I know that the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. I know, says Jeremiah, that the way of man is not in himself. Well, friends, we're thinking just about this verse tonight just for a few brief minutes. And it's all about guidance, isn't it? Guidance in life. and how we are so needing guidance in life. We look to people to guide us, perhaps in our careers. What career path shall I choose? Maybe we'll see a career guidance officer, university guidance officer. Sometimes maybe you need to see a marriage guidance person if you're having problems and you don't know a way out. Maybe we'll see a marriage counsellor. And we need guidance. Perhaps we get a lot of guidance from our parents. And children are often guided. They don't know what to do. They ask mom and dad, what shall we do, dad? And they give us some good advice. And it's good to lean upon them. It's not so good to lean on the stars for guidance. Some people do that. They look in the newspaper, and they find a star sign. I'm a Capricorn, I'm a Gemini, whatever it is, and they use that as a guidance for life, and some people take that very seriously, and some people go even further than that, and there is talk of inner guides. And they look to these inner guides and their books on these things, which you can use to find a pathway through life. How shall I navigate my way through life? I'll refer, I'll discuss it with this inner guide. Well, I don't really want to talk about that, but people resort to all sorts of things, but we need really to take God as our guide. as the best person to have, the living God to lead us and to direct us in the journey of life. Well, my message really, I'm thinking about the younger people because as they make their start in life, but hopefully there is something here for all of us tonight. Well, how can we make a good start in life? What is the best way The safest way, really, I should go. How can I avoid the many pitfalls that there are in life? How can I safely navigate my way through the storms of life? And life is not always calm sailing, peaceful sailing. There are many storms that come our way. How can I avoid a shipwreck? Is it even possible to do so, to go through life unscathed, and especially at the end of life? to come out unscathed. How can I end life? Feeling good, in a sense, about myself. Feeling good that a life I haven't wasted it, I haven't spent it in a bad way, without regret, without wishing. Oh, I wish. I wish I could go back again and start life all over again. I would do things so differently to what I did now. If only I'd known then what I know now. or I would have made different decisions. I would not have chosen that path. If I knew that by going down that route, it would have led me to such and such a state, I would never have gone down there. If only, if only I knew, it's too late now. I can't do anything about it. I can't change things. I can't do things. But if I had a chance, I would do things so differently. Experience is a great teacher, isn't it? We all wish in one sense that we had experience and maturity on our sides, especially as young people, but with something that we have to learn. But friends, I want to tell you that it is possible as a young person starting off, maybe you're in your late teens, maybe you're in your early 20s and you're beginning life really, you're in the spring of life and we envy you who are a bit further on than that. It is possible to go through life without being scared, without falling into these pitfalls, to successfully navigate through life. It is possible if we know the Lord and if we have the Lord leading us and guiding us. But you have to do two things. If you want to know God's guidance, you have to do things first. Even this verse tells us, oh Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself. Firstly, don't trust in yourself. Don't trust in your own wisdom. Don't trust in your own understanding. Don't trust in your own knowledge. Don't trust in anything about yourself to be a guide. Don't make a plan, a map for your own life, and then be a self-guide. You know, on these tours, you can either choose a guide or you can do a self-guided tour. Many people are choosing a self-guided tour. You don't want to do that. This verse is telling us the way of man is not in himself. Don't be a self-guide. The way of man is not in himself. You must look outside of yourself. That's the first thing we have to realise. But then secondly, you must take God for your guide. You must look to Him for direction, not anybody else, not anything else. Yes, of course in some things you look to trustworthy people, your parents, your good friends, but You must depend ultimately on God for life, and especially for eternal life. Lean upon God. That's the best way to go through life. Leaning, depending upon Him. Following Him. Follow Him, friend, and all will be well. And all will end well with you. I'm not saying you'll never have problems in life. I'm not saying you'll never have troubles. you will have the Lord always with you. Follow him and you will close your eyes in this world with peace, knowing that your life has been well spent, knowing that you have not wasted your life but it has been lived Well, Proverbs chapter 3 tells us something very similar. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lead not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths. And then again it goes on to say, be not wise in your own eyes. Isn't that what we're saying? Don't look to yourself. Fear the Lord, that's the way to live life, trusting in him. Well, oh Lord, Jeremiah says, I know that the way of man is not in himself. Well, firstly, friends, let me just say a word about man himself, about human beings. Because just from this, the actual fact that man thinks about guidance, that man plans for his future, maybe his short-term future and his long-term future, he's able to think about these things, tells us something about him that he's so very different from the animals. Man, as you know, he's made up of two parts. He has a material body on the one hand, and he has an immaterial soul on the other hand, a soul that will go on forever. We're not only physical beings. We're not only biological chemicals all compounded together. We're more than that, friends. We're a body, yes. We are these chemicals, yes, to a degree. But there is also a soul within us. God has made us a living soul. The soul, that's you. That's the real you, isn't it? That's the real person, the conscious person who is inside. The body is the shell, the soul is the kernel. I'm sure you know this, we feel it, isn't it? We feel