There are passages in the Bible that are frightening. Heb. 3:12-13 is one such passage. "Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of
you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one
another daily, while it is called 'TODAY,' lest any of you be hardened through
the deceitfulness of sin." (NKJV)
This is a passage addressed to Christians but the idea that the heart
can be hardened by sin is applicable to all men.
The fact that a man can be hardened by sin is scary in that
the implication is that a person might well get to the point where he/she is so
hardened that they can no longer repent and thus lose all possibility of being forgiven and of salvation. Sufficient hardening leads to damnation. When your heart becomes so hard that you cannot
repent, for your heart will not allow it, you are done.
The spiritual heart of man can be likened to cement in that
when cement is wet, before it has settled and dried, you can fashion it in
whatever manner you choose but once it has hardened it becomes a different
matter altogether.
Once a person hears the truth, whether about the
gospel as a whole or the truth as regards a particular sin, and that person
refuses to respond to the truth obediently he hardens his heart in that
very act.
Sin is a hardening agent.
Every day away from God living for self, when one has heard the truth and
knows better, is another day of sin, another day of the further hardening of
the heart. You say you can change but
the desire to do so becomes less and less as time goes by and one grows ever
more comfortable in a non-Christian or unfaithful lifestyle. Sin becomes ever more comfortable as each day
passes by. This is a part of the
deceitfulness of sin. Things seem to go
fine without God or without faithfulness.
That is until the day it is too late.
In Heb. 6, the Bible speaks of Christians who have gotten
themselves into a situation where it is impossible to renew them to repentance:
"For in the case
of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift
and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word
of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is
impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to
themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame." (Heb. 6:4-6
NAS)
One does not fall away from God in a single hour, day, or
week, but it is a process. Let the leaven
of sin do its work, let the heart become gradually hardened by it, day by day,
week by week, month by month, year by year, and the end result may well be a
heart too hardened to repent and who can say how long or short a time
that may take.
The Bible speaks about God giving up on people. No doubt they had become hardened. In Rom. 1 we read words like "God also gave them up" (v. 24),
"God gave them up" (v. 26),
and "God gave them over"
(v. 28) all talking about God giving those people up to sins of various kinds
which means he ceased to exercise any restraining influence on them. The New Living Translation says "God abandoned them" in verses 24
and 26, and in verse 28, "he abandoned
them." How would you like God
to abandon you, to give up on you, to allow you to go on in sin with no more
efforts to restrain you or bring you to repentance? Would that scare you? It should.
God says in Psalms 81:11-12, "But My people would not heed My voice, And Israel would have none of
Me. So I gave them over to their own
stubborn heart, To walk in their own counsels." (NKJV) That God was long-suffering with his people in
Israel and Judah no one can doubt who has ever read the Old Testament. Time and again in the prophets one can see
God pleading with his people to repent and turn back to him but they refused to
do so. There comes a time when it is too
late to repent, too late because you cannot do it, because you become incapable
of doing it. The heart will not allow
it.
A person's heart is not something to be played with. "Keep
your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life."
(Prov. 4:23 NKJV) Adam Clarke says of
this verse, "'Above all keeping,’
guard thy heart." The New Living
Translation reads, "Guard your heart
above all else, for it determines the course of your life." Think about that, your heart determines the
course of your life and so it does. That
is serious business. If the heart
wanders, if it is not steadfast, if it is not centered on God, on Christ, on
the gospel, on God's will, what then? It
is then directing the course of your life towards hell. There is good reason to "Guard your heart above all else." One's eternal destiny is at stake.
Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there your heart
will be also." (Matt. 6:21 NKJV)
If you look closely at the two verses just before Matt. 6:21 Jesus
only offers two alternatives as to where a man's treasure will be, either on
earth or in heaven. He says without
quoting it all, "Do not lay up for
yourselves treasure on earth…but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven."
(Matt. 6:19-20 NKJV) A man's treasure is
either going to be found on earth in the things of this world, which means that
is where his heart is, or his treasure is going to be in heaven, which means his
heart is set on the spiritual life. The
one pathway is inevitably going to lead to sin for it does not lead to God.
A man who has hardened his heart against God and his word is
like a man carrying around a bottle of liquid nitroglycerin in his
pocket. He never knows when his life
will end and total disaster befall him.
Solomon wrote, "He who
hardens his heart will fall into calamity." (Prov. 28:14 NKJV) Now I want you to take note of two things
from this passage. (1) There is no doubt
about the calamity. It is coming. You will not escape it no matter who you are
if you harden your heart. (2) Secondly,
who is it that hardens his heart? It is
the individual. It is not something that
has to happen. You can prevent it. It is in your hands; you have the ability to
prevent your heart from hardening.
Again, "He who is
often reproved, and hardens his neck, Will suddenly be destroyed, and that
without remedy." (Prov. 29:1 NKJV)
While the text is correctly translated "hardens his neck," we
understand that is a figure of speech referring to the hardening of the
heart. The New Revised Standard version
reads, "One who is often reproved,
yet remains stubborn, will suddenly be broken beyond healing." (Prov.
