Hard Hearts and Blind Eyes

Posted on by korgrocker

“But the people couldn’t believe, for as Isaiah also said, “The Lord has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts— so that their eyes cannot see, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and have me heal them.” Isaiah was referring to Jesus when he said this, because he saw the future and spoke of the Messiah’s glory.”
John 12:39-41 NLT

‭‭John, in these verses from chapter 12 of his Gospel, quoted a verse from Isaiah 6. Isaiah was a prophet in the time of King Uzziah, a good leader who died in 740 BC. He was one of the few Godly kings in those days and he brought stability in a politically unstable period of history. So when he died, Isaiah was concerned about what might happen next and he did something we all do, or should do, in times of worry and stress – he sought God’s counsel. And what better place to seek God than the temple. While there, he had an amazing vision of God – the detail is in Isaiah 6:1-4. 

As well as a vision of God, though, Isaiah became aware of his sins, and the sins of the people. Isaiah 6:5, “Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies”“. But equally, Isaiah realised that sinful though he was, it was only an act of God, through His servant the seraphim, that could forgive his sin. Isaiah was about to become a minister of God’s Word to his people and it was only with cleansed lips that this would be possible. 

Then God ordained Isaiah as His messenger to the people – Isaiah 6:8, “Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?” I said, “Here I am. Send me”“. So he went out proclaiming God’s message of salvation to a people reluctant or unable to hear and understand the implications of what they were being told. In a way, Isaiah was a “type” of the coming Messiah, who was also proclaiming the message to a people seemingly deaf to the message of grace and truth, of eternal life to anyone who believed in the Son of God. Jesus taught the people by using a literary style we call parables and as we can see from Matthew 13, Jesus explained why He used such a medium to speak to the people. In response to a question from His disciples, Jesus said, “ … You are permitted to understand the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven, but others are not. To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given, and they will have an abundance of knowledge. But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them. That is why I use these parables, For they look, but they don’t really see. They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand” (Matthew 13:11-13). Jesus went on to quote Isaiah’s prophecy, in Matthew 13:14-15.

Is there a reason why the Jewish people were afflicted with hard hearts and blind eyes? Of course, this condition is not unique amongst Jews by any means – any human being is sinful, and that in itself will harden hearts and make them resistant to God’s message. Heart, ear, and eye diseases are endemic, and always have been since the days of Adam. Jesus told a parable about seeds and soils, and He likened the state of the soil to the different conditions that can be found in the human heart. Those people with receptive hearts will have eyes and ears opened ready to hear and receive the seed of God. But most have stony soil on which seeds will wither and die. But even the disciples were accused by Jesus of having hard hearts following the feeding of the four thousand, as we read in Mark 8:17-18, “Jesus knew what they were saying, so he said, “Why are you arguing about having no bread? Don’t you know or understand even yet? Are your hearts too hard to take it in? ‘You have eyes—can’t you see? You have ears—can’t you hear?’ Don’t you remember anything at all?” No-one is exempt from having hard heart disease.

So how do we deal with the condition of having a hardened heart. There is only one remedy, and that is true repentance for our sins. We have to do this, because the effect of sin on our hearts is disastrous and leads to a hardening that will eventually shut God out of our lives. The Holy Spirit will call but we will be unable to hear Him. One of my favourite Psalms is 139, and we read the closing verses, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” A dangerous prayer to pray but one that will lead to a softening of our hearts. And a soft heart allows God once again to bring His Word of truth into our spirits, leading us and guiding us in His ways.

Dear God. We pray today for Your Word to dwell deep within our hearts, keeping us soft and leant in Your hands. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.


