This message is related to the hardness of the heart. Proverbs 4:23 says, Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. So much of the Scriptures deal with a broken heart before the Lord, or with a heart that is hardened before God. David said, A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Psalm 51:17b. Most of our relationships exist on a basis of the heart. For with the heart man believeth … and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Romans 10:10. We want to apply this not only to God’s relationship to us and our relationship to God, but also to our relationships to one another; for they depend a great deal upon the state of heart.
This is illustrated in Matthew 19:4–8, a passage which is very important to us. With this in mind, “Moses said we could divorce,” the Pharisees asked the Lord if it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause. And He answered and said, “Have you not read, that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh’? Consequently they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate and divorce her?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.”
Whenever a relationship breaks down, especially one as intimate as marriage, there is a reason for it; and that reason is generally found in the heart. When the heart is open, then the relationship continues. But when the heart becomes hard, the relationship breaks down. Jesus said, “Because of the hardness of your heart, Moses permitted divorce.” He was sensing God’s attitude: “You have already destroyed the relationship by the hardness of your heart; so how can you go on? You might as well issue the writ of divorce.” But the Lord reestablished the perfection of a perpetual, open heart when He said, “From the beginning it was not so.” God ordained marriage as a relationship that was to endure and not be destroyed because of the hardness of the heart.
Not only family relationships, but many other kinds of relationships can break down. There is a self-destructiveness in the relationship between rulers and leaders, and their people; between men and women; between husbands and wives; between pastors and the flock, and prophets and the people of God. All these relationships depend upon a humble and repentant heart. When the heart becomes hard, men kill the prophets. “Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city.” Matthew 23:34, NASB.
When the heart becomes very hard, then they will connive to crucify Christ. But the Pharisees went out, and counseled together against Him, as to how they might destroy Him. But Jesus, aware of this, withdrew from there. And many followed Him, and He healed them all. Matthew 12:14–15, NASB.
Take note that when people change in their attitudes, it is not really a change of mind; it is a change of heart. If you look at the way people open up to the Living Word, you see that for a while they rejoice in it, until that Word hits something in their heart. If they are not prepared or dedicated to accept His Word, they resist it; and with their resistance comes a hardness of the heart. As the heart becomes hard, it is like it was in Matthew chapter 13 with all the parables. The disciples asked Jesus, “Why do You teach in parables?” And He answered, “Because they will hear, but not understand.”
And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?” And He answered and said to them, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him shall more be given, and he shall have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ‘You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; and you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; for the heart of this people has become dull, and with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn again, and I should heal them.’ ” Matthew 13:10–15, NASB.
Zechariah 7:11–12, NASB: “But they refused to pay attention, and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears from hearing. And they made their hearts like flint so that they could not hear the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets; therefore great wrath came from the Lord of hosts.”
The Word that falls on a broken heart and a contrite spirit melts it into the form of the will of God. But the Word that comes upon the hardened clay only makes it harder. That is why we can understand the Scripture, “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23). If you keep your heart level right, everything else will be right. Your heart level and your heart condition before God determine your whole life level, with all of its output, its withdrawals, its attitudes, and everything else. It is the heart that Christ always saw. The Word says, “Christ perceived their hearts” (Mark 2:8; Luke 5:22; 9:47). He knew what was in the heart of man. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need any one to bear witness concerning man for He Himself knew what was in man. John 2:24–25, NASB.
Here lies the issue right now: God has been speaking a Living Word. What effect has it had upon you? There are people who heard it and rejoiced in it, but who have now come to reject it. At some time they reached a level where their heart was no longer open, and they were no longer dedicated to do the will of God. You say, “I would never be like that,” but you cannot be sure. When Christ appeared to the disciples after His resurrection, He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart … Mark 16:14b. You would think that after all they had been through, they would be in a humility and brokenness of spirit, yet Christ still had to reproach them at the depth-level of their heart, because their hearts were hard.
Every one of us should be searching our hearts, looking to God and saying, “Don’t let me be deceived, Lord. I want my heart to be tender toward You.” After all, what is the whole purpose of our serving God? It is to fulfill what He demands. And what does He demand? Deuteronomy 6:5 says, And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. This is the whole key.
