A Warning Against Hardness of Heart

Next Part A Warning Against Hardness of Heart 2

"But exhort one another daily, while it is called today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." Hebrews 3:13

The children of Israel in their coming out of Egypt, and in their forty years sojourn in the wilderness, represented the visible Church of the living God; not the secret and elect body of the redeemed, but the professing company of the outward Church. They were very prone to the great sin of unbelief. They believed in God after a fashion while they saw his wonders, but the moment they were brought into straits or difficulties, they at once began to doubt the power or Jehovah, and to cast off all reverence for his authority. Hence they fell into another sin which at last fastened on them so as to become a part of their nature- they became stiff-necked, obstinate, rebellious, perverse, and hard of heart. They would not learn, although their lesson-book had miracles for its pictures. Their hearts became so hard that although they saw all the great things which God did for them, they despised the pleasant land, and were ready at times for the sake of the flesh-pots of Egypt, to wear again the yoke of Pharaoh, and to die the inglorious death of slaves. Such, also, are the great sins of the Christian Church - unbelief the root, and obstinacy the fruit. Brethren and sisters, if we know our own hearts, we must confess that unbelief is a sin which does very easily beset us, and that our obstinacy may well provoke the Lord to anger.

We rejoice in God while the rocks run with rivers, and while the daily manna drops about our tents; but when the fiery serpent bites us, or the wells are bitter, or our comforts are in any way interfered with, we begin to distrust and to suspect the faithfulness of God; and, as the result of this, there is an obstinacy about us which often inclines us to stand out against the plain precepts of God, because, forsooth, in the judgment of our unbelief, obedience might lead us into trouble, and disobedience might make our path smooth. Oh that it were not, too sadly true that God's people are liable to be overtaken by the worst of sins! Egypt itself did not produce worse sins than those which provoked the Lord to anger in the camp of Israel; and to this day the Church has some in it who defile her with all the sins of the world. I do not mean to insinuate that the Church of God is not infinitely to be preferred to the world in character; God forbid that I should slander the fair bride of Christ, she is as much superior to the world as the curtains of Solomon excel the smoke blacked tents of Kedar; but who dares deny that there are specimens to be found of the worst of sins occurring among true believers, just as in the most carefully tended garden there will spring up here and there some of the most noxious weeds- not that the weeds are permitted to smother the whole garden and kill the flowers, but that their coming there while men sleep, is an indication of what the soil is, and a plain manifestation that although the garden is very different from the piece of waste ground on the other side of the wall, yet it differs not in nature, but owes all its superiority to the culture of the husbandman, even as the saints owe all their excellence above the very chief of sinners, to the guardian care and omnipotent grace of the great lover of souls.

It seems, dear friends, that it is really necessary to warn God's people, although they have received the new nature, and are partakers of the adoption, against being hardened in heart through the deceitfulness of sin, and that there is a machinery provided by which the saints may be preserved from this great evil. "Exhort one another daily, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin."

We will talk together thus this morning. First, we shall dwell for a season upon the hardening effect of sin upon men, whether saints or sinners. Then we shall show the peculiar power by which sin hardens, namely, through its deceitfulness. Then we will consider the remedy which we are to use with others — "Exhort one another daily." But what if we should be diseased ourselves with this same hardness of heart? Then it will be needful for us to have a few words concerning what to do for ourselves, if we have to complain of a growing insensibility of Spirit, as I am afraid some of us may most justly do.

