It Was the Lord's Doing to Harden Their Hearts
JOSHUA 11:19-20
Good morning! I want to invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Joshua 11. Last week we studied the final battle; the last saga in the Canaanite wars, which was the Northern Campaign. It was, as I said, the Armageddon of Canaan, as it was the battle to end all battles, so to speak.
As is our custom, we covered the passage line by line, section by section. However, there were two little verses that I skipped over. And despite being just two short verses, they are rather significant. They are words that are actually somewhat extraordinary. They could very likely be words that you are going to say, “Hey, what do you say about this?”
So I want to circle back this morning and meditate on these verses (verses 19-20) this morning. And will you join me in giving all reverence to God’s holy and inspired word: Joshua 11:19-20.
[Read passage; pray]
Introduction
I don’t know that there has ever been a series that I’ve preached where I’ve gotten more feedback than this series in Joshua. Many of you have expressed how much you’ve enjoyed these messages and have looked forward to them each week. I just want to say here that I appreciate the feedback and am glad that you have been blessed.
Of those who have talked to me though, almost everyone have also mentioned that this or that text was a difficult one. I personally believe there haven’t been very many easy passages in this book.
And that’s certainly true for the passage that is before us this morning. As a matter of fact, this may be the most challenging one yet. We read here that the Lord “hardened the hearts of the Canaanites.” That’s a pretty wild statement. It is one that is obviously true. After all, it’s right here in the Bible. But it’s one that will certainly cause people to raise their eyebrows. You’ll probably be reading through this section and go over these words and then do a double take. You’ll say, “Did that say what I think it said?” And you’ll probably wonder what exactly it means.
And the difficulty is just made that much more knotty with the fact that He didn’t just harden their hearts, but he hardened them so that they would be destroyed. The whole purpose of this hardening of the heart was that they would come and fight and ultimately meet their end. The hardening of their hearts was the means God used to bring about their demise.
You might even say that their depravity wasn’t that which brought their destruction. That may sound at least a little more palatable. After all, we understand that God justly judges those who sin. But this passage is unique in that it tells us that it was God who hardened them in their depravity and intentionally brought about their defeat. He was the one directly responsible for their deaths because He had directly intervened through the hardening of their hearts.
All in all, this probably isn’t one of those passages that you highlight or hang up on a pretty board in your kitchen. Rather it’s one that’s probably going to make you scratch your head. And it may be something that causes you to question the legitimacy of Scripture (or Christianity in general).
So what do we make of such a passage? How are we to understand it? Well, that’s what I want to talk about this morning. I didn’t think it would be appropriate to tack on the end of last week’s sermon. Being that it is such a profound statement, I thought we’d take some time today and grapple with it.
How are we to understand this hardening of the hearts?
Well, we can begin by remembering that their hearts were never soft to begin with…
I. Their hearts were never soft to begin with
If you been with us for any length of time in this study of you’ll understand what I mean. We’ve talked before how these Canaanites were not your upstanding people by any means. They were a morally depraved people. They were not just your ordinary pagans. They were particularly a debauched band of people.
God had said to Abraham back in the book of Genesis 15:16 that he was not going to give them the land yet because “the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full.” What you have to understand is that over a period of 400 years the sins of these people became more wicked and their culture fell further and further into sin. They were filling up their iniquity and, subsequently, they were losing any kind of moral sensitivity.
So these Canaanites were not just innocent bystanders who were going to Sunday School each week and singing hymns with their family after dinner each night. Then along came God and hardened their hearts. These people were far from interested in the things of the Lord.
But this isn’t just unique to these Canaanites. What we have to remember is that a hard heart is the plight of every man who is born into this world. Part of our fallen condition is that we are naturally in rebellion to God and have no interest in him.
Scripture tells us that we are conceived in sin and born in iniquity (Ps. 51). The book of Ephesians says that we are by nature dead in sin (2:1). We are “darkened in our understanding” because of the “hardness of our hearts.” (4:18)
This is why, if we are going to be saved from sin, we need God’s supernatural working upon us in regeneration. Ezekiel talks about this very thing when he says he will remove our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh.
