The Sudden Ruin of a Stubborn Heart

From Gospel Translations

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Revision as of 15:28, 24 July 2025

He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken beyond healing. (Proverbs 29:1)

He grows offended by instruction, flushes at correction. He sins, sure, but that is none of your business. Correction makes him worse. He is known not for a strong character but for a stiff neck — an ox of a man who travels only one way: his own.

He knows better than others. Friends, if they still own the name, try to confront his glaring faults. They want better for him. They are courageous — would you try to steer a bull by the ear? He stampedes along, trampling everything in his path. God speaks; he hangs up. Wisdom cries in the street; he turns aside. The pleas of love cannot bind him. Conscience cannot deter him. His neck, strong as an oak, only stiffens more.

It’s not as bad as they say, he thinks. I can stop at any time. Who are they to judge?

He is a fool. A Nabal. “Such a worthless man that one cannot speak to him” (1 Samuel 25:17). A son too wise for his father. A sheep too smart for his shepherds. An old man too proud for change. He spits upon the hand delivering God’s gift to him: the grace of correction. He charges past signposts warning of the cliff. Like Pharaoh, he calls down from his self-made throne, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice?” (Exodus 5:2).

Inevitable Fall

Our proverb warns how a long refusal comes to a quick close. Ruin replaces deafness. His path ends — “suddenly.” He falls — “broken beyond healing.” Here is the day he thought would never come, the finish he said he would never meet. He is shattered without remedy. No second chances. No do-overs. No further opportunity to consider his path and change his ways.

Noah’s sermons are heard no more. God seals the ark door; the rain begins. The laughter of Lot’s sons-in-law dies away; fire falls on Sodom. The prophets no longer raise their cry of repentance and woe; Jerusalem is surrounded by Babylon, by Rome. And a day draws near when Bible studies will lie extinct, and church services as we know them will end; Jesus will arrive. Hard necks will finally and forever be broken.

Stubborn oxen, unsteerable and uncorrectable, always find the cliff in the end.

They twitch at the bottom and groan, “How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof! I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors” (Proverbs 5:12–13). Does wisdom weep at his fall? Does she mourn his final misery? “I will mock when terror strikes you . . . when distress and anguish come upon you” (Proverbs 1:24–27). Yet surely Jesus weeps over them? “As for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me” (Luke 19:27). As he heeded not the Almighty’s cries, the Almighty shall not heed his. Oh, fear a hard heart more than a hard word.

Reproving Love

Some of you have been “often reproved” for years to no avail. You have been implored, soberly warned, spoken with by several of your closest relations, and yet your neck has only grown firmer. What you have received as the pestering intrusion of Christians has been the patient invitation of a God repeating, “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?” (Ezekiel 18:23). Will his offer of a free and full pardon and pleasures forevermore in his family go unheeded? Will the knowledge that this offer came at the sudden and utter breaking of his own dear Son not call forth water from your stony heart?

Others of you know that God wants to send you to give reproof — and you have stayed mostly silent. You are Jonah, unwilling to go to Nineveh with a message of repentance and salvation. You said something one time, perhaps, but you will not put your hand to that stove again. Humbly, lovingly, prayerfully, appropriately, offer your reproof. “Like a gold ring or an ornament of gold is a wise reprover to a listening ear” (Proverbs 25:12). Pray for a listening ear.

Things are better left alone — until they’re not. “He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken beyond healing.” He refuses to believe God, but you believe. He thinks it trifling to juggle knives that stab at souls, but you know better. And because you know better, you can feel better. Do not give up. Do not forget to pray for him. Weep for him. Plead with him. Do not turn off your feeling for him, even if it allows “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” into your heart (Romans 9:2). These are alarms to fast, to intercede, to overflow with compassion as your Savior did — “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem” (Matthew 23:37).

And let us, Christians, be a people who gladly receive reproof. “Let a righteous man strike me — it is a kindness; let him rebuke me — it is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it” (Psalm 141:5). We want to refuse it. To criticize the messenger’s delivery. Don’t let your head refuse this oil. Learn from this ox-man and tremble. Insecure people, proud people, self-reliant people cannot stomach reproofs. But you know you fall short of God’s perfect will, and you can fully admit it because you trust in the perfection of Jesus on your behalf.

You can endure — and even offer hospitality to — such chastening words. The Spirit uses imperfect tools and flawed reproofs to chisel us into the likeness of the Son — until that sudden, happy reversal, when we are healed beyond all breaking, when we see him face to face.