Harden Not Your Hearts — Sermon by Rev. Canon Bryan Biba

Let us pray.

Lord, may my speech and my message not

be plausible words of human wisdom, but

a demonstration of the spirit and of

power. So that our faith may not rest in

the wisdom of men, but in the power of

the living God, Jesus Christ, who is the

living water. We ask this in the name of

the Father and the Son and the Holy

Spirit. Amen. You may be seated.

For nearly 1,500 years, Christians have

begun their day by praying Psalm 95, the

psalm appointed for this morning. The

psalm that many of us know as the

venite. In fact, if you come to morning

prayer here uh most days at 8 a.m. we

will often begin morning prayers with

the venite. Turn with me if you would to

your uh order of service on page 6.

This psalm is a glorious wonderful

psalm. It's a psalm of praise to the

Lord. It begins by calling us to sing

unto the Lord to heartily rejoice in the

strength of our salvation. We

acknowledge God as the great king, as

the creator of all things. We bow down

ourselves before him. He is our God and

we are the people of his pasture, the

sheep of his hand.

What a great way to begin your day in

prayer.

But then in verse 8, there is a sudden

turn, a dramatic turn. A turn so sudden

that 200 years of American prayer books

left out these verses of the venite

Psalm 95. Generations of Episcopalians

began their day not praying these

verses. And if you read them, you may

understand why.

Today, if you will hear his voice,

pardon not your hearts as in the

provocation, as in the day of

temptation, the wilderness. When your

fathers tested me and put me to the

proof, though they had seen my works, 40

years long, I was grieved with this

generation and said, "It is a people who

do error in their hearts, for they have

not known my ways, whom I swore in my

wrath that they should not enter into my

rest."

Pretty tough way to end your morning

prayers, huh?

Second half of verse 8 recalls our

scripture reading from Exodus 17.

Literally as in the provocation, as in

the day of temptation, the wilderness is

translated in the Hebrew as Meabbah and

Massa.

The psalmist is asking us to remember

what happened in Exodus 17. one of the

critical turning points in the life of

Israel. And the psalmist is giving us

some commentary on Exodus 17. He's

giving us insight into what really was

going on.

This story is about the heart,

particularly the hardness of heart.

Exodus 17 teaches us why hearts harden

and how God changes hard hearts into

soft hearts.

So, open your Bibles with me. Let's look

at Exodus 17 together.

The people of Israel have been redeemed

from slavery in Egypt. They've passed

through the waters of the Red Sea

and that means everything's going to be

good for them from now on, right? No

problems, no challenges.

No, their redemption from slavery is

only the beginning of a process. They

have been redeemed, yet they still must

be made holy.

And in order to become holy,

Israel must wander in the wilderness for

the appointed time. But it's not just

any wilderness. Verse one is very clear.

Of all the congregation of the people of

Israel moved on from the wilderness of

sin by stages.

And isn't that true for our own lives,

friends? Yes, Jesus has saved us from

sin and death by his cross and

resurrection. And yet, we still must

move out of the wilderness of our sin.

And this doesn't happen all at once. It

happens in stages over the course of our

life.

It seems you could take the people out

of Egypt, but you can't take Egypt out

of the hearts of the people. That's

exactly what the Lord intends to do in

the wilderness.

They camp at a place called Repidm,

but there is no water for the people to

drink.

God is testing his people, Israel. He

often does this. He wants to test their

hearts as a blacksmith test the purity

of a metal. See, they've been oppressed

generation after generation by Pharaoh.

And their hearts have been hardened. And

now that they're redeemed, the Lord

wants to soften their heart to beat out

of them all of the impurities.

God allows such testing in order to

reveal the state of their hearts and he

allows such testing for our hearts as

well.

The first sign,

the first step of hardness of heart is

in verse two. Therefore, the people

quarreled with Moses and said, "Give us

water to drink."

That's the first sign of a hard heart,

quarreling. The Hebrew word here is

reeb. It means to contest, to bicker, to

dispute, to stir up strife. This is the

word that's often used in Leviticus to

describe a lawsuit.

Friends, we can quarrel over all kinds

of things.

big things. I mean, quarreling often

begins like anger with a genuine desire

for justice to see something made right

in the world. But if you're like me,

more often than not, you like to quarrel

over little things, things that don't

really matter, things that are

inconsequential.

The problem comes when we take matters

into our own hands and make ourselves

the prosecuting attorney in our own

case. That's when we quarrel. That's

when we dispute and fight.

