Proverbs 28:26

He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.

The folly of trusting in our own hearts

I. What is meant by a man trusting his heart. It is--

1. To commit and resign up the entire conduct of his life and actions to the directions of it, as of a guide. A guide should be able to lead and direct him; and a guide should faithfully give the best directions.

II. Wherein the foolishness of it consists. Two things render a trust foolish.

1. The thing which we commit to a trust. We commit three things to the mercy of this trust--the honour of God; our own felicity here; the eternal concernments of our soul hereafter. The honour of God as Creator, Governor, Saviour, and gracious Father; our happiness in this world, both temporal and spiritual. Is the heart worthy of such trust? Nay, it is weak, and so cannot make good a trust. In point of apprehension, it cannot perceive and understand certainly what is good. In point of election, it cannot choose and embrace it. Moreover, it is deceitful, and so will not make good a trust. The delusions of the heart relate to the commission of sin; the performance of duty; a man’s conversion or change of his spiritual estate. The heart of man will draw him on to sin by persuading him he can keep it in bounds; by leading him into occasions of sin; by lessening and extenuating it in his esteem. A man’s heart will persuade him that a cessation from sin is a plenary conquest and mortification of sin. (R. South.)

Strange self-deception

By what sophistry, what perversity of the understanding, what negligence it is, that the tremendous prospect of eternity and judgment has really so little to do with the formation of our opinions, and the regulation of our conduct. Two propositions may be established by this inquiry.

1. From the deficient practice of those calling themselves Christians, we are by no means justified in the inference that their judgments are not therefore convinced of the truth of the doctrines they profess to believe.

2. If, in defiance of incalculable hopes and terrors of another world, man is still unable to keep that guard over the inclinations of his heart which may secure his innocence, the entire removal of so potent a check could surely have no other tendency than to complete the degradation of his nature, and to dislocate the whole fabric of society.

With regard to the question before us--

1. Although the highest achievement of a course of moral and religious discipline be, to subject our every thought and action to the control of conscience and religion only, yet in every stage short of this highest exaltation of character it is to far inferior impulses that even our most plausible actions owe their birth. In his natural state passion, not principle, forms the mainspring of action. As moral education advances, impulses ripen into knowledge. Where he once only felt, he now reasons. But it will be long ere his original constitution will change its bias. In this intermediate state of moral improvement our conviction may indeed be sincere, but our conduct will still be defective. With the greater part of mankind action almost invariably outruns reflection. If the want of union between reason and appetite be the first source of sin, our amendment must depend upon establishing their connection. One cause of that strange indifference on the subject of religion manifested by many may be traced to that callousness of mind, that apathy arising from satiety, which all of us have felt when our minds for a long period together have been occupied with one predominant idea, however originally interesting. The only remedy we can apply is still the same calculating and systematic counteraction produced by habitual meditation and discipline which we have already recommended. A last inducement to sin is that natural tendency of our constitution, whether intellectual or physical, to adapt itself to the medium in which it is placed, and to vary its own habits and propensities and feelings according to the accidental association of external circumstances. (P. N. Shuttleworth, D.D.)

The height of folly

Let me ask you to look at the closing clause of the previous verse, for it appears to me to have a very immediate relation to our text. “He that putteth his trust in the Lord shall be made fat. He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.” On the one hand is Jehovah, all strong, all wise; and on the other one’s evilly disposed, vacillating heart. In whom dost thou trust? Those who trust Jehovah become fat and flourishing; He honours their faith, He prospers the work of their hands; but leanness of soul and lack of real blessing must be the result of trusting to one’s inner consciousness, or past experience, or anything of self.

