Sermon: Guarding Our Vulnerable Hearts

#1775A
Clyde Finklea
Given 03-Aug-24; 39 minutes 2024-08-03

Please open in your Bibles to Jeremiah the 17th chapter. We are going to look at a scripture here that is often quoted a lot of times, usually out of context. But let us take a look at it because this is where I want to begin. I was going to use this just to kind of bounce off into my subject today.

Jeremiah 17:9 "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?"

Like I said, this verse has been quoted so many times, I could only guess how many times I have heard this year after year, over and over again, but I found something that was very interesting here in my research on this translation of the verse and would like to share that with you. And before we move on to the heart of the message (I guess you could say that pun was intended), when I opened the verse on my e-Sword (that is where my Bible program is), Adam Clarke's commentary popped up. It was right there, already open, and I glimpsed over at it to see what it said and I found something very, very interesting.

According to Adam Clarke on this section here, this term "and desperately wicked," he says in his commentary (and you can look this up for yourself), "The word that should have been used for desperately wicked is not the word that is used here. That word desperately wicked [he says] should be [unclear]." And he said that the definition of that is "wretched or feeble, distress beyond all things in consequence of the wickedness that is in it." Now, he goes on to say, "I am quite of Mr. Parkhurst's opinion." Mr. Parkhurst is L.J. Parkhurst, Jr. He also wrote a commentary back then. He says, "I am quite of his opinion in that this word is here badly translated as anesh." If you look it up that is the Hebrew word that is used there. Anesh for desperately wicked.

He calls it badly translated. He said "because anesh is never used in Scripture to denote wickedness of any kind." And he goes to his old manuscript, and he said, "My old manuscript Bible translates it thus, 'Shrewd is the heart of a man and unsearchable; who can know it.'"

After reading that, I thought, "Huh, I need to look into this a little deeper." So I started to investigate a little further and I run across a website. It was by a Hebrew scholar and teacher. His name was Chaim Bentorah and his website is ChaimBentorahBiblicalHebrewStudies. And he was doing a Hebrew word study in this article on deceitful and wicked and he was quoting this from Jeremiah 17:9, going over these words. I am going to be doing a little quoting from him so bear with me on this.

The word used here for deceitful is very curious. It is the aqov. Every modern translation with few exceptions will render aqov as deceitful. Yet the Septuagint uses the Greek word bethuno, which has the idea of deep hidden things. How did the seven translators of the Septuagint arrive at the Greek word bethuno for aqov? I suppose, in a way you could say bethuno carries the idea of deceit as deceit involves hiding the truth from someone and therefore would mean things not understood. But I think that is stretching it to put the word deceit to bethuno. Deceit shows intent to hold back knowledge. Bethuno shows no intent. It is just knowledge that we cannot comprehend.

[Now back to the Hebrew word aqov.] Aqov should not be rendered as deceit, but that we should find a modern English word that would more appropriately express the idea of knowledge that is hidden. Based on this, I would render this passage to read not that the heart is deceitful, but that the heart contains knowledge that is so deep [And that is really basically, if you look in Strong's that is what that word means, deep.] that we cannot comprehend it. That would fit the context where the verse ends with, "who can know it?"

And we will look at that a little later. Now he goes on to say, still quoting, bear with me.

The word desperately wicked, in my opinion, is a rather unfortunate rendering. The word in Hebrew has really nothing to do with the idea of wickedness. It is not one of the many rá words. [And if you understand the Hebrew different words that are used for sin and transgression, and rebellion in the Hebrew, the word rá is one of the worst ones. That is where you are purposely rebellious and and sinful and disobedient.] He said, "It's not one of the many rá words used to express evil or wickedness. The word anesh, which is translated there for this desperately wicked, means mankind in a state of weakness and helplessness.

I suppose you could get wicked out of that. But a better and more accurate English word would be "vulnerable." Thus, I do not read this passage as "the heart being deceitful" and wicked, but the heart has a depth of knowledge that makes it vulnerable and who can know it. What this is saying is that we go about our everyday business unaware of the deep secrets of one's heart. And this is referring not only to our heart but that of others.

