We’re starting this brand new series, Guardrails, and if you can’t remember the name of
the series—this should be unforgettable. We’re pretty excited about this. Now, everybody knows
what a guardrail is, but you probably don’t know the official definition of a guardrail. And for
those of you who are kind of grammar people, who are going to get really messed up with this
whole series, let me go ahead and tell you—guardrail can be two words, and it can be one word,
okay? So, if you thought it was one or the other, we can work it both ways. In fact, in our
literature, we use it both ways just to make everybody happy and bother everybody.
A guardrail is actually a system designed to keep vehicles from straying into dangerous
or off-limit areas. Got that? A guardrail—you use them all the time, you’ve been impacted—
they’re simply a system, this entire system, designed to keep vehicles from straying (that’s the
word we’re going to key off of), from straying into dangerous or off-limit areas. Now, again,
nobody pays attention to guardrails unless you need one. There are all different kinds of
guardrails. We were going to show you a whole bunch of different kinds of pictures, but it’s kind
of irrelevant. Guardrails are that invisible part of our driving experience. We’re glad they’re
there when we need them, but for the most part, we pay no attention to them. You generally find
guardrails in one of three areas. You find guardrails on bridges, because on a bridge there’s very,
very little margin for error. You find them on bridges. You also find them in medians, in medians
to keep us from, in areas of driving, where we’re very, very close to people moving in the
opposite direction. The closer we are to people who are moving in the opposite direction, the
more we need protection. The third area where you find guardrails, specifically, is around
curves—unexpected changes in roadside conditions.
Now the really interesting thing about guardrails, and again this is what we’re going to
kind of key off of in this series, is that, generally speaking, guardrails are not actually located in
the most dangerous part of the road. Guardrails are actually located and constructed in areas
where you could actually drive, if you think about it. The point of a guardrail isn’t to say, don’t
drive on this particular piece of real estate. The point of a guardrail is it’s the piece of real estate
just beyond the guardrail that’s a point of danger: oncoming traffic, curves, mountainsides, edges
of bridges, or whatever it might be. So, generally speaking, guardrails are actually constructed in
areas where theoretically and actually you could drive, but guardrails are there to keep us from
moving into an area where there’s actual danger.
But when it comes to guardrails, nobody really argues the point and says, Hey, I don’t
know why they put guardrails around the edge of the bridge. They need to take the guardrails
off, because actually I could drive closer to the edge of the bridge if they would just move the
silly guardrails. We understand in driving that there needs to be some margin for error. The
theory behind a guardrail is that you will do less damage to your body, and even in some cases
less damage to your car, if you hit a guardrail than if you actually hit what was on the other side
of the guardrail, or if you actually went off the side of something that would cause damage to
you or your car. So the whole idea is it’s okay to cause a little bit of damage in order to keep you from creating and experiencing a lot of damage, either to your physical body or to your car. So
that’s kind of the idea behind a guardrail.
Now, what we’re going to do in the next few weeks is we’re going to talk about this
whole idea of guardrails as it relates not simply to driving, because that’s pretty apparent, but to
other areas of our lives. Because the truth is, and I think we’re going to build this case
throughout these next few weeks as we do this series, your greatest regret relationally—and you
hear me say these kinds of things all the time—your greatest regret financially, your greatest
regret morally, your greatest regret ethically, maybe professionally—chances are your greatest
regret could have been avoided. And if you think of it in terms of driving, that ditch that you
went off into, that cliff that you rolled off into relationally, however you want to describe it, your
greatest regret could probably have been avoided and would probably have been avoided if you
had had some guardrails in your area, in your life financially, morally, relationally, in your
marriage, in your parenting, in your whole perspective on authority, whatever it might be. So
what we want to do is just take this very, very common imagery of the guardrail and apply it to
several areas of our lives.
Now, our definition for guardrail is going to go like this, here’s the new definition: We’re
going to talk about a guardrail in terms of a standard of behavior. This is your—and you can
even add the word personal—personal standard of behavior that becomes a matter of conscience;
a standard of behavior or a personal standard of behavior that becomes a matter of conscience.
Let’s leave that up there if we could. Here’s what I mean by that. I’m going to encourage you as
we talk about your marriage, as we talk about your dating life, as we talk about relationships,
we’re going to talk about friendship, even time. I’m going to encourage you to develop a
personal—this is just for you, this isn’t for everybody, this isn’t the law that applies to all
people—I’m going to encourage you in these next few weeks to think through and develop a
personal standard of behavior that becomes a matter of conscience that serves as a guardrail to
you.
