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I couldn't help noticing when I went home today, because the newspaper was sitting on our counter, that there were 75 Boston police officers who failed drug tests here recently, and most of them for cocaine and whatnot.
And I just thought, it is such an indication of, one, how we need to pray for all men, especially for those who are in places of authority over us, including police officers. But I also thought, just the depravity of man, the wickedness of the human heart.
I remember an old Dragnet show where one of the cops on the show had been busted, and Jack Webb says something like, well, he says the other guy, like Jack Webb always did, he says, well, we work at a handicap.
And his sidekick says, well, what's that? He says, we have to hire from the human race. And I thought, that's right. But during my time, I certainly saw a number of scandals. People that worked for my dad and then worked for me, and then they're getting hauled off for tax evasion, and you just kind of go, what is going on?
Human beings, mankind, regardless of their position, regardless of their authority, they all suffer from one thing. And that's that they have a broken heart. They have a broken compass. They have a misfiring heart in the sense that they can't rely on it.
Now one of the most common thoughts, one of the most common phrases, one of the most common responses when somebody says, well, I don't know what to do in this given situation. What do people say? Well, you know what, I think you just have to listen to your heart.
I think you just have to do what feels right. You know, you will come to a place where you make that decision, and you're just going to have to trust yourself. Listen to that inner voice. Even Christians do that.
How about this? I have a real peace about this decision. You ever heard that one? Or contrast that with, you know, I just don't have a peace about this relationship. Or I feel the Lord leading me in this area.
And you know what? They could be right. Jenna was telling me today, she was reading, she's rereading a biography. And this woman said some things that seemed almost like prophetic, and then they happen, and I'm going, well, how does she know?
Could she have known that ahead of time? I don't know. But I think we'd be foolish to basically rely on that sort of thing. And my goal tonight is not to give you a recap of Pastor Mike's decision-making series that he taught a couple years ago.
My purpose is to view, for us to view, the human heart the way God does. To turn you from any kind of reliance upon your feelings, and to present the human heart for what it is. The heart, as we will see, is a very bad compass.
If you want to know what direction to go in, the human heart is not the best way to go. To help establish this, we will first look at our text for this evening, and then we will look at what counselors call a few case studies.
We won't make these case studies up. They are drawn from real life, and we know that because they come out of God's word. Let's please open your Bibles to Jeremiah 17. And I'm going to read verses 1 through 10, and we'll briefly describe those.
And then we're going to go through the case study manual and discover what we can about the human heart. Jeremiah 17, the sin of Judah is written down with an iron stylus. With a diamond point, it is engraved upon the tablet of their heart and on the horns of their altars.
As they remember their children, so they remember their altars and their Asherim, by green trees on the high hills. Oh, mountain of mine in the countryside, I will give over your wealth and all your treasures for booty.
Your high places for sin throughout your borders, and you will, even of yourself, let go of your inheritance that I gave you. And I will make you serve your enemies in the land which you do not know, for you have kindled a fire in my anger which will burn forever.
Thus says the Lord, cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord, for he will be like a bush in the desert and will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitants.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord, for he will be like a tree planted by the water that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes, but its leaves will be green and it will not be anxious in a year of drought, nor cease to yield fruit.
The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick. Who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.
Now, as we work our way through the text here, first looking at verse 1, the sin of the southern kingdom, Judah, was written down with an iron stylus, the text tells us, and that the idea of an iron stylus or even the idea of a diamond point upon the tablet of their heart, the idea is to show the depth, the permanence, the abiding nature of their sinfulness.
They were in the habit of sin, they were immersed in it. It was, in essence, their character. When you looked at the people of Judah, this is what they did all the time and what was it that they were participating in?
That sin was idolatry. Verse 2 says that they remember their altars and their asherim, their altars, the places where they would go and make their sacrifices to their gods. The asherim were figurines, little figures of the Canaanite goddess of fortune and happiness.
So they were going off and they were worshiping these little figures, these little goddesses of fortune and happiness. Because of their sin, God pronounces judgment upon Judah. God says that he will give over their wealth and their treasures for booty.
