If you’ll turn with me in your Bibles, we’ll begin with Jeremiah chapter 17, beginning at verse 9.
“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart and test the mind to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
From there, we turn to the Gospel of John, chapter 2, beginning at verse 23.
“Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus, on his part, did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man; for he himself knew what was in man.”
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Lord, you search our hearts; you know our innermost beings. Do not judge us harshly, but forgive us according to your righteousness, the righteousness of faith in Christ. Conform our hearts so that they more closely match and align with Him. Continue to sanctify us and correct us, making us better image bearers. Help us to not be as we are but more like you. Through your Holy Spirit and through your word, we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Consider the Apostle John. He was once a simple fisherman from Galilee, became a disciple of Jesus, was commissioned by Christ as an apostle, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to carry the good news to the ends of the Earth and to make disciples of the nations. He was also strengthened to endure Roman tortures and exile, eventually becoming the last surviving apostle. He was given wisdom and understanding of the scriptures and was inspired to write this gospel in several letters to strengthen and encourage Christ’s Church and every Christian believer.
We cannot help but be impressed and amazed at the power of God when reading this gospel. For the Lord took such a simple and ordinary man and gave him the eloquence and gravitas to write the greatest story ever told—the story of the God who took on flesh, who added humanity to Himself and redeemed His chosen people in love, who forgives our sin through faith in Him, and who will raise us up in the last days, bringing us to Himself to dwell with Him, love Him, worship Him, and enjoy Him forever.
Meditating on the human source of these words reminds us that the Lord can and will also use us in extraordinary and amazing ways, even though we are of no account and have no value in ourselves apart from the great value that God alone ascribes to us.
But John’s words alone do not persuade us of the truth; it is God’s Holy Spirit who persuades us when He regenerates our hearts. But that does not mean that his words or his arguments have no merit because they do. They are a means by which the truth and revelation of Jesus Christ are communicated to us. His words are reasoned and based in fact, conveying the wisdom and word of God.
John, in the first chapter of his gospel, alleges that Jesus is the Eternal God-man, the Logos who is Theos and is Andros, alleging through the mouth of John the Baptist that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world—an atoning sacrifice of propitiation. He also alleges that Jesus’s disciples believed Him to be the one of whom Moses and the law and the prophets wrote, the Messiah and the true King of Israel.
Across the second chapter of the Gospel, John presents a case to prove these allegations, offering the evidence of three signs demonstrating that Jesus is the Lord God Almighty. At the end of this second chapter, John concludes his cases and then begins to transition us into the teaching ministry of Jesus.
Now, among the four gospels, John’s is unique in many ways, but the greatest difference is the fact that he wrote it for believers to encourage and strengthen us with the Holy Spirit’s comfort, giving us a deeper understanding of Jesus’s teaching beyond the revelation of plain facts and stories about Jesus Christ. The three synoptic gospels were written for people who did not believe yet or for those who were recently converted to faith in Jesus’s name. They assume that their reader or hearer knows very little to nothing about Jesus, His person and work, and assumes that they know little concerning the Hebrew scriptures and the Jewish religion.
But John’s gospel is different because, as is evident through his writing, he assumes that his audience already knows many facts about Jesus, that they’ve been catechized in the basics of the Christian faith, but that they may not yet know why. He assumes that while they already believe in Jesus, they may not yet understand why they believe or how they should be believing in Him.
This is not to say that John is initiating us into the secret mysteries, as the Gnostics whom he opposed claimed to do themselves, but that he is expositing, explaining, elucidating, and illuminating the scriptures and the Jewish religion through Jesus’s life and teachings so that we may have strong pisto faith, knowing what we believe, why we believe it, and how it applies to life and our future hopes.
Being the last gospel written, later in the first century, John does not need to establish the fact that Jesus lived, taught, died, and rose again; those are generally accepted as fact. Instead, he teaches us concerning what the whole of Jesus’s life means for us. John does not need to convince us that Jesus performed these many miracles, signs, and wonders; instead, he teaches us what they symbolize, represent, and mean for us, and more about the why Jesus did the things He did.
