Jeremiah 17:9-10
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
“I the Lord search the heart
and test the mind,
to give every man according to his ways,
according to the fruit of his deeds.”
When we hear or read about what modern day psychologist say or write about the issues with mankind, we have to marvel at their plight. Most non-believing psychologist start with the premise that man is basically good and simply has made some mis-steps along the way that need to be "heal" or "mended" to restore their "original" evolved design. Most non-believers theorize that man has been progressing through history and, although has yet to reach his stride, is growing and maturing in knowledge. They believe man will reach the pinnacle of perfection by continuing to look at knowledge as the sole "antidote" for man's condition. It is ignorance that haunts man, in their eyes, and nothing else. However, in the above passage, God states that the issue with man is not in his intellectual thinking, but in the inner reaches of the heart. God states that man is "deceitful above all things and desperately sick" (the old KJV of the Bible would replace "sick" with "wicked"). If you are going to look at the condition of the world and try to "fix" it, you must begin with the condition of the heart and try to replace it. Man has a corrupt and evil heart. If it were not for the common grace of God, that heart would devour all around it. God holds back sin because God is a gracious God and wants to save man. God searches out the heart. He knows that man has no good deeds in his heart. The only way man can have a good deed in his heart is if God puts it there. Man tries to understand man's heart, but, as Jeremiah writes in the above verse, "who can understand it?" Just as you think you understand the depth of evilness in the heart of man, man does something else so deplorable you can't really fathom the thought of it. Later, in Jeremiah, he will write these words about man's heart:
Jeremiah 31:31-34
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
The truth is, the only thing that will change man's heart is God. God must replace the old heart, full of deceit and wickedness, with a new heart, one that seeks after God. Only God can do a heart transplant. No amount of psychology will ever change the deep condition of man. Only God through the Gospel of Christ and make a man new and change his heart.
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