Moses names what's really going on in

the second half of verse two. Moses says

to them, "Why do you quarrel with me?

Why do you test the Lord?" See, their

quarrel isn't with Moses. Moses is just

the messenger. You don't shoot the

messenger. It is the Lord who led them

to this place without water. It is the

Lord whom they are testing. You see

what's happened here? The Lord seeks to

test the hearts of Israel. And now the

quarreling Israelites are testing the

Lord. They're putting the Lord to the

proof. As Psalm 95 says,

when we think we are in the right,

we seek to make our case and prove our

point no matter what.

And when we don't get what we want,

well, that brings us to the next step of

the hardness of heart in verse three.

But the people thirsted there for water

and the people grumbled against Moses.

Grumbled.

Everyone say grumbled. Grumbled. That's

the second step. That's how hearts

harden. We quarrel and then we grumble.

The Hebrew word is lon. It means to

complain, to nurse a grudge, to remain

obstinate.

Grumblers continue to dwell on something

long past it is reasonable or healthy.

Does anyone know anyone like that?

Is anybody like that?

Grumbling, friends, is a huge problem in

the church.

If we have a problem with someone, we

should follow the advice of Jesus in

Matthew 18. We should go directly to

them. We should tell them the problem we

have and seek reconciliation. But that's

not often what we do. Instead, when we

have a problem, in my experience growing

up in the church, what Christians like

to do is we grumble. We complain.

Complain to one another. Do you hear

what that person did? Do you see what

they said? Why' they do that?

Second half of verse three,

you hear what the people say to Moses.

They say, "Why did you bring us up out

of Egypt? To kill us and our children

and our livestock with thirst." Often

grumbling leads to foolishness. They're

making absolutely ridiculous claims.

They're saying Moses led them out of

Egypt to kill their animals.

I mean, this is preposterous, patently

false. And yet, this is what happens

when our hard hearts begin to quarrel

and grumble. We gossip and slander

against our neighbor as Paul says in

Romans chapter 1. We traffic in

Romans 1 · chapter mention

untruths. We use our words to tear down

others rather than building others up.

Friends, a grumbler is always proud.

There's no such thing as a humble

grumbler.

And they're proud because their hearts

are hard.

And left unchecked, grumbling can

escalate to violence. Verse four, Moses

at his wits end cries out to the Lord,

"What shall I do with this people?

They're almost ready to stone me.

They're ready to kill Moses." That's how

hard their hearts are.

So in desperation, Moses turns to God

for help. He asks him, "Help me, Lord.

I'm just your servant. I need your help.

These are your people. Their quarreling

is with you, not with me.

This is reminiscent of Jesus's own

teaching on anger from Matthew 5. We all

just recited the decalogue, the

commandment against murder being one of

them. I hope that no one here has

actually physically murdered someone.

But Jesus teaches very clearly that

anger is a kind of spiritual murder

against your neighbor in your heart.

And friends, all of us are guilty of

that.

When we're angry,

we murder our neighbor,

slander them, dismiss them,

ignore them, reject them, treat them as

less than us.

And so, it's no surprise that anger

often leads to physical acts of

violence.

But thanks be to God, for us, this story

has a happy ending.

The Lord responds to Moses in verse 5.

He instructs them to pass before the

people, to take some elders, some

support, to take the staff which he used

to strike the Nile and to go and strike

a rock and out of that rock comes living

water.

God miraculously provides for his people

through Moses. He hears

their quarreling and their grumbling and

their violence. He knows their hardness

of heart and yet he gives grace anyway.

Thanks be to God.

The story ends in verse 7 with some

commentary. It connects back to our

psalm. We're told he called the name of

the place Massa and Meabbah. literally

the place of testing and quarreling

because of the quarreling of the people

of Israel because they tested the Lord

saying, "Is the Lord not among us?"

This story h occurs. It's referenced all

over the Old Testament. It's just one of

these things that keeps coming up. It's

all over the Psalms. It pops up in the

book of Proverbs. It props up in the New

Testament. There's something about this

story in Exodus 17 that the Holy Spirit

wants us to never forget. The temptation

to harden our heart through grumbling,

through complaining,

through quarreling.

But right here we learn really what's at

the heart of this.

Is the Lord among us or not?

Hard hearts angly angrily quarrel and

grumble because they don't trust God.

It's fundamentally a matter of faith.