What is booty? That is what people get when they come in and they sack the land and they haul off the treasures. They haul off what is valuable. That is all going to be taken away by people who will invade Judah.
Verse 4 tells us that they will give away their inheritance, they themselves are going to give away their inheritance, the land Yahweh promised to them. And he will put them in bondage in a very far away land.
This all came to pass. This is what happened to the people of Judah. And look at that, at the end of verse 4 he says, For you have kindled a fire in my anger which will burn forever. God is so displeased, and we are going to talk about this more, so displeased at them and basically it is for idolatry.
Verses 5 -8 show the contrast between those who rely on their own strength, those who rely on mankind, and those who trust in the Lord. Trust in man is equated with cursing. Trust in God with blessing.
The curse is equated with being like a bush in the desert, blessing like a tree planted by water. Now which would you rather be? A bush in the desert or a tree planted? And again it is that idea from Psalm 1 of being transplanted, of being carefully placed by a canal of water where you would have access to water all the time.
The cursing, you live in stony wastes in a place where no one can live. The blessing, access to the stream, no fear of heat or drought, always yielding fruit. And again the pictures come so alive when you think about it as being out in the desert.
You are out where the water is the most precious commodity there is. And he says listen, these are your choices, you can rely on mankind and you can be like this bush that is stuck out there in the middle of the desert where nothing can survive, kind of reminds me of Palmdale where we used to live.
Or you can be this choice tree that is transplanted and set right next to this canal where its roots dig in and can get the water anytime they want. You will always produce fruit and that's the choice they're given.
Now here's the million dollar question and the crux of the matter. Why would anyone choose the cursing and not the blessing? Why would anyone do that? Why would they say, you know, thanks Jeremiah, I appreciate that, but I really would rather be the bush in the middle of the desert.
Why would anyone want to trust in man knowing that men will fail instead of God who cannot fail? But here's the million dollar answer. They do this, they choose this because the human heart is a liar.
The heart, as it's represented in scripture, is the inner man, the mind, the mission control center, it wraps up all that a person is. And the Bible describes it right here in Jeremiah 17 9 as more deceitful than all else.
Literally it is insidious. It is evil. It is deceitful. In fact, that word can also mean that it is tracked by footsteps and I thought, well, that's an interesting way of thinking about things. And I thought about it some more.
I thought, well, what does it mean to be tracked by footsteps? What do you track by footsteps? Well, you can track animals by footsteps, but it just made me think this is like detective work. This is tracking down something that is so sneaky that it has to be found in that way.
So that's the idea, the idea that it's a shadowy kind of tricky, deceitful. That's what the heart is. And it is not only deceitful, it's not only insidious, it's not only evil, but it is more deceitful than anything else.
As I said this morning, when we think about this, when we understand the human heart and its capacity for evil, its capacity for deceit, we don't need to focus so much on Satan. We don't need to so much worry about attacks from without because we've got a big enough problem to handle on our own.
We've got our own hearts to deal with. Jeremiah 79 also tells us that the heart is very sick. In fact, it says it is incurably sick. There is no surgery or medicine that can restore the heart. It's terminal.
Now I thought about that and I go, well, there is a passage that would tell us that we can get a new heart. Ezekiel 36, 26. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
When you're born again, you get that heart of flesh, but there's still that nature. There's still that sin nature. We're still prone to wander. We still have that inherent capacity within us given to us by Adam to sin against God, to deceive ourselves.
We're quite capable of self-deception and of just like Judah did, we're equally capable of committing the sin of idolatry. The heart is beyond understanding. It cannot be known. Bloch says, who can know it?
He says, i .e., fathom its nature and corruption. Therefore, a man must not trust the suggestions and illusions of his own heart. If you're relying on impressions, thoughts, the leading of your own heart, you're in trouble.
No one can know the depth of depravity of his own heart. It just reminds me about how Billy Graham, when he goes to hotels, he always makes sure that he's not alone. He's careful. Why? Because even, you know, what is he, 80-something, 90-something, I don't know how old he is, but he doesn't trust himself.
He knows that in him is no good thing. As soon as we begin to rely on ourselves, on our own strength, trusting our own hearts, we are in big trouble. You cannot trust your heart. Your heart is not a source of truth.
