Beware Hardness of Heart (Mark 3:1-6) - Christopher G. Brenyo

Ascension Presbyterian Church Longwood

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Mark chapter 3. This is God's holy and infallible word.

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And he entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a withered hand.

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So they watched him closely, whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.

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And he said to the man who had the withered hand, Step forward. And he said to them,

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Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?

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But they kept silent. And when he had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, he said to the man,

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Stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored as whole as the other.

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Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.

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Please pray with me. O Lord, we observe the hardness of heart in the

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Pharisees, and I pray that you would reveal it where it exists in us.

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Lord, I pray that we would heed the warning to do not harden our hearts.

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Lord, we don't want to be an obstinate and rebellious people. We want your gospel light to shine in and through us.

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We pray that we remember today again the great work of Christ on our behalf, reconciling us to God, that we might turn from our wicked ways and our coldness and hardness of heart and be revived and enlivened by the gracious work of Christ.

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We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated.

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This is the fifth of the early marking controversies that we've been going through.

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And again, we find ourselves on the Sabbath day and in the synagogue.

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Today, the message is entitled, Beware Hardness of Heart. Today, we need to see the danger of religious people missing the point.

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We who are the people of God who are Christians can sometimes miss the whole point.

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We can focus on secondary matters or unimportant matters to the exclusion of that which is truly weighty and important.

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I want to set the stage again for you. The promised Messiah has come.

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The Lord of the Sabbath is presiding over the Sabbath in the synagogue in the presence of these witnesses.

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It is a momentous occasion. A glorious moment in redemptive history where Christ would be ministering on earth and be in the synagogue ministering to the people of God.

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And the sad news is the Pharisees have come to synagogue on the

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Sabbath not to see the Messiah, not to edify the brethren, but to find fault with Jesus.

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To find a way that they might accuse Him of some evil, that they might bring charges against Him.

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They are seeking to destroy Him. Now, I'm going to mention this later, but I want to point out something to you, the irony of something in the text observationally.

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The Pharisees have come hoping to catch Jesus healing the man with the withered hand so they can accuse

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Him for Sabbath violations. But the Pharisees are plotting to kill, to murder the promised

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Messiah on the Sabbath. They are violating the

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Sabbath in the highest order in the grandest possible way. They are seeking to destroy the long -awaited promised

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Messiah, the King of Israel, the Son of Man, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

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They want to eradicate Him. Their entire focus is misplaced.

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Their entire direction is off. They want to find fault with the

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One who can save them. Very simply, I've broken the text down.

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It says in our bulletin, we're going through verse 12, but I'm cutting it off at verse 6 in the interest of time.

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1 -6 today, Mark 3. The first point is that Jesus enters the synagogue on the

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Sabbath. That's point 1. Secondly, Jesus summons the man with the withered hand and, of course, ends up healing him.

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Jesus summons the man with the withered hand. Number 3,

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I know I'm going fast, but I'll review it quickly. Number 3, Jesus poses the question,

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Is it lawful on the Sabbath? The very thing that the Pharisees are trying to uncover, trying to get to the bottom of, trying to find some way to accuse

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Him. Jesus, discerning this, asks the question, Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil?

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To save life or to kill? That's verse 4. Next, there is a righteous anger in Christ.

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In verse 5, And he is grieved by the hardness of their hearts.

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A righteous anger in Christ. And he was grieved by their hardness.

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And then finally, the Pharisees' hard -heartedness in full force.

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The Pharisees' hard -heartedness in full force.

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What should a righteous man in Israel, and what should a righteous man in this world, do on the

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Lord's Day, on the Sabbath? They should go to worship with the people of God.

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Jesus, as was His practice, chapter 3, verse 1, entered the synagogue again.

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And He goes there as a faithful Jewish man. And He goes there as a teacher.

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He goes there as the capital P, Prophet. But He goes to the local synagogue.

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We still believe He's close to the ocean, close to that Capernaum region, in the same place

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He's been through the previous narrative. And He comes to the synagogue.

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He makes His way there on the Sabbath day. And we should make our way to church on the

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Sabbath day as well. And in the synagogue, there is a man with a withered hand.

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Now, I don't know the full depth explanation of this. I read some conflicting stories about what this actually means.

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Apparently, this man had some deformity, which made the use of this particular hand impossible.

