blb/devotions/morneve/04/0428pm.html

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<title>Blue Letter Bible: Morning and Evening&#8212;Charles Spurgeon</title>
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<div class="head">Meditation for This Evening</div>
<div class="subhead">Charles Spurgeon</div>
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<div class="pad2020" style="font-weight:bold">April 28<sup>th</sup><br><em>Evening Reading</em></div>
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<p>All the house of Israel are impudent and hardhearted.&nbsp;&#8212;&nbsp;Ezekiel 3:7</p>
<p>Are there no exceptions? No, not one. Even the favoured race are thus described. Are the best so bad?&#8212;then what must the worst be? Come, my heart, consider how far thou hast a share in this universal accusation, and while considering, be ready to take shame unto thyself herein thou mayst have been guilty. The first charge is <em>impudence,</em> or hardness of forehead, a want of holy shame, an unhallowed boldness in evil. Before my conversion, I could sin and feel no compunction, hear of my guilt and yet remain unhumbled, and even confess my iniquity and manifest no inward humiliation on account of it. For a sinner to go to God&#8217;s house and pretend to pray to Him and praise Him argues a brazen&#8208;facedness of the worst kind! Alas! since the day of my new birth I have doubted my Lord to His face, murmured unblushingly in His presence, worshipped before Him in a slovenly manner, and sinned without bewailing myself concerning it. If my forehead were not as an adamant, harder than flint, I should have far more holy fear, and a far deeper contrition of spirit. Woe is me, I am one of the impudent house of Israel. The second charge is <em>hardheartedness,</em> and I must not venture to plead innocent here. Once I had nothing but a heart of stone, and although through grace I now have a new and fleshy heart, much of my former obduracy remains. I am not affected by the death of Jesus as I ought to be; neither am I moved by the ruin of my fellow men, the wickedness of the times, the chastisement of my heavenly Father, and my own failures, as I should be. O that my heart would melt at the recital of my Saviour's sufferings and death. Would to God I were rid of this nether millstone within me, this hateful body of death. Blessed be the name of the Lord, the disease is not incurable, the Saviour&#8217;s precious blood is the universal solvent, and me, even me, it will effectually soften, till my heart melts as wax before the fire.</p>
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