Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Great Deceiver and the Omniscient Judge: Total Depravity and Sovereign Grace (Jeremiah 17:9–10)

Transcript

The Great Deceiver and the Omniscient Judge: Total Depravity and Sovereign Grace (Jeremiah 17:9–10) · Reformed Thinking

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  Well, welcome back to another session of Reformed Thinking.
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  We are really glad you were here with us today.
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  Yeah, it is great to be back at the table.
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  Today we are doing well. Basically what we love doing
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  best. We are opening up the text of
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  scripture. Specifically, the Old Testament
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  today. Right, the Old Testament, and we
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  are going to see how it just completely dismantles the way
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  the modern world thinks. It really does.
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  We have this huge stack of theological journals and
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  commentaries and some historical sermons right here in front of
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  us, and we are going to walk through them with you.
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  And you are right about the dismantling part.
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  The text we have today is well, it's not a gentle suggestion.
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  No, it is a sledgehammer. A total sledgehammer.
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  We are looking at Jeremiah chapter 17, specifically verses
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  9 and 10. Yeah.
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  And just to be clear, right from the jump, so you know where we
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  are coming from, we are approaching this deep dive from
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  our specific theological lane. Which we always do.
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  Right. We are Protestant Christians, we
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  hold to Reformed theology and we stand on the Westminster
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  Confession of Faith. That is the lens.
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  That framework is going to guide how we handle all this source
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  data we're looking at. Spot on, and the reason this
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  specific text from Jeremiah is so vital right now is that it
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  addresses probably the most common advice you will hear in
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  our culture today. Oh, without a doubt.
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  You see it on Instagram, you hear it on pop songs, It is the
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  plot of basically every movie. The mantra is just follow your
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  heart. Follow your heart, trust
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  yourself. Be true to you, yeah.
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  That is the one. It sounds so liberating, doesn't
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  it? I mean it is the driving force
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  behind almost every animated kids movie from the last 30
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  years. It is the absolute anthem of
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  secular humanism. Yeah, it is the bedrock of
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  modern psychology in a lot of ways.
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  And tragically, and our forces point this out right away, it is
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  a poisonous doctrine that has completely infiltrated modern
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  evangelicalism. Yeah, it really has.
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  We have this idea that inside of us is this true authentic self,
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  and that this self is inherently good.
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  And if we just let it out, if we just stop suppressing it, we
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  will be happy. But when you open Jeremiah 17
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  verses 9 and 10, you are getting a well, a funeral sermon for
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  that entire project of self trust A.
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  Funeral sermon for self trust. That is a heavy image.
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  It is the only way to describe it based on the Hebrew.
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  Our mission in this deep dive is to strip away that false
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  confidence in human nature. We want to demonstrate, using
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  the text, why looking inward for truth is actually spiritual
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  suicide. We are going to perform an
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  autopsy of the soul, basically guided by the prophet Jeremiah.
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  So let us look at our sources for a second.
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  We have a collection of really dense theological breakdowns of
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  the Hebrew text here. Lots of grammar and syntax
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  notes. Yeah, lots of that.
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  We are going to be dealing with heavy concepts, total depravity,
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  sovereign grace. But we aren't just doing this
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  for academic exercise. No, not at all.
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  We want to understand what is actually going on inside our own
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  chests. Precisely, we need to know the
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  anatomy of the human condition, and to do that we have to start
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  with the context. Always start with context.
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  You cannot just pluck verse 9 out of the Bible as some
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  floating proverb. We have to understand where
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  Jeremiah is sitting when he says this.
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  Right, so let us set the scene. Why is Jeremiah saying this
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  right now? What is happening in the history
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  of Israel? So Jeremiah is speaking directly
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  to the nation of Judah, and they are standing on the very
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  precipice of disaster. The Babylonian exile is right
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  there. It is looming over them
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  politically. They are a total mess.
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  But the crisis isn't just that they made bad political
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  alliances with Egypt or whatever.
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  Or that the economy is crashing? Right.
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  The crisis is a failure of the heart.
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  The sources described this as a covenant lawsuit.
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  A lawsuit? Yeah, God is suing his people
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  for breach of contract, essentially.
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  That is a great way to put it and the indictment against them
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  is severe. If you look back at the very
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  beginning of the chapter, Jeremiah 17, verse one, it says
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  their sin is engraved on the tablet of the heart engraved.