Now, the reason I say a matter of conscience is this: In driving, as I said before, the
whole idea of a guardrail is that there is some damage done when you hit a guardrail, but it’s less
than the damage that would be done if there were no guardrail. What I want to help you develop,
and some of you have done this, so I’m going to be as practical as I know how to be, and today is
kind of the set-up—I want you to begin thinking in terms of standards of behavior or behavioral
practices that you are so committed to as an individual that when you violate them it bothers
your conscience. Standards of behavior that when you violate them, you would feel like you’ve
actually done something wrong. That’s the guardrail. That you would even feel guilty and that
your guilt level would be so associated with these guardrails that you’ve established in your life
financially, in your marriage, in the way you conduct yourself with friends—whatever it might
be, that these would be like personal guardrails. And they’re not for everybody.
They’re for you. But a personal standard of behavior that informs or energizes or ignites
your conscience. And as you begin to bump up against these guardrails internally, little warning
lights would go on and red flags would wave and there would be something in you that says,
You know something, danger, danger, danger, because I’m bumping up against something that if I ignore and if I continue to bump up against it, it may lead me into areas of trouble from which I
might not be able to recover or from which I might live the rest of my life with regret. Because
again, your greatest regret, your greatest regret—just pick the area, it doesn’t matter. Your
greatest regret could probably and would have probably been avoided if your conscience wasn’t
simply tuned in to the big thing, the “Oh, my gosh, and people should never, and married people
should never, and single people should never, and when it comes to money, we should never.” If
your conscience hadn’t simply been tuned to these big ideas, but had been tuned in to a standard of behavior that gave you a warning that you were getting too close to the big thing that now you regret. That’s what we mean when we talk about guardrails. It’s a personal decision you’ll make as it relates to your marriage, a personal decision you’ll make as it relates to your finances, a personal decision you make as it relates to how you conduct yourself in friendships and dating and all those things. A personal decision that informs or ignites your conscience that becomes a standard by which you live your life. Guardrails. Again, we’re going to give you lots and lots of examples.
Now, the interesting thing is, in our culture—and I don’t want to spend too much time on
this, but just to kind of put it in perspective—in our culture and in our world there are things that
pretty much most people or everybody agrees are bad. In other words, in our culture, we could
find consensus around, okay, what is it on the other side of this guardrail that everybody should
avoid? There is some consensus around that. And so in our culture, in our world through
advertising and through marketing, we get some messages that are sort of the culture’s way of
developing guardrails—but they’re very, very, very weak. It’s things like this: Drink responsibly.
Well, that’s not bad, but that’s not a guardrail. Drink responsibly is like a little yellow line
painted on the edge of a bridge. It’s like, true, everybody agrees we shouldn’t drink
irresponsibly. We all agree there, but that’s not much of a guardrail. And again, I’m sure most of
you or a lot of you could tell a story about drinking that you weren’t really sure where
irresponsible was, but by the time you got close to it, you didn’t care. That’s just the nature of
alcohol. It’s like, “Honey, I think we’re drinking irresponsibly, but I don’t care!” Because that’s
just how it goes. So drink responsibly—that’s not a bad idea, but that’s not what we’re talking
about.
Or another one in our culture is when it comes to teenagers or young people. I don’t like
that phrase, “the young people.” Young people and sex. Here’s the message of culture, and this
isn’t necessarily wrong. It’s just not helpful, because again, everybody in culture knows that
somewhere on the other side of this guardrail, sexually, that there’s danger involved for the
“young people.” There’s danger involved for teenagers that we’re not sure what it is, but we
know over there somewhere it’s a bad thing. So the message of culture is “don’t have sex until
you’re ready.” Now, I can’t even imagine how that conversation goes. “Are you ready?” “I think
so.” “Well, I feel I was born ready!” “Well, now when do you think you’ll be ready?” “Well, I
think three weeks.” “All right, well, I’ll tell you what. Let’s calendar it in, because when you’re
ready and I’m ready …” Now see, I don’t think that’s a horrible thing to say—wait till you’re
ready—all I’m saying is that’s not a guardrail. That’s a little yellow line painted on a curvy road
up in the mountains somewhere, because how do you know? Again, it’s like “drink responsibly.”
