Problems of The Heart | Jeremiah 17 | Pastor William Hixson

your attention to the book of Jeremiah.

Prepare ourselves for the Lord's supper.

Jeremiah 17.

Jeremiah chapter 17.

Jeremiah 17 · chapter mention

It's a long chapter. I'm not going to

I'll just read the first part,

then we'll get started.

Jeremiah chapter 17,

Jeremiah 17 · chapter mention

the sin of Judah is written with a pen

of iron and with a point of a diamond.

It is engraved upon the table of their

heart

and upon the horns of your altars.

While their children remember their

altars and their idols by the green

trees upon the high hills, oh my

mountain in the field, I will give thy

substance and all thy treasures to the

spoil and thy high places for sin

throughout all thy borders. Thou even

thyself shall discontinue thy heritage

that I give thee, and I will cause thee

to serve thy enemies in the land which

you know not. Yet you kindle a fire in

my anger, which shall burn forever. Thus

says the Lord, "Cursed be the man that

trusts in man and makes flesh his arm,

and whose heart

whose heart departs from the Lord. He

shall be like the shrub in the desert

and shall not see when good comes but

shall inhabit the parched places in the

wilderness and assulted in a salt land

not inhabited. Blessed is the man who

trusts in the Lord and in whose hope the

Lord is. For he shall be like a tree

planted by waters by the waters that

spreads out her roots by the river and

shall not see when heat comes but her

leaf shall be green and shall not be

anxious in the year of drought. Neither

shall cease from yielding fruit.

The heart is deceitful

above all things

and desperately wicked.

Who can know?

I the Lord search the heart and test the

conscience even to give every man

according to his ways and according to

his doings. Let's stop right there.

Father, we thank you for this portion of

Holy Scripture. We pray your blessing on

our time together tonight in Jesus name,

our savior. Amen.

can't help but reflect

that at the first Lord's table, Judas

was there

and the devil had already put it in his

heart

to betray the Lord

and Jesus knew it.

The prophet Jeremiah so many long so

many years before Jesus

is a great spiritual cardiologist

and as you've heard me say from Dr. les

and I don't know if he got that himself

or got it from others. The heart of

every problem is the problem of the

heart.

And Jeremiah definitely is dealing with

the heart. He mentions it three times in

10 verses here in this chapter.

And of course, he's not talking about

the muscle in our chest.

He's talking about the inner man

here.

So, he's got a lot to say

to this nation.

And it's pretty obvious that it it

Jeremiah's got a lot to say because

God's got a lot to say and God says it.

And that some people don't want to read

the Bible because they're afraid God

will talk to them about something wrong

in their life that they don't want to

hear about.

Um,

what a powerful section this Jeremiah 7

is from the great spiritual cardiologist

Jeremiah.

Warren Whis Wearsby was writing on this

chapter and he said, "Anything we love

and trust more than the true and living

God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ

is an idol and must be torn from our

hearts.

And RK Harrison wrote here, "National

sin is so engraved, ingrained that

repentance is out of the question.

These people are have hard hearts."

And uh it's very obvious

Kylin Daily on this section, Judah sin

is inefficably stamped upon the people

and on their altars.

Both the people and the altars when it

comes to the people is talking about

their heart.

But the heart sin is stamped on their

altars as well. So it means their inner

being and their outer worship was both

affected by the sin. So it wasn't

something inside that didn't come out.

It was something that was inside that

was coming out in everything they said

and did.

And I really love Derek Kener. He said,

"A person or person's reaction to the

gift of a day," and he's going to the

end of the chapter here when it deals

with the Sabbath. "A person or person's

reaction to the gift of a day to be set

apart to God is a fair indication of the

spir of their spiritual temperature and

still is."

We're getting ahead of each other making

that quote, but they weren't keeping the

Sabbath.

They were not keeping the Sabbath

and so their outer con their inner

condition was coming out in their

outward

u behavior.

