Harden Not Your Heart

1. There is such a tiling as vaguely admitting a statement to be true, and yet not receiving it so as to act upon it. This is practical unbelief. A man is in the habit of using intoxicating drinks without restraint. His medical adviser lays before his eyes an old age of decrepitude, pain, or palsy. His spiritual adviser points out to him the impending evil of drunkenness. He is to a certain extent convinced, but his practice remains the same. One who labors under an insidious disease, is told that unless immediate means be used, it will probably prove fatal. He half believes, but flatters himself, and goes on as before. A rash adventurer in merchandise is warned that his speculation will end in bankruptcy; yet he pushes forward and runs upon the catastrophe. These are familiar instances. But still more common and still more deplorable is the same blindness in regard to eternal realities. The sinner admits that he is unprepared to die and in peril of eternal wrath; and if he believed this with the power of his mind, he would be convulsed with agony. But there is nothing influential in his vague persuasions, and therefore they do not deserve the name of faith. Thus he hardens his heart.

2. Men are kept from believing by their supposed interests, prejudices, and passions. This is an admitted principle in the philosophy of evidence, recognized in alL legislation and jurisprudence. Why is a man deemed incompetent to decide in a case which involves his own interest? Not merely because it is feared he will deliberately judge against his sincere convictions of the truth; this were a shallow and superficial explanation; but because his bias will actually influence him to believe what is untrue. Twelve men in a jury-box hear precisely the same evidence; yet one of them, who is secretly but deeply concerned, hears all at a disadvantage, and comes to a conclusion adverse to the truth of the case. Which of us is able with perfect candor to credit testimony against his own child as freely as against a stranger? Here is a wide field for the operation of our inborn depravity, in hardening the heart against the truth of God. By a perverse abstraction, we hear all on one side. We lend an ear to that part of the evidence and argument which is favorable to what we have predetermined. We are deaf to reasons on the other part, which, to a mind not preoccupied, would be demonstrative.

8. Closely connected with this is the power which the mind has of turning itself awajy from that which is unpleasant. The edge of the thoughts may be averted, first from the testimony or the reasons, and then from the partially admitted truth. We may withhold our attention, or bestow it upon something else. It is not enough that truth be held before the mind for an instant. There must be consideration, in order to influence the will and the life. Momentary flashes of belief are ineffectual. The seal must not only touch, but for a season abide upon the waxen surface. Religious truth is robbed of its power when the mind refuses to ponder on it; and then the heart is hardened. Many an urgent 59 message of God’s Word strikes with a ray of conviction, but the mind shrinks and, as it were, closes its eyes. For this voluntary exclusion the soul is of course deeply responsible. These acts are repeated thousands of times during an impenitent life.

4. But perhaps the most common method of hardening the heart, and that to which the words of the text are most specially directed, is that of procrastination. The mind for a moment admits the truth and puts it off. This is precisely the same in its effects as degjiberate rejection. Often repeated, it becomes a habit of the soul, and effectually prevents salvation. The resolution not to hear God now is involved in the resolution ‘to hear at some other time. What is postponed to-day, will be more easily postponed to-morrow, and so life slips away. Old age is more enslaved by the evil habit than childhood and youth. Thus the arch-enemy gains his point; the heart is hardened and the door of mercy is allowed to close. And it is the destructive influence of this treacherous temper, which is opposed by the words of the Holy One crying in our ears: “To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts!”

Let me call the reader’s attention to this part of the solemn admonition.

1. To-day then is the best time for opening the heart to divine impressions, because iti GocVs time. He is a sovereign, and it is wonderful that he should treat with us at all; but when he does so, we must surely admit his authority to fix his own time. Especially when the communication to which he asks our response is one of abounding mercy. He demands the heart noio; he offers pardon and renewal noic. If it is ignominious to disregard the entreaties of a /HencZ, how guHty are those who turn away from the beseechmgs of their God and Saviour 1 If we were to treat the proposals of a fellow-mortal in this manner he would leave our doors and shake off the’ dust of his feet against us. Is there no malionity then in the sin of asking God, our offended Lord, to await our good pleasures* He knocks, but the hard heart will not admit

him.

2 To-DAY is the time, because U)-morrow the heart will he harder. Delay increases the indisposition to return. The conscience acquires armor, and becomes skilkd to ward off the sword of the Spirit. The history of 61 every soul shows this to be true; your own case shows it. There have been days, and memory recalls them well, in which you had no peace by reason of your sins. You thought of little else for a season; you read and prayed and strove. Those days are far away in the distant past. Scripture and sermons and providential warnings find you less penetrable than you were. Should not this warn you against further procrastination? You complain that it is difficult to yield yourself unreservedly to God. Oh! betray not your souls by the belief that delay will make it less difficult. There are those in whom the disposition to defer divine subjects has become from habit almost a part of their nature. They are steeled against every weapon, for long continuance in an evil way has made the heart hard, and there is nothing they regard so little as the voice of God.

