What to Follow?
2/14/25 Bible Thought
It’s a very popular saying to “follow your heart.” You’ll hear people giving that as “good” life advice and at times even Christians are found commonly saying this. However, the heart is never to be the primary guidance for the Christian’s pursuits in life, but rather God’s Word.
As we survey the Gospels, it always fascinates me how the Pharisees were so outwardly righteous and yet they missed the Messiah entirely. In Mark 7 they criticize the disciples of the Lord Jesus because they were eating with unwashed hands. Truly, the religious folks had added a lot of their own traditions to the Word of God and amongst these were all sorts of regulations for handwashing and dishwashing when it came to food.
To this, the Lord Jesus brings out a passage from Isaiah to turn the criticism where it rightly belonged. He cries out, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Mk. 7:6b-7). Their traditions ended up taking precedence over the plain word of God because their hearts were far from Him!
Jesus concludes that what goes into a man cannot defile him, but that which comes out (Mk. 7:20). Why? Well, because the human heart is filled with a bunch of bad things. The Lord Jesus says, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mk. 7:21b-23). We don’t have to worry about the dirt that is on our hands, we have to worry about the filth that is in our hearts.
The prophet Jeremiah once said something similar when he wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). This is the state of the human heart apart from God’s work of transformation. Under the new covenant God promised a new heart (Ez. 36:26). He makes us new creations in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). Yet, we still deal with sin and temptation and at times fall short. We may be redeemed but we’re still on a journey. So, should we follow our heart or our traditions, when we have access to the plain Word of God: the Bible?
God has preserved His Word for thousands of years to bring it to us today. The Apostle Paul says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). When we, as modern believers, have access to God’s Word in unprecedented ways, we don’t need to follow our hearts. We probably all have multiple paper copies of God’s Word, we have it on our phones or tablets, we can have all manner of Bible software programs on computers, some of which are free. With such access to the Word of God, why bother following the heart? The human heart, even for the believer who has been redeemed is still far less reliable than the inspired Word of God. So, let’s aim to follow God’s Word as our roadmap in life, as our compass that always points north, rather than following our hearts that can be easily deceived.