And Derek Kidner also said only heaven

sees us as we really are.

And that's certainly true.

And what a powerful section this is of

scholy scripture.

And I want to go through it just a

little bit with us together to prepare

us for the table because the Lord's

supper should be a time of heart exam,

right?

We go to the doctors and get electroc

cardiograms and we get, you know, heart

monitors and we have our physical heart

examined if there's something wrong.

Well, the Lord's supper is a time to get

examined, a spiritual exam.

So it with but with that exam

we find we got a very deep deep-seated

problem deep-seated problem.

And as we think about this problem what

do we find in the heart exam? Number one

indelible wickedness.

Indelible wickedness.

It's a wickedness that can't be erased.

humanly speaking can't be removed. It's

permanent. Notice what he says. The sin

of Judah is written with a pen of iron

and with a point of a diamond. It is

engraved upon the tablet of your heart

and on the horns of your altars.

So that's the word engraved is like

engraving on a tombstone

someone's birthday and their death day

and their name and so forth.

engraved.

So this is something long lasting and

this is something deep and has to be

dealt with by God because it's too it's

too engraved for us in our own power or

ability to engrave it.

And when you're talking about things

that are engraved, you're talking about

serious stuff.

I remember walking through a graveyard

and uh it was after a funeral of

somebody somewhere and I looked at a

tombstone.

This was not the family I was doing the

grave funeral for. It was somebody else

had been long gone, but it had a man's

name on the headstone. Had the wife's

name on the headstone like they do. And

then it had a joke.

A joke.

And I thought, is that how is that

appropriate?

Everybody likes a good joke.

But when you're looking back at your

whole life,

when you're born, when you die, and your

mate beside you, and you give a joke,

death's no joke. Life's no joke. Death

is serious because life is serious.

And when we got a problem that we can't

fix,

that only God can fix, then we need to

let God fix it and be thankful.

Uh, better thing on your tombstone would

be physical birth, birthday, spiritual

birthday.

And so something like that. I'm not

telling you what to put on your

tombstone. I'm just saying uh we ought

to be somber about all this.

And it's quite important.

And so God calls them on it. And the

first three verses, the sin of Judah is

written with a pen of iron with a point

of a diamond. It's engraved on the

tablet of their heart and upon the horns

of your altars. While their children

remember their altars and their idols by

the green trees on the high hills. Oh my

mountain in the field. I will give thy

substance, all thy treasures, to the

spoil, and to the high places for sin

throughout all your borders. You folks

are in trouble because you have a heart

problem, and I'm not going to stand for

it.

Now, how does God work on this? How does

God work on the heart problem that's

indelible?

Well, God has the ability

to do something wonderful.

In Jeremiah

31

and in earlier passages in Proverbs and

Deuteronomy, we find God's holy law can

be written on our hearts.

And if we see that concept in light of

what we're saying here, sins on my in my

heart, it's engraved. Okay, we have a

responsibility even though that's so.

But God, what's God going to do? He is

going to deal with the indelible

wickedness that every heart has by doing

his own writing.

And it's serious stuff.

Look with me to Jeremiah 31.

Jeremiah 31

Jeremiah 31:31

verse 31.

Behold, the days come, says the Lord,

that I'll make a new covenant with the

house of Israel and with the house of

Judah, not according to the covenant

that I made with their fathers in the

day that I took them by the hand to

bring them out of the land of Egypt,

which covenant my broke. That's the old

covenant,

although I was a husband to them, says

the Lord. But this shall be the covenant

that I will make with the house of

Israel after those days. Watch what God

says.

I will put my law in their inward parts

and write it

in their hearts

and will be their God and they'll be my

people. This hasn't happened yet for

Israel, but it's happened. God promises

he will do this and they'll teach no

more every man his neighbor and every

man his brother, saying, "Know the Lord,

for they all know me from the least to

the greatest. The greatest of them says,

"The Lord, for I'll forgive their

iniquity, and I'll remember their sin no

more." Now, there's a lot more to that.