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  That is a permanent marker. The sources emphasize that it is
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  written with a pen of iron. It is etched into them.
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  This tells us that their idolatry isn't just some
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  superficial bad habit. It isn't that they just forgot
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  to go to the temple a few times on the weekend.
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  No, it is a fixed loyalty. Yeah, they are wholly devoted to
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  their rebellion, and that sets up the immediate context of
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  verses 9 and 10, which is this Wisdom framework you find in
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  verses 5 through 8. Let us unpack that wisdom
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  framework because it gives us the visual for what follows.
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  You have these two contrasting images.
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  The cursed man and the blessed man.
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  First you have the cursed man, and the text describes him as a
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  shrub in the desert. Yes, a shrub in the Erebaugh,
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  the parched wilderness. Now think about that visual for
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  a second. A shrub in the desert looks
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  pretty tough. It survives in a really harsh
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  environment. It looks independent.
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  It is scrappy. This represents the man who
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  trusts in man, who makes flesh his strength.
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  He thinks he can handle it on his own.
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  He is completely self reliant, but the text says he shall not
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  see any good when it comes. He is spiritually barren.
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  He's living in a salt land where absolutely nothing grows.
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  It is the picture of the guy today who says I don't need God.
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  I have my own truth, I have my own strength.
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  He looks strong on the outside. Perhaps he might have a great
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  career, but he is starving on the inside.
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  That is spot on. And then you contrast that with
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  the blessed man in verses 7 and 8.
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  He is like a tree planted by water.
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  A very different image. Completely different.
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  He trusts in Yahweh. His roots go way down to the
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  river and when the heat comes and notice, the text says, the
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  heat comes to both the shrub and the tree.
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  Oh that is a good point. The tree doesn't escape the
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  heat. Right, the circumstances are the
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  same, but the tree doesn't fear its leaves remain green, it just
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  keeps bearing fruit. So the difference isn't the
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  environment, it is the source of life.
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  One is drawing from the flesh and the other is drawing from
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  God. Correct.
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  And this leaves us logically right to our main text.
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  Verse 9 is not a non sequitur, it's actually the answer to a
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  very pressing question. Which is why?
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  Why would anyone choose to be the shrub?
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  Right. If you have the option between a
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  parched salt desert and a lush garden by a river, why on earth
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  would you pick the desert? Because this verse 9 explains
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  the heart lies. The heart convinces you that the
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  desert is actually a garden. The heart tells you that
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  rebellion is safety it. Flicks reality upside down.
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  It tells you that depending on God is weak and depending on
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  yourself is strong. This is why Jeremiah has to drop
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  the theological bomb on us. He is explaining the sheer
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  irrationality of human sin. Because trust in this context
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  isn't just a psychological feeling.
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  It is an act of worship. It is a declaration of
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  allegiance. And the heart seduces us into
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  giving our allegiance to the exact wrong things.
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  Which brings us right to the core of this deep dive.
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  Let us do the autopsy of the heart.
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  We are looking at Jeremiah 17/9. The heart is deceitful above all
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  things, and desperately sick. Who can understand it?
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  We really need to break down the Hebrew here.
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  Yes, let's do it. What is the word for heart?
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  The word is LEB, and in the Hebrew mind, the heart isn't
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  just the seat of emotions like we think of it today.
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  Right. Not like a Valentine's Day card.
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  No, not at all. It is the command and Control
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  Center. It includes your thinking, your
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  willing, your desiring, and your judgment.
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  It is the cockpit of your life. And Jeremiah uses a very
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  specific word to describe it. He says it is deceitful.
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  The Hebrew word there is a quab. Now I was reading one of the
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  commentaries and it said this word a quab is related to a name
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  we would all recognize. It is.
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  It shares the exact same root with the name Jacob.
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  Jacob from Genesis. The very same His name literally
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  meant supplanter or heel grabber.
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  He was the trickster. He tricked his brother Esau out
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  of his birthright. He tricked his father Isaac out
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  of the blessing. So Jeremiah is effectively
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  saying that your heart is a Jacob.
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  That is precisely what he is saying.
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  My heart is a scam artist living in my chest.
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  That is a terrifying way to put it, but it is entirely accurate.
