Hardening Oneself Against God

There is an injunction in the book of Hebrews, friends, which stands out in black print on white paper as a warning from the word of God. Today, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. There is a layer of warnings embedded in that verse of scripture, friends, and I want to peel it back like an onion for us today.

First, God states that he is addressing individuals whom he is speaking to today, right now, in the present dealings of their lives. Today, right now, to some perhaps this very minute. Then God declares, if ye will hear his voice, God is and has been speaking to some of you here recently.

He's been dealing with you, testing you, trying you, as a silversmith tries silver in a cauldron of fire. If you will hear his voice, God says, if you will hear his voice, God is speaking to you, but are you listening? Can you hear what he is trying to say to you? For if God speaks to you, he desires a response from you. How will you hear? How will you respond to his dealings with you at this hour? Then Almighty God posts a warning sign to get your attention, and he props it up between his written word there in the book of Hebrews.

The warning sign is yellow to slow you down, to consider your ways, consider your actions and response to God. And then the warning sign goes blood red if you fail to heed what he is saying to you. He says, harden not your heart.

Then he makes a reference to the Jews in the wilderness where they provoked God with their multiplied sins and disobedience. He calls it the provocation. Then God goes into great descriptive detail about this matter in chapter 3 and verses 7 through 11, which state, 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.

Wherefore, I was grieved with that generation, and said, they do always err in their heart, and they have not known my ways. Let me pause here, friends, to say this is where God's warning sign turns from yellow to red. So I swear in my wrath, they should not enter into my rest.

I will stop there. There were graves in that desert, if I may so speak, buried beneath the headstones of ignoring God and disobeying God through a hardening of the heart against God. I have seen it happen in individuals whom I have known.

God was dealing with them. God was speaking to them. They turned their back to God and hardened themselves against God.

And it wasn't long after that God removed them by sudden death. It is dangerous to harden yourself against God. Very dangerous indeed.

I want to relate a story to you, friends, that happened during the ministry of Rolf Barnard, and it illustrates my point as I relate it to you today. It speaks volumes about our text today from Hebrews. Hear now are the words of Rolf Barnard.

The pastor of a church in a certain place asked me to come and hold meetings. Before I got there, seven deacons of that church had come to the pastor and said, Now, brother pastor, we're not going to oppose anything, but we don't believe in what you call evangelistic campaigns. So we will not be back until this preacher is gone and the meetings are over.

The pastor said, Well, I hate to see you take that attitude. But if that is what you want to do, I appreciate you coming and telling me. Well, if they had done what they said, it would have been all right.

But we couldn't get a crowd for a few nights and we were hitting it pretty hard. So those fellows were glad and got to bragging about how we weren't getting anywhere in the meetings. They violated their word that they wouldn't oppose us.

The pastor came to me and he was broken hearted. And he said, Brother Barnard, this is killing me. What can we do? I said, I don't know.

Are you game for us to get down on our knees and ask God to save them or kill them? He agreed. And we got down on our knees and said, Lord, you know what these fellows are doing? They are ruining the meeting. They are making fun of the gospel, the church and the Lord Jesus Christ and God's preachers.

They were just filling the whole town with this. And everybody was talking about how the meeting was no good and those seven deacons making fun of it. So we said, Lord, save them or kill them.

Neither one of us was supposed to tell about that prayer. And I don't think I did, but somebody did. And those deacons heard about it.

They just heard half of it, though. And so they just had a big time. They said the preachers up there are praying for God to kill us.

But we were praying for God to save them or kill them to get them out of the way. They were bucking God and they were hardening themselves against God. I think that is dangerous.

They just laughed and had a big time about it. But in four days time, the pastor had seven different funerals. And they were the funerals of those seven Baptist deacons.

Every one of them died a horrible, sudden death. God kills people that harden themselves against his claims for Jesus Christ. Well, friends, I pray that today we heed those warnings from the word of God, from God, about harden not yourself.

Harden not your heart, friends, if God's been speaking to you. Let us pray.