WHILE IT IS CALLED TO-DAY.
“But exhort one another daily, while it is called To-day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” Heb. 3:13. This brings to view present duty, in view of present danger. The present duty is the duty of exhorting one another; and the present danger is that of being hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. The apostle strikes a point of time, and the only point which we can use and call our own. Yesterday is past, and cannot be recalled. To-morrow has not yet come, and to us may never come; but to-day is ours, to be used judiciously for God’s glory and our good. The subject is a little more extended in the next chapter: “Again, He limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To-day, after so long a time; as it is said, To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” Heb. 4:7. Should we live till to-morrow, then that will be to-day to us. But how long will the to-days be lengthened out? The language of verse 7 indicates a severe stretch of God’s patience,—“Saying in David, To-day, after so long a time,”—implying that much time has elapsed, but still God’s long-suffering and patience hold out; and even now His voice is still heard pleading; and if we will hear, we are invited to repent and harden not our hearts. That impressive poem, “The Boundary Line,” applies well to this point. We quote three stanzas:— “There is a time,—we know not when,—
A point,—we know not where,—
That marks the destiny of men
For glory or despair.” “How long may we go on in sin?
How long will God forbear?
Where does hope end? and where begin
The confines of despair?” “A message from the skies is sent:
Ye who from God depart,
While it is called To-day, repent,
And harden not your heart.” What is it to harden the heart? and how does one do it? It is something we are earnestly warned against. We do it by tempting God and provoking Him, as Israel did in the wilderness. Heb. 3:7–11: “As the Holy Ghost saith, To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I swear in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.” The apostle continues, “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To-day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” This is one of the ways in which our hearts are hardened. We suffer them to harden under the deceitfulness of sin. Sin is phenomenally deceitful. It has never yet been known to make good one of the fair promises it has made to the children of men; and yet men are as madly infatuated with it as ever. This is natural; for we read of the human heart itself that it is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked;” just the soil for the deceitful element of sin to take root in. We may perhaps learn what it is to harden the heart, against which we are so urgently warned, by studying the cases of those who are held up as marked examples of that failing. The most prominent among these is, perhaps, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, of whom God says, “For this same purpose have I raised thee up,” or caused thee to stand, that is, to come to the throne, “that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.” Rom. 9:17. God foresaw that a crisis was coming between himself and Pharaoh; that the king of Egypt was intending to array all his power against God, to prevent His delivering His people from Egypt, which He had promised to do. Under these circumstances He might have said, Now I will remove Pharaoh and bring a more accommodating man to the throne, who will readily yield to my will, and let my people go. Had He done so, His enemies would have said, Of course He could carry out His plans; for He took the time to do it when He had a mere puppet on the throne, a weak, pusillanimous man, whom He could influence at His pleasure. So He didn’t act that way, but let the hard-hearted, stiff-necked Pharaoh come to the throne, that he might exert the highest human power to defeat God’s purposes; and then the Lord would carry out His word over it all, to get honor to His name in all the earth. He thus vindicated His power before all men. But Pharaoh hardened his heart. Under judgments he repeatedly promised to let the people go; but as soon as the judgment was lifted, he would go back on his word, and refuse to let the people go. Thus Pharaoh hardened his heart by repeatedly denying his word, in favor of his own selfish interest. It was his own voluntary act. So he hardened his own heart. But the Scriptures speak of it as God hardening his heart, because God had pointed out the way of duty, and opened the way so fully for it to be carried out, and under these influences brought Pharaoh repeatedly to promise to do the right thing, and then suffered him to turn around and contradict and act contrary to his own word. God was treating Pharaoh as a free moral agent, setting before him sufficient light and truth, but suffering him to act out his own selfish disposition, and make his own choice. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart was his own act directly, and the act of God only indirectly. And Paul shows that Pharaoh was not under any compulsion to do as he did. Speaking of this very case of Pharaoh, in Romans 9, he says: “What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had afore prepared unto glory?” The first and leading object of God is to show mercy unto His people; and to do this it is often necessary for Him to endure with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath, as He did with Pharaoh. He has vessels of mercy, on whom He desires to make known the riches of His glory. But the vessels of wrath stand in the way, and for a time retard His purposes and delay His plans. So He endures them with much long-suffering and patience, and bears with them till His mercy and long-suffering can no longer endure, and then cuts them down. A stiff neck is often associated with hard heartedness in the characters of those who are not doing God’s will, showing that those who are opposing God have set up their own wills in opposition to His. This is a further exhibition of pride and selfishness, which God cannot tolerate in His creatures. This is another element that enters largely into the hardening of the heart which we are warned against. “To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” The message to the Laodiceans tallies exactly with this exhortation: “And unto the angel of the Church of the Laodiceans write: These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. . . . So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in His throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” A more deplorable spiritual condition than that of the Laodiceans it would be beyond the power of language to describe. And no language can describe a more full and gracious promise by which it is to be met. “To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.”