If we look at this in a proper way we should not be aghast at this. Rather we should say, “I thank God that has even allowed my heart to be softened. I am blessed that God has broken through the hardness of my heart and given me a new spirit that loves him and desires him.
So that’s the place we need to start. We need to recognize that our hearts were never really all that soft—never all that inclined to seek the Lord in the first place.
But the second thing we should keep in mind is the sovereignty of God. So, we might say that its not just important to understand the condition of man, but we also need to take to heart the character of God.
II. God is sovereign.
We actually have a commentary on this very thing over in the book of Romans. In Romans 9 Paul talks about the doctrine of election and reprobation. And in so doing he gives a couple illustrations. He begins by talking about Jacob and Esau. And he says that Jacob was loved, and God showed him mercy. But he says that Esau was hated. And he says that God is allowed to have mercy on whom he wants to have mercy and he shows compassion to whomever he wishes to show compassion.
Basically, his point is that is God’s prerogative. Since God is sovereign, he’s allowed to love and hate whomever he wants. After all, no one deserves his love. So that he chooses to love any of us is a crazy thing.
But it all boils down to one thing: God is sovereign and he is free to choose. He is free to choose who he saves and who he condemns.
But if that were not provocative enough, Paul goes on to give another illustration. He talks about Pharaoh. And his purpose for doing so is to further illustrate this idea of reprobation.
Now you remember that Pharaoh was another person who experienced this hardening of the heart. And the Scripture says that God raised Pharaoh up just for this purpose: that He might show His power in him and that He may have His name proclaimed throughout the earth.
So God raised Pharaoh up specifically for the purpose of bringing him down. God specifically created Pharaoh for that reason.
Years ago there was that book, “Purpose driven life.” Well, Pharaoh’s purpose in life was to be an example of God’s predestining some to ruin.
And then Paul concludes this section of his argument by saying that God has mercy on whom he desires to have mercy and he hardens whom he hardens.
Now Paul knows that may be hard to take. So he uses a third illustration; one with which we would all undoubtedly agree. It’s the illustration of the potter and his clay.
A potter has a right to do with his pots what he likes. He can make out of one lump of clay a beautiful vase to display in his home. And he can also make a bedpan out of another. All in all, it’s his prerogative.
So when we think about these Canaanites, we have to think about how God is free to do as he pleases. We have to come to grips with the fact that God is absolutely sovereign over all creation and He’s free to soften some people’s hearts and he’s free to harden other people in their sin.
Now, a lot of people won’t like that. I mean, this is coming from people who make smash cakes. Have you heard of smash cakes? It’s kind of a popular thing now. When a baby turns 1 year old, there are some parents who will bake two birthday cakes. There’s one cake which is for everyone to eat. It’s your normal birthday cake.
But the other cake is the smash cake. It’s the cake you give to the birthday boy. And you know how a 1 year old is with it. He just slams his fist down into the cake. He doesn’t know you’re supposed to eat it. It looks like a toy to him. So he starts mashing his hand down into it. Then he brings it up to his mouth and he gets a taste of the icing. And he figures out that it tastes really good. So he starts grabbing fist-fulls of the cake and tearing it apart.
Now, that’s pretty much what Paul says God does. The only difference is that cake is perfectly innocent. Humans, on the other hand, are sinful and deserve to be punished.
Which leads us to our third point. We’ve seen the condition of man and the character of God, but we also need to keep in mind the correctness of judgment
The third thing we must keep in mind is that the Lord is free to punish sinners as he chooses.
III. The Lord is free to punish as he chooses fit.
Now, we just talked about God being sovereign, let’s apply that to his justice.
As a just God, he must punish sin. And he will always punish it in a just way. The punishment will always fit the crime, so to speak. He’ll never punish too harshly or too lightly. The judgment will always perfectly accord with the sins that have been committed.