3. Harden not the heart TO-DAY, because to-morrow the number and aggravation of your sins loill he increased; and they will go on increasing. Are they not sufficiently numerous? and is not their crimson hue sufficiently deep? If you could bring yourself to call them up in order, you would soon be over- 62 whelmed. Is it not the exquisite painfulness of this survey which causes you to resist the light? Be not deceived. Remorse will overtake you, either in this world or in that which is to come. You do but act the part of an unthrifty debtor, who avoids settlement and plunges yet more deeply towards his ruin. Every new page in the book of God’s account adds to the wrath and terror of your future reckoning. Most who read this have already lived the greater part of their time on earth, and some are very near the great tribunal. During all this period there has been an accumulation of guilt — mountains of unpardoned sin. Why should you add to the dreadful mass? To-day, God comes with offers of pardon. To-day, if ye will hear his voice, he is ready to be reconciled. Though you have repeatedly refused him, yet to-day he is willing to enter into your heart. Why should he find it locked against him? Why will you continue to offend, and add transgression to transgression? Consider, moreover, from this time forward your acts of disobedience acquire an additional quality of turpitude; for they will be committed against clearer light and newer mercies, after fresh strivings of the 63

Spirit, and with deeper wounds of conscience. And the oftener you have been ineffectually wrought upon by divine considerations, the more direct will be your opposition to the truth, and the more heinously culpable the hardening of your heart.

4. To-day is the only safe time, for to-morrow you may he in eternity. Life is uncertain. “Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” “He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.” Behold now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation. Can you reasonably expect God to wait the movements of an impenitent heart, which perpetually renders him nothing but denials for all his proposals of grace? How dreadful would be the narrative, if I could unfold it, of those who have been summoned away in the midst of these procrastinations! The moment when they vainly promised themselves that they would open their hearts to the divine visitant, found them beyond the reach of hope. You are conscious that you stand in dread of death, and yet you madly refuse the only gift which can disarm death of his horrors. The part of wisdom is to leave nothing to hazard. The argument is so convincing that none can seriously persevere in considering it, without an increase of feeling, and hence you turn away from it — in other words, you harden the heart. Yet I press it, earnestly and affectionately, once again, knowing that in the hand of God it has been used to bring many a rebel to his right mind. This dream of tD-morrow if unbroken by an unusual effort, will wrap you in its delusions until your last breath.

5. Repent to-day, because refusal so to do is inconsistent luith a desire to repent. Unconverted persons never more deceive themselves than when they plead that they have a sincere wish to return to God. If you credit their assertions, there is nothing which they so strongly desire as to have experience of true religion. But such a desire, if genuine, would instantly break up all these habits of indolent lingering. He who desires to be healed, flies to the physician. He who means to escape shipwreck, loses not a moment in lashing himself to some buoyant material. He who craves deliverance from conflagration, instantly rushes from amidst the flaming tim- 65 bers. And lie who longs to be saved, puts aside every other interest and engagement as unimportant, and devotes all the energies of his soul to this single point, that he may escape from the wrath to come. How remarkably do we see it exemplified, when any man is under conviction of sin. Away with all indifference or carnal waiting, at such an hour. He reads, he prays, he looks in every direction for help, he uses every means, he thinks of nothing else. Here is a case of real desire to return to God. And the absence of all this, especially the deliberate purpose to adjourn the whole inquiry and remain longer under condemnation, is demonstrative that there is no reality of desire. Let not this hollow fallacy delude you. These are not the fruits and tokens of strong desire, and if you can plan a postponement of your greatest concern, you must have learned to harden the heart. There is no remedy but immediate acceptance of God’s word.

6. Repent to-day, O my hearer! let me finally urge, because rejoeiitance is the gift of God. You sometimes plead the difficulties of the work and your own helplessness as a reason for delay. But surely this should be GO mightily operative in the other direction. If God, whose voice is heard saying, To-day to-day, is the only Being who can effect the great change, then -you are in his sovereign hands and at his absolute mercy. If he were unwilling to receive your returning soul, he surely would not limit a certain time as the accepted period. To-day, we may assure you, he is ready to give repentance and remission of sins. For future days he makes no promises. Your sins are great, but he desireth not the death of the wicked. Cast yourself in absolute surrender before him whom you have offended. Throw your guilty soul into the arms of his beloved Son. Myriads now in heaven owe their salvation to this very course. Why should he urge you with his messages, and plead with you to make this the blessed moment, if there were not mercies in his heart? Why this unwonted seriousness, and this weight of solemn thought, except from influences of the Holy Spirit, who will not allow you to remain unreproved? Remember, I beseech you, that all who have become believers were once in the condition in which you now are. They felt the difficulties which you now feel. They suffered your perplexity and groped in your darkness. They were tempted to put off the day of submitting to the righteousness of God, as you are now tempted. But mark it well, they were brought to a point where further delay was impossible. And had they not been brought to this, they had never been saved. The pressure was momentous and irresistible. They were driven to this yielding. Sin was intolerable. “Wrath was overhanging and insupportable. They saw before them a yawning gulf. The gleam of light on their heart and their path was so dazzling that they felt that any procrastination would be an impious abandoning of God. To remain in the plain of condemnation any longer they saw to be ruin. Nothing was left to them but the one determination — and they made it.

It is the voice of God your Redeemer which is sounding in your ears. Think not of him as an austere Judge, but as a compassionate Father, offering you the tender mercies of his Son. The whole work of Christ is made over to you in the offer of the Gospel for your cordial acquiescence, and that cordial acquiescence is saving faith. All is yours upon your believing. Abandon your own works and duties, your own innocence and morality, your own merits and righteousness, your own strivings, emotions, and tears. Abandon forever the vain effort to render yourselves more acceptable. Come in the one character which belongs to you, that of a corrupt, lost, and helpless sinner. Come out of yourselves, and find all in Christ. Now, while the Word is near you; now, while the seal of truth is pressed upon the somewhat yielding heart, give way to the impression and yield yourself to God. Why should not this be the happy moment, since all things are ready except your unrelenting soul? To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts! There will never be a freer access; there will never be a more present Saviour. The work, so long delayed, may be accomplished here and now, and your weight of sin will thenceforward be taken away wholly and forever.