To-day
The present
Let us take that short division of time--to-day--the now--and consider what is the duty, the preciousness of each passing hour and day.
1. Let us notice that each day has its own gifts. A writer speaks of the hours passing by him like solemn virgins in long and silent procession. He sits in his garden and sees them pass. Their faces are veiled in their hands, they bear caskets full of various gifts, some trivial, some of inestimable value. Among these gifts are stores of brilliant diadems and fruits and faded flowers. He forgets his morning wishes, he lets the day pass by idly and neglectfully. At last, just as the evening is about to fall, he hastily snatches some of their slightest gifts, some harsh apple or withering rose, and as they turn and pass away in silence into the evening shadows, the veils slip from their faces, and he sees the look of scorn which their faces wear. Yes, every day has its gifts, but all good gifts are exactly what we make of them. Let us pray that God will teach us rightly to use His gifts of every day.
2. Each day has not only its own immediate gifts, but also its immediate opportunities. When the Roman emperor sadly lamented to his friends, “I have lost a day,” he meant that on that day be had not conferred a kindness upon any one. How often by selfishness and temper, by egotism, by vanity and want of thought, we miss those opportunities of helping others in little ways which the angels in heaven might envy us. We may see men and women on every side of us, not by any means only among the poor, but among our social equals, staggering along under heavy burdens, which it does not even occur to us to put out even so much as our fingers to help. A word spoken in due season, how good It is! When good John Newton saw a little child crying over the loss of a halfpenny, and by giving it another dried its tears, he felt that he had not spent a day in vain. But it is not only by our daily neglect of a thousand little kindness and courtesies of daily life that we so lightly regard as mere grains of coarse sand in the hour-glass--moments as precious as if they were grains of gold. We lose them in a thousand other ways--not only lose, but squander and fling them away, and, worse than all, pervert them into opportunities of unkindness. In the words of the man of business, Time for us is money. But that is the least thing it is--for time is eternity.
3. Again, every day has its own stores of pure and innocent happiness. To those who walk through the world with open eyes every day reveals something beautiful. We are self-tormentors only because we are selfish and egotistical and vain. Our taste is corrupted; there are few of us to whom God wholly denies the grassy field of contentment, the simple wild flowers of innocent gladness, the limpid spring of the river of the water of life. That was a true saying of the ancients, “Carpe diem”--pluck the blossom of to-day. Our best hopes, our richest treasures, our destiny on earth, yes, even our heaven itself, lie not in the visionary future, but in the here and in the now.
4. And again, every day has its duties. What a special gift of God is this! Riches may fly away, fame may vanish, friends may die, but duty never ceases. This saves our poor little lives from most of their perplexities. Are we happy? Let not our felicity make us falter in the performance of a single duty, for on these duties that happiness itself depends. Are we unhappy? Strenuously try not to grieve over the bitterness, for action is the surest of solaces. In every case we cannot do better than obey the brave old rule, “Do the next thing.” While we are doing our duty, it is always ours to say that we are doing the very thing for which God made us. One of the most charming of the Greek idylls tells us how two poor fishermen, weary and cold, before the earliest dawn, while the moon still rides high in the heavens, rise from their beds of dried seaweed in their miserable hut, and while the waves dash fiercely on the shore hard by, repair their nets by the dim and uncertain twilight; and while they repair them, one of the men tells the other the story of how on the evening before he had fallen asleep very hungry and weary, and had dreamed that he stood on the reck where he was used to fish, and had thrown his line and caught a huge fish. When, with straining rod and line, he drew it to land, he found the fish to be made of pure and solid gold. And in his dream he thereupon took a solemn oath that he would sell his prize, and get wealth, and never dip line in the waves again. And now his poor ignorant thoughts were troubled with his oath, and he doubted whether he should renew his fishing. “Cheer up,” says his old comrade, “you may fish. You did not take the oath, for you see you have not caught the fish of gold. What are dreams? But if not in a dream, in broad waking if you toil and watch, some good may perhaps come to your vision. Look out for the real vision, lest you die of hunger with your golden dreams.” Is not the moral of this Greek idyll to be found even in Scripture? When the apostles waiting through those great forty days after the resurrection, when the appearance of the risen Lord seemed for a time to be hopeless, conscious of the pressure of their want and waiting, when it lay heavily upon them, what was to be done? Thank God, there is always something to be done. Each day has its duty, and He who gave the day and the duty gives also the desire to fulfil it. But not only has each day its duty, but each day has its one supreme duty before which all others sink into insignificance--the duty of repentance if we are living lives of sin; the duty of getting nearer to God and seeing His face if by our Saviour’s mercy we have tasted that the Lord is gracious. Oh, if this duty be left neglected, no other duty can be a substitute for it. Everyday is but a single spoke in the swift wheel of the revolving week, and the weeks flash into the months, and the months into the years, and the years roll on into the world beyond the grave. How many days are there even in a long life? How very few may be left to us! If, then, as we have seen first, every day has its gifts which we often despise; and secondly, every day has opportunities which we often waste; and thirdly, every day has its sources of happiness which we often forget; and fourthly, every day has its duties which the best so imperfectly accomplish; and fifthly, every day has its one thing needful Which if left unaccomplished is utter ruin--ought we not to thank God that every day has also its gracious help. There is One of infinite help always at hand--God is our help and strength. He loves us, He will not forsake us. He who gave His own Son for our sins, shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? And is it not the Son who shall be our Judge? Is He not standing in heaven to make intercession for us at God’s right hand? Is not conscience His voice within us? Has He not given us His Holy Spirit? Is not duty which He makes so clear to us His eternal law? and though He is infinitely far above us, He has given us a ladder between heaven and earth, so that we may ascend heavenward in our supplications, and His answer will fall back in blessings. (Archdeacon Farrar.)