But that does not mean that God will always punish sinners in the exact same way. The Lord may vary his punishments in whatever way he so deems appropriate. And the fact is, he does utilize a diversity of methods.
You kids know that your parents do this from time to time. If you get in trouble, you may have any kind of punishment: You may get privileges taken away or you may be assigned chores to do. If your notes are not good enough, you may lose lunch or you may have to take a nap, right? There’s a lot of ways we can make your life miserable.
God is free to punish sin in whatever way he deems appropriate too.
At times he may deprive. At other times he may be more proactive and inflict some pain and disaster. The Lord uses physical punishments, such as wars, destruction, or natural disaster. But his punishments may also come in other forms. They may be emotional punishments. He can strike people with fear or throw them into a panic so that they run away.
But there are some punishments that are spiritual in nature. This is what we read about in Romans 1. In Romans 1 God talks about “giving people over to their sin.” One of the ways the Lord punishes people is by simply allowing them indulge their sinful appetites and become more sinful. He removes the restraints he has placed on their lives, and lets them fall deeper into their own folly.
And that’s a way to understand this process of the hardening of the heart. They become hardened in their hearts because God just lets them follow the desires of their hearts. Rather than restrain them in his grace, he can punish them by letting them go down the road that they have chosen.
It’s a silly example, but think about your first encounter with baker’s chocolate. I remember when I was pretty young I came into the kitchen and there was mom baking a cake (or something which had bakers chocolate as an ingredient). I asked if I could have a piece. She told me no and explained that I wouldn’t like it. But I didn’t believe her. It was obviously a chocolate bar, and who doesn’t like a nice fat piece of chocolate? So I pressed to have one. Instead of disciplining me in the normal ways, she just said, “Okay, fine.” And she gave me a piece of the chocolate bar. And I, of course, picked that thing up and shoved it in my mouth. And I was rudely introduced to the fool’s gold of chocolate.
Now that’s an illustration. You could say that my mother gave me over to my sin and allowed me to fulfil my desires.
The only difference of that and what God does, is that sinners are not really all that repulsed by their sin (like I was with the chocolate). They embrace it more ravenously.
Which leads us to our 4th point. This hardening of the heart, we have to understand that it’s willingly embraced.
IV. It’s willingly embraced
What I want you to understand is that this is not something that people are resisting. None of these Canaanites are not pitching a fit about it.
There’s no one out there who is saying, “That mean old nasty God is making me more hardened in my sin.” The people who have their hearts hardened are happy to have it hardened. They are willingly embracing it. They are happy to become more hardened in their sin.
I say this because you might hear someone object to this. They will blame God for making these poor people to be more hardened. And how can you possibly blame someone who is being hardened by God for what they do. They will try to make Pharaoh and the Canaanites out to be innocent in the whole matter. As if to say, “Well, who could blame them for doing what they do?”
Now, certainly, we do not deny that God is actively working to harden the person. All that we’ve said so far is a recognition that God is the active party. But no where do we deny human responsibility. As we’ve said before, God’s sovereignty is not opposed to human responsibility. The two are not mutually exclusive.
And here we say that no one who has ever experienced the hardening of their heart had any qualms with it. You may say that they were perfectly fine with it. As a matter of fact, they craved it. They were already hardened against God, and God’s hardening them was merely a further fulfilling of their own desires.
Let’s put it like this. Let’s say you want donuts. You crave donuts and you go to the donut store. You buy some donuts and you eat them. But that doesn’t satiate your desire. You want more donuts. And to your surprise, the guy behind the counter and the donut baker start giving you donuts. They bring out tray after tray of donuts. All you can eat. Cream filled, glazed, bear claws, cake donuts with all kinds of frosting and sprinkles on it. You are just loving it. You’re grabbing them by the fistful and shoving them down your gullet.
That’s the way you should think about the hardening of the heart. God is like the baker. He’s just giving the unbeliever what he naturally wants. It’s merely an outworking of his insatiable lust for sin.
