05 What is Wrong With Me? (Jeremiah 17:1-11)

You're listening to Wednesday in the Word: What the Bible means and how we know. I'm Krisan Marotta. Today we'll be talking about Jeremiah 17, verses 1 through 11. For notes and study questions related to this talk, please visit our website. You can find them at wednesdayintheword.com slash Jeremiah 5. Glad to have you along. Well, what do you do when you sin repeatedly? So now I'm not talking about, you know, the kind of the daily failures and frustrations, but when you see something about yourself, maybe it's a quick temper or a sarcastic tongue or a pattern of thoughtlessness or selfishness, and you realize that that is a trait in you, you decide to change it and it doesn't work. You just keep doing it. So you resolve maybe to be a better wife or a better friend or a better student, and you're determined, you read books and you pray and you memorize verses and you you get people to hold you accountable and eventually you fail. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. What do you do? So some of you may be surprised that that type of failure would describe anyone at our church, but I would claim that it in fact describes us all. It's just most of us don't like to admit it. So let's say you try, you resolve to try harder, you pray more, you get your accountability, and then anger gets the best of you, or you you know that sarcastic remark just slips out because it's just too delicious or something, and you take your husband for granted or whatever. What's going up with that? Why would we keep sinning even when we don't want to sin? That's the question we're gonna answer today. So, what's wrong with me? Why would I keep doing that? And we're gonna look at Jeremiah 17, verses 1 through 10. Now you may be wondering why we jumped all the way from chapter 7 last week up to 17 this week. Just to remind you, the book's not in chronological order. There are some general divisions, it's arranged more thematically. Um different themes are repeated throughout the book, they show up in different places. So rather than go through the book chapter by chapter, I decided to focus on passages that hit major themes. So we're just skipping ahead to the next theme I wanted to hit. So just to review, this hopefully is old hat for you by now, but just remember the historical setting where we are in biblical history. Jeremiah is a prophet to the southern kingdom. So after the death of Solomon and uh, well, David and then Solomon, Israel went into civil war and the kingdom split, and there were ten tribes we called Israel that were the northern kingdom, and two tribes we called Judah, who's a southern kingdom. And at this point in history, the northern tribes have been conquered by Assyria and taken into exile. Judah is struggling on alone, and Jeremiah is called by God to warn them that Babylon is coming, is going to conquer them, and they too will be taken into exile, but the exile will end, they will be restored. So last week we looked at the question, what's wrong with religion? This week we're going to look at Jeremiah 17 and ask the question, what's wrong with me? Why would I keep sinning? And that's the short answer is we're sinful. Now, most any child in Sunday school would answer that correctly. You say, What's my basic problem? And they could say, Sin, I'm sinful, but hopefully by the end of the day you'll have a more theological, richer understanding of what that means. But this passage doesn't give us a theological or technical definition. It doesn't argue, you know, logically for why we're sinful. Instead, we have three metaphors or three pictures that describe us what it means to be sinful. And we're going to look at each of those, but before we do, I want to give you the theological concept of what we're talking about, because it's always good to know those things, and I like to then you can drop them, you know, in conversation. You can impress your friends. So we're talking about total depravity, what theologians call total depravity. You may recognize that as the T in tulip, which is the acrostic for the five points of Calvinism. The T stands for total depravity. So what do we mean by that? Total depravity refers to the effect of sin, but it does not mean, this is kind of the popular view, it does not mean that we are as wicked as we can be. So it doesn't mean that we have gone as far off the deep end as we can possibly go, such that if you could find someone who has an ounce of kindness, then it would disprove total depravity. So let's say Adolf Hitler personifies the worst of mankind, and we we could prove that even he loved his mother or he was kind to his cat, that wouldn't negate total depravity. Sinful people do perform some asp actions that have goodness, kindness, and virtue in them. So by total depravity, what it's not that you're as sinful as you can be, rather, it's what we call radical corruption. It's the idea that sin affects your entire being. So it cor it corrupts and permeates every single solitary aspect: your heart, your mind, your soul, your personality, your choices, your thoughts, your words, your actions, everything. There's no little corner or piece of