Those aren’t terrible ideas. What I’m saying is what we’re going to talk about in the next few
weeks are bigger than that.
The other one is to parents. And again, this isn’t bad advice, it’s just not a guardrail.
“Parents, talk to your kids about drugs.” Now, I don’t know. I have three teenagers. I’m just
telling you. That’s not a guardrail. That’s just a conversation. And I’ve never met a parent who
said, “Well, you know, I don’t really care what happens to my kids. They’re all on drugs, but I
talked to them. I talked to them about drugs and it didn’t work.” Well, that’s again because
everybody in culture knows somewhere on the other side of this, whatever this is, there’s some
bad stuff. But our culture—and this is where the challenge is going to be for you and for me—
our culture does not appreciate this when it comes to all these different areas. Our culture thinks
this is kind of stupid. The people that you live and work with on the surface—now once you drill
down and once you explain it begins to make sense—but for the most part our culture thinks this
is the problem with religion—that religious people are all about these silly rules and these silly
guardrails and these silly barriers, and it’s so stupid. But those very same people would say,
Now, but I will agree over there somewhere on the other side is some bad stuff and you really
should be careful. When it comes to money, guardrails and the message in our culture about
money is “consolidate your debts.” Well, that’s helpful. Again, because everybody knows when
it comes to debt and money, there’s some bad stuff, but a guardrail? Doesn’t that seem kind of
restricted? Doesn’t that seem kind of negative?
So as we talk about these things, if there’s something that rises up in you and says, Well,
that’s too—something—I don’t know what word you’ll use. If you have a religious background,
you might say that’s too legalistic. We’re going to talk about this. This has nothing to do with
legalism. Or you may say that’s too confining or too restrictive. But at the same time, we all
know somewhere on the other side there’s some bad stuff—whether it’s marriage, money,
morally, ethically, professionally—everybody agrees. What I’m saying is this: I’m going to
challenge you for the next few weeks to do something that many of us have done for years, and
that is to establish some personal standards that inform your conscience. That when you begin to
bump up against some behaviors that don’t bother anybody else in your office, that don’t bother
anybody else in your school, that don’t bother anybody else in the world that you live in, they
begin to bother you, because you have some personal standards that, again, inform or have
become a matter of conscience.
Now, here’s the cool thing. This is why I tell you all the time, read your Bible, read your
Bible, read your Bible. This is all over the Bible. In fact, this is so much a part of the Old and
New Testaments that these are some of the passages and some of the verses that people get very, very, very confused about. Because God who loves you has invited you to talk to him and relate to him as a heavenly Father. And here’s what good fathers do. And if you had a good father, your father did this. And if you had a bad father, he didn’t do this and you wish he had. Good fathers say to their children, “In order to keep you out of the real danger zone, I want to set up some protective barriers. And if you and I are going to have conflict in our home, I want to have
conflict with you here. I don’t want to have conflict with you there, because the conflict here is
much easier to resolve.”
The conflict over there leaves you with scars and leaves you with memories and leaves
you with things that you wish you didn’t have to deal with. So in my family when I establish
rules and boundaries for my kids, I want to make sure that the boundaries are so far away from the edge of the abyss, whatever it might be—relationships or money or whatever it might be—I
want the barriers and the boundaries to be so far away from that, if we’re going to have a
conflict, we’re going to have a little, itty-bitty wreck that happens on a guardrail as opposed to
going over a cliff from which sometimes people never recover. And the thing is, this is all over
the Scripture. But if God really loves you and if God wants to relate to you as your heavenly
Father, isn’t that what we would expect? And the answer is yes.
Now here’s the other good news. If you’re listening or you’re here and you’re not really a
religious person or you’re not really a Christian person, the good news is this is kind of a freebie.
This will work for you too. You don’t have to have any religious convictions or any religious
beliefs for you to apply the principle of the guardrail, for you to establish some personal
standards of behavior that inform or become a matter of conscience for you. But as you begin,
maybe you sit through this series and go, “Wow, I’m still not sure about the Jesus part and the
Bible part, but wow—this is very practical.” Then here’s what I’d love for you to think about as
you sit through this series. “Wow, that’s in the Bible. Maybe I should read it.” And the answer is,
yes, maybe you should read it. And you say, “Well, I don’t believe the Bible is true.” But as I’ve
said before, that’s not the litmus test for anything you read. You don’t read anything because you
think it’s true; maybe your journal, that’s about it. Everything you read, you’re suspect. So read
the Bible as literature if you want to, but read the Scripture.