There’s one last point that I want to make about this hardening. And this may be the most important point to be made. It’s that this hardening of hearts accomplishes the Lord’s redemptive plan.
V. God accomplishes his redemptive purposes through it
What I want you to realize is that God does more than merely punish an unbeliever through this hardening. This is not just about seeing someone or some group of people destroyed. This has a greater redemptive purpose that coincides with it.
What I mean is that I don’t want you to think about this hardening as merely a negative thing. There is a positive side to it. We may even say that what eventually happens to the unbeliever serves a greater purpose. There’s a higher end to which this is aiming.
So you can look at this passage and say, yes, the Canaanites’ hearts are hardened. They do end up meeting their demise. But that’s not the final point. That’s just a step in the process of what God is seeking to accomplish. God’s ultimate purpose has to do with his people. The result of the hardening is that God’s people come to inherit the land that was promised them.
That’s the real focus. That’s where we really need to keep our eyes. God is ultimately focused on the fulfillment of his promises. It is through this process of hardening these hearts that He brings about the blessings He has in store for His people.
The same is true for Pharaoh when his heart was hardened. On the one hand, Pharaoh and his kingdom was destroyed. But that was not the whole goal. The ultimate purpose in hardening Pharaoh’s heart was that God’s people would be brought out of Egypt.
And you can say the same for the Jews in Jesus’ day. Jesus tells us in the gospels that the religious leaders and unbelieving Jews were hardened by God. God had blinded their eyes so that in seeing they would not see and hearing they would not hear (John 12:40). But this hardening of their hearts further served to bring about our redemption. Because it was those people who took Jesus and put him to death.
Then again, Paul in the book of Romans talks about a partial hardening that has come upon the Jews of his day. This was done so that the Gentiles might hear the gospel and experience God’s grace.
So you all here, are a direct result of God’s hardening of some certain people. And so you should be glad. You should be glad that this is part of God’s plan.
You have to realize that the salvation we now possess is very much due to this very thing we read about here in these verses.
So we may end with this: God’s work of hardening always serves a greater purpose. And we should rejoice because he works through it to accomplish his purposes in and for us.
As is our custom, we covered the passage line by line, section by section. However, there were two little verses that I skipped over. And despite being just two short verses, they are rather significant. They are words that are actually somewhat extraordinary. They could very likely be words that you are going to say, “Hey, what do you say about this?”
So I want to circle back this morning and meditate on these verses (verses 19-20) this morning. And will you join me in giving all reverence to God’s holy and inspired word: Joshua 11:19-20.
[Read passage; pray]
Introduction
I don’t know that there has ever been a series that I’ve preached where I’ve gotten more feedback than this series in Joshua. Many of you have expressed how much you’ve enjoyed these messages and have looked forward to them each week. I just want to say here that I appreciate the feedback and am glad that you have been blessed.
Of those who have talked to me though, almost everyone have also mentioned that this or that text was a difficult one. I personally believe there haven’t been very many easy passages in this book.
And that’s certainly true for the passage that is before us this morning. As a matter of fact, this may be the most challenging one yet. We read here that the Lord “hardened the hearts of the Canaanites.” That’s a pretty wild statement. It is one that is obviously true. After all, it’s right here in the Bible. But it’s one that will certainly cause people to raise their eyebrows. You’ll probably be reading through this section and go over these words and then do a double take. You’ll say, “Did that say what I think it said?” And you’ll probably wonder what exactly it means.
And the difficulty is just made that much more knotty with the fact that He didn’t just harden their hearts, but he hardened them so that they would be destroyed. The whole purpose of this hardening of the heart was that they would come and fight and ultimately meet their end. The hardening of their hearts was the means God used to bring about their demise.
You might even say that their depravity wasn’t that which brought their destruction. That may sound at least a little more palatable. After all, we understand that God justly judges those who sin. But this passage is unique in that it tells us that it was God who hardened them in their depravity and intentionally brought about their defeat. He was the one directly responsible for their deaths because He had directly intervened through the hardening of their hearts.