being that is uncorrupted by sin. So it's radical in the sense of complete or total in the sense of every inch and every last fiber. Such that if I look inside myself to try to find something free from sin, I'm not gonna find it. Okay, this would be in contrast to the Greek idea that our souls are good and our physical body is evil and the two are at war with each other. You've probably heard that. That gets taught uh in a lot of modern philosophies that the physical is corrupt, the soul, however, is perfect, and and then what God does is is redeem the physical, or you have to seek the soul in terms of and deny the physical and all those kind of contradictory ideas. So total depravity says that's even your soul is corrupt too, everything is corrupt. It also contradicts the notion that mankind is basically good, but we're just a little broken or flawed, like we have some divine spark left inside us that just needs to be awakened, and if we can be enlightened enough to find that divine spark, we can overcome sin. Total depravity would say there is no divine spark left within us. There is no piece of us, no little corner of our mind or piece of your will or your soul that is neutral or unaffected by sin. So all of us through and through, inside and out, body, soul, spirit, mind, heart, everything are sinful. Now, where does the Bible teach that? I would say over and over and over, lots of scriptures, uh, including the one we're gonna look at today. But probably the clearest example is Romans 3, 9 through 18. And in this passage, he is quoting several Old Testament scriptures. So I'm just gonna read you 9 through 12. Paul is writing and he says, What then? Are we better than they? Not at all, for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks all are under sin, as it is written, there is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God, all have turned aside, together they have become useless. There is none who does good, there is not even one. So you notice over and over again he's saying, Not even one, no one. Ephesians 2, 1 through 10, I think, is another good example you may be familiar with. And then here in Jeremiah 17, I think we see it again because he's going to give us these three images which answer the question, what's wrong with us? Each of these metaphors has to do with the heart, and true, he was speaking specifically to the people of Judah, describing the condition of their hearts, but based on other scriptures, I think we can just can logically conclude our hearts are described as well because this is the condition of all mankind. This is everywhere. Now, the other thing we need to know before we jump in is the Old Testament metaphor of heart is different than what we think today. Today we tend to talk about your head versus your heart, and we think of our head as our intellectual center, and our heart is our emotional center. But in Jewish thought, they didn't make that distinction. For them, the heart referred to your entire internal life. So what we might say as the core of our beings, so intellectual, emotional, spiritual, personality, all of that combined was your heart. There was no intellectual-emotional distinction. And that's true throughout the Old Testament. When you see them talking about your heart, they're talking about that thing that makes you you, that thing that makes you who you are, every your entire internal life, your intellect, your will, your emotions, your personality, your spirit, your soul, all of that. Okay, so let's jump in with the first metaphor then. In Jeremiah 17, we're going to look first at verses 1 through 4. The sin of Judah is written down with an iron stylus, with a diamond point, it is engraved upon the tablet of their heart and on the horns of their altars. As they remember their children, so they remember their altars and their ashram by green trees on high hills. O mountain of mine in the countryside, I will give over your wealth and all the treasures for booty, your high places for sin throughout your borders, and you will, even of yourselves, let go of your inheritance that I gave you, and I will make you serve your enemies in a land which you do not know, for which for you have kindled the fire in my anger which will burn forever. Now these verses start out abruptly. In fact, the he in Hebrew the very first word is sin. And the passage starts by saying that Judah's sin is engraved on their heart with an iron tool, and then he repeats that, engraved with a diamond point on a stone tablet. So that's a pretty powerful picture. And the first thing that comes to our mind is hardness. This is this stone tablet that is, they have permanently etched into the stone sin. Their hearts are described as as hard and impenetrable, such that the only thing that leaves an impression is this very hard, very sharp instrument of iron with a diamond point. Now, iron was not all that easy to come by in Judah in Jeremiah's time. Usually Israel's enemies had an abundance of iron and they were not inclined to share. So it's unusual for him to pick an iron tool, but I think he picks it because it's just so hard. It's the idea that this is a hard, strong tool, and not just any