Jeremiah 17: 9-10

Jeremiah 17:9-10. "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? 'I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.'”

This might be the third most famous quote in Jeremiah. (Only Jer 29:11, and Jer 31:31-34 tend out-shine this one). Some popular secular mantras come in great conflict with God's Word here. We're told to "follow your heart" or "Listen to your heart" "what you feel in your heart correct." This is an popular illusion (lie) that our hearts a good, truthful and contain our destiny. However, Jeremiah clearly warns us here: the heart is deceitful and beyond cure, this is fact, not debatable according to this passage.

Here are a summation of the truths found in Jer 17:9.
1. The natural state of everyone's heart is deceitful, permanently.
2. There is no cure: for all our lives we manage a deceitful heart.
3. No human can understand the heart (implied by rhetorical question).
4. The heart is the strongest agent of deception. Above all things: move over idols, addictions and spirits. After Satan, the biggest deceiver is our own heart.

So my heart cannot be cured (permanently fixed) from deception -no matter how godly, how holy, or how much God uses me. There remains an agent present in my heart, able to deceive me until the day I die.

Similarly, the sin-nature (originating from Adam and Eve act of sin) inhabits permanently as well. No matter how many days since spiritual new birth in Christ, my heart still has the potential to be bent towards doing sin. I will never live cured (without a trace deceit) -but Jesus Christ can manage my deceit-disease, He can lodge His Spirit in my heart, and grow me from all afflictions of deceit.

In living, we must seek a pure heart or accept a deceitful one.

I think the spiritual disciplines in my faith life help me commit to seeking a pure heart. Praying for a pure heart must be done daily. Worship often, read Scripture daily, sing hymns, fast etc... A preacher once told me that inside of me are two dogs. The dog of a godly nature and the dog of a sin nature. They are fighting and barking at each other daily. They both are stuck in me, the only thing I can do is feed them. I choose the portions and the quality of the food: as I feed one, the other grows weaker and quiet. -I much choose to make all of my life into food for the godly dog, that his bark would be greater and louder and more frequent. Again this doesn't point to a cured state, rather a trained and conditioned Christ-centered heart being sanctified.

Now in verse ten Jeremiah states that only God can search and know our hearts. So even though no human can understand the heart, God knows it (which is a step beyond understanding it). Thankfully God gives, blesses, and delights in looking at the heart set on purity(verse 10). The implication here is that somewhere, somehow our heart of deceitfulness becomes able to earn a reward from God for good "conduct and deserving deeds."

There is no confidence/truth in thinking that our hearts are the safest operating center to receive orders from. Emotion and feelings are insulators to the content of the heart and that isn't a good thing. We must anchor ourselves on the Rock of our Salvation, our Redeemer Jesus Christ. Faith that is anchored on this eternal truth is deeper then our feelings, and emotions and truer to the Living God. Let us be rewarded by God for seeking a pure heart and inviting Christ's indwelling Spirit.