• on April 18, 2021

Only Evil Continually: The Heart in Its Natural Condition (Genesis 6:5)

Only Evil Continually:

The Heart in Its Natural Condition

A Sermon by

Rev. S. Randall Toms, Ph.D.

 

And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. (Genesis 6:5-8)

Even if I were an atheist, there is one verse in the Bible that I would believe.  I would have to confess the truth of Genesis 6:5 when it describes man in this way: “…every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”   This statement was true of human beings thousands of years ago, and it is still true today.   Human history is nothing but the proof of this statement–a proof given over and over again, seen in the life of every human being of every generation and every culture.  The imagination of our hearts is only evil continually.   To deny the truth of this statement, one must deny the facts of human history and also refuse to recognize the truth about ourselves.   As Samuel Johnson said, “I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.”  The Christian cannot join in Samuel Johnson’s hatred of mankind, and I cannot say that I think myself one of the best of them.  But Johnson is correct in saying that even the best of human beings are awful.   We try to hide from this truth and make up fairy tales about our own character, but if we are brutally honest with ourselves, we must admit that the Bible is true on this one point.  The history of humanity proves that we are vicious, cruel, and so greedy that we will do anything we can get away with to get what we want.  The words before us in the sixth chapter of Genesis reveal what human beings really are.  I cannot think of a more graphic illustration than these words before us of what people are at the core of their being.

There are several words and phrases that are used in this passage to show us what human beings really are in the sight of God.   We must remember that when God created man, he was sinless and perfect.  As the wise man of Ecclesiastes put it, “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions” (Eccl. 7:29).  God created man just and pleasing in His sight.   Human beings lived in fellowship with God, holy and righteous without any faults at all.  But human beings went from that state of sinless perfection to wickedness.  We start with man in perfection in the Garden of Eden, and before we have read 6 chapters in God’s Holy Book, we read, “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth.”   When God first created the world, he looked upon everything that he had made, and he saw that it was all very good.   But now, when God looks at the earth, what stands out is this widespread wickedness of human beings.   God had told the man and the woman to be fruitful and multiply.   Sadly, as humans multiplied on the face of the earth, wickedness multiplied—a wickedness that was characterized by violence (Gen. 6:11).   The violence that began with Cain when he killed his brother had filled the earth.

What has happened to the good earth and the good man that God created?  When man sinned against God in the Garden of Eden, his heart became filled with evil.   The reason wickedness spread throughout the world is found in the heart of man.   Human beings are constantly engaged in doing evil because they are evil.   We often hear it said that human beings are not evil, but they sometimes do evil things.   We make excuses for our wicked behavior.   We say that if a person is a murderer, or a rapist, or a thief, or a drunkard, or a sexual pervert, it is due to certain psychological problems, or because of the environment in which he grew up, or because he had abusive parents.   While it may be true that these things could be contributing factors in some cases, the primary cause that people commit such horrible acts is that at the core of their being they are evil.   I once watched a documentary about a serial killer, and experts were trying to comprehend how this man who appeared so normal in every other area of his life could commit these horrible crimes.  But no one offered the explanation at the root of his horrendous acts.  He was evil.  We do evil things because we are evil.

To stress that man is evil at the core of his being, Genesis 6:5 tells us that “every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”  The phrase “the imagination of the thoughts of his heart” is speaking of the very essence of the human being.  As you know, the word “heart” in the Bible can be used in a number of ways.   The heart can refer to the mind, the will, the emotions, or the affections.   But I agree with scholars who believe that when the word “heart” is used here, all those faculties are included.   His mind, will, and affections have all been poisoned by sin.    Everything that makes us human has been defiled by sin.   Everything man thinks about, chooses, and loves is evil.

The Scripture is very plain that the heart of the human being is filled with evil, wickedness, sin, and every other word that you could use to describe the depravity of the human heart.  Jesus himself taught that all the vile deeds that people commit originate in the heart.  Our Lord said, “That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.” (Mark 7:20-21).  Look at that list!  Thirteen vile sins are mentioned.   The list is by no means exhaustive, but it does summarize so much of the evil that comes out of the heart.   Again, don’t we find these things in every generation, and, to one degree or another, in every person, if not in actual deeds, yet residing in our thoughts?  Even if we have not committed some of these sins mentioned by Jesus in actual practice, we have committed them in our hearts, entertained what it would be like to commit these sins, and given the opportunity and enough temptation, we know that we are capable of committing every one of those sins.     We do not commit these vile acts simply because of pressure from the outside.   When pressure does come from the outside in the form of temptation, the temptation finds a willing, loving accomplice in the human heart.  All these sins dwell in the heart, and, sooner or later, they will find expression in our words and deeds.  People commit murder because hatred and the desire to murder dwell in our hearts.  People commit adultery because of the lust that resides in the heart.   We not only do these things, but we find pleasure in doing them, because the human heart is a lover of evil.