Rather than receiving the gifts of God

with open hands, they clench their fists

and they fight for control. And when

they don't get their way, we allow

resentment to build.

We pridefully think of ourselves as

better than our neighbors and we murder

them in our hearts. This is very

dangerous, friends.

Hard-heartedness always leads to

rebellion. That's what this story

fundamentally is. It's a story of

rebellion.

The hard heart are unable to follow the

leadership of others because they are

their own masters

in the church.

This often looks like moving from one

church to another, from one leader to

another. I experienced this in my own

family growing up.

You're happy at a church for a time and

then the leader does something you don't

like and you quarrel and you grumble and

then before you know it you leave to go

somewhere else and the cycle starts over

and over again. Isn't that the story of

American Christianity?

The saddest thing of all friends is that

the hardhearted person is often closed

off to the presence of God.

They're closed off to their neighbor and

it's hard for them to hear the voice of

God.

The psalmist makes the consequences of

this hardness of heart very clear.

Verse 10, 40 years long I was grieved

with this generation and said, "It is a

people that heir in their hearts for

they have not known my ways of whom I

swore in my wrath they should not enter

into my rest.

Yeah. When I get up to heaven to be with

the Lord before Christ returns, I hope

the Lord doesn't say to me, "I was

grieved with you for 40 years."

That would be tough.

Only the soft of heart will experience

the blessed rest of God. And what's also

interesting about this is verse 8.

Today, if you will hear his voice,

harden not your hearts. The psalmist

seems to indicate that you and I have

some control. We have some power. We can

stop our hearts from hardening.

But once our heart is hardened,

only the Holy Spirit can make us soft

again.

By contrast, let's turn to John chapter

John 4 · chapter mention

4 and look at the story of the woman at

the well. If the Israelites at Meabbah

and Massa are hard-hearted, then this

woman is an example of a soft heart.

First, she's a Samaritan. She's a mortal

enemy of the Jewish people. And she's

drawing water at the sixth hour, at the

high noon, the hottest part of the day.

The only people doing this at that time

would have been the social outcasts. So,

right away we know this woman, it's not

the kind of woman Jesus should be

hanging around with, or at least

according to the Jews of his day.

And in verse 7, Jesus asked this woman

for a drink of water.

Listen to the woman's response in verse

9.

The woman said to him, "How is it that

you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a

woman of Samaria, Samaria? For Jews had

no dealings with Samaria?"

This question, it's not a quarrel. She's

not picking a fight with Jesus. This is

an example of kind curiosity.

This woman is trying to understand who

this person is before her.

Jesus's actions are unexpected. So she

inquires and Jesus answers her in verse

10. If you knew the gift of God, who it

is that is saying to you, give me a

drink, you would have asked him and he

would have given you living water.

And then comes

one of the most profound statements in

all the gospels. Verse 14.

But whoever drinks the water that I give

him will never be thirsty again. The

water that I give him will become in him

a spring of water welling up to eternal

life.

The soft of heart abide with Jesus. They

remain with him. They receive his water.

and out of their heart flows life to

other people, to all those around them.

But the hard-hearted, well, they are

bitter and they pour out and deal death

to all those around them. The contrast

is very clear. Hard hearts make living

waters bitter.

The Samaritan woman, she knows what it's

like to be a person who ripples death

all around her. She is a pariah, a

reject, a persona nongrada.

So to her, this word from Jesus is

unbelievable. You, even you can become a

source of living water for those around

you if you drink of my water.

And this invitation reveals another

aspect of her soft heart. Soft-hearted

people don't quarrel. Instead, they have

kind curiosity.

And soft-hearted people, they don't

grumble.

Instead, verse 15, the woman said to

him, "Sir,

give me this water so that I will not be

thirsty or have to come here to draw

water."

This is not proud grumbling. This is a

humble request. She knows what she needs

and she's just asking for it. I talk

about this with my kids all the time.

When my kids start grumbling, and you

know, kids do. You know, often it's cuz

they have something they need, but they

haven't asked me. They think I can read

their mind. They think I know what they

need before they ask. And I having to

teach my four-year-old, especially these

days, just tell me what you want. How?

What do you need? This woman knows,

"Sir, give me this water.

I never want to thirst again."

But too often, what do we do instead?

Right? We complain. We demand. We have

our pretense about us.

And what happens next is almost

more unexpected than the prior comment.