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So he's a severely limited person. And you can imagine, in those days, to have a disability like this would put you at the mercy of a lot of other people in order to provide for yourselves.

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You couldn't work, couldn't do other things. This is a humble man who has a disability.

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And notice the heart and intent of the Pharisees. Their hearts are not moved with compassion for the man with the withered hand.

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Their hearts, they view the man with the withered hand and the possibility of Jesus healing him, they view him as their chance to catch

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Jesus. Now, I want you to think about the darkness of the hearts of those people.

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They've come to church hoping to catch somebody in a sin.

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They've come to synagogue hoping that Jesus will attempt a healing so that they can accuse him.

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They don't care about the possibility of Jesus being the Messiah. They don't care about the possibility of this man's burden being relieved and he being helped from his humble condition.

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They're only interested in their quest to accuse Jesus. What a terrible indictment of the hearts of those people.

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Some years ago, I was, my wife and I, I think Savannah might have been born.

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We went to my brother -in -law's getting run out of a church in Georgia. And I brought my gun with me to church.

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And he was getting, I mean, basically lynched out of town. And we came there and the church was full.

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And the thing that was interesting, there were people who had not been at church the whole time of his pastor but showed up for the vote to kick him out.

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And they were all very excited. And they came to church that day on the Lord's Day. The only thing they were interested in is getting to that business meeting after the service.

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They didn't come to worship the Lord. That wasn't why they came. And there's a danger for us.

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We can come to church hoping to have the fellowship after. We'd be looking forward to the fellowship.

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We have assembled as God's people first and foremost to worship him.

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The Pharisees on this day, they weren't interested in worshiping their God. They were interested in catching

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Jesus in something. So beware, your heart can grow so cold that you can come to the

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Lord's Day service, the Sabbath day worship of God's people, distracted from the essential things.

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Your mind elsewhere, thinking about something else, some other agenda, some other motivation.

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They watched him, verse 2, look again, closely. They're not looking to learn more about their

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God. They're not looking for the Messiah. They're watching him closely, whether he might attempt a healing so that they might accuse him.

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The withered man is there. The Pharisees are there. And Jesus is there.

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And so what does Jesus do in this conflict? Does he shy away from it? Does he run away from the idea of the conflict?

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Does he say, I'm not going to do the healing now because the Pharisees might be offended? No. Verse 3 says,

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And he said to the man who had the withered hand, step forward. Jesus now forces the issue.

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Now the Pharisees had to be excited because Jesus is doing that thing they hoped he would do so that they might accuse him.

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But Jesus has another plan in mind. He's going to show them the error of the way.

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Verse 4, a rhetorical question. The answer is an obvious answer to this question.

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Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?

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The answer obviously is, it's right on the Sabbath to do good and to preserve life.

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That's obvious. So Jesus has kind of cornered them here a little bit. He says, what

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I'm doing is entirely lawful. I'm doing something good, something that preserves life.

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I'm doing something to authenticate my message, to show that I am the Messiah, to open the door, pave the way for the preaching of his gospel.

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But they kept silent. They had nothing to say to the answer to the question, the answer to that question that was obvious.

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It's lawful to do good on the Sabbath. And don't you see the irony here?

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They're wanting to find fault with Jesus' Sabbath keeping, thinking that they themselves keep the

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Sabbath perfectly, looking to themselves as the righteous ones. And they've really become the thing that they detest.

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They are the worst, most egregious Sabbath violators. That's what happens when you have a hard heart.

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Our sinfulness blinds us and causes our hearts to be callous and cold to the things of God.

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So with all of your diligence, all of your effort, beware of hard heartedness.

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Let's look at verse five. I'm going to spend most of our time here today. And when he had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, he said to the man, stretch out your hand.

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And he stretched it out and his hand was restored as whole as the other.

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And so Jesus proceeds to heal the man. But in the midst of that healing, we see two things.

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First, that Jesus is angry. And we should point out that there is a very limited scope of things in the world that you are permitted to be angry about.

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And Jesus, as the most righteous man, was righteously angry at the hostility and lack of love for God in the

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Pharisees. These were the teachers of Israel. These were the most revered theologians, practitioners, scholars in Israel.

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And their hearts were far from God. And he was grieved by their hardness.

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Well, what does this hardness of heart mean? Well, the heart is the most frequent part of the human anatomy that is referenced in scripture.

