"The Heart"
Jeremiah 17:9
If we would understand what kind of person
a man or woman is, we must understand what that person is at heart. This is
what God says about the hearts of all human beings by nature: "Every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart (is) only evil continually" (Gen.
6:5). His prophet Jeremiah declares, "The heart is deceitful above all
things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"
The heart of man is deceitful above all
things. Our hearts are so deceitful that none of us knows his own heart, before
conversion or afterwards. So deceitful is the heart of man that nothing in it
can be trusted. "He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool" (Prov.
28:26). Some "trust in themselves that they are righteous, and despise
others." Some trust in themselves that they are "rich, and increased
in goods, and have need of nothing," not knowing that they are
"wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked!" All who
trust in their hearts, that they are good, are fools, for the heart is as
wicked as it is deceitful.
The heart of man is desperately wicked.
The heart, yours and mine, is wickedness itself (Psa. 5:9). It is enmity
against God (
The plague of the heart is so deep and
secret that none can understand his errors; and there is no hope for cure but
by God's sovereign grace and Christ's cleansing blood!
Don Fortner