GUARDRAILS FOR YOUR LIFE
Eph. 5:3-5
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR: Tomorrow is Tax Day. Here’s 7 thoughts:
1. Moms and Dads never appreciate their kids more than at tax time.
2. Did you know that whoever won the Mega Millions jackpot will make history? They'll be the first billionaire to pay taxes!
3. Why was the seafood restaurant being investigated by the IRS? They were suspected of being a shell company.
4. Why doesn’t the IRS audit cows? Because the farmer milked them dry.
5. Ever wonder how Form 1040 got its name? For every $50 you earn, you get $10, they get $40.
6. Tax day is when ordinary Americans send their money to Washington, D.C., and wealthy Americans send their money to the Cayman Islands.” — Jimmy Kimmel
7. Why didn’t Sherlock Holmes pay a lot of taxes? Because he made brilliant deductions.
B. THESIS
1. Today I’m talking about something we see every day but rarely think about; something that will likely save our lives one time or another. Guardrails.
2. So we’re going to talk about this simple concept that also applies to the spiritual realm. The real author of guardrails is God. The title of this message is, “Guardrails For Your Life.”
I. THE IMPORTANCE OF GUARDRAILS
A. WHAT IS A GUARDRAIL?
1. Definition of a Guardrail: A guardrail is actually a partial wall designed to keep vehicles from straying off the road into dangerous areas. You usually find guardrails on bridges, in medians, around curves and if there’s a precipice/drop-off.
2. The idea behind guardrails is that you will do less damage to your car and your life if you hit a guardrail, than if you run off the road.
B. A GUARDRAIL SAVED MY LIFE
1. When I was a teenager, I was driving across Houston in my blue Volkswagen Bug car. My friend and I were on an overpass (a bridge over a perpendicular road). I was driving and had my elbow out the window and was steering with only my little finger.
2. Suddenly I had a blowout of my right front tire. Before I could grab the steering wheel, it spun 3X to the right, as if I’d made a right-hand turn. My car impacted with the guardrail and I slid down it about 100 feet (making a large crease down the side of my car) until I was able to bring it to a stop.
3. The whole time I was looking over the edge at the oncoming cars that would run me over if my car went over the guardrail. Thank God it held. The guard rail probably saved my life!
C. WE NEED GUARDRAILS IN OTHER AREAS OF LIFE. Guardrails aren’t just important to have on roads, we also need them in many other areas:
1. Financial Guardrails – to keep us out of debt;
2. Behavior Guardrails– so we don’t act like lost people;
3. Moral Guardrails – so we don’t shame the Name of Jesus and set a bad example for others.
4. Marriage/ Dating Guardrails – “I will not be alone with a person of the opposite sex where we could fall into sin.” “I will not look on a woman to lust after her;” 1 Pet. 3:1-7. And generally, “If there’s something that’s wrong to do in public, then it’s wrong to do in private!”
5. Ethical Guardrails – “I will be honest, truthful; I will not cheat, lie, or steal, etc.”
6. In other words, we need to develop a set of standards beyond which we will not go.
II. WHICH IS BETTER: PREVENTION OR CURE?
A. STORY OF THE TOWN: FENCE OR AMBULANCE?
1. There was a town that was reached by a dangerous highway curve on a cliff. Several cars had already over-run the curve and plunged into the abyss. A community meeting was called to discuss the problem.
2. Some thought it a good idea to station an ambulance at the bottom of this cliff to give immediate aid to the victims. Wiser heads suggested it might be better to erect a fence (or guardrail) around the curve on top of the cliff.
3. Such a discussion is ridiculous: We know it’s much better to PREVENT accidents and deaths than to try to REMEDY THEM AFTERWARD. Let’s don’t overlook the truth that this principle has much spiritual merit as well.
4. The same thing is true with dangerous temptations or mistakes in life. Setting up boundaries around yourself (and sticking to them) is much better than “crashing & burning” – ruining your reputation, your health, your marriage, your finances, or whatever else – and then trying to recover. The "fence" at the top is better than on the "ambulance" at the bottom!
B. GOD’S BOUNDARIES
Eph. 5:3-5; “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” Mark 7:21, “For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder...”
1. God has set up limits/ boundaries for everything we DO, SAY, THINK -- ranges where things are safe. Even GOOD things have limits – eating, breathing, or drinking water (excesses of these are gluttony, hyperventilating, and overhydration).
2. When you violate GOD’S boundaries, you endanger yourself. Are there Heights? You may fall. Speed? You may wreck. Is there Deep Water? Beware, you may drown.
3. God made everything good, but if it’s taken out of its boundaries, it can become evil. Sex is meant to be only within the confines of Biblical marriage [one man + one woman for a lifetime]. God made it to be good; but if you take sex out of its boundary, it becomes dangerous to you and a sin.
4. God designed nature and human Government to punish wrongdoing. We may escape the consequences of our actions for a while, but eventually it will catch up to us.
III. GETTING IN GOD’S SAFETY ZONE
A. GOD’S SAFETY ZONE IS IN JESUS CHRIST
1. Illus. of family traveling on prairie when a huge prairie fire occurred. A wall of fire could be seen far away, slowly moving toward them, driven by a strong wind.
2. The father quickly got down from the wagon and lit fires downwind from them, for an area 100 yards wide. The fire he lit burned a large swath of grass for a mile downwind.
3. The father said, “Hurry, let’s get into the burned area!” They traveled in it a mile to a small knoll. There they took their stand. Upwind, the wall of fire came sweeping toward them, smoke and heat filling the sky.
