It's a Matter of Trust

Jeremiah 17:5–10 NIV

5 This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord. 6 That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. 7 “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. 8 They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” 9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? 10 “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.”

What I want to focus on this morning, is trust. Who can you trust? I will always tell couples that are preparing for marriage, that trust is something that is difficult to build, but easy to destroy. So, who can we trust? Ultimately, It’s a Matter of Trust

I had a very difficult decision to make this week, and a difficult task to undertake. Where was my dad going to go when he got released from the short-term care he was getting since he is not fully recovered? I had to make a decision - and, to be totally honest with you, I am not always very good at making decisions. I was the kid that when our class went to the library, I never could make a decision on which book I was going to get, and that indecision has followed me throughout life. I’m just not very good at making decisions. And, when I have made a decision, I often suffer from buyers’ remorse after I have made decisions.

One of the pieces of advice I have gotten over the years when it comes to decision making is to trust your heart - or sometimes we word it - “trust your gut.” Pop songs have been written that focus on this idea of “trusting your heart” or “listening to your heart.” I do that on little decisions like which line to get in when I go to the store or bank - but all too often, the decision I make is not the best as my line goes the slowest.

Of course, this being the day before Valentine’s Day, maybe this is a good day to talk about following your heart. We tend to think of the heart as the seat of our emotions, and so on Valentine’s Day we give our loved ones cards that have hearts on them to show our love. Emojis for love have hearts all over them because the heart, in our thinking, is the seat of our emotions. When we say that somebody wears their heart on their sleeve, what we mean is that they don’t do a good job of hiding their emotions - you can always tell what they are feeling.

For us, the mind is the seat of our thought processes, reason, and consciousness. But that is not the thought process in the Old Testament time of the prophet Jeremiah. For the ancient Hebrew - the heart is the seat of all thought and emotion.  Biblical Hebrew doesn’t even have a word for ‘brain’, or ‘mind’ as we conceive of them. So, when the prophet talks about the heart being deceitful above all things, he is not just talking about emotions failing us.

What he is talking about is who are you going to trust!

We could place our trust in human beings.

You could place your trust in yourself.

Our culture encourages us to trust in ourselves and our own way of thinking. Sayings like “trust your gut” come from this way of thinking. A simple Google search yields all kinds of encouragement, writings, and sayings that espouse this world view. Some of that advice is pretty good - it encourages self-confidence and promotes self-worth. One of my favorite quotes about trusting yourself comes from Oscar Wildes who said: “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.” The strange thing about that quote, though, is who else are you going to be but yourself. Ultimately, that is really the only option we have, isn’t it? I mean, yeah, there are people who decide to be somebody else, but stealing identities is illegal. You have no choice but to be you, and that is a good thing, because you are who God created you to be. Every individual is a beautiful creation made in the image of God. And God has a beautiful plan in mind for every one of us.

But the prophet is clear, when you place your ultimate trust in human thought and feelings, including your own thoughts and feelings, you are like a bush that is planted in the wastelands. In other words, a bush that is planted in an area where it does not get the care or the water that it needs. Trusting in ourselves.

John Wesley, in his sermon “The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart” described how self-trust led Adam and Eve and the people of antiquity to the place where God ultimately flooded the earth to rid it of the evil that was the result of that self-trust. “From the devil the spirit of independence, self-will, and pride, productive of all ungodliness and unrighteousness, quickly infused themselves into the hearts of our first parents in paradise. After they had eaten of the tree of knowledge, wickedness and misery of every kind rushed in with a full tide upon the earth, alienated us from God, and made way for all the rest. Atheism, and idolatry, love of the world, seeking happiness in this or that creature, covered the whole earth. (Wesley, J. (1999). Sermons, on several occasions. Logos Research Systems, Inc.)

You would think that after the flood, all would be well, but people continued to trust in themselves alone - Wesley says, in that same sermon: “They that lived after the flood do not appear to have been a whit better than those that lived before it. In a short time, probably before Noah was removed from the earth, all unrighteousness prevailed as before.” That is a sad commentary on humanity.

We could place our trust in our leaders.

Ultimately, we do have to put some trust in those who are in authority over us. After all, refusing to pull over if you see flashing lights of a police car following you, will get you into trouble. We may disagree with decisions that are made by our leaders, but if they are in a position to lead, then we have a responsibility to support through our prayers.

Yes, we must place a bit of trust in our leaders. But there is no individual or group of individuals in which we can fully place our trust. In our country, people tend to place their trust in political leaders that are flawed, failed human beings. Politicians love to tout their own accomplishments and even tend to encourage us that they are our only hope! In 1928, the political slogan for Herbert Hoover was “Who but Hoover?” implying that nobody else could fix things but him. Ironically, in 1936, FDR used the slogan “Remember Hoover” to remind people how bad life was under the president that had promised only he could fix things. I had to crack up at the slogans in 1964 Goldwater used the slogan “In your heart, you know he’s right” while his opponent, Lyndon B. Johnson’s supporters answered, “In your guts, you know he’s nuts.” In 1968, the Nixon campaign used the slogan, “Nixon’s the one.” - that’s a pretty outlandish claim, and looking back, it has a completely different meaning. Bill Clinton was presented to us as a person who was even from a place called “Hope.” The Barak Obama campaign just simply put his picture with the word, “Hope.” During Donald Trump’s campaign, it was implied that only he could do the job that needed to be done.

When we place our ultimate trust in any human being, we will find that their leadership will come up short! We must not place our ultimate trust and hope in humans, because, as the prophet Jeremiah has reminded us here in verse 9: Jeremiah 17:9 “9 The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse— who can understand it?”

So, we could choose to place our trust in human beings, but that trust will always come up short - or

We can place our trust in God.

Jeremiah says : Jeremiah 17:7-8 “7 Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. 8 They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”

You can trust Him! There is a famous sermon by S.M. Lockeridge that describes this God that we can trust. I would quote it, but I don’t do it justice when I do, so I want us to listen to this description of our King.

Placing our ultimate trust in our King - the very God that created it all, is our hope! You can trust Him!