If you want to, you can go on that site and read the whole article. It is pretty interesting how he explains a lot of this stuff, but that is all I am going to quote today. I think we got the message here.

What he is saying is the heart is not deceitful. It is prone to deception. I do not know what you are thinking. You do not know what I am thinking. Sometimes you have heard somebody respond and you are like, "Oh, man, I can't believe they said that. I can't believe that person is so cruel, mean." You know, you did not know that about people until it comes out. That is why he is talking about these deep things. And we are prone to deception. So if you are prone to deception, that is basically what it is talking about, about being deceitful. It is very easily deceitful and that is why we are desperately vulnerable.

With that in mind, let us continue on. So I looked this verse up (Jeremiah 17:9) in the Septuagint. I just want to read it. It said, "The heart is deep beyond all things, and it is the man, and who can know him?" Yet, because we are all so easily influenced by the world around us, we have to understand that our hearts mean more than just that thing pumping in the middle of your chest. But [unclear] is going to need guarding because we are so vulnerable.

Proverbs 4:23 Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.

Because the word "heart" can be translated a number of ways depending on the context, the number of times that this word is found varies from the different translations of the English Bible. I looked it up and in The Faithful Version and it was translated 826 times, in the King James 833 times, and in the New King James 836 times. So as these numbers suggest to us that the heart is one of the most commonly used words in the Bible.

Now, most of these occurrences are used metaphorically, we understand that, of the inner man, depending on the context, the heart refers to the mind or it can refer to the emotions, the will, to the sinful nature, or simply just to a person as a whole. And it is often translated that way. Now, the term heart then generally speaks of the inner person and the spiritual life with all this different aspect. This multiple use of heart, along with the way that it is used, strongly focuses our attention on the importance of the spiritual life. Like the human heart, it is central and it is vital to our existence. As long as the heart is pumping, we might still be alive. When the heart stops pumping blood and carrying all that oxygen and nutrients to the cells, then we die.

So that is how important it is. That is why it is mentioned so many times in Scripture. If we get down to the depth of understanding it, as we can see by the many occurrences in the term, heart is a very important word because God is so deeply concerned about this inner man and the condition of our hearts and our minds.

Turn with me over to Genesis the sixth chapter. We are beginning in verse 5.

Genesis 6:5-8 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart [that is probably his mind] was only evil continually. And the Lord sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. So the Lord said, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them." But Noah [one man] found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

I guess when God said He searches us out, He tests the minds (and we will see that a little later back in Jeremiah when we get back there) He tries to see what is inside of us. And apparently Noah had a righteous heart. He did not have that evil thoughts continuing like the rest of the world. Remember Enoch. God had to take him and move him somewhere and apparently He moved him and put him to death and buried him in a good old age to keep people from killing him. They did not want to hear that righteous stuff they were so evil.

So God destroyed them because of their totally and completely evil hearts. Noah was the only one who was spared, him and his family, and most likely because he did have a righteous heart.

In I Samuel 16, verse 7, you do not have to turn there. This is pretty familiar to you. I will just read it. When God sends Samuel to anoint another king because He had rejected Saul, He sent him to David's father's house to anoint him. But He said to Samuel,

I Samuel 16:7 "Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. [remember Saul was a tall, handsome man] For the Lord does not see as a man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."

You know, we can, as a people, fool people for a while, for a long time until something happens and that inner person really comes out in them. You know, a lot of people can talk a good righteous game. I have heard a lot of people talk a lot of righteous lingo during the years. They want everybody to think they are real righteous, but it turns out they were not so righteous in the end. So you just have to think about these things. We do not know, we cannot see what is inside a person. But God digs in there and finds out what is in us, in these deep things.

Let us go back to Jeremiah 17, verse 10. We going to read the next verse because we hear verse 9 quoted first, but very rarely do you hear anybody go ahead and finish this or even put the whole context together in this. Because He says in verse 10,

Jeremiah 17:10 "I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings [or his deeds]."