It is a source of corruption. It is a source of idolatry. It is not even a reliable source of worship. In fact, I would say that it is a launching pad for idolatry. Now that's a pretty shocking statement, but I think it's accurate.
We are all given to worshiping idols. Some might be sitting here saying, not me. I wouldn't do that. I would never make for myself a little figurine and go worship it and sacrifice up in the hills. That's silly.
John Calvin said this, the human heart is a factory of idols. Every one of us is, from his mother's womb, expert in inventing idols. In Calvin's day, they didn't have the assembly line yet, but I mean, it just drags out the picture for me of us just working piece by piece to make idols.
That's what we do. We create them. We go from one to another to another to another, and you say, well, how can you say that? Because if we're not loving the Lord, our God, well, our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we are in some way, shape, or form putting something in front of that.
Whether it's our own comfort, whether it's something else, whether it's someone else, there is something that is preventing us from worshiping God as we ought to, and that something, that someone is, in fact, an idol.
And this was God's very first concern when he established the law with his people, Israel. What did he tell them? Look at Exodus 20. The Ten Commandments are in Exodus 20, and I don't know, you know, one of those things you have to memorize for a seminary, and I always thought, okay, Ten Commandments in Exodus 20.
I don't know why that always sticks in my head, but 10, 20, it works. I don't know why. I guess I should have some picture of Charlton Heston or something in my head, but I just don't. Instead, that's the email I send out of Pastor Dave.
Exodus 20, verses 3 to 5, you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.
You shall not worship them or serve them for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children on the third and fourth generations of those who hate me. Now, that's pretty explicit, but why do you have to go to all that trouble?
Could he just say, you know, hey, don't worship any other gods? He explicitly went through step by step by step. I think we can easily say just by reading that, that idolatry wasn't just God's first concern.
It was his second and third concern, too, because he knew the heart of man. He still knows the heart of men, and he knows that men would rather worship the creature, worship the creation than worship the creator.
Why? Why would they want to do that? I think the most obvious answer is there's less accountability. If I worship some God who is half fish and half man, I know in my mind that I just carved that thing up, and he's not going to do anything to me.
He falls over. He never tells the future before it happens. He is absolutely powerless. So when we see Exodus 20 and we see verses 3, 4, and 5, we can know that verse 3 wasn't enough because of what happened with Israel.
In spite of delivering them out of Egypt, the people were not faithful to Yahweh for long. What did they do? They get the Ten Commandments. They're there in the wilderness for a little while, and what do they do?
They make a golden calf and start worshiping it. You might think, well, they were dumb. I would never worship anything except for God. Again, an idol is anything that takes preeminence above God. There can be a lot of things, and since our hearts are, as Calvin said, idol factories, there could be potentially, and this might just be India alone, 6 .2 billion idols on the earth.
Everybody can create their own idols. Some worship the NFL. As I've said, you know, here's this great big book that just came out here, Why Men Don't Like Church or something like that, and I'm going, I know, because it conflicts with football.
You know, if we could somehow get that out of the way, it would be all right. Some will worship a God of their own design, one who is only love. In other words, you know some of the attributes of God, and you just decide that you're just going to focus on one.
God is only love, and that's all God is. Some will worship the human mind and science. So, what is it that gets your affection, your time, your energy, your resources? Are you an idol worshiper? What about the heart?
Are there other instances we can turn to where we see the sinfulness of the human heart displayed? Well, there are many, and I had to just pick a few. Let's look at Genesis 6, Genesis 6, verse 5. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
The Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart. The Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creepy things and to birds of the sky, for I am sorry that I have made them.
Now, it's not like at this time, it's not like the earth's population was just Adam and Eve and 2 .2 kids. The earth was packed. There were millions, probably billions of people on the earth, and yet all of their thoughts, this passage tells us, were evil continually.
Now we've been promised that God will never flood the earth again, but we're not promised that there won't be billions of people whose thoughts are evil continually. The heart is evil. Are there other ways that the sinfulness of the heart manifests itself?
