Sermon Tone Analysis

Context of Judgment -

The sin of Judah

The final judgment is cast - loss of heritage

So it can be with churches and movements

A Heart for God -

Man is insufficient

the bitter curse of v5

lack of nourishment

physical reality to point to spiritual, intellectual, and emotional truths

Our souls are sealed to the day of redemption; the provision for our churches and heritage are not!

lack of return - future harvest, revival, and restoration

expectation of judgment - uninhabited salt land

it’s a voluntary curse - whose heart turns away from the Lord

God is abundant

the roots are sent - again this is voluntary, willful choice

sustenance is given - by water, not in a dessert

so is assurance - he does not fear (~100 times in Bible)

In this contrast, the believer’s heart, meaning the affections, the passions (or the collective of the congregation) is FOR God, His Word, and His Cause

The Bible never paints a picture of someone whose heart is for God, but not His word/His people

Jonathan Edwards A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746)

“True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections”

“the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul”

Let me never be mistaken to advocate for Christianity that does not involve feeling, emotion, energies, excitement, and passion for God; His worship, His glory, His Word, or His Church.

Our hearts ought to be ALL IN for The Lord

Heads and Hands for God -

Biblical Christianity has more to do with right thinking and right doing than how we feel about any of it in our hearts.

Doubling Down:

The Bible never says that Jesus saved you so you wouldn’t go to Hell.

If you are saved, you won’t go to Hell, but you were saved for the purpose of doing good and right things.

The heart is deceitful - v9

Not solved in rebirth

Not solved in rebirth

Things confessed to me with no lack of peace:

Adultery

Theft

Lying to a congregation

Not the ground of our faith

The only mention of feeling in the entire case Paul makes for the grounding of our faith is in v19 where he says if what we know about the truth claims that Jesus is risen are wrong, others ought to pity us.

matt 16:15-17

God revealed = granted knowledge and understanding, and THAT rock, not Peter’s emotions is sufficient to build a church.

Feeling is not.

Not a master to be obeyed

“I cannot contain what is in my heart”

Some read this to say the utterances and words spoken by one prophesying are to be judged by others who hear it; both in content and manner.

I believe that is true, but believe that Gill more captures Paul’s intent:

they can refrain themselves and be silent, and wait till they have proper opportunity of speaking, being not like the prophets of false gods, who are acted by an evil spirit, and observe no order or decorum, but with a sort of fury and madness deliver involuntarily what is suggested to them: but such is not the case of true prophets that are influenced and directed by the spirit of God, who will give way to one another; one will be silent while the other speaks, and by turns prophesy one after another; and where there is not such a subjection, ’tis a sign that the spirit of God is not in them, for the reason that follows.

Ver.

33.

For God is not the author of confusion,

We have as Missionary Baptists for more than a generation been imbalanced in our over-emphasis and enthroning of how we feel, which has in too many cases eclipsed the import of the plain teaching and understanding of God’s Word.

Believer in Christ, there is both a sense that your heart of stone was replaced with a heart of flesh when you were born again AND that your heart presently is deceitfully wicked and a weakness that must be guarded against.

These are parallel truths; not conflicting positions.

God gives according to ways; deeds -v10-11

Entrance is based on the book of life; judgment is based on the books.

“If my heart isn’t in it, I may as well not do it”

WRONG!

If a thing is right, but your heart is not in it, the right thing to do is to do the right thing and beg God in His mercy to move and change your heart to match!

When a man or woman senses they are distant from their spouse, the best thing to do is to start LOVING them.

Following the choice and action, they will start feeling love for them.

This is no less true for the believer.

The more time we spend with God, His Word, and His People, the more we will be inclined to them.

In this way, our hearts fill out the experience without us being enslaved to them.

While no one is saved by seeing good works, they are a witness to the truth and power of the gospel; the lure with hooks for fishing for men

Relying on our hearts is foolish, and making flesh our strength - v11 & v5

While the Psalmist asks God why the wicked seem to prosper in this life, God is clear that in the end; only righteousness; righteous deeds will be rewarded.

“in the midst of his days they will leave him, and at his end he will be a fool.”

The tragedy of it all is to realize that relying on our hearts in an imbalanced way is the epitome of making flesh our strength

Without taking away from the truth that every bit of our heart ought to be for God; passion, preference, love, desire, and emotion all invested in God, His Word, His People, His Church, let us be awakened to the reality that our own hearts, even as believers, were never intended to be the sure compass guiding our paths, that we have been and will be deceived by them, and that we need God to renew our minds and illumine our understanding that we begin to make the Word of God a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path; that our hands and heads would be for God even if and when our hearts are not.

A Praise for God -

Even while delivering a prophecy of judgment and justice against Judah, Jeremiah completes this poem with a verse of praise.

While I will not seek to exegete these last 7 verses per se, after dwelling on demands (hearts ought to be for God & Hands and Heads ought to be for God) let me praise God and offer gospel for all of us cut by these.

God has provided and preserved his Word to teach us His ways.

God has sent, and currently sends His Spirit to give understanding.

God will turn our hearts if we ask Him to and do what He has said.

This is a secure truth.

This is something to take sanctuary in.

God help us to take this to our heart, and our head!