Reflections on Jeremiah 17

Jeremiah 17 (Contemporary English Version)
1. People of Judah, your sins cannot be erased. They are written on your hearts like words chiseled in stone or carved on the corners of your altars. *
   
2. One generation after another has set up pagan altars and worshiped the goddess Asherah everywhere in your country-- on hills and mountains, and under large trees.
   
3. So I'll take everything you own, including your altars, and give it all to your enemies.
   
4. You will lose the land that I gave you, and I will make you slaves in a foreign country, because you have made my anger blaze up like a fire that won't stop burning.
   
5. I, the LORD, have put a curse on those who turn from me and trust in human strength.
   
6. They will dry up like a bush in salty desert soil, where nothing can grow.
   
7. But I will bless those who trust me.
   
8. They will be like trees growing beside a stream-- trees with roots that reach down to the water, and with leaves that are always green. They bear fruit every year and are never worried by a lack of rain.
   
9. You people of Judah are so deceitful that you even fool yourselves, and you can't change.
   
10. But I know your deeds and your thoughts, and I will make sure you get what you deserve.
    
11. You cheated others, but everything you gained will fly away, like birds hatched from stolen eggs. Then you will discover what fools you are.
    
12. Our LORD, your temple is a glorious throne that has stood on a mountain from the beginning.
    
13. You are a spring of water giving Israel life and hope. But if the people reject what you have told me, they will be swept away like words written in dust.
    
14. You, LORD, are the one I praise. So heal me and rescue me! Then I will be completely well and perfectly safe.
    
15. The people of Judah say to me, "Jeremiah, you claimed to tell us what the LORD has said. So why hasn't it come true?"
    
16. Our LORD, you chose me to care for your people, and that's what I have done. You know everything I have said, and I have never once asked you to punish them.
    
17. I trust you for protection in times of trouble, so don't frighten me.
    
18. Keep me from failure and disgrace, but make my enemies fail and be disgraced. Send destruction to make their worst fears come true.
    
19. The LORD said: Jeremiah, stand at each city gate in Jerusalem, including the one the king uses, and speak to him and everyone else. Tell them I have said: I am the LORD, so pay attention.
    
20. (SEE 17:19)
    
21. If you value your lives, don't do any work on the Sabbath. Don't carry anything through the city gates or through the door of your house, or anywhere else. Keep the Sabbath day sacred! I gave this command to your ancestors, but they were stubborn and refused to obey or to be corrected. But if you obey,
    
22. (SEE 17:21)
    
23. (SEE 17:21)
    
24. (SEE 17:21)
    
25. then Judah and Jerusalem will always be ruled by kings from David's family. The king and his officials will ride through these gates on horses or in chariots, and the people of Judah and Jerusalem will be with them. There will always be people living in Jerusalem,
    
26. and others will come here from the nearby villages, from the towns of Judah and Benjamin, from the hill country and the foothills to the west, and from the Southern Desert. They will bring sacrifices to please me and to give me thanks, as well as offerings of grain and incense.
    
27. But if you keep on carrying things through the city gates on the Sabbath and keep treating it as any other day, I will set fire to these gates and burn down the whole city, including the fortresses.

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I often hear the advice given a person to "follow your heart," given in a tone as if one is giving wise, sage advice. But when I hear such counsel I wonder what it really means and if the one giving this counsel really knows what it means. Does it mean simply to "follow the desires of your heart?" Or maybe to "let your conscience be your guide?" Neither is particularly sage advice to the one who has little conscience or the one for whom the desires of their heart are evil. Or what real help does it offer the one whose heart's desire is good and whose conscience is well honed? Maybe it means, then, just to do what you want to do and don't be confused by the counsel of others. But that doesn't sound like such wise advice either. So what is it supposed to mean?

Jeremiah's assessment of the heart is that it is "more deceitful than anything else and desperately sick--who can understand it? " (17:9) Nor is Jeremiah the only writer in scripture to give such an assessment of the heart. If the heart, then, is "more deceitful than anything else," the advice to "follow your heart" doesn't seem like such good advice after all.  Jeremiah makes his statement concerning the heart after extoling the benefits of trusting in the Lord compared to trusting in mankind and in idols. To the implied question as to why a person would choose to trust in man and in idols rather than the Lord when the outcome is so much better for the one who trusts in the Lord, Jeremiah's response is that the "heart is more deceitful than anything else." In other words, it is the heart that deceives one into trusting other things rather than the Lord when trusting the Lord is the only means to real blessing.

It was the deceitful heart that caused Judah to turn to idols and to reject God, even though it was God who had blessed them so richly in the past. It was God who miraculously delivered them from Egypt and led them through the wilderness then repeatedly gave them victory over their enemies in giving them the land of promise. It was God who prospered them bringing them to the pinnacle in their history under the reign of king David and king Solomon. But it was their choice in turning away from God that took them down from that pinnacle and eventually led them to the plight they were in at the time of Jeremiah in which they faced total destruction and exile in a foreign land. And yet they persisted in this choice. This "following of their hearts" was leading them to their destruction. It was their deceitful hearts, also, that led them to taunt the prophet Jeremiah about his predictions of coming destruction, asking when it was to come as if it would not come at all.

To highlight Judah's sin and her rejection of God and His teaching, Jeremiah was instructed to focus on the most basic teaching of the Mosaic Law - observance of the Sabbath. Following and worshipping God involves one's whole life, but the most basic element is the practice of public worship, which for the Jews was the Sabbath observance and for the Christian is the observance of Sunday worship. If this most basic element of worship is not present it is not likely one will worship God in any other part of their life.