The outpouring of the Spirit prophesied in Joel 2:28–29 was meant not only for the days of the Book of Acts, but also for the end time, when the latter rain comes (verse 23). Joel 2:12 says, “Return to Me with all your heart.” That is like the Word of the Lord through Jeremiah: Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:12–13, KJV.
These verses are very important, because the heart can become hard, until it is like fallow ground. Copious rains can fall upon such ground, but they are washed off because of the hardness of the soil. So the Lord says, … break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you. Hosea 10:12. That is exactly where we are right now. The Kingdom of God in the earth is now at the point of decision. That decision is not made by the minds of men or by their adherence to a doctrine. Though they will have mental reasonings and excuses for their decision afterward, it is made at the heart level. It is from the heart that all the issues of life proceed. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Matthew 12:34b.
How can a Word from God bless one and be an occasion of offense to another? The answer is very simple: It is in the heart. You can trace this all the way through one of the difficult passages in the Old Testament, the story of God hardening the heart of Pharaoh (Exodus 7–14). Whenever God brought a judgment, Pharaoh would repent, apparently out of the pressure, only to harden his heart again and reverse his decision. We don’t know how to explain this, except that perversity was in his heart. In the Scriptures we see two different words for heart in the Hebrew. One, lebab, seems to speak of a heart that is open; and the other, leb, seems to speak of God judging a hard heart. But what we see is that God deals with us, and His dealings either harden our hearts or open our hearts. When He chastens us, we either repent, or we become rebellious; we go one way or the other. But thank God that He does chasten us (Hebrews 12:5–11). This life is a probationary period in which we are allowed an opportunity to either expose ourselves to the grace of God, or to harden our heart against it. For instance, in the second chapter of Romans is a passage of Scripture that I think is very important.
Romans 2:4–6: Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his deeds. This second chapter is dealing with people who are judging, and saying that they are without excuse; and it goes on to explain the whole condition that we are all condemned before God. But the main point is whether or not we despise the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering. We despise it when we do not open our heart, as it says, to repentance. If we harden our heart, and we are impenitent (meaning that we do not repent), we treasure up to ourselves wrath. In time, a heart can become very hard, and the hardness of that heart is almost a guarantee that the judgment of God will fall on it.
An open heart with a broken and contrite spirit is always filled with a certain measure of humility; but there is arrogance in a hard heart. That arrogance always comes out. You can always detect it. God wants a relationship that is based upon this broken and contrite heart. His Word does not tease us with a false hope for a hardened heart. God brings the Word to assure judgment and destruction of it. You are the one who must open your heart to the Lord. He again fixes a certain day, “Today,” saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Hebrews 4:7, 12–13, NASB.
I remember the times at the beginning of this walk with God when we heard over and over in every service, “Open your heart to God.” To those of us who finally laid hold of the meaning of what God was saying, there was a real visitation from the Lord. This Word falls on the obstinate and proud and grinds them to powder. But those who are humble open their heart to the Word; they fall on the Word and become even more broken and contrite in their heart before the Lord. This has become a very important reality to us. “Every one who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.” Luke 20:18, NASB.
In the Old Testament, God continually spoke to the people about the way they were living and the way that they were responding to Him. Both Ezekiel and Jeremiah prophesied that God will be giving us a heart of flesh for a heart of stone. “And I shall give them one heart, and shall put a new spirit within them. And I shall take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 11:19, NASB. “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26, NASB. “And I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the Lord; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.” Jeremiah 24:7, NASB.
These prophecies are very important to us, because that heart of stone can actually exist in a person. If you have that heart of stone, you will not be very open to this Word. You may also be in the process of hardening your heart toward the Lord because of circumstances and problems, or a lack of dedication in your own heart, or a lack of revelation to your own heart or because of your disobedience. If that is the case, it is very important for you to receive this Word and begin to humble your heart before the Lord. It does not matter with whom you walk, so much as that you open your heart to God. An open heart to God may not mean an absolute solution to all the problems that you have in your mind; but at least He will respond to your openness to Him, and He will bless you and help you with your problems.