4. But when it got to the burned place, the wall of fire parted and passed their wagon on both sides and moved on. The father summarized, “The fire can never come where it’s already been.”
5. This is spiritually true too. God has already let His judgment fall on Jesus at Calvary. If we get “into Christ” the judgment of God can never fall on us, because it’s already burned there; we’re safe! Jesus is our Safe Zone!
B. ARM YOUR CONSCIENCE
1. If you have an area of weakness to temptation, then you need to study the Bible and locate scriptures that you can quote when you’re tempted.
a. If you’re afraid, memorize 2 Tim. 1:7;
b. If you’re tempted to lust, memorize and quote Jesus words, “It’s better to pluck your eye out & throw it away than to go into Hell with two eyes.” Job said, “I have made a covenant with my eyes; Why then should I look upon a young woman?” (31:1). Job decided not even to let his gaze linger on a young woman.
2. If we don’t “Guard” ourselves, we’ll get into trouble. You know what can happen if you give in to your temptation. You know already. You don’t need new information. I want you to stop and face up to what you know God’s will is for your life—God’s will for your body, your marriage, God’s will for the direction of your life.
3. You may be married and there’s this guy at work or this girl at work, and nothing has “happened” yet, but oh, my gosh, you’ve been thinking about stepping over that line. But there’s something inside of you going, “Ahem!” That’s the Holy Spirit. He’s saying, “Hey! You’re losing self-control in this area!”
4. Are you making friends with ungodly people? They WILL affect your decisions! 1 Cor. 15:33 says, “Do not be misled: Bad company corrupts good character.”
5. Alcohol causes your judgment to be lost. God says, “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery” Eph. 5:18. You need to back up and put a guardrail. Peter says, “A man is a slave to whatever controls him” 2 Pet. 2:19. If you play video games half the night; you need to put up a guardrail.
6. I’m suggesting you develop a SET OF PERSONAL STANDARDS, then when you violate them, your conscience should be sounding the alarm, “Danger, danger, danger!”
7. When you bump up against some behaviors that don’t bother anybody else in your office or your school -- they should begin to bother you. Good parents tell their kids, “In order to keep you out of real danger, we need to set up some protective barriers. I want to have that conflict now, and not after you go over a cliff. People who go over cliffs often don’t live to tell about it.”
C. FOR THOSE WHO THINK THEY DON’T NEED BOUNDARIES:
1. None of us plan to mess up our lives. No one ever says, “I can’t wait to wreck my marriage.”
2. Nobody plans to mess their bodies up physically, but a lot of people have, because they didn’t have any guardrails. Nobody plans to mess up relationships with their relatives, but they do. You need guardrails!
3. And please don’t insult yourself by saying, “Well, I just think God will protect me.” GUARDRAILS ARE GOD’S MEANS TO PROTECT YOU – HIS FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE! But we have to play our part. We must make the right choices.
4. Even after we set parameters, we need to have accountability partners – someone who knows your temptations and who’ll ask you how you’re doing.
5. God’s saying, “Look, I want you to be honest with yourself. You know what’s on the other side of this guardrail: death and destruction. Is it really worth it? Yes, there is “pleasure in sin for a season” (Heb. 11:25), but in the end it bites like a snake and stings like an adder!
6. ILLUS. Natural gas smells bad. In one city the customers suggested to the Gas Company that they make the natural gas smell better – “put perfume in it.” What? Disguise what will kill you so you don’t recognize it’s there? No! That’s crazy! It’s the ‘rotten-egg’ smell that warns you of your danger! But that’s what people do with sin; they try to make it look safe. [Paul Tan, Encyclo. Of 7,700 Illus., #5705]
D. SURRENDER OF YOUR WILL IS NECESSARY
1. Unless you pray with Jesus, “Not my will, but thine be done” and die out to your own will, you will always have inner conflict. Only when your ‘right to choose’ is turned off, will the war cease in your soul.
2. 1 Pet. 2:11 puts it this way, “Sinful desires...wage war against your soul.” The only way to live a new life is to die out to the old one.
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION: Spiritual Blind Spot
1. Everyone of us has blind spots in our vision. It occurs where the optic nerve moves through the retina. No cells respond to light (photoreceptors) in this tiny area. The lack of light-sensitive cells causes a blind spot in your vision. So in that area you CAN’T SEE what’s coming at you!
2. The devil seeks to approach us in the sector of our blind spot, if he can discover any defect in our spiritual vision. sooner or later it gets us into trouble.
3. But the Christian whose heart is full of light enjoys cleansing from God; "and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin."
4. ILLUS.: GOD KNOWS WHAT’S BEST FOR YOU!
a. A Pastor, James Gray, had been sick for about 6 months and finally recovered. An elder in the church suggested he take a cruise on a cruise ship.
b. Just before he was to go on the cruise, he got sick again and couldn’t go. He asked God why.
c. The next day he turned on the news and discovered why: the cruise ship had hit a reef and almost instantly sunk. It was God’s mercy that spared him.
B. THE CALL
1. How many of you have some areas where you need to put up some guardrails? On your movie watching? Your conversation? Who you’re hanging out with? Some behavior you shouldn’t be doing? You thought-life?
2. STAND. I think we need to repent as a congregation from ways we’ve come-up short from God’s will. I want all who want a change to come join me here at the front.
3. PRAYER.
[This message is a rewrite of Andy Stanley’s “Direct & Protect” message.]
