Okay, I want to turn your attention
to Jeremiah chapter 17, the passage that we read earlier on this
morning. As human beings, we live in bodies. This is very self-evident. And living in bodies, we grow
old and, you know, it doesn't take very long before you start
to feel the infirmity of advancing age in all sorts of way. We live
in bodies which are gradually growing old and the time will
come, sooner or later, when we will die. But what about your
soul? What about the soul? You have
a soul which the scriptures say, and the scriptures is what has
come down from heaven. Christ the God-man came, he said
he's the one who came down from heaven. He brought God's word.
God who at sundry times and in diverse manners spoke to the
fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us
by his son. This is his word and his word
says you have an immortal soul. You may have a dying body. You
may have a body that will die and we hear of people dying every
day. It's almost a daily item in the news that some well-known
person has died. But your soul is immortal according
to God's word. And your soul is made in God's
image. And your soul is accountable
to God. And your soul is precious. What value do you, what value
do men and women around us and children, what value do you put
on your soul? Matthew's Gospel chapter 16 and
verse 26 we read this, for what is a man profited if he shall
gain the whole world? and lose his soul. You know you
can gain, everybody's seeking immense riches, but Jesus said,
what is a man profited? What gain is all of that worldliness
to a person if he shall gain the whole world and yet lose
his soul? Because his soul is immortal,
his soul is precious, his soul is accountable to God. It goes
on to say, and what shall a man give? in exchange for his soul. What shall a man give in exchange?
You know, this thing, this commodity, the soul that we have, that each
of us has, this immortal soul, it's precious. What value is
it? What would you give in exchange
for your soul? You can commit suicide with the
body, as many do, very sadly. People commit suicide, they don't
want to go on living, they find the pressures too great, and
so they kill their body, they die. But not the soul. The soul
goes on. What lies in store for it in
eternity? What's the future after death?
What lies in store in eternity for the soul? The Bible makes
clear, either eternal bliss, indescribable bliss, eternal
bliss or eternal torment, nothing in between, one or the other.
Eternal bliss in the presence of God, delight and just indescribable
pleasure forevermore or eternal torment. Ezekiel 18, a couple
of times, tells us, the soul that sinneth, it shall die. And that doesn't mean it shall
cease to exist as so many would like to believe. They want to
believe, oh when it's over that's it, the lights just go out and
I don't exist anymore. No, the scriptures talk about
dying the second death. Suffering eternal condemnation.
Suffering eternal separation from God. This is a dreadful
situation. And Jeremiah chapter 17 lays
bare the issue, the stark contrast between the blessing and the
curse of God and the only way of salvation. It's a stark contrast. Now, having said that there are
two outcomes, there's only one situation now, and that's the
universal state in which we all are by nature, by birth, by descent
from Adam. Let's be clear, This universal
state, does it apply to everyone that ever lived, including you
and me? Or can I opt out of this religion
thing? So many people seem to think,
they think they can opt out, but look at verse 9 of chapter
17. The heart, and he means every heart, the heart of man is deceitful
above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Which
of us can know how bad it truly is? Which of us can? He goes
on to say, I, the Lord, search the heart. God knows, but which
of us truly knows the deceitful, wicked state of the human heart
by nature? And it applies to everyone, for
Romans 3 verse 10 tells us there is none righteous No, not one. None. There was only ever one,
and that was the Lord Jesus Christ. The patriarchs of the Scriptures
were all sinners. They all were that great cloud
of witnesses that lived in the knowledge of the salvation that
is in Jesus Christ. But they were sinners. There
is none righteous, no, not one. All have sinned, verse 23 of
Romans 3 says. All have sinned and fall short. That's what to sin is, it's to
fall short. It's a term from archery, where
the archer fires the arrow, as they'll be doing in the Olympic
Games in a week or so. They fire the arrow. And if the
arrow falls short of the target, it is said to be sinning. We
fall short of the target. All have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God. And your heart and my heart now,
the scripture says, your heart and mine in the flesh now is
deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Are you aware
of it? Am I really aware of it? of how
wicked, desperately wicked, my fleshly heart is. How deceitful
my fleshly heart is. And knowing an awareness of it,
a feeling of it, a consciousness of it, and of its dreadful malady,
the dreadful sickness, the dreadful illness that is pictured in the
Scriptures so often by that disease of leprosy, knowing the sickness
and the evil of it, do you seek a remedy for it? Have you sought
a remedy for it? Have you applied that remedy,
having found it in the Word of God? In what ways? You might say, I don't feel that
my heart is particularly deceitful and particularly wicked. I don't
know who this is talking about. I can think of some people to
whom you might apply it, but not me or my friends or my family.