Many Believed

Posted on by korgrocker

“Many of the people who were with Mary believed in Jesus when they saw this happen. But some went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the leading priests and Pharisees called the high council together. “What are we going to do?” they asked each other. “This man certainly performs many miraculous signs.”
John 11:45-47 NLT

Why did John record that many of the people who were with Mary came to believe in Jesus? Why not those with Martha? Perhaps Mary was the sister who was popular in the community, while Martha was the stay-at-home introvert who enjoyed nothing else than the house keeping. But regardless, both the sisters had faith in their friend Jesus, and enjoyed His presence in their home. However, the important message was that many “believed in Jesus” because of the miracle that had taken place. Jesus had restored to life a man who was graveyard dead, something unheard of in that age or any other, come to that.

John recorded that many believed, but obviously not all did. Faced with such a miraculous event, why did some people not believe in Jesus? What would it take for these people to believe? What was stopping them? Worse, when the religious leaders were told what had happened they didn’t believe in Jesus either. In fact, they were so disturbed by what had happened that they called a meeting of the High Council, the Sanhedrin. This was serious stuff, because this assembly of leaders was the ultimate Jewish court. To many of the people, and collectively by the leading priests and the Pharisees, to change their religious system to instead follow a Man who called Himself the Son of God and who even proved it by performing amazing miracles, was just not going to happen. 

So what was stopping a universal belief in Jesus? In Matthew 22:14 we read that Jesus said, “For many are called, but few are chosen”. The sad thing is that in every age since Jesus died for our sins, the clarion call of salvation has rung out but only those with hearing ears have responded. In Jesus’ day, the devil had blinded the eyes and ears of those who stubbornly refused to accept the evidence before them, instead deciding to maintain the status quo. People were spiritually deaf and such deafness continues today. God said to Isaiah, “ ... Yes, go, and say to this people, ‘Listen carefully, but do not understand. Watch closely, but learn nothing.’ Harden the hearts of these people. Plug their ears and shut their eyes. That way, they will not see with their eyes, nor hear with their ears, nor understand with their hearts and turn to me for healing” (Isaiah 6:9-10). Hardened hearts are still the default state of mankind today. Hearts resistant to anything that will lead to spiritual understanding are all around us. But God will warm and soften those whom He has called.

Today, we pilgrims are believers in Jesus. We have heard the call and responded wholeheartedly to the One who has the words of eternal life. 

Dear Father God. There was a time when, like Wesley, our hearts were “strangely warmed”. Thank You for the call through Your Son Jesus. Amen.

Worldliness

Posted on by korgrocker

“So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.”
‭Ephesians‬ ‭4:17-19‬ ‭NIVUK‬‬

Strong words from Paul. He presented to his friends the inviolable requirement that they had to change the way they live. No more living in a worldly way. No more going with the flow. No more following the crowd. Obviously his friends in Ephesus were once steeped in worldliness and he points out that living in this way was futile. It would lead nowhere other than to death and destruction. Paul’s observations of living life the Gentile way involved having hard hearts, insensitivity, sensuality, impurity and greed. Strong words indeed. The problem the Gentiles had was that they didn’t know any better. They had no moral compass. They had no appreciation of sin and its consequences. If it felt right they did it, regardless of what might happen. 

Here we are in the 21st Century and Paul’s analysis seems just as relevant today as it was in his day. Nothing has changed. In fact things may even seem to have got worse. Human nature has not been changed by the intervening years, by the improvements in “civilisation”, by the embracing of technologies totally beyond the thinking of the Ephesian Christians. We look around us at the behaviour of worldly people – take just the war in Ukraine as an example of futile thinking, of greed, of hard hearts. Our depressing analysis of human nature today won’t change the reality of the sort of world in which we live. But as Christians we must double our efforts to show those around us that there is a better way. Jesus came to this world bringing His Kingdom, a counter-cultural new way of living. Living God’s way, not the way of human nature dominated by “futile thinking”. And so today we reach out to Jesus and pray. We pray for those around us. We pray for divine appointments. We share our message of hope with our families, our communities. And we pray for our governments, that God will penetrate the dark thinking, the sinful ways, showing them that there is a better way. God’s way.