Hardened Hearts

 “Wherefore then do ye harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? when he had wrought wonderfully among them, did they not let the people go, and they departed?” 1 Samuel 6:6 KJV


The sermon according to the priests and diviners of the Philistines teaches that life’s encounters with either mercy or misery depends on the interplay between the holy hands of God and the hardened hearts of men. The extension of God”s holy hands through the instrumentality of the Philistines  against the Israelites was still within His prerogative. God wanted to punish Eli and his children for their sins and atrocities, as earlier announced. Unfortunately, the Philistines in their arrogance and pride went beyond their bounds by their confiscation of the Ark of the Lord on one hand, and its confinement in the temple of Dagon on the other hand. And in an apparent ‘Let my presence go’ warning about the Ark of the Lord at the temple of Dagon, the lords of the Philistines flexed their hardened hearts against the holy hands of God until they were bended by the wonders from God. The morality of the sermon is clear, as exemplified by the experience and encounter of Pharaoh against the Israelites at the Red Sea, hardened hearts bring misery and not mercy until they are softened by confession and forsaking of all trespasses. Only the lifting up of holy hands bring the mercy of God; hardened hearts simply invite misery and unnecessary destruction of the proud and arrogant men.


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