No, they're all right. My mother was good. My grandfather
was basically a very good person. No, that doesn't apply to any
of them. The scripture says all. The scripture says there is none
righteous, no not one. In what sort of ways is your
heart and mine deceitful and desperately wicked? Here are
some, there's probably more. Blindness, the blindness of your
heart. You say you can't help being
blind? This is deliberate, willful blindness. The natural heart
of man is deliberately, willfully blind to the truth of God. Deliberately,
you know, you see the vision like I'm going to come on to
say about deafness, you know, the person that sticks his finger
in his ears and goes, la la la, I don't want to hear what you're
saying. That's what we're like by nature, before the declaration
of God, the truth of God, the goodness of God, the holiness
of God, the purity of God, His sovereignty, His kingship, His
rightful kingship, His justice. His holiness, His abhorrence
of sin, for He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. And
the human heart, by nature, is blind, shuts its eyes willfully,
deliberately, deceitfully. Not only is it deceiving of others,
the human heart, it's deceiving of itself, shuts its eyes to
the truth of God, and death to His Word. Preaching comes, and
they hear His Word. People like you and me hear His
Word and shut our ears to it, and close it out, and won't listen
to it preached, and won't read it to see what it says, and won't
heed the admonitions of the Word of God. It's deceitful and desperately
wicked in ignoring You say, well, why doesn't God just leave me
alone to live my life the way I want? God is the God of the
universe. He's sovereign over all things.
This is not an opt-out situation. Everybody, everybody, is created
by God, is given life by God, and is accountable to God. And
there is no opt-out clause at all. The heart is deceitful and
desperately wicked in its hardness. The hardness of the heart. As
I said, it's a willful denial of God. It's a willful, stubborn,
hard refusal to listen to him. An evil heart of unbelief. Coldness towards God. He's the
rightful king of you and me, of our souls, of our hearts.
He's the rightful king. and we're hard-hearted towards
him. We're stubborn in our rejection
of him, naturally. And you just look around the
world, you look in the media, you look at what is said publicly. There is just godlessness all
around, and it's the stubborn, hard, human heart. There's the
pride and worldly-mindedness of the human heart is deceitful. How deceiving it is, and how
desperately wicked it is. Self-centeredness, putting me
first in everything. Sinful thoughts, what John in
his epistle calls the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life. And all of these things which
start in the heart lead to the outworking of sinful acts. things
that we commit, things that we do. The human heart, all of us,
a universal state, is evil. It's deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked. And which one of us really knows
the depths of that wickedness, and the depths of that situation
before God? You know it's a blessed thing
when we come to see it, because it's God that's showing us it.
It's God that's showing us what we truly are like. He is the
judge of the universe. He is the judge of all things.
He cannot abide sin. Look at verse 10. I, the Lord,
search the heart. I try the reins, even to give
every man according to his ways. He searches you inside out, is
how we might put that. I try the reins to give every
man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings. He
searches the heart. He tries the reins. He judges
and repays justly, is how that might be put. How would it be
for you and for me? There's no soul annihilation. None at all. It says it's appointed
to man, you know it well, Hebrews 9, 27, it's appointed to man
to die once. And after this, the judgment.
We read in 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 10, we must all stand before
the judgment seat of Christ and receive the things done in the
body. We must all stand there in that day. There's no soul
annihilation. The scriptures are talking clearly
about after the body has died, the soul is accountable for its
sin and will be judged for its sin by the God of the universe
who is inherently holy and sinless and pure and cannot abide sin. Do you see it? Do you see the
sick state of sin, the malady, the illness, the sickness that
you're in by nature? Do you know, saints of old, and
in these days, praise God, but saints of old write that which
isn't written or testified by many of the overwhelming conviction
of sin in their hearts. You read some of those that were
living a couple of hundred years ago and had a walk with God which
is much closer than most of us aspire to. they knew him, they
steeped themselves in his word. And what did they know? Not how
much better they were getting by their own sanctification.
What they knew was that, like Paul said, I am the chief of
sinners. They knew this vile disease in the eyes of God, the
just condemnation of God for their sin. This is what they
know, they knew. What do you know? Do you know
these things? And verse 11, at the end of it,
at his end, He shall be a fool, this one, just like the partridge
sitting on the eggs and not getting anything as a result of them,
thinking that she's got everything she needs and then not getting
anything. So he that getteth riches, and not by right, who
follows the pursuits of his deceitful wicked heart, shall leave them
in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool. Shall
be a fool in the judgment, not a light thing. This isn't a fool
in a light way. This is talking about eternal
shame and loss and guilt when justice is seen to be done, because
the justice of God must be done and will be seen to be done.