All in all, this probably isn’t one of those passages that you highlight or hang up on a pretty board in your kitchen. Rather it’s one that’s probably going to make you scratch your head. And it may be something that causes you to question the legitimacy of Scripture (or Christianity in general).
So what do we make of such a passage? How are we to understand it? Well, that’s what I want to talk about this morning. I didn’t think it would be appropriate to tack on the end of last week’s sermon. Being that it is such a profound statement, I thought we’d take some time today and grapple with it.
How are we to understand this hardening of the hearts?
Well, we can begin by remembering that their hearts were never soft to begin with…
I. Their hearts were never soft to begin with
If you been with us for any length of time in this study of you’ll understand what I mean. We’ve talked before how these Canaanites were not your upstanding people by any means. They were a morally depraved people. They were not just your ordinary pagans. They were particularly a debauched band of people.
God had said to Abraham back in the book of Genesis 15:16 that he was not going to give them the land yet because “the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full.” What you have to understand is that over a period of 400 years the sins of these people became more wicked and their culture fell further and further into sin. They were filling up their iniquity and, subsequently, they were losing any kind of moral sensitivity.
So these Canaanites were not just innocent bystanders who were going to Sunday School each week and singing hymns with their family after dinner each night. Then along came God and hardened their hearts. These people were far from interested in the things of the Lord.
But this isn’t just unique to these Canaanites. What we have to remember is that a hard heart is the plight of every man who is born into this world. Part of our fallen condition is that we are naturally in rebellion to God and have no interest in him.
Scripture tells us that we are conceived in sin and born in iniquity (Ps. 51). The book of Ephesians says that we are by nature dead in sin (2:1). We are “darkened in our understanding” because of the “hardness of our hearts.” (4:18)
This is why, if we are going to be saved from sin, we need God’s supernatural working upon us in regeneration. Ezekiel talks about this very thing when he says he will remove our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh.
If we look at this in a proper way we should not be aghast at this. Rather we should say, “I thank God that has even allowed my heart to be softened. I am blessed that God has broken through the hardness of my heart and given me a new spirit that loves him and desires him.
So that’s the place we need to start. We need to recognize that our hearts were never really all that soft—never all that inclined to seek the Lord in the first place.
But the second thing we should keep in mind is the sovereignty of God. So, we might say that its not just important to understand the condition of man, but we also need to take to heart the character of God.
II. God is sovereign.
We actually have a commentary on this very thing over in the book of Romans. In Romans 9 Paul talks about the doctrine of election and reprobation. And in so doing he gives a couple illustrations. He begins by talking about Jacob and Esau. And he says that Jacob was loved, and God showed him mercy. But he says that Esau was hated. And he says that God is allowed to have mercy on whom he wants to have mercy and he shows compassion to whomever he wishes to show compassion.
Basically, his point is that is God’s prerogative. Since God is sovereign, he’s allowed to love and hate whomever he wants. After all, no one deserves his love. So that he chooses to love any of us is a crazy thing.
But it all boils down to one thing: God is sovereign and he is free to choose. He is free to choose who he saves and who he condemns.
But if that were not provocative enough, Paul goes on to give another illustration. He talks about Pharaoh. And his purpose for doing so is to further illustrate this idea of reprobation.
Now you remember that Pharaoh was another person who experienced this hardening of the heart. And the Scripture says that God raised Pharaoh up just for this purpose: that He might show His power in him and that He may have His name proclaimed throughout the earth.
So God raised Pharaoh up specifically for the purpose of bringing him down. God specifically created Pharaoh for that reason.
Years ago there was that book, “Purpose driven life.” Well, Pharaoh’s purpose in life was to be an example of God’s predestining some to ruin.
And then Paul concludes this section of his argument by saying that God has mercy on whom he desires to have mercy and he hardens whom he hardens.