Now today what I want to do is take you to one of my favorite, favorite passages. And the
reason this is one of my favorite passages, honestly, is because this was the passage I was
teaching the first time Sandra heard me teach, and I met her that night. So it’s kind of got a
romantic … I know, aww, isn’t that great? So I’ll never ever forget, and this is one of the first
times I ever taught this passage, Sandra was in the audience. Somebody introduced us later, and
we fell in love and got married, so it’s special to me. It’s in Ephesians, chapter 5, which is in the
New Testament. Ephesians is simply a letter that the apostle Paul wrote to Christians in Ephesus.
Now what’s so cool is you can actually visit Ephesus today and you can see where the apostle
Paul did all this kind of stuff. It’s a pretty cool ancient city that used to be on the coast, but now
the coast moved and now it’s in the middle of land. But anyway, Ephesians, chapter 5 and we’re
going to begin with verse 15, but let me kind of set this up for you.
In the fifth chapter of Ephesians, the apostle Paul is talking to a group of people, and it’s
hard to imagine this, who lived in a culture that was even more amoral or immoral than our
culture. In fact, you can visit Ephesus today and see evidence of just how amoral it was. In fact,
what we would consider infidelity or what we would consider adultery and even in our kind of
loose culture was considered common and even acceptable because in that culture having
extramarital affairs or extramarital sex was part of a religious experience. I mean, so it was like
way out there. So in this culture, the apostle Paul goes through kind of a list of things to be
careful—don’t do this, and be honest; stuff we would expect. You know, don’t have any
relationships or you’re going to destroy your marriage, and be kind to people. He kind of goes
through this whole list of things, but at the end the list gets pretty stringent, and so he sensed that his audience was asking, like many of us ask, okay, Paul, it’s hard to disagree with you on being honest. It’s hard to disagree with you on being faithful to my husband or wife. It’s hard to disagree; I believe all that stuff, but how, in a culture that doesn’t reward marital faithfulness,
how, in a culture that sort of works off of bribes, how, in a culture where nobody values any of
the things you just asked us to do, how do we pull that off? And so in these verses we’re going to
read, Paul is explaining how a person avoids the ditches on the left and the right, how a person
avoids rolling his car off the side of a mountain, how a person stays in between the lines and in
between the guardrails. And in doing so, he explains this principle of the guardrail. Obviously,
they didn’t have guardrails back then. And here’s the most interesting part of the verse, of the
passage, and he gives us an example. And the example for some of you is going to be a little
disturbing. And for me it’s not disturbing, and I’ll explain that in just a few minutes. So hang
with me. Here we go. Ephesians chapter 5, verse 15—here’s what he says:
Ephesians 5:15 (TNIV)
15 Be very careful, then,
And the word “then” is there because this is following this whole list of things he said Christians ought to do.
Ephesians 5:15 (TNIV)
15 Be very careful, then, [You know what careful means] how you live—
And the little Greek word there “live” actually means walk. And in fact, if you have a different translation of the Bible, it may mean be very careful then how you walk. Now, when I
read this verse, something kind of gross comes to mind, and if you have pets you can understand
this, but here’s what this means literally. Some of you already know what I’m going to say. We
have two dogs, okay. And in the morning when we let these dogs out, because they’re kind of—
dogs, they do things together; they both, in the morning, kind of do their morning business in the
same ten square feet of grass every morning. So in our family, when people come to our house
and then we’re in the back porch and people are going to walk out in the yard, we say, “Be
careful!” “Why?” “Well, that’s the danger area over there because every morning our two
dogs—just be careful where you walk.” That’s what this verse means. Be careful. That is, the
rest of the yard is fine. Be careful there. I won’t go into detail. So that’s kind of the idea (Paul
doesn’t have dogs in mind) of this verse. He’s saying, as you live your life and as you walk
through relationships, as you deal with money, as you deal with people, as you are dealing with
your marriage or engagement or whatever it might be, be very careful how you walk. Why? Then
he says, middle of verse 15:
Ephesians 5:15–16 (TNIV)
15 not as unwise [Unwise means careless—that’s what that means, like I could care less.]
but as wise, [That is, with your eyes wide open.] 16 making the most of every opportunity,
Which literally means, “redeeming your time,” which in our culture means (this is really
what this idea is) being very intentional. That’s the word we like to use—being very intentional
with how you use your time. He says, Because of the things that I’ve called you to do, because of
the life that God wants you to lead, because God wants to protect you and direct you, then as you live your life in every arena of life, be careful. Don’t be careless. Don’t be a fool, but pay
attention to how you’re living your life; pay attention to how you walk, and pay attention to
what’s happening to your time. Because here’s the reason:
Ephesians 5:16 (TNIV)
16 because the days are evil.