And all, those who fall under its condemnation, will have no
other testimony than this, that God is just, and God is right,
and God is holy in everything that He has done. What about
your soul and mine? Will it be well with it in the
judgment and in eternity? You see, in this chapter we have
opposite outcomes determined. Look back at verses five to eight. Thus saith the Lord, Cursed,
just pause and think. Thus saith the Lord, thus saith
the God who is sovereign over everything. Cursed be the man
that trusts in man. and maketh flesh his arm, trusts
in the flesh, trusts in what man can do, and whose heart departs
from the Lord, whose sinful, deceitful, desperately wicked
heart departs from the Lord and goes after the things of the
flesh, the things he can see, the things he can grab, the riches
he can get, the pleasures he can have, He shall be like the
heath in the desert, speaking of a barren place, and shall
not see when good cometh, won't benefit from it, won't benefit
from the blessings of eternity, but shall inhabit the parched
places in the wilderness in a salt land and not inhabited. That's
not a place that's good for living things to be. But look at the
opposite, verse seven. Blessed is the man, blessed ought
to be blessed of God. The Psalms again and again, blessed
is the man that God blesses. To be blessed of God is to be
blessed indeed. What shall a man be profited
if he gain the whole world and lose his soul? But, oh, how shall
he be profited if he is blessed of God? Blessed is the man that
trusts in the Lord and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall
be, and this is like Psalm 1, isn't it? Do you remember the
first Psalm? He shall be as a tree planted by the waters, by the
river, that spreads out her roots by the river, and shall not see
when heat cometh. So there's a drought and a tempest
of extreme heat coming that would wither the plants, and those
that are away from the river will wither and die because they
won't have water, but this one is by this endless supply of
refreshing water. And this is God and his spirit.
This is what he gives to those who trust him. This endless supply
is pictured elsewhere in scripture as olive trees and the olive
oil, the refreshing olive oil lighting the land. He shall not
see when he cometh, but a leaf shall be green, and shall not
be careful in the year of drought, shall not be worried in the year
of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. Even in
the year of drought, blessed is the man that trusteth in the
Lord. These are stark opposites. Cursing
of God and blessing of God. What is it that marks the difference
between the two? We all start in this universal
state of a heart deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,
but there are these two outcomes. What is it that marks the difference?
Notice I said marks, I didn't say makes. What is it that marks
the difference? Did you notice it's where the
trust is placed? Verse five. Cursed be the man
that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart
departeth from the Lord. Verse seven. Blessed is the man
that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. Blessed
is that man. The man who trusts in man and
in flesh, with his heart departing from the Lord, is fruitless,
dead, and eternally tormented. All who seek their good and put
their trust in fleshly, worldly utopia, the thing that we see
people trying to create all around us, and it's a utopia you'll
note without God. They'll be tormented. They'll
be cursed in the end. They are in a cursed situation.
Because, verse 13, they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain
of living waters. This is what in chapter 2 of
Jeremiah, and verse 13, God says this is the accusation He brings
against those who were His nominal people, that they have forsaken
Him, the fountain of living waters, Jesus said, on that great day
of the feast, he cried out, ho, everyone that thirsts, let him
come to me. Echoing Isaiah, Isaiah 55, ho,
everyone that thirsteth. He says he's the fountain of
living waters, of living spiritual waters. And yet, those that claimed
to be his people had forsaken the Lord. And what had they done
for water? They'd hewn out, they'd carved
out for themselves out of a big block of stone like farmers used
to do. They'd get a huge block of stone
and they would carve out of it a trough for the animals to drink
out of, a cistern where the animals could drink. And it says, we
used to sing that hymn, didn't we? I tried the broken cisterns,
Lord, but are their waters failed? And even as I stooped to drink,
they mocked me as I wailed. Those broken cisterns of what
we try to do to replace the fountain of living waters and the cursing
that results from it. Oh, how deceitful, how desperately
wicked. is the heart of man, yours and
my heart by nature. But he that trusteth in the Lord,
he that is brought to trust in the Lord, God is his hope, and
he's nourished, and he's watered, and is immune from drought, in
all situations, whatever it might be, whether it might be in prosperity,
or whether it might be in hardship, the soul is watered. Those, in