Now Paul knows that may be hard to take. So he uses a third illustration; one with which we would all undoubtedly agree. It’s the illustration of the potter and his clay.
A potter has a right to do with his pots what he likes. He can make out of one lump of clay a beautiful vase to display in his home. And he can also make a bedpan out of another. All in all, it’s his prerogative.
So when we think about these Canaanites, we have to think about how God is free to do as he pleases. We have to come to grips with the fact that God is absolutely sovereign over all creation and He’s free to soften some people’s hearts and he’s free to harden other people in their sin.
Now, a lot of people won’t like that. I mean, this is coming from people who make smash cakes. Have you heard of smash cakes? It’s kind of a popular thing now. When a baby turns 1 year old, there are some parents who will bake two birthday cakes. There’s one cake which is for everyone to eat. It’s your normal birthday cake.
But the other cake is the smash cake. It’s the cake you give to the birthday boy. And you know how a 1 year old is with it. He just slams his fist down into the cake. He doesn’t know you’re supposed to eat it. It looks like a toy to him. So he starts mashing his hand down into it. Then he brings it up to his mouth and he gets a taste of the icing. And he figures out that it tastes really good. So he starts grabbing fist-fulls of the cake and tearing it apart.
Now, that’s pretty much what Paul says God does. The only difference is that cake is perfectly innocent. Humans, on the other hand, are sinful and deserve to be punished.
Which leads us to our third point. We’ve seen the condition of man and the character of God, but we also need to keep in mind the correctness of judgment
The third thing we must keep in mind is that the Lord is free to punish sinners as he chooses.
III. The Lord is free to punish as he chooses fit.
Now, we just talked about God being sovereign, let’s apply that to his justice.
As a just God, he must punish sin. And he will always punish it in a just way. The punishment will always fit the crime, so to speak. He’ll never punish too harshly or too lightly. The judgment will always perfectly accord with the sins that have been committed.
But that does not mean that God will always punish sinners in the exact same way. The Lord may vary his punishments in whatever way he so deems appropriate. And the fact is, he does utilize a diversity of methods.
You kids know that your parents do this from time to time. If you get in trouble, you may have any kind of punishment: You may get privileges taken away or you may be assigned chores to do. If your notes are not good enough, you may lose lunch or you may have to take a nap, right? There’s a lot of ways we can make your life miserable.
God is free to punish sin in whatever way he deems appropriate too.
At times he may deprive. At other times he may be more proactive and inflict some pain and disaster. The Lord uses physical punishments, such as wars, destruction, or natural disaster. But his punishments may also come in other forms. They may be emotional punishments. He can strike people with fear or throw them into a panic so that they run away.
But there are some punishments that are spiritual in nature. This is what we read about in Romans 1. In Romans 1 God talks about “giving people over to their sin.” One of the ways the Lord punishes people is by simply allowing them indulge their sinful appetites and become more sinful. He removes the restraints he has placed on their lives, and lets them fall deeper into their own folly.
And that’s a way to understand this process of the hardening of the heart. They become hardened in their hearts because God just lets them follow the desires of their hearts. Rather than restrain them in his grace, he can punish them by letting them go down the road that they have chosen.
It’s a silly example, but think about your first encounter with baker’s chocolate. I remember when I was pretty young I came into the kitchen and there was mom baking a cake (or something which had bakers chocolate as an ingredient). I asked if I could have a piece. She told me no and explained that I wouldn’t like it. But I didn’t believe her. It was obviously a chocolate bar, and who doesn’t like a nice fat piece of chocolate? So I pressed to have one. Instead of disciplining me in the normal ways, she just said, “Okay, fine.” And she gave me a piece of the chocolate bar. And I, of course, picked that thing up and shoved it in my mouth. And I was rudely introduced to the fool’s gold of chocolate.
Now that’s an illustration. You could say that my mother gave me over to my sin and allowed me to fulfil my desires.
The only difference of that and what God does, is that sinners are not really all that repulsed by their sin (like I was with the chocolate). They embrace it more ravenously.