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And I'm going to cover a little bit about what the scope of that is. It's really an all -encompassing term.

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It's the seat of emotion. It's the intelligence. It's the morality.

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It's the volition. It is the center of religious life.

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So we speak of the heart. We're not talking about just about the organ that pumps blood.

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We're talking really about the essence of a man. We're talking about who a person is in their entirety, and all their complexity, all their parts, who they really are.

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We say we want to do it from the heart. We want to love the Lord our God with all of our heart.

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That's part of what's going on here in this text. Interestingly, this word that is described as hard -hearted is sclerocardia.

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And cardia sounds familiar to you, no doubt. And that's where we get the word cardio from.

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And sclera is interesting to me because of the term scleroderma. It's a hardening.

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And that can happen internally and externally on a person. So it's very literally hard -hearted.

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And it's terrible when you think about a hard heart. A hard heart is one that blows up and dies.

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When a heart calcifies, you're on the path to having a heart attack. And so to be hard -hearted spiritually is to be close to death.

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Christians can be hard -hearted. Christians never ultimately die in a penal sense for their sins.

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Christians are always forgiven. But Christians can be hard -hearted. Unbelievers are entirely hard -hearted to the things of God.

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I've got a couple of quotes for you to help you get a sense of what hard -hearted means. The heart, in effect, is the whole person in all of his distinctive human activity.

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As a thinking, planning, feeling, worshiping, socially interacting being.

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When a person isn't living according to the will of God, as a

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Christian, being a believer who believes the scriptures, part of the church, that heart is described as darkened, rebellious, callous, unfeeling, or idolatrous.

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The heart can be tender, it can be fleshy, or it can be hard as stone.

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Ezekiel 11, 19. The heart represents the total response of a person to life around himself in relationship to God.

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So hard -heartedness, by defining it, to diagnose it is, how do

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I, how does a person view themselves in relationship to God?

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And if they're not thinking properly about God, they're going to immediately turn to hard -heartedness and selfishness and go about things the wrong way.

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We say, thanks be to the Lord, I don't have a hard heart. In the ultimate sense, as a Christian, you don't.

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But in a temporal, in a momentary sense, in a rebellious sense, you do, and you can.

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That's why the warning today. Beware of hard -heartedness.

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Hardness of heart describes a negative condition in which the person ignores, spurns, or rejects

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God's authority and grace. I want you to think about the Pharisees in the synagogue.

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God's authority, His mercy, His grace, His salvation are all there, present.

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And they ignore it. The grace of God, in its fullness, is present here with us, as the people of God.

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The Bible is opened. A minister is preaching the Word. A sacrament is going to be consumed.

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The grace is all here. All of the fullness, the weight of it, is all right here for the taking.

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But we can spurn it. We can treat it as a common thing, or an unimportant thing.

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And that only happens through hard -heartedness. Are you ignoring, spurning, or rejecting

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God's authority or grace? Well, if you are, then you're experiencing a hardening of your heart.

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And this hard -heartedness is more than just being totally depraved, or having a radical corruption because of original sin.

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It seems to connect here with the idea of our sinfulness, and our unrepentance, and our forgetfulness about Christ and His gospel, lead us on a path of calcification.

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Our hearts begin to creep in the direction of hardness. It starts small, and then it begins to creep an inch forward in that direction.

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Sin hardens our heart. Daniel 5 .20, Ephesians 4 .18,

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Hebrews 3, all give ample, abundant evidence that sin is at the heart of our hardening.

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It's possible for you to harden your own heart in sinful rebellion, in your bitterness over circumstances, or just in that very common self -seeking that seems to be common to all men, that self -willing, that self -reliance, that self -preservation.

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All of these things can begin to harden your hearts.

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So there's something that's going on here. There's something that's happened, it's evident, it's obvious in the life of the

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Pharisees. Their hearts are very hardened to God and His grace.

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Their hearts are hardened to the Messiah who is bringing in salvation, ushering in the kingdom.

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They're rejecting it, they're spurning it, they're ignoring it. So we can see man's responsibility in contributing to their condition.

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But frighteningly, God can also harden the heart. Do you remember

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Pharaoh, Exodus 7, 3, 9, 12?

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The Egyptians. There seems to be evidence that, and it's explicitly taught, that God hardened their heart.