But not only is the heart evil.   The Scripture says that the thoughts of our hearts are only evil continually.  The first sin that Jesus mentions in that list of those wicked things that come from the heart is “evil thoughts.”   The Hebrew word for “thoughts” means “ideas,” “plans,” “purposes,” “designs,” or “plots.”  The heart is always planning evil.  We find the perfect description of the wicked plotting and scheming in Psalms 36:4: “He deviseth mischief upon his bed; he setteth himself in a way that is not good; he abhorreth not evil.”  Here we have the description of human beings lying awake in bed at night scheming about how to do evil–meditating on how they can do it without getting caught.   The prophet Micah describes them in this way: “Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand” (Micah 2:1).  Here we see the truth about human beings.   They love evil so much that they think about it all night long, and then, when the morning comes, they hit the floor running to put their plans into effect.    Because the hearts of human beings are corrupt, they are always scheming and planning ways to do evil things.    No matter how many centuries roll by, each generation is characterized by devising new methods to commit evil.   If you study all the different methods of torture used in times of war and persecution, even in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, you can tell that someone spent a great deal of time devising how these kinds of cruelty could be constructed.  No matter how far advanced we think we are, and no matter what new discoveries we make, we will eventually find a way to use these new discoveries to hurt and murder one another.   One of the most precious gifts that God gave to human beings was the mind.   We have brains that have accomplished wonders in science and technology, but as we increase in scientific knowledge, we also increase in our capacity to use our knowledge to cause great harm to one another, because the thoughts of our hearts are only evil continually.

Then, it is not just the heart that is only evil continually, not just the thoughts of the heart that are only evil continually, but even the imagination of the thoughts of the heart are only evil continually.  This word “imagination” comes from a word meaning “to shape,” “to form,” or “to frame.”  It is an interesting word because it is the same word used to describe how God made man: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”  The word “imagination” comes from this word for “formed.”   God formed man, and man forms thoughts.   But whereas God formed something beautiful and perfect, when man forms thoughts, those thoughts take the shape of evil.  We could say that that this word “imagination” refers to “a frame of mind.”   No matter what we may begin to think about, the beginning of the thought is evil.   Some of the old divines used to describe the imagination of the thoughts of our hearts as a fountain that has been poisoned at its very source.   If the source of the fountain is polluted, then everything that flows from it is poison.  Our thoughts are poisoned at the very source of all thought.  There is something in us that influences our attitudes and behavior, and that something is evil.   Ever since the fall, we have this natural disposition toward evil.  We do not have to be taught to be evil.  It is our natural condition.   Evil is our frame of mind.

This description of the human being as evil is further hammered home to us by three other words in this verse—every, only, and continually.  When the old divines used to preach on this verse, they said that the imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was evil “without interruption,” “without intermission,” “without any intermixture of good,” “without exception.”  As Andrew Fuller put it, “What a picture here is given of what the world naturally is!  It is evil; without mixture—only evil; without cessation—continually;  from  the very fountain-head of action—’the thoughts of the heart…’”  The word “continually” in this verse is literally, “every day.”   Every day, from one sunrise to the next, day to day, we never change—the imagination of the thoughts of our hearts is only evil continually.

Now, you may be saying to me, “I’m already having a difficult time accepting what the Bible says about all people being evil, but surely you are overstating your case when you say that every imagination of the thoughts of our hearts is only evil continually.   Such a thing could not be said even about someone as evil as Adolph Hitler.   Hitler probably petted and fed his dogs out of some sort of kindness.   But look at that young mother sitting up all night with a sick child.  Isn’t there some goodness there?  How can you say that the thoughts of the imagination of her heart is only evil continually when she is making such loving sacrifices for her children?   Look at that man slaving away at a job all day so that he can provide for his family.   When he comes home exhausted at the end of the day, he drags himself outside to play with his children. Can it really be said that the imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually?   Aren’t there millions of people who do not deserve this description that the imagination of the thoughts of their hearts is only evil continually? I can concede that some people do some very evil terrible things, but can it really be said of anyone that every imagination of their heart is only evil continually?”

