The same sun
that softens the wax, hardens the clay. So the
preaching of the Bible either softens and saves, or
it hardens the heart. It all depends on you. This is
brought out clearly in John 12:37 to 42. The Lord
Jesus lived a lovely life and He preached with power.
He went about doing good. But instead of being
received, He was rejected. The Bible says, "They
believed not on Him." But it doesn't stop there.
It continues, "therefore they could not
believe."
Unbelief
binds. It paralyzes your power, stupefies your soul
and weakens your will. It will rob you of your
faculty of faith. Here's an empty bottle. It's
capable of holding water. But tightly cork it so that
none can enter it. Hold it under a faucet or toss it
into the sea, it will remain empty. So it is with
your hearts. Unbelief closes them so that the water
of life can't fill them. And it's the law of nature
that unused powers waste away and wither. Keep your
arm in a set position. Don't move it. After a while
you won't be able to use it. So it is with your
heart. Every time you say "No!" when you're
asked to believe on the Lord Jesus, you cripple your
ability to believe. Soon the time will come when you
won't be able to believe.
Unbelief
blinds. It's written in John 12:40, "He hath
blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that
they should not see with their eyes, nor understand
with their heart, and be converted." For some
help on this startling statement, let's turn to 2nd
Corinthians 4:3 and 4, "If our gospel be hid, it
is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this
world hath blinded the minds of them which believe
not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ,
who is the image of God, should shine unto
them." It may be that you're saying, "If
Satan has blinded the minds of some people, how can
they be blamed? It isn't their fault that they're
blinded." But it is. Who were the people that
Satan blinded? The Bible answers, "them which
believe not." Though our Lord spoke with
authority, and had given them many signs, yet they
didn't believe in Him. They were deliberate
unbelievers. Because they spurned the Savior, they
came under the sway of the god of this age, who is
Satan. You see, if your neck isn't in God's yoke,
it's in the devil's noose. But as it was then, so it
is now, if you refuse to believe the truth of the
Savior, there's no other alternative but to believe
the lying statements of Satan. But remember this,
you're not blinded by Satan until you deliberately
reject the truth of the Savior.
Unbelief
benumbs. Every time the Spirit of God strives with
you to believe on the Lord and you say
"No!", you lose your softness and become
stiff. Soon you become stoneblind to the promises of
God and stonedeaf to the pleading of God. You can't
get away from this. If you hear but you don't heed,
you harden your heart. Dr. Harry Ironside was talking
to a group of children in a Sunday School. He was
trying to illustrate this truth. He said, "How
sad to know, dear girls and boys, each time you say
'No' to the Lord Jesus, your heart gets a little
harder, and if you keep on saying 'No,' the heart
gets harder and harder, until by-and-by God calls it
a heart of stone, and you no longer care about the
things of God, but persist in spurning His grace in
your sins." As he was pleading with them to give
their hearts to the Lord, he noticed one girl who
took in everything he said. She was very quiet on her
way home, and when the car pulled into the drive, she
darted ahead of her mother and ran to her father,
saying, "Daddy, Daddy, feel your heart! Is it
getting like stone?" "What are you talking
about?" he demanded. "Well," she
answered, "the man at Sunday School said if
you'd say 'No' to Jesus, you're going to get a stone
in your stomach! Have you got a stone there? Oh,
Daddy, I hope you haven't, for if you have, you can't
be saved." Turning to his wife he said,
"Well, I think I had better settle this thing
right now." He dropped to his knees and yielded
his life to the Lord. How happy he was. And how happy
you'll be if you'll yield your life to the Lord now!
copyright 2000 Guido Evangelistic
Association
All Scripture verses are
quoted from the New King James Version.
Click here to go
to the next message in this Sower Scripture Study on
the book of John.
This series of messages on the
books of the Bible were originally written for
broadcast on Dr. Guido's radio program, "The
Sower." They are collected and reprinted here
for your enjoyment and spiritual edification.