I. First, then, dear friends, THE HARDENING CHARACTER OF SIN. This is matter of experience. The first sin which came into the world hardened man's heart in a most terrific manner, so that he dared to excuse himself and even to charge God as being indirectly the author of his sin, by giving him the woman. No sooner had Adam tasted of the forbidden fruit, than a stony hardness came upon his moral nature; the heart of sensitive flesh was suddenly petrified, and became hard unfeeling stone; he no longer shrank from the thought of sin, but tried to hide himself from the presence of his best friend. He felt his nakedness in some degree, but that which made him naked he did not lament, or even confess before his God. He would never have been content with an apron of fig leaves, if he had known the full measure of his degradation. His unborn children in that dread hour participated in his fall, and are now born into the world with a stone in their hearts. Man's heart, naturally, is like that of Leviathan, of which the Lord says, "It is as firm as a stone, yes, hard as a piece of the nether millstone" — the lower stone of the two in the handmill was always chosen on account of its peculiar hardness. Still, hard as the heart is by nature, it may grow harder by practice and by association with sin, even as Zechariah writes of sinners in his day, "Yes, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law" (Zechariah 7:12).

There is no doubt whatever that living among sinners has a hardening tendency upon believers You cannot walk about in this great lazar-house, without receiving some contagion. Though you were pure in heart, unless you had the absolute perfection and Godhead of Christ Jesus to protect you, the prince of this world would make you his prey. It is hard to dwell in so foul a world as this without contracting some impurity. Those black coals which fill this earthly cellar if they will not burn us, will at least blacken us. When so many fires of sin are pouring forth their smoke, the whitest of linen cannot escape the falling black soot. If "the thought of foolishness is sin," and we have divine authority for so judging, then even to think of sin exercises a polluting influence. Can I read a description of another man's sin without getting my heart hardened?

I question if reading the daily reports of crime in the police news is not a very fertile cause of sin. Great crimes usually produce their like in congenial winds, and even in the purest hearts their recital cannot but have an injurious effect. The tree of knowledge of good and evil bears dangerous fruit- it were well if we restrained our curiosity, and left foul deeds alone, unknown, unread by us. What good can come from turning over the foul dunghill of crime? Let those traverse our sewers whose business it is to do so. Would it not be better for the most of us to keep out of them. Those who are called in providence to deal daily with the coarser sins had need to set a special watch over themselves lest they fall by little and little.

Let me here remark that the sins of God's people are peculiarly operative in this manner. If I see a drunkard intoxicated, I am simply shocked at him, but I am not likely to imitate his example. But if I see the same vice in a man whom I respect, and whose example has hitherto been to me the guide of my life, I may be greatly grieved at first, but the tendency of my mind will be to make an excuse for him; and when one has succeeded in framing a plausible excuse for the sin of another, it is very natural to use it on one's own behalf. Association with inconsistent Christians has been the downfall of many young believers. The devil delights to use God's own birds as a decoy for his nets. "I could not have thought it," says the young Christian, "that men whom I esteemed as saints would have acted so." "Well, well," is the next reflection, "if these are good men, and go to heaven, and yet act so ill, then I need not be so precise." And thus, by a course of reasoning which sin makes as easy as casting up accounts by a ready reckoner, we arrive at the conclusion, that perhaps what we avoided as a sin, may have been no sin at all, and we therefore indulge in it without stint, and step by step come down to the level of this evil generation. He who handles sharp-edged tools, is apt to cut his fingers, and none the less so because the knife is made of the best steel. Let us walk warily among men, like a man with naked feet when going over thorny ground, lest our hurt be grievous.

I am fearful that even preaching against sin may have an injurious effect upon the preacher. I frankly confess, my brethren, that there is a tendency with those of us who have to speak upon these themes, to treat them professionally, rather than to make application of them to ourselves; and thus we lose our dread of evil in some degree, just as young doctors soon lose their tender nervousness in the dissecting-room. We are compelled in our office to see ten thousand things which at first are heart-breakers to us. In our young ministry, when we meet with hypocrisy and inconsistency, we are ready to lie down and die; but the tendency in after years is to take these terrible evils as matters of course. Worldliness, covetousness, andcarnality, shock us most at the outset of our work. Is not this a sad sign that even God's ministers may feel the hardening effect of sin? I daily feel that the atmosphere of earth has as much a tendency to harden my heart as to harden plaster which is newly spread upon the wall. And unless I am baptized anew with the Spirit of God, and constantly stand at the foot of the cross, reading the curse of sin in the crimson hieroglyphics of my Savior's dying agonies, I shall become as steeled and insensible as the mass of professors already are.