Is it always idle worship? Well, in a sense, I think yes. How can I say that? Because the most common idolatry, I think, can be summed up in one word, self. I've said this before, but in my entire life of working in law enforcement, I've never run into one criminal who wasn't consumed with themselves, who didn't have a very positive self-image.
Why is that? Because if you think that you're more important than somebody else, then what they have rightfully belongs to you, and that's how they view things. Self is, without a doubt, the number one idol in the world today.
People are in love with themselves. You watch infomercials, and most of them are about me, about you. They're about how I can be better, how my life can be better, how my face can be better, how whatever can be better.
That's what they sell. Well, self is the number one god of this world. And I think sin, in most cases, if not all cases, it's hard for me to think of a case where it just isn't the worship of something else.
If it's pleasure, if it's something else, something more important than God is what leads us into sin. We convince ourselves that something is more important than the God of the universe. Now the heart, we talk about it being deceitful.
Let's look at the case of Ananias and Sapphira, Acts 5, 1 to 4. By the way, that's what I told Mike when he thought he wasn't going to be able to preach one day, or he thought... How was that? I think he thought he was going to die or something, and I said then that I would preach...
I was ready to preach Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira. Mike and I are very close. You have to be able to say something like that, Tom. Acts 5, verses 1 to 4, but a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, we know the story well, and kept back some of the price for himself, with his wife's full knowledge.
You know, as a cop, I just have to break right there, what is that called when two people do something that they know is not right, and they take an act towards committing it? Conspiracy, that is exactly right.
You guys watch a lot of Law and Order or something, CSI, okay. It's conspiracy, and that's what they did. They conspired, but the problem is they didn't conspire against just anyone. They kept back some of the price for himself, with his wife's full knowledge, and bringing a portion of it, he laid it at the apostles' feet.
But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and to keep back some of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control?
Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to God. Subsequently he dies, his wife dies, but you know what, here's the thing, Ananias and Sapphira did not do this thinking that they were going to die.
In fact, I can guarantee you that they conspired, that they plotted this thinking that no one would ever know. And I'll tell you something else, I think, I think they were probably at peace with the decision.
I think they had a real peace about it. But they put on this external display of spirituality while in their hearts they knew that they were lying. I'm sure that they felt led to hold some of it back.
Now why was this idolatry? Because they wanted the approval of men. They wanted everybody to see how wonderful they were, that they'd sold this property and that they were bringing in this money. And because they put that money in front of the right worship of God.
They valued that money more than they valued their relationship with God. They made an idol out of that money. Again, back in the Old Testament in Genesis, Abraham is good for a couple of case studies here.
I mean, we could just do this whole thing on Abraham's life. It's amazing. And I just got through, we're going to get to judges here in a few minutes, but I just got through reading judges and that is just one horrifying book, I have to tell you.
The way, you know, when it says that everybody did what was right in their own eyes, it's true and it's not a pretty picture. Genesis 17, verses 15 to 17. This is God confirming the Abrahamic covenants.
God says to Abraham, as for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her and indeed I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her and she shall be a mother of nations.
Kings of peoples will come from her. Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said in his heart, will the child be born to a man 100 years old? And will Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child? Abraham's heart, his mind told him that what God, the creator of the universe was saying was impossible.
Should he have listened to his heart? Should he have laughed? Now was this idolatry? I'm going to suggest slightly different definition of idolatry. Anything that takes priority over God or distorts our view of God is a form of idolatry.
In other words, if we have a picture of God, first of all, having a picture of God is idolatry. But if we have a picture of God that is erroneous, if we understand him in a wrong way, if we change him in some way to fit our own conception, then we've made an idol of him.
We're not worshiping the God who is, we're worshiping the God of our own creation. And Abraham doubted God. Abraham didn't believe God. In fact, Abraham laughed at God. God, fortunately, is long-suffering.
And he's still around. Abraham's still around in Genesis 20. Genesis 20, Abraham and Sarah on a vacation. Starting in verse 1. Now Abraham journeyed from there toward the land of the Negev out in the desert and settled between Kadesh and Shur.
Then he sojourned in Gerar. Abraham said of Sarah, his wife, she is my sister. So Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent and took Sarah. But God came to Abimelech in a dream of the night and said to him, behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is married.
