This is the Lord’s instruction to all people to whom the gospel comes. There is no need for sin to blind you. Maybe someone is holding the Lord at arm’s length for months or even years. It could be eventually that God will judicially harden you. That may happen. Sit down, kneel down, submit to God, for, if you don’t, everything you are proud of will one day be taken away. Do not harden your heart, but ‘give glory to God’ (verse 16). Why won’t we respond to the offer of new life? The answer so often is because of pride. This is the great explanation. It is the opposite in the way of faith which is humble. Pride boosts itself. It says, ‘I don’t need mercy; I am not going to come grovelling to a Saviour.’ Pride is not so foolish as to say, I am best, but at least better than most. Today pride is sanitised; it is renamed self-esteem. You must feel good about yourself, or else you are going to suffer untold psychological damage. That is what society tells itself, but it is a further tactic to suppress conscience.
What form does pride take for you? Is it pride in appearance? Your mind revolves around how you dress. For others it is obtaining a good position. This is to my credit for; this is better than what that other person has achieved. It may be intellect: I have shrewdness; I can think things through. Or it is accomplishments in life, or possessions. If we have got no brains, we will find something else to be proud of. Some are proud of their background; it makes some feel superior. Some glory in their children; they see themselves in them – a chip off the old block. Or people are proudly independent; they don’t let anything happen that will threaten their self-determination. Some won’t allow themselves to be contradicted; they cannot be challenged. When they hear the gospel, they refuse to accept God’s grace. Or they say, ‘I could have made a success of life, if I had been given better opportunities.’
The preacher explains the gospel, but for some, salvation is too easy. Christ bore away my sins; he earned a perfect righteousness for me if I trust in him. ‘That is too simple’, say some. ‘I am a complex person and if the message challenges me, only then am I interested.’ We hear this over and over again from certain types of people. ‘Just suppose I turned to God – that would lower me in the estimation of my friends.’
We are not so bad when we are younger as we will become when we are older. We are all great sinners, even children, but children are more persuadable by the grace of God. Although God saves people of every age, the majority are saved when they are younger. God gives some awareness of his light and you can eliminate that awareness. He can bring the judicial darkness on us. You may be exposed to darkness of satisfaction – ‘I am perfectly satisfied’; you see only the here and now. Maybe it is darkness of conscience. The conscience stops speaking to you, and God delivers you to darkness. It could be the darkness of carnal human reasoning. You never ask yourself, should I seek and find him? When young, some people went through a listening phase. They were concerned and worried. But they shut their minds and there was a profound change. Now there is no glimmering, no feeling. They are in darkness and the gospel is become mystery language to them. They are completely materialistic in their outlook. We fall into pits, sins that grip us. We make decisions which bind us. We don’t have the help of God through life. We suffer consternation and confusion, a loss of inner peace. Reject God and you are in trouble. You realise something is wrong, but you don’t look to the Lord for help. Instead you say, ‘I will get some meaning out of this world’, but it cannot comfort you. Perhaps you become depressed – life has lost its meaning, so you say, ‘The doctor will put me right’ – that is another false door. To your friends you are no longer a companion. The final darkness is to become cynical, bitter. Here is a soul who went away from God to the world, but he found it did not pay. Did he then go back to God? No, because he had become cynical. Give glory to him. Recognise he is the living God. He made me. I have turned aside to sin. Jeremiah gives an appeal and a warning together.