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  It is a calculating swindler. It doesn't just make innocent
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  little mistakes, it actively manufacturers reasons to call
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  then righteousness. Give me an example of how that
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  works in real time. We'll think about how we
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  rationalize our own behavior. Your Aquab heart will take the
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  sin of pride and it will relabel it for you as self respect.
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  Oh man, it will take the sin of greed and call it financial
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  prudence or good stewardship. It will take lust and call it
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  appreciating beauty or fulfilling a natural human need.
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  That is genuinely terrifying when you stop to think about it,
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  because it means I cannot trust my own assessment of myself.
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  You can't. Because the very instrument I am
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  using to judge myself, my heart, is the thing that is lying to me
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  in the first place. That is the vicious circularity
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  of it. It rigs the scales.
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  You are the defendant and you are the judge in your own
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  internal courtroom, and the judge has been bribed.
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  The judge is corrupt. But the text gets even worse.
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  It says the heart is not only a scam artist, but it is
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  desperately sick. And this isn't just a mild
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  illness we're talking about here, right?
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  We aren't talking about catching a cold.
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  No, the Hebrew word there is an ash, and our sources dig into
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  the ancient Near Eastern usage of this word.
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  It is a medical term, OK. It describes A wound that is
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  entirely incurable. It is a mortal blow.
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  It means frail or malignant to the point of imminent death.
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  So if we apply that theologically to the human
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  condition, it means we simply cannot fix ourselves.
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  Precisely. A corpse cannot cooperate with a
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  surgeon. Wow.
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  And this is where our reformed theology really shines a bright
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  light on the text. This single word anash
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  completely refutes the idea of Arminianism.
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  The idea that we have a neutral free will that can just choose
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  God on its own. Right.
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  It refutes that. It also refutes the Roman
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  Catholic framework of Sacramento merit, where we somehow
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  cooperate with grace to earn our justification.
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  Because the condition is terminal.
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  You cannot fix in the nosh heart with a life coach.
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  You cannot fix it with 10 easy steps to a better you.
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  You cannot fix it with more education or better government
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  funding. The patient is dead on the
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  table. And then Jeremiah follows that
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  diagnosis up with a rhetorical question.
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  Who can understand it? And the implied answer in Hebrew
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  is a resounding negative. No human can understand it.
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  We have an epistemic inability, meaning we aren't all knowing we
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  can't. See all the angles?
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  Right. And we also have a moral
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  inability. We actively resist the light.
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  We don't want to know the ugly truth about ourselves.
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  We hide from it. So we are stuck in this
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  terrifying position where we are being LED around by a captain
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  who is actively trying to shipwreck the boat and we are
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  sitting in the passenger seat thinking he's doing a fantastic
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  job. That is the human condition in a
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  nutshell. Which leads us naturally into
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  looking at our modern culture. We you mentioned earlier that
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  this text reads us. How does this ancient Hebrew
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  autopsy confront the philosophies we are seeing
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  everywhere today? Well, let's look at what the
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  theological journals are pointing out regarding modern
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  societal frameworks, things like critical race theory or
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  intersectionality, or just general social justice
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  narratives that dominate the universities right now.
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  And just to pause here, we need to be really clear with you
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  listening. The sources we are reading bring
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  these topics up to contrast them with the biblical worldview.
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  We are not taking a political side, left or right on these
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  specific modern theories. We are just impartially
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  reporting what the theological analysis says about how these
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  frameworks view the human problem compared to Jeremiah.
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  Well, I should say spot on. The fundamental premise of a lot
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  of these modern sociological philosophies is that humanity
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  score problem is external. Right, they say the problem is
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  the societal structures or power dynamics or historical
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  oppression from the outside. And the underlying assumption is
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  that if we just fix the system, if we just fix the environment
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  and tear down the bad structures, that people will
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  naturally be good and society will flourish.
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  It is the ultimate society made me do it narrative.
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  Yes, it is a victimhood narrative at its core, but the
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  journals argue that Jeremiah 17 utterly demolishes that view of
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  humanity. Jeremiah locates the rot inside
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  the human heart, not in the environment.
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  Right, because going back to the print analogy, it isn't the
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  environment that makes the shrub barren.
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  It is the fact that the shrub trusts in the flesh.
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  The Bible says your own heart condemned you.
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  We cannot blame our parents or government or economic class for
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  our spiritual rebellion. Those things might influence us.
