“Why Do You Cause Us to Stray from Your Ways?

Part 2”
(Isaiah 63:17)
(Taken primarily from John Owen, Works, 9:296-307)

Introduction: This morning we were looking at the ways in which the Lord causes man to stray
from His ways, and the ways in which He hardens their hearts from the fear of Him. We saw
that this was something that God does by way of judgment. When wicked men sin against the
Lord, He sometimes removes His restraint from them, gives them over to their lusts, to Satan, to
more opportunities to sin, and finally to a reprobate mind. This is a total hardening as an act of
His justice, and it results in their becoming absolutely insensitive to the things of the Lord.
Sometimes, He will even remove His gracious restraints from the hearts of His children, and give
them over for a season to a partial hardening. It is this second kind of hardening that we will
want to focus on this evening.
It is apparent, from our text, that even true believers may, for a time, so stray from the
paths of God’s righteousness, so as to have their hearts partially hardened from the fear of Him.
This results in their straying farther from His paths. They fall into this condition because the
principle of grace in their hearts decays. The result is that they get into in a situation that they
cannot rescue themselves from. And so it forces them to cry out, “Why, O Lord, dost Thou
cause us to stray from Thy ways, and harden our heart from fearing Thee?” (63:17). It is
also clear that God’s righteous hand is in this condition that comes upon them. He is the only
One who can soften, and He is the only One who can harden. It is sovereignly in His hands.
And it is also clear that when this happens, it is the most tragic situation that the church can find
herself in, for it removes from her almost entirely the evidence of God’s special love, and it
exposes her to grief and misery, if it is not remedied.

I. Let Us Then Begin This Evening by Looking At What It Is to Have Our Hearts
Partially Hardened from the Fear of God. What Is the Evidence that One Is in This
Condition?
A. First, We Know that We Are Partially Hardened from the Fear of God When We Lack a
Proper Sense of the Seriousness of Sin, That Is, When We Are Not Very Much Affected
by It.
1. What is it after all, that gives us the appropriate sense of just how serious sin is except
the fear of God?
a. If we fear Him a lot, then we will have a great fear of sinning.
b. If we fear Him a little, then we will fear sinning only a little.
c. But if there is no fear of God, then there is no fear of sinning. The belief in an
infinitely holy God who cannot overlook sin is a tremendous sin deterrent.
d. The people of the world sin freely because they do not believe that there is any such
Being who will call them to account.
e. Our hearts are becoming hard, when they begin to reflect this attitude of the world
towards God and towards sin.

2. This means, first of all, that we do not take the secret sins of our hearts seriously
enough.
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a. David took them very seriously. He wrote in Psalm 19:12-13, “Who can
understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults. 13 Keep back thy
servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then
shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.”
b. Here are the two kinds of deadly sins that we must deal with, which we must also
have cleansed by Christ if we are to live eternally. And both are equally serious.
Secret sins and presumptuous sins.
c. We would all recognize, that according to the Scriptures, that if we become the
slave of any sin, then we are lost.
d. Presumptuous sins are literally, “sins with an uplifted hand,” the sins of defiant
rebellion. These are different than sins which you might commit inadvertently. It
is knowing that something is sin, and yet willfully disobeying it as an act of
rebellion. From what David here prays, it is apparent that even true saints need the
grace of God to restrain this kind of sin.
e. But the danger is the same for secret sins. If the power of these are not broken,
they will condemn us as well.
f. Secret sins are the sins which no one else but God can see. These are also sins
which may even be secret to us. We may deceive ourselves into thinking that they
are not sins, when they really are.
g. They are the vain imaginations of the mind. The evil thoughts which no man,
angel or devil can see, but which only you and God know about.
h. They are the evil desires of the heart, the lusts from which sin is conceived.
i. And they are those hidden dispositions of the soul to give into these imaginations
and lusts, and to secretly indulge them. If the imagination of our minds and the lusts
of our hearts are constantly pressing on our souls, and we allow ourselves to nurture
sexual lust, hatred, envy, jealousy, or anything else, this is secret sin.
j. And can the saint take these things in his bosom and not be scorched by them? Can
he have confidence and peace in his walk? If so, then it is a sign that he has been
hardened from the fear of God.
k. As I said before, if the fear of God is present in your heart, then your conscience
will be stricken when these things rise up against you. You will hate them. You
will keep a diligent watch against them and not allow them to come and go in your
mind without fighting them.
l. If you are at peace with them, then you are hardened.

