What does the Bible say about hardheartedness?

The Bible passages below can be used in sermons, prayers, or pastoral care focused on hardheartedness.

• Exodus 7:13, Pharaoh's heart was hardened (Pharaoh would not listen)
• Exodus 8:15, Pharaoh hardened his heart (Pharaoh would not listen)
• Exodus 9:12 the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart (Pharaoh would not listen)
• 1 Samuel 6:6, why harden your hearts? (don't do as Pharaoh and the Egyptians did)
• Proverbs 28:14, hardheartedness leads to calamity (don't ignore God's commands)
• Ezekiel 3:7, a stubborn heart (Israel is not willing to listen)
• Ezekiel 11:19-20, heart of stone (God replaces our hard heart with a heart of flesh)
• Zechariah 7:12, adamant hearts (the people refused to hear God's message)
• Matthew 19:7-8, you were hardhearted (the law as a response to hardheartedness)
• Mark 3:4-5, hardness of heart (Jesus grieved their hardheartedness)
• Romans 2:5, hard and impenitent heart (storing up wrath)
• Romans 9:18, hardening the heart (mercy and hardheartedness)
• Ephesians 4:18-19, ignorance and hardness of heart (alienation from God is a result of hardheartedness)
• Hebrews 3:12-13, hardened by sin (deceitfulness of sin hardens the heart)

Sermon ideas about hardheartedness

Pharaoh's hard heart

What can a sermon on hardheartedness say about Pharaoh's hard posture? The texts in Exodus about Pharaoh's hard heart, particularly 9:12 and its repetitions, have long troubled sensitive believers. Could it be that a just and merciful God hardens Pharaoh's heart and then blames and damns Pharaoh for his hard heart? No. If believers thought that God proceeds in this way, they would no longer have any idea of what they mean when they say God is just. Fortunately, as Brevard Childs shows in his commentary on Exodus, the hard heart texts in Exodus are open to a wholly different reading. 

Sometimes the narrative does say that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, but sometimes it says Pharaoh hardened his heart, and sometimes it says simply that Pharaoh's heart hardened, without giving any indication who was doing the hardening. The narrative is casual about the cause of the hardening because its real point lies elsewhere, as Childs observes. Its point is that Pharaoh's hardness prevented him from gaining the knowledge of God revealed by the plagues and that Pharaoh's hardness resulted in the multiplication of the plagues. To read the narrative as if its topic is predestination and free will is to over-interpret it.

God's supreme goodness and justice

A sermon on hardheartedness can say that it's in this spirit that Romans 9:18 is to be read. To repeat: If believers were forced to accept that God hardens people's hearts and then blames and damns them for their hardness, most believers would give up their religion because they felt forced to attribute demonic behavior to their beloved God and Savior. God's supreme goodness and justice are anchor attributes of God. No text may be read in such a way as to contradict these attributes.

God "gives people over"

More plausibly, we may interpret Romans 9:18 in the light of Romans 1:24, 26, and 28, which speak of God giving people over to their evil. If God gives them over to their evil, one result is going to be their hardness of heart, which then becomes their judgment.

God's rejection of Israel

The theologian N. T. Wright believes that chapters 9-11 of Romans are not really about individual election or salvation, but about God's rejection of Israel for a time so that the gospel could go to the gentiles.

God's "No" to Israel becomes God's "Yes" to the gentiles and eventually God's "Yes" to Israel as well. In the words of Romans 11:30-31, "Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy.

Urgency

The Bible is urgent about the deadliness of a hard heart. Hardness keeps a person from listening to God. "They would not listen" is the tragic harbinger of approaching disaster. A hard heart is willful, obtuse, and stubbornly resistant to the call of God, the cry of the prophets, the teaching of the Savior. Not listening is the tripwire that leads to disobedience and all its woes. A hard heart stands for stubborn pride, which is pro-self and anti-God and therefore an overflowing fountain of evil.

Hard heart vs. healthy heart

A hard heart cannot be moved to all the good emotions that flourish in a healthy believer's life. Healthy believers will be moved to remorse over their sins, to joy over their salvation, to gratitude to God for God's goodness, to love of God and of neighbor. They will be moved to compassion at the distress of others, feeling a mirroring distress in their own heart. They will be moved to enthusiasm for God's program of reclamation and justice in the world and for their own calling within the program.

Accordingly, because hardness of heart blocks the lively exercise of what he called "religious affections," Jonathan Edwards concluded that sin consists in hardness of heart and virtue in tenderness of heart.

Excerpts about hardheartedness

Following are sample excerpts from Zeteosearch.org sermon resources about hardheartedness:

• "As we come to the Lord's Supper today, we take heart from the life of Jesus himself. In this terror-filled world, we will resist the temptation to be hardhearted." Scripture Meditation or Sermon by Carol Penner from Leading in Worship
• "We might also gently remind our hearers that none of us would receive God's grace with our faith without the convicting work of the Holy Spirit within us. That is to say, God's hardening of unbelievers doesn't impose on them something they haven't already naturally chosen for themselves." Sermon Illustration, Sermon Preparation by Doug Bratt from Center for Excellence in Preaching

Worship ideas about hardheartedness

Following are sample excerpts from Zeteosearch.org worship resources about hardheartedness:

• "O Lord, save us from hardness of heart, where your word cannot take root. O Lord, save us from shallowness of mind, where your word withers away." Prayer of Intercession by the Staffordshire Seven from ReWorship