I cannot enter at length into the whole matter, but let me trace the gradual process of hardening of heart which may take place in a measure in a true Christian; but in its full extent in the mere professor whose religion lacks the inward vital principle. You must understand that the hardening of a tender conscience is a gradual process, something like the covering of a pond with ice on a frosty night. At first you can scarcely see that freezing is going on at all. There are certain signs which a thoroughly practiced eye may be able to detect as prognostics of ice, but the most of us would see nothing. By and bye, there is ice, but it would scarcely support a pin. If you should place a needle upon it ever so gently, it would fall through. In due time you perceive a thin coating which might sustain a pebble, and later a child trips merrily over it. And if old winter holds his court long enough, it may be that a loaded wagon may be driven over the frozen lake, or a whole army may march without fear across the stream. There may be no rapid congelation at any one moment, and yet the freezing is complete enough in the end. Apostates and great backsliders do not reach their worst at one bound. The descent to hell is sometimes a precipice, but far oftener a smooth and gentle slope.

It would be hard to find out in the worst of men exactly when they were utterly given up to judicial blindness. It is often a long and laborious process by which conscience is completely seared. This dreadful work usually begins thus, the man's first carefulness and tenderness departs. When you were, first converted, you felt afraid to put one foot down before another, for fear you should go astray. You scarcely ever ventured from your house without a anxiety to be kept by the grace of God. You used to pray in the morning with great ardor and earnestness that not a thought might be awry, not one single word amiss; and, when business was over at night, you felt uneasy, lest in anything however trivial, you might have injured your profession and grieved the Spirit of God.

Well do I recollect when I was the subject of excessive tenderness — some people called it "morbid sensibility." How I shuddered and shivered at the very thought of sin which then appeared exceedingly sinful. I would to God I could always feel as I then did. O believer, your new-born character was then white as the lily, and the smallest grain of dust would show upon it. Your life was bright and shining, and the least speck would be discovered, and you yourself were like the sensitive plant, the slightest touch of sin sent a thrill of horror through every fibre of your soul. But it is not so now, at least not to the same admirable degree. It may be you can hear talk to which formerly you would have closed your ears; you cantolerate sins which once you would have shunned as though they were deadly serpents. Your life is somewhat careless now; great sins you avoid right heedfully, but secret sin gives you little or no concern. The departure of that blessed sensibility of soul which marks the new birth, is one very serious mark of declension. It may not seem a great evil to have less abhorrence of evil, but this truly is the egg from which the worst mischief may come. Hear me attentively, O my brother, to whom this message is directed, when I rebuke you in the words of the Savior in the Revelation, "Nevertheless I have somewhat against you, because you have left your first love."

The next distressing sign of growing hardness is increasing neglect or laxity of private devotion, without any corresponding shock of the spiritual sensibilities on account of it. The daily prayer will become shorter and shorter, if not irregular. Occasionally the period allotted to the reading of the Word will be given to business or worldly pleasure, and perhaps frequently forgotten and neglected. It may peradventure have happened at the first that on some occasion we could not conveniently read the Scriptures according to our habit and our prayers were necessarily shortened, but then we sought to make up for the loss at the first opportunity, and we felt like men who having been cut short at their meals, must needs eat the more freely next time. But now I am afraid these things become common with some professors, and they scarcely care to invent an excuse for their slackness in divine things. O what poor pleas do some men offer for deserting their closets! How unjustly may unread Bibles accuse those pretenders to grace who treat them so ill! Alas, brethren, we may look each other in the face and few of us can plead "Guiltless." Divine Spirit, help us to awake out of sleep, and to shake off this deadly lethargy.

Another symptom of increasing callousness of heart, is the fact that hidings of the Savior's face do not cause that acute and poignant sorrow which they produced in former times. Ah, my soul recollects when she walked in the full blaze of Jesus' love; when the very thought of his turning his face away seemed like the chill blast of winter nipping the summer-flowers of my soul. Then I sang —

"Your shining face can cheer,
This dungeon where I dwell
It is paradise if you are here,
If you depart it's hell."