Now Abimelech had not come near her. And he said, Lord, will you slay a nation even though blameless? Did he not himself say to me, she is my sister? And she herself said, he is my brother. In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands, I have done this.
Then God said to him in the dream, yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this. And I also kept you from sinning against me. Therefore, I did not let you touch her. Now, the sin again is Abraham.
Did Abraham trust God to protect his wife or did he take things into his own hands? Have you ever done that? Have you ever decided that a situation was a little bit too difficult to handle in a biblical Christian way, trusting in the Lord alone?
So you give God a little help. That's all Abraham was doing. He was just kind of giving God a little help. Now, isn't that a wrong view of God? And isn't the heart desperately wicked? I mentioned the book of Judges.
A man named Micah, not the prophet, hired himself a priest, a Levite. If you look at Judges 18 verses 17 through 20, now the five men who went to spy out the land and entered there and took the graven image and the ephod and the household idols and the molten image, while the priest stood by the entrance of the gate with the 600 men armed with the weapons of war.
When these went into Micah's house and took the graven image, the ephod and household idols and the molten image, the priest said to them, what are you doing? They said to him, be silent, put your hand over your mouth and come with us and be to us a father and a priest.
It is. Is it better for you to be a priest to the house of one man or to be priest to a tribe and a family in Israel? The priest's heart was glad and he took the ephod and household idols and the graven image and went among the people.
Now, this priest was the priest of an idol. He'd forsaken the God of Israel. He'd forsaken his Levite vows and he'd become the priest of this idol, this molten image. And the people had a group of Israelites had come in and they had found this idol and they wanted it and they wanted the land that went with it.
And so they took this priest with them. And he went from having a congregation of one to having a congregation of many church growth. And the text tells us his heart was glad. Now, there are many happy people in this world, there are many people with glad hearts.
They are thriving, they are excited by the momentary pleasure. Of success, the momentary feeling they get when something goes their way. They worship that feeling. You can worship the feeling of being delighted, of being happy.
In fact, you could say that many people worship happiness. What's the most important thing in life? To be happy. The heart is a deceiver. The heart is hopelessly wicked. I think the best example of the in the Old Testament of the deceitful nature of the heart and why we can't trust our feelings is found in the book of Jonah.
Jonah is also, I think, without a doubt, the clearest picture of the sovereignty of God. God says, Jonah, go. Jonah says, no way. And God makes it happen anyway. Jonah resists. Jonah does all that he can and it doesn't work.
Jonah 1, verses 1 to 5. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, arise. Go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry against it. In other words, preach the gospel, for their wickedness has come up before me.
But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare, and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
The Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea. And there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up. Then the sailors became afraid and every man cried to his God. And they threw the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.
But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship and, get this, lain down and fallen sound asleep. So in the midst of this storm, in the midst of all this tumult, with everybody throwing everything over the ship trying to save their lives, Jonah goes downstairs and goes to sleep.
Now, when Jonah was commanded to go to Nineveh, he got on that ship. Nineveh was to the east, northeast. Jonah got on a ship and went west. He went west, young man. He was heading towards Spain. He was getting out of town, getting out of town fast.
He was heading across the Mediterranean Sea as far away from the Ninevites as he could go and stay in the known existence of things. Why? Because Nineveh was repulsive to him. Nineveh was incomprehensibly wicked to the Jewish mind.
These were horrible people. The Ninevites were wicked. They were barbaric. They were fierce, fierce warriors. And they were the fiercest, most barbaric people in a world that was fierce and barbaric. And Jonah didn't want to go to them and call them to repentance because he didn't want them to repent.
Nineveh deserved what Nineveh was going to get. So to make sure that they didn't repent, he went the opposite way. And when the storm rages, when the ship is being tossed around like the minnow on Gilligan's Island is being thrown all over the place, he goes to sleep.
Why? Because he's completely at peace with the decision he's made. He had a peace in his heart. He felt really good about his decision. I think it's also pretty clear that he thought he knew better how to handle this situation than God did.
