The Heart, Part 3
Notes
Transcript
The Key word over the past few weeks has been repent. We saw how the Lord was commanding Judah, through Jeremiah, to repent, or turn back to him.
Then, last week, we saw that the Lord told Jeremiah that he needed to repent.
Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and incurable? You are to me like a deceptive brook, like a spring that fails.
Jeremiah’s pain
Incurable - refuses to be healed
This is one of the key words for us this week - heal
The accusation - God you are deceptive, you do not give me the water of life, you do not give me what I need for life
To which God replied...
Therefore this is what the Lord says: “If you repent, I will restore you that you may serve me; if you utter worthy, not worthless, words, you will be my spokesman. Let this people turn to you, but you must not turn to them.
Repent.
At this point in his life, Jeremiah realized that he had gone too far. He had sinned. He was not walking in faith, trusting the Lord and acting accordingly. There was something rotting away in him.
It wasn’t his pain that needed to be healed. It was his heart.
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
What is the heart?
Expository Dictionary of Bible Words: Word Studies for Key English Bible Words Based on the Hebrew and Greek Texts lēb [לֵב, 3820]; lēbāb [לֵבָב, 3824]
the inner person, the mind, understanding, and underlying attitudes of human beings...
the seat of a person’s inner being, guiding motivation, or moral conscience.
The human mind is more deceitful than anything else. It is incurably bad. Who can understand it?
Where was his mind focused?
What were his desires?
What was his motivation?
What was behind his feelings?
What was he judging to be right, and on what basis?
Heart is deceitful
heart - for the Jew of Jeremiah’s day - the mind, the thoughts
God and...
but my desires are good...
Jer 17 .9
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
Not the pain, but the heart is beyond cure, beyond healing.
Hopeless? No...
“I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.”
The Lord examines and rewards according to their conduct and according to what their deeds deserve...
Actually this still sounds a little hopeless to me…
Like a partridge that hatches eggs it did not lay are those who gain riches by unjust means. When their lives are half gone, their riches will desert them, and in the end they will prove to be fools.
And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest.
He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain.
And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
A glorious throne, exalted from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary.
Sanctuary - temple, the place we go to find spiritual healing and renewal
But God is searching the heart, and rewards according to what we have done… isn’t it scary to go to him?
Lord, you are the hope of Israel; all who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken the Lord, the spring of living water.
Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.
Heal me - tropical ulcer illustration:
rotten flesh needs to be removed - sugar
new flesh needs to be fostered - antibiotic ointments and growth
Who can remove the rotten flesh from me?
Who can cleanse me and bring growth?
Save me and I will be saved - Save/rescue from a situation, from an enemy
Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, people of Israel?
For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!
I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.
Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.
Earlier, God revealed through Isaiah the prophet...
For this is what the high and exalted One says— he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.
After I strayed, I repented; after I came to understand, I beat my breast. I was ashamed and humiliated because I bore the disgrace of my youth.’
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
That is the healing… what about the saving?
They keep saying to me, “Where is the word of the Lord? Let it now be fulfilled!”
I have not run away from being your shepherd; you know I have not desired the day of despair. What passes my lips is open before you.
Do not be a terror to me; you are my refuge in the day of disaster.
I will make you a wall to this people, a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you to rescue and save you,” declares the Lord.
“I will save you from the hands of the wicked and deliver you from the grasp of the cruel.”
What about me?
What about me?
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
How do we know what is going on in the heart?
“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.
Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers.
A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.
But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery;
idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions
and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Actions tell us something is going wrong on the inside.
But what? How can we judge our hearts?
“I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.”
Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.
Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.
Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
Drink deeply in him, and he will refresh, he will renew, he will supply our needs according to his riches in glory!