that our body in a sense is like a house and the house is there but It's the person living in the house that's the real person, isn't it? Not the house itself. Or like a car, you may be driving on a long journey from A to B, and you're driving in the car, but the car is like the body in a sense, but the person in the car is the real thing, is the one who's driving the car. And we like that. We feel, don't we, even in ourselves, that we are like peering out of ourselves, peering out of our bodies, our soul. The real person in us is looking out. Your body may be hurt, but then also we talk about, oh, you hurt me. You hurt me with your words. And which part of that is, that's not physical hurt. That's an inner part of us, isn't it? That's our self. inside, which feels the hurt that other people do to us or say to us unkind things. So, friends, is that thinking part of us. And here you are. You're just doing what every other human being does and thinking about the future and planning for the future and mapping out the way that you want things to pan out for you. You're young, so you say, well, I'm going to go to university. I'm going to graduate when I'm 21. And then I'm going to have a career and be set in my way by 25 or 26. Well, I'm hoping to be married by that time. And then by 30, when I'm going to have two or three kids around me, and I'm set for life, and I'll be on life's journey, and so on. We plan in this way. We think in this way. And the very fact that we make plans shows, doesn't it, that we are higher than the animals. Animals don't plan in this way. They don't plan for their future. Oh, you say to me, look, the birds, they migrate, isn't it? They migrate in the seasons. Yeah, but they do that by instinct. They do that for survival purposes. a dog, well, he doesn't make any plans, does he? He doesn't say, well, I'm going to commit myself to a city owner for X number of years, and I'm going to serve him faithfully, and I'll eat whatever he puts before me, and I'll go to those parks and play with the other dogs in that time and be loyal to that particular. And then when I'm a little bit older, I'm going to head towards the countryside, and I'm going I'm going to work in the country, run in the countryside. I'm going to have a different master. But I'm going to be free, and I'll be chasing the sheep, and I'll be chasing the hares, and so on. He doesn't plan like that, does he? Animals do things by instinct. They do things as they've done it for years. Man thinks. He advances. He develops. He improves things. Just look at the houses that we live in or the cars that we drive. They're not the same from 50 years ago or even sometimes 10 years ago. You look at a bird, well, look at a bird's nest. It's pretty much the same, I think. I don't know, unless you know better, but it looks pretty much similar to what it was 500 years ago or 1,000 years ago. There's no development. There's no change. My friends, we are so much higher than the animals. Just that point, really, to initially bring before us. We think in this way. It shows us that God has given us a soul. But the way of man is not in himself. He has in him knowledge. No one denies that. And he can do many things. And he comes up with many things. He invents many things. We mentioned this not so long ago. He can do some great things even. He knows perhaps how to trade on the stock market and how to make money, although that's quite difficult to do these days. He knows how to set up a company and to set up a business, to run a company. He perhaps knows how to study very well, and so he's able to get those grades in his exams. He's able to pass with flying colors because he's got that ability, that know-how. He knows how to lose weight. He knows how to put on muscle. He knows how to do these things. He's a doctor. He knows he can diagnose a patient's symptoms. He can ask the right questions. He knows what's the cause of the patient's ailment. He knows how to cure that person, how to bring them back to health again. If he's a builder, he knows how to repair things. He knows how to fix that central heating that's broken down, or perhaps to clear those drains which are blocked. Other people don't know. He knows that. has these things in him. And he can do these things and a great many more things, but he doesn't know how to direct his life right. He doesn't know how to live in the right way and the right path that he should take in it. He knows how to make plans, but he doesn't know the best way, the best plan to make for his life, the safest way for him to go. It's not in him. Oh, if only we could realize that. It's not in us. Often, oh, I can do it myself. I don't need anyone to tell me what to do. I know which way I should go. We don't. Really, we don't. We need the Lord to guide us. We're so limited. And though man can do all these things, really, he's limited. He's weak in this area. He's fallible. He's prone to make mistakes. Life has taught us that already. We make mistakes. We are sinful, and that affects our judgment. That clouds our judgment. The Bible says, before we come to the Lord, we're in darkness, and that darkness has affected our understanding, has affected our choices in life. Sin has so affected us that if we choose to be the script writer for our own lives, we are sure to choose things that will hurt us. We are sure to go down the wrong way. We will say yes to our lusts and pleasures and no to the serious things in life, to a relationship with God and to holiness and heaven. We will say yes to our self-interest and that which brings us glory and pomp, but we will say no to a humble seeking of the Lord. That's the way that we would naturally choose, our friends, to go our own way only leads to ruin. We have so many examples of this, isn't it? We only have to look about us, and we see many whose lives are in tatters, really. Are we admirers of the stars, or the rich and the famous? Are we admirers of the articulate, the wise, the intellectual people of the world, the philosophers of the world? Oh, friends, Don't judge them by what you see on the big screen or the small screen. Look at their private lives. Look at the private lives of those stars. Many of them cannot even stay in one relationship. They jump from one relationship to another, one marriage to another. Some of them have earned millions, millions and millions of pounds. And then, after a number of years, what do you hear? They've lost it all. They're filing for bankruptcy. People are suing them, and they have nothing to pay. Shadow of their former selves. People only look at the screen, they only look at them when