Let me answer that objection by saying that when the Bible describes the sinfulness of human beings, it is not saying that people do not perform deeds that may be good in and of themselves.    We are not denying that even the worst of people can do some “good” things.   But we are overlooking a particularly important phrase in this text of Scripture.   We fail to notice the words, “And God saw…”  What God sees is not the same thing that you and I see.   None of us have the ability to see our hearts the way God sees them.   The holy, righteous and pure God sees that even the best of our actions are tainted with sin.   As the prophet Isaiah said, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6).   Notice that the prophet does not say that your sins are as filthy rags.   He says that your righteous acts, when you are doing righteous things in obedience to God, those righteous acts are like filthy rags in his sight because they are being done by someone who is unclean, defiled by sin.  In our Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, Article XIII,  entitled “Of Works before Justification,” we read, “Works done before the grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of the Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ; neither do they make men meet to receive grace, or (as the School-authors say) deserve grace of congruity: yea rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin.”   This article is saying that if we do not have faith in Jesus Christ, our good works are not pleasing to God.  Only Christ can purify our works so that they are acceptable to God.   Outside of Christ, everything we do is unacceptable to God because everything we do is tainted by sin.   The Heidelberg Catechism (1563), defines good works as “those which proceed from a true faith, are performed according to the law of God, and to his glory.”   Only the Christian can do good works for the glory of God.   Non-Christians might do many things that are good in and of themselves for many different reasons—out of selfishness, out of a desire for praise and fame, for money, out of duty, etc.), but they are not good in the sight of God, because they are not done in the way that God has commanded them to do done, and they are not done for the glory of God.   Since we have not been cleansed by faith in Jesus Christ, we cannot do any works in a manner that is pleasing to God.  Even our best works are tainted by sin.   When God sees even our best works, he also sees the sin attached to them, sins such as pride–the desire that we should be praised rather than God being glorified.  Therefore, those “good works” are still tainted by sin.  Or, as our Thirty-nine Articles put it, even those good works “have the nature of sin.”   Thus, the fact remains that every imagination of the thoughts of our hearts is only evil continually.

There are some who have tried to deny the teaching of this verse by saying that this description only applied to those who were living just before the flood.   The theory is that the wickedness was so great at that time, that the hearts of the people of that generation could be described as “only evil continually,” but certainly not generations afterward.   But let us go back to the moments just after the flood.  Were people better after the flood when the wicked had been swept away?  No, the flood was punishment upon a wicked world, but the flood did nothing to the heart of man.  After the flood, God says that he will never destroy the earth again because of their evil, because the descendants of Noah will be no different than the people who drowned in the flood.   The Lord says, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:20).  Noah himself proved that human beings were no better by getting drunk immediately after the flood.  From childhood through adulthood, the heart is filled with evil.  David describes this innate evil when he says, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalms 51:5).  Every person since the time of Adam, other than our Lord Jesus Christ, was born with this sinful nature.  The evil that was in the heart before the flood is still in the heart of human beings after the flood.  Not even starting over with Noah and his family will take this evil out of the heart of human beings.

But some still object and say, “We have made so many advances morally.  Two thousand years of a higher standards of morality have improved us considerably.  The ethical principles of more noble religions and philosophies have spread in many parts of the world, resulting in people being much better than what they once were.”    I wonder if people who say such things have ever read a history book, or watched the evening news, or read today’s newspaper, or honestly looked into their own hearts.  Is it not obvious that every generation has been like that of Noah’s?   When we come to the time of the first century, how did Paul describe the Gentile world?  He writes:  “Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them” (Romans 1:29-32).  Does that sound as though humanity had made a great deal of progress?   Then, look at Paul’s description of the Jews in the first century.  Long after the flood, God chose a people, Israel, to be his own and gave them his law.  But again, in the first century, after having had over a thousand years to become obedient to God as a people, how does Paul describe the Jew and Gentile?   Were the Jews any better?  Listen to Paul’s words: “What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (Romans 3:9-19).  Thousands of years after the flood, the same thing was true of every single person on the face of the earth.  It was still true that there were none righteous.   No one was doing good.  People were still lying and deceitful.  They were still obsessed with murder and destruction.   Now let us come forward another 2,000 years to the present time, and we see that everything that Paul said in the first century can be said of every single person and every single culture.  Just turn on the evening news tonight and watch the total collapse of civilization as the sins mentioned by Paul are being committed on the largest stage of all time with greater numbers and greater vehemence.  All stand guilty before God, because what was true of human beings before the flood is still true at the present:  every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart is only evil continually.

