The Heart – From The Fall

Jeremiah 17:9 provides us with deep insight into the nature of the heart. As we’ve stated before the heart is the very center of our life, the controlling core of our intellect, will and entire being. Perhaps the best English word that can be used to describe the heart is the mind. The prophet Jeremiah offers a very frightful and disturbing assessment of the heart – “deceitful above all things and desperately sick.” Deceitful is taken from the noun Jacob which as you know essentially means to supplant, literally, to grab the heel, to displace or depose someone by devious means. Thus, the inspired verdict concerning the heart is that it is crafty and in this context it refers to the heart’s cunning attempts to mislead us. However, the verdict doesn’t stop there for the text goes on to say that it is deceitful above all things- it is the most deceitful creature on the face of the earth.

How many times have we stated that the Lord knows my heart? How many times have we professed our purity of motive and innocence of intention when trying to impress others that we are so virtuous in our thinking that we would even invoke the divine intervention on our behalf, that we would dare call the Lord to judge our heart? To invite the Lord’s input is to bring disaster upon ourselves for the heavenly verdict is that the heart is the most deceitful of all creatures. Indeed, so deceitful is it that we cannot even know it. That is to say, firstly, we are the chief objects of the deceitful actions of our heart and secondly, we are so duped by it that we cannot even know the true extent of its corrupt nature. We cannot plumb the depths of its craftiness; we cannot fully comprehend the sinfully sly and cunning ways in which it functions. Thus, when we need an objective opinion concerning the true intents of our desires, when we need a correct assessment of our goals, the heart is the most unreliable source for us to seek.

The next description of the heart strengthens the grim reality of its wicked nature: it is desperately sick. This term is one word in the Hebrew and it originally means, as the text says to be sick. For example in 2 Sam 12:15 we read that “.. The LORD afflicted the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and he became sick.” However, most frequently it is used to describe a pain or wound that has become incurable. This is its meaning here along with other examples such as Jer 15: 18, “Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?..” and 30:12, ” “For thus says the LORD: Your hurt is incurable, and your wound is grievous.”

The clear emphasis here is on the heart’s desperate spiritual condition. It cannot be naturally cured. It certainly cannot cure itself and it is so depraved that it cannot know where to seek mercy and help in time of need. If this is the case, if this is the divine verdict concerning the heart of man, the way he truly is at the very core of his being, then is there any hope for him? Whither shall he look to find help? Verse 5 tells us that the corrupt heart “trusts in man and makes flesh his strength,..” Flesh is the opposite of spirit- Isa 31:3, “The Egyptians are man, and not God, and their horses are flesh, and not spirit. ..” and refers not only to human feebleness and frailty but also to his vanity and perishableness. As a result, he incurs God’s covenant curse because his heart is turned away from the Lord and is banished to a fruitless existence in a land that is completely dry and desolate, that cannot bear any fruit, v. 6. That is to say, the man who trusts in human beings, lives a life marked by futility and unproductiveness that are worked out in the most destitute conditions. He is utterly hopeless!

Help for the heart therefore has to come from an external source. It is the Lord God himself who must open our hearts as he did Lydia’s, so that like her, we can hear the gospel of Jesus Christ (with our hearts), Acts 16:14. It is the Lord God himself who must sovereignly exercise the initiative to radically change our stubborn, depraved hearts from stone to flesh, Eze 36:26; see also 11:19; Jer 24:7. In this case, flesh does not indicate the frailty and futility of man but a material that is pliable and that accepts God’s overtures of saving grace; in other words, a heart that seeks to be conformed to God’s revealed will. This work is done by God the Holy Spirit who creates a new heart within us and gives us a disposition to love the Lord by the process of the new birth or regeneration – we are said to be born again, Jn 3:7, or to be born of the Spirit, v. 8 – and by giving us hearts that will believe and receive Christ as he is freely offered in the preaching of the gospel. We are then said to be God’s new creation in Christ, that is to say, entirely new persons being fitted for heaven, for the old (self or man) has gone and the new has come, 2 Cor 5:17.

What shall we then say? The heart of the matter is that the heart chiefly matters.