times past, the martyrs have testified that even in the utmost
deprivation, in the prison cell, or tied to the stake for the
burning for their faith, in those situations they've been watered
with eternal blessing, with water that's from on high, that the
world knows nothing about. Where will you be? Where will
I be? Among the cursed of God? are
those blessed by God. It's such a stark contrast. Will
you gain the whole world now, if you possibly could, and of
course you can't, and lose your soul for all eternity? Will you
sell your birthright for a mess of pottage, just a plate of stew,
as did profane Esau? You know, in that moment when
he was hungry, he sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. That's
such a picture of those who reject salvation. for the sake of that
which their flesh wants, desires, must have here and now. Or will
you seek the Lord today while He may be found, if you haven't
already? Will you seek His blessing and
salvation and healing for your sinful soul? It's He that heals,
it's He that saves. Psalm 49 verses 7 and 8 address
the issue of how is a man going to be saved, that question of
Job. How can a man be just with God? And Psalm 49 puts it like
this, they that trust in their wealth and boast themselves in
the multitude of their riches, however rich they are, none of
them can by any means redeem his brother. None of them can
by any means pay the ransom price of that precious soul. What will
you give in exchange for your soul? Not the richest man in
the world can pay the price by any means to redeem his brother,
nor give to God a ransom for him. There's no point turning
anywhere else, none. For the redemption of their soul
is precious, and it ceaseth forever. What does that mean? It's not
language we would use today. The redemption of their soul
is precious, and it ceaseth forever. I'll put it this way. It's uniquely
priceless. It's uniquely priceless. It cannot
be paid by any substitute. There is nothing else that will
ever be worked that can pay that ransom price for the soul of
a sinner to save us in the day of judgment. There's only one
that is precious, that which is the precious blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ. But trusting in the Lord is blessing. They that trust in the Lord are
blessed. Trusting in the Lord, there is a confident plea. Look
at it there, it's verse 14. Those who trust in the Lord,
he has a confident plea. This is the heart that knows
it is deceitful above all things, that feels the desperate wickedness
of itself, that feels the stubborn hardness of itself towards the
things of God. And this heart cries, heal me,
O Lord, And I shall be healed. If you heal me, O Lord, I shall
be healed. Not if anybody else, but if you
heal me, O Lord, I shall be healed. Save me. If you save me, O Lord,
from the state of my heart, I shall be saved. For you are my praise. You see, having an awareness,
and I don't just mean a fleeting awareness, but I mean an absolutely
crushing knowledge of the malady of sin. The leper, before the
days of modern medical treatments which can deal with the bacterium
that causes it, but in days before that, the malady of leprosy,
the illness of leprosy, if you had that, it was such a sentence
of death in your flesh. It was such an end of all things. It was the end of society for
you. It was the end of all intercommunication with other people. It was isolation. It was a curse. the awareness
of sin. In that same way if you have
that feeling and knowledge of sin, that feeling of sinfulness,
that feeling of the justice of God in condemning me rightly,
and a certain knowledge that there's no remedy in yourself,
there's no remedy in your fellow men, and you're given a God-given
sight because he gives it, of the God-given remedy in the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus, then cry to God that it might be for
me. This is the plea. Save me, O
Lord, and I shall be saved. Heal me, and I shall be healed. In the miracles in the Gospels
as Jesus went about healing. He didn't go around just being
a doctor before the days of antibiotics. That wasn't his purpose. It was
to show that he is the Lord, our healer, the one who heals
us of this condition of heart deceitfulness and desperate wickedness
and of condemnation under the curse of God. That's why he went
around healing, to show that he is the one who is capable.
Where nothing else could heal, where that man who was born blind,
he created eyes for him. where Lazarus went into the tomb
and died. And he said, it's for the glory
of God. And he cried, Lazarus, come forth, four days dead. And
he showed who he was, that he is the one that can heal. There
was the woman with the issue of blood. If only I can touch
his garment, I shall be made whole. The Syrophoenician woman,
bless me. No, I only came for the lost
sheep of the house of Israel. It's not right to give the children's
food to the dogs, said Jesus, sounding so harsh. But yet she
said, because our heart was touched with grace, ah, but even the
little dogs can eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table.
