A Hard Heart (Preached: Feb. 21, 2010 AM)

(Hebrews 3:1-13)

Heart is used in Scripture as the most comprehensive term for the authentic person. It is the part of our being where we desire, deliberate, and decide. It has been described as “the place of conscious and decisive spiritual activity,” “the comprehensive term for a person as a whole; his feelings, desires, passions, thought, understanding and will,” and “the center of a person. The place to which God turns.” –Joseph Stowell

What kind of a person do you think of when you think of someone who is “hardhearted?”

• Criminal minded
• Militant homosexuals
• Abortionists
• Atheists (Madalyn Murray O’Hair; Christopher Hitchens)
• Marilyn Manson (who ripped up Bibles during his show)
• Morally destitute
• Child abusers
• Scoffers, mockers, blasphemers, rejecters of Christ

There are other people whose hearts are hardened, though their conduct may not reach the extreme depths of depravity as those previously mentioned. They are in our churches and they are hardened to God and to His Spirit. They are people that lack compassion for others and passion for God. They are fruitless, barren, cold, and indifferent to spiritual things.

“The hardening of our hearts is the spring of all our other sins.” —Matthew Henry

Our Hearts Are Hardened When…(examples)

1. We resist the will of the Lord (Ex. 8:15)
2. We complain against the Lord (Heb. 3:8)
3. We fail to trust the Lord (Heb. 3:8)
4. We stop listening to the Lord (2 Ki. 17:13-14; Jer. 7:25-26; 19:14-15; Heb. 4:7)
5. We exalt ourselves above the Lord (Dan. 5:19-21)
6. We value traditions more than the Lord (Mk. 3:5)
7. We resist the work of the Lord (Acts 7:51-52)
8. We yield to temptation rather than the Lord (Heb. 3:13)

“He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck, will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.” (Prov. 29:1)

Ask God to break up the fallow ground of your heart and to make you sensitive to Him again.