I. “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool,” because of the divine verdict on the human heart. It is not as though we were left to our own estimate of the natural heart. If we were, since it is natural to us to think well of ourselves, we could hardly be called fools for trusting in these hearts of ours. We have a higher verdict; One who knows, far better than we can, has published the innate character of the human heart. We need not be in ignorance as to what God thinks of us. He is the authority on this matter. He made the heart. True, He did not make it sinful or foolish; He made it pure and holy, prepared for every good word and work. But, knowing as He does how beautiful it was at the outset, He can best judge of the marring of it. He knows, too, that the more beautiful and glorious it was at first, the greater is its wreck and ruin. We are aware of the fact that those things which are most finely constructed, when they do suffer damage suffer very materially. The wreck is all the greater, and repair is more difficult because of the delicacy of construction. Well, God knew how pure the human heart was made, what capabilities it possessed, what possibilities lay latent there. He knows, too, the damage sin has done. God does not look upon the fall as a slight accident which could be easily remedied. What does He say of the human heart as it is, by reason of its sin? He says, “Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Moreover, God in another place has plainly written, “The heart of men is fully set in them to do evil.” Have you forgotten that striking word from Jeremiah, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked”? Well may we say, with the writer of this proverb, “He theft trusteth in his own heart is a fool,” for he is trusting a deceiver; nay, he is trusting the arch-deceiver, the very chief among the deceivers. Are you going to trust in this heart of yours? Your feelings, your capabilities, your faculties--everything that you like to include in this comprehensive word, are all affected, more or less, by the fall, and yet you are prepared to trust in this rotten reed, this broken staff. When I hear some excuse themselves or their fellows by saying, “Oh, well you know, but they are good at heart,” I feel like saying, “Wherever else they are good, they are not good there, for God Himself declares, ‘There is none righteous, no, not one.’” So, then, we have got God’s verdict concerning the human heart, and it is so emphatic, and so unflattering, that we say with the author of the proverb, “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.”

II. Secondly, experience warns us in the same direction. We can see for ourselves, if we open our eyes, that those who trust their own hearts are fools. Should we not learn lessons from the falls and follies of others? Let me ask you who have been vigilant, Have you noticed the result of self-confidence in others? Whether it be in business matters, or social affairs, or political questions, or spiritual concerns, to what has unbounded self-confidence led men? They may have run well for awhile. It proved to be only a nine-day’s wonder. It was as the crackling of thorns under a pot: there was great flare and flame, but it ended in smoke and ashes. I have met with instances, not a few, in which men have thus overrun themselves, and become filled with their own ways. It seems to me as if a Nemesis followed them. God virtually says to them, “Well, you believe in yourself; I will leave you to yourself; you trust your own heart, you can do without Me; you ask for independence--you shall have it.” These men have not succeeded--they have come to grief; their supposed righteousness and self-merit did not provide them with shelter in the day of storm; it was a refuge of lies. Are you going to follow their example? Are you likely to succeed where they have failed? Such matters are influenced by certain inexorable laws. A Nemesis pursues those who proudly trust their native strength. Besides, you have had some experience of your own, have you not? Is there anybody here who has not had a try at trusting his own heart?

III. I must point out to you that self-trust is quite unnecessary. I can conceive that, if we were shut up to trusting our own hearts, we might be excused for doing it. God knows we must trust somebody or something! Is there not in us all the clinging tendency, a desire to get hold of somebody or something, a craving for sympathy? If there were no outside helper, stronger than ourselves, what else could we rely on but our experiences and our feelings? But there is something else infinitely better to trust to. We have no excuse for such folly as this; we are not shut up to self-confidence; there is an alternative. If I saw one on the shore launching a leaky boat upon a troubled sea, I should say to him, “Fool that thou art, to go to sea in such a sieve as that!” “Well, but,” says he, “I must go to sea, necessity is laid upon me--and there is no boat but this.” In that case I could only pity him: if he must embark, what can the poor fellow do but take his chance in the leaky cockleshell? Ah, but this is not our case at all. You must go to sea, and it is stormy, too, but you need not embark in this leaky craft of your own heart. God’s own lifeboat stands alongside you; nay, it is already launched. You have but to leap into it; it will outride the roughest sea, and weather every storm. I do not know how it is that some people will not trust God till they are obliged to. You who have not yet got rid of sin and of its condemnation, why not trust Jehovah? Why not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and be saved? I know you are trusting to your own heart. You say to yourself, “I do not think it is so bad after all. Sometimes it is really first-rate.” Another says, “Well, my heart is not up to the mark, I know, but it is better than it was! “Well, really, friend, I am glad to hear that; but when it is at its best it is, by no means, reliable. I pray you do not say, “I think it will come all right at last.” It is folly thus to talk. Look away to Jesus; trust not your own heart, but in the living God. And you, who have been brought out of darkness into His marvellous light, surely you are not going to play the fool by trusting your own heart. You, you of all men, ought to know better. You are going back to where you were at first, to self-righteousness, and self-trust! Well, I leave this question with you; are you able, despite all the experience you have had, to steer your craft across life’s trackless sea, and how can you hope to outride the breakers of judgment that break upon the further shore? (Thomas Spurgeon.)

