Am I As Sinful As Possible part 2

Yesterday, I began a post on Jeremiah 17 as I share some of my thoughts on the chapter. By no means are these comments exhaustive nor are they infallible. These are just thoughts as I read through the passage for the first several go arounds. Of course these areas will be much more developed as we gather together on the Lord's Day as the Word is preached and the Holy Spirit moves. The whole idea is to give what readers I have for this blog a little bit of insight into the main passage of the day. Enjoy part 2....

Verses 3-4 tell us what would eventually happen to Judah. Exile. Babylon would come in and destroy the temple, carry off of the treasures of Jerusalem and ultimately enslave the people of God. They had placed their trust in man. They had placed their trust in themselves. This sounds strangely like the self-esteem prophets of the modern day. Just turn on Oprah Winfrey and her sidekick Dr. Phil to see a picture of ancient Judah. “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength!” But Jeremiah is not finished. When we turn to ourselves and put our trust in our sinful flesh our heart naturally turns away from the Lord. It is the exact opposite action of repentance! Repentance is turning from our flesh toward the Lord. When we are told to look in ourselves all we should find is what Paul found—total depravity and inability.

Paul says in Romans 7:16, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful flesh, for I have the desire to do what is good but I cannot carry it out.” Judah was looking toward themselves and trusting in the words of men’s wisdom rather than in the laws of God. As a result they had fallen away from the Lord into a pit of despair.

Jeremiah goes on to make the same comparison between the righteous and the wicked that the Psalmist makes in the first Psalm of the Psalter. Whereas the wicked man is dried up like chaff, like a bush in a desert wilderness, the righteous man is like a tree planted by a flowing stream. In verse 8 Jeremiah uses the Hebrew word and tense that indicate that the tree is planted not by the tree’s power but by some other power. A tree doesn’t plant itself it must be planted in order to grow. Judah had tried to plant itself in the world and became of the world when God had called them to be holy and set apart from the world. In the same way, God has called the Christian to be holy and set apart—a priestly people who are called out of darkness! But it is God who calls and plants.

You see, man is not able to answer that call unless God, in his wondrous grace, moves that person and enables him to answer the call of God’s Word. Man is totally depraved in all their body and soul. This is not to say that every person is as sinful as possible. No, rather it is the Holy Spirit that invades a person’s life and enlightens their minds and renews their will and convinces them of the message of the Cross. It is the Holy Spirit that implants new life into the person and firmly plants them by the stream of water that enables them to yield fruit.

Jeremiah proves this point of total inability in verse 9 when he says that a man’s heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. I like the way the New American Standard translates the Hebrew when it says that a man’s heart is desperately sick. It is a pretty desperate situation that the Prophet leaves man in. We are sick, beyond cure, and in need of help. WHO CAN SAVE US?

The prophet answers in verse 10. The Lord searches our heart and rewards a man according to his conduct. The Lord examines the mind. Well, if you are anything like me…this is a scary thought. I know what my mind is full of. I know what my deeds deserve.

But the message of the Gospel doesn’t stop with the depravity of man. God gave us his Son in our desperate hour. Jesus Christ makes intercession for those who have trusted him as their Savior and Lord. When God examines our heart he sees the heart of his Son. When God searches our thoughts He sees righteousness of Jesus Christ which has been imputed to us and received by faith alone. Of course this is such crude language to speaking of the God of the universe. But God has condescended to us so that we might know him.