The Heart of Man Is Exceedingly Deceitful, A Sermon by Jonathan Edwards.

The Heart of Man Is Exceedingly Deceitful, A Sermon by Jonathan Edwards.

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

And ye have done worse than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the imagination of his evil heart, that they may not hearken unto me:
— Jeremiah 16:12

And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
— Genesis 6:5

What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?
— Job 15:14-16

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
— Psalm 51:5

Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
— Hebrews 3:12

God is here threatening the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem. In the verses immediately preceding, He had denounced a curse against him that trusts in man and makes flesh his arm, and declared such blessed who trust in the Lord. Lest any should flatter themselves with hopes of escaping the curse and obtaining the blessing through a wrong opinion of themselves—or an imagination that they, by their dissimulation and hypocrisy, had deceived God—God puts them in mind of the deceitfulness of the heart. He informs them that, however deceitful the heart is, and however difficult it is for men themselves or for other men that are conversant with them to know it, yet He cannot be deceived by it. As it follows in the next verse: "I, the Lord, search the heart, I try the reins, even to give to every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings."

There are two things about the heart in the words: its deceitfulness and its wickedness. The latter may be mentioned as that from which its deceitfulness arises. It is because the heart is so desperately wicked that it is so deceitful. Sin is a very deceitful thing; thus we read of "the deceitfulness of sin" (Hebrews 3:13). Or, the deceitfulness of the heart may be mentioned as part of its wickedness. Hypocrisy and wickedness both represent that which is very odious to God.

The deceitfulness of the heart is set forth by two expressions, both of them representing it as exceeding deceitful:

It is deceitful above all things.

It is set forth by the exceeding difficulty of knowing it.

Doctrine

What I now propose from these words is to show that the heart of man is exceeding deceitful.

The deceitfulness of the heart is twofold:

Its treacherousness and hypocrisy towards others.

Its being so full of deceit towards itself.

It is very deceitful in that it is exceeding prone to treacherousness and hypocrisy towards others, both towards God and towards men.

I. The Deceitfulness of the Heart Towards God

The deceitfulness of the heart towards God consists in:

Its being full of dissimulation with respect to what is now in the heart.

Its being most treacherous towards God as to pretenses and promises of what is future.

Indeed, there is no such thing as the heart’s being deceitful towards God as to any tendency to actually deceiving God, or any difficulty there is on God’s part to know the heart. God never was deceived with any heart or about anything that there is in the heart, nor is He put to any difficulty to discern what is in the heart. It is all open to the view of God. He perfectly sees and knows everything that is in it. Yet, there is a proneness in the heart to be doing what in it lies to deceive God. If God is not deceived, the cause of it is not on the part of the heart, because that has a disposition to deceive Him.

1. The Heart Is Full of Dissimulation and Hypocrisy Towards God

Although men are told that God knows everything and that nothing can be hid from Him, yet men are exceeding prone to be dissembling before God and to make pretenses to Him of that which is not. They make a show of this and that in their hearts which is not in them, and which is directly contrary to what is in them.

Men are very apt to dissemble in their prayers, and not only in their prayers, but even in the sight of God. They are very ready to make an appearance and pretense before God as though they were very sensible that they were great sinners, and that sin was a vile thing and a thing that deserved God’s wrath. They will confess before God, and would be taken as though they spoke from their hearts, that they are sinners, that they came sinful into the world, and that their hearts are full of sin, and that they have nothing that is good in them, and that the best that they can do is sinful—when they are not sensible of any such thing. They are not sensible that they have such hearts as they tell of.

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