The immediate claims of religion
I. THE PROPOSAL. “If ye will hear His voice.”
1. By acknowledging His authority.
2. By considering His words.
3. By accepting the benefits which He offers.
4. By obeying His commands.
II. THE MEANS OF ACCEPTING IT. “Harden not your heart.” Beware of cruelty to your own souls. Beware of impenitence amidst the means and calls of religion.
III. THE PERIOD TO WHICH IT REFERS. “To-day.”
1. To-morrow you may be indisposed to listen to the voice of God.
2. To-morrow you may be incapable of hearing His voice.
IV. THE END TO BE SECURED BY ACCEPTING IT. This the connection leads us to consider as “Rest.” The heavenly rest.
1. Rest from sin.
2. Rest from sorrow. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)
Today
We have two brief clauses to dwell upon: “If ye will hear His voice”; “Harden not your hearts.”
1. The word “will” is not in the original. The apostle is not speaking at present of a willingness on the part of man, but of a grace on the part of God. The exercise of the human will does not come into view till the next clause. This says merely, “If ye hear,” or “ shall hear,” God’s voice speaking. It is the recognition of the Divine freedom to speak or not to speak. “If ye should hear God speaking, listen.” It is conceivable that God may not speak. We may have wearied Him out by our inattention. He may say, “My Spirit shall no longer strive.” “If ye should hear His voice.” This awakens thought, quickens interest, arouses anxiety. What if I should have silenced that voice? Often have I heard without hearing. Often has the voice pleaded, entreated, besought, and there was nothing in me that regarded. Neither hope nor fear, neither love nor dread, neither interest, nor apprehension, no, nor curiosity. “If ye hear” says, “which haply ye may not.”
2. “Harden not your hearts.” The figure is taken from that process of drying and stiffening which is fatal to the free play of a limb or the further growth of a vegetable. The “heart,” in Scripture phrase, is that life-centre, that innermost being, out of which are the issues of thought and action, and upon the condition of which depend alike the decisions of the will and the habits of the living and moving man. When the heart is hardened, there is an end of all those influences of grace which till then can touch and stir, control and guide, inspire the quickening motive and apply the heavenward impulse. Sometimes this hardening is ascribed in Scripture to the operation of God. That is when the voice ceases to speak, and the will to disobey has become at last an incapacity to obey. But this we say, Never does the hardening b-gin on God’s side; and never does the Divine hardening preclude the human softening. “Whosoever will”--that is the condition: and without the willing salvation cannot be even if it would. These are deep as well as sorrowful mysteries. The text of this day lets them alone. It addresses itself to the will, which is the man, and says, “Harden not your heart.” If you will not harden it, certainly God will not. “Why will ye die, when He hath no pleasure in it?” If you hear, any one of you, the voice speaking--hear it say, “This is not your rest”; hear it say, “I am Thy salvation--come unto Me--abide in Me--I will refresh--in Me ye shall have peace”--harden not your heart. If the deceitfulness of sin should say within any of you, “The voice can wait--let it plead outside you till you have taken your fill of that which it cannot tolerate and cannot dwell with--then, when age comes, or sickness, or sorrow, or some shadow cast before of death or eternity, then hearken, then obey”--harden not your heart.