3. But this partial hardening means, secondly, that when we are not walking with the Lord
as we should, that we are not greatly concerned about it.
a. We may be living lives which to the world, the church, and to other saints seem
good enough.
b. But yet, when we examine our lives by the infallible rule of the Word of God, we
find that there are areas in which we are failing, areas where sin has entered. And
this is bound to happen. There is no man who is perfect. There will be sins of
commission as well as sins of omission.
c. Now if we are unwilling to examine our lives according to the rule of the Word to
find out those sins, then that is a sign of hardness.
d. And on the other hand, if we do examine them by the Word and see our deficiency,
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and yet we are not greatly grieved by it, this too shows that we are hardened.
e. If you are walking with confidence and boldness in the things of the Lord, and your
soul is not troubled by the sin which so easily besets you, it may be because you are
not examining your life by God’s standard. If you compare yourself to others, then
you might not look all that bad. If you compare your life to the perfect holiness
which God requires, then you should be humbled. But if you will not look into the
mirror of the law of liberty (James 1:25), then you are hardened.
f. Who among you can say that your life is worthy of the Lord, that you are living up
fully to what the Lord has called you to? If you think you are, then your heart is
hardened.

4. To have our hearts partially hardened to the fear of God, thirdly, means that we do not
take seriously our fall into known sins.
a. Here I am talking about those sins which we commit that we know are wrong, those
things which we know God hates, but yet we too easily give into them.
b. Now there is no one living who does not sin. But when we fall into sin, we should
feel grief and shame for it.
c. But if instead, we easily dismiss it as being covered by the grace of God, if we pass
over it with a slight confession of sin and then easily commit the same sin again, if
we do not seek with all of our power to overcome it in the power and grace of Christ,
then our hearts are hardened against the fear of God.

5. And fourthly, our hearts are partially hardened to the fear of God when we not only
don’t “feel” the weightiness of our own sin, but also when we pass over the seriousness
of the sins of others.
a. When we are not grieved by the sins which others commit, then our hearts have
become hard.
b. It is a sign in Scripture that men are totally hardened when they not only commit sin
themselves, but also “give hearty approval to those who practice them” (Rom.
1:32).
c. We should be distressed by the sins of other Christians, by the sins of unbelievers,
by this sins of this nation, and by the sins of other nations.
d. Some don’t care if they sin or not. Others make fun of it. Most are indifferent to
the sins of any non-Christian as long as they don’t affect the church.
e. We really today don’t understand too much of what the Psalmist meant when he
wrote, “My eyes shed streams of water, because they do not keep Thy law”
(Psalm 119:136). Can you say that you are so full of the Spirit and of the love of
God that you weep over the sins of others, whether believers or not, that they do not
keep the Law of God, that they dishonor God, and that they are storing up for
themselves wrath in the day of His wrath?
f. Why aren’t we more concerned than we are? It could be that we have a lack of zeal
for the glory of the Lord, who would have men everywhere to repent and to turn to
Him. It could be because we lack compassion for the souls of men, and we are not
concerned whether they perish or not.
g. Jesus said in the last days, “Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall
wax cold” (Matt. 24:12). Our love has grown cold.
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h. We are partially hardened from the fear of God if we are lightly affected by the sins
of other men, or our own sins.

B. Secondly, We Know that Our Hearts Are Partially Hardened to the Fear of God When
We Are Not Affected Much By God’s Judgments Upon Sin.
1. When we see the judgment of God come upon men in judicial hardening, in giving
them up to a reprobate mind, and are not greatly concerned about it, this also betrays a
hardness of heart.
2. We are hardened when we see this and do not fear and reverence the Lord for His
awesome judgments.
3. We are hardened when we do not learn from His judgments wisdom, so that we also
would fear and turn from those paths which have brought this upon the wicked, but
indulge in them ourselves.
4. And we are hardened when we do not make use of these situations to stimulate
ourselves to pursue even further the paths of righteousness and to run from all evil.

C. And Thirdly, We Know that Our Hearts Are Hardened to the Fear of God When We
Don’t Take Walking in Obedience to His Commandments Very Seriously.
1. When we are no longer terribly concerned about whether we are searching the Word to
do all of God’s commandments, then we have become hardened.
2. When we are not being careful to scrutinize our path, when we are not careful to put a
gate over our mouths to screen the words that we speak, when we are not careful to
make sure that all that we do is within the scope of God’s righteousness, then we have
become hardened.
3. Taking sin lightly, taking the judgments of God against evil lightly, and taking our
duty to God lightly, these are all signs of a hardened heart, a callous heart.
4. God calls us to be circumspect in our walk, to be precise in our Christianity. He calls
us to be perfect, to be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. When the ideal is lowered in
our hearts and minds, and we become convinced that this lower standard is what is
pleasing to the Lord, then our hearts have been hardened by Him.

