Don’t
Harden Your Heart
By Pastor David Minor, Sr.
(Excerpted from a sermon)
“Wherefore as the Holy
Ghost saith, Today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation in the day of temptation in the
wilderness: when your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw My works forty years.”
Read Hebrews 3:7-19.
“But with many of them
God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these
things were our examples to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. Neither be ye idolaters... Neither let us commit fornication... Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of
them also tempted and were destroyed of serpents. Neither murmur ye, as some
of them murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. Now all these things happened
unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition...” Read
1 Corinthians 10:1-11.
Let us look at what happened
to the Israelites for they are examples unto us. Three times in the third chapter
of Hebrews we are admonished to harden not our hearts. The Holy Ghost said if
you are going to hear My voice, if you want to hear Me speak, then don’t harden your heart. If you harden your heart you cannot hear from God for the heart is the ear unto your spirit. God does not speak unto the man who hardens himself against the voice of God.
The Israelites hardened their
hearts because God was not doing things the way they wanted Him to. How many
of you could make a list of things in your life that are happening to you that you don’t like? The list might read something like this: I don’t like my husband (or wife). I don’t like my neighbors. I don’t like my job. I don’t like my hair. I wish I
wasn’t fat. I wish I was rich. I
wish I lived in a different town. We don’t like our situations; we wish
things were different. We refuse to praise God.
Some even backslide and harden their hearts because they will not accept the fact that they are in the place where
God wants them to be or He would have sense enough to get them out of it.
The Israelites murmured against
Moses and against God. They said, “Moses, we don’t like our diet. We don’t like the desert sand. There’s
not enough water for us to drink. Who do you think you are? Moses, you hold the services too long. Our heads get hot under
the sun.”
How many of you wish God would
change the circumstances? Do you know something – you’ve got the
beginning of a hardened heart and God isn’t speaking to you. If you want
to hear His voice, HARDEN NOT your heart. How many of you can say, “I’m
satisfied.” I’ve found that which satisfies my soul. I’m satisfied with Jesus. Do you know why you’re
not satisfied? You’ve got a hard heart.
The revival will go right by you. The move of God will bypass you and
you won’t enter into the rest of the Spirit unless you humble yourself.
God hardened ole Pharaoh’s
heart and he could not repent. God had His hand on him for judgment and was about
to settle up 400 years of slavery, 400 years of abusing His people, 400 years of mistreating the seed of Abraham. He could not repent; he could not turn around, for his heart was hardened by God and God was taking him
down to the sea to drown him and the armies of Egypt. But God did NOT harden
the Israelites’ hearts. They hardened their own hearts against God.
This complaining, this murmuring
and this dissatisfaction will keep you from entering into the rest. Do you know
why you’re discouraged? Do you know why your hands are hanging down? Do you know why there’s a crepe on the door of your heart? Do you know why the sun isn’t shining? Do you know why
you are restless? Because you’ve been hardening your heart. You don’t feel like praising God because you’ve been complaining.
When you’re trying to
be satisfied on the realm of earth, you’ll never be satisfied. There is
no such thing as complete satisfaction on the realm of human experience. There
is no such thing as a perfect marriage. It takes something more than a sweet
little lady to put heaven in the human heart. It takes something more than a
handsome, curly haired debonair Don Juan to put peace in a woman’s heart. The
only thing that will ever satisfy the human heart is being in conformity with Jesus Christ and having the love of God and
the peace that passes all understanding within. Satisfaction is being washed
in the blood of Jesus, being filled with God’s Spirit and rejoicing in everything that God sends your way.
Every one of us is persuaded
that if my economics were just a little different, I’d be happy. If I had
a little more money...if I drove a better car...if I didn’t have to work so hard...
But if you visit the millionaire you’d find he has a different thing to complain about. He is bored...he is dissatisfied...he isn’t happy...he doesn’t have peace. The rich are jumping out of windows, taking pills and blowing their brains out or trying to drown themselves
in drink. There are beautiful women who have gone to Hollywood and had their
names splashed upon the marquees of the world, but they have never found happiness.
They married once, twice, three times, etc., and finally took an overdose of sleeping pills and said life is not worth
living. There is something more than fame and fortune, prestige and having your
name in lights that satisfies the heart – His name is Jesus Christ, whom to know aright is LIFE ETERNAL.
So harden not your heart to
your circumstances. If God would give you the power to change everything the
way that you want it, if you could change your surroundings, your mentality, your appearance, your metabolism, etc., you would
find somewhere down in the recesses of the heart that you are still dissatisfied. That’s
why God doesn’t do that. The only satisfaction for the heart is when God
Almighty comes down and that heart responds to Him and praises Him and worships Him and walks with Him.
The Israelites were complaining. Moses said, “What’s the matter with you people? Why don’t you praise God?” They said, “We’re
not going to praise God. If you want us to praise Him, the circumstances must
change. We’re discouraged. We’re
tired of eating manna. We want melons.