Folly of self-confidence

I. The evil the text refers to. The heart here signifies the whole soul. Trusting in it means to rest on its sufficiency; to depend upon it in the various circumstances in which we may be placed. It includes--

1. A reliance upon our own wisdom in the concerns of life.

2. To adopt our own schemes of religion. By affirming the sufficiency of nature and reason. By admitting into his creed nothing but what his imperfect mind can understand. By placing all his hopes on excited feelings and warm emotions. By adding to, or diminishing from, Christ’s holy doctrines, ordinances, or commands.

3. To confide in the moral goodness of our own hearts. The Christian also trusts in his own heart when--

4. He relies upon his own skill or power in temptation and trouble.

II. The declaration made concerning this evil. “Is a fool.” This is obvious--

1. If we appeal to reason.

2. To the heart itself.

3. To examples.

4. To our own experience. (J. Burns, D.D.)

Self-sufficiency and godly confidence

I. Self-sufficiency. Seen as pride, and as self-trust. Two things indicated. It is mischievous. It is foolish.

II. Godly confidence. Trust in God implies a knowledge of Him, an appreciation of His transcendent excellences, and a consciousness of His willingness and ability to sustain us. This trust leads to prosperity. (Homilist.)

The folly of self-trust

1. This maxim is justified by the description which Jeremiah gives: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?” For if it be indeed such as it is there represented, assuredly the heart cannot be trustworthy. And that the prophet’s description is but too correct must appear abundantly evident to all who have ever sincerely and seriously engaged in the difficult task of self-examination. The very difficulty of the task proves how full the heart which is the subject of it must be of treachery and of secret vice.

2. This maxim is also abundantly justified and confirmed by universal experience, and may be illustrated experimentally.

I. One striking proof we have in our proneness to relapse into sins of which we fancied, perhaps, that we had long ago fairly repented. He makes at once his prompt yet firm choice between God and the world. But soon his evil heart of unbelief tempts him again to depart from the living God.

II. Another practical and experimental proof of the wise man’s assertion we have in the various turns of the believer’s struggle with indwelling sin.

III. We pass from the Christian’s continual struggle with the sin that dwelleth in him to the resolute stand which he is called upon to make against the evil that is in the world. Confessing that our corrupt inclinations still long for certain forbidden indulgences, we yet heedlessly loiter still within sight and within reach of the glittering prize, though we feel our longing becoming daily more intense, and our power to resist it daily giving way.

IV. One other instance of this folly we may mention: our proneness to rely on the amount of our attainments, the sufficiency and the stability of our own conscious and confirmed integrity. We easily forget the imperfection which adheres to our best services and our best qualities, and please ourselves with the idea that some one favourite Christian virtue, at least, is now strong enough for any emergency. And from the very instant in which such an idea begins to prevail between us, that particular virtue may be pronounced the feeblest and most precarious of all that we have. A slight change of circumstances--some very trifling accident, unforeseen and unexpected--a new temptation suddenly assailing us--may lay the proud structure in the dust, and teach us how vain it is to trust in any degree of excellence, in any height of Christian perfection. (R. S. Candlish, D.D.)

Self-deceit

Whosoever trusts his own heart as his light, adviser, and guide, in the complex ways and actings of life, is a fool. Half the wisdom of the wise is in the choice of their advisers. Wise men discern wisdom in others, and call them to council; the wisest man is he who least trusts himself alone. He knows the difficulties of life and its intricacies, and gathers all the lights he can and casts them upon his own case. He must in the end act on his own responsibility; but he seeks all counsellors, the experienced and impartial, sometimes the opposed and unfriendly, that he may be aware on all sides; for “in the multitude of counsellors is safety.” But it may be asked, Is not the heart God’s creation and God’s gift? Did He not plant eyes in it, and give to it light and discernment to guide our ways? Is it not our truest personal guide, given to each one of us by God Himself? Why must a man who trusts his own heart be a fool?

