Jeremiah 17 Fixing Our Heart

Fixing Our Heart

Jeremiah 17

Introduction: Every person who has ever desired to turn away from sin and turn to God has lost the battle because of the same mistake: we try to stop the sin without fixing the illness of the heart. Jesus said in Mark 7:21-23 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” 

Jeremiah 17 is a blessing to us. God exposes the problem with our heart and then gives us the answer. It is typical of the graciousness of God. He always knows our weaknesses, but always comes to the rescue.

1. Sin Engraved on the Tablet of Their Heart (1-4)
   1. God presents a contrast between 16:19-21 and these verses. While Israel stubbornly refused to obey God and give up their idols, the nations would come to the Lord and confess the foolishness of the idolatry of their fathers. 
   2. Therefore the opening of chapter 17 is an expose of Israel’s root problem: “their sin is engraved on the tablet of their heart.” 
      1. The heart is more than just our minds. The heart has to do with our inner most thoughts and desires. When the heart is wicked, it results in making decisions that affect the direction of our life. Habitual has only one outcome: sin is embedded/etched in our heart. 
      2. We would say it this way: their sins are set in concrete. Verse 2 explains when he says, “their children remember their altars and their Asherim.” Their altars were placed on high hills and under green trees where lascivious rituals were practiced. The Asherim were a female fertility goddesses which gave the people further excuses to practice sexual sins. In other words, their evil had been normalized from childhood and thus embedded in their thinking. To suggest living differently would be abnormal! This is how movies, TV shows, and other various corporate advertising normalizes sin so that kids who grow up with it are shocked when anyone objects. 
      3. The “horns of their altars” reveals even further wickedness. The horns of the altar was to be smeared with blood in order to provide forgiveness of sin and protection from the wrath of God. Thus they had mingled their sins with their worship to justify themselves.
   3. The price of “high places” would eventually be paid. For the greater part of 200 years they served the sin of their high places, and there did not seem to be a downside. In the same way, the consequences of our own neglect of God is not immediately apparent. But the principle of Galatians 6:7 stands, “Whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”
      Romans 2:5 “But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.”
2. Where Is Our Trust? (5-13)
   1. Now the Lord enters into a discussion on the choices the heart makes. In other words, even though sin is engraved on their heart, it does not mean they cannot change. We must never allow Satan to convince us that we are beyond hope. If we desire to change, the Lord promises to give us the strength to do so (Deuteronomy 30:11-18; Ephesians 4:16-21).
   2. Contrasting 5-6 with 7-8, we learn an important principle: everyone has faith. No one lives without faith. Faith is trusting in an object or person or activity that we hope will provide the unfulfilled desires of our heart. As God points out in this text, everyone trusts in something. In fact, God narrows down two objects of faith, either man and human strength or God and his desire and ability to care for his creation. 
      1. Thus, discussions with unbelievers need to focus on this point. You also live by faith. You put your trust in yourself and other people with the hope of a successful outcome. 
      2. How will we know which “faith” will accomplish the goal of human fulfillment? It cannot be seen at the moment, but when life begins to dish out trials and tribulations, which faith will put us to shame and which will answer the call even when “the heat comes” and “the year of drought?” 
   3. 9-10 Understanding the Heart! How do you hear verse 9? Maybe you are thinking, “Well yes, some people are really crazy. They are just sick in the head.” But that is not the case. God is not talking about “some” people. He is exposing all of our minds—our human way of thinking, our goals and our desires. He is getting our attention that our human thinking is not something to trust. Notice the description:
      1. “The heart is deceitful above all things!”
         “The heart is desperately sick…”
         “Who can understand it”
         Who would want to trust something like that!
      2. The Lord to the rescue! God understands our hearts. God tests our minds. And, most importantly, God will give to everyone according to his ways and according to his deeds. [God won’t make mistakes in judgment] So, who is the “fixer” of our desperately wicked minds? Only God.
      3. Hebrews 4:12-13 “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” 
