Hardness Of Heart

by D. Smith, Lerwick | Category: General | Dec 1969

"Thou wilt give them hardness of heart, Thy curse unto them" (Lamentations 3.65). All who seek to win souls for Christ know something of the hardness of the unregenerate heart of man. The heart that is untouched by the grace of God is unresponsive to the word of life, veiled in spiritual darkness. The hard and impenitent heart of the natural man and his resentment of God and His gospel has been produced through sin. God did not make man with an impervious heart, any more than He made him destitute of the knowledge of God, for "the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse" (Romans 1.20). Sad it is that such revelation should have failed to produce reverence in the hearts of men. "Because that, knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened" (Romans 1.21). As in the physical realm so in the spiritual; darkness reduces spiritual longings, and hardens the senseless heart of man.

Having refused divine enlightenment, men lapsed into the terrible condition of being abandoned by God to lust and evil, for "God gave them up" to be filled with all unrighteousness and wickedness. Surely no statement can surpass in gravity the implications of being delivered up by God to the passionate cravings and pernicious evil of unrestrained flesh.

Pharaoh, king of Egypt, stands as a sombre warning to all who harden their hearts against God. Having refused to let the people of Israel go and being unmoved by the plagues of judgement which God brought upon Egypt, "He sinned yet more, and hardened his heart, he and his servants". The result of this refusal brought upon Pharaoh and his people a curse from which they never recovered, for upon this "the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart" and consequently, he and all his host were overthrown in the Red Sea. The words of Job were confirmed, "Who hath hardened himself against Him, and prospered?" (Job 9.4). That day Israel sang concerning their enemies "they went down into the depths like a stone".

Israel, with Egypt behind them, were soon on their way to the land of promise, but within a very short time they found themselves at a place called Rephidim "and there was no water for the people to drink" (Exodus 17.1). Here the people murmured against Moses and tempted the LORD, so that Moses "called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the striving of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the LORD, saying, Is the LORD among us, or not?" (Exodus 17.7).

Hardening of heart was not confined to Pharaoh and the Egyptians, any more than it is confined to the unsaved today, for what Israel did stands on record as a warning to all who are redeemed. "Harden not your heart, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness" (Psalm 95.8).

It is significant that the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews should choose this text as the basis of his exhortation to those in the house of God. While every believer is eternally secure in Christ and can never fall away from the "Church which is His Body", all who occupy a place in the house of God do so on the condition of obedience to the word of God, and are therefore liable through disobedience to fall away from the living God who dwells in the house of God (1 Timothy 3.15).

Falling away from a divine position begins in the heart, hence the solemn warning, not only to the Hebrews, but also to those in a like place today. "Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God; but exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called Today; lest anyone of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin" (Hebrews 3.12, 13). Sin today is as insidious as when those words were penned, and certainly none the less potent to produce in the hearts of God's people obstinacy and indifference.

The process of hardening may commence in a very subtle manner. Unbelief, which since the time of Adam has affected man's communion with God, still lurks in the heart, ready to resist God and His word, and no man, however mature in spiritual strength, is immune from the danger of hardening of heart against God and His word. The saint who begins in a little measure to withstand the word of God and to treat the will of the Lord with indifference is in danger of the judgement of God, even hardness of heart. Beloved, "Today if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation" (Hebrews 3.15). "Happy is the man that feareth away; but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into calamity" (Proverbs 28.14 R.V.M.).

D. Smith, Lerwick | Dec 1969
General