We see another truth in the Old Testament: While God said that He would take away the heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh, He also said in Jeremiah 31:33 (quoted again in Hebrews 8:10 and Hebrews 10:16) that He would write His Word on the fleshly tablets of the heart. “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their minds, and I will write them upon their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall not teach every one his fellow-citizen, and every one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest of them.” Hebrews 8:10–11, NASB.
When you have a hard heart, you rarely retain the Word; but when you have a tender, broken spirit, the Word is etched on your heart as it comes; and eventually you become a living “epistle, known and read of all men.” This is exactly what Paul was referring to in II Corinthians 3:2–3: “God has written the Word not with pen and ink, or upon tables of stone, but on the fleshly tablets of your hearts.” When your heart is open, God writes His Word there over and over again, and you become a living expression of His Word. But when your heart is hard, there is a destruction of all the relationships that are meaningful and within the will of God for your life.
At a time when all of the Kingdom is being shaken, and the Living Word has been coming for several years to shake all things (Hebrews 12:26–28), some do not like what God is doing; yet they have excuses without a reason. The truth of the matter is that they have not been heeding what God has been saying, and their heart has become hard. The relationships in the Body, in the family, and in the whole world, are facing the real test of heart. The hardness of heart will be the destructive factor that causes some to draw away from the Lord and not walk in what the Lord really wants them to walk in. You must face this truth: An open heart is never hard, and a hardened heart is never truly open (Kingdom Proverb).
This hardening of the heart is what causes problems with relationships. A minister can try to have marriage counseling with a couple who is having difficulties; but if their hearts are not open to each other, it becomes only a big argument. Because to the hardened heart offenses never cease, every moment is an occasion for resentment, contention, bitterness, withdrawal. Remember that. The next time that you wonder why you are so critical, why there is always contention in your life, why things do not look good to you, when in fact they are better than when you first began to walk with God, then realize that the problem must be with you. You had better take your dark glasses off; the sun is still shining. To the hardened heart, offenses never cease.
When your heart is hard, you feel that everyone is antagonistic to you, everyone is a problem, and every circumstance is a reason for withdrawal. That is not true. Look at the men of God who have lived, and you will see how many of their circumstances were contrary, how many winds blew against them in the course of their lives, how many storms beat upon them. Nevertheless, they stood firm because their foundation was right: they had heard the Word, and their heart was open to that Word. This is the basic teaching of the Sermon on the Mount: “If you hear My Words, and you believe them and build on them, you are building on a rock. If you do not, you are building on sand, and the storms will wash it away” (Matthew 7:24–27).
Remember this one principle, and remember it well: The heart is either hard or humble, but it is always persistently expressive. If you have a hard heart, you generally have a “big mouth.” If you have a humble heart, you generally have a gracious mouth. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The Lord taught this basic truth over and over again. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure (of his heart) bringeth forth evil things. Matthew 12:35. The heart always expresses itself. The expression of your mouth, the expression of your actions and your emotions all come from your heart. This is where you make it or you do not make it in walking with God—right at the heart level. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Proverbs 4:23, KJV.
The heart can be either hard or humble, but it will be expressive. A heart pours out its venom and its bitterness, its criticism, its rebellion. Though the mind may try to dress it up and make it subtle and clever, the truth of the matter is that it is vicious, deadly, and slimy. The open heart that loves God, humbling itself before the Lord, has a way of blessing almost everyone. Because that heart is not challenging what you are and what you bring to it, but that heart is receiving it and appreciates being received, a great deal of blessing is poured upon that life.
Let’s look a little further into this. Our temperament and our hostile responses come forth from the heart like molten lava from a volcano, but they congeal and harden. In the Hawaiian Islands many great black lava flows exist, and the Islands were formed by them. Some of the ground that is broken up and tilled is beautiful and very productive, but that which is lava rock remains hard. At one time it was flowing down as brilliant, red hot, fiery molten lava; but it congealed in time. Your temperament, your hostile responses, your criticisms, your rebellion, your contentions, your bitterness and withdrawal from situations all come out as the hot lava of the old fleshly heart. When they congeal and harden, you will be one with a hardened heart.