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  Sure, the world is broken, but the root of the problem is
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  always internal. And then you have the
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  psychological aspect. Our sources bring up the whole
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  self esteem movement, the idea that the main thing holding us
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  back is that we just don't love ourselves enough.
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  That is what one of the commentators calls therapeutic
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  religion. The primary goal of that kind of
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  religion is just to make you feel good about yourself to.
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  Boost yourself worth. But think about the medical term
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  a Nash again. If you have a terminal illness
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  and your doctor just tells you to feel good about your body and
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  completely ignores the cancer, that doctor is committing
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  malpractice. He's killing you with kindness.
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  The goal of Jeremiah is not to help people like themselves, it
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  is to expose their terminal illness so they will panic and
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  flee to a surgeon who can actually save them.
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  There is a statistic in one of the sociology sources that
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  really stood out to me. It said that 66% of people in
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  modern surveys claim to be quote, basically good.
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  Essentially means 66% of people are calling God a liar to his
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  face. God says the heart is deceitful
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  and incurable. We say no.
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  I am basically a good person who just makes a few mistakes here
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  and there. That is the lie of the Aquab
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  heart operating in real time. It is the heart protecting
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  itself from the biblical diagnosis.
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  This connects directly back to our confessional standards,
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  specifically the doctrine of total depravity.
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  I think people often hear that term.
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  They get confused. They assume it means something
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  it doesn't. They hear total depravity and
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  think it means everyone is as absolutely evil as they could
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  possibly be. Like everyone is a serial killer
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  deep down. Right.
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  That is a common misconception, but that is not what the
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  Reformed doctrine means. Total depravity means that we
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  are wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and
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  body. All the parts.
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  It means the corruption of sin extends to every single aspect
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  of us. Our mind is darkened.
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  Our will is enslaved to sin. Our emotions are disordered.
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  There is no pristine island of neutrality within us that
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  somehow escaped the fall. Spot on.
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  We aren't as bad as we could be because God's common grace
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  restrains a lot of our evil, but no part of us is pure enough to
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  please God on its own. We are the trub through and
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  through. So we have this really bleak
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  picture painted by the prophet. The hunt is a liar.
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  The sickness is completely incurable.
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  We are totally depraved in all our faculties.
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  It feels hopeless. It does.
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  But then right in verse 10 we get an interruption in the text.
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  And thank God for that interruption.
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  The text shifts abruptly from the human dilemma to the divine
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  answer. Verse 10 starts with I, the
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  Lord. In the Hebrew it is Ani Yahweh.
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  Yes, God literally steps into the frame of the poem.
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  He claims the exclusive prerogative to know what is
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  completely unknowable to us. He says I search the heart and
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  test the mind. Let us look at those specific
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  verbs. The sources highlight search and
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  test. So the word for search is
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  chakar. It means to dig really deep.
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  Think of mining operations. You are digging deep into the
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  earth to find hidden things. God isn't just glancing at the
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  surface behavior. No, he is excavating the soul
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  and the word for test is Bacon. That is a metallurgical term,
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  like a blacksmith or a refiner working with metals.
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  Yes, it describes the very intense process of assaying
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  precious metals. You put the gold or silver into
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  a blazing furnace, you melt it down completely, and you watch
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  to see what impurities rise to the top.
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  You test the actual quality of the metal under extreme heat.
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  God puts our hearts into the Crucible of His omniscience to
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  see what we are really made of underneath the presentation.
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  And the text mentions the kidneys.
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  This is fascinating. It says I search the heart and
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  test the kidneys. Now I know most modern English
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  translations will soften that and say mind or inmost being
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  right, but the literal Hebrew is kidneys or rains.
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  Why Kidneys? It is a Hebrew idiom.
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  In their ancient anthropology, the kidneys represented the
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  deepest, most subconscious drives and appetites a person
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  has. The gut instincts.
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  Right. The heart is where you think and
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  plan and calculate, but the kidneys are where you feel your
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  gut instincts. It is what you crave.
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  It is what you desire when you weren't actively thinking about
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  it. So God is saying, I know what
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  you think, but I also know what you hunger for in the dark.
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  Exactly. He isn't just looking at a stat
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  sheet of our good and bad behavior.
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  He is actively investigating our core motives.
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  He sees right through the religious mask.
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  You can fool your pastor. You can easily fool your spouse.
