Table of Contents
Jeremiah 17:9
“If I know my heart,” is a refrain, a catchphrase, a favorite saying used by each of us at times to express the honesty and sincerity of our deepest motives and interests. The meaning is understood. And, most of the time, one’s sincerity isn’t questioned. When speaking of the heart, however, we aren’t talking about the organ that lies between the right and left lungs within the chest and pumps oxygenated blood throughout the body in a system of veins. “My heart” is understood to mean ‘my inner person,’ the place where human emotions and conscience is, even the human mind.
We also hear frequently someone speak of another following a tragic event and say of them, “He had a good heart. He was a good person. He just made some bad choices. Got with the wrong people. But he was a good person inside.” That description and metaphor of the heart don’t ring true with what we know about the human heart and it especially doesn’t square with the teaching of the Bible. Jeremiah the prophet spoke to the ‘heart’ of this subject when he addressed the spiritual condition of the heart of his people, which was the leading cause of their defeat to the Babylonians and their exile to a strange land (Ps. 137:4).
By the time Jeremiah uttered this statement to the tribe of Judah, the northern kingdom of Israel had fallen to the Assyrians years earlier. You would think that the southern kingdom would have learned a lesson from Israel’s sinful experience and would have repented of their sin and turned back to the Lord and remained committed to Him. But they didn’t. They denied anything was wrong with them. If this chapter teaches us anything it is this, the transgressions of Judah were equal to if not more grievous than those of Israel.
1 Judah Could Not Believe
Judah could not believe that God would bring the severe judgment as predicted by Jeremiah upon them. They were in disbelief. Disbelief was the problem. Disbelief is unbelief. Unbelief was the sin of Judah. It was a sin that caused them to callously ask the prophet after his warning, “Wherefore hath the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? or what is our iniquity? or what is our sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?” (Jer. 16:9-10). What was their sin? It was the sin of their heart. The sin of rebellion. The sin of pride. The sin of overconfidence in the flesh. The sin of a deceptive and desperately wicked heart that would not allow them to believe God would judge them for their idolatry and iniquity. So, the Lord answers their questions through Jeremiah in chapter 17:9 and 10 by showing them the true condition of their heart. What is it about the heart that we need to understand?
“The heart” must be scripturally defined. In Jewish thought and usage, the heart and reins (i.e. kidneys, v.10) speak of the inner man, the seat of emotions, desire, the will, inclination, even the mind, the place of our thoughts. It helps us to understand why we do what we do, why we act and feel the way we do, or why we think the thoughts we think. Everything in the ‘inner man’ proceeds from a fallen nature, a nature tainted by sin. This helps us understand Jesus’ statement when He said, “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man” (Mk. 7:21-23). Don’t miss what Jesus said, “these evil things come from within,” that is, within the heart.
2 Judah was Religious
Judah was religious but did not regenerate. They were guilty of not forsaking the idolatries and iniquities committed by their forefathers. Instead of forsaking them, they embraced them and continued in them (v. 18). Her sins had separated her from her God. The heart of Judah needed to be quickened. She needed a spiritual awakening. Judah stands as an example of the religious but unsaved professing believer. The Lord said that the heart of this person was “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” This spiritual condition is called in the New Testament spiritually dead. Paul wrote of this condition to the Ephesians and said, “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others” (Eph. 2:1-3).
By His prophet Jeremiah, the Lord said the heart is strongly defiled. Jeremiah’s choice of words to describe the heart is graphic. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” he said. Deceitful comes from the Hebrew word ‘Jacob defined by Strong’s Concordance to mean, “a knoll.” A knoll is a small rounded hill. So, the idea is that of a swelling up’ of pride, or self, of the inner man. It is also translated in the KJV as crooked (Is. 40:4) and polluted (Hos. 6:8). The same Hebrew word is related to the Hebrew name Ya’aqob, better known as Jacob. Jacob’s name means “Trickster, heel-supplanter.” Jacob was, by nature, a trickster, a deceiver, one who tripped up his brother and others. But the other word used by Jeremiah was ‘desperately wicked.’ In the original language, it meant ‘feeble, frail, incurably sick.’ That is, our heart is strongly defiled apart from the life-changing grace of God. But God doesn’t do a ‘makeover’ of our heart when He saves us. He gives us a new heart, one spiritually awakened and undefiled by sin.
3 One Final Thought
One final thought about the heart. It can be strangely dull even in the life of a true believer. Just as our natural senses of sight, smell, taste, and hearing can be dulled or lose their sharpness, this can happen to our spiritual senses. When the Lord Jesus taught the people through parables, the disciples asked Him why. He quoted the prophet Isaiah, who had said, “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them” (Mt. 13:15). Paul, who we believe wrote the book of Hebrews, and was speaking about Christ the author of our eternal salvation, said to his readers, “Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing” (Heb. 5:11). “Rather than listening carefully, hearing completely, and comprehending clearly, they had become mentally and spiritually dull in their hearing. They were not slow learners but had allowed themselves to grow lazy. A spiritual callus was growing over their ears” (from Thomas Constable’s Notes on the Bible).
We need a spiritually developed, or matured heart that comes from constant cleansing, concentration on the word of God, commitment to our Lord, comforted by the Holy Spirit, and cheered on by others. The question for us all is, how is your heart?
Dr. Dee Keith
