#3: “The Heart Is Deceitful”
INTRO:
Centuries ago, through Solomon, God told His people: “Above
all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”
Last Lord’s Day we looked at several scripture passages that tell
us that God knows our hearts. From those passages we learned five
things:
1. Our outward appearances do not always accurately reveal our
hearts.
2. God places more value on our motives than He does on what we
think and do.
3. Since God knows our hearts, His judgments are always fair, just,
and merciful.
4. We need God, who knows our hearts and our thoughts, to reveal
our sinfulness to us.
5. Like the Pharisees, we tend to seek the approval of others rather
than that of God.
Today’s message, “The Heart Is Deceitful,” was born of Jeremiah
17:9, where the Lord says through the prophet:
“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?”
Jeremiah spoke these words of the Lord to the people of Judah,
people who were among God’s chosen, people whom God had chosen
to reveal Himself and His will, but people who had rebelled and sinned
against Him.
The Contemporary English Version has this verse: “You people
of Judah are so deceitful that you even fool yourselves, and you
can’t change.”