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  You can fool your whole small group.
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  You can show up to church, raise your hands and say all the right
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  theological words. What?
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  God knows. He knows if you're doing it just
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  to be seen by men, or to feel good about yourself, or if you
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  were doing it because you actually love him.
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  He knows what you love, he knows what you fear, and he knows what
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  you hide. That is the terrifying reality
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  of the doctrine of omniscience, and for the hypocrite that is a
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  devastating thought. Devastating, but for the
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  believer that can actually be a comfort, which we will get to in
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  a minute. But first we have to deal with
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  the reason for this intense search.
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  Why is God minding and refining right?
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  He doesn't search just for curiosity's sake.
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  No, the text says. He searches with a judicial
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  purpose to give every man according to his ways, according
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  to the fruit of his deeds. This brings us to the verdict.
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  Now this is where it gets a little tricky for us
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  Protestants. Sometimes we read a text that
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  says according to his deeds or the fruit of his deeds, and we
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  immediately get nervous. Because it sounds like a
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  contradiction. Does Jeremiah teaching salvation
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  by works here? Does this contradict the core
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  doctrine of justification by faith alone?
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  That is the tension, right? But all the reformed
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  commentaries we were looking at agree there is no contradiction
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  at all if you understand the distinction between root and
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  fruit. Break that down for.
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  Us works are not the root of our salvation.
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  We are absolutely not saved by our works.
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  But works are the fruit of salvation.
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  They simply reveal build the nature of the tree.
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  Going right back to the shrub and the tree analogy from verses
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  5 through 8. Yes, it all connects.
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  If you are a tree planted by the water, meaning you are trusting
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  in Yahweh, you will naturally bear good fruit.
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  And if you are a shrub in the desert, trusting in your own
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  flesh, you will be barren. The fruit just reveals what kind
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  of plant you are. The word weighs in the text
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  refers to the overall trajectory of a person's life.
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  So the function of the law here in this verse is to strip away
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  all human merit. Completely.
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  Because if God judges the unregenerate heart, the
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  naturally sick heart that hasn't been changed by grace, by its
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  fruit, what is the only possible verdict?
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  Guilty. Guilty every single time,
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  because the fruit of a deceitful sick heart is always going to be
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  deceit and death. If you're trusting in yourself,
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  your food is rotten by definition.
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  This is a really strong critique of some popular movements today,
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  like the prosperity gospel. Oh absolutely.
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  The prosperity gospel thinks God just exists to bless your
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  fleshly plants and it. Also critiques liberal theology
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  or universalism, the idea that God is just too loving to ever
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  actually judge anyone. Jeremiah is incredibly clear
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  here. God is holy.
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  He will judge the fruit, and if your fruit is generated from the
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  flesh, the end result is destruction.
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  So if we stop right there, we are left in a really desperate
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  spot. Our hearts are sick and lying to
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  us. God sees everything, including
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  our hidden motives, and he judges based on the fruit, which
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  for us naturally is all bad. We need a serious cure.
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  Which brings us to Christ and the gospel, because we don't
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  just read the Old Testament in isolation.
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  No, we have to use what the reformers called the analogy of
• 20:03
  faith. Meaning Scripture interprets
• 20:05
  scripture. Right.
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  We don't just stay stuck in Jeremiah.
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  We look at where this specific theme goes throughout the rest
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  of the Bible, and it points directly to Jesus Christ.
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  One of the theological journals pointed out a fascinating
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  textual connection in the Book of Revelation.
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  Revelation 223. This is one of those moments
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  where you just have to step back and marvel at the unity of the
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  whole Bible. In Revelation 223, Jesus is
• 20:31
  speaking directly to the church in Thyatira.
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  OK. And Jesus says, I am he who
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  searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you
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  according to your works. Jesus quotes Jeremiah 1710
• 20:42
  verbatim and applies it directly to himself.
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  He says I am he. He is claiming the exact
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  identity of the divine speaker in Jeremiah the Journal's note.
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  This is absolute, irrefutable proof of the deity of Christ
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  Jesus is Yahweh. Which completely rejects the
• 20:59
  teachings of groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormonism
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  who try to argue Jesus is just a created being or a lesser God.
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  No, Jesus claims the exclusive divine prerogative to search the
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  kidneys. He is the judge.