Looking back into our text, John concludes his case of signs by writing, “Now when He—Jesus—was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs that He was doing.” People saw the many signs Jesus did; therefore, they believed in Him. They had faith in Him, pisto, and trust in His Divine and holy name.
But John is not arguing causality on account of the signs. He does not say that they believed because of the signs, merely saying that they believed after they saw the evidence which proves who Jesus is, the God-man. Witnessing the signs was a stimulus that led them to faith, but the signs were not the operative means causing them to believe.
Soon, John will explain what that means—regeneration, being born again by the Holy Spirit. But first, John tells us something that is strange, surprising, and kind of ironic.
“But Jesus, on His part, did not entrust Himself to them.”
Now, I mean that does sound like wisdom to us, and it seems pretty straightforward and obvious considering the fact that we know what people will eventually do to Jesus. So why am I saying that this is strange and ironic?
It’s ironic because, while writing that many believed in His name and that Jesus did not entrust Himself to them, John uses the same term, pisto—the Greek term we most often translate and think about as faith. The irony is that while the people believed in Jesus, Jesus did not believe in the people.
The irony is that while the people willingly entrusted themselves to Jesus, Jesus was unwilling to entrust Himself to the people. To entrust oneself, that is the element of faith which we most easily and most often forget or ignore. Because faith, saving faith, is a combination of belief and trust. Faith is a head and heart activity; faith is an activity of trust born out of confident knowledge. As James writes, “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.”
Consider the classic illustration of a chair. I believe that the chair is, that it exists. I believe that I can sit in it, and I expect it to support my weight. But that is not faith. I mean, I can be totally confident about both aspects. I may believe this to be true because I have friends or family who have themselves sat in the chair, but that is not faith. My belief does not become faith until I sit down in the chair—until I entrust myself to the chair’s strong support.
So, while we could read this to suggest that Jesus had no faith in humanity, that Jesus did not trust people, I think John means the exact opposite. Jesus trusted us. Jesus trusted us greatly, but He did not trust us to do the right, good, and godly thing. Instead, He trusted us to act according to our sinful, fallen nature.
Because He knew all people, and He needed no one to bear witness about man, for He Himself knew what was in man. Jesus Christ, God the Son, the Word, the Logos who is Theos and is Andros, who was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be the light of life and the Lord God, our Sovereign Creator, it is certain and easy to believe that Jesus knew, and Jesus knows people. Not only because He made us, not only because He walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, not only because He is the one that clothed Adam and Eve after their fall into sinful rebellion—not only because He knows the entirety of past and future history since He decreed all that was, is, and is to come, but because He is the Lord, the judge of the earth, judging the living and the dead.
If He is to judge justly, with all fairness and in righteousness, then He must be privy to the inner and secret workings of every person’s heart. As through the prophet Jeremiah, God explains to us, “I, the Lord, search the heart and test the mind to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
And also because Jesus has a human heart—except one that is uncorrupted by original sin. He is God, and He is man, but man without sin because of His divine conception. That is why Jesus needed no one to bear witness about man, for He Himself knew what was in man.
Because He is eternally God, He knew because He knows our hearts, and they testify against us constantly. Ultimately, what does the Lord conclude from our hearts after He searches them and tests us? He concludes that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.
And that’s not very good for us; it is an indictment of our whole character. But it is actually far worse than the English translation of the Hebrew suggests. The Hebrew word translated as “heart” gives us a sense ranging from the primary circulatory organ to encompass the human will, mind, and inner man.
The Hebrew word that deceitful translates interprets a simple term that can mean to use as hilly or uneven or crafty. It’s something that is inconstant, unreliable, undependable, and in clear opposition to the straightforward, easy, and narrow way of God. Which, although it may look fine from a distance, upon close examination, its ruggedness becomes tragically evident.
And the Hebrew word translated as “desperately sick” does not convey its full direness; it is calamitous. It is beyond mere sickness; it is incurable sickness. It is a terminal illness. It is something that nothing, no practice, and no wisdom available to human ingenuity is able to heal, repair, or prevent.
This is perhaps the simplest and most clear expression within scripture demonstrating the reformed doctrine of total depravity, a term which itself now even seems to be lacking—the doctrine that no part of our humanity is untouched, uncorrupted by sin.
