Jeremiah 17:9 – The Surprising EKG of the Wicked
“The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?"
The third season of the Windsor drama The Crown as the Queen enters her mature years is typically darker. It takes on poignancy, however, when she, sans royal finery and pomp, goes to see the uncle who forsook the crown and shifted its burdens onto her as an unsuspecting young woman.
She would comfort and reconcile with a dying man, but he puts his energies elsewhere. In contrast to her simplicity of gesture, he insists on being fully decked out for the occasion, hiding his expiring vulnerability to last. His tone betrays that this is not out of respect for the sovereign holding the authority which could have been his but is a last attempt to show that he is in control of his fate and convinced of his own rightness.
What here might be family rivalry is in its extreme form of wickedness described in Jeremiah 17:9. For, the antecedent to the wicked heart the prophet describes there is a heart that departs from the Lord each time it seeks to be strengthened by the impressions humans make upon each other. Lacking an EKG in matters spiritual, let's rely on Jeremiah's picture of what such a posturing heart's health looks like. It's like a shrub in the desert, closed off to renewal when it comes.
This variety of wickedness against which Jeremiah 17:9 warns, then, may not be so much wallowing in filth, contented, as eking out existence in exile, presenting ourselves in unrepentant, invulnerable full dress to our rightful Sovereign when He, again, crosses that dread channel and our history of effrontery to present right relationship with Him as a persistent possibility. How DESPERATE, then, is this strain of wickedness? How much of our life, itself the gift of this King, will we expend in an unconvincing effort to fool Him that our past decisions have been the right ones?
Who can know it? Who can know that this performance is a sham, that the shrub in the desert onto which JD Greear in Gospel would picture us stapling fruit could ACTUALLY flourish? Who can know but our King from Whom we have been too long estranged? Who would understand our barrenness but our Gardener Who would, one more time, dig us up from the subsistence with which we have been satisfied, root us in Him that we would be fruitful by grace?
Measure not your heart's health by people's reactions! They are trained to polite indulgence. They may find in its exercise grounds to excuse themselves for the very same strain of wickedness. Rather, look unto the Word and its Author for the health of your heart, the obsolescence of its current vigor, and the possibility of newness found only in honesty before Him.
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?"
The third season of the Windsor drama The Crown as the Queen enters her mature years is typically darker. It takes on poignancy, however, when she, sans royal finery and pomp, goes to see the uncle who forsook the crown and shifted its burdens onto her as an unsuspecting young woman.
She would comfort and reconcile with a dying man, but he puts his energies elsewhere. In contrast to her simplicity of gesture, he insists on being fully decked out for the occasion, hiding his expiring vulnerability to last. His tone betrays that this is not out of respect for the sovereign holding the authority which could have been his but is a last attempt to show that he is in control of his fate and convinced of his own rightness.
What here might be family rivalry is in its extreme form of wickedness described in Jeremiah 17:9. For, the antecedent to the wicked heart the prophet describes there is a heart that departs from the Lord each time it seeks to be strengthened by the impressions humans make upon each other. Lacking an EKG in matters spiritual, let's rely on Jeremiah's picture of what such a posturing heart's health looks like. It's like a shrub in the desert, closed off to renewal when it comes.
This variety of wickedness against which Jeremiah 17:9 warns, then, may not be so much wallowing in filth, contented, as eking out existence in exile, presenting ourselves in unrepentant, invulnerable full dress to our rightful Sovereign when He, again, crosses that dread channel and our history of effrontery to present right relationship with Him as a persistent possibility. How DESPERATE, then, is this strain of wickedness? How much of our life, itself the gift of this King, will we expend in an unconvincing effort to fool Him that our past decisions have been the right ones?
Who can know it? Who can know that this performance is a sham, that the shrub in the desert onto which JD Greear in Gospel would picture us stapling fruit could ACTUALLY flourish? Who can know but our King from Whom we have been too long estranged? Who would understand our barrenness but our Gardener Who would, one more time, dig us up from the subsistence with which we have been satisfied, root us in Him that we would be fruitful by grace?
Measure not your heart's health by people's reactions! They are trained to polite indulgence. They may find in its exercise grounds to excuse themselves for the very same strain of wickedness. Rather, look unto the Word and its Author for the health of your heart, the obsolescence of its current vigor, and the possibility of newness found only in honesty before Him.
It is sometimes unreal that we allow ourselves to be carried away, not only by our own hearts, but also by the whimsical and deceitful hearts of others. If Christ is our prize, then he must also be our aim, our metric for spiritual progress. Each step along the way, we compare with Christ, uncover our own wickedness, and admit our shrubbery. I find that it requires me to preach to myself with the same vigor that I would perhaps speak to another heart that I deem 'wicked' in my own self-righteousness.
ReplyDelete"Him we proclaim, warning everyone, and teaching everyone with all wisdom in order that we might present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me." Col. 1:28-29