The Heart Is Deceitful: What Jeremiah 17 Really Means

We live in a culture that constantly tells us to trust ourselves.

“Follow your heart.”

“Do what feels right.”

“Trust your instincts.”

“Live your truth.”

Those phrases can sound encouraging. But Scripture gives us a much more sobering picture of the human heart.

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

Jeremiah 17:9 is often quoted by itself, but when we read it in context, its message becomes even more powerful.

The issue isn't simply that we sometimes make bad decisions.

The deeper issue is where we place our trust.

Two Kinds of Trust

Before Jeremiah speaks about the deceitfulness of the heart, God gives a striking contrast.

“Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.”
— Jeremiah 17:5 KJV

The person who places his ultimate confidence in human strength is compared to a shrub in a barren wilderness.

But then comes the contrast:

“Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.”
— Jeremiah 17:7 KJV

That person is:

“as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river…”
— Jeremiah 17:8 KJV

Notice something important.

The tree still experiences heat.

The drought still comes.

Trusting God does not mean we will never experience suffering, uncertainty, temptation, or difficult circumstances.

The difference is where our roots are planted.

The person whose confidence rests in the Lord has a source of life that circumstances cannot provide and circumstances cannot take away.

And then Jeremiah turns our attention to the human heart.

The Heart Can Deceive Us

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

The Hebrew word translated “desperately wicked” in the KJV carries the sense of something desperately sick or grievously afflicted. Other translations therefore render the phrase “desperately sick” or “beyond cure.”

Jeremiah's point is devastating:

We are not perfectly reliable judges of our own hearts.

We can sincerely want something and still be wrong.

We can feel strongly about something and still be deceived.

We can convince ourselves that something is God's will because it is what we already wanted.

That is why our feelings cannot be our final authority.

Feelings are real. Emotions matter. Desires can tell us something about what is happening inside us.

But they are not infallible.

God Knows What We Cannot See

Jeremiah asks:

“…who can know it?”

And the very next verse gives the answer:

“I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.”
— Jeremiah 17:10 KJV

We may not fully understand our own motives.

God does.

He sees beneath our explanations.

He sees beneath our excuses.

He sees desires we haven't admitted, motives we haven't recognized, and places where we may even be deceiving ourselves.

That should humble us.

But it should also make us want to bring our hearts before Him.

Something God Has Been Teaching Me

This is something I've had to confront in my own life.

There have been times when I've wanted something so badly that I wanted my feelings about it to mean it must be from God.

And I've realized how easy it can be to start looking for confirmation instead of looking for truth.

We can pray about something while already having decided what answer we want.

We can interpret circumstances as “signs.”

We can mistake a strong feeling for God's voice.

But studying Scripture has been teaching me something important:

I don't want God simply to confirm what I've already decided. I want Him to correct me when I'm wrong.

My feelings are not my authority.

God's Word is.

That means the question cannot simply be:

“What does my heart tell me?”

I also need to ask:

“What has God said?”

How Do We Discern God's Will?

Scripture never teaches us to treat every internal thought or feeling as God's voice.

Instead, God's Word gives us an objective standard by which our thinking is tested.

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”
— Psalm 119:105 KJV

And Paul writes:

“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…”
— Romans 12:2 KJV

Biblical discernment isn't learning to trust every feeling more strongly.

It involves having our minds renewed by God's truth.

If something contradicts what God has already revealed in Scripture, we do not need to wonder whether God told us to do it.

God does not contradict His own Word.

But Jeremiah Doesn't End With a Hopeless Heart

This is one of the most beautiful parts of Jeremiah.

If we stopped at Jeremiah 17, we might wonder:

If the human heart is so deeply corrupted, what hope do we have?

Later in Jeremiah, God promises something extraordinary:

“But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts…”
— Jeremiah 31:33 KJV

Humanity's answer isn't merely:

“Try harder to have a better heart.”

We need God to do something within us that we cannot accomplish for ourselves.

Jeremiah points forward to the promise of the new covenant.

And in the New Testament, Jesus identifies His sacrificial death with that new covenant:

“This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.”
— Luke 22:20 KJV

Hebrews 8 also quotes Jeremiah 31 when explaining the new covenant established through Christ.

The Bible's answer to the problem of the human heart is ultimately not self-improvement.

It is God's transforming work.

Don't Make Your Heart Your God

Jeremiah 17 isn't telling us that emotions are meaningless.

It's warning us against placing ultimate confidence where it doesn't belong.

Not in other people.

Not in human strength.

And not ultimately in ourselves.

Our confidence belongs in the Lord.

The world may tell you:

Follow your heart.

Scripture gives us something safer:

Bring your heart before the God who knows it completely.

Ask Him to expose what is false.

Ask Him to correct what is crooked.

Ask Him to align your desires with His will.

And then submit what you feel to what He has revealed in His Word.

David prayed:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
— Psalm 139:23–24 KJV

That is a very different prayer from:

“God, confirm what I want.”

It is:

“God, search me. Correct me. And lead me.”

That is the posture I want.

Not follow your heart.

But:

Trust the Lord. Submit to His Word. And let God transform your heart.