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There was a view of salvation that the Pharaoh and the

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Egyptians could have seen. In all of those works, in all of the plagues, in all that was happening, the gospel was being preached to them.

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The Deliverer was coming to deliver His people. They could have responded with repentance.

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But their hearts were hardened. And in this case, the reprobate were actively given over to that hardening by God Himself for His own purposes.

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It happened to the king of Heshbon in Deuteronomy 2.

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And it happened to the Hivites also living in Gibeon in Joshua 11.

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Let's turn quickly to Romans 9. I tried to streamline the references. I'd like you to read this familiar passage with your own eyes.

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Romans 9. God has had a very important redemptive purpose in hardening the hearts of people and nations.

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It very much could be argued properly that God hardened the hearts of Pharaoh and the

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Egyptians that Israel might see that He is God. And it seems that God was pleased to harden the hearts of Israel so that all of the

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Gentile nations might be brought in. So it's got a negative aspect, but certainly also has got a redemptive and a

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Godward aspect where God is doing something in the hardening of hearts for His own glory.

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I have to acknowledge that. Romans 9. I'm going to begin reading verse 1.

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I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying. My conscience also bearing me witness in the

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Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart.

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For I could wish that I myself were a curse from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen, according to the flesh, who are

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Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises of whom are the fathers, and from whom, according to the flesh,

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Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.

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Now I want to stop here for one second. Think about what Paul is saying about Israel and its rightful place.

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All of the blessings that have been bestowed upon Israel. That even the Messiah, Christ, would come from Israel.

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And I want you to think about our text in Mark 3. The Pharisees cannot see it.

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They're scholars. They know the prophecies. The hardness of their heart, their sinfulness, blinds them from the truth about who

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Christ is. We have a sizable

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Jewish community. I've mentioned this, and I'm trying to find a way to get to know them.

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I thought maybe I'd go and talk to them about studying Hebrew together or something. And these people who live near me are the most devout

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Orthodox Jews I've ever seen. They walk to synagogue, and it's very far from their house.

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They wear yarmulkes. They dress a certain way. They look the part. Their religion is worn on their sleeve.

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They have all of the little beaded things. I can't even think of the names of all the things. They have all of the elements of the

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Jewish religion hanging from their hands. Their hair is long. It's twirled up and uncut and all those things.

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And I think about them, and they're diligently studying the law of God. But they've missed the gospel.

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They have a tradition that has been perpetuating a hardness of heart toward Christ and his gospel.

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Wouldn't it be amazing if those folks came to know Christ? With all of that history.

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Read Romans 9 to them. The adoption, the covenants, the promises, the law, all given to you, but you're missing

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Christ. Continuing on.

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Verse 6, but it's not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all

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Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham.

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But in Isaac, your seed shall be called. That is, those who are the children of the flesh.

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These are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as the seed.

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For this is the word of promise. At this time, I will come and Sarah shall have a son.

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And not only this, but when Rebecca also had conceived by one man, even by our father

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Isaac, for the children not yet being born or having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God, according to election, might stand not of works, but of him who calls.

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It was said to her, the older shall serve the younger. As it is written,

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Jacob, I have loved, but Esau I have hated. What shall we say then?

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Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whomever

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I will have mercy. And I will compassion on whomever I will have compassion. So then is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.

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For the scripture says to the Pharaoh for this very purpose, I have raised you up that I may show my power in you and that my name may be declared in all the earth.

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Therefore, he has mercy on whom he wills and whom he wills. He hardens.

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And there's the key text. He has mercy on whom he wills.

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And he hardens whom he wills to harden. So there's two sides to this.

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I can harden my own heart. And as a Christian, that's really the only option for us.

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So for the people of God, we should assume that this hardness of heart is not imposed on us by God as an act of judgment and reprobation.

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If we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have to acknowledge our hardness of heart is self -inflicted.

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Our sinfulness, our ignorance, our walking away from God and his promises. That is the cause of hardness of heart.

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Verse 19, You will say to me, then, why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his will?

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But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it,

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Why have you made me like this? Does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?

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What if God wanted to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he called not of the

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Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. Now let's go back to our text in Mark.

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Pharaoh, the Egyptians hardened, the king of Heshbon hardened, the

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Hivites, Livian and Gibeon hardened by God. This is God's prerogative.

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God is sovereign. He does as he pleases. We have to acknowledge and appreciate that.

