Sanctified in Christ

[Sung Psalm: 1]

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.

You will never understand your own heart, so long as you rely on your own understanding. So long as you insist on affirming your “right” to be the final judge and arbiter of truth and reality, you will only be exercising the sickness and deception of your heart – you will only be refusing to acknowledge the only true God as God – in other words, you will be an idolater!

If we would understand our deceitful hearts then we must come to the LORD and allow his word to interpret us.

In Jeremiah 17, Jeremiah tells us that two kinds of trees: the shrub of the desert and the tree planted by water.

What kind of tree are you?
Well, what kind of fruit do you bear?
The thorns of a desert shrub?
Or the fruit of the tree of life?

If you’re honest with yourself, then your fruit is rather mixed. And that’s why we need our Psalm of response. Because Psalm 1 is all about the blessed man – the one who delights in the law of the LORD, the one who meditates on it day and night. Such a man is like a tree planted by streams of water.

He is the one who will stand in the judgment.