Thursday, May 29, 2025

            Jeremiah 17 is an indicting chapter.  The indictment is against sin in general and the sins of Judah in particular.  It is a weighty chapter to read and ponder.  The prophet opened the chapter by saying that “Judah’s sin is engraved with an iron tool, inscribed with a flint point, on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars” (Jeremiah 17:2).  He was saying that Judah’s sin was so pronounced and persistent that it was almost like the inclination to sin was ingrained or inscribed on their hearts.  In other words, they seemed to be hardwired against the Lord and His ways.
            This indictment is a good assessment of sin—in biblical times and even today.  Sin is a persistent turning away from the Lord to embrace something else.  Sin leads only to more sin.  Sinful choices do not suddenly become righteous ones.  Left to ourselves, we will remain in sin and drifting ever further away from the Lord and His righteous ways.  The only disruption to this spiritual decline is the intervention of the Lord to change us by His grace and power.  The human heart can never work or wind its way to a righteous state.  Jeremiah wrote, “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure, who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).  So, there is no confidence in mankind, man’s choices or man’s heart.  Indeed, “cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord” (Jeremiah 17:5). 
            Even today, we cannot reverse course by ourselves.  We need God’s help and deliverance to leave behind a life of sin and an inclination to sin.  We experience this turning from sin by a full and complete reliance upon Christ and His righteousness to set us free from sin’s grasp and trap.  In this midst of his indictment of sin, Jeremiah did give us some words of encouragement and hope.  He wrote, “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.  He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.  It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17:7-8a).  God can turn a heart of sin, where sin is inscribed and embedded as hard and as unflinching as flint itself, into a heart that grows, thrives and flourishes in righteousness like a tree.
            The good news is God can change you and me.  God can change our desires from sin to righteousness, from defiance to devotion and from fruitlessness to fruitful faith.  For nothing is impossible with God!  He can bring forth new life from dead places.  Today, we can rejoice that we can be forgiven in and through the work of Christ at the cross.  We can come to Him for the first time ever as Savior and Lord.  We can renew our faith and return to Him if we have roamed or wandered away.  We can trust our battles with temptation to Him—the One who was tempted in every way that we are but remained without sin.  He can transform a hardened heart into a healthy one and a broken life into a new one. 
            Our sins do not have to enslave us or have the last word.  We are not held captive to them.  Like Jeremiah described in chapter eighteen, the Lord is the Master Potter who can reshape and reform our wasted and ruined lives into ones that are good, holy and true.  We can go boldly before His throne of grace and place ourselves wholly and fully before Him.  If your heart is calloused and rough, it can be made new.  If your life is marred by sin, you can be reborn.  If your life is rudderless, it can find hope and direction in Christ.  We rejoice today that sin does not have the last word.  Christ does.  And we place our hopes in Him.  Have a great Thursday!