II. Why Does God Deal With His Children Like This?
A. First, There Are Several Ways in which We Provoke God to This.
1. First, we provoke Him when we are unthankful for His mercies.
a. This is what we see in our text. In verses 8-10, we read, “For He said, "Surely,
they are My people, Sons who will not deal falsely." So He became their Savior.
In all their affliction He was afflicted, And the angel of His presence saved
them; In His love and in His mercy He redeemed them; And He lifted them and
carried them all the days of old. But they rebelled And grieved His Holy
Spirit; Therefore, He turned Himself to become their enemy, He fought against
them.”
b. When we rebel and grieve His Spirit, He turns and fights against us. Why?
Because after He has redeemed us, after He has carried us in His arms all our days,
after He has felt all the afflictions with which we have been afflicted, after He has
saved us, we rebel and grieve His Spirit, showing our unthankfulness and
ungratefulness.
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c. Brethren, we must consider whether or not the cause of our hardness of heart is due
to unthankfulness for His innumerable mercies.

2. Secondly, we provoke Him when we hold on to the things of the world too tightly.
a. After He has shown us His love and mercy in such a way, that He would give His
only begotten Son to deliver us from this present evil age, and we turn and become
more enamored with the things of the world than the things of heaven, this provokes
God.
b. We must consider whether we have gone too far with the teaching of common
grace, whether we are using that as a license to enjoy the world and neglect the
things of eternity. Whether this may be provoking God to turn our hearts away from
holy desires.

3. And thirdly, we provoke Him when we do not bear fruit which measures up to the
means of grace that He has given us to enjoy.
a. There are many in the world who are destitute of the advantages that we have to
worship God and to hear His Word expounded for the instruction of our lives in
godliness.
b. And yet have we lived up to those advantages? Have we born the fruit which the
good Lord expects from those trees which He has planted?
c. Jesus told a story about such a tree. In Luke 16:6-9, He said, “A certain man had
a fig tree which had been planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit
on it, and did not find any. And he said to the vineyard-keeper, 'Behold, for
three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree without finding any.
Cut it down! Why does it even use up the ground?' And he answered and
said to him, 'Let it alone, sir, for this year too, until I dig around it and put in
fertilizer; and if it bears fruit next year, fine; but if not, cut it down. '”
d. Have we born the fruit that the Lord expects from us? Have we been filled with
love and affection and zeal for His cause? Have we been on our faces in prayer for
the needs of His church, and for the Gospel to have free course in our community?
Have we sought to reach out to others with the riches of the knowledge of the Gospel
that we have had to enjoy? If not, then we should not be surprised if the Lord has
become an adversary to us.
e. Brethren, let us search our hearts to find the cause of our spiritual lethargy.

B. Secondly, Not only Do We Provoke God by Our Actions, But God’s Purposes in
Hardening Us Are also to Help Us Realize that He Sees All that We Do, and to Awaken Us
to Our Sin.
1. Sometimes we forget that God sees all that we think, feel and do.
a. When we seek to please ourselves and others, we forget that we displease God.
b. God would have us to be awakened to the fact that He knows all that we do and sees
the secret motives and thoughts of our hearts.

2. God brings about this spiritual hardening to open our eyes and to bring us to
repentance.
a. If there is any grace in our hearts, the realization that we are in such a sad state will
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awaken us, more than all of the judgments in the world could do.
b. And if we are His children, we can know that God brings this about because of His
love. He wants us to turn from our sin and to revive us in the Spirit of His Son.

III. And This Brings Us to the Last Point, Namely, What Can We Do to Recover Our
Souls out of This Predicament?
A. There Is Only One Way Which Is Prescribed Here: Prayer. The prayer of the faithful
is, return, O Lord, “Return for the sake of Thy servants, the tribes of Thy heritage” (v.
13). Return and restore in us the joy of your salvation.
B. But There Are Also Two Arguments Which We Can Plead Before Him:
1. First, we can plead His sovereign mercy.
a. “Look down from heaven, and see from Thy holy and glorious habitation;
Where are Thy zeal and Thy mighty deeds? The stirrings of Thy heart and Thy
compassion are restrained toward me” (Isa. 63:15).
b. Our great plea can only be His mercy. We deserve nothing from God. All is of
grace.
c. We must plead with God; we must beg for His mercy to revive us.

2. And, second, we can plead God’s faithfulness to His covenant.

a. He has taken us as His children by adoption. We can pray, “For Thou art our
Father, though Abraham does not know us, And Israel does not recognize us.
Thou, O LORD, art our Father, Our Redeemer from of old is Thy name” (v.
16).
b. We can come as a child, who has erred, to a Father, and ask that we be received
again into the comfortable presence of the Lord.
c. These are our two arguments. We must plead for His mercies, coming as a child
would to a father. We must pray that the Lord would deliver us from this hardening
and grant us a gracious outpouring of His Spirit, that we would no longer stray from
His ways, and that our hearts would no longer be hardened against the fear of God.
d. People of God, judge honestly what you see and hear in yourselves, and determine
whether or not this sermon is for you. God wants you to be zealous in the things of
His kingdom. May Christ put His fire in your heart, that you might earnestly seek
for His glory in this life, that it might go well with you in the life to come. Amen.