Yesterday we’ve begun to see the danger of becoming spiritually deaf reading Matthew 13:13-15. Compare what God said about Israel in the Old Testament in Psalm 95:7-8.
Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert.
And then He goes on about those people who did harden their hearts:
For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways.” So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.”
I believe there are many of God’s people today who never really enter God’s rest. They’re always wandering in the wilderness but they never enter the Promised Land. The reason is they haven’t learned to hear God’s voice. The only way to enter God’s rest is to hear His voice.
If you put those two accounts from the New Testament and the Old Testament together, of people who were deaf in their hearts (spiritually deaf) there are two significant words that describe the condition of their hearts. The two words are calloused and hardened. That’s the kind of heart that does not hear.
So what’s the application? What’s the opposite to being calloused and hardened? I would say the key word is sensitive. We have to cultivate inward sensitivity toward the Lord and toward His voice.
Let me give you a vivid picture. Have you ever seen a blind person reading braille? Have you seen their fingers skimming over those little dots on the paper? If I were to brush my fingers over those dots, they would mean nothing to me. I would just feel something a little above the surface. But a blind person has so sensitized his fingers that those dots mean something to him. They are words. They have a message. I believe that’s what it means to cultivate a sensitive heart toward the voice of the Lord. It’s to have our hearts so sensitive that when God speaks we hear His voice. It means something to us. I believe that’s the real key to blessing, and to entering in our inheritance.
It’s so grieving to think of the people that wandered in the wilderness when they could have been in the Promised Land, all because they had not cultivated a sensitive heart toward the voice of the Lord. Let me challenge you to do that, to cultivate a sensitive heart.
Father, help me to cultivate a sensitive heart, to not harden my heart, help me to not go astray, to hear Your voice, and to enter in the rest You have promised. In Jesus’ Name, amen!
