Jeremiah
17:9 (NASB)
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.
Have you given serious thought to what the
Lord thinks about you as a human being; that is a human being without His
presence in your life? He thinks that
you are sick; indeed you are desperately sick.
Your heart—your natural tendencies in life apart from the Lord—is
deceitful. The Message Bible says that
your natural self is “hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can
figure out”.
While you may not think of yourself like
this (we have too many blind spots), don’t you think of others like this? Don’t people around you, especially those
closest to you, sometimes baffle you?
You think that you know someone close to you, then you find out that you
really don’t. Haven’t you ever thought,
even said, to your spouse, “Here I thought I knew everything about you, but
obviously I don’t” or something like that?
Haven’t you ever been lied to?
And, if you are totally honest with yourself, haven’t you lied before
and been deceptive to someone else?
The heart is more deceitful than all else;
the heart is desperately sick. Wow, can
you believe this about your natural inner being? You say to yourself, “no, I don’t believe
this about myself”. This proves how
deceptive your heart is. Proverbs 28:26
says “he who trusts in his own heart is a fool”. I John 1:8 says that you deceive no one but
yourself if you think that you have no sin.
God says that He searches the heart, He
examines the mind, He gets to the heart of the human, He gets the root of
things, He treats humans as they really are, not as they pretend to be (Message
Bible). When you measure yourself not by
your own standards, but by God’s standards, you will clearly see how far you
are from where you need to be. The
website, Bible.org, quoting a devotional from Daily Walk gives this interesting
illustration of how deceitful the human heart is
“Man
makes the same mistakes over and over, even though history repeatedly warns him
about the folly of his sins. Paul pinpointed the problem in Romans 1. He said
that although man has a limited knowledge of God in creation, he chooses not to
glorify Him, nor is he thankful. As a result, he becomes vain in his imaginations
and his foolish heart is “darkened.” He no longer discerns right from wrong,
but actually begins to think that right is wrong. The deceitfulness of sin is vividly seen in
the life of the French philosopher Rousseau.
He declared, “No man can come to the throne of God and say, ‘I’m a
better man than Rousseau.’“ When he knew death was close at hand, he boasted,
“Ah, how happy a thing it is to die, when one has no reason for remorse or
self-reproach.” Then he prayed, “Eternal Being, the soul that I am going to
give Thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it proceeded from Thee;
render it a partaker of Thy felicity!” This is an amazing statement when you
realize that Rousseau didn’t profess to be born again. In his writings he
advocated adultery and suicide, and more that 20 years he lived in
licentiousness. Most of his children were born out of wedlock and sent to a
foundling home. He was mean, treacherous, hypocritical, and blasphemous.”
God’s standard is the Bible. The Bible says that it is “able to judge the
thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12). May you be like the psalmist (David) who
prayed, “Search me, O God, and know my heart…….see if there be any hurtful way
in me……” (Psalm 139:23-24). May you
recognize your need for God’s Word to be active in your life; that you take it
seriously and make appropriate changes in your life so that you never deceive
yourself or others again.
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