Do Not Harden Your Heart

Deut. 28:47-48 "Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you."

When we defy God, refuse to acknowledge Him in our schools and public places, He will come against us in ways we never thought of, even the natural consequences of our own sin will pile on us, until we repent, if we do not repent then we will see harsher and harsher judgments, devastating misery while hardening our own hearts with each one.

When we harden our own hearts, God sees fit to harden them even further until we have no chance to return to repentance.

Matthew 4:7 "Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

As a culture we have sorely tested God, time after time after time, refusing to see the wickedness of our ways. Now that we are suffering the consequences of broken marriages, broken children and now rebellion everywhere we look, we want the Lord to bail us out. We want Him to bless us with peace, happiness and prosperity when we are not willing to confess, admit openly our sinfulness, even defending our evil as though it were good.

Exodus 8:32 "But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and he did not let the people go."

Exodus 9:12 "But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and just as the LORD had predicted to Moses, Pharaoh refused to listen."

First Pharaoh hardened his own heart with each plague, finally God hardened it permanently. When we refuse God continuously, eventually He will move to make our hardened heart permanent.

Hebrews 3:8 "DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS AS WHEN THEY PROVOKED ME, AS IN THE DAY OF TRIAL IN THE WILDERNESS,"