they're all dolled up, when they're at the peak of, they don't see what happens after. Or even some of the big tech people, isn't it? the CEO of a big tech company. Well, he was known for his nasty temper, his short temper with his staff. And so often people end up, who go their own way, end up in lies which are bitter. And you look at them, and you say, is this the same person who once was so glamorous? And you look at them at the end, and they look so miserable, or they've become a recluse in life, pulled themselves away from society. Oh, friends, not only do we need to look for examples in the stars. Sadly, even among the men in the street, the everyday person in the street, in the newspapers that we read, we find ordinary people's lives are ruined. Why? Because they chose to go their own way. They chose to ignore God's way, and they mapped out a path for themselves. Friends, this is just a simple message, just one thought for us. You must look away from yourself. You must distrust yourself. Distrust even your own judgment. This is where it begins. to get ourselves on the right path. It begins with a distrust of ourselves, a distrust of those suggestions even that the enemy would put into our minds, the devil who hates us and who's doing his level best to take us down the wrong route and to ruin and to spoil and to steal from us. He says, you can do it. You can do it yourself. You don't need any help from others. You don't need others to tell you what to do. You're wise enough. You're good enough, you're able enough. Others have made a mistake. You won't do the same. You'll be different. There's something different about you. You'll learn. Oh, live life the way, he says, the way that you decide. Don't let others decide it for you. Oh, especially you don't need God to guide you. You can leave that out of your life. It'll spoil your life, it'll ruin your life, it'll make you miserable. Friends, this is what the devil may say to us and whisper in our ears. We must really look away from ourselves. This life is full of traps. And you know, traps, they're not visible, they're invisible. They're hidden from us. They're like these sinkholes. People are walking along the street and suddenly they fall into the sinkhole. and never see them again. They lose their lives. Precipices which, if you fall into, you may never rise again. I'm saying these things because this is what happens in life. This is what happens, and I wish to save you from such a scenario. One step can ruin a person forever. Oh, friends, the path of life is a dangerous one. It's like traveling down a road that is notorious perhaps for robbers and for armed bandits and for beasts who may any time spring upon you and attack you. That's what life is like. There are people out there you cannot trust. There are people who are out to gain something from you or to mislead you or to direct you in the wrong way. Who can you trust? Who can we trust? Who will speak to us the truth? We need a reliable guide. We need the Lord God to guide us, friends. We are like sheep. Already we have wandered astray. Already we are lost. Already we cannot find our way home. You know, like the sheep, once they're off, away from the fold, they can't find their way. They need the shepherd to go and bring them back. We're like that. We've gone away from God. We're lost. We're far away from Him. We can't find our way back to Him. We don't know how. He must come and rescue us. Lift up your heart to God. Let this be a prayer. Oh, Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct himself. But you will be my guide. I take you to be my guide from this time forth and forevermore. You know, Adam, the first man, even in his state of innocency, you would think that he wouldn't make any mistake, would you? He had no sin at that time. He lived in a perfect world. Everything was wonderful. There was no death. There was no trouble. There was nothing really to disturb him and to cause him to fall. But he couldn't himself, even in that state of innocency, he couldn't direct his own way. And he chose to disobey the Lord. And what happened? Paradise was lost. Lost for us all. Even in his state of innocency, he made the wrong choice. The way of man is not in man and not in us, friends. No hope for us, then, even more. If Adam fell, well, we are fallen already. If he, in his innocence, he fell, how hard is it for us to find our own way back to paradise? We can't do it. We will only wander further and further away from God if we try in our own wisdom. We must have the Lord to lead us back, to take us by the hand, and to bring us back to himself. Dear friends, you and I, we were made for God. We're not made for ourselves. The blessed life is not just to have God to lead us and just to bless us and make us happy only in this life. You and I, we were made for God and made for his glory. And the blessed life, the happy life, the safest life, the life that we should follow, is one in which we are in friendship with God, one in which we are following the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what he said, John chapter eight and verse 12. I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. If we repent of our sins and we trust in him, if we give our lives to him and follow him, if we take him as a pilot of our lives, Not only will He lead you through this life safely, not only will He bless you, not only will He keep you from those pitfalls, but also He will lead you all the way to glory. He will lead you to heaven. We must begin here, friends. We must begin here with this humble realization, Lord, I need you. I am a sin. I am far away from you. I am lost. I need salvation. I need to be reconciled with you. Lord, I know not the way to even find you. I know not the way to be reconciled to you. Teach me your ways to bring me back to yourself and then be my leader, my guide, my friend through life from this day forward and forever. I give myself to you. That's how it begins, friends. Will you do that today? Let's pray together. O Lord, our God, we thank you that you even offer yourself as our guide and how we are desperately in need of one. Lord, we pray that you would lead us by your spirit to yourself, that we may be brought to realize this simple truth, that we cannot go through life depending on our own understanding or our own wisdom, but we are sure to fail, but Lord, we need you to uphold us and keep us and to bless us. And so we would lift our eyes away from ourselves and up to you, the living God. Lord, hear our prayer and bless each one. We ask in our Saviour's name. Amen. Let's close by singing our final hymn, number