tool, but one with a diamond point, which was probably the hardest stone they knew. So we're talking like Mount Rushmore here. This is a hard stone service permanently engraved. And the horns of the altar probably refers to their on the altars they have these projecting pieces which sat on the top of the altar and they were designed to hold the timber in place for a sacrifice. That's probably what he's talking about in verse 2. And the altars in the ashram are a reference to the Canaanite worship practices. They have these wooden poles that were rep that represented the goddess Asherah, and they were installed in the high places. So the first thing he tells us is our hearts are like this hard stone tablet, and what's written on them is sin, and the evidence of that is they are worshiping other gods in clear violation of the covenant, and they're going to face exile and the loss of their inheritance. So that may, I don't know about you, but that makes me think what's the other prominent stone tablet in Scripture that had something chiseled on it? Well, the Ten Commandments. They were stone tablets, they had something written on them. It was written by the finger of God, and it wasn't sin, it was righteousness and justice and the standard of righteousness described in the law. So here we have the opposite of that, these stone tablets, but instead of justice and righteousness, they have sin engraved on them. Okay, and what's God's response to that? He says, if you want to worship other gods, you can have them. All your possessions are gonna go to foreign nations who worship other gods. You yourselves will be given over to your enemies as slaves where you can worship all those gods you're trying to worship in my land. So his anger was kindled against them because of their breaking of the covenant, and their punishment is they're gonna get what they want. They're gonna worship other gods in other nations. God's gonna haul them off, make them slaves, where they will have to worship those gods. And that's of course what happened. So here's the first thing we learn about sin. Sin is the basic condition of our hearts, it is who and what we are at our core. Because it is engraved on our hearts the way a tablet of stone is engraved. It's just permanently there, apart from the grace of God. So when we used to teach second grade Sunday school to explain this concept, we told the kids they had broken choosers. So that thing inside them that made them choose, say, ice cream over broccoli, or blue over green, or whatever it was that made them choose one thing over another, was broken. And left to ourselves, our choosers would consistently, repeatedly choose sin and selfishness rather than God and righteousness. And no amount of effort or trying harder is going to fix it because my chooser is broken. What I need is a new chooser. So left to ourselves, apart from the grace of God and the work of his spirit, our hard hearts, as Jeremiah would say, or our broken choosers only get harder with time. I think that's what the Bible means when it says God hardens someone's heart, so God hardened Pharaoh's heart. It's not that he caused him to do something he would otherwise not do, it's that he let him do exactly what he wanted to do. He didn't intervene. He simply lets them go the direction they are naturally inclined to go, which is sin. So sin is the basic condition of who I am, such that I can be pictured as a hard stone tablet permanently engraved with sin. Okay, it just gets better. Let's look at the second image, verses five through eight. Thus says the Lord, cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord, for he will be like a bush in the desert, and will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitant. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose trust is in the Lord, for he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream, and will not fear when the heat comes, but its leaves will be green, and it will be anxious it will not be anxious in a year of drought, nor cease to yield fruit. So we have this verse five contrasted with verse seven. Verse five criticizes the man who trusts in mankind and contrasts him with the one who trusts in the Lord. And that phrase for trusting has a military sense. It has probably referring to a king who is making alliances and treaties with other nations rather than trusting in God. So, for instance, the king of Egypt or the king of Judah trying to make an alliance with the king of Egypt to seek protection and salvation rather than turning to God. So this person's heart's turned away from the Lord because it's the Lord who cares for his people. When things go badly, they aren't supposed to look to other people or their own resources, they're supposed to look for the Lord. And then verse 7 gives us the opposite: blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. So here's the second thing we learn about sin. Sin is relational, it has to do with your relationship to God. Are you turned toward him or are you turned away from him? Are you trusting in God or are you trusting something else? So trusting in someone or something else is sin. Now we tend to think of sin as rule