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In the Psalms, the wicked are described as having a calloused heart.

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So as Christians, we should always be recoiling and wincing when we bear imagery of the reprobate, the unbelieving, the wicked who hate

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God. We should always be saying, How can I do the things that the wicked do? I have no share with them.

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I should be totally different than them. I shouldn't be living as the world lives. I shouldn't be enslaved to the passions that the world has.

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Psalm 17, Psalm 73, Psalm 119. The wicked all described as having a calloused and hardened heart.

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Important prophecy in the book of Isaiah. God told Isaiah that the people will reject him as God's messenger.

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Isaiah, the most righteous man. God says to him, You're going to go to my people and they're going to reject you utterly.

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They're going to reject you because they reject me. They reject your message because it's my message. Jesus and Paul viewed this event as prophetic and that it ultimately referred to Israel's rejection of Jesus as the

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Messiah. Jesus makes this argument in Matthew 13 and Paul in Acts 28.

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So there's a lot happening here in this little somewhat unimpressive to us section in Mark.

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We talk about other things more exciting to us. There's a lot happening here. Prophecies being fulfilled all over the place.

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Let's turn to Hebrews 3. This will be the last reference. And this is the solemn warning that we should heed today.

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In both Psalm 95 and in Hebrews 3 and 4, the hardness of Israel's heart is cited as a negative example and has to be taken as a warning to us.

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The alarm bells are going off. Beware, Christian, of hardness of heart.

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You can just listen if necessary. Hebrews 3, I'm going to begin reading in verse 4. Every house is built by someone, but he who built all things is

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God. And Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant for a testimony of those things, which would be spoken afterward.

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But Christ as a son over his own house, whose house we are if we hold fast to the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end.

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Now, listen carefully. This is a very important section of Hebrews. It's obviously explaining all those

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Levitical promises, how those things come true in Christ is very important. But listen to the language that's referenced here and cited by the author of Hebrews.

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Verse 7, Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.

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And the day of trial in the wilderness where your fathers tested me, tried me and saw my works for 40 years.

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Therefore, I was angry with that generation and said they always go stray in their heart.

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So really what we're arguing for here is a purity of heart devotion that is loyal to Christ alone, to the

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Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, loyal to God. There's no turning from right to left.

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There's a singleness of mind, a single purpose of the people of God and their allegiance is to follow the

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Lord. He's angry with that generation, that Exodus generation.

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They always go astray in their heart. They have not known my way.

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So I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Now, I find it ironic that the author of Hebrews articulates this, taking all these passages of Scripture and everything and talks about in the context of rest.

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And this is all happening on the Sabbath and synagogue on Mark 3. There's a strong connection here that must be made.

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We don't have time to go into it. There's something happening here about Sabbath, rest of the people of God and this whole idea.

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Verse 12, Beware brethren, lest there be in you an evil heart.

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Again, that language using that part of the anatomy to explain that evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living

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God. Christian, your heart can depart from the living

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God. The insanity of that is that we as Christians can drift away.

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And so the warning is don't do that. Don't drift away. Don't allow your heart to be hard.

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Don't be practicing sin that will lead you astray from that covenantal union with Christ.

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And that reconciliation that we enjoy with our God. Verse 13,

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Exhort one another daily while it is called today. Lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

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For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast that which we've held from the beginning.

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That confidence all the way to the end. Verse 15, Today, he repeats it.

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And I think about Hebraic ideas. Say it twice verbatim in Hebrew.

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What are the Hebrews reading this? What is that? Very strong exclamation.

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Today, if you'll hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.

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For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses?

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Now, with whom was he angry 40 years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness?

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I want to stop here. The analogy is very big. Because the

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Jewish people in Exodus saw salvation. They saw deliverance. They saw the lamb slaughtered.

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They saw the blood on the doorposts and the lentils. They saw it all with their own eyes.

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And they forgot about God. In the synagogue, salvation has come.

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The Messiah has come. And the hard -hearted people ignore him. Now, what's crazy is you and I who have tasted the goodness of God.

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We've seen salvation. We've experienced it. Isn't it crazy?

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And isn't it so, speak to the radical corruption of our sinfulness, that we can forget?

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How could we forget? Well, thankfully, the Sabbath comes every seven days.

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Thankfully, we get to come to the table every week. Thankful for the gospel to be preached every week, to be sung about, to be prayed about every week.