3. “To-day, if ye shall hear His voice.” The Epistle returns again and again to that word. What is “ To-day.” It is the opposite of two times and two eternities. It is the opposite of yesterday and to-morrow in time; it is the opposite of an immeasurable past, an inconceivable future, in the eternity which God inhabits. “To-day “ is at once the dividing line and the meeting point of the two--the barrier between the two finites, and the link between the two infinites. “To-day.” What a word of reproof and of admonition--of thanksgiving and of hope--of opportunity and of blessing. Is not each To-day the very epitome and abstract of a life? It has its morning and its evening; it has its waking and its falling on sleep; it has its typical birth and death; it has its hours marked out and counted; it has its duties assigned and distributed; it has its alternations of light and shade; it has its worship and its service, its going forth to labour and its coming back to reckon. Within these twelve or these sixteen hours a life may be lived, a soul lost or won. (Dean Vaughan.)
Opportunity to be seized
Opportunity is the flower of time, and as the stalk may remain when the flower is cut off, so time may remain with us when opportunity is gone. (J. Bond.)
To-day
How much the Bible has to say about “ to-day”--time present! This is really all we can call our own. It says very little about “yesterday” or “tomorrow.” “Yesterday” is like a closed book; its record is finished. As “the mill cannot grind with the water that is past,” so our work cannot be done with the strength and opportunities of yesterday. Of “to-morrow” we may repeat the old and significant saying, “It may never come!”
Opportunity
Opportunity has hair in front; behind she is bald. If you seize her by the forelock, you may hold her; but if suffered to escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her again.
Harden not your hearts
Hardening the heart
I. THE MEANING OF THE WORD “HEART,” AS HERE USED. Parents sometimes have the mortification of seeing their own children become stubborn against parental authority, and of seeing their requirements resisted and their counsels set at nought. Parents often see children, when they undertake to press them to do anything, instead of obeying, wax stubborn and rebellious. They stand and resist, and manifest a cool determination to persevere in their disobedience; and, so far as the philosophy of the act is concerned, resistance to God is just the same. The mind resisting truth “is hardening the heart,” in the sense of the text.
II. HOW IS IT THAT SINNERS DO HARDEN THEIR HEARTS?
1. This leads me to say that persons are very much in danger of hardening themselves, by holding fast to some erroneous opinion or improper practice to which they are committed. All their prejudices are in favour of it, and they are very jealous lest anything should disturb it. What danger such persons are in of assigning to themselves, as a reason for resisting the truth, that it clashes with some of their favourite notions! When they see its practical results contradict some pet theory of theirs, they will strengthen themselves against it. I recollect an instance of this kind. One evening, in the city of New York, I found among the inquirers a very anxious lady, who was exceedingly convicted of her sins, and pressed her strongly to submit to God. “Ah!” she said, “if I were sure I am in the right Church, I would.” “The right Church!” said I; “I care not what Church you are in, if you will only submit yourself to Christ.” “But,” she replied, “I am not in the Catholic Church, I am not in the right Church; if I were, I would yield.” So that her anxiety about the “ right Church” prevented her yielding at all, and she continued to harden her heart against Christ.
2. Others harden themselves by indulging in a spirit of procrastination. “I will follow Thee,” is their language, “but not now.”
3. I remark, again, that many persons strengthen themselves and harden their hearts by refusing, wherever they can refuse, to be convicted of their sins. They have a multitude of ways of avoiding the point, and force away the truth, and hardening themselves against it. Take care, for instance, of the practice of excusing sin.
4. But, again: Another way in which men harden themselves is that they are unwilling to come and do what is implied in becoming Christians. But a short time since, I was pressing an individual to yield up certain forms of sin of which I knew him to be guilty. “Ah,” said he, “if I begin to yield this and that, where will it all end? I must be consistent,” said he, “and where shall I stop? “Where should he “stop”? It was clear that the cost was too great, and that he was therefore disposed to harden himself and resist God’s claims, because he considered God required too much. This is a very common practice. If you ask persons in a general way, they are willing to be Christians; but “what will be expected of them?” Ah! that is quite a different thing! Now you have set them to count the cost, and they find it will involve too great a sacrifice. They are wholly unwilling to renounce themselves and their idols; and accordingly they betake themselves to hardening their hearts, and strengthening themselves in unbelief. I will cite the case just referred to for a moment. The conversation respected at that time a particular form of sin. Now, why did he not yield at once? He saw that the principle on which he yielded this point would compel him to give up others; and therefore he said, “If I begin this, where shall I stop?” He gathered up all the reasons he could, and strengthened himself in his position. Thus he was hardening his heart; this was just what the Jews did when Christ preached.