We miss the cucumber salad. We don’t like sand fleas. We’re tired of all these things.” Why did God
send all these things to them? God said, I wanted to prove them.
It’s a dangerous thing
when the heart hardens toward God. It is better to have hardened arteries than
a hard heart that won’t respond to God. But God doesn’t humble you;
you must humble yourself. God doesn’t walk with the proud. He said the high and the haughty I don’t know. You must
humble yourself under the mighty hand of God where it is safe. God walks and
talks with those of a broken and a contrite spirit and blesses them. Be careful
that you don’t harden your heart.
The circumstances that you
are in may not be ideal, but God put you in those circumstances and you’re complaining against them. God has not sent these circumstances to you because He is angry with you.
A trial does not mean that God is displeased with you.
We read in the book of Job
where Job was tested on every hand. He was a perfect man. But one day God allowed Satan to come against his life. One
by one the things that God had given Job were swept away. Things and people that
he had trusted in were taken away. Then calamity came upon calamity, heartache
upon heartache, destruction upon destruction. But he fell down on his knees. He didn’t harden his heart against God.
He didn’t rebel, he didn’t backslide, he didn’t run to the bar, he didn’t turn against God. He fell on his knees and lifted up his hands and said, “God gave it and God
took it away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Don’t fight with God
if God is after some little ole something from you. You’re holding on and
saying, God, don’t you dare take that away from me – I’m going to backslide if you do. I don’t know what you’ve got. Maybe you have a
$5 bill and God has a $10 bill. God is trying to pull the $5 out of your hand
so that He can put something larger back into it. Every time God sends a trial
it is to do something for you. Every time He takes something away from you, it
is to give you back something better. There is a purpose in every trial. If you’ll let it do its work, if will draw you closer to God.
When trials come we often
start to harden our hearts and say that we can’t praise God. It’s
not that we can’t praise Him, it’s that we WON’T praise Him. We
say, “God if you want me to praise you, then you change the circumstances.”
But God says, “I’m not going to change the circumstances until you praise Me.” That’s just like folks who say, “God, show us a miracle and we’ll believe.” God says, “You believe and I’ll show you a miracle.” God is not going to change the circumstances until you change.
These things do not come to
us out of God’s displeasure, but because His divine purpose permits them. We
don’t always understand why, but God wants us to accept the things that come into our lives as the divine purpose. Paul said, I have learned to be content. If
one of your good radial tires blew out on the way to church, you’d sit it church with a long face and you wouldn’t
be able to get your heart into the meeting because you’d be so discouraged you couldn’t even praise God. The roof leaks. Somebody ran over the
family cat. The dinner burned. The
dryer went bad. The well went dry. Why? Why do all these things come?
I look back in history and
I see a man who is moving by divine revelation. He comes to the city of Phillipi
and preaches the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He’s not just an ordinary man. He’s a man with as fine an education as any Jew of his day. He could be a senator, he could be a man of position and influence, but instead he’s a little missionary
of the cross of Jesus Christ and they have mistreated him. They took off his
clothes publicly and beat him with rods. Then they took away his justice and
threw him into an inner prison. But there in the midnight hour as the blood is drying upon his back and he feels as if a thousand
thorns are sticking is his bare flesh, with his hands and feet in stocks, unfed, nauseated, sick and discouraged, he started
to sing a song of life and victory. He lifted his head toward God and said, “My
back might be bloody; I might be in jail; I might be disgraced; I might have been reproached, but somehow I feel like singing. I feel a song in my soul.” So he
lifted his voice and began to fill the Grecian sky with a song of faith and deliverance and joy – a song that came from
a broken and a contrite heart.
But we say, “Now God,
if you love me, how come this? If I’m your man or your woman, why did this
happen to me?” God is beginning to get tired of our complaining. I don’t know why; I don’t know the reason, but God wants us to trust Him. He is too wise to make a mistake and too good to hurt us. And
whatever comes in life we can bow our hearts and say, “I don’t understand it; it isn’t pleasant –
but somehow God sent it. We can accept it and live with it because it came from
Almighty God and He is faithful.
The things in our lives that
make spiritual giants are the same things that make backsliders. Our attitude
is what makes the difference. The same sun that melts the wax, hardens the clay. Many a person backslides when adversity comes or God puts His hand on something that
belongs to them. They harden their hearts.
Don’t get your eyes on people. Don’t look for perfection in
humanity or you’ll fall.
I remember the day that God
let me see the feet of clay on the people that I trusted in and looked to for spiritual leadership. The most godly person I ever knew did me wrong and had prejudice toward people. God let the ones that I thought the most of fail me – the ones that I ran to when I needed prayer
or the word of the Lord. I remember when I felt so all alone and I wondered which
way to turn. God said you can look up to ME.
Get your eyes on Jesus and keep them there. Many people backslide because
they see some Christian living inconsistently with Christian principles. But
that excuse will never hold for them on the day of judgment. Jesus will day,
“So and so was not your example, I WAS. Can you find fault with Me? Did I not leave you the proper example?”