I have sometimes walked in darkness, and have seen no light; and I confess deep shame and profound sorrow that I have occasionally been half indifferent whether Jesus shone forth or no. The spouse who fondly loves her husband longs for his return, if he is absent; a long protracted separation from him is a semi-death to her spirit. Likewise with souls who love the Savior much- they must see his face, they cannot bear that he should be away upon the mountains of Bether, and no more hold communion with them. A child that is full of love to its parent cannot endure a frown. An angry pat is heavy, a stroke cuts to the very heart. A reproaching look, a glance of rebuke, an uplifted finger will be grievous to good and loving children, who fear to offend their tender father, and are only happy in his smile.

Oh, beloved, it was so once with you. A text of Scripture, a threatening, a touch of the rod of affliction, and you went to your Father's feet, crying, "Show me wherefore you contend with me?" Is it so now? Are you content to follow Jesus afar off? Content to be a wanderer from your Father's house? Can you contemplate suspended communion with Christ without alarm? Can you bear to have your Beloved walking contrary to you, because you walk contrary to him? Have your sins separated between you and your God, and is your heart at rest? O my beloved brother, let me affectionately and even tearfully warn you, for it is a grievous token of hardness of heart when we can live contentedly without the present enjoyment of the Savior's face.

Still further, when the soul is hardened to this extent, it is probable that sin will no longer cause such grief as it once did. Brother, you remember how you humbled yourself before God with many fears, when in your former days you felt that you had made a slip in your conversation. You could not sleep that night. Even that precious promise, which you tried to lay hold of, could hardly quiet your agitated mind. You bemoaned yourself most piteously, crying out upon your bed, "I have dishonored the Lord who bought me, I have been false to my profession and my love to Jesus."

Your spirit had no rest even on the next day, nor could time assuage your bitterness of grief; it was only when the Savior had by his sweet consolations and the application of his precious blood effectually purged your conscience, that your soul at last had rest. My brother, it may be you have lately sinned far worse than you did then, but you do not ache half so severely. Your life is not so pure as it once was, but still your heart is quite as peaceful, for an evil spirit whispers, "Peace, peace, where there is no peace."

Dr. Preston tells us of a professor, who on one occasion was found drunk; and when much depressed on account of his folly, the devil said to him by way of temptation, "Do it again, do it again," for said he, "the grief you feel about it now, you will never feel any more if you commit the sin again." Dr. Preston says that the man yielded to the temptation, and from that time he never did feel the slightest regret at his drunkenness, and lived and died a confirmed sot, though formerly he had been a very high professor. Take special heed of the second sin if you have already fallen into the first, for that second fall may most effectually prevent your repenting and returning to the right way, for habit will take you as in an iron net, and hold you fast to be dragged down with other hypocrites like you, to the lowest depths of hell. It is a sad sign of coming declension, nay, of decline already come, when we can talk of sin lightly, make excuses for it, or make jokes about it; when we can see it in others without sorrow, and in ourselves without the greatest shame.

The next stop in this ladder, down, down, down to destruction, is that sin thus causing less grief, is indulged in more freely. The man had fallen the first time, the second time he deliberately lies down. The first time he was overtaken in a fault, the second time he overtakes the fault and runs after the sin. The first time he was a victim, the second time he is most willingly given up to it. The first time he drank the cup by mistake, or by a kind of compulsion, but the second time he comes to a feast like that of Ahasuerus, where none do compel, and yet he rejoices to be a ringleader in rioting. First he sipped, but now, like the ox, he drinks by the bucketful. At first he carried only a spark in his bosom, but now he bears a whole bucket of burning coals and cries that it is sport. The man may not be ripe enough yet for outward sins under the immediate eye of the world — the probability is that he keeps his iniquities private. He eats the bread of sin in secret.

Next Part A Warning Against Hardness of Heart 2

Back to Charles Spurgeon