Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1206
“I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord.” Jeremiah 24:7.
WITH what blindness has sin struck the heart of man, for man does not know his own Maker! It is implied in the text that in his heart he is ignorant of Jehovah, though in Him he lives, and moves, and has his being. What an impotence has sin brought upon the mind of man, since being ignorant of God he is also incapable of finding Him out! This, also, may be most readily gathered from the text. The fact that a promise is made in the Covenant that to the chosen shall be given hearts to know the Lord is a clear proof that without the Divine teaching and without the reception of a new heart from the Lord, man not only does not know, but cannot find out his God!
You boast of your intellect, O vain Man, but your foolish heart is darkened so that you stumble in the noonday as at midnight. You have eyes, and you say, “I see,” but your eyes are closed, your ears are dull of hearing and your heart has waxed gross. And your soul has become so dull that only He who formed the ear can make you hear. And only He who fashioned the eye can give you sight.
How can we sufficiently admire the condescension of God, that He should stoop to instruct the heart of man? Man forgets his God, but God does not forget him. Though man knows not God, yet God knows him and, seeing that his powerlessness to grasp Divine knowledge lies in his heart, He visits him in Grace and renews the fountain of his strength and the center of his nature by giving him a new heart and a right spirit.
The infinitely glorious God might have regarded it as a matter of indifference whether such an insignificant creature as man knew Him or not. He might well have said, and it had been consistent with the majesty of His justice to say it, “Seeing that you do not desire to know Me, you shall not perceive Me. And inasmuch as you close your eyes to Me, you shall continue in outer darkness. Because you will not glorify Me as God, your hearts shall abide in midnight, I will leave you to your own devices.”
But the Lord of Love said not so to the sons of men, upon whom His heart was set! On the contrary, He has made a Covenant of Mercy on our behalf and His speech is the reverse of what we might have expected. He declares in the words of the text, “I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am Jehovah.” What is meant by this great promise of the text is not merely that God will lead the converted to know that there is a God, because that may be known without a new heart. Any man possessed of reason may know that there is a Supreme Being who created all things and preserves the universe in existence.
The heavens declare the Glory of God and the firmament show His handiwork. The tokens of Divine skill and power are so abundant that, “The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are already seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.” The knowledge intended here is much deeper than that which comes from observation—and only affects the intellect. To know that there is a God is a lower step which every man takes except the fool who has said in his heart, “There is no God.” The text promises that the favored ones shall know that God is Jehovah! So the original text has it, “I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am Jehovah.”
God leads men to see that the God revealed in Scripture and manifested in the Person of the Lord Jesus, is the God who made Heaven and earth. Man fashions for himself a god after his own liking. He makes to himself, if not out of wood or stone, yet out of what he calls his own consciousness, or his cultured thought, a deity to his taste who will not be too severe with his iniquities or deal out strict justice to the impenitent. He rejects God as He is and makes other gods such as he thinks the Divine One ought to be. And he says concerning these works of his own imagination, “These are your gods, O Israel.”
The Holy Spirit, however, when He illuminates our minds, leads us to see that Jehovah is God and beside Him there is none else. He teaches His people to know that the God of Heaven and earth is the God of the Bible, a God whose attributes are completely balanced, Mercy attended by Justice, Love accompanied by Holiness, Grace arrayed in Truth and Power linked with Tenderness. He is not a God who winks at sin, much less is pleased with it, as the gods of the heathen are supposed to be. No, He is a God who cannot look upon iniquity and will, by no means, spare the guilty.
This is the great quarrel of the present day between the philosopher and the Christian. The philosopher says, “Yes, a god if you will, but he must be of such a character as I now dogmatically set before you.” But the Christian replies, “Our business is not to invent a god, but to obey the one Lord who is revealed in the Scriptures of Truth.” The God of Holy Scripture is Love, but He is also possessed of justice and severity. He is merciful and gracious, but He is also stern and terrible towards evil. Therefore unregenerate hearts say, “We cannot accept such a God as this,” and they call Him cruel and I know not what besides.