Nothing is more unknown to man than himself. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)
Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?
The statement by Thomas Adam and then by Jeremiah 17:9 are shocking to those who are secure in thinking that they have everything under control. If but once a soul begins to question what it means to really know self, that soul may experience a major earthquake in its own estimation. It will discover faults and cracks running everywhere with its new lenses on. It will begin to wonder how these things can be. Though it may accept the biblical teaching that man is born dead in sins and trespasses, that is still a far different thing than coming to the stunning realization of what that means for my own heart this moment and then for eternity.
International Outreach has recently published a tremendous book for those who wish to have their own heart unmasked to themselves. It is by Anthony Burgess (originally written in 1654) and is entitled A Treatise of Sin: The Deceitfulness of the Heart Unmasked. In that great work he does not just state that the heart is more deceitful and all else, but he goes to great lengths to take the mask off of the heart in order to reveal what it really is and see it for what it is. It is not a book to be read as an academic exercise as such, but it is a book that needs to be read with an open Bible and a praying heart. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; 24 And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way” (Psa 139:23-24).
It is not just helpful and even needful to know that the heart is deceitful and therefore unknown to self, but we must be shown the ways that it is deceitful. It may be important to point out that the religious person is certainly not immune from his or her heart being deceived in the ways that will be described. In fact, the religious person has ways of being deceived that the non-religious person does not. The heart is so wicked that it will take the things of God and use them to deceive itself. There are many religious people in the world who have wicked and vile hearts and simply have covered them over with religious things. The Pharisees used religion to cover their wicked hearts and give them excuses to carry out their wicked deeds.
Burgess starts off by making a statement about how this verse implies a great depth in the heart. Perhaps another way to look at this is to think of most people thinking of themselves as having hearts that are open and easily seen to themselves. However, a heart with great depth has places that are not easily seen. But the heart puts up an image that one does not even understand the depths of it and so it is quite hidden to them. So the heart can have windings and crevices of desires and motives that are hidden to people and as such make them unknown to them and deceive them as well. Psalm 4:4 teaches us to “Tremble, and do not sin; Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still.” As Burgess puts it, there may be thousands and thousands of lusts in the heart that simply don’t appear at first glance. We must spend time in prayer and meditation seeking for God to show us our hearts if we truly want to see them as they are. While we may not understand it, our sin means we deserve to be hardened in our sin which includes the deception of sin that goes with it.
Man is thrown in utter dependence upon God to know his own heart and therefore how utterly needful it is that he have grace or he will perish. This is so like our great God who will have all men to recognize the truth that all souls are utterly dependent upon Him in all ways and at all times. In the fall Adam and Eve left their utter dependence upon Him in order to trust in themselves and seek their own wisdom. The fallen heart is now blind to its own sin and must turn from its pride and self-reliance in order to see just how sinful it really is. To repeat a point from the previous paragraph, God is under no obligation to show us our sin. We are under judgment for it and part of that judgment is the blindness and deception of our sin. We are to seek Him for mercy to open our eyes to it and then for grace to repent of it. O how desperately we need to see our own hearts.
God Loves... Himself 
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