I'm simply saying, but that's enough to

read to show that God's got an answer

for this indelible

problem.

Um, so there's no excuse.

Alexander McLaren said, "Do not let your

hearts be the devil's copy book.

Don't let him have his graffiti on your

heart.

The devil put it in in Judas's heart to

betray the Lord.

And when did he do it? The very night of

the Lord's supper.

J. Thompson said of Jeremiah 31, "The

picture is consistent with much of

Jeremiah's preaching. Judah's rebellion

was deeprooted and ineradicable unless a

deep change such as described later on

in the book took place. Only when God

writes his law on his people's hearts

could obedience replace rebellion.

So the whole book of Jeremiah and all

this going back to the sin, going back

to the sin, going back to the sin, it's

it's uh it's going to it's going to move

forward to that Jeremiah 31 passage at

the end of history when God will finally

deal with that which

needs to be dealt with.

Turn with me to Jeremiah 16

and verse 10.

Jeremiah 16

10

would someone read Jeremiah 16:10-13 for

Jeremiah 16:10–13

me, please?

And it shall come to pass, and now shall

tell his people all these words, and

they shall say unto thee, Therefore, the

Lord pronounced all this great evil

against us. For what is our iniquity?

What is our sin that we have committed

against the Lord our God?

Then shalt thou say and do this

because your fathers have forsaken me

say the Lord have walked after God and

have served them and have worshiped them

and have forsaken me have not kept my

law.

Ye have done worse than your father. For

behold he walked everyone after the

imagination

with evil heart that they may not

to me. Therefore, will I cast you out of

this land into the land that ye know

not, neither ye nor your fathers, and

there shall you serve other gods, day

and night, for I will not show you

favor. Well, God says there is too plain

to be denied

and uh too bad to be excused.

So, this is what you've done. This is

what you're doing. And this is where

you're going. Matthew Henry said, "What

is so well, what is written well

not be worn out by time.

You you can't evolve into a better

species. It's indelible.

It takes intervention."

And what's true of the heart is true of

the altars. The very uh place of of

worship.

We can't change oursel.

Man can't change himself. We're stuck

with ourselves unless God does the

changing.

Now, obviously, repentance is a change

of mind that results in a change of

behavior. But who grants repentance?

God.

Who gives repentance? God.

And so, these are awesome things.

And when we come to this chapter in

Jeremiah 16, there were thousands of

hearts equally equally wicked with

indelible wickedness. The nation was

taken over

and Satan has done his work scribbling

on the hearts of man.

And like Pilate saying, "What I've

written, I've written and he's not going

to change it." So this indelible

wickedness, it's not only true of

Israel. It's not it's true of everybody

until they get saved

and uh

it's a shocking thing. Now we have that

from the day we're born till the day we

die. In one sense only glorification

will totally erase it.

But uh having said that the new birth

does make a difference. It adds the new

heart and then the battle is on. So

indelible wickedness. Second,

incomparable fickleness.

Incomparable ficklessness.

The heart turns away from the Lord.

Heart turns away from the Lord. Notice

in chapter 16 verse4,

they shall die grievous deaths. They

shall not be lamented, neither shall

they be buried, but they shall be as

refuge on the ground. Wow, that's

punishment.

that they'll be as refuge on the ground

on the face of the earth and they'll be

consumed by the sword and by famine.

Their carcasses shall be food for the

fowls of heaven and for the beast of the

earth. That's Jeremiah 16. And I want to

go back to 17 now.

The sin of Judah is written with a pen

of iron with a point of a diamond. It's

engraved on their heart, table of their

heart, on the horns of their altars.

While their children remember their

altars and their idols by the green

trees upon the high hills. Oh my

mountain in thy field, I will give thy

substance and all thy treasures to the

spoil and the high places for sin

throughout all your borders. And thou,

even thyself, shall dis continue from

thy inheritage that I gave thee.

and I'll cause thee to serve thy enemies

in a land which you know not you've

kindled the fire of my anger which shall

burn forever.