Paul says, You Ephesians (now this is a couple thousand years ago), you Ephesians are
living in dangerous times. If you’re not careful, you’ll roll your car. If you’re not careful, you’re
going to go into one of the two ditches on each side of the road. If you’re not careful, if you’re
careless, if you don’t pay attention, if you think, oh, it’s just going to work out, things just work
out for me—if you’re not careful, there will be a price to pay, because the days are evil. Now, I
don’t think I have to spend a lot of time convincing you how dangerous the days are that we live
in. Financially, some of you have debt. You can’t imagine how you got so much debt and you’re
just dealing with debt. You can’t give, you can’t be generous; you can’t live the way you want to
live. Then on top of the debt, here comes our economy and you’re just upside down financially.
These are dangerous days to live in financially. You’ve got to be careful. I don’t have to tell you
that.
Morally it’s the same way, right? In your marriage, it’s the same way. The way you deal
with your kids, the way you deal with temptation—there’s no difference. He’s saying because we
live in a dangerous world morally, ethically, professionally, financially, marriage is less and less
respected—whatever it might be—because we live in a dangerous time, he says you’ve got to be
careful how you live or how you walk.
Ephesians 5:17 (TNIV)
17 Therefore [Here’s his first command] do not be foolish, [Do not be foolish, or careless.]
but [and then this is kind of cool—but—contrast] 17 understand what the Lord’s will is.
Now, this is a tricky little Greek thing where he uses an English word that doesn’t really
make sense in this context. He commands us to understand something. “Understand!” Which
doesn’t make any sense. You remember when you were a kid, they did this in school where you
had to go up to the board. They’d call out your name and say, Andy, you do problem three and,
Bart, you do problem four, and they’d send you up to the board. You’ve got your math book and
you’re up there going, do you have four? It was like, ah, this is terrible. And imagine your
teacher while you’re up there and you turn to your teacher and say, “I can’t do the third problem.
I don’t understand it.” And the teacher says, “Understand! Understand!” It’s like, okay, you can’t
command me to understand. And Paul takes this little Greek word and he uses it in an odd way,
and he says to us Christians, he says—those of us who are Christians—he says, I want you to understand what the Lord’s will is. And here’s what he’s saying. This is a big, big idea. He’s
saying to you and he’s saying to me, I want you to face up to, I want you to accept, I want you to
embrace what you know in your heart God’s will for your life is.
I want you to face up to, I want you to embrace, I want you to accept what you know
God’s plan for you is as it relates to your money, to your marriage, to your dating relationships,
to your friendships, to the way you spend your time. He’s saying this: I want you to stop
deceiving yourself. I want you to stop playing games. I want you to stop kind of smearing and
smoothing everything over. I want you to face up to what you know God’s will for your life is.
Here’s how it works with our illustration. He’s saying, Look, I want you to be honest with
yourself. You know what’s on the other side of this guardrail financially. You know what’s on
the other side morally. You know what could happen to your marriage. You know what can
happen to your physical body if you don’t change some things. You know already. You don’t
need new information. I want you to stop and I want you to face up to what you know God’s will
for your life is—God’s will for your body, God’s will for your marriage, God’s will for these
different areas of your life. I want you to quit deceiving yourself and face up to what you know
God’s will is.
Now this is a two-by-four upside of our heads, because all of us—Christian, non-Christian, churched, non churched people—all of us have a tendency to play as close as we can
to the edge of disaster in many areas of our lives, right? We know exactly where the little yellow
line is and we know where the abyss is, financially and in different areas of our lives, and our
tendency of course is to get as close, as close, as close, as close to the line as possible—to dance on the edge of chaos financially, to dance on the edge of chaos morally. Well, I didn’t touch him; well, I didn’t touch her. Well, I … I mean, how close to sin, (if you’re a Christian) how close to sin can I get without sinning is kind of the way we live our lives sometimes. Exactly where is the line? And Paul says, Okay, okay, look. You live in a dangerous culture. You live in a dangerous age. You’ve got to quit flirting with disaster and face up to what you know in your heart God wants you to do and face up to what you know in your heart God wants you to be. “Quit messing around” is what he’s saying. And then he gives us this illustration. So here’s his illustration.
