The Peril of the Hard Heart

Aim: To have melting hearts, in love with Christ.

Doctrine: The hard heart takes refuge in dead religion. It seeks to eradicate God's truth, and it suffers greatly under its own foolishness.

Exegesis: Why God is just in condemning the hard heart: because it hates all of God's servants (v. 18), it rejects all of God's warnings (vv. 19-20), and it deserves all of God's wrath (vv. 21-23).

Further application: Divine remedies to soften hard hearts: a glimpse of the pristine Jesus, and of the Christless self.

Key verse: v. 18 ''Then they said, 'Come and let us devise plans against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come and let us attack him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words.'''