Food For Your Soul
by Reverend Hubermann Larose
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The Hardening Of The Heart
“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…” (Hebrews 3: 7-8)
I read the story of a man who went to a morgue to identify a body. It was at the peak of Summer; it was very hot, and, since in that country, power outage was the rule rather than the exception, there was in the morgue a pervasive, heavy and nauseating stench.
To the visitor’s surprise, the morgue attendant was busy spreading peanut butter on his bread, apparently not the least bit bothered by the smell. He was eating heartily. Before leaving the place, the visitor could not stop himself from asking the morgue attendant:
- “Sir, the smell doesn’t bother you?”
- “Not at all,” he replied. “I have been around for twenty years; I have lost my sense of smell.” “My nose is dead,” he added.
This anecdote is a good illustration of the hardening of the heart, this state of being that makes him who had come to it insensitive to any act of God in his life and deaf to His voice.
The first observation I would like to make about the hardening of the heart is that it is a process. A man doesn’t become hardened overnight. As the saying goes, “little by little one goes far.” For example a corn (this horny thickening of the skin that occurs on the toe and hurts so much) doesn’t appear in one day. It’s the same thing for the hardening of the heart.
He whose heart is hardened has not always been like that. There was a time when his heart was still sensitive to God’s voice talking to him either through his conscience, or through His inspired Word, the Bible, or through the mouth of one of His messengers. But little by little, this man shuts his ears, until finally he doesn’t hear anything anymore, not because the voice has stopped speaking, but because his ears ―exactly like the nose of the morgue attendant― have become dead, being unable to react to God’s voice.
The second observation I would like to make about the hardening of the heart is that it is a willful act, a deliberate choice. It is a defense system intentionally put in place by him who wants to keep God out of his life. He whose heart is hardened barricades himself behind a set of justifications, of excuses and of pretexts: either he says he has no time, or he calls into question the authority of the Bible, the revealed Word of God, or he stumbles over the existence of suffering and evil that he finds incompatible with the existence of an All-Good and Almighty God, or he blames his unbelief on the diversity of religions or sects in the world, so on and so forth… He uses those things as excuses to reject God and deny even His existence. In the meantime, his heart shuts more and more, grows more and more insensitive, until it becomes a heart of stone, completely impervious, a heart on which God’s Word slides as water on marble.
But the worse of it is that God eventually joins the party, hardening in turn the heart of him who persists obstinately to harden his own heart. For example, in the book of Exodus, it is said six times that Pharaoh hardened his heart. But from Exodus 9:12, it’s not Pharaoh who hardens his heart, but the “the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” God has, in a way, given him over to his foolishness. That’s the way God deals with all who willfully shut their hearts to Him: “just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind.” (Rom. 1:28)
Since the hardening of the heart is a process and a willful act, it is possible to put an end to it, to stop its progress by an act of repentance that implies surrendering our rebellious will. That’s the meaning of this appeal by the Holy Spirit in Hebrews 3:8: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”
The writer of this letter shows that, to him who decides to stop hardening his heart, the door of grace is wide open “as long as it is called ‘Today.’” (Hebrews 3:13) But no one knows when it will no longer be called “Today.” And “Tomorrow” doesn’t belong to us, since tomorrow may be too late. Who knows if this act of rejecting God, of hardening your heart to His Word, won’t be that last straw that breaks the camel’s back? It could be what will cause God to give you over to your unbelief, hardening in turn this rebellious heart of yours.
That’s the reason why the time to open your heart to Jesus Christ is now; the time to obey the prompting of the Holy Spirit who draws you to Christ is today! Respond with delay to God’s voice, open your heart to Him, and this word of the book of Revelation will become true for you: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” (Revelation 3:20)
Hubermann Larose
Associate Pastor
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