Illustration one:
Ephesians 5:18 (TNIV)
18 Do not get drunk on wine.
Now, before I give you this full illustration, I’ve got to tell you some things, so full
disclosure, okay? I don’t drink—at all, nothing, ever. And the reason I don’t isn’t because I think
it’s a sin. The reason I don’t is two reasons. Number one, I was brought up in a home where
there was just no alcohol. It just was not an issue. My parents didn’t drink socially. It just was
not a part of the culture I grew up in. And then as I got old enough to decide for myself, my
experience with alcohol through other people was 100% negative. I began working with
teenagers while I was in college, and from that point on in my life I’ve been in some sort of
ministry, and 100% of my interaction with alcohol has been negative. It’s been wives that got
beat up, alcoholic husbands, alcoholic moms, kids crashing cars, fights, date rape. You name it, I can sit here all afternoon and talk to you about my interaction with people who drank, and it’s all
been 100% negative. Now I know that’s not true for everybody, but that’s my experience, so I
just—the alcohol thing—it’s just not a part of my life.
In other words, I’ve never heard this story: “You know, Andy, we were having so much
trouble in our marriage, and then we started drinking.” Or, you know, “My son was just running
from family and God and he was just like a prodigal, and I said, ‘Son, maybe we should start
drinking.’ And so we started drinking, and I mean, God just brought us back together.” See, now
maybe that’s your story, but in my life, I’ve never heard, “And once we introduced alcohol, we
all lived happily ever after,” okay? Maybe I just live in a bubble, but my experience . . . so this is
a very easy illustration for me, because it’s just a non-issue for me. I’ve got my issues. We’re
going to talk about some more things.
But Paul, as he’s introducing this idea of okay, okay, okay, let’s all wake up and be
honest. That’s what he’s saying. Let’s be honest. We all know on the other side of the guardrail
is something nobody wants, so let’s be honest about that and let’s set up some guardrails so that if we have some crashes, we have some conscience crashes; we don’t destroy our lives. And the
first illustration he uses is alcohol. So he says this:
Ephesians 5:18 (TNIV)
18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.
That clears it up completely, doesn’t it? How many of you would say in the last three
weekends you were debauched? Any debauchers here? Yeah, right. We don’t even know what
that word means. It’s like, Oh, I love the Bible, because when I think I’m going to be convicted,
there’s some word I don’t understand, and I can just move on and don’t feel anything. Now,
here’s what he’s about to—I’m going to give you the definition for debauchery in a minute, but
here’s what I want you to—I don’t want you to miss this. For those of you, you’re like, It’s about
time somebody talked about alcohol in church. And for those of you that only don’t drink on
Sunday, you’re thinking, Uh-oh, here we go. I want you to hear exactly what Paul is teaching.
Here’s what he’s teaching. Paul is about to explain to us that drunkenness is a guardrail. In other
words, Paul’s about to say, Christian—he’s talking to Christians, so if you’re not a Christian, you
have an out, don’t worry. He says, Christians, I don’t want you to get drunk. I want you to set a
personal standard.
Here’s his first illustration. I want you to set a personal standard of behavior that you
decide you’re not going to get drunk, and the reason I don’t want you to get drunk is not because
being drunk is a sin. I know a lot of you would like me to say being drunk is a sin. Here’s what
he argues. Getting drunk is foolish is what he’s going to argue. Getting drunk is irresponsible is
what he’s going to argue. He says, I want you to decide you’re not going to get drunk, because
getting drunk leads to something you don’t want to be a part of. In fact, getting drunk often leads
to something that most people agree people shouldn’t be involved with. So, Christian, I want you
to establish a guardrail, and your guardrail is I’m not going to be drunk.
He says, I want you to hardwire your conscience into the issue of being controlled by
alcohol so that if you are ever at a point in your life or a night or a weekend or a week or
whatever it is, and you realize, oh, my gosh, I’m giving up my control of my life and my
behavior to alcohol—that would so bother you that it would be like hitting a guardrail that causes
you not to go beyond what’s on the other side. That’s what he’s teaching, that drunkenness is an
example of establishing a guardrail, because drunkenness leads to debauchery, and debauchery is the problem. But what in the heck is that? So let me read you the official definition of
debauchery: “extreme indulgence that results in a loss of control. Extreme indulgence or
indulgence that leads to a loss of control.”
