The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it?The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it?
5 sermons cite this verse
… And then he makes this amazing comment. He says this, he says, the heart is deceitful above all things. That's like all. The heart is deceitful above all things. And he's thinking about the king. I mean, the king has deceived himself into making a terrible decision. Then he realizes everybody does this. The heart is deceitful above all things. This is not encouraging. Beyond cure. Like, you can't even fix it. Like, he says that your heart and my heart is permanently broken. and what he's getting at is I will always have the potential to talk myself into bad ideas. And you will always have the potential. You'll always be your worst enemy in the sense that nobody can convince you better than you. The hardest deceitful above all things, the beyond curious, then he's asked this question. Who can make sense out of that? I mean, how can that, why is it? Why is it we become our own worst enemy? And the implication is nobody can understand it. …
… other. There was disagreement around this sin. And the devil has been running a similar play ever since. Jeremiah 17, 9 tells us this, the heart is deceitful above all things. The heart is deceitful above all things. In other words, your heart can actually deceive you too. That's how deceptive the heart is. And that's how deception works a lot of times in relationships, especially in marriages. You generally don't start by lying to your spouse. You generally start by lying to yourself. And you tell yourself, well, it really wasn't that big of a deal, okay? It's not that bad. I mean, I could have done a lot worse. I'm not hurting anyone. It's better that they don't know. Technically, I didn't really tell a lie. And sometimes we just spin it just enough to in our own mind, we can rationalize what really is deception, what really is lying, and we make it look like something else. And if we do it long enough, we don't even really realize we're doing it. …
And here's why, you know, the scriptures say in Jeremiah, I believe it's Jeremiah 17, it says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And then it says, who can know it? Okay, that's scary that's scary because that's telling me that I have something in me that's powerful that is influencing me that can deceive me and then it literally says and it's desperate above all things and it says who can know which means that without God I can be thinking that I'm good. I can be thinking that I'm okay. I can be thinking that I'm right and be wrong. That scares me. There's a passage of scripture that's in Proverbs twice in two different places and it says, there is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. That scares me. I don't want to be wrong, but I can handle being wrong if I know I'm wrong because I have the opportunity to be right. …
… here's what the scripture says about our heart you know we're talking about hearts the bible says in jeremiah chapter 17 verse 9 the heart is deceitful above all things isn't that the truth and desperately wicked who can know it biologists have tried anthropologists have tried psychologists have tried. No one has a solution for our heart problem. The issue of the heart is the heart of the issue. We have a major heart problem. what did God do about our heart problem what did he what did he do how did he act about our heart problem because the heart is who you are it's who I am well let's go back to the EKG again I ask you what your EKG was now let me throw another question at you You have to think deeper. Are you ready? What is God's EKG? That's right. What is God's EKG? Hmm. What if we could read that on the screen? Well, we can because God's EKG is written out for us right here. …
It's a very generic word, a bad-hearted person. And we know that every unregenerate person is a bad-hearted person because Jeremiah 17 9 says, the heart of man is deceitfully wicked. It's desperate and deceitfully wicked. So bad-hearted people are bent toward bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander. So they come out tortured on the inside by their hatred and hostility, and it explodes on the outside. That's what you see in all of this cultural action that's going on, whether it's the riots and burning things, or whether it's crime being committed. There's a something in the human heart. It's bigger than just wanting to steal. It's bigger than wanting to find the next meal. There is a deep-seated tendency in every human being, badness that is so profound and so far-reaching that people feel like they have to do bad to fulfill their strongest impulses. Those are the natural vices, you can say, of the children of the devil. Those who are content to live like that are reflecting their father, the devil. …