This is one of those Biblical descriptions of the human heart that people refuse to believe.  People believe that they may have a few faults and shortcomings, but they are certainly not evil.   People make mistakes, but these mistakes are not acts of wickedness.  They have merely “acted inappropriately,” the common euphemism of the day.  And even if people should make some rather serious “errors in judgment,” still, basically, at heart, they are good people.  But peoples’ good opinions about themselves come from that same corrupt heart.   The prophet Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).   Your own heart deceives you into thinking that you are good.   Your goodness is an illusion.  Your goodness is a fiction you have created about yourself because the truth is too horrible to accept.  But the prophet says that the heart is “desperately wicked.” The words “desperately wicked” could be translated as “incurable.”  The heart is deceitful, and there is no way to cure the way it deceives itself.   So, the prophet asks the question, “Who can know it?”  You can’t know it!   You can’t know your own heart.   Your heart will only deceive you. The only way you will ever know your own heart is by believing what the Bible says about your heart.  Only the Holy Spirit can convince you that what this Book says about you is true.   So, we have seen the Scriptural condition of the human heart.  It is filled with the vilest of sins that spring from an evil source—the imagination of the thoughts of the heart.

Let me say that I take no pleasure in saying these things about the condition of the human heart.   I wish I didn’t have to say them.  I wish these things weren’t true, but the testimony of Scripture and the lessons of history prove that the imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart is only evil continually.   If I have painted the condition of the human heart in a terrifying way, I have done so with a loving purpose.   The human heart must be described in this way, or else people will never understand their need for a Savior.

It is so vital that this message about the human condition be preached.  Until this message is preached and believed, there is no hope for humanity.   The world is still laboring under the presumption that human being are basically good, and all they need is a little help.   Or, if human beings are not basically good, they are born morally neutral, and if you steer them in the right direction, they will lead a good, moral lives. We should have seen by now that throughout recorded history, the Biblical pictured presented of human beings in Genesis 6:5 is still true. After all these years of recorded history, human beings are no better.   Our pride prohibits us from seeing the truth about ourselves and leads us to believe that we can save ourselves.   In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries we were supposed to have entered the Age of Enlightenment.   Human reason was going to solve all our problems.   We didn’t need the Bible to show us the way.   We didn’t need the Scriptures to tell us what is right and wrong or how to solve our problems.  Human reason would lead us to the peace and prosperity.  Well, this experiment with human reason has had around three hundred years to usher in this Utopia.   Has the Enlightenment improved the human being?   Since the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment we have had devastating wars, far more horrible than those that preceded the Enlightenment.   Even in this country, founded on Enlightenment principles, we had to watch the bloody massacres of the Civil War.   The European nations, the seat of the Enlightenment, continued to have wars over land and money.   The twentieth century saw horrible wars, and as you read the history of the wars that occurred in the 20th century and the 21st century, we are appalled at the way human beings continue to treat one another.  I could recommend to you some books about the atrocities committed by soldiers upon civilians during and in the aftermath of wars, but as St. Paul would put it, it is a shame even to speak of such things.   When men have the liberty to do what they want without fear of any consequences, they are more vicious and violent than any animal that walks on the face of the earth.    At this very hour, we can see human beings getting much worse at a rapid pace.  Money and education have not helped.   Give every person a million dollars and an education that earns him a Ph.D., and he will be millionaire with a doctorate, but the imagination of the thoughts of his heart will still be only evil continually.  The people in our country are absolutely consumed by hatred for one another at the present time.     It is no surprise that they are consumed by hatred.  Hatred is the natural condition of the human heart. The apostle Paul says that our natural condition is “living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another” (Titus 3:3).