So here, when John tells us that Jesus did not entrust Himself to humanity, he’s explaining that Jesus knew there is no hope to be found in mankind, that there is no help to be found within mankind, that we all suffer and are trapped within our sinful condition—a condition which the Shorter Catechism describes as the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature.
See, the world, through folks like Disney, has been teaching the greatest lie of our age, telling us all to follow your heart. This is advice which, if followed by everyone to its fullest and logical endpoint, must end in absolute, total, and utter anarchy.
Imagine, if you will—as Rod Serling used to say—a world where Jesus had a sinful nature, where Jesus was corrupted by original sin, a world where Jesus gave into the temptation of sin and followed His heart. He might have achieved every human desire and goal, but He would also become a tyrant, utterly enslaved to sin in the process.
Consider what might have happened if Jesus had entrusted Himself to humanity, knowing what we know about Jesus and His capabilities from the gospels. The Jews wanted a Messiah King, a revolutionary war hero like David or one of the judges, and Jesus certainly could have been that and even more. He could have been the greatest of them all.
Jesus was popular and inspiring; people loved Him, and He attracted a large following. Jesus fed 5,000 men with just a few loaves and fishes, and He transformed water into wine, so He could have easily provided for any sized army. I mean, who can stand against an army that has no reason to be concerned about their supply train?
Jesus healed the sick, the injured, and deformed, and He raised the dead, so He could have just healed His troops after every injury and resurrected His lost fighting men after every battle. Who can stand against an army that does not run out of soldiers?
Jesus walked on water and commanded Peter to come out of the boat, calling him to walk out to Him while He was standing on the waves. How do you defend against an army that natural barriers and boundaries cannot stop or slow? And Jesus calmed the storm by commanding it to be still, so He likely could have also summoned up storms against His enemies.
Who can stand against an army whose General commands the elements? So, of course, the people would want to crown Jesus as king because, through Him, Israel would rule the world—even as they would also lose their soul.
You see, if Jesus had entrusted Himself to humanity and surrendered Himself to a sinful nature, then we would not have had a deliverer, but a wicked tyrant instead. If Jesus had followed a sinful heart like ours, then He would not have willingly hung up on the cross, dying to give us eternal life; instead, He would have lived, and we would be dying eternally.
See, the world likes to teach that our heart is the best arbiter in life. And while the law of God is written upon our hearts universally, our sin prevents us from loving it and wanting to obey it. The world teaches that our heart is what determines what is right and what is wrong. Remember, even Elvis told us that if something feels so right, then it cannot be wrong. This is the one absolute truth in relativism—the foundation of all postmodern thought.
What is right for you is right, and your heart is the only way to know what is right for you. But our hearts are subjective and inconsistent. The only thing constant and consistent concerning the human heart is that it only cares about number one: itself and its own self-gratification, which is the practical definition of sinfulness—the idolatrous worship of ourselves instead of the Lord.
And this is the primary consequence of the Fall—our heart becomes our idol, our God, our preferred Lord of life because it is most concerned with our feelings of happiness, our enjoyment, our pleasure, and all the unaccountable immediate felt goods.
Honestly, our human heart does not care about God and His glory; it only cares about our own honor, glory, and privilege. This idolatry of self is why John Calvin concluded that our heart and mind is a perpetual forge of idols.
While our culture and modern society removes all sense of the supernatural, miraculous, and divine from the public sphere, our heart continues to create and craft new idols for us to worship. Although the modern gods of this world—our new idols—are not named Baal, Zeus, Athena, Horus, Thor, Hermes, or Odin, they are no different and no less ineffectual for our personal satisfaction and salvation.
Our new idols are called things like sports, cell phones, the internet, philanthropy, protest, social justice, equity, work, school, and even love. Things which are, in themselves, good creations but become sinful idols when our concern for them becomes disproportionate and inappropriate.
Sadly, the social ideal of love may be the worst idol of them all because it’s really faux self-love that they worship instead of agape, selfless love, which is the love of Christ for us and the love that God is. The world teaches us that we must always trust our feelings regarding love; yet we do not really love others—not by natural inclination—but we do love the way we feel when people are indebted to us, don’t we?
