An Impenitent Heart

Well, the first thing we need to do is to describe what is an impenitent heart. And everything I have read here [Isaiah 57:4-14] with regard to these charges brought against the people of Israel was in the way that they worshipped, the false worship, coming in some other way than what God had ordained. That is important, because we need to deal with a society today where everywhere there are professing Christians who would tell you I have repented and I am believing God. And yet when you weigh their profession of faith and... against the Scriptures and you listen to them talk about what is their righteousness and their works, I have to conclude based on the Scriptures that we are dealing with an impenitent, religious generation. That is who Isaiah faced and that is who we face. There is nothing new under the sun.

Now we could go to a dictionary, a Bible dictionary if we want and so-called and look up what it is to be unrepentant or impenitent, but I believe the Scriptures themselves are their own best interpreter. And so I want to look at a couple of verses with regard to what is an impenitent heart. And we will begin, there is a lot we could cite, but we will begin in Proverbs chapter 27 and verse 22. I love the language of Scripture. It is picturesque. It is designed to give us a visual of some of these things. And God by his Spirit has so written this Word to give us these pictures. And here is one right here in verse 22 in Proverbs 27. We read:

“Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.”

That word bray it means to literally pound or grind. How hardened is the heart of a sinner in its impenitence? Well, here it is describe as a fool that if you were to take and put that fool in a mortar along with wheat... of course, when you take wheat and put it in a mortar and beat it with a pestle, it is designed to separate the wheat from the chaff. But such is the hardness of the sinner’s heart that with all of the evidences, even with all of the warnings of God’s providence and his Word, all the declarations of the gospel, left to himself that one will never change. That one will remain what he is in his blindness and ignorance and never sense the urgency of even the desperate state of their own soul. That describes an impenitent heart.

Continue reading or listen to the full sermon by Ken Wimer here.