Hebrews 3:7-8 Why (as the Holy Ghost said, To day if you will hear his voice,… 1. The first motive which I shall set before you with this view, is the shortness and uncertainty of life. I urge you to become religious to-day, because you are not sure of to-morrow. Need I tell you, that you are frail as well as mortal; that you must not only die, but may die soon and suddenly? Who, let me ask, are the persons that die suddenly and unexpectedly? Are they the feeble, the infirm? No, observation will tell you, that they are the youthful, the vigorous, the strong. She will tell you that while the former, like a reed, bend before the blast and escape, the latter, like the stubborn oak, brave its fury, and are prostrated. 2. This remark suggests a second reason, why you should not postpone religion to another day. You cannot properly, or even lawfully, promise to give what is not your own. Now to-morrow is not yours; and it is yet uncertain whether it ever will be. To-day, then, is the only time which you can properly or lawfully give to God. 3. A third reason why you should commence a religious life to-day, is, that if you defer it, though but till to-morrow, you must harden your hearts against the voice of God. God commands you to commence immediately a religious life. Now if you do not comply, you must refuse, for there is no medium. Here then is a direct, wilful act of disobedience to God's commands; and this act tends most powerfully to harden the heart; for after we have once disobeyed, it becomes more easy to repeat the disobedience. But this is not all. If you disobey, you must assign some excuse to justify your disobedience, or your consciences will reproach and render you uneasy; if no plausible excuse occurs, you will seek one. If none can readily be found, you will invent one. This also tends most powerfully to harden the heart. A man who is frequently employed in seeking arguments and excuses to justify his neglect of religion, soon becomes expert in the work of self-justification. He is, if I may so express it, armed at all points against the truth; so that in a little time nothing affects him, no arrow from the quiver of revelation can reach his conscience. But if, as is sometimes the case, his excuses prove insufficient, and his understanding and conscience become convinced, he can avoid compliance only by taking refuge in an obstinate refusal, or by resolutely diverting his attention to some other object, till God's commands are forgotten, or by a vague kind of promise that he will become religious at some future period. Whichsoever of these methods he adopts, the present impression is effaced, and his heart is hardened. He has resisted the force of truth, and thus rendered it more easy for him to resist it again. In a word, he has less religious sensibility; he has become more inaccessible to conviction, and less disposed to yield to it, than before. Now this is precisely what the Scriptures mean by hardening the heart to-day. (E. Payson, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice,WEB: Therefore, even as the Holy Spirit says, "Today if you will hear his voice, |
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