Hard Heartedness

Do these people seem familiar?

• The churchman who, faced with knee-buckling family tragedy, turns completely from faith and lives the rest of his days cursing God, and shunning everything about the church.
• The scolding family member who says, "You are becoming a Jesus freak; you are embarrassing our family." 
• The matriarch who says, "No, let's not pray at our 50th Anniversary dinner; it will make some feel uncomfortable. Let's just leave religion out of it."
• The couple, no longer having babies, that looks beyond young parents in need of free baby furniture to see a few dollars made at a neighborhood yard sale?
• The successful white-collar businessman who looks at a neighborhood and refers to everyone in it as "them," assigning a measure of superiority and societal blame with his words.
• The church volunteer who throws her hands up in disgust and says, "I quit! No one is helping, and everyone is happy to watch me work myself to death."
• The uncle (or aunt - fill in the blank) who knows his nephew doesn't know Jesus and washes his hands of any guilt by saying, "Well, if it's meant to be, God will get his attention."

All of these are but a very few examples of spiritual hard-heartedness.
For all of those examples, above, I can assign a very real person to each of them. I can even assign myself to one or two. I'm not suggesting any of these people are bad, immoral, un-Godly people. Each of them is a good person, and a follower of Jesus. But, each of them, too, experienced a measure of what Jesus calls hard-heartedness to the matters of faith, meaning their spiritual journey detoured. If unchecked, the detour can be costly.

Let's look at Mark 8: 1-21, and let's look at in several parts.
Part One: 8:1-10. Jesus has miraculously fed 4,000 people with a few loaves of bread and fish. And, in fact, there were even leftovers. That's pretty impressive. How could anyone close to the miracle be blinded to the reality of Jesus? After the feeding of the people, Jesus and the disciples got in a boat and crossed to another place.
Part Two: 8:11-13. When the Pharisees heard about the miracle, they confronted Jesus, and demanded that He show them a miracle. He sighed deeply. That's big for me - Jesus just gave a weary sigh. He refused to give them a sign, and he and the disciples got back in the boat to travel again.
Part Three: 8:14-21: Back in the boat, the disciples got hungry, but they had forgotten the leftovers. They had just one loaf of bread. Gee whiz. Jesus warned them, "Watch out! Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod." The disciples ignored Jesus and began to argue with each other, blaming one another for forgetting the leftovers. Jesus was exasperated. They had seen but quickly forgotten that He had miraculously just fed 4,000 people from a few loaves. One loaf of bread to feed those in the boat was nothing. And, Jesus says, "Are your hearts too hard to take it in?"

Oh, my. Just like the disciples, we suffer from hard hearts. We suffer from Teflon hearts. We see and know and follow Jesus, but in the matter of seconds, minutes and in our everyday attitudes - we act no different than the Pharisees who hated Jesus. Drawing from yeast as a microorganism that enriches bread, Jesus warns us to not to have the yeast of the Pharisees growing within us.
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What is hardness of the heart? Well, at its core – it is sin because it puts the will of self ahead of the will of God. The will of God is always about loving Him and loving others ahead of self. With hard heartedness, there is an attitude of stubbornness, disobedience and self-will. When a child stands up against parental authority, we speak of the child as hard-hearted – a heart that is hardened to parental love. In our spiritual lives, hardness of the heart is choosing self and things of the Earth over loving and serving God, and following Jesus. What it makes it worse is that it is willful disobedience. We can’t excuse it away.

What are some of the effects and manifestations of a hard heart? There will be a spirit of defensiveness – a rejection of conviction of sin. Two believers were arguing over a photograph one had posted on Facebook. They asked me if I approved of the photograph, showing one believer - a leader in his church - at a roulette wheel on a cruise ship. I told them that the photograph did not personally offend me, but I could make a case for it tarnishing the witness of the believer. The person in the photograph became indignant, lashed out, and essentially told me to "mind my own business." Hard-heartedness always defends, justifies and rationalizes sin. Hard heartedness manifests itself, too, in prejudice, blunted morality, a limp gospel (that hell does not exist and God will usher everyone into heaven), mockery of faith, and a blindness to the social position of others.

What is the byproduct of a hard heart?
Just like the yeast growing in bread, a hard heart can grow so thick that a person can't hear from God, cannot hear the voice of God through others, and if the person is unsaved . . . well. You and I always stand on the precipice of hard-heartedness. For me, hard heartedness is like a veil that comes between me and God. It's like something blocking me from being in that sweet spot with Him. Fortunately, I can hear the Holy Spirit crying for me to acknowledge the veil exists, and to tear it away through my obedience to our Lord.

Having a tender heart for the gospel, and for others, is something that requires our constant focus and prayer. It also demands that we have people in our lives who can hold us accountable when our hearts began to turn hard.