Ecclesiastes 9:3

The heart of the sons of men is full of evil.

Scriptural statement of the doctrines of human corruption, and of the renewal of the heart to holiness

I. Man’s natural corruption.

1. One prevailing misconception on the subject of human corruption respects the seat of the disorder. What is the daily language of numbers? “Our lives, it is true, are not exempt from blame. We are guilty of many indiscretions. But our heart is good.” In opposition to this language, the text asserts that the origin of all the evil is within. “The heart of the sons of men is full of evil.” Not the streams alone are filthy and defiled; but the fountain is polluted (Genesis 8:21; Jeremiah 7:24; Jeremiah 17:9; James 4:1; Matthew 12:34; Matthew 15:19).

2. Another ground of misconception on the subject of human corruption respects the degree and extent of the disorder. The text says that this corruption is not only radical but total. Generosity, gratitude, fidelity, and the exercise of many other pleasing qualities between man and man; the spontaneous applause of virtue; the decided condemnation of immorality may all exist, without any tendency in man to what is truly good (Isaiah 1:5; Romans 7:18; Romans 8:7; Genesis 6:5).

3. The declaration in the text is also absolute. No exception is stated or implied on account of any difference of outward dispensation under which mankind may be placed. The Gospel uniformly proceeds on the supposition that man is born in sin; that his corruption is not accidental, but innate; not acquired, but hereditary. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.”

II. The renewal of the heart to holiness. If, as the Scriptures teach, “without holiness no man shall see the Lord,” then every text which points out the nature and extent of human corruption, points out by implication the nature and extent of that moral change which man must undergo.

1. Let us thankfully receive the information vouchsafed.

2. Let us also profitably use the information vouchsafed.

While the text sets before us the picture of mankind in general, let us remember that it sets before us our picture in particular. Let us seek to acquire a deep, an experimental conviction of the truth. Let our experience of the inveteracy of the malady lead us earnestly to seek for help from Him who alone can heal our disordered souls. (E. Cooper.)

The unconverted world

I. Their guilt. “The heart--full of evil” (Mark 7:21). It applies to all. The most peaceable man alive has often probably committed murder in his heart. The man of purity and chastity may often, in the heart, have been guilty of adultery. Passions, vile and loathsome as the pit from which they spring, only wait their opportunity. Is the man provoked? He is enraged. Is he admired? He is proud and puffed up. Does God afflict him? He is rebellious. Does God cross him? He is discontented and impatient.

II. Their madness.

1. It is a well-known symptom of natural madness that the poor creature who is thus afflicted is apt to entertain most extravagant notions of his own greatness and importance. Whilst the chains are on his hands, whilst he is confined within the narrow limits of his gloomy cell, he often struts about, and thinks himself a king. Is this acknowledged to be madness? and is there none, then, in the conduct of those men Who, being spiritually “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked,” are saying of themselves, “I am rich and increased with goods, and I have need of nothing”?

2. Men who are mad, in the ordinary sense of the expression, are, for the most part, utterly insensible of danger, and incapable of fleeing from it. They walk on unconcerned, where men possessed of reason and of foresight would be shifting for their safety. Are those men, then, to be set down for sober who show an equal unconcern when the danger is eternal?

3. But mark another painful symptom of the man who labours under a natural derangement, he knows not his best friend. Those whom, were he in his senses, he would hasten to embrace, he looks on with a cold, unfeeling eye. Nay, perhaps he turns away from them, he counts them enemies. It is also the worst symptom of that spiritual derangement with which the men of this world are afflicted. They also know not their best Friend. They “turn away from Him who speaketh to them from heaven.”

III. Their miserable end. “After that, they go to the dead.” After what? After all the evil and the madness of their earthly course--after having wasted all their years in worldliness and folly--then, “they go to the dead.” Their souls are gathered to the place where all who lived and died like them are gone before. And what place? Can we doubt that hell is meant? Where else do they go “who forget God”? What other wages hath sin, the worldly man’s master, to bestow upon its servants? (A. Robertson, M. A.)

Madness is in their heart while they live.--

Moral madness

There is a worse madness than mental. Many men intellectually sane are moral maniacs. Wherein does the madness of the unregenerate appear?

I. In practically ignoring the greatest being.

II. In ignoring the greatest interests.

III. In ignoring the greatest dignities. The dignity of a pure character, moral conquests, and self-sacrificing deeds. These they never recognize. (Homiliest.)

Moral insanity

This affirmation is not made of one or two men, nor of some men merely; but of “the sons of men,” as if of them all.

1. The insanity spoken of in the text is moral, that of the heart. By the heart here is meant the will--the voluntary power.

2. Who are the morally insane? Those who, not being intellectually insane, yet act as if they were. The conduct of impenitent men is the perfection of irrationality. You see this in the ends to which they devote themselves, and in the means which they employ to secure them. An end madly chosen--sought by means madly devised; this is the life-history of the masses who reject God.

3. This moral insanity is a state of unmingled wickedness.

(1) It is voluntary--not from the loss but from the abuse of reason.

(2) It is often deliberate.

(3) It is a total rejection of both God’s law and Gospel.

The law he will not obey; the Gospel of pardon he will not accept. He seems determined to brave the Omnipotence of Jehovah. Is he not mad upon his idols? Is it saying too much when the Bible affirms--“Madness is in their heart while they live”? Remarks:--

1. Sinners strangely accuse saints of being mad and crazy. Yet those very sinners admit the Bible to be true, and admit those things which Christians believe as true to be really so.

2. If intellectual insanity be a shocking fact, how much more so is moral? Suppose the case of a Webster. His brain becomes softened; he is an idler I There is not a man in all the land but would feel solemn. What! Daniel Webster--that great man, an idiot I How have the mighty fallen! What a horrible slight! But how much more horrible to see him become a moral idiot--to see a selfish heart run riot with the clear decisions of his gigantic intellect--to see his moral principles fading away before the demands of selfish ambition--to see such a man become a drunkard, a debauchee, a loafer. Intellectual idiocy is not to be named in the comparison!

3. Although some sinners may be externally fair, and may seem to be amiable in temper and character, yet every real sinner is actually insane. Eternity so vast, and its issues so dreadful, yet this sinner drives furiously to hell as if he were on the high-road to heaven! And all this only because he is infatuated with the pleasures of sin for a season. (C. G. Finney, D. D.)