THE LIVES OF THE PATRIARCHS #75 | THE LIFE OF MOSES #57
Pastor Christopher Choo
Lesson 3758
THE LIVES OF THE PATRIARCHS #75
THE LIFE OF MOSES #57
MOSES VS. PHARAOH ( PART 3 )
THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART .
A common question readers have about this story, concerns the repeated theme of Pharaoh’s “hard heart.”
Sometimes we’re told Pharaoh hardens his heart against God, but other times we read that God hardens his heart.
Who is really behind all this evil? And what does this story tell us about God’s relationship to evil at other times in history, or in our own lives?
Let us look at the 10 plagues of Egypt as an example.
The Ten Plagues and Pharaoh’s Heart
Blood: Pharaoh’s heart “became hard” (7:22)
Frogs: Pharaoh “hardened his own heart” (8:15)
Gnats: Pharaoh’s heart “was hard” (8:19)
Flies: “Pharaoh hardened his own heart” (8:32)
Livestock die: Pharaoh’s heart “was hard” (9:7)
Boils: “The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart” (9:12)
Hail: Pharaoh “hardened his own heart” (9:34)
Locusts: God announces that he has “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” (10:1,10:20)
Darkness: God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” (10:27)
Death of the firstborn: God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” (11:10)
Here we are able to draw several conclusions.
First of all, in plagues 6-10, we hear four times that God has hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
Can you see how this is a distinct change from plagues 1-5?
In those stories, Pharaoh explicitly hardened his own heart (plagues 2 and 4), or the source of the hardening was ambiguous (plagues 1, 3, and 5).
Interestingly, in the seventh plague of hail, we first see Pharaoh harden his own heart (Exodus 9:34)
A theologian Morris notes that "neither here nor anywhere else is God said to harden anyone who had not first hardened himself."
The Scripture is very clear that God is sovereign and all powerful. It also indicates that man has some sort of freewill and responsibility.
We as humans tend to think of God exercising His sovereignty as somehow being unjust in that it is violating man's freewill.
Theologians come down on both sides with arguments either defending God's sovereignty or Man's freewill.
But today we see that God's Sovereignty and Man's Freewill are reconciliable.
Man may propose but it is God who disposes.
N.B. We will look at Paul's explanation of this issue tomorrow.
the issue in Romans 9:1-11:32 and particularly uses the hardening of Pharaoh's heart as an example in Romans 9:14-18.
"What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth." So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires."