breaking. We tend to think it's something I do. I'm crossing a line I ought not to cross, or I'm violating a rule I ought not to violate, or I'm not doing something I ought to do, and that breaking the rule is sin. Well, breaking a rule can be sin, but here we see that sin goes deeper than that. The motivation behind it matters. Who and what I'm trusting in. Am I doing what I'm doing out of trust and humble obedience to the Lord, or am I doing it out of selfishness or conceit or trying to look good? So sin may be have nothing to do with a rule at all. It has to do with our relationship to God. Let me give you an example. This is from my own life. When we were newlyweds, we had a very hard time getting pregnant. And after six years of trying, I finally got pregnant only to have a miscarriage at about 15 weeks. And that was a really crucial test of my faith because I became incredibly angry at God because he wasn't giving me what I wanted. So I broached the subject of adoption with my husband, and he refused to even consider it because he was very wise at the time, he knew that for me, adoption would be sin. Because my motivation was I want what I want in the way I want it, am I going to get it whether God gives it to me or not? Now, adopting a child is a wonderful thing. By adoption, I would have broken no rule, I would have violated no rule laws at all, but for me at that moment in my life, it would have been utterly sinful because I was doing it in defiance of God. I was trying to go around his will and his timing. And the sin was in my relationship to him, not in the rule, not in the action I was trying to take. Now, thankfully and very painfully, I had one of those dark nights of the soul where I had to come to the point where I could say, God, I'll follow you no matter what. I'll follow you if it means I never have children. I'll follow you no matter what you in, I'll trust in your timing no matter what that means. And it was only after that humbling that I did finally become pregnant and had our son. I did go on to have two children, thankfully, but I also had four miscarriages. But it was only after God taught me what he wanted me to learn, which was I have to want what he wants, not mine. So the point of all that is in my case, I wasn't breaking any rules at all, but my relationship was totally broken because there was this defiance and anger in my heart at the time. So sin is also relational. It has to do with what it, what's driving you, what's your motivation? Are you doing what you're doing out of glory to God and obedience to him? Are you doing it in defiance and anger? So the metaphor begins with whether your heart is turned toward God or not, and then it continues to give us the results of that. What happens, what real life is like when your heart is turned toward God or away from him. This is where we get our two plants. One's a bush and one is a the tree. So the bush lives in the desert, barely scraping by. It's in a parched, barren, salty land where people can't live. In contrast, you have a tree that's by a stream drinking from this flowing water. So not only is the land dry for the bush, the land is salty, which dries everything out around it as well, and as opposed to the tree whose leaves are always green and full of life. And you probably notice this imagery is very reminiscent of Psalm 1, but notice the difference in emphasis. Psalm 1 focuses on a tree planted by living waters that bears fruit. Here the emphasis is on surviving the drought. Who's going to survive when calamity comes? Who's going to be better off in that season of drought? So the bush in the desert won't even see the rain when it comes, it won't even recognize it. And yet the tree by the water has these deep roots that reach down and get life-giving water even during a season of drought. So that's this picture of life and death. The bush is barely alive, just managing to kind of eke out an existence and a dying land. And the tree is richly alive, vibrant and lush. And uh so even when calamity comes, has no reason to fear. So the bush is out of touch with life, focused on eking out that meager existence so that when I love that phrase, when prosperity comes along, he won't even recognize it. And the contrast couldn't be greater. So here's the third thing we learn about sin. Sin makes us blind, it makes us blind to real life. Because we're sinful, unless God opens our eyes, we don't even recognize true life and true blessing when it's offered to us. By contrast, faith gives us so much life that we don't even need to be anxious or scared when calamity walks right past us. And the the contrast, the reason for one or the other is are you trusting God or not? So when we fail. To trust the one who gives us life, we experience, we will not experience life, not here and not in eternity. That's what sin does. It chokes out life. But when we trust God, seeking a relationship with Him, we experience life fully, both today and in eternity. What struck me about that is our culture is trying to paint the opposite picture. How many times have you heard people say, oh, that religious stuff, that's boring? That, you know, being religious, that just chokes all