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  But wait, if Jesus is the judge who searches the heart, we are
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  still in massive trouble. We would be, except that Jesus
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  is also the substitute. Sweet exchange.
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  Yes, the sweet exchange. Think about the historical life
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  of Jesus of Nazareth. Was his heart deceitful?
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  No, he was entirely without sin. Was his heart desperately sick
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  with the Enash disease? No, it was completely pure.
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  So Jesus is the only man in all of human history who was truly
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  the blessed man. He was the tree planted by
• 21:43
  water. He trusted the Father perfectly
• 21:45
  in every single moment and He produced perfect, flawless food.
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  But then on the cross. Right on the cross, what
• 21:51
  actually happened? God the Father searched Jesus.
• 21:54
  God tested Jesus in the Crucible of his wrath, and God judged him
• 21:58
  according to our ways. He took the verdict for the
• 22:00
  shrub. He took the drought, He took the
• 22:02
  intense heat, He took the complete forsakenness.
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  He was treated by the Father as if He had our deceitful Jacob
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  heart so that we could be treated as if we had His
• 22:13
  perfect, obedient heart. That is the gospel.
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  Right there, that is the only hope any of us have.
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  We survived this terrifying divine search not by trying to
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  hide our sin, but by being hidden in Christ.
• 22:25
  And the sources show it goes even further than that.
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  It isn't just a legal transaction where our record
• 22:30
  gets cleared, it is also an actual internal transformation.
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  This connects to the promises of the New Covenant.
• 22:35
  Later on in Jeremiah chapter 31. God promises I will write my law
• 22:40
  on their hearts. And Ezekiel 36 says I will
• 22:43
  remove the part of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
• 22:45
  Yes, salvation isn't God just patching up your old sick heart.
• 22:49
  It isn't spiritual bypass surgery.
• 22:51
  It is a full transplant. He takes out the Inash heart,
• 22:54
  the Terminal 1, and he what's in a brand new heart that actually
• 22:58
  loves him. A heart that wants to be the
• 23:00
  tree planted by the water. So now, as born again believers,
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  we are in a completely different state.
• 23:05
  We still battle the flesh, sure, but we have a fundamentally new
• 23:08
  nature. We do, and that reality changes
• 23:12
  entirely how we apply this passage to our daily lives.
• 23:15
  We don't read Jeremiah 17 and fall into despair.
• 23:18
  We read it and we fall into dependence on Christ.
• 23:20
  Let us move into the practical application of all this.
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  The journals break this down really well into head in heart
• 23:26
  and hands. That is a very helpful
• 23:27
  structure. Let's start with the head, the
• 23:30
  intellectual aspect of this truth.
• 23:32
  We have to completely abandoned the belief in the inherent
• 23:36
  goodness of man. It has to go.
• 23:38
  This is absolutely crucial for your world view as a Christian.
• 23:42
  If you believe people are basically good pretty, you will
• 23:45
  be constantly confused by the world.
• 23:47
  You will be shocked when people betray you.
• 23:49
  You will be confused by war, by corporate greed, by crime, and
• 23:53
  most importantly, by your own personal moral failures.
• 23:56
  But if you accept total depravity, you have a massive
• 24:00
  safeguard against error. You actually understand reality
• 24:03
  as it is. It explains perfectly why
• 24:05
  utopian political projects always end in disaster.
• 24:08
  It explains why following your heart always leads to chaos and
• 24:12
  pain. Right now, let's move to the
• 24:14
  heart application, the spiritual and emotional side.
• 24:18
  Our sources touch on a very specific theological debate here
• 24:22
  regarding cessationism and divine guidance.
• 24:25
  We really need to untack that because a lot of well meaning
• 24:28
  Christians are constantly looking for inner voices or
• 24:30
  nudges from God. And this text in Jeremiah warns
• 24:33
  us specifically against doing that.
• 24:36
  If the heart is deceitful above all things, why in the world
• 24:40
  would you look inside it for a fresh word from God?
• 24:43
  People say things like, I just feel like God is telling me to
• 24:46
  do this or I have a real peace in my heart about this decision.
• 24:49
  Well, as one of the commentators dryly notes, Jonah probably had
• 24:52
  a lot of peace when he was sleeping down in the bottom of
• 24:54
  the boat, running in the exact opposite direction of God.