Can't imagine what this woman must have

felt like. Jesus says to her, "Go call

your husband and come here." Knowing

full well that she doesn't have just one

husband. She's had five husbands and

she's with another man. Now Jesus here

is being a prophet.

Prophecy is not primarily about seeing

the future. It's about speaking clearly

the truth. And that's what Jesus does.

He goes right to the heart of the

matter. He speaks to her a word of truth

and she feels seen and known perhaps for

the first time in her life.

This woman has gone from man to man

seeking satisfaction in her heart.

And now the very source of love stands

before her. And he asks her for a drink.

Amazing.

Jesus then in verse 23 invites this

woman to become a true worshshiper. She

she attempts to get in a little bit of a

theological debate about Samaritans and

Jews and what they really believe. And

Jesus has none of it. Right?

The hour's coming is now here when the

true worshippers will worship the father

in spirit and in truth. For such the

father is seeking to worship him.

In order to be a true worshipper, we

must receive Christ's spirit. We must

receive his word, his truth. That must

be the thing that softens our hearts.

And slowly over time, as we receive his

word and his spirit, our hard hearts

become soft again. We stop quarreling.

We stop grumbling and anger and instead

with kind curiosity in simple petition

we ask for what we need and are

satisfied.

Friends, this Lent we are faced with two

ways.

The way of the soft heart, the Samaritan

woman, or the way of the hard heart, the

way of the grumbling, complaining,

quarreling Israelites.

The soft-hearted, when they receive the

word and spirit, will become springs of

living water, giving life to all those

around them. But the hard-hearted will

deal out bitter death to their neighbors

and loved ones.

Which one do you want to be?

Which one are you right now?

Lent is a time to ask the Holy Spirit

through the power of Christ to soften

the hard places of our heart through

prayer, through fasting, through

almsgiving, through discipline so that

we might be springs of living water.

A few weeks ago, uh, Bishop Marcio from

Brazil preached and he shared at the

Rehydrate Conference a funny anecdote

that I've thought a lot about. Craig and

I talked about that for Lent one year,

he gave up fighting with his wife.

And by the end of that Lent, he realized

that he didn't want to fight with her

anymore.

I mean, that is a picture of a hard

heart becoming soft by the grace of God.

Only God can make a hard heart soft, but

we can keep our hearts from hardening

more. And it's pretty simple. We stop

quarreling.

We stop grumbling.

We put anger behind us.

And instead, we seek kind curiosity and

simple requests for those around us.

This word quarreling,

it's used by St. Paul at a key moment in

the New Testament.

I was reminded of it because this week

we were at our clergy retreat and this

was the text that we all studied

together. And sometimes, you know, like

when the Holy Spirit is speaking so

clearly, this was one of those times for

me. 1 Corinthians 1 10.

Listen to what Paul says.

I appeal to you brothers by the name of

our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you

agree that there be no divisions among

you but that you be united in the same

mind in the same judgment.

For it has been reported to me by

Khloe's people that there is quarreling

among you my brothers. Same word

quarreling.

Paul was a rabbi. He wasn't dumb. What I

mean is that each of you says I follow

Paul or I follow Apollos or I follow

Cphus or I follow Christ.

Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified

for you? Were you baptized in the name

of Paul?

Paul calls the Corinthian church to

unity. And such unity is only possible

if we have soft hearts.

And he calls us today to that same kind

of unity. To put away our grumbling and

our quarreling and our anger and instead

treat one another with kindness and

gentleness,

with kind curiosity and with humble

requests.

But where your heart is hard, where my

heart is hard, we need God's help. We

can't do that on our own.

So, let's close with something a little

different this morning. Let's have a

time of guided repentance.

I would encourage you to close your eyes

and to hold up your hands in an open

posture where you are.

Season of Lent is a time of repentance.

So, we're going to do that together

today.

Quiet your hearts in prayer to the Lord.

A soft heart is an open heart.

Open hands.

Where is your heart today?

Where is your heart

and bitter?

Come Holy Spirit.

Consider how you may have contributed to

the quarreling and grumbling,

in your family,

in your workplace,

in your community,

in your church.

From whom might you need to seek

forgiveness from?

Holy Spirit, speak to us. Make it very

clear.

Ask the Holy Spirit to soften the hard

parts of your heart.

Today, if you will hear his voice,

harden not your hearts

as in the provocation,

as in the day of temptation in the

wilderness.

Repent

and believe the gospel.

Amen.