III. WHY MEN SHOULD NOT HARDEN THEIR HEARTS IN THIS WAY.
1. Perhaps the first thing that I shall notice will startle some of you. It is this: you should not harden your hearts, “because, if you do not do so, you will be converted.” God has so constituted the mind that, as everybody knows, truth is a most powerful stimulant, which invites and draws the mind in a given direction. Truth induces it to act in conformity with its dictates. Now, to do this, to obey the truth, that is conversion. If you do not obey it, it is because you harden yourself against it; for it is an utter impossibility to be indifferent to the presentation of truth, and especially is it utterly impossible to maintain a blank indifference to the presentation of the great practical truths of Christianity.
2. Another reason why you should not harden your hearts is that you will not be converted if you do. In other words, if you resist the Spirit, God never forces you against your will. If He cannot persuade you to embrace the truth, He cannot save you by a physical act of omnipotence, as, for instance, He could create a world. You are a free moral agent, and He can save you only in His own way. In other words, if He cannot gain your own consent to be saved in His own any, He cannot possibly save you at all.
3. Another reason why you should not harden your hearts is that you may be given up! God may give you up to the hardness of your hearts. The Bible shows that this is not uncommon. Whole generations of the Jews were thus given up. Some think there is not so much danger of this now; but the fact is there is more, because there is more light. He gives them up because they resist the light of the truth with regard to His claims.
IV. WHOSE “VOICE” IS HERE REFERRED TO? IS it the voice of a tyrant, who comes out with his omnipotent arm to crush you? “If you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” Whose voice is it? In the first place, it is the voice of God; but, more than this, it is the voice of your Father I But is it the voice of your Father, with the rod of correction, pursuing you, to subdue you by force? Oh, no! it is the voice of His mercy--of His deepest compassion. A few further remarks must close what I have to say; and the first remark is this: persons often mistake the true nature of hardness of heart. Supposing it to be involuntary, they lament it as a misfortune, rather than regret it as a crime. They suppose that the state of apathy which results from the resistance of their will is hardness of heart. It is true that the mind apologises to itself for resistance to the claims of God, and, as a natural consequence, there is very little feeling in the mind, because it is under the necessity of making such a use of its powers as to cause great destitution of feeling. This is hardening the heart--that act of the mind in resisting the claims of God. For persons to excuse themselves by complaining that their hearts are hard is only to add insult to injury. I remark, once more, it is worthy of notice that the claims, commands, promises, and invitations of God are all in the present tense. Turn to the Bible, and from end to end you will find it is, “To-day “ if ye will hear His voice. “Now” is the accepted time. God says nothing of tomorrow; lie does not even guarantee that we shall live till then. Again: the plea of inability is one of the most paltry, abusive, and blasphemous of all. What! Are men not able to refrain from hardening themselves? I have already said, and you all know, that it is the nature of truth to influence the mind when it receives it; and, when the Spirit does convert a man, it is by so presenting the truth as to gain his consent. Now, if there was not something in the truth itself adapted to influence the mind, He might continue to present the truth for ever, without your ever being converted. It is because there is an adaptedness in truth--something in the very nature of it which tends to influence the mind of man. Now, when persons complain of their inability to embrace the truth, what an infinite mistake! God approaches with offers of mercy, and with the cup of salvation in His hand, saying, “Sinner! I am coming! Beware not to harden yourself. Do not cavil. Do not hide behind professors of religion. Do not procrastinate! for I am coming to win you.” Now, what does the sinner do? Why, he falls to hardening his heart, procrastinating, making all manner of excuses, and pleading his inability. Inability! What! Is not a man able to refrain from surrounding himself with considerations which make him stubborn? Once more: I said this is a most abusive way of treating God. Why, just think. Here is God endeavouring to gain the sinner’s consent--to what? Not to be sent to hell. Oh, no! lie is not trying to persuade you to do anything, or to consent to anything, that will injure you. Oh, no! He is not trying to persuade you to give up anything that is really good rather relinquishment of which will make you wretched or unhappy--to give up all joy and everything that is pleasant--to give up things that tend to peace--He is not endeavouring to persuade you to do any such thing as this. With regard to all such things, He is not only willing that you should have them, but would bring you into a state in which you could really enjoy them. (C. G. Finney.)