• 24:57
  Right. Your internal emotions are not
• 24:59
  the voice of the Holy Spirit. So where do we look then, if we
• 25:02
  can't look inward? We look to the external
• 25:04
  objective Word of God, the closed Canon of Scripture.
• 25:08
  We trust what is written on the page, not what is felt in the
• 25:12
  chest. To trust an inner voice or a gut
• 25:14
  feeling is effectively to trust the traitor living inside you.
• 25:19
  The expert pastoral advice here is simple.
• 25:21
  Do not listen to yourself. Listen to the Bible.
• 25:25
  That is incredibly freeing, actually.
• 25:26
  I don't have to sit around trying to decode my fluctuating
• 25:29
  feelings. I just have to read the book and
• 25:31
  obey it. Yes, but there is also a deep
• 25:33
  comfort here for the Saint, right?
• 25:35
  For the believer who is struggling.
• 25:37
  Oh, absolutely. For the believer who feels the
• 25:39
  heavyweight of their remaining sin, listen.
• 25:44
  God knows the absolute worst about you.
• 25:46
  He has already searched you completely.
• 25:48
  He found things in your kidneys that you don't even know about
• 25:50
  yourself yet. And he still loves.
• 25:52
  You. He still loves you in Christ.
• 25:53
  You don't have to hide from Him. You don't have to pretend you
• 25:56
  have it all together. You are fully known and you are
• 25:59
  fully loved. And really, that is the only
• 26:01
  true basis for intimacy with God.
• 26:03
  Finally, let us look at the hands, the volitional
• 26:07
  application. What do we actually do with this
• 26:09
  on a Tuesday morning? We practice self examination,
• 26:13
  but we do it the right way. We use the Word of God as the
• 26:16
  mirror to examine ourselves, not our subjective feelings.
• 26:20
  Like Psalm 139, search me, O God, and know my heart, yes.
• 26:25
  We invite the divine light in, and practically speaking, we
• 26:28
  take the Lord's Supper. The sources mention the Lord's
• 26:30
  Supper as a visible word for the 6th soul.
• 26:33
  It is a visible, tangible word. We don't come to the communion
• 26:37
  table because we are well and strong.
• 26:39
  We come precisely because we are sick.
• 26:42
  We come because we desperately need the medicine of Christ,
• 26:45
  body and blood. It is a weekly physical reminder
• 26:48
  that we cannot sustain ourselves.
• 26:49
  We need outside intervention. And finally, repentance.
• 26:53
  Real biblical repentance. Stop trying to manage your
• 26:55
  public image, stop making excuses for your Arkab heart,
• 26:58
  and actively mortify your sin by the Spirit.
• 27:01
  This has been a really heavy, but just an incredibly valuable
• 27:04
  discussion today. We have traced the path from the
• 27:06
  deep deception of the human heart to the terrifying holy
• 27:09
  judgement of God and finally to the Amazing Grace of Jesus
• 27:12
  Christ. And that is the exact path we
• 27:14
  need to walk every single day. As we wrap up this deep dive, I
• 27:18
  want to leave you listening with this final charge.
• 27:20
  The heart is a terrible captain for your life.
• 27:23
  It will steer you into the jagged rocks every single time
• 27:26
  without fail. It is time to stage a full
• 27:29
  mutiny against your own heart. Stop taking orders from the lyre
• 27:32
  in your chest and submit your life to the Captain of
• 27:35
  Salvation. Amen to that.
• 27:36
  My closing thought for you to Mull over is this.
• 27:39
  Do not look inward to the constantly shifting shadows of
• 27:43
  your own emotion. You will only find confusion and
• 27:46
  despair down there. Look outward and look upward to
• 27:49
  the finished historical work of Christ on the cross.
• 27:51
  That is the only solid ground in the universe.
• 27:54
  Stop trusting the shrub life of self-reliance.
• 27:57
  It is dry, it is lonely, and it ends in death.
• 28:00
  Be the tree planted by the river of God's grace.
• 28:03
  That is where true life is actually found.
• 28:05
  And that is where the good fruit comes from.
• 28:06
  Thank you so much for joining us for this deep dive into Jeremiah
• 28:09
  17. We hope this helps you think
• 28:11
  more clearly, worship more sincerely, and trust Christ more
• 28:14
  fully this week. This has been Reformed thinking.
• 28:17
  Peace to you all. See you next time.