The only way to understand the gospel is to understand this truth.  If you don’t understand this truth about human beings, you will never understand why God sent Christ into the world.  The human being is so sinful that you cannot make him better by giving him a moral code or a good example.   God gave the law to Israel, and what did they do with it?   The Law of Moses proved that people will not abide by the law, not that there was anything wrong with the Law.   Paul said that “the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” (Romans 7:12).   As a Pharisee, Paul tried to keep the law, and he thought he did a great job.   He considered himself to be blameless.   But Paul says that there came a time when he read the commandment, “Thou shalt not covet,” and the commandment itself produced in him all kinds of covetousness.  How could that be?   The problem was not the commandment.   The problem was the response of the heart to the commandment.  You must understand that the human heart is so sinful that when God’s holy law says, “Thou shalt not…” we respond by saying, “O yes we shall.”  Our sinful hearts despise the law of God.  Some people think that the only reason Jesus came into the world to give us a better teaching–a higher moral standard to live by. Some have told us that we need to get rid of all this messy doctrine about Jesus being the Son of God, dying on the cross for our sins, and being resurrected.  None of that is important, they said.   All that matters is the moral teaching of Jesus.   But if men hated the commandments of Moses, they hate the teaching of Jesus even more.  Everything in the heart of man hates what Jesus taught.   “Love your enemies.”   “Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me”   “I am the way, the truth, and the life.   No man cometh to the Father but by me.”   The human heart despises these teachings.  Are people better now that liberal theologians have convinced them that Jesus was simply a great teacher, and all they need to do is follow his beautiful philosophy of life?  No, nearly two thousand years after Jesus, the world is further away from obeying him than it ever has been.   The gospel is not that Jesus Christ came into the world to give us great teaching and a good example.

Jesus came into the world because of the description of the human heart found in this sixth chapter of Genesis.   The imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart is only evil continually.   But glory be to the grace of our merciful and loving God, there is something that can be done to cure this condition of the heart.  The heart does not have to remain in this condition. As matter of fact, the promise of the new covenant is, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them” (Ezekiel 36:26-27).  You cannot improve the heart you were born with.   It is hopelessly corrupt.   Your old heart loves sin and hates God.   You must have a new heart—a heart that loves God and hates sin–a heart that actually takes delight in obeying the commandments of God. The promise of the new covenant is, “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; and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33).   The law of God will not be something external to us that we try to obey though deep down inside we don’t want to obey.   Rather, the law of God will be in our hearts, molding and shaping our hearts and lives. God has promised that he will put his Holy Spirit in us and actually cause us to live in obedience to him in a loving way that is not burdensome.   You must have a new heart.   This new heart is a miracle given to you by God.   David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10).   The new heart is an act of creation performed by Almighty God himself.  The word David uses for “create” is the same word used in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  Just as it took the mighty power of God to create the universe, it takes that same power of God to create in us a new heart.  For too long we have neglected to teach the supernatural change that takes place  in a human being when the grace of the Holy Spirit is imparted to the Christian.   God’s mighty work in us result in a new creation, a new heart.   Something can be done about the heart—a new heart can be given.

Also, something can be done about the “thoughts of the heart.”  The first thing we must do about our thoughts is to repent of them.   This sermon has been designed to lead people to see how sinful their thoughts are–thoughts that spring from a sinful fountain and pollute our entire lives.   In Isaiah 55:7 we hear the words, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”   Recognize that your thoughts are sinful that your thoughts come from a sinful heart.  Plead with the Lord to give you that new heart, and your thoughts will change.   Remember that this word for “thoughts” means “plans,” “schemes,” and “purposes.”   Those who do not know Christ plot schemes that are evil, but when a person is given the new heart, that heart plans ways to live in obedience to the glory of God.   As Proverbs 12:5 says, “The thoughts of the righteous are right: but the counsels of the wicked are deceit.”  This verse could be translated, “The plans of the righteous are just.”  No longer is the heart engaged in meditating on schemes to harm other people, but rather, the heart is now engaged in planning to do all in its power to do what is holy and loving.

