Do you have a hard heart? The definition of being hard-hearted is someone who is uncaring, unfeeling, not being moved to tenderness for others. The Bible warns us about being hard-hearted, especially against God, and our psalm for this week is one of those warnings. Let’s take a look at what the Lord says in this psalm, what this warning was about, and what we can learn.
As our psalm opens, the psalmist calls upon us to bring praise to the Lord, and come to Him with thanksgiving and joy (vs. 1-2). We read here that we are called to shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. This is a metaphor for God. This hearkens back to the Old Testament Scripture passage for this week, and my previous blog, where the people were thirsty and came against Moses, and actually against God demanding water, and the Lord brought forth water from the rock. That rock was a type of Jesus Christ, and in our psalm, He is referred to as the Rock of our salvation.
Throughout this psalm the Lord God is pictured as the God of all creation (vs. 3-7). Yahweh is not a local god, like the gods of the heathen people. Most pagan gods have one particular area or thing that they are god over. The heathens would have a god of the mountains, a god of the valleys, a god of the oceans, one for the rivers, and so forth. They had gods who supposedly controlled the rain, one who would control the harvests, one for shopkeepers, one for metal workers, etc. These false, pagan gods do not really exist, but are only lifeless idols. Yahweh, the one and only true God, is not limited to any one place or thing. He is God over everywhere, the deep places and the heights, the sea and the dry land. He is over all. He is the universal Creator, and Ruler of the whole earth.
The message of the psalmist here is an admonition that we are not to worship creation. This includes any worship of earth goddesses that modern pagans do. Yahweh is the only Creator of all, and we are to worship Him alone. From the earth’s deepest valleys and ocean depths to the highest mountains, the earth belongs to the Lord because He created it all.
The Lord God, through the psalmist, continues with an even sterner warning to the people at the closing of the psalm. This again refers back to the Old Testament passage where the people murmured against God, demanding water, and He provided them with water from the rock (Exodus 17:1-7). The “rebellion” and “tested” mentioned in verses 8 and 9 refer to Massah and Meribah, where the people of Israel rebelled against God and His servant Moses. There were times throughout their journey to the Promised Land that they even spoke about wanting to return to Egypt, returning to their former life of slavery. Do we also doubt God and seek to return to our former life of slavery to sin? The psalmist warns against this.
We are warned against having a hardened heart like the people of Israel did. A hardened heart is useless to God. Nothing can restore it and make it useful. When someone’s heart becomes hardened, that person is stubbornly set in their ways. They will not turn to God. They choose to disregard His will. The people of Israel had hardened their hearts against God. They lost their faith in Him. They were so convinced that God couldn’t deliver them. Do not allow this to happen to you, to where God will toss you aside as a useless hardened piece of bread.
Because of their hard and straying hearts and unbelief the people were sentenced to wander through the wilderness for forty years before they would be allowed into the Promised Land (vs. 10). God swore that they would not enter into His rest (vs. 11). The “rest” was originally the Promised Land. It was analogously applied in the Book of Hebrews to salvation by grace (Hebrews 3:7-4:10). If our hearts are equally hardened, where we are filled with unbelief and are testing Him with our doubts like the Israelites did, we cannot enter into that rest either.
Our psalmist gives us one way to combat ever growing a hard heart, and that is to be thankful to the Lord God for all of His blessings (vs 2). If the people of Israel had been truly thankful to Him after their deliverance from Egypt they would not have tested and rebelled against Him. When we realize all Jesus has done for us our hearts will remain soft and open to Him. All of our worries, woes, and concerns will flee when we start naming out loud the things we can be thankful to the Lord for.
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