      4. We will only be able to discern the thoughts and intents of our heart by turning to God’s word. Please understand: that is all 66 books! You might say, “Why all 66?” Well that gives you an idea of how complicated and easily deceived our hearts are! Casual and occasional Bible readers are not going to succeed in fixing their deceitful and desperately wicked minds—meaning they are not going to grow a passion for God and overcome a heart engraved with sin. [Like a prescription for antibiotics. We can’t stop halfway through.]
   4. 11-13 summarizes the end result of those who do not put their trust in the Lord compared to those who do. 
      1. Somewhere in the “midst of his day” his riches will leave him, and…
         “at his end he will be a fool…and he will be “put to shame.”
         The reason? “They have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water.” 
      2. But those who trust in the Lord will have “a glorious throne set on high from the beginning.” That will be their “sanctuary”—where one who trusts will be secure without fear.
3. Jeremiah’s Prayer (14-18)
   1. Remember that in 15:19 Jeremiah was struggling with his faith and the Lord rebuked him. The prophet now turns his who heart to God. What does that look like? True dependence on God: “heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; same me, and I shall be saved, for you are my praise.” God and only God is now his refuge. 
   2. It is impressive how the Lord reveals that even his prophet struggles with faith at times. We can certainly relate. But his prayer is the answer. The whole prayer is an expression of being on the Lord’s side even when it is uncomfortable. 
   3. Jeremiah kept arguing with God for the redemption of the people. His human thoughts and human compassion kept him from seeing the necessity of the people’s destruction. Can we relate? Certainly. But those final words say it all: “bring upon them the day of disaster; destroy them with double destruction!” That is a prophet who now sees man’s persistent unrepentant rebellion from God’s point of view.
4. Warning of Sabbath Keeping (19-24)
   1. At first, this sudden dissertation by the Lord concerning the Sabbath seems out of place. But when we consider that the theme of the text has been trust and the heart, we will begin to see why the Lord used the Sabbath command as his concluding emphasis.
   2. Let’s start with this: what was the penalty for breaking the Sabbath? Numbers 15:32-36 was the first incident of Sabbath breaking. A man went out and picked up sticks on the Sabbath. When he was discovered, he was brought to Moses, and Moses inquired of the Lord since the penalty had not been revealed. God’s answer was, stone him to death. And that was that. Nothing else said. It was an example of a “high-handed,” in your face, sin.
   3. Let’s look at why the Sabbath was so important to God:
      1. Sabbath was the fourth commandment. It was a pivot point between loving God and loving your neighbor. Sabbath reminded Israel of their need for God and their need for reflecting God in their love for one another. As Jesus said, “Sabbath was made for man…” It is not difficult to see the parallel today in God’s command that we meet together. 
      2. Sabbath was a unique gift to Israel, giving balance to time for work, time for rest, and time for God. Sabbath “prevented work from becoming a dominating idol” (Christopher Wright) in life. Again, we can see the parallel value today of God giving us the first day of the week to celebrate the rest from sin that Jesus has given us and our future eternal Sabbath with the Lord.
      3. Therefore, “Sabbath was not so much a burdensome prohibition on work for a day, as a liberating permission to rest for a day” (C. Wright). God desires our rest because only in rest can we truly contemplate and enjoy God—“Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). 
      4. For Israel, Sabbath was a celebration of God’s deliverance from Egyptian bondage in which labor never ceased. Therefore, God is remembered as both our Creator and our Redeemer. To break the Sabbath exhibited a rejection of God’s grace that revealed a heart of greed for earthly possessions over the riches of God and love for fellow citizens in the Kingdom of God.
   4. Though we have not been given a Sabbath “day” as was given to Israel, we can see all the same “Sabbath messages” for our lives today. Desiring to limit our time together for Bible study and encouraging one another to love and good works is counter-productive to God’s purposes as seen in the Sabbath command. Are we worshiping and studying together to check boxes so we can go back to fulfilling our desires? In the scriptures, God has given us 66 books that reveal his mind, his love, and his judgments, and are required to bring us to maturity and to salvation. Remember, the penalty for breaking the Sabbath was death! 

Conclusion: This text begs the question for all of us: Where is our heart? Where is our trust? Are we living in such a way that reveals a heart trusting in the flesh or trusting in the Lord? 

Berry Kercheville

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