Calloused or hardened hearts

If you lift weights or do something repetitively with your hands, you get callouses. This happens because your body is exposed to the same thing over and over again, it builds up thickened layers of skin to protect itself. If you touch the calloused skin, you can't feel it as well as uncalloused skin. Well, just as this can happen to our physical bodies, it can happen to our hearts and minds (in the spiritual sense) We can indulge in this behavior that leads to that behavior.

As we try to live our lives in Christ, there is the potential danger that we can become hardened against many things in this world to the point where we forget that they are evil.

We are exposed daily to things that may tend to weaken us...even just language and attitudes that we might take for granted.

God realizes we must live in the world.

1 Cor 5

9 ¶ I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:

10 Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.

[It would not be very practical for us to totally avoid being in the presence people around us who are not believers. We have to have jobs, go out and run errands in public, and other reasons we have to be out there in the world.]

11 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.

12 For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?

13 But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.

We have this dilemma then. How can we live in the world with people who do all of these terrible things but not be of the world. This is our goal. We in the church are not to be fornicators, or idolators, or drunkards. We are to separate ourselves from all of that. We are to dedicate ourselves to God and continually try to be obedient to him...not to our own desires.

People who have hardened their heart have, of course, caused many problems in their own lives. For example, God wanted men and women to be together for the rest of their lives but it was because of their hardness of heart that Moses allowed them to divorce. (as we read in Mark 10.) And this problem still continues today as people try to find loopholes in God's law of marriage for life so that they can divorce and remarry. But there are passages such as Romans 7 that make this law very clear. My point is that if we harden our heart enough, we can are much more likely to interpret the bible the way we want rather than the way it is. And there are many other ways in which people harden their hearts against God's word because it has ideas that are very unpopular today.

Paul quotes Psalms 95 when he talks about the danger of hardening our hearts.

Heb 3

7 ¶ Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice,

8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:

9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years.

10 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.

11 So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)

12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.

13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

14 For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;

15 While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.

16 For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses.

17 But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness?

18 And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?

19 So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

This refers back to what happened in

Numbers 13 Some of the Israelites had gone out to spy out the land that God was going to send them into and brought back some of the plentiful fruit from it.

...

27 And they told him, and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it.

28 Nevertheless the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great: and moreover we saw the children of Anak there.

...

14

1 ¶ And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night.

2 And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness!

...

[These people had forgotten very quickly what God had done to get them out of Egypt and the many miracles and wonders He had caused there.]

26 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,

27 How long shall I bear with this evil congregation, which murmur against me? I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel, which they murmur against me.

28 Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the LORD, as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you:

29 Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against me,

30 Doubtless ye shall not come into the land, concerning which I sware to make you dwell therein, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.

31 But your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, them will I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised.

32 But as for you, your carcases, they shall fall in this wilderness.

33 And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness.

34 After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.

35 I the LORD have said, I will surely do it unto all this evil congregation, that are gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.

We see around people who willingly walk away from their Creator and harden their hearts.

2 Cor 4

1 ¶ Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not;

2 But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

3 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:

4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

Many at the time of Jesus' teaching and even afterward on to today

Jesus talks about the hard heartedness of some of the people he was speaking to.

Mat 13

14 And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:

15 For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

[Of course, Jesus was probably disappointed with those who had him in their very presence and refused to believe him.]

16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.

17 For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.

[So there were many before Jesus who would have been happy to see him but didn't. I'm sure any of us today would have been happy to see Jesus as the apostles had the opportunity to. But it's sad that there were many who hardened their hearts to him so much that they ended up killing him.]

Reading the bible can help to thin out those calluses on our hearts. As we read about how we should behave, and how we should walk away from evil things, we become more likely to do that.

Heb 4:12a

12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword

Likewise, if we expose ourselves mainly to ungodly influences, then that will also have an effect. We turn off our consciences as we indulge in whatever we want to, ignoring our consciences. Maybe you remember as a kid when your brother or sister was annoying you and you'd cover your ears and say lalalala I can't hear you. Well, this is a real danger when we do this in our spiritual lives. This is almost literally what happened when some decided to kill Stephen

Acts 7

Stephen as he was near the end spoke

56 And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.

57 Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord,

They held their ears as he spoke of Jesus....the same as saying "I can't hear you!". They were so intent on their ideas about Jesus not being the savior that it enraged them to hear someone talk about him as the son of God. Stephen is to be commended as he had such great faith to the very end.

Basically, I think that whatever influences we are exposed to the most will be what has an effect on our heart. If we expose ourselves mainly to worldly influences, our hearts will become calloused and hardened against God. Again, this hardness in our hearts may even affect the way we interpret the bible. If our hearts are hard, we may be more likely to ask "What can I get away with here" rather than "What does this say here?" If we find parts of our heart that are calloused then we need to get out the pumice stone of the word if you'll forgive the bad analogy...and soften our hearts to God's will.