If you will look back up in there you kind of see the context of this. Starting in verse 5, He talks about "Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord." Now, if a person departs from the Lord and maybe one time they were of the Lord, remember Jesus said there is coming a time ahead of us when many people are going to be deceived. So we have to be careful and think about these things because there is going to be a lot of people departing from the Lord. And He says, cursed is that man.

But if you look down in verse 7, He said, "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is in the Lord." Then He goes on and talks about the heart. If we looked at it as being easily deceived and extremely and desperately vulnerable, He says, I searched his heart out. I searched the deep things that are in man. I test his mind even to give every man according to his way, according to the fruit of his doings.

This passage here teaches us that our Lord looks at and searches the heart, that is, the inner person. So, we ask ourselves again, why is the heart so important? Because of the issues of life (we read that back in Proverbs 4:23 about guarding the heart). He is talking about here are our actions, our works, whether they are good or bad works, our deeds, and things like that and so on. And these all proceed from what is inside of us, from what is inside of our hearts. So what we do, then, in word and deed is, first of all, a product of what we are basically inside. It reveals who we really are.

So God is saying that a cover does not always exactly match what is inside, does it? If you open a box of Grape Nuts, everybody knows about Grape Nuts cereal. Maybe you have never had them. Maybe you have. But if you open a box of Grape Nuts, well, I am going to tell you something. You are probably not going to find any grapes or nuts. If you are looking for hamburgers, thankfully they do not have ham in them. We love hamburgers, ok? But they do not have ham in them. French fries, you know, did not originate in France. They originated in Belgium. And I remember, we used to go to the fair. I remember when we was young teenagers we used to love to buy them big old elephant ears. I am going to tell you, you probably will not find any elephant parts in those elephant ear. And let us just hope that hot dogs have no dog in them. You might better be careful with some of them real cheap things that put all the scrap in them and it might be a little dog!

Anyway, some things are just not always what they say they are and some people are not always who they say they are. So we need to ask ourselves the question. Are we who we say we are? Does our cover match what is inside? Because we claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, we claim to be Christians. Do we have the heart and mind of Jesus Christ? That is what we need to ask ourselves.

People, as we have heard, look on the outward appearance. But God however, is always concerned with what is inside of us, what is inside of our mind, our heart, with the reality and the condition of what is inside. That is what He is looking for. What are you really like? Let us let it come out, then I will know. Remember He tested the Israelites. He made them eat manna for all that time. He said, I did that. He tested them in the wilderness for 40 years to see if they would obey Him or not. He wanted to see what is in their hearts.

Is it any wonder then that Solomon actually challenges us with that statement in Proverbs 4:23 where he says, Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.

Now, I want to quote here from Charles Swindoll. I am pretty sure many of you, especially some of the older ones, know Charles Swindoll. He is a Christian author. He has authored a lot of books and one of them is called, The Quest For Character. And he writes in here,

How important is the heart? It is there that character is formed. It alone holds the secrets of true success. Its treasures are priceless but they can be stolen.

And I guess he is saying here that that which is in us, we are so easy, so vulnerable, and we are so prone to deception that Satan can come and steal away the words that are in us. Remember the Parable of the Sower and the Seed. If it does not land on good ground, if it is not properly prepared, Satan will come around and snatch it away from us. We are in a battle with this every day, a spiritual battle.

So we must all ask ourselves another question. Am I guarding my heart? Is the condition of my heart my greatest concern? How important is that to you? Well, it should be because as we have heard so far, it is going to determine who we are and what is really inside of us. We talk about guarding our hearts, but before we can guard our hearts, our minds and our thoughts must first be prepared.

I am going to put a couple of psalms together here.

Psalm 78:8 And may they not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that did not set its heart [or its mind] aright, and whose spirit was not faithful to God.

We see from this that we need to prepare our hearts.

