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Do I Have a Hard Heart? · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Welcome back to the podcast. Over the years, we have taken up a
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  lot of questions from listeners who struggle with self doubt, wondering if they are
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  in fact an unbeliever, asking whether they have committed the unpardonable sin, asking
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  whether they have or will fall away, asking whether they are one of the
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  non elect. There's just a lot of sober, fearful, self reflective questions
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  like these that come up all the time, and the emails that we get,
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  and that's true today. In this question from a listener named Aaron,
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  Hello, Pastor John, he writes, I'd like to first say that you
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  have truly been a blessing to me. I thank God for you. I've
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  recently started to pursue a better relationship with the Lord. I often come across
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  this phrase though in the New Testament about the hardened heart the hardened heart.
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  My question is, how would I know if my heart was hardened against God?
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  What does this mean? And how can I that I don't have a
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  hardened heart towards God. Let's start with the most general meaning of hardness of
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  heart in the Bible, and then we can move to the specifically Christian meaning
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  of hardness of heart. In relation to God and how to avoid it or
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  how to get rid of it. The most general meaning of the hard heart
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  is a heart that lacks ordinary feelings of tenderness and compassion. For example,
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  compassion for the poor Deuteronomy fifteen seven. If one of your brothers should become
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  poor, you shall not harden your heart against your poor brother, but you
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  shall open your hand to him. Or not just compassion for the poor,
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  but also compassion for the sick or the disabled. In Mark three, verse
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  five, Jesus sees a man with a withered hand in the synagogue, and
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  he says to the people surrounding him, is it lawful on the sabbath to
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  do good or to do harm? To save life or to kill? And
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  they were silent. Now that was not a hard question to answer, right,
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  I mean, is it okay to save life or to kill? That's
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  not And they were silent, And it says Jesus looked around at them with
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  anger, grieved at their hardness of heart. So the most common meaning for
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  hardness of heart is a heart that cannot be touched and moved and made to
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  feel tender emotions, empathy, sympathy towards suffering. It's like a stone.
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  It can't feel what it ought to feel. So Jonathan ed Wards, in
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  his book Religious Affections, which I recommend very highly powerful in my life,
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  at a certain point about fifty years ago, he defines hardness of heart like
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  this. After he surveys so many texts, he says, now by a
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  hard heart is plainly meant an unaffected heart or a heart not easy to be
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  moved with virtuous affections, like a stone, insensible, stupid, unmoved,
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  and hard to be impressed. That's Edward's definition. We can see that as
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  the Bible moves from the ordinary lack of feelings for the poor and the disabled
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  to a lack of responsiveness to God, the hard heart refuses to hear God
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  refuse it to turn to God in repentance. Zedekiah, it says, stiffen
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  his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord Second Chronicles, thirty
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  six thirteen. In other words, he felt no compelling desire to repent and
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  turn to the Lord. He was unfeeling, unresponsive, like a stone to
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  all the efforts made by the prophets to speak truth into his life. We
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  see it even more generally in Romans two verses four and five. Do you
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  presume on the riches of God's kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that
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  God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance, But because of your heart
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  and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself. On the day
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  of wrath. God's kindness, God's patience, God's long suffering pulses ought to
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  melt the heart with thankfulness and humility and repentance, and instead it meets with
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  a heart of stone, unresponsive, unmoved, unthankful, proud, insolent.
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  When the word of the Lord came to the people through Zechariah the prophet,
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  it says, they made their hearts diamond hard lest they should hear the words
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  of the Lord Zechariah seven twelve. So hardness of heart in the Bible is
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  a heart that is like stone in that it is unmoved, unfeeling, unresponsive
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  sometimes to human suffering, but worst of all, unmoved, unresponsive, unfeeling
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  toward God's word and God's mercies. God's Gospel offers the warmth of God's mercy
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  shines on it, and it doesn't melt the rain of God's grace pours out
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  on it, and it doesn't soften diamond heart. It resists God. So
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  we ask, how do we get rid of it? Or how do we
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  avoid getting it a hard heart? Getting rid of a hard heart is decisively
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  the Bible says, a work of God, a miracle, a gift,
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  and we should ask for it if we don't have it. So here's Ezekiel
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  thirty six, twenty six. This is a beautiful statement of the new covenant
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  that Jesus fulfills when he sheds his blood for sinners. I will give you
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  a new heart, a new spirit I will put within you, and I
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  will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of
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  flesh that is a tender heart that can feel, can be touched. And
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  I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes
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  and be careful to obey my rules. That's the same I think as what
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  we call being born again, or being made alive, or being called out
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  of darkness into light. It's a gift, it's a miracle, it's a
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  work of God, and we should receive it as a gift. Second,
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  we avoid getting a hard heart once we have been given a soft heart.
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  We avoid getting a hard heart reverting to hardness by being in a healthy community
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  of believers who exhort us every day and help us recognize the deceptive nature sin.
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  Now, I say that because that's exactly what he Brews three thirteen tells
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  me to tell you. It says, exhort one another every day, as
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  long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by
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  the deceitfulness of sin. That's amazing. Get in a good community where you
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  will be exhorted day by day with pointers to the deceitfulness of sin. Sin
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  is deceitful. It tells lies, and those lies harden the heart. If
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  we don't counter the lies of sin with the truth, our hearts are going
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  to go hard. And God has designed fellow Christians to remind us of this
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  truth. The beauty is the preciousness, the worth, the satisfying nature of
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  God in his ways, and the lies of sin in people need to speak
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  that into our lives. Sin tells us that God and his ways are not
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  satisfying. That's the main message of sin. Let me say it again.
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  The main lie of sin is that God and his ways are not satisfying and
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  if we give place to those lies, we accept them, that they start
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  to grow in our heart. We become stones towards the all satisfying God instead
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  of God. Sin becomes our satisfaction. We love sin. Sin has tricked
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  us and made itself to look like what satisfies, and made God look boring
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  and unsatisfying. God begins to bore us. And if no one steps in
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  and helps us feel the deceptive folly of sin, we're going to wake up
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  someday utterly like a stone, unable to enjoy God. So Hebrews three thirteen
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  says, don't let that happen. Instead, confirm your calling, confirm your
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  election, show that you are a true Christian. How by both exhorting and
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  receiving exhortations every day, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness
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  of sin. Amen, The main lie of sin is that God and His
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  ways are not satisfying. That's the battle we face in this world of sinful
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  allurements that promise us a better joy than we can have in God, the
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  lifelong battle, and that's why we need one another. Thank you, Pastor
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  John, and thank you for joining us today. If you have a question
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  on your mind. Check out the archive. Go to askpastor John dot com.
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  It's our landing page, our main homepage, and we have well over
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  two thousand episodes answering the major questions that you face in life. We may
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  have already answered that question on your mind right now. And speaking of major
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  questions, next time we look at the major question facing every student, literally
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  the major question what major to choose? Pastor general law for five guidelines for
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  those who are choosing a vocation or college or a major, and who don't
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  want to waste their lives but make their lives count for the glory of God.
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  This episode is for students, parents of students, and for all of
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  us. Don't miss it. I'm your host, Sony Rinki. We will
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  see you back here on Monday. Have a great weekend.