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We have to take full advantage of these means of grace, that our hearts would not grow cold or hardened toward God.

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Just a couple more verses. Verse 16,

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For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt, led by Moses?

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Now, with whom was he angry forty years? Was it not those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness?

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And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who did not obey?

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See, they could not enter in because of unbelief.

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Therefore, since a promise remains of entering his rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it.

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For indeed, the gospel was preached to us as well as to them, but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.

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I have to ask the question, why was it not mixed with faith? Hardheartedness.

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For those who have believed do enter that rest, as he has said.

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So I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Although the works were finished from the foundation of the world, for he has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works.

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And again in this place, they shall not enter my rest. Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience.

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Again, he designates a certain day, saying in David, Today, after such a long time as it has been said, can you believe it?

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He says it a third time. Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

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Christ, in his gospel, changes the hard hearts of both new converts, and he continues to do that for believers.

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Later in Mark, we'll get there, but in Mark chapter 8, it's surprising that Christ rebukes his disciples who are really starting to pick up steam, and their mission and all that in the world, what they're going to be doing, and he rebukes them for their hardheartedness.

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Well, what happens?

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The Pharisees' hardheartedness goes into high gear, full force.

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They take this information about Jesus' healing on the Sabbath and begin to plot.

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When you're plotting with someone, it's not good. Plotting with the Herodians against him, and how they might destroy him.

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And I'll say it again, isn't it a tremendous irony that the Pharisees, who have arrived on this day to uphold the integrity of the

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Sabbath day, have used the occasion of the Lord's Sabbath, and the gathering of God's people to plot the murder of the

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Messiah who would save them. Such is the wicked hearts of men who have hard hearts.

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What do we do now? Well, first, we need to guard our hearts.

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We need to flee from sin. We need to repent early. You find yourself falling away into a place of rebellion and coldheartedness, transgressing the law of God.

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You need to repent quickly and turn from it. Turn back to the

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Lord quickly, lest your hearts be hardened. And the amazing thing about this is, when we turn back to our

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God, He's so loving and so gracious and so merciful, He receives us back.

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Don't stay in your sin any longer. Turn, flee from it. Second, there's only one remedy for hardheartedness.

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That's the glorious and gracious gospel of Jesus. That's the message that the dying world needs to hear, and that's the message that the

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Christian needs to hear. You're not earning your salvation. You're not keeping covenant.

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Your standing with God is entirely rooted and grounded in your union with Christ.

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And that is not of yourselves. It's all of grace. You're not working yourself to keep this relationship.

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God has done it. So your heart should rejoice. You're hardhearted.

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You're unloving. But our loving, tenderhearted, forgiving God restores you and I and makes us keep covenant with Him.

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And third, let's use this as an occasion to give

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God thanks for what He's done. You and I should perish in the wilderness.

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You and I should be outside of the camp. You and I should not have the blessings of the promises of God, but we do.

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And since that's true, we should respond to Him with great hearts of thanksgiving and joy.

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To not do so would be evidence that you're hardhearted, and you need to start this all over again and re -preach the message to yourself.

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So let's give thanks to Him in our hearts now. Let's take just a moment. Lord Jesus, we cry out with hearts of thanksgiving that you've taken away our stoneheartedness and replaced it with tender, fleshy hearts.

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Lord, help us not to be so prideful that we would not see our own tendency to slip into this hardening, to ignore, to spurn these blessings.

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Lord, only hard hearts can turn away from your grace and mercy and find it contemptible.

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Lord, we acknowledge that our hearts can darken, can turn rebellious, can be callous and unfeeling and idolatrous.

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We pray that you would preserve our hearts and that we would respond appropriately.

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This is fitting, the people of God, to you and to your love, to your mercy and grace. Lord, we also cry out with great joy that the victory has been won in Christ.

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Oh, what discouragement there would be for us if we had to maintain it by our effort.

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We'd be failing every day. We'd never have confidence. We'd never have hope. But we can because we can look to Christ and Christ alone for salvation to make us reconciled, right with God.

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Lord, I pray that in this humbling, we'd see more of our inability and more of your grace, that Christ would be exalted and lifted up among us.

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And that you, oh God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, would be glorified in our recognition of all that is necessary for our salvation and the wonder and majesty and glory of Christ.