We love the gratitude that they show towards us when we love them. Loving others is what we do when our sinful heart likes what’s in it for me. That is fouchia. Where is Jesus’s love?
Jesus’s agape is radical, counterintuitive, and contrary to the world because only from Him may we experience true self-sacrificing love. Greater love has no one than this: that someone lay down his life for his friends. There was no worldly gain or benefit for Jesus dying on the cross.
That is why honest and earnest Christian love is obeying Jesus’s commandment that if you love one another, you love one another as I have loved you. But unless His Holy Spirit has changed you, unless He dwells within you, all that you will ever do is follow your heart.
The slogan sounds great; it sounds loving and free. But it is the anti-Christian slogan from which every trouble flows. If you are following your heart, then you are not following Jesus Christ. Following your heart will always lead us into disobedience—disobeying the authority of our parents, of duly appointed government, disobeying social norms and common conventions, or disobeying the natural order and propriety of relationships.
Following our hearts always leads us away from God into sin. Following their heart led Eve to eat the forbidden fruit; it led Cain to murder his brother; it led Joseph’s brothers to sell him into slavery; it led Pharaoh to murder newborn Hebrew boys; it led Samson to Delilah; it led David to Bathsheba. It led the kingdom of Judah into Babylonian exile; it led Herod to murder the boys in Bethlehem, hoping to preserve his kingdom; it led the tax collector Zacchaeus to exploit his people, and it led Judas to betray Jesus and Peter to deny knowing Jesus three times.
Trusting ourselves, leaning upon our own understanding or wisdom, is certain to lead us into ruin and disaster. We cannot help it; we cannot help ourselves.
The good news is Jesus can help us, and Jesus does. Jesus is our only hope and our help. That is why He did not entrust Himself to us, and that is why we must entrust ourselves to Him.
We are all sinners, each and every one of us. The only judgment and reward that we each deserve when the Lord searches our heart and tests our minds is death—the wages of sin. Whenever we follow our heart, we earn those wages of sin by rejecting the free gift of righteousness and abundance of grace found in Christ Jesus.
But when we follow Christ instead of our heart, we confess our sin before the Lord as Adam and Eve confessed to eating. We obey the difficult commands of the Lord, even against popular reason, as Noah built the Ark. We leave our country, people, and family of origin, trusting the Lord’s promises, as Abraham left Ur and Haran.
We trust the Lord’s good provision, as Moses and the Israelites trusted Him in the wilderness for 40 years. We repent of our sin and seek after the Lord’s heart, as David did, as Zacchaeus and Peter did. We stand against the world and against ungodly authorities that command us against the Lord, as Elijah stood against Ahab and Jezebel.
We meekly yet confidently suffer persecution, unjust punishment, and slander while also praying for the deliverance of our enemies, like Jeremiah did.
So, if we entrust ourselves to Jesus, then we will take up our own cross and follow Him. We will follow Him and carry His gospel of reconciliation, love, and peace to the ends of the Earth and also to the ends of our street.
If we entrust ourselves to Jesus, then we will live as disciples of Christ, and we will make disciples of Christ. We will raise up our children—biological, adoptive, and spiritual—teaching them the way in which they should go so that they never depart. We will teach them to not follow their heart.
If we entrust ourselves to Jesus, then we are confident that the Lord will ultimately give to us according to Jesus’s ways, according to the fruit of His deeds, because He alone is the perfect, righteous, and sinless man—our covenant representative before the Lord.
It is by His wounds that we are healed; it is by His shed blood that our sins are forgiven; it is by His death and resurrection that we shall have eternal life.
So believe and trust in His name; have pisto in Christ Jesus. You can see the signs; all the necessary evidence is here within scripture. Jesus is God, the only God, and the only Lord of Life. He is the Eternal Sovereign over creation.
So live in faith and by faith. Ask Christ to transform you, to give you His heart and mind, so that you may live in and with Him forever. Trust yourself to Him because He knows your heart, and He alone can change it. Amen.