the life out of people. You know, religious people are like these, they're always dressed in black and they never smile and they're like live in fear that somebody somewhere is experiencing joy. You know, we've got to go stamp that out. And that's kind of the constant message that if you want to really have life and go for the gusto, you need to live in total defiance to all those things the Bible says. And that's where you find real fun and excitement in life. But being religious, that's boring, that's dull, that's, you know, there's that's just like takes all the fun out of life. And yet Jeremiah is saying, that's exactly backwards. The world is lying. They have it completely backwards. The way you find life is by following God. It's not through pursuing sin, it's through pursuing God. It reminds me of those smoking commercials where you know you see the ones where there are everyone who's smoking is young and pretty and exciting and vibrant. And then you see these other commercials where the people who smoked are in like a wheelchair and they're on a ventilator and they're barely alive. And so the one advertiser is trying to say, This is what smoking does for you, and it shows only the beautiful people and the laughing people, and then the other advertisers saying, No, this is what smoking really does for you, and it shows you the kind of that sick and and the health consequences. And I think that's the image here he's trying to get. The world is telling you a picture that isn't true. The world is trying to claim that if you want life, if you want blessing, you have to go for the swinging, single, promiscuous, do whatever makes you feel good lifestyle. And Jeremiah is saying that's only going to lead to death. That's the bush in the dry, barren land. If you really want life and blessing, it is found by trusting God. Faith leads to being that lush, vibrant tree that flourishes and survives a season of drought. Okay, let's look at the last image in 9 through 11. The heart is more deceitful than all else, and is desperately sick. Who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds. As a partridge that hatches eggs which it has not laid, so is he who makes a fortune unjustly. In the midst of his days it will forsake him, and in the end, he will be a fool. Okay, I might as well tell you about verse 11. I'm not sure I understand what's going on with verse 11. So I'm going to give you my best guess at this point. But if you ask me in a year and I have a totally different answer, I'm going to I reserve that right. But this is my best guess right now. I think what he's saying is there's assurance for the person who trusts in the Lord. So unlike the person of verse 5, the person of verse 7 who trusts in the Lord has assurance. And then there's this further assurance from this proverb-like saying in verse 11. So the man who amasses riches unjustly is like a partridge who hatches an egg it did not lay. So the partridge would steal an egg from some other bird's nest and hatch it as if it were her own. But then when the egg hatched and the little bird said, You don't look like me. You know, you're a partridge and I'm what, a canary or something else, and they're not like their parent, they're going to fly off and abandon the deceiver, and the partridge will be shown to be a fool. So I think that's kind of the metaphor. The one who's seeking riches and trying to find life in riches and getting them unjustly, he's going to be shown to be a fool. That thing he's trusting in, that prosperity, is a delusion. It's not true wealth. He's trusting in riches that he thinks will save him, but in the end, he will be seen to be the fool because those riches will not save him. They will abandon him, like the baby bird would abandon the partridge. So I think that's what's going on. Best guess, but I'm not the context. It's just like, okay, why is that verse here? So that's my best guess. But at any rate, the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick. Who can understand it? This is the fourth thing we learn about sin. Sin is a disease and we are sick with it. So sin is a virus that lodges itself in our hearts, meaning our hearts being our entire internal life. It's something that infects us. Our hearts are hard. They're turned away from God, they're diseased. And again, the most noticeable thing about this is that this is a condition. This is not a behavior. This is not something we did or didn't do. It's not even an attitude in this metaphor. It's just who we are. It's a condition. So again, we see that sin is more than rule keeping and rule breaking. It's a disease, and we've got it. So our hearts are sinful. It's not that we're acting sinful at any particular moment. It's that we're acting sinful because we are sinful, because we're sick. So we talked about how we usually think of sin as a behavior, as having to do with a rule violation. And here we see it doesn't even have to be an action, it's just who we are. And apart from God's work in our lives, there's nothing we can do about it because we're sick. So once you realize, I think that sin is not primarily a behavior, it changes the way you think about everything. And it changes