Now to take it to take off the land is

to experience political death.

Political life for Israel is when the

people and the land are together.

Political death is when the people are

separated from the land.

And so, uh, God knows how deep the

problem is. It's tattooed on their heart

and there's an incomparable ficklessness

that is there because of it. And God God

wants to deal with it. But God's got

some answers for it. And if you look

down in verse seven, blessed is the man

who trusts in the Lord, whose hope of

the Lord is. Now, where do you think

these verses come from?

See if you can guess who Jeremiah is

quoting.

Verse 8.

Well, verse 7 says, "Blessed is the man

who trusts in the Lord, whose hope the

Lord is, for he shall be like a tree

planted by waters that spreads out its

roots by the river and shall not see

when he comes, but her leaf shall be

green and shall not be anxious in the

year of drought, neither shall cease

from yielding fruit." Anybody got an

idea where that comes from?

Psalm one,

Psalm 1:1 and following. Yeah. Psalm two

Psalms 1:1

is about the son of God. Psalm one is

about the word of God.

And so he's going back. There is an

answer to this. And we get in the word,

right? And let God do the changing of

our hearts.

And it's a very needful thing because of

uh the indelible wickedness that we have

and the incomparable fickleness that we

have hearts to turn from the Lord. And

there's two alternatives in life to be

cursed or blessed.

And outward flourishing has to begin by

inward uh inward flourishing. But

inwardly they were stunted and unbelief

was doing its work.

Um

Burton Goddard makes some comments on

this. He said, "Another prophet once

spoke words that are to the point here.

He said, "We all like sheep have gone

astray." Isaiah 53:6.

Isaiah 53:6

Likewise, a noted apostle declared, "All

have turned away. There's no one that

does good." What made us all go astray?

What made us all sin? There's only one

answer, the untrustworthy

heart.

And he said, 'I venture to suggest that

in all the world there's no sin more

disastrous with more disastrous

consequences than the sin of wandering

away from God, regardless of what form

that sin may take.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone

to leave God I love.

And he said, you do not have to become a

drunkard in order to reject your maker

and turn from him. Likewise to yourself

and withhold him from him the worship

and honor that's his due and you

automatically ex if you withhold from

him the worship and honor that's his due

and you automatically exclude yourself

from the kingdom of heaven. No greater

tragedy can come to us human soul human

soul and yet it is the heart of deceit

that people are prone to trust.

He said, 'I wonder what you would do if

you had a friend who led you into a life

of drunkenness and accompanying

degradation. What if such a friend who

used his influence to teach you to

gamble and to make you lose your money

and made you his companion in thievery

until you were caught and punished?

The human heart is such a friend.

It is a deceitful companion. Can you

possibly trust it? I remember as a young

teenager, I had a friend. He would

always get us in trouble, especially if

he was driving

and you're you're in his car. We're all

in his car and he'd take off and he'd

just do bizarre stuff just to get in

trouble for fun and get all the rest of

us in trouble. We're in the car and

finally I said, you know, I'm not going

to get in the car with this guy anymore.

About the fourth time he did it, I

thought that's it. I was a little slow

on the draw on that one,

but I realized no.

And so sooner or later, we got to learn

our heart

is going to get us in trouble.

The heart of every problem is the

problem of the heart. And we need we

need to recognize that indelible

wickedness, incomparable fickleness

and go to the Lord and say, "Lord God,

he have help me."

And then he talks about incurable

deceitfulness.

It's beyond a cure.

We see that in verse 9 and 10. The heart

is deceitful

above all things.

You ever have a car it wouldn't start?

I did. I had a car it wouldn't start. It

just drives me crazy. The distributor

cap was a little wet and you'd have to

get out there with a haird dryer to pop

that cap off and try to dry everything

off. And I got tired of that.

And but the heart is like that

distributor cap that with a crack in it.

