Is the Believer’s Heart ‘Desperately Sick’?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Jeremiah 17 9 is a famous Bible passage about the heart.
00:00:09.000 | It's a verse that many of us know by heart and it says this,
00:00:12.000 | "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it?"
00:00:17.000 | Pastor John, this is certainly true of a pre-conversion heart without the Holy Spirit.
00:00:22.000 | But is this passage accurate for a converted, regenerated heart that is now united to Christ?
00:00:28.000 | Or is it simply wrong to apply this passage as a diagnosis for the sin struggles in the Christian life?
00:00:34.000 | It is wrong to apply this text, the text about Jeremiah 17 9, about the heart is deceitful above all things.
00:00:45.000 | It's wrong to apply that text to the regenerate heart without qualification.
00:00:50.000 | Let me start with the definition.
00:00:53.000 | In what sense is the heart deceitful like that?
00:00:58.000 | Here's my answer.
00:01:00.000 | The heart offers incentives and motives for behaviors that destroy us by putting the proposed action in a compelling light.
00:01:13.000 | In other words, that's deceitful. It's a lie.
00:01:16.000 | And the heart is telling us, "Do this, do this," because it'll do this, this, this.
00:01:19.000 | And it's lies. It's lying us into destruction.
00:01:24.000 | So evil actions can have very compelling motives that the heart offers up.
00:01:30.000 | Or flip it around, good acts can have no motive.
00:01:35.000 | The heart just stays silent and doesn't offer anything.
00:01:39.000 | Or the heart offers corrupt motives.
00:01:42.000 | You know, you can tithe in order to be seen for your good deeds and things like that.
00:01:48.000 | But yeah, the heart is deceitful in the sense that it is withholding good motives from good actions and is offering good motives from bad actions.
00:01:57.000 | Now, before we're converted by Christ through faith and the work of the Holy Spirit, we don't have faith.
00:02:07.000 | And without faith, it is impossible to please God.
00:02:11.000 | Hebrews 11 6, "And therefore we don't please God."
00:02:16.000 | The mind of the flesh cannot please God.
00:02:19.000 | And so the heart is thoroughly corrupt.
00:02:23.000 | It's not doing anything that is God-ward and therefore anything that is pleasing to God.
00:02:28.000 | So it's not an overstatement when Paul says in Romans 3, "None is righteous."
00:02:34.000 | No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God.
00:02:38.000 | Now, that means until there's a mighty and wonderful work of grace in our hearts.
00:02:45.000 | When that happens, the new covenant that is promised and that Jesus bought with His blood happens.
00:02:53.000 | And what happens in the new covenant is Ezekiel 11 19, "I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and I will give them a heart of flesh."
00:03:04.000 | Or Ezekiel 36 26, "I will give you a new heart, a new spirit I will put within you."
00:03:12.000 | And the Bible is just, I mean the New Testament is so filled with beautiful descriptions about what happens.
00:03:22.000 | Second Corinthians 4 6, "God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts."
00:03:28.000 | Our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
00:03:33.000 | Or Romans 10 9, "If you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you'll be saved."
00:03:39.000 | Romans 2 29, "The true Jew that is the Christian is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart by the spirit, not the letter."
00:03:50.000 | And Romans 5 5, "God is shedding out His love in our hearts, pouring it out through the Holy Spirit."
00:03:58.000 | And Romans 6 17, "Thanks be to God that you became obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching."
00:04:06.000 | And Second Corinthians 1 22, "God put His seal on us and has given us His spirit in our heart as a guarantee."
00:04:15.000 | So this is not deceitful. This is a guarantee welling up in the saint's heart.
00:04:22.000 | Or Galatians 4 6, "God has sent the Son into our hearts, the spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father.'"
00:04:34.000 | Ephesians 3 17, "Christ dwells in your hearts through faith."
00:04:40.000 | Philippians 4 7, "The peace of God which passes all understanding will guard your hearts in Christ Jesus."
00:04:47.000 | So I hope, I mean those texts are just so thrilling to me that in spite of all my imperfections,
00:04:56.000 | God has targeted my heart with omnipotent invasion.
00:05:02.000 | He has moved in, given me a new heart in Christ, indwelt by the Holy Spirit,
00:05:08.000 | and our calling therefore is to bear fruit out of the abundance of the heart now.
00:05:14.000 | Something new is going to come as an overflow.
00:05:18.000 | Let's be careful here. Our heart is not our new God giving infallible guidance.
00:05:26.000 | God is God and His Word is our sure guide.
00:05:32.000 | But the heart is now a regenerate witness with the Holy Spirit to the truth of God.
00:05:40.000 | And we are being changed from one degree of glory in our hearts to another.
00:05:46.000 | And our hearts are being brought to affirm, approve what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect.
00:05:58.000 | So we should not say of our new spirit indwelt hearts, "It is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt."
00:06:08.000 | We should say, "Apart from Christ, apart from Christ I would be deceived.
00:06:14.000 | Apart from Christ, I would be corrupt. But I am no longer apart from Christ.
00:06:20.000 | I have the mind of Christ by grace through faith."
00:06:24.000 | If you don't qualify that with those texts that I just gave,
00:06:28.000 | then you're going to give a totally wrong impression as to what has really happened to the believer.
00:06:36.000 | I mean, we are supernatural people.
00:06:40.000 | God has moved in on us.
00:06:44.000 | And to minimize that or belittle that by using descriptions of an unregenerate heart to describe a regenerate heart is a huge mistake.
00:06:54.000 | Here's what I would recommend.
00:06:56.000 | That the person go back and look at the preceding verses of Jeremiah 79 and the following verses.
00:07:04.000 | Both of them relate to fruit.
00:07:07.000 | And therefore, you take Jesus' words, "Make the tree good and its fruit good. Make the tree bad and its fruit bad."
00:07:16.000 | In other words, I think if you look at the context there of Jeremiah 79 and the relationship between the heart and fruit,
00:07:23.000 | and then apply Jesus' words to that, you'll see that Jesus intends for us to understand that a corrupt and deceitful heart will bear corrupt and deceitful deeds.
00:07:35.000 | A new tree bears different fruit.
00:07:39.000 | Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:07:41.000 | Email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org and visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and other resources,
00:07:50.000 | all free of charge from John Piper and all intended to help explain why God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
00:07:59.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Have a great weekend.
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