Hebrews 3:18

Hebrews 3:18

The Hardening Influence of Sin.

I. Sin has distinctly this effect, that while it makes repeated sin more easy, it makes repentance more difficult. It makes sin, in a measure, the obvious beaten path where our own footsteps are stamped for a precedent. They lie there before our eyes; we repeat ourselves. We have less scruple in sinning today than we had yesterday; we find it easier to sin again than it was to sin once; we sin now with a relish where we sinned before with a pang. This is what Holy Scripture calls hardening the heart. This is the way in which the deceitfulness of sin works within us. It conveys, as it were, a bribe to the judgment, an opiate to the conscience; we have learned what it were better for us not to have known, viz., that a sinner may be let alone by God's judgment to pursue his way unmolested. It is a fearful thing to be thus initiated into the mystery of ungodliness, ever working grosser deceit within.

II. As was the first step of man from purity to sin, so is, in a lower degree, every first step. True, we have no upright nature to debase, we have no untainted spirit within us to corrupt; yet the grace of God has done much for us, has set us on a pinnacle of vantage. Every time we resist a temptation we make that vantage more easy to keep. Every time we yield we forfeit a position which of itself was a preservative. You are members of Him from whom radiate and to whom rally all the pulses of the spiritual life. The will fixed on Him tends to fix itself yet more intently, to be set and rooted in Him. That was the best security you had. For He worketh in you, both to will and to do, of His good pleasure. All this you may strengthen yet more by the entrenchments of habit. Then there will go on a process gradually building up a result, each day, each hour adding something; like the massive reefs of coral, which are the result of the deposits of a worm.

H. Hayman, Rugby Sermons,p. 199.

References: Hebrews 3:19. H. Jones, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxv., p. 404; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 281.Hebrews 4:1. E. D. Solomon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvii., p. 195.Hebrews 4:1; Hebrews 4:2. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xx., No. 1177. Hebrews 4:1. R. W. Dale, The Jewish Temple and the Christian Church,p. 81.