The church today loves hard hearts.
You say, “How do you know that?”
Oh, they love hard hearts. “How do you know?”
Because of soft preaching. Soft preaching produces hard hearts. It’s just how it is. We would like to think that soft words produce soft hearts, they don’t. Soft words produce hard hearts. And if you preach a soft, easy, popular, soothing message that doesn’t trouble the mind or the heart or anything in-between, if you preach that kind of stuff then you’re content with a hard heart.
Hard preaching makes soft hearts because preaching the authoritative truth of the Word of God breaks down the walls of rebellion. It’s like Jeremiah said, “Your word is a hammer. It’s a fire,” Jeremiah 23:29. It’s like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. God wants a broken heart, doesn’t he, and a contrite heart. How you gonna break that up? Not with soft, soothing words. You’re gonna come in with the truth and it’s gonna break up the hard heart. So you know that people today are content with hard hearts.
Hard hearts mean disobedient hearts, sinful hearts. They’re content with that because they preach soft messages. Hard preaching makes soft hearts. And I said this, you know, wherever a person is hard is where the Word of God has to be applied. So we don’t make any equivocation. If this is true then we preach it as the truth, not in an unloving way or an ungracious way. Once we determine it’s the truth then it’s God’s truth and God’s truth is always binding, right?
Always binding.
John MacArthur – Why Biblical Christianity Is Intolerant in an Age of Tolerance
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Amen! How I wish some of the emergent crowd would actually “HEAR” this message.