Now, as you read the Bible, and again if God is our heavenly Father, none of this should
come as a surprise, right? As you read the Scripture, you discover that whether it’s lust, alcohol,
greed, anger, food, material possessions—anything in our lives that leads us to a loss of control,
that baits us toward things that we don’t need to be involved in—to where we’re just so lustful
we can hardly help ourselves, we’re so greedy we can hardly help ourselves. I want that car so
badly I’m willing to sacrifice my kids’ education and sacrifice financial integrity to get the car.
Anything in our lives that baits us to or draws us to a point to where we almost, or in fact, lose
control, your heavenly Father is against. And you know why? The same reason you’d be against
it for your kids. Because on the other side of this is disaster.
So what Paul is saying is this. Look, for example, any area of your life where you have a
tendency to hand control over to somebody or something else, you need a guardrail. And since
alcohol, by its very nature, can lead everybody to a point of a loss of control, he says, then you
need to set up a boundary. You need to decide that drunkenness, for you, is wrong. Is
drunkenness a sin? I don’t know. It’s foolish. Is drunkenness God’s not going to love you if
you’re drunk? That’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying it’s a guardrail. And I think he chooses
this one because it’s common to all of us. But it’s just one illustration of what he’s teaching
when he says, “Be careful how you walk, because the days in which we live are dangerous.”
Don’t get drunk with wine. Why? Because it leads to a loss of control, and the loss of control is a
sin, and the loss of control has led you to some of your greatest regrets. A loss of control in
someone else’s life has been a disaster in your life. Don’t ever do anything that leads you to a
point where you “just can’t help yourself.” He said that’s the problem, so you need guardrails.
And listen to what he contrasts it with because it emphasizes this point. Instead, he says:
Ephesians 5:18 (TNIV)
18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, [contrast] be filled with the
Spirit,
The point Paul is making is this, is that God—and we know this—your heavenly Father
wants to be preeminent influencer in your life. And God doesn’t speak out loud to all of us every
single day of the week. That would be interesting. I think it would be intimidating, but that’s not
how he does it. But the Bible teaches that when you put your faith in Christ, that the Spirit of
God comes to live in you in a unique way and in a different way, and that the Holy Spirit inside
of you will prompt you, will guide you, and will direct you. The Holy Spirit, in my experience, and in talking to so many other people, the Holy Spirit never yells; the Holy Spirit never
screams. The Holy Spirit usually goes, “Ahem!” That’s about it. It’s like we’re getting closer and
closer and closer and closer, and the Holy Spirit goes, “Ahem!” It’s just a still, small voice in our
conscience.
It’s the voice—it’s the megaphone—of the Holy Spirit, our conscience, and God just
elbows us in the conscience. Come on! And we know, don’t we? You know exactly what I’m
talking about. We know. That’s why Paul says this: Come on, face up to what you know God
wants for you and quit playing games and quit hiding in the dark and going, Well, but my
mama … And, I was drunk, but … And I … He says, Whoa, you can convince everybody else
but God. Face up to what you know God wants for you. And when you sense that little elbow in
the conscience, and when you sense that still, small voice, and when you sense that warning on
the inside, Paul’s saying, Come on, your life is too important, time is too short, the world’s too
dangerous, pay attention, pay attention, pay attention, be careful.
Because here’s what I know about you and what I know about all of us. None of us plan
to mess up our lives. No one has ever stood at the altar and saying his vows and in the back of
his mind saying, “I can’t wait to get married, because I am really going to screw this one up.
You’ve seen some bad marriages; you wait. This is going to be the worst one ever. First, we’re
going to have a bunch of kids, so I can really make it complicated.” That’s never anybody’s plan.
But here’s the conclusion I’ve come to, after a lot of years of doing this. Nobody plans to mess
up a marriage; a lot of people never plan not to. They never establish guardrails.