Over in Psalm 108. I want to bring this out in verse 1. This is David speaking.

Psalm 108:1 O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and give praise, even with my glory.

Now, the reason I brought these two up is because the word prepare in Psalm 78 and the word steadfast in Psalm 108 is the very same word Hebrew word, kuwn. Anyway, I want to quote here again from Hamilton Hinkley, III. He is another Greek and Hebrew scholar. He writes concerning these two scriptures here, explaining this word. He said,

Its basic meaning, to be firm, established, stable. And from this it came to mean be set up, established, fixed, and is used in the Old Testament of a house fixed on a foundation, of the establishment of a throne or kingdom. Then it came to mean to fix as to prepare, to be to be ready.

How many times has Christ told us we need to be ready? How do we be ready? We prepare our hearts and our minds to be ready. And he goes on to say,

It needs to be ready, be arranged, set in order. As such, it was used of preparing words for wise speech [I hope the words I am speaking to you or at least the ones coming out of the Bible are wise], of the preparation of food, of preparing the foundation for the temple of Solomon, of prayer, being prepared, arranged and set in order before God, of preparing one's step or path, and of preparing the heart. This word is used in Psalm 78:8 of preparing the heart to be firm and fixed on the Lord in the sense of trust in God's love, His compassion, His mercy, His grace, and His power.

The point here is that the heart can only become steadfast, stable, when it has been properly prepared. The same word used in Psalm 108:1 of preparing your heart to worship the Lord, the King James translates it as, "my heart is fixed" while the New King James translates this as "my heart is steadfast." The idea here is that it is steadfast because it has been spiritually prepared. Just as the human heart needs preparation through proper diet and exercise in order to handle strenuous activities and be healthy in general, so one's spiritual heart must be properly prepared if it is going to be able to effectively respond to God in the various situations of life.

Now, let us turn over to the book of Mark and we are going to look at what Christ has to say concerning this. And we are beginning in verse 18. This is right after a parable that He spoke to them about nothing enters a man from the outside which defiles him, but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. So the disciples come to Him and ask Him concerning the parable.

Mark 7:18-19 So He said to them, "Are you thus without understanding also? Do not you perceive that whatever enters a man from the outside cannot defile him, because it does not enter into his heart [or his mind] but his stomach, and it is eliminated, thus purifying all foods?"

We do not have to worry like we do sometimes. We try hard not to eat anything unclean, but there are times that we will be eating something and all of a sudden we say, wait a minute, this does not taste right. It tastes like it has got something in it I do not want to be eating. But that is okay because it is going to be purged out. We do not deliberately go out and eat unclean food, trying to be totally disobedient to God's command on those things.

Mark 7:20-23 And He said, "What comes out of a man, that defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these things come from within and defile a man."

And I am assuming that is pretty much the way that first world was. They had gotten so bad that this was what was coming out of them. A lot of wickedness and a lot of violence, a lot of sinfulness.

So in preparing our hearts and our minds, we need to keep these evil thoughts out of our mind. I am just going to quote what Hunter [Swanson] quoted earlier in his sermonette in Philippians 4.

Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there be anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.

Back in the Worldwide Church of God, probably in the late 70s, we had a young minister that came to assist John [Ritenbaugh]. He was probably just out of Ambassador College. I do not know how long he was there or if he had ever worked as a minister at that time or not. But anyway, I remember his first sermon he gave us and it just stood out in my mind. It was was on GIGO. I think most of you know what that means, right? Garbage in, garbage out. That was his sermon message. That if we allow garbage in our hearts, guess what is coming out? Garbage is coming out.

So once we have been purged from sin, we have God's law, He writes them on our heart. That is part of the New Covenant, right? He said, I will put My laws in their heart. I will give them My Spirit and put My laws in their heart. So once we have that in us, then we have to be careful to guard our hearts from the evils in this world. Because remember, we have a very vulnerable heart, easy, prone, apparently, to deception.