Which leads us to our 4th point. This hardening of the heart, we have to understand that it’s willingly embraced.
IV. It’s willingly embraced
What I want you to understand is that this is not something that people are resisting. None of these Canaanites are not pitching a fit about it.
There’s no one out there who is saying, “That mean old nasty God is making me more hardened in my sin.” The people who have their hearts hardened are happy to have it hardened. They are willingly embracing it. They are happy to become more hardened in their sin.
I say this because you might hear someone object to this. They will blame God for making these poor people to be more hardened. And how can you possibly blame someone who is being hardened by God for what they do. They will try to make Pharaoh and the Canaanites out to be innocent in the whole matter. As if to say, “Well, who could blame them for doing what they do?”
Now, certainly, we do not deny that God is actively working to harden the person. All that we’ve said so far is a recognition that God is the active party. But no where do we deny human responsibility. As we’ve said before, God’s sovereignty is not opposed to human responsibility. The two are not mutually exclusive.
And here we say that no one who has ever experienced the hardening of their heart had any qualms with it. You may say that they were perfectly fine with it. As a matter of fact, they craved it. They were already hardened against God, and God’s hardening them was merely a further fulfilling of their own desires.
Let’s put it like this. Let’s say you want donuts. You crave donuts and you go to the donut store. You buy some donuts and you eat them. But that doesn’t satiate your desire. You want more donuts. And to your surprise, the guy behind the counter and the donut baker start giving you donuts. They bring out tray after tray of donuts. All you can eat. Cream filled, glazed, bear claws, cake donuts with all kinds of frosting and sprinkles on it. You are just loving it. You’re grabbing them by the fistful and shoving them down your gullet.
That’s the way you should think about the hardening of the heart. God is like the baker. He’s just giving the unbeliever what he naturally wants. It’s merely an outworking of his insatiable lust for sin.
There’s one last point that I want to make about this hardening. And this may be the most important point to be made. It’s that this hardening of hearts accomplishes the Lord’s redemptive plan.
V. God accomplishes his redemptive purposes through it
What I want you to realize is that God does more than merely punish an unbeliever through this hardening. This is not just about seeing someone or some group of people destroyed. This has a greater redemptive purpose that coincides with it.
What I mean is that I don’t want you to think about this hardening as merely a negative thing. There is a positive side to it. We may even say that what eventually happens to the unbeliever serves a greater purpose. There’s a higher end to which this is aiming.
So you can look at this passage and say, yes, the Canaanites’ hearts are hardened. They do end up meeting their demise. But that’s not the final point. That’s just a step in the process of what God is seeking to accomplish. God’s ultimate purpose has to do with his people. The result of the hardening is that God’s people come to inherit the land that was promised them.
That’s the real focus. That’s where we really need to keep our eyes. God is ultimately focused on the fulfillment of his promises. It is through this process of hardening these hearts that He brings about the blessings He has in store for His people.
The same is true for Pharaoh when his heart was hardened. On the one hand, Pharaoh and his kingdom was destroyed. But that was not the whole goal. The ultimate purpose in hardening Pharaoh’s heart was that God’s people would be brought out of Egypt.
And you can say the same for the Jews in Jesus’ day. Jesus tells us in the gospels that the religious leaders and unbelieving Jews were hardened by God. God had blinded their eyes so that in seeing they would not see and hearing they would not hear (John 12:40). But this hardening of their hearts further served to bring about our redemption. Because it was those people who took Jesus and put him to death.
Then again, Paul in the book of Romans talks about a partial hardening that has come upon the Jews of his day. This was done so that the Gentiles might hear the gospel and experience God’s grace.
So you all here, are a direct result of God’s hardening of some certain people. And so you should be glad. You should be glad that this is part of God’s plan.
You have to realize that the salvation we now possess is very much due to this very thing we read about here in these verses.
So we may end with this: God’s work of hardening always serves a greater purpose. And we should rejoice because he works through it to accomplish his purposes in and for us.