Uh it's it's it's uh incurable

deceitfulness. It's you never know when

it's not going to work right.

And so the heart I the Lord search the

heart. He said he says in verse n the

Lord the heart is deceitful above all

things and desperately wicked. Who can

know it? I the Lord search the heart. I

test the conscience and even give to

every man according to his ways and

according to his works.

So this incurable deceitfulness is the

third and final point

and

um

Philip Reichen said this is one of the

most powerful statements of human

depravity in all of scripture.

It's beyond cure. humanly speaking

beyond cure.

Matthew Henry said, "It's a common

mistake among the children of men to

think themselves

uh and think themselves in their own

hearts at least as a great deal better

than they really are.

So

it's incurable.

It's a torturous, crooked thing.

And the Lord knows the whole truth about

the human heart.

You can't read what Jesus says in the

Gospels, but without getting he knows

it. He knew Judas. Judas didn't know

himself.

The others didn't know Judas.

Jesus knew.

Turn to Matthew chapter 15.

Matthew 15 · chapter mention

Verse 19,

Jesus said, and he made many statements

like this,

for out of the heart proceeds evil

thoughts. 15:19

murder, adultery, fornication, thefts,

false witness, blasphemies. These are

the things that defile a man.

The deed with unwashed hands

not a man.

So it is incurable deceitfulness.

Um

Jeremiah shows us what we need to do,

how we need to deal with it. And there's

one more thing I want to bring out and

then we'll close. Turn back to Jeremiah

17.

There's so many things here in this

particular chapter.

Um,

but I'm I only want the last thing as we

conclude tonight.

If you go to verse 19 and 27,

he talks about the Sabbath.

He talks about keeping the Sabbath.

He talks about not working on the

Sabbath,

not doing your own thing on the Sabbath.

Not treating it like every other day.

Now, in some ways, this seems to be not

related to what we're talking about, but

we're talking about the heart. Now,

you're talking about Sabbathke keeping.

So, that seems a little odd, doesn't it?

I want you to see what he says.

>> Did you say Jeremiah

>> 17:19?

Thus says the Lord to me. Go and stand

in the gate of the children of your

people by which the kings of Judah come

in and by which they go out in all the

gates of Jerusalem and say to them,

"Hear the word of the Lord, ye kings of

Judah and all Judah and all inhabitants

of Jerusalem who enter into these gates.

Thus says the Lord, take heed to

yourselves and bear no burden on the

Sabbath day, nor bring in by the gates

of Jerusalem.

Neither carry a burden out of your

houses on the Sabbath day, neither do

any work, but hollow the Sabbath day as

I command your father.

But you obeyed not.

Very clear. Remember the Sabbath day to

keep it holy. Fourth commandment. Very

clear. But you obeyed not.

That'll be the easy one,

right?

You shall not steal. You shall not

murder. You shall not commit adultery.

Those are harder ones, but this should

be an easy one. What do you do to do the

Sabbath? You just don't do your own

work. You do the Lord's work.

You occupy yourself with him.

You put everything else aside

and don't let anything else intrude.

But that's that that should be one of

the easiest things.

But it says verse 23, they obeyed not

neither inclined the ear, but made their

neck stiff that they might not hear and

receive instruction. It'll come to pass

if you diligently hearken to me, says

the Lord, to bring no burden through the

gates of this city on the Sabbath day.

But how the Sabbath day, and do no work

in it? Then then we know that Jews added

layers and layers of stupid stuff onto

this. God's not talking about that. That

came later. He's talking about Sabbath

day. Biblically observed.

Then shall there enter into the gates of

this city, kings and princes sitting on

the throne of David, riding in chariots

and on horses. They and their princes,

men of Judah, inhabitants of Jerusalem,

and this city will remain forever. And

they'll come from the cities of Judah,

from the places about Jerusalem, from

the land of Benjamin, from the Arabah,

and from the mountains, and from the

Negv, bringing burnt offerings and

sacrifices and meal offerings and

incense, and bringing sacrifices of

praise to the house of the Lord. But if

you will not hearken to me not to hollow

hallow the Sabbath day and not bear a

burden even entering into the gates of

Jerusalem on the Sabbath day then will

kinder a fire in its gates and it'll

devour the palace of Jerusalem and it'll

not be quenched.