29:1) It is the heart that is stubborn, but who makes it that way? Who is
responsible for not listening to the word of God that reproves a man of his
sins? To ask is to answer. What happens to such a man? He is destroyed without remedy. That ought to scare us.
Without the word of God we would not even know there was
such a thing as sin or that we were going to be judged by God's word. It is God's word that reproves a man, that
tells him he is wrong and needs to change, that he needs to repent? What do you think, should a man harden his
heart against the things he reads in the Bible?
It is just a matter of time for the hardened man who refuses to listen
to the word of God, just a matter of time.
"But in
accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up
for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment
of God." (Rom. 2:5 NKJV) The
impenitent heart is a hard heart. It
will not obey God and its reward is wrath.
That reward begins on the day of death.
He will be as was the rich man who desired of Lazarus some water for his
tongue for he said, "I am tormented
in this flame." (Luke 16:24 NKJV)
That time of torment for the hard-hearted man or woman could begin in
the next few minutes for no one knows the minute of his death. My niece died in apparently perfect health
while asleep on a couch at the age of 33.
The autopsy found no apparent cause of death. According to the autopsy report she ought to
be alive but she is not. When your heart
quits beating you are dead no matter what state of health you may think you are
in or your doctor says you are in.
An impenitent heart is a choice. A hard heart is a choice. God knows a man's heart. Peter said at the Jerusalem council in Acts
15 in speaking of God's acceptance of the Gentiles, "So God, who knows the heart, acknowledged them." (Acts 15:8
NKJV) The Psalmist, David, said, "He knows the secrets of the heart."
(Psalms 44:21 NKJV) Then we are told,
"All things are naked and open to
the eyes of Him to whom we must give account." (Heb. 4:13 NKJV) David, in speaking to his son Solomon said,
"The Lord searches all hearts and
understands all the intent of the thoughts." (1 Chron. 28:9 NKJV) One can fool other men as to his motives and
as to what he thinks. He can mislead,
deceive, and even tell outright lies but he cannot fool God for God knows--he
has searched out every man's heart.
One of the big questions that a man faces is am I
honest with myself? Am I honest with
God's word as it applies to me? If I am
not I am simply going to die in my sin or sins.
There is no way around it. In
God's eyes it is the wicked man who "hardens
his face." (Prov. 21:29 NKJV)
We can please men or we can please God.
We can please self or we can please God.
Whatever we do we must remember the question Job asked, one which we
must answer, "Who has hardened
himself against Him and prospered?" (Job 9:4 NKJV)
I want to close this article with a short discussion of
Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, a man who hardened his heart against
God. I quote the following text:
"Zedekiah was
twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in
Jerusalem. He also did evil in the sight
of the LORD his God, and did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet,
who spoke from the mouth of the LORD.
And he also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear
an oath by God; but he stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against
turning to the LORD God of Israel." (2 Chron. 36:11-13 NKJV)
The kingdom was at that time a
tributary to Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. Zedekiah rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar paying
no heed to Jeremiah, God's spokesman.
Jerusalem was laid siege to around 18 months before being taken. When the city was taken, Zedekiah was captured
while trying to flee. All of Zedekiah's
sons were executed before his very eyes and then his own eyes were put out and
he was carried captive to Babylon. I
remind you of what Job said, "Who
has hardened himself against Him and Prospered?" (Job 9:4 NKJV) Not Zedekiah.
Zedekiah "hardened his heart against turning to the
Lord." Was there a reason he
could not have turned to the Lord? Was there
something preventing such a turning? Not
a thing in the world. Jeremiah was there
urging just such a turn all the time.
Until a man gives in to the word of God and is willing to come into
compliance with it there is no hope for him.
In this same chapter, where we
read about Zedekiah in 2 Chron. 36, just 2 verses below where we left off in our
reading above, we find the following as a follow-up.
"And the LORD God of their fathers sent warnings to them by His
messengers, rising up early and sending them, because He had compassion on His
people and on His dwelling place. But
they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His
prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, till there was
no remedy." (2 Chron. 36:15-16 NKJV)
Zedekiah was not the only Jew
with a hardened heart. But I have quoted
this passage to make some points from it.
(1) God is compassionate. He sent
warnings via the prophets but they were more than warnings. Often, as one reads the prophets, it is as
though God is begging, pleading, as though his heart is broken over his people
who have left him. He yearns for them
and desires their return much like a parent over a child, a child who has
turned his back on the parent and broken the parent's heart.
(2) The second point is that
God had done all he could. There comes a
time when everything has been done that can possibly be done for an ill
patient. So it is with the spiritually
ill.
(3) The third point was that
God's word was despised. When you get
yourself in that position, where you despise what God says, how can you expect
help from God for you have basically said I will not accept such help? His help is found in his word that tells us
what we need to do but we are unwilling to accept his prescription.
(4) The final point, there
comes a time when there is no remedy.
Why not, because of the hardness of heart.
I close now with the best
advice you will ever get. It is not
mine. It is God's. "Today,
if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts." (Heb. 4:7
NKJV) How is your heart today? How is mine?
It is the pure in heart that will see God (Matt. 5:8). They do not harden their hearts against his
word. We will either see God or Satan in
time to come. It is our choice. It is our heart that will make the
difference.
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