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?
It is a sickening thing for a person to come to see his or her heart in the light of the nature of God and His Word. This is one reason why people flee from the sight of their own hearts. A sight of the heart, much like Isaiah did in chapter 6 of Isaiah, will cause all of a person’s supposed righteousness to unravel and that person will see that s/he is a vile creature in the sight of a thrice holy God. So many in the modern day work hard to keep up their self-esteem and self-worth, yet one sight of their own hearts in the light of the holiness of God will shatter that delusion. The heart is so deceitful that it deceives a lies people from seeing just how desperately sick it really is.
The verses in Romans 3:4 and 9-18 are clear that all men are liars, unrighteous, without understanding, and do not seek God. Yet so many claim to be truthful, righteous, have a lot of understanding, and seek God with all of their being. What is the problem? It could be that they have no idea of what it means to seek God, but that again just shows how deceived they are that they would say they seek God when in fact they do not. It is part of the great deception. So people are deceived by their own hearts that they seek God when in fact they hate the true God. So many will claim to love the god of their own imaginations and seek him out of love while they hate the true God and true Christianity. They do this while being very religious.
John 12:35 points to this when Jesus said this: “he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes.” He said this in the context of Himself as the Light. How many things of our hearts are simply covered over with the darkness of ignorance and the blindness of our minds? Believers are said to be children of Light while unbelievers are in darkness (Eph 5:8). So (as seen in previous BLOGS) the hearts of men are like deep abysses with deep crevices and dark corners. There are so many places to fall and to be tripped up that no one can follow his or her own heart and come out unscathed. Dealing with the heart is not for beginners or for very religious people who are in the dark. Dealing with the heart is such serious business that there is only One who can truly deal with such a vile and blind object as the human heart. It is the Christ Himself who is Light and who is Life. He alone can give Light and Life to the human heart.
Jeremiah 17:5 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.
Proverbs 28:26 He who trusts in his own heart is a fool,
Just before the passage of Jeremiah 17:8 which teaches us how deceptive the heart is, there verse 5 gives us reasons why the heart is so deceptive. The fallen human heart will trust in mankind, make flesh his strength, and in doing so this is a person whose heart turns away from God. As Proverbs 28:26 states so clearly, the person that trusts in his own heart is a fool. The human heart wants to trust in itself, but at times it sees that this is foolish and will not work. So it resorts to trusting in itself to trust in God. Such is the folly of the free-will arguments. It ends up trusting in self to trust in God. How utterly hideous this is to the all-seeing eye of God who sees the darkness of the heart that trusts itself which is really a heart that is deceiving itself into thinking that it is trusting in God.
It is not just that it is a bad thing that the heart does not know itself, but that the heart does not know eternal things and does not know the depths of sin in it which deceives it into trusting itself rather than God. It does not know that it is not trusting in God but instead in itself. The heart that does not know itself does not know that self-deception is at work in it at all times and in all things so that it is a fool in all things as well. The deceived heart, however, is not free from criminality for its deception, but it is a greater criminal because it is deceiving itself. How horrible it will be on judgment day when sinners will see that their crimes of breaking God’s laws is only increased by their deceiving themselves about it.
God Loves... Himself 
Leave a comment