Is the Christian’s Heart Deceitfully Wicked?
00:00:00.000 | Is the Christian's heart deceitfully wicked?
00:00:08.680 | You've heard that phrase, "deceitfully wicked" from the Old Testament, but is such an indictment
00:00:13.760 | actually applicable to the regenerated Christian heart?
00:00:18.000 | The question is from a podcast listener named Micah.
00:00:20.080 | "Pastor Jon, hello.
00:00:21.080 | I was recently in a debate with a friend over Jeremiah 17.9.
00:00:24.680 | The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.
00:00:28.320 | Who can understand it?
00:00:30.040 | I applied it to the ongoing sin blindness in the heart of the Christian.
00:00:33.720 | My friend said I was taking a passage about unbelieving hearts and misapplying it to the
00:00:38.480 | Christian heart.
00:00:39.480 | However, in returning to the bigger context of Jeremiah 17 verses 5-13, I find myself
00:00:44.920 | even more convinced verse 9 is equally applicable to believers, especially in light of verses
00:00:49.960 | 7 and 8.
00:00:51.200 | What do you think?
00:00:52.200 | Is Jeremiah 17.9 about believers, unbelievers, or both?
00:00:56.800 | Pastor Jon, how would you process this text and this context?
00:01:01.760 | Let me walk quickly through the flow of thought from verse 1 of Jeremiah 17 down through verse
00:01:09.160 | 9, and I think everybody will be able to see how the verse is functioning if we do that,
00:01:15.200 | how verse 9 is functioning.
00:01:17.800 | Jeremiah begins with an indictment of Judah and a warning of destruction.
00:01:23.320 | It says, "The sin of Judah is engraved on the tablet of their heart while their children
00:01:30.840 | remember their altars and their asherim."
00:01:33.920 | Those are other gods, so idolatry is the issue here.
00:01:37.120 | "Your wealth and all your treasures I will give as spoil and as a price of your high
00:01:43.800 | places for sin."
00:01:45.520 | So he's going to bring judgment upon them for the sin of their heart and the idolatry
00:01:50.240 | of their worship.
00:01:52.280 | And then he says what's beneath that.
00:01:55.240 | He says in verse 5, "Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes the flesh his strength,
00:02:04.160 | whose heart turns away from the Lord.
00:02:07.200 | He is like a shrub in the desert and shall not see any good come."
00:02:13.600 | Now, that's the root problem of the idolatry and the sin.
00:02:17.920 | The root problem is they are trusting in man, not in God.
00:02:24.240 | And then he describes what alternatively ought to be the opposite of this and the benefits
00:02:30.680 | that would come if it were the case.
00:02:33.280 | Blessed is the man—not cursed is the man who trusts in man—but blessed is the man
00:02:36.800 | who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord.
00:02:40.320 | He's like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream and does not fear
00:02:46.520 | when heat comes, for the leaves remain green.
00:02:49.360 | And he's not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.
00:02:55.960 | Now, that leaves us with this question.
00:02:59.200 | Well, if trusting in self results in such misery, "no good shall come," and trusting
00:03:07.480 | in God results in such fruitfulness, you can prosper.
00:03:13.080 | Why in the world is a whole nation acting so suicidally in self-trust and sin and idolatry?
00:03:21.480 | And his answer is verse 9, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
00:03:27.560 | sick who can understand it."
00:03:30.200 | So the human heart is diseased with sin and in the sway of deceit, and that's why people
00:03:38.300 | act suicidally in preferring self-trust over God-trust.
00:03:44.800 | So the overall point of the passage seems to be that the root of sin and idolatry is
00:03:51.240 | a failure to trust in God rather than self, and the root of that failure is a deceitful
00:03:57.640 | and depraved heart.
00:03:59.960 | So I think Jeremiah—indeed, I think all the biblical writers—would say that's
00:04:04.960 | the root problem ever since the fall of man into sin and corruption.
00:04:12.400 | All human beings, no exceptions, are born with this kind of fallen, diseased, deceived,
00:04:20.800 | self-exalting, God-opposing heart.
00:04:24.280 | So the question is, when a person experiences the new birth, becomes a Christian, what happens
00:04:32.960 | to that diseased, deceived, self-exalting, God-opposing heart?
00:04:38.800 | And here are some verses that describe what happens.
00:04:42.640 | So Ezekiel 36, the new covenant, described like this, "I will give you a new heart
00:04:48.960 | and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your
00:04:53.840 | flesh and give you a heart of flesh."
00:04:55.840 | Or Romans 6:17, "Thanks be to God that you who once were slaves of sin have become obedient
00:05:05.440 | from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed."
00:05:10.320 | Or Acts 15:9, "God made no distinction between Jew and Gentile, having cleansed their hearts
00:05:18.640 | by faith."
00:05:20.440 | Or John 7:38, "Whoever believes in me," Jesus says, "as the Scripture has said,
00:05:28.520 | out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."
00:05:33.480 | Oh, amazing!
00:05:34.480 | I want to be like that, right?
00:05:36.080 | I just want to have a kind of new heart that doesn't just enjoy water, it flows to other
00:05:41.760 | people.
00:05:42.760 | So I'm going to read the next verse now, John 7:39, "Now this he said about the Spirit,
00:05:49.840 | whom those who believed in him were to receive."
00:05:53.000 | Or 1 Timothy 1:5, "The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart."
00:06:00.360 | Or 2 Corinthians 5:17, "If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation."
00:06:06.340 | So my conclusion is that we can say that Jeremiah 17:9, "Deceitful above all things and desperately
00:06:15.680 | sick," the human heart, is true of the human heart, all of them.
00:06:22.080 | But that where God is applying the blood-bought purchase of the new covenant, there is a new
00:06:31.040 | creation.
00:06:32.960 | Sins are forgiven, Holy Spirit is poured in, new nature is brought into being.
00:06:38.960 | That newness consists in the presence of the heart influencing Holy Spirit and in the new
00:06:48.520 | nature—you might call it the divine-like DNA—that is more and more being conformed
00:06:56.880 | to Christ.
00:06:57.880 | So maybe a good verse to end on would be 2 Corinthians 3:18, "Beholding the glory of
00:07:03.960 | the Lord, we are being," I would say this old, horrible, self-exalting, God-opposing
00:07:10.800 | heart of mine, "is being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to
00:07:18.760 | another."
00:07:19.760 | Really good and careful exegesis of these Old Testament texts and of key New Testament
00:07:25.320 | texts as well.
00:07:26.320 | Thank you, Pastor John, for putting this all together for us.
00:07:29.440 | And thank you for listening.
00:07:30.440 | If you haven't done so, you can get the latest episodes by subscribing to Ask Pastor
00:07:33.800 | John in your favorite podcast app in Spotify or by subscribing to DG's YouTube channel.
00:07:38.680 | To find episodes in our archive or to submit a question of your own to us, go online to
00:07:42.600 | DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:07:50.960 | We are going to return on Wednesday.
00:07:53.280 | I am not certain of the topic, but we'll see you then.
00:07:56.040 | I'm Tony Reinke.
00:07:57.040 | Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime author and pastor
00:08:01.240 | John Piper.
00:08:02.240 | We'll see you Wednesday.
00:08:02.880 | [END]
00:08:03.380 | [BLANK_AUDIO]