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I. TO HARDEN THE HEART IS TO CHERISH A VOLUNTARY INSENSIBILITY TO GOD AND DIVINE OBJECTS.

II. HOW THE HEART IS HARDENED.

1. By fixing its affections supremely on the world. A striking exemplification of this was furnished by that miser whose band, cold in death, still held its firm grasp upon his gold, when his spirit had gone to the bar of God.

2. By refusing to turn the attention to Divine things. No truth is plainer than this; that a man will not feel what he does not think of. God unthought of, must leave the heart as hard and unmoved as it would be were there no God, no Christ, and no heaven.

3. By excusing sin. The object of every excuse formed by the mind is to impair or destroy a sense of obligation and guilt.

4. By presumptuous hopes and expectations from futurity. The very language of such hopes is, the authority and glory of God shall not be felt now; the evil of sin and the awful realities of a future world shall not be felt now; all sensibility shall be deadened by hopes from futurity. These hopes of a future repentance, fellow-sinner, are a shield to your heart, which the arrows of the Almighty will never penetrate.

III. TO ENFORCE THE EXHORTATION NO LONGER TO HARDEN THE HEART, BY THE CONSIDERATIONS IMPLIED IN THE TEXT, "To-day if ye will hear His voice." The declaration implies —

1. That to harden the heart is a fatal obstacle to bearing and obeying the gospel.

2. To harden the heart is the only obstacle to an immediate compliance with the demands of the gospel.

3. To abstain from hardening the heart is as easily done at the present as any future time.

4. The last consideration is that those who now harden their heart may never hear and obey the gospel. This appears, if we consider, in all such cases, the increase of guilt. To harden the heart against the voice of God once is a high measure of provocation; and if it be the tendency of sin, of accumulated guilt, to exhaust the patience of God and to provoke His speedy vengeance, what must be the effect of hardening the heart with the formal design of continuing to rebel against Him? When in its own nature it involves every act of future sin; when its whole strength — strength, too, thus to offend God — is derived from the fact that God is good and long-suffering? What purpose embodies baser ingratitude, a more direct insult to God, greater hardihood in rebellion, and a greater amount of crime; and what purpose could the sinner form to provoke God's instant vengeance if this does not? Again, there is a fearful principle of God's administration which arrays all its alarms before such persons. "Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone."

(N. W. Taylor, D. D.)

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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,