And yes, something can even be done about the imagination of the thoughts–your frame of mind.   In Scripture, this phrase, “the imagination of the thoughts” is frequently used in a negative sense.  But there a few instances where it is used in a positive light.   For example, when David is gathering offerings for the building of the temple, he prayed, “O LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, our fathers, keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of thy people, and prepare their heart unto thee” (I Chronicles 29:18).   David is so pleased at how the people are offering willingly to build the temple, and his prayer is that they would forever be able to retain this frame of heart.  If a person has a new heart, then his frame of mind will be directed toward holy objectives.   This word “imagination” is also used in that famous passage in Isaiah 26, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee” (Isa 26:3).   The word “mind” in this verse is the same word “imagination” in Genesis 6:5.   The imagination can be fixed on God.  Remember that this word “imagination” means “formed,” “shaped,” or “framed.”   Therefore, instead of a sin-shaped frame of mind, you can have a God-shaped frame of mind.  When the old heart thinks, the thoughts automatically take the shape of evil.   But when a person has a new heart, the thoughts automatically take the shape of what is good and holy, because our hearts have been purified by the blood of Jesus and the Holy Spirit becomes the spring of our thoughts. Instead of your mind being fixed on sin, your mind can be fixed on God.   What a transformation the new heart makes!

Now, you may be asking, “How do I receive this new heart?”   The new heart is given to us simply through faith in Jesus Christ.   When the Apostle Peter made the case that the Gentiles should be received into the church, he said, “And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:8-9).  Notice two especially important things in this passage.   The Holy Spirit had been given to the Gentiles, and when the Holy Spirit came to them, he gave them faith, resulting in the purification of the heart.  It is faith that enables us to see that Jesus Christ died on the cross.   It is faith that enables us to see that our sins put him on the cross.   It is faith that gives us the ability to see that the only way we could be forgiven for our sins was by his dying in our place.   It is faith that gives us the ability to see that only his blood can wash away the sin from our defiled hearts.   Once again, we see the miracle that is necessary for a new heart to be given.   The Holy Spirit comes to us and works faith in our hearts. Then, the heart becomes the dwelling place of Christ himself.   Paul prayed for the Colossians “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith” (Colossians 3:17).  Christ came into the world to shed his blood on the cross to purify us from sin, and then he actually dwell in our hearts.    Spurgeon describes what happens when the heart is purified in this way:

where the Holy Spirit comes, He burns as a heavenly fire and consumes sin. He comes also as a flowing stream and cleanses away evil, and as a rushing mighty wind to chase away all that is foul and polluted which has gathered in the stagnant air of the soul. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of holiness and as He always dwells with faith, being its author, its strengthener, and guardian, you may be sure that where faith comes, the heart will speedily be purified. The fact is, brethren, faith sees sin, loathes it, and flings itself into the eternal arms to be delivered from it… Faith changes the current of our love and alters the motive which sways us—this is what is meant by purifying the heart. It makes us love that which is good and right, and moves us with motives free from self and sin—this is a great work indeed… Faith lays the axe at the root. It heals the stream at the fountainhead and what is done is therefore done thoroughly, effectually, and honestly done. But the heart being purified, the purification becomes operative throughout the whole life. A diseased heart means a sickly man all over—you cannot get your heart wrong but what every organ is in its measure wrong—the whole life is disarranged. Neither can you have the heart right without its telling upon the entire nature and affecting for the better all that is within you and all that comes forth of you— of thought and word and deed. There is nothing like beginning at the heart out of which are the issues of life. All else is poor patchwork, but to have the heart made new is to be renewed indeed.

Notice that Spurgeon says “the stream has been healed at the fountainhead.”  Until the heart is renewed, sin will continue to flow from the heart, but in the new heart, righteousness flows from center of our being.

It is for this reason that this description of the human heart and this cure for the human heart must be preached throughout the world.  Until Christ gives people new hearts, the evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness will continue as they have continued since the time of the flood.

How about you?   Have you ever seen your heart as it really is?   Have you ever seen that you need to be cleansed by the blood of Christ?  Have you tried in the past to live a good life, but failed again and again because your love of sin is too strong?   The solution is not found in trying harder to live a better life.   You don’t need a new book to teach you how to be a better person.   You need a new heart.   Come to Christ now, and your heart will be purified by faith in him.

If you are a Christian, pray that this gospel will spread around the world with power.   The Church, like the world, has been trying to cure the human heart with human methods.   Let us realize the truth of how Genesis 6 describes the human heart.   Let us realize that we are powerless to change the human heart.    Let us be on our knees praying every day that God would perform the greatest miracle that can ever be performed—the creation of a new heart.  Let us plead with God for people of whom it is still true—the imagination of the thoughts of their hearts is only evil continually.   Then, relying on the miracle-working power of God, let us go into this world spreading this gospel until every heart has been purified by faith in Christ.   Amen.

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