Don’t harden your heart
because someone you’re looking at fails. Keep your heart soft and tender
and keep going on with God. Jesus will never fail you. Some of the most trying, difficult, terrible trials that men have ever endured have turned those men into
some of the greatest saints of God.
Do you know what makes perfection? Do you know what works patience? It is
going through these furnaces of affliction without murmuring and complaining and instead of asking God to take the load off
your back, pray for God to give you more strength to endure – not a lighter load, but a stronger back. “God help me to endure; help my attitude. Help me to
praise you. Help me not to complain. Help
me not to find fault. Help me not to look at the other fellow.”
How many of you really feel
the other fellow has a lighter load? God knows what each back should carry. He knows exactly the cross that is tailored for your back. God knows exactly what your trial needs to be and tailors your cross for your back. He puts it on your back and He wants you to bear it and not keep complaining about how heavy your load
is, how light the next fellow’s is. If you ask God to change those crosses
around and you carry his for awhile you’ll find it’s just as heavy as yours.
Don’t harden your heart. God has not put this trial on you for destruction.
God has placed it on you because He wants to make you a stronger Christian. If
God can trust you with a trial, He desires to make something of you. Trials make
saints or they make backsliders. It is time you accept your trial as from God. With each one of us there is something we have not praised God for. We have not accepted it. But when you have praised God for
the circumstances that are around you and they no longer bother you, then you have grown to the place where God can take that
trial away, for it has done its work.
Do you wonder why things never
change? It is because the circumstances that God sent haven’t changed you
because you have not permitted them to. In Corinthians we read that there is
no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. God will never give you
more than you can bear. If God sent it, then the grace of God is sufficient to
carry you through it in victory, and you can say, “I’ll praise God until the gates of heaven open and God lifts
me a little higher.” Why? Why? Why the trials? God is trying to bring
a maturity in you that He can trust you with a trial or a tribulation or a valley of humility, then He can lift you to the
mount of exaltation. The worst thing God would do for you would be to give you
exaltation before you’ve had humiliation.
We read where God anointed
David and said, “Son, I’m going to bring you to the throne.” For
about twelve years of his life David lived as an outlaw, running for his life as God put him through test after test. God put him though a time of humiliation, a time of going down. But look at his attitude. God brought his enemy before him
one day. Here was the one who had made David’s life miserable and had caused
him to live as a vagabond lying asleep in a cave at his feet. One of David’s
men said, “Ah, God has delivered this man unto you. Let’s just smite
him right here.” This was a test.
God wanted to see what David would do with an anointed vessel, for God had said, “Touch not mine anointed and
do my prophets no harm.” His enemy, Saul, had shown no respect for the
anointing when he had killed the consecrated priests. But David passed the test
when he replied to his men, “God forbid that I should touch an anointed man.”
Harden not your heart. Is your heart hardened toward the Lord? Is
there communion with Him? Can you praise Him?
Is there that constant brokenness of spirit and sweet fellowship with God? We
sing that chorus, “Take Everything But My Lord.” What is it that
you’re living for? What is it that means the most? What is your chief aim in life? Paul said, “That I might
know Him.” Let someone else have all the other things, I want to know Jesus!
Don’t harden your heart. Sometimes our hearts have been hardened. We’re
not touched with compassion. We don’t feel when others suffer. We’ve lost the sensitivity to the Spirit, the joy of church attendance, the beauty of Christian fellowship. We’ve lost that appreciation and communion with the body of Christ. Instead, we’ve criticized, talked against and undermined God’s people. Do you know why? Because we’ve hardened our hearts. When you’re giving your tithes and it’s no longer a joy, you’ve
hardened your heart. When going to church doesn’t thrill you right down
to your toes, your heart has been hardened.
Don’t harden your heart
against God. Don’t harden your heart against the Word of God. Do you know what it is to get hard to the voice of God? I
have preached and I have seen God’s people whose hearts have been tender and broken before God harden their hearts to
the preaching of God’s Word. Today they’re backslidden and far from
God. The Word of God is precious. The
Word of God is the most wonderful treasure you can have. Don’t harden your
heart against the preaching. Don’t shut your ears to the voice of the Spirit. Don’t become indifferent to the pleas and cries of God’s people. Burdens are to be shared. We need to
get under each other’s burdens. Don’t shut yourself off from others. When we’re not touched with the infirmities and afflictions of others, we’ve
hardened our hearts. When we can sleep comfortably in our beds at night while
others are going through afflictions and it doesn’t touch us, our hearts are hardened.
Don’t harden your hearts
against prophecy that has come over your life. Don’t harden your heart
against the circumstances that God has put in your life, for every trial that God sent has a purpose. Humble yourself under the mighty hand and say, “I WILL praise Him, I WILL accept the circumstances. I WILL bow my heart and I WILL bow my head and I WILL bow my will to the purposes
and plans of Almighty God.”