If you do it, then it will be food for me. Just these crumbs
will be food for me from your table. They came and they said,
heal me, Lord. If you heal me, I shall be made
whole. They tried all the doctors. They
tried all the different places. They'd waited by the pool for
years and years and no man had ever been there. Do you want
to be made whole? Yes, Lord, heal me and I shall
be made whole. Don't even bother to come, said
the Roman centurion. I know that if you give the word,
my son will live. If you just give the word, this
is confidence, heal me and I shall be healed. If you Lord condescend
to heal me, because you are sovereign over all things, then I surely
shall be healed of this soul sickness of sin. What's he saying? What does the sinner plead in
that moment? If you heal me Lord, I shall
be healed. If you Lord, have borne my sin
of this deceitful heart, this desperately wicked heart. If
you have taken it and borne it in your own body on the tree,
if you who knew no sin have made my sin your sin and borne responsibility
for it and taken the guilt of it and suffered the just wrath
of God for that sin, in my place, as my substitute, as my surety. If you've paid that ransom price
which is so precious it ceaseth forever, the redemption of their
soul is ceaseless, but your precious blood, if you've paid for my
sin, if you've paid for me, then you've healed me indeed. Your
righteousness is now my righteousness, because you who knew no sin were
made sin for me, that I, might not just be credited with righteousness
you've earned, but I might be made the very righteousness of
God in the Lord Jesus Christ. You've healed me. If you heal
me, Lord, I shall be made whole. I shall be healed. This sin disease
that would curse me in the judgment, that I would stand quaking, fearing,
standing before the judgment seat of Christ, that, that sin
is taken away. If you heal me, I shall be healed. If you save me from the condemnation,
the eternal torment that is my just dessert, You've saved me
from this. You've saved me from the guilt
of sin. How has God, the Lord, saved
his people from the guilt of sin? That guilt of sin which
would say the judgment day is coming and I've got this weight
and this burden on my back like pilgrim in pilgrim's progress.
How will I stand in that day? I cannot get rid of this. There
is no one can take it off me. It's a price too great. My soul
is precious. The redemption of it is precious.
It ceaseth forever. But by looking to Him, by looking
to His precious blood, the blood of Christ my substitute, it sprinkles
my conscience and it takes away the guilt of sin. Why? Because
I know He's borne it away. My sin, oh the bliss of this
glorious thought, my sin not in part but the whole. Do you
know that hymn spoke so powerfully to me, probably about 25 years
ago now I guess it was, something like that. because I always used
to think that Jesus had forgiven some sins, but not everything.
And then that hymn spoke to me, my sin of the bliss of this glorious
thought, my sin not in part, but the whole, is nailed to his
cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, he is my praise. Thou art my praise. I bear it
no more. Praise the Lord, O my soul. He
saved me from the filth of sin. If you're conscious of your sin,
of what you are, you will feel it like defilement. You'll feel
it like you've just fallen in a pigsty mire. of dirt and dung
and corruption. And you feel the sense of it,
but he cleanses us, he saves us from the filth of sin by the
washing of regeneration, by his word, by the new man that he
puts inside, by the new birth. He saves us from the power of
sin. The power of sin that so has an influence on us as long
as we're in this flesh, till the moment we die, constantly.
This flesh and its evil heart is subject to the power of sin,
but he saves from the power of sin. He says, look unto me. Look
unto me. What should I do to be saved?
What does he say in Isaiah 45? Look unto me, all ye ends of
the earth, and be ye saved. What? Look! Look! The salvation in a look! Look
unto me! Look at that brazen serpent lifted
high in the wilderness, dying of snakebites. Look unto me.
Look unto me. What power there is in a look.
We saw this a couple of weeks ago. In a look at the crucified
one. It pours extinguishing water
on the fires of fleshly lust that would burn within us the
power of sin, but a look to him. Not the law, a look to Him pours
extinguishing water on the fires of fleshly, sinful lust. Those
who go to the law to contain their sin, to restrain their
sin, to make their churches behave well. No, the flesh is too powerful,
the sin is too powerful, but a look to Christ, look to Him. How are we to run the race that
is set before us? Hebrews 12, verses 1 and 2, looking
unto Jesus. He saves us, and this is it. He saves us from the presence
of sin in the judgment. How will you stand on that day?
Before the throne, the judgment throne of Christ, how will you
stand? He removes the presence of sin.
He saves us from the presence of sin. He's taken it away. He says again and again in the
Scriptures for his people, he has taken it away as far as the
east is from the west. He says in Numbers 21 by Balaam,
he says, he looked for iniquity in Jacob, the one he saved. Do
you know what? He found none. He didn't find
any iniquity in Jacob. And so it will be for the heart
that trusts in the Lord. He's able, Hebrews 7.25, to save
to the uttermost them that come to God by him. The blessing that
results from this. Blessed is the man that trusts
in the Lord. Heal me, O Lord, and I shall
be healed. Save me, and I shall be saved.
Is this your experience? Is this your soul's confidence? Is the Lord your trust and hope?
If he is, you'll cry out with Jeremiah here, save me and I
shall be saved for thou art my praise. True praise, true praise
to God, true worship of God. You know they say, oh we must
go to a cathedral to worship God. We couldn't possibly come
to a little room in a village hall that's got no trappings
of religion. Tell you, that's not where you worship God, you
worship God in the heart. From a heart that knows this,
save me and I shall be saved. You, Lord, are my praise.