Harden Not Your Heart

The Psalmist wrote this about the experience of the children of Israel in the wilderness: “To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest” (Psalm 95:8-11).  This was referring of course to the fact that the Israelites, after being led out of Egypt, remained in the wilderness and did not immediately enter into the promised land because of their unbelief.  Moses had sent 12 men into the land of Canaan to see what was there, and 10 of them came back with an evil report, saying, “We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.”  Though the Lord had delivered them miraculously out of the hand of the Egyptians—who also were stronger than they—they doubted that the Lord could deliver them out of the hands of this people who had “rejected every word of God, and… were ripe in iniquity; and the fulness of the wrath of God was upon them.”  The Israelites were so fearful of this people who were “giants” that they considered themselves “as grasshoppers” compared to them (Numbers 13:31-33, 1 Nephi 17:35).  When the children of Israel heard the report of these people, they “murmured against Moses and against Aaron” and said “let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.”  They had hardened their hearts despite all of the miracles they had already seen, and so the Lord said, “Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice; Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it” (Numbers 14:2, 4, 22-24).  They could not enter into the physical rest of the promised land and spent forty years in the wilderness because they did not believe in the Lord’s power and in His word. 

               The Psalmist’s invitation then for us is to not harden our hearts like they did but to believe in the power of the Lord in our own lives.  Hardening their heart was not simply doing wickedness but it was disbelieving the miraculous power of Jehovah.  This theme was taken up by Paul in his epistle to the Hebrews.  After quoting this passage from the Psalms, he wrote, “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end; While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.”  He emphasized the need to persevere in the gospel and that the original Israelites did not enter in “because of unbelief.”  His invitation to the Hebrews and us is to believe and not harden our hearts: “Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.”  This was the context of the powerful invitation he then gave them: “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 3:12-19, 4:12,16).  If the Israelites had gone boldly to the Lord and pled for His help in facing the wicked inhabitants of the land, He would have shown them grace and mercy and help; instead they hardened their hearts and suffered in the wilderness.  Jacob, likely referring to the same Biblical story, invited his people similarly: “We labored diligently among our people, that we might persuade them to come unto Christ, and partake of the goodness of God, that they might enter into his rest, lest by any means he should swear in his wrath they should not enter in, as in the provocation in the days of temptation while the children of Israel were in the wilderness” (Jacob 1:7).  The invitation of these scriptures for all of us is to not harden our hearts but rather to come unto Christ today and to enter into His rest through our faith in Him.