Nobody plans on purpose to mess their bodies up physically, but a lot of people have,
because they never really planned not to. They didn’t have any guardrails. Nobody plans to mess
up any kind of friendship or any kind of relationship that’s meaningful to them, a relationship
with a child or a relationship with a grandchild, a relationship with a parent. Nobody sits in his
room and says, How can I like totally sabotage this relationship? How do I break my mama’s
heart? Hey, I’m going to break my mom’s heart. It’s never a plan. We just don’t plan not to. We
don’t plan not to, because we never establish guardrails. We think a little yellow line, “drink
responsibly,” “wait till you’re ready,” “talk to your kids about drugs.” We think that’s going
to . . . it’s not going to work. You need guardrails.
And please, please, please don’t insult yourself by saying, Well, I just think God will
protect me. This is how God protects you. Oh, I’ll just be careful. Everybody says that, so
consequently your heavenly Father, because he loves you says, Look, I want you to be careful
how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, not as foolish, but as wise. I want you to take
advantage of every opportunity. I want you to redeem the time. I want you to face up to what
God wants for your life, and I want you to establish boundaries. These are for you. This isn’t
“get on the street corner and tell everybody what to do.” You need personal standards. You need
personal standards that become a matter of conscience, personal standards that become a matter of conscience.
And when everybody else in your fraternity and everybody else at the office and maybe
everybody else in your family says, Oh, what do you mean you’re not going to … Is it because you’re a Christian? Do you think that’s a sin? Do you think it’s wrong? Then somehow through
your personality with your own language you’re able to say, No, I’m not saying you shouldn’t.
I’m just saying I shouldn’t. I’m not saying the rest of the world shouldn’t; I’m just saying for me,
this is as far as I allow myself to go in this area. And you can borrow all the money you want to
borrow, but for my family, this is as far—and I know legally I can do more, but for me
personally, this is as far as I go. I know everybody else—but for me, I’ve set a personal standard
that has so informed my conscience, that when I begin to bump up against my personal standard, I feel as if I have done something wrong. And by establishing that standard for me, I’ve decided this is how God wants to guard me from whatever it is on the other side that ultimately
everybody agrees with, nobody should go in that area.
So here’s what we’re going to do. For the next few weeks, we’re going to take some
different areas, some specific things. We’re going to talk about time, we’re going to talk about
friendship, and we’re going to talk about marriage. And then here’s the best part of the series. I
have finally convinced my wife to do a tag team sermon with me. We’re going to do tag team
preaching. It’s going to be great. So in a few weeks, here’s what we’re going to do: Sandra and I,
because this is such an important area to us, Sandra and I are going to do the message together,
and we’re going to talk specifically about how we have done some of these, set up some of these
things in our marriage, with our children—because again, this is such a big, big deal to us. And
as our hearts are continually broken through the years by people whose lives have become
broken unnecessarily—this is such a passion point for us—and so I said she has so much to say, so she’s agreed to do that. So that’s going to be a lot of fun. So that’s where this series is going.
But here’s where I want to land you today. As I’ve been talking, for some of you something very specific came to mind. It may have been the alcohol thing. It may have had nothing to do with alcohol. Because you know there’s an area in your life where you are dancing on the edge of the yellow line and you need to back up about three feet and set a standard that keeps you away from the yellow line. It may be something financially you’re doing. It may be something in a relationship. 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 were saying and asking, Where is the line, and I want to walk right on it. If my wife catches me, I can say, but I haven’t done anything yet!
And as you’ve listened to this message, there’s something inside of you going, “Ahem!” That’s
the Holy Spirit. It’s God who says, “Call me Father” saying to you, “I want to rescue you. I don’t
want to keep you from something good. I want to rescue you from something bad. You need a
guardrail in your life.”
And then maybe there is an arena of your life where once you get closer and closer and
closer, you are so overwhelmed with lust that you really kind of lose self control in that area.
What would it look like to back up to some place safe and put a guardrail in the ground that
maybe none of your buddies ever understand, but it may be the thing God uses to rescue your
marriage? I don’t know what it is for you, but while I’ve been talking, I have a feeling some
things came to mind. My hunch is, whatever came to mind is where God would like to start with
you in your life. And you don’t need five more messages on this to start; because chances are
between here and the door, you know where you need to plant the guardrail. You know where
you need a personal standard of behavior that informs and energizes your conscience. And my promise to you, based on Scripture and based on personal experience is this: no one has ever
regretted establishing a guardrail—ever—but there are plenty of us and there are plenty of people
who look back and wish that they had. So I want you to think about it this week, and I want you
to face up to what you know in your heart your heavenly Father wants you to do. Let’s pray
together.