Pretty shocking, isn't he?

Pretty pretty shocking.

So these people thought they were uh

doing good,

but the Sabbath day observance was

outrageous.

It was either totally ignored

or

like they were doing in Jeremiah's day

or legalistically

uh observed like in Jesus's day. But

they didn't really do it the way they

should be doing it.

Either way, it was a heart problem,

right?

And Derek Kitner said, I maybe I read

this earlier, a person or person's

reaction to the gift of a day to be set

apart to God was a fair indication of

their spiritual temperature and still

is. Now, we don't observe the Sabbath

like the Jews did as a wet day of rest,

but we do observe the Lord's day as a

day of celebration.

Can't we give God any time?

What would you think about a person that

said, "I love you, but I don't have time

for you."

I mean, obviously there might be some

times where that might be legitimate

because of emergencies or whatever else,

but you know, if that becomes the

consistent thing, I love you, but I

don't have any time for you.

How how genuine is that love?

How real is that love? You just say in

words

in Isaiah 58 and verse 13. If you turn

away your foot from the Sabbath, from

doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and

call the Sabbath a delight, a holy of

the Lord honorable, and shall honor him,

not doing your own ways, nor finding

your own pleasure, nor speaking your own

words, then shall you find you shall

delight yourself in the Lord. and I'll

cause thee to ride on the high places of

the earth and feed thee with the

heritage of Jacob thy father for the

mouth of the Lord spoke. So apparently

there were people that were just

ignoring it as if it didn't exist and

went on about their business. Uh and

that was one way of sinning against the

Sabbath and then the Pharisees did the

other when they had all their nitpicking

rules and missed the whole point about

the whole thing.

But either way,

uh, we show ourselves what we really

believe. We show ourselves where our

real priorities are.

Judas,

on the night the Lord's supper was

given,

showed himself.

The devil put it in Judas's heart to

betray him.

The devil put it in Judas's heart to

betray him on the very night the Lord's

supper was initiated. and

dagger

in the heart of the Lord Jesus.

And he, the devil, still works to tempt

people to be not observing his day. And

we have the Lord's day, not the Sabbath

day. And we don't, it's not a law like

it was then, but there's principles that

transcend dispensations.

So first Jeremiah talks about indelible

wickedness, then incomparable

fickleness, and then incurable

deceitfulness.

People deceive themselves about

themselves and about

now that's where the new birth comes in.

And God writes his law on our heart and

everything the law demands is something

it it's it's done from the inside out.

And so may God help us as we come to the

table of the Lord.

Let's come receiving these

exhortations, remembering that the new

covenant that we celebrate in the Lord's

supper was first announced in Jeremiah

31

where all of this book is going.

And asking God to do a work inside out

so that our worship is real and genuine.

We don't give God any cold kisses. Our

God has died for us and we celebrate the

body and blood of the Lord together.

We'll pass the bread and take the cup

and and we'll wait for each other and

then partake. Father, we thank you for

the time we've had tonight. Change and

challenge us with your most precious,

holy word.

The heart is deceitful above all things.

Nothing more deceitful.

nothing

our own heart.

May we trust you, trust your word

and not our own hearts. May our faith be

in you and not in ourselves

or not in our feelings

or not in our twisted arguments

and rationalizations

about what we do and what we don't do.

We're glad we can come tonight and

celebrate the death of Jesus

that have our hearts occupied with the

lover of our souls. In his name we pray.

Amen.

>> Amen.

>> Lord, as we go from this place

loving you more,

trusting you more.

May the power of your love and the light

of your word shine

to a sin darkened world as we go from

this