People do not remain the same, because time changes them as their own responses build up over and over again. The beautiful coral beds are built from microscopic skeletons, one on top of another. That is the way that the arrogant spirit comes. In I Samuel 15:17, Samuel told Saul, “When you were little in your own sight, God raised you up and made you ruler over His people.” In time Saul became quite arrogant, and anything that God did threatened him. This is why he tried to kill David. From the time that David was a boy with his harp, singing the demon spirits away from Saul, the king, it was evident that something was building up in the heart of Saul (I Samuel 18:7–9), until finally he went on hunts to try to kill David when he was a fugitive (I Samuel 23:8; 26:2). Nevertheless, the Lord had spoken that David was to be the next king, and the next king he became (I Samuel 16:1, 13; II Samuel 5:3).
God dealt with the kings according to their hearts, all through the Old Testament. When the kings of Judah were humble, they were established (I Kings 15:8–15). When they were prosperous, and they became proud and arrogant, their hearts became hardened toward God; they departed from the Lord, and soon they were destroyed or judged.
This is one thing you must remember about your heart: keep it open; keep it blessed of the Lord. Feed it with a Living Word. Let that Word be etched on your heart until you become a Living Word. If you do not, remember that the flesh can lie dormant, waiting for its opportunity. Then the meanness, the cruelty, the hardness, and the rebellion begin to come forth out of the heart. Your heart level and your heart condition will determine your future life level. With all of its output and all of its experiences, your heart determines what will happen to you.
It is very important that you receive this Word with an open heart, because all your relationships are based upon the state of your heart. Your relationship in the Kingdom, your relationship to God, everything that you do and everything that you say, is an expression of your heart. Out of the abundance of the heart, down in the whole depth of it, the mouth speaks. That is why Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, “Our hearts are open to you. Now we entreat you, open your hearts to us” (II Corinthians 6:11, 13). God is performing “open heart surgery” in us. We are letting the Living Word cut deep into our heart until our heart opens up. We refuse to have grudges; we refuse to have bitterness.
Keeping an open heart before God is the real Word, the real message of the Scriptures. Psalm 95:6–11 gives us a very important revelation along this line. The Psalmist said, Come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you would hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness; “When your fathers tested Me, they tried Me, though they had seen My work. For forty years I loathed that generation, and said they are a people who err in their heart, and they do not know My ways. Therefore I swore in My anger, truly they shall not enter into My rest.”
This passage in Psalm 95 deals much with the hardness of the heart. It is quoted again in Hebrews 3:7–13 and in Hebrews 4:7. When we talk about all the promises and blessings of the Lord, it is good to see that the writers in the New Testament referred back to the key thing that had happened in the Old Testament. And they referred to why God hated a whole generation for forty years. He hated them because they had hardened their heart against Him.
Hebrews 3:7–13 and 4:7 are saying, “Do not harden your heart. Now is the time to hear; now is the time to open your heart to what God is saying. Do not draw back from it; you will never go on with God if you do.” The very rebellion and withdrawal of your heart can determine that you are never able to open up to a Word from God.
This is the time when the unpardonable sin is being committed by those who have hardened their heart. A heart has to be very hard when it will see God do mighty works and bring forth a Living Word, and then attribute that to the devil. That was the basis of the unpardonable sin of the Pharisees. They accused Jesus of working His miracles by the devil (Matthew 12:22–32). “But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.” Mark 3:29–30, NASB.
Over and over again we see that when the heart is hardened, it has a quality that draws judgment with finality. This we must remember: God is judging the hard heart; but He is blessing the hearts that are opening up to Him, and they are coming into a new relationship with Him. As it was with Pharaoh, so it was with Cain and Esau. Cain cried out, “My punishment is greater than I can bear” (Genesis 4:13). Judgment happened again with Esau, though with him the effect was interesting. Esau sought a place for repentance and could not find it. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears. Hebrews 12:15–17, NASB.
God warns you to watch the state of your heart. It is impossible, Hebrews 6:4–6 says, to bring you again to repentance, if you harden your heart against God and crucify Him afresh. There is a line drawn. “He that is often reproved and hardens his neck shall suddenly be cut off, and that without remedy” (Proverbs 29:1).
That is the Word from the Lord.