Now, the emphasis, of course, here is on spiritual preparation through these different disciplines that we do find in the Bible, like honesty. God wants us to be completely honest, especially in our confession to sin. And always be in the spirit and attitude of repentance. Remember David in his prayer of repentance, he asked God to remove his sin from him and to create in him a pure heart, a clean heart. And Jesus quoted in one of the beatitudes, Blessed is the man who is pure in heart, for he shall see God. So we want to keep that clean and pure heart within us, in that mind.

We want to pour our hearts out to God in fervent prayer and develop an intimate relationship with Him. We hear this a lot from the pulpit. So be careful Bible study. I am not talking about just reading a few passages and let that be it. I am talking about digging into God's Word like you were digging for a hidden treasure. I kind of refer to them, like when I see something or find something interesting, like this in Jeremiah 17:9-10, I call them like little golden nuggets. It just adds to the value of what you already know and have heard but it puts a little different approach or perspective to it.

I think it was maybe Richard in an article I was reading who said when people come out and say, I got some new truth to tell you, you will be like, ok, there goes the red flag. But we can look, dig, and look at things and begin to get a little better perception and understanding of them. And that is why we study and do these things, and God continuously feeds us with more knowledge, more understanding.

So meditating on the Word of God, when you do that and zero in on focusing on a particular subject, that is what meditation is. It ain't like having a blank mind like some people think meditating is. But no, it is about focusing on something, a subject, and zeroing in on it and really concentrating on it. Like David said, he meditated on God's law day and night. Well, he did not just sit there, you know, in a position seated on the floor doing that. He thought about it constantly. He was zeroing in on those commandments constantly. Because he had so many decisions to make as a king, right? And he wanted to make sure he was making right judgments.

Finally, we need, of course, fellowship with people of like mind. That is very important fellowship.

We need these disciplines to stabilize our hearts so that we can respond positively to God in entrusting Him in the different situations in our life and for the times just ahead of us. Remember what Christ said? Many are going to be deceived and the love of many is going to grow cold. And maybe some of that has already happened. But I think that the fulfillment of this is probably still ahead of us a little bit, at least full fulfillment.

Let us go back to Proverbs 4. We will pick up there in verse 23 and we will read a little further as we begin to bring this to a close.

Proverbs 4:23-25 Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. Put away from you a deceitful mouth, and put perverse lips far from you [just be honest and always speak the truth]. Let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you.

Again, Adam Clarke says in his commentary on this, "Look inward, look onward, and look upward, and stay focused on Jesus. Follow Him, listening to Him and obeying Him." That is one of the things we have to do. Follow Christ. Listen to Him, we listen to Him and we have got to be obedient to Him for all power, all authority, and all judgment is given to Him.

Proverbs 4:26-27 Ponder the path of your feet, and let all your ways will be established. [This comes through careful Bible study and fervent prayer.] Do not turn to the right or the left; remove your foot from evil.

And we need to let God's law be a light before our feet. That is our path. That His law is like a light that leads us and it keeps us from doing evil things if we yield to His Spirit properly.

Now, a couple more verses and then we will be closing out here.

Philippians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, . . .

Remember when Christ told the disciples, "Let not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me." Trust in Me, trust in God, trust in Me.

Philippians 4:6-7 . . . but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God [and verse 7 is the one I really want to bring out]; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Is that not amazing! Once we are prepared, once we are converted, once God's law is put into us, he says, do not be anxious for anything. Trust in Me, as He said there in John 14. Do not let your hearts be troubled, believe in Me, trust in Me. And then He goes on to say, My peace I leave with you. Not the peace that the world gives. But My peace I give to you. And that is what He is talking about here. That peace that God has given us through conversion, it says, surpasses all understanding and that is what guards our hearts and our thoughts in Christ.

Proverbs 3:5 [you have heard this many times] Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.

That is what He is telling us. Trust in Him and do not try to do things on our own accord and try to make our own way and get off course and do the wrong thing. He said,

Proverbs 3:6-7 In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and depart from evil.

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