{"id":49376,"date":"2018-10-02T05:43:08","date_gmt":"2018-10-02T10:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prayingpint.com\/?p=49376"},"modified":"2018-10-02T05:43:08","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T10:43:08","slug":"i-will-harden-his-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/02\/i-will-harden-his-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"I will harden his heart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Exodus 4:21\u00a0 <\/span>And the Lord said to Moses, \u201cWhen you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.<\/p>\n

Deuteronomy 2:30-33<\/b><\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0But Sihon the king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him, for the LORD your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, that he might give him into your hand, as he is this day.<\/p>\n

Joshua 11:20<\/b><\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0For it was the LORD’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the LORD commanded Moses.<\/p>\n

Psalms 105:25<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0He turned their hearts to hate his people, to deal craftily with his servants.<\/p>\n

Isaiah 6:10<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand wit<\/p>\n

Isaiah 63:17<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0O LORD, why do you make us wander from your ways and harden our heart, so that we fear you not? Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage.<\/p>\n

Romans 1:28<\/b><\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.<\/p>\n

Romans 9:18<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.<\/p>\n

Romans 11:8-10<\/b><\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0as it is written, \u201cGod gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.\u201d<\/p>\n

2 Thessalonians 2:10-12<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.\u00a0\u00a0Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false,\u00a0\u00a0in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.<\/p>\n

1 Peter 2:8<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0and \u201cA stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.\u201d They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.<\/p>\n

Ezekiel 3:6-11<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0not to many peoples of foreign speech and a hard language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely, if I sent you to such, they would listen to you\u00a0\u00a0But the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me: because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart\u00a0Behold, I have made your face as hard as their faces, and your forehead as hard as their foreheads.\u00a0\u00a0Like emery harder than flint have I made your forehead. Fear them not, nor be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Moreover, he said to me, \u201cSon of man, all my words that I shall speak to you receive in your heart, and hear with your ears.\u00a0\u00a0And go to the exiles, to your people, and speak to them and say to them, \u2018Thus says the Lord GOD,\u2019 whether they hear or refuse to hear.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

One of the more difficult biblical concepts to understand is that of God hardening the hearts and minds of certain people. What are we to make of texts like these, which explicitly or\u00a0implicitly speak of\u00a0God hardening the hearts of people?\u00a0These questions involve very deep mysteries,\u00a0<\/b>mysteries about God\u2019s sovereignty and how it interacts with our freedom.<\/p>\n

There was a time when people thought that God was at the center of all things and they instinctively saw the hand of God in everything\u2014even terrible things. Job said,\u00a0The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised \u2026 if we have received good things at the hand of God, why should we not receive evil?<\/i>\u00a0(Job 1:21; 2:10) Thus the ancients would commonly attribute everything as coming from the hand of God, for He was the \u201cfirst cause\u201d of everything that happened.<\/p>\n

The ancients were thus much more comfortable attributing things to God than we are. In speaking like this, they were not being superstitious or primitive in their thinking; rather, they were emphasizing that God was sovereign, omnipotent, and omnipresent, and that nothing happened apart from His sovereign will.\u00a0They believed that God was the primary cause of all that existed.<\/p>\n

We need to understand that the ancient biblical texts, while often speaking of God as hardening the hearts of sinners, do not mean to say that man had no role, no responsibility. Neither do\u00a0they\u00a0mean to say that God acts in a merely arbitrary way. Rather, the emphasis is on God\u2019s sovereign power as the\u00a0first cause<\/i>\u00a0of all that is. Hence He is often called the cause of all things and His hand is seen in everything.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In man\u2019s enlightened, superior, highly educated, and self-reliance, man moved himself to the center and God was gradually \u201cescorted\u201d to the periphery.\u00a0<\/b>Man\u2019s manner of thinking and speaking began to shift to focusing on secondary causes (those related to man and nature). If something happens we look to natural causes, or in human situations, to the humans who caused it.<\/p>\n

We are dealing with the mysterious interrelationship between God and Man, between God\u2019s sovereignty and our freedom \u2013 Mysteries.\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0In the face of such mysteries we have to be very humble. We ought not to think more about the details than is proper for us, because, frankly, they are largely hidden from us.<\/p>\n

Therefore, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. One of you will say to me: \u201cThen why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?\u201d But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? \u201cShall what is formed say to him who formed it, \u2018Why did you make me like this?\u2019\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

None of us can demand an absolute account from God for what He does. Even if He were to tell us, could our small, worldly minds ever really comprehend it?\u00a0My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways, says the Lord. <\/i>Yet we try to put God in a box we can humanly understand.<\/p>\n

We should be careful to admit the limits of our knowledge when it comes to interpreting \u201chardening texts,\u201d in which God hardens the hearts of certain people. These must be approached carefully, humbly,\u00a0and\u00a0with proper distinctions as to God\u2019s sovereignty, our freedom, His mercy, His justice, His plans, and His purposes. (Charles Pope)<\/p>\n

We do well to put God in the center of all things and man\u2019s existence totally subjective to His sovereignty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exodus 4:21\u00a0 And the Lord said to Moses, \u201cWhen you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. Deuteronomy 2:30-33\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But Sihon the king of Heshbon would not let … Continue reading “I will harden his heart”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5586,1533,8041,378,2548,8045,3629,1411,5819,806,8042,8049,813,8052,6349,1059,425,8048,8038,2369,4,8039,8046,8053,8047,8037,84,219,3112,5418,2542,619,969,362,8043,8051,1356,352,468,239,315,3679,8040,147,8050,8044,285,1604,7125,2545,1291,6715],"class_list":["post-49376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-prayers","tag-acknowledge","tag-against","tag-battle","tag-blind","tag-condemned","tag-craftily","tag-debased-mind","tag-delusion","tag-destined","tag-destroyed","tag-devoted-to-destrution","tag-did-not-see-fit","tag-dismayed","tag-disobey-the-word","tag-dull","tag-egypt","tag-false","tag-fear-you-not","tag-harden","tag-hate","tag-heart","tag-heart-obstinate","tag-heavy","tag-listen-to-you","tag-make-us","tag-meracles","tag-mercy","tag-moses","tag-people","tag-pharaoh","tag-pleasure","tag-power","tag-rebellious","tag-receive","tag-receive-no-mercy","tag-refused-to-love","tag-rock","tag-saved","tag-servants","tag-speak","tag-spirit","tag-stumbling","tag-the-lords-doing","tag-truth","tag-tupor","tag-turned-their-hearts","tag-understand","tag-unrighteousness","tag-wander","tag-wicked-deception","tag-willing","tag-your-hand"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49376"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49539,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49376\/revisions\/49539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}