know, you've got to hear and obey God's word and then wisdom coming, is what we just saw here in verse 20, hear counsel and receive instruction that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end. Look at verse number 21, there are many devices in a man's heart. We have many desires, we have many ways that our heart's going to want to go, many directions. There's many devices for our hearts, sometimes you feel things, things that feel good to us, to our senses, you know, in our hearts, but just because something might feel good or something might feel right, it doesn't mean that it is good. Things can feel good to us, things can feel good to your heart, it's not always right. Your heart can deceive you, your heart is flesh. It's not always wrong, but I'm just saying, don't let your heart just lead you that way. It says, nevertheless, even though there's many devices in a man's heart, nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand. God's word stands. You can have total trust in that. If you're going to trust in anything, don't trust in your own heart, trust in what the Bible says. Trust in God's word, trust in His wisdom and His righteousness for us, and you won't be led astray. So I'm going to close with this, if you have questions, if you have things that you need to work on in your life, if you're looking for counsel, if you need help in any areas when you're battling sin, when you're battling whatever it is, let's go to God's word. God's word is going to stand, this is the counsel that we need. I'm not saying everything else is bad, but compare it with this book. If it lines up with this book, great. Amen. That's good. If your heart's telling you to do something, and it lines up with this book, great. Follow with them. But don't just blindly follow your heart and just say, oh, well, this is feeling good to me, so I'm just going to do it. That's the wrong thing that we could do. That's going to lead you to become a fool. Use God's word, use that discretion, use that wisdom to help to set your heart on the right things. You want your heart to be in whatever you're doing. I'm not trying to say it's a bad thing to have your heart in something, absolutely the opposite. It's good. You ought to have your whole heart in what you're doing. The Bible says believe in the Lord with all of your heart. God wants your whole heart. He wants you dedicated to that, so get your heart right, set your heart right, but do it based on what the Bible says, not based on other things. Don't just let your heart come up with its own imagination and its own things. Set it right, set it according to God's word, and get your whole heart in whatever it is you're doing. I mean, especially serving God. You want to go with someone, get your whole heart in it. Let's get out there and let's reach people. Let's go all out. Getting your all out in something like sewing could be like, hey, I'm going to go home and I'm going to study and I'm going to memorize some of these verses and I'm going to try to figure out how I'm going to be able to talk to someone and I'm going to be able to share the Gospel and be thinking about it and that's something that I'm going to be focused on and thinking about for the whole week. That's going to be setting your heart right and getting your heart into the things of God and not just sitting around and saying, eh, what am I going to do today? What does my heart want to do today? And then just going with whatever. So hopefully you're able to pick up something. I wasn't the most eloquent speaker tonight for some reason, but not that I necessarily ever am, but let's use the Bible to gain some wisdom. This is something that, and when I read this originally, this isn't something that's new to me as of recently. I've learned this a while ago, but it's an important truth because the philosophy pervades of really magnifying yourself and magnifying your own heart. The Bible clearly says that that's not the course that we should take. So let's just get all of our wisdom instruction from the Bible and use that as our guide and that as our compass to determine what's right and wrong. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, I thank you so much for this opportunity to preach. God, I pray that we'd all use your wisdom and retain your words and use that to determine the direction we're going to go. Help us all to set our hearts to serving you. Have it set our hearts to write, dear God, that you would lead us and direct us. And it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.