Proverbs 29

I don’t think I’ve yet seen in the Bible a better description of the fate that awaits the wicked than this: “Whoever remains stiff-necked after many rebukes will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy.” (vs 1) This is what Romans 6:23 calls the “wages of sin.” It is destruction that comes as a result of a stubborn insistence to continue in sin, not as a result of something God does to you!

I think this verse is speaking of the ultimate and permanent Death that sin causes (the death from which there is no resurrection), but we see temporal examples of the dangers of this sort of stubbornness in Scripture. For instance, Pharaoh cherished his stubborn heart. Time and time again, he was convicted that he ought to give in to God, but he was proud and would not yield.

Each time Pharaoh rejected the conviction of the Holy Spirit, he rendered his heart just a little harder, just a little more stubborn. He made it that much harder for himself to respond positively the next time. As a result, he ended up chasing the Israelites in his chariot right into the middle of a sea that was standing on end—and the walls of water came crashing down on him, destroying him suddenly.

I still can’t imagine the absolute hardness of heart required for a person to witness a parted Red Sea and not stop immediately in his tracks. But, apparently, that’s where Pharaoh’s stubbornness had left him—used to cavalierly witnessing the miracles of God and completely ignoring them whilst continuing headlong in his own course. It ended up being a deadly one.

And that’s exactly what sin is, too—a deadly course. All along the path of Scripture, there are warnings to turn back, warnings not to go on. God demonstrates time and time again that the stubborn pursuit of sin is nothing but a Dead End, but sadly, there will still be many who decide to take that road.

For those who do, they will appear to come to destruction suddenly, but it will have been the careful work of a lifetime of choices to reject the Holy Spirit. And once they have completely cut themselves off to the wooing influence of God, there is no remedy left for them. There is nothing for God to do but give them up to their choice and let them go.

That God does that, that He subjects Himself to the possibility for that kind of suffering, that He gives us the freedom to choose and then respects our choices, still boggles my mind. He loves us so much that He wants us to be able to freely choose—even when that means that we might choose against Him.

But we don’t have to come to that Dead End! We don’t have to be like Pharaoh. We can take the freedom God gives us and use it to make a choice for Him instead of against Him. And we may start today, by allowing the next rebuke of the Holy Spirit to dissolve our stubbornness (instead of allowing our stubbornness to dissolve His rebuke)!