your efforts to get rid of sin. Because if sin isn't so much what I do but who I am, how am I going to get rid of it? If the it's like if I'm an extrovert, how do I make myself an introvert? Or if I'm an introvert, how do I make myself an extrovert? I can't change who I am. The disease metaphors teach us that we can't look inside ourselves and just try harder. We can't just try to keep the law better and better. We need a cure. We need a heart transplant or a savior. So verse 9 ends with this note the heart's incurable, but who can know it? And then verse 10 says, there is one who knows it. And I think the point of verse 10 is God knows our hearts. He knows how hard they are. He knows we're naturally turned away from him and that we're sick, and he is going to do something about it. There is hope for our heart, diseased, and rebellious hearts, and that is God intends to give us a heart transplant. Later in Jeremiah, he's going to give us the full picture of that. This is Jeremiah 31, 33. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, and on their heart I will write it, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. So, in contrast to that sin being engraved on the tablets of our heart, God's going to write his law there. Ezekiel echoes this. This is Ezekiel 36, 26. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit with you, within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. So that's the promise of the gospel. That God intends to do something about our hard hearts. It's not a result of us trying harder. It's God sending his son to die in our place, taking the punishment we deserve, so that God can redeem us, give us the new hearts. And we when we accept the sacrifice of Jesus, we metaphorically die along with him. Our sick, diseased hearts metaphorically stop beating because there's no way to repair them. We need a transplant, but then when we are metaphorically raised to new life, we are given new hearts where there is something written there other than sin. There is now the law of God in his spirit. Now think about that. If sin is simply behavior and we have this external understanding of the problem of sin, then this whole deal gets a lot easier. Because if sin's just what I'm doing or not doing, then what's the solution? Well, I I just stop doing it. That's not too hard. I'm organized. I can organize myself into a pattern that where I diligently, you know, do all the things I'm supposed to do, or maybe make a 12-step plan or something. I can change my behavior for a season. But I think Jeremiah's encouraging us to get past that superficial layer of outward behavior and saying, realize you have a deeper problem. You have a broken chooser or a diseased heart. The problem is we desire wrongly. We need a new heart. Those outward acts of sins are just a manifestation of what is on the inside. And what we really need, the real cure, is a new heart. So that focus on outward behavior, I think, is what lies behind the popular movement today, which is known as spiritual formation or emergent theology or spiritual disciplines, it goes by different name. But that's the idea. They make the claim that if I do these spiritual disciplines or I practice these spiritual practices, that by changing my outward behavior, I will change my heart. And they there are some that go so far that actually make that claim that the more you do these things, the more you change your heart. And it's based on the premise that doing certain things, usually daily prayer, fasting, confession, meditation, things like that, will change my heart to make me more like Christ. Well, I look at a passage like Jeremiah and I say, that's not what God says is the solution. There is no change for a stone tablet written with an iron tool. So in this regard, emergent theology is closer to the Roman Catholic view than the Reformed Protestant view. So in the Roman Catholic view, grace is seen as a thing God gives you, kind of like an energy drink. God gives you this thing and it mobilizes you so that you can go out and be more spiritually energetic. So I can go out and do more things and do the right things. And by doing them, I become more spiritually energetic and become the sort of person God will let into heaven. And often, traditional Roman Catholics, when they're talking about salvation by grace, that's what they mean. That grace is this thing that God gives me on a daily basis, kind of like an energy drink that makes me more spiritual. And emergent theologians are right there with you. They say these practices, those are like that spiritual energy drink that will make me more spiritual. What Protestants mean, traditionally, by salvation by grace alone, is that God looks at a sinner with compassion and by his grace sends his spirit to give him a new heart and declares that sinner to be righteous in Christ. That is a totally different understanding of grace. And that's one I think that causes true rejoicing. Because grace is not a thing that God gives me like an energy drink, it's a legal pardon that I am now judged to be free of guilt and forgiven. So under the Roman Catholic view, there's always this doubt have I been spiritually energetic