1. Because our hearts--that is, we ourselves--are ignorant of ourselves. If we knew ourselves, we should not trust ourselves; we do so because we do not know what we are. We are by nature, and still more by personal act, sinners. And sin blinds the heart: so that the more sinful the less it knows its sinfulness; for like death, which is most evidently perceived by the living, not at all by the dead, and by the dying only in the measure in which their living consciousness is still retained, so it is with sin dwelling in us. Where is the worldly man who in matters of honour and dishonour, right and wrong, sin and duty, wisdom and folly, religion and faith, death and judgment, heaven and hell, does not with confident assurance trust his own heart? But in the sight of God such a man is a “fool.”

2. Not only is the heart ignorant of itself, but it deceives itself. Of course these cannot be altogether separated. Every one who is ignorant is, in one sense, a self-deceiver; and yet it may not be with any laboured illusion. Ignorance is absence of light; self-deceivers have light, and visions in that light; but those visions are illusions. Ignorance is the danger of unawakened minds; self-deceit of the awakened.

(1) What is more common than to see men characteristically marked by one sin which they pointedly censure in others, and from which they believe themselves to be absolutely free? These unsuspected sins are almost universally the faults of childhood and early youth, which have become habitual and unconscious; for instance, personal vanity, selfishness, a difficult and disputatious temper, impatience, resentment, unreality, or the like. And they who have these faults in them by long habit generally excuse themselves by ascribing the same to others on whom they have inflicted them; as if the wind should chide the roughness of the sea for disturbing its repose, all the while believing itself to be at rest.

(2) The same effect which appears in casual temptations is more dangerously produced in deliberate motives and lines of conduct. An early habit of personal vanity, or desire of wealth, sometimes unconsciously governs a person’s whole life. The same is true of worse passions, such as jealousy, envy, resentment, etc.

(3) The gravest part still remains; I mean the deceit we practise upon ourselves as to our state before God. The same unconsciousness which conceals from us our habitual sins, such as anger or envy, conceals also the impatience and stiffness of our will towards God, and our want of gratitude and love, our undevotion and sluggishness in the spiritual life. All these, having been upon us from our earliest memory, have become our natural, our normal state. Such a heart becomes, at last swathed in its own self-trust; and we watch it as we do the rash motions of a man who walks blindfold, reeling in the midst of dangers, which might sometimes for a moment provoke our mirth, if it did not always excite alarm.

2. Another reason why to trust our own hearts is a note of folly is because they flatter us. How long have we gone on persuading ourselves that we are meek, poor in spirit, makers of peace, merciful, patient, and the like, because we assent in desire and will to the Beatitudes, and would fain share in their benedictions! How long have we persuaded ourselves that we pray both often and enough, earnestly, and with devotion; that we love God above all, and above all desire so to love Him; that our life is, on the whole, not unlike the great Example of humility; and that we know our own hearts better than any one can tell us! And yet what does this last persuasion show? Why are we so sensitive under a reproof? Why do we accuse ourselves freely of all faults but the one imputed? Why are we never guilty in the point suspected? Why do we wholly guide ourselves, and feel so great security in our own direction? but because we trust our own hearts. Out of this proceeds our visions of devotion, our imaginations of sanctity. It is a forge never cold, always at work, forming and fashioning devices which please us by their fair and shapely forms, and flatter us because they are a homage to ourselves.

Lessons:

1. The greatest security against deceiving ourselves by trusting our own hearts is a careful information of conscience. But this plainly runs beyond the period of our responsibility into the account of those to whom our childhood was subject. Our chief difficulty is in the attempt to analyse the confused and hardened mass of self, neglected for twenty, thirty, half a hundred years; to unravel a world of knots and entanglements; to find the beginning of the clue. Self-examination begun late in life must remand the chief part of its discoveries to the day of judgment.

2. The other security is the only one which remains to those who have never enjoyed the first; and that is to take the judgment of some other persons instead of trusting in themselves. It will be, no doubt, painful and distressing; it will bring shame and burning of face. But is not the stake worth the cost? (Archdeacon Manning.).