A DECEITFUL HEART

Jeremiah 17:9-10 KJV “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.”

Have you ever been deceived?  The Bible tells us that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”  And the deceitfulness, desperation, and deviousness of the heart of sin can only be addressed by the Discerner of the heart.

Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs wrote a Bluegrass song that went like this:

My Deceitful Heart

My deceitful heart keeps changing its mind

Hurting everyone but me

Each time I fall in love it's soon that I find

My fickle heart longs to be free

Don't fall love with me let me warn you from the start

I'm so in love with you but I know I'll break your heart

Yes I'll only break your heart

Oh, but your wonderful and I'd like to make you mine

But I don't think my love could ever stand the test of time

Could ever stand the test of time

http://www.bluegrasslyrics.com/bluegrass_song.cfm-recordID=s80315.htm

Many sins emerge from a deceitful heart of sin.  A deceitful heart causes murder, adultery, lies, and cheating.

Calvin enrolled at my Christian high school a few years after I had graduated.  He started out well, cooperative, bright, and spiritually hungry.  But Calvin rebelled.  In his rebellion, he was asked to leave the school.  Calvin returned to his native Chicago, and became involved in a gang.  He claimed he was innocent, in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The charge was murder.  The sentence was prison.  A deceitful heart.

Another friend gave into lust, power, and a deceitful heart. I had admired his leadership. But the FBI arrested him, charged him with trafficking in Internet child pornography, and he served his time in federal prison. A deceitful heart.

Even her parents never knew when their daughter was lying or telling the truth.  Lying came second nature to her deceitful heart.  Deceit, immorality, illegitimacy followed.  A broken life.  A life built on lies.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”  The deceit and desperation of the heart of sin. I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings” (Jeremiah 17:10).

God is our judge.  Only He can plumb the depths of our thoughts, desires, motivations, and longings. Before they experienced Pentecost, our Lord’s disciples called on the “Knower of Hearts,” and asked Him to know theirs (Acts 1:24).

The Bible, God’s Holy Word, is His divine revelation to discern our hearts. Holy Spirit GPS will locate you and me, our spiritual state, and call us to His divine plan.

 “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.  Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:12-13).

This “Knower of Hearts” is our Redeemer.

• “For I know that my redeemer liveth” (Job 19:25). 
• “Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the LORD, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 41:14).
• “As for our redeemer, the LORD of hosts is his name, the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 47:4).
• “The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17).

Our Redeemer is the only one who can make us righteous.

• “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalms 51:10).
• “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1: 9).
• “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded” (James 4: 8).

God rewards our hearts.

• “But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29). 
• “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).   

Only God is the Discerner of our hearts.

Perhaps you have seen the deer mounts.  Two bucks with locked horns, fighting to their mutual destruction.  In their pride, each insisted on dominance.  In their insistence upon their rights, they died, and their mounts grace some lodge corner with a testimony to their self-destruction. Self-deception leads to self-destruction.

Don’t resist the exposing light of God’s Holy Spirit as he reveals the self-deception of your own heart. Perhaps the self-deception of a self-centered heart has locked you in a power struggle for your rights at home, at work, or even at church.  Your spirit may be ugly and cantankerous, fighting and clawing for your own way.  All the while, you are professing the fulness of God’s blessing and power in your life. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

Be honest to God. Don’t live with a deceitful heart.  God wants to forgive our sins, cleanse our deceptive moral nature, and empower us by His grace to live an authentic, genuine, Spirit-filled life.  Only the blood of Jesus and the grace of God can set us free from our fallen, deceptive moral natures.  Have you allowed God to discern your heart, to redeem and give you a righteous heart?  He wants to.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:  And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).