enough to please God? How am I doing today? Well, maybe yesterday I was good, but today may not be so good. Where the reformer would say, Have I been spiritually energetic enough? The answer is no. Just guaranteed, the answer is no. I'm a failing sinner. I'm going to be a failing sinner. Left to myself, I can never be spiritually energetic enough, but my righteousness in Christ. And He is, to continue my metaphor, spiritually energetic enough. His righteousness is credited to me as if it were mine. And that's what makes me forgiven and acceptable. And that, I think, makes me want to cry out with joy and seek God. So changing our behavior without dealing with the heart just cultivates hypocrisy. It's like this self-righteous cloak we put on a cold, hard heart. And ultimately, that kind of theology strikes me as a cruel joke to force on people because to repeatedly attempt to change behavior against who I am without the work of the Spirit or God behind me, that's just going to lead to futility and failure. The problem with sin is not going to go away on its own. It only goes away by the grace of God and the work of his spirit because we need a heart transplant. As Paul says in Romans 7, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? So in Romans 7, he describes this very problem of I'm doing the thing that I don't want to do. I agree with God. This is what the law says. The law is good. That's the right thing to do. And I want to do it and I don't. And then I agree with the law that this thing is sin and I don't want to do that thing, and yet I'm doing it. And he describes this very problem of what do I, why do I keep doing the thing that I don't want to do? And he says, Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. There's the deliverance. It is in the gospel. I'd like to close this to wrap this all up by reading to you a piece of a sermon that was given by the English Puritan Richard Sibbs in about 1629. And it was called The Tender Heart. It's pretty famous. You can find it on Amazon, and it's still published even today. Imagine that. He wrote it in 1629, and you can still find it on Amazon today. But his sermon is on the text of 2 Chronicles 34, where it says that God answered King Josiah because his heart was tender. And I encourage you to read it. It's a good sermon, but I'm just going to read you some pieces of it. So he writes, It's not enough to have the heart broken. A pot may be broken in pieces and be good for nothing. And so may a heart be through terrors, sense of judgment, and still not be like wax, pliable. The heart must not be broken. No, sorry. The heart must be not broken, melting. Tenderness of heart is brought about by an understanding of the tenderness and love that is in Christ. A soft heart is made soft by the blood of Christ. Then he refers to this mythical metal that was called adamant, and the mythology said that adamant could only be melted when it was immersed in blood. And he says, Many say that adamant cannot be melted by fire, but only by blood. I cannot tell whether this be true or no. Well, it's a myth, it's not true. But he says, I cannot tell whether this be true or no, but I'm sure nothing will melt the hard heart of man but the blood of Christ, the passion of our blessed Savior. When a man considers the love that God has shown us and sending his Son, doing such great things as he has done, giving of Christ to satisfy his justice, setting us free from hell, Satan, death, the consideration of all this with the persuasion that we have an interest in this melts the heart and makes it become tender. And then he goes on to talk about how sin is coldness and hardness of heart, and that our hearts can be so hard we don't even recognize the weight of sin that's engraved there, very similar to what Jeremiah says. He talks about how our hearts may be dutable, dutiful, but not delighting in God. But the work of the gospel is to warm and soften our hearts. So he writes, And when things that are cold, we bring them to the fire to heat and melt, so we so bring we our cold hearts to the fire of the love of Christ. Consider we our sins against Christ and Christ's love toward us. Dwell on this. Think what great love Christ has showed up unto us, how little we deserved, and this will make our hearts to melt and be as pliable as wax before the sun. If thou wilt have this tender and melting heart, be always under the sunshine of the gospel. I like that phrase. I thought that was a great way of saying it. Be always under the sunshine of the gospel. That's what makes our hearts soft. Amen. Well, let me pray for us. Father, thank you that you did for us what we could never do for ourselves. That it's beyond us to repair our hearts' hearts or to give ourselves a heart transplant. But in your mercy and in your grace, you sent your son to die for us, such that you could make a new covenant, one where you write your law on our hearts in place of our sin. And we just pray that we would dwell on that fact, that we would grasp it fully, not as a theological fact or an answer we might put on a test, but as a reality of who you are and who we are and the great things you have done for us. In Jesus' name. Amen.