He wasn't going to let God tell him better than he already knew. So Jonah lost. The Ninevites repented. But Jonah's sin is evident throughout the book of Jonah, sleeping. Now, a New Testament example of how feelings can be wrong, how we perceive things can be wrong, John 16 verses 1 to 7, Jesus talking to his disciples.
John 16 verses 1 to 7, he says, These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering a service to God.
In other words, in the future, things are going to be much worse for believers than they are now. These things they will do because they have not known the Father or me. But these things I have spoken to you so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them.
These things I did not say to you at the beginning because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me and none of you asked me, where are you going? But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.
But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I did not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. The disciples were sorrowful. They were sad because the Lord told them that he was going to go away.
Their hearts were filled with a sense of loss. But Jesus told them, listen, this is actually, in spite of the fact that you guys are sad right now and you're going to miss me, it is to your advantage.
He knew that the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives would be more powerful than his presence because the Spirit would indwell them and be with them until the day of their death. They were simply going to miss their leader, teacher, and friend.
They were sorrowful and they did not fully understand the blessing that they were going to receive. But their feelings were not to be trusted. Their feelings were not correct. Jesus corrected them. A couple more passages, a couple that tell us, help us in understanding how to deal with our hearts.
Proverbs 4 .23 says, watch over your heart with all diligence. For from it flow the springs of life. The Net Bible translates it this way, guard your heart with all vigilance. For from it are the sources of life.
Actively, vigilantly, watch over, guard your heart. Do not let it wander. Do not let it wallow. Do not get all caught up in your emotions. Your heart will deceive you. Your heart will mislead you. Your heart will lie to you.
Your heart, if it is allowed to take in that which will lead you astray, will do so. What we take in matters. It issues forth in what we do. Jesus made this clear in Mark 7. Mark 7 verses 18 to 23, Jesus, and he said to them, are you so lacking in understanding also?
Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, telling him it's not, or telling them it's not about what they ate, not about what they drank. It wasn't about obedience to any kind of laws.
Verse 19, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach and is eliminated. Thus he declared all foods clean. And he was saying, that which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man.
For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness, all these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.
The heart is desperately wicked, who can know it? Outward obedience does not reveal what's going on inside of us. Dietary laws cannot protect us. Your heart is a spring, a source, filled with the desires for all of these sins.
Your heart is not a reliable source of truth. Our hearts are wicked. Back in Jeremiah 17, verse 10, I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.
Who can understand the heart? Who can understand the inner workings of the human heart? God alone. And he never says things like, listen to your heart. He never says, go with your feelings. He never says, go with your impressions.
If we are to worship the God of the Bible, we have to watch out for our heart. We have to protect ourselves from the enemy within. Who or what are you worshiping? How do you decide what is right? If you have a peace, if you have peace about an issue, does that mean that you know what to do?
Does that mean that you know the Lord's leading? Does that mean that you know what direction to go, as in, this is a reliable compass? What can we do with this besides understanding that our feelings can't be trusted?
This is also something we need to, as we evangelize people, as we talk to them, they need to understand that their feelings about things are not what is true. They need to understand that objective truth, that is, truth that lies with or outside of them is what matters.
Objective truth is only found in the Word of God. Subjective truth, that is, what we feel, what we sense, what we feel led or compelled to do, that is subject to everything that we've been talking about here.
The heart is desperately sick. It is deceitful. It will mislead us. We cannot trust it. We dare not use it for a compass. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, Lord, we are a people of fallen hearts. Lord, even when we received a new heart, our emotions, our thoughts, our desires can lead us astray from you.
We can turn even seemingly unknowingly to idolatry, placing things before you that are not right. Lord, would you just convict us? Father, this week, in the weeks to come, in the months and years to come, to examine ourselves, to look at our lives, to determine what our priorities are.
Father, that we might love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That we might put aside those things that would hinder us from running well. That we would not rely on our feelings. That we would not rely on our hearts.
That we would not rely on others. That our source of strength would be you and you alone. Lord, we praise you for your son, Jesus Christ. For the new life we have in him. For the hope that we have. Father, that in spite of our weaknesses, you are strong.
We can rely on you, even if we can't rely on ourselves. What a great blessing that is. We'll give you all the praise in Christ's name. Amen.