Ex 11:10, And Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh; yet the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the sons of Israel go out of his land. 
We are in the midst of our consideration of what it means to have a hardened heart. We have looked at those who deliberately choose to not even consider the possibility of the existence of the Lord God Almighty. Despite their hard hearts, God still used them to accomplish His plans and His purposes. 
We also studied the nation of Israel, that blessed and chosen people of God, who refused to listen obey Him as their own interests became their idol of self-promotion and self-determination. They wanted to be just like all the other nations, ruled by a man instead of by God, Himself. 
This hardness of heart toward God was so much so that the very religious leaders, those who should have anticipated and rejoiced at the coming of the Messiah, were the very ones who instigated for Jesus Christ’s crucifixion. Rather than open their hearts to the Only Begotten Son of God, they chose to put Him to death since He was a direct threat to their very base of power and prestige. 
This now brings us to the deliberation of what can happen in the hearts of even those who believe in Jesus Christ. We must take this into our thoughts and considerations in order to heed the many warnings in the Word of God to not allow our hearts to be hardened to the truth of the living relationship that we have with God in His Beloved Son. Everything that we have previously seen is simply prologue to the great warning to the Church. We are not to let our hearts be hardened by the forces of this age that would turn our soft, spiritually receptive hearts into calloused and stony hearts, set in the concrete of dogma and ideology, mixed with unforgiveness and animosity and self-concern. 
We see this at the core of even the Lord’s disciples when they were more anxious with their own comfort than the truth of Him by Whom they were being taught. Please turn in your Bibles to Mark 8:14-21 and follow along as we read of this very warning given by Christ to His beloved brethren. Mark 8:14-21, And they had forgotten to take bread; and did not have more than one loaf in the boat with them. And He was giving orders to them, saying, "Watch out! Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod." And they began to discuss with one another the fact that they had no bread. And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, "Why do you discuss the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet see or understand? Do you have a hardened heart? "Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember, when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces you picked up?" They said to Him," Twelve." "And when I broke the seven for the four thousand, how many large baskets full of broken pieces did you pick up?" And they said to Him, "Seven." And He was saying to them, "Do you not yet understand?" 
	Christ was plainly warning His disciples that their hearts could be hardened to the things of God just like the Pharisees and the political establishment. There were forces at work, even as He was speaking to them, which caused this warning to become imminent in scope and purpose. The religiosity and the political power struggles had a leavening in them that could cause the hearts of even those closest to Christ to become hardened to the reality of the Person and the Provision and the Lordship of Jesus Christ. 
At the very moment Christ was so instructing them, they were engaged in an argument concerning the lack of bread, the food of their physical sustenance. Their hearts were focused on their physical need rather than on the spiritual truth of the One Who was in their immediate presence. They were so preoccupied in the argument of the lack of bread that they forgot, until they were reminded by the Lord, that He had fed the five thousand with sufficient to spare afterward. 
	Christ would again reproach them for their growing hardness of heart after His crucifixion and resurrection, as we read together in Mark 16:9-16. Mark 16:9-16, [Now after He had risen early on the first day of the week, He first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons. She went and reported to those who had been with Him, while they were mourning and weeping. And when they heard that He was alive, and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it. And after that, He appeared in a different form to two of them, while they were walking along on their way to the country. And they went away and reported it to the others, but they did not believe them either. And afterward He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table; and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen. And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. "He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned. 
        Jesus had relayed to His disciples many times what was going to take place. He tried to instill into them that belief in the reality that He was the Son of God and was going to have to die for the sake of their salvation and the salvation of all who would believe upon Him. Yet, after His crucifixion, these eleven, who had been with Him for those years of instruction, instead of looking forward to His promised resurrection, cowered in fear in that upper room. They dismissed any of the witnesses of the resurrection power of the Lord with that hardness of unbelief and the fear that they would soon follow the same path of their teacher to the grave.
Rather than rejoicing in the various testimonies that Christ was indeed risen, they were paralyzed with doubt and anxiety and desperate terror and dread of their own demise. That is why Jesus had to, once again, chide them out of their hardening of heart to the reality that He was, in truth and reality alive forevermore. …And afterward He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table; and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen. He did this as He gave them the great commission to go forth in the power of His life and declare the fact that God’s salvation was readily available to all who would believe. 
	It is the Lord Who made fully known the fact that the heart is the guiding source of what we desire to be the focal point of our lives. As we read His very words in Luke 6:45, "The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart. 
In declaring this to His disciples, Jesus made known the principle that man is controlled and gives evidence to that which is harbored in his heart. When that essential nature of humanity is focused on the things of God it will produce softness and pliability and a seeking after spiritual truth in a living relationship with the Lord God Almighty. When the core essence of humanity is centered on the things of this age, the physical requirements and desires after what is on earth, that individual will be set on the path which will only produce stiffness of neck and hardness of heart toward the things of God, even when that person is a Born Again Christian. 
	The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Church at Rome, highlighted exactly what was in place within the defiled nature of mankind. Sin had put an absolutely lurid and ugly cast upon the world that God had created. In the dregs of selfishness and self-exaltation as a god unto himself, the nature of unregenerate mankind is deluded and without excuse and without any means of making himself acceptable to God. The Apostle gave this explanation to those who had not been taught of the way and the law and the nature of God. It was the exposition of who man was apart from the redemptive work of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The purpose was to highlight what had been true and what was still in the residue of the old nature which has to be utterly cleansed away by the mighty hand of God in operation. 
	Please follow along in Romans, Chapter 1, verses 20-32. Rom 1:20-32, For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and, although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. 
The Apostle declares what is in the heart of those who harden their hearts unto God with the goal that in recognizing these awful attributes, those Christians in Rome, and all who read this letter, will be very careful of our actions and thoughts and behavior. We will be on guard against allowing our hearts to embrace, in even the smallest measure, anything that once was part of us separated from Jesus Christ. To do so is to allow an environment for that residue to begin creating a hardening shell of self-indulgence and self-exaltation to become a barrier to the things that God desires to share with us. 
This is so vital that Paul reinforced what we need to know and guard against as he continued this writing. Please follow through verses 1-8 of Chapter 2. Rom 2:1-8, Therefore you are without excuse, every man of you who passes judgment, for in that you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. And do you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment upon those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation. 
	This warning is directly applicable to you and to me in the manner in which we regard others, whether they are family members, fellow Christians, work-mates, school-mates, leaders, customers, or teachers. Because of how God has dealt with us in the salvation provided by His Only Begotten Son, we are to put away all those things which once drove our hearts and minds away from God. We are to hold one another as more worthy of God’s so great love and treat others, all others, parents, children, spouses, in-laws, and out-laws in accordance with His Love. There should be a genuine softness in our hearts, overflowing with forgiveness and long-suffering and gentleness and joy and peace in the full magnitude of the love of Jesus Christ.  
	There is no place for anything other than this in the heart of each one who has been saved by the grace and the mercy and the love of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He will keep our hearts soft and pliable and ready to receive all the spiritual wealth of what God has given us in His Son as we focus on Him and not on ourselves. So be it! 
Amen!

	This morning’s benediction is Ps 134. Behold, bless the Lord, all servants of the Lord, Who serve by night in the house of the Lord! Lift up your hands to the sanctuary, And bless the Lord. May the Lord bless you from Zion, He who made heaven and earth. Amen.