Why Did God Harden Pharaoh’s Heart
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
If you have your bibles and I hope you do for this series the next four weeks we are going to look at a few different places today and over each week
I would recommend even a pen and note taker so you can write down a couple other verses i look at
Today we are going to be in Exodus 9 and at the end in Romans 9 if you want to place a note card or finger there
Today we have a question from a long time listener first time caller
The Question is Why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart basically condemning him to hell leaving him no chance to be saved?
Great question because it is going to take us on an epic journey to really understand the bible, the exodus, who god is, what saving looks like, and how Jesus is immeasurably beautiful
Before we start i want to say i have humbly worked as hard as I can to see what the bible says not my own opinion
There are different answers you may come too as this opens the door to age old debates like predestination and the decrees of God before time
If you research this on your own i hope to give you a road map in the word and give a warning. if your answer does not in the end glorify the real jesus you need to reexamine your conclusion
that is the end game of all of what we will look at answering the next few weeks
So lets fire this thing up
We are hitting several passages in Exodus to really look at what we are answering
Our passages are Exodus 4:21, 5:2, 8:15, 9:34, and 11:9-10
The Lord instructed Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, make sure you do before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put within your power. But I will harden his heart so that he won’t let the people go.
But Pharaoh responded, “Who is the Lord that I should obey him by letting Israel go? I don’t know the Lord, and besides, I will not let Israel go.”
But when Pharaoh saw there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
When Pharaoh saw that the rain, hail, and thunder had ceased, he sinned again and hardened his heart, he and his officials.
The Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh will not listen to you, so that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.” Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his land.
So how do we answer this question the exodus puts in front of us
What the Word is for
What the Word is for
To answer the quesiton in front of us today we have to know what the bible is even for
The bible is God telling us who he is, who we are, what he is doing, and how he is going to take back all that sin has stolen
Even the hard parts when it seems from what we read that in some places God can seem unjust making it impossible for people to be saved
That is where we have to look to the whole of the bible to give us a lens to know what may look like God is mean can never mean that
What is God about in other places in the bible that we can see who he is in full spectrum not just this one part like a diamond
Look at his heart for a barbaric evil empire like Ninevah in Jonah who had no interest in even knowing God’s name?
So may I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than a hundred twenty thousand people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left, as well as many animals?”
The New Testament says the same character of God has never changed
For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.
He doesnt want ANY peter says to be lost
That is what has to inform our looking to answer why does he harden Pharaoh’s heart when it looks like he is going against who he says he is
The bible as a whole exists to help us know who god is
and that is huge for all of us
Because when experiences in life seem to go against who we think he should be we lose faith
We are always interpreting our world
We dont just live the experiences of the human world we experience the way we interpret the human experience
We have to let the bible do what it exists for to tell us who God is….that helps us answer this question
What Was the Exodus For
What Was the Exodus For
If you are new to the bible or christian things the exodus is the second greatest event in the bible
topped only by the death and resurrection of Jesus…we will get to how the exodus pointed to Jesus later …
God’s people had been enslaved in Egypt for almost 500 years
Slave labor starvation rape murder it was horrific
For 500 years
God saves a man named Moses from Pharaoh’s genocide to rescue his people
Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt, and have heard them crying out because of their oppressors. I know about their sufferings, and I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them from that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the territory of the Canaanites, Hethites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.
Exodus is all about the rescue mission of God to do the impossible to save them
Pharaoh isn’t about to let them go
Moses comes and here we go
Lets go back to Exodus 5:2
But Pharaoh responded, “Who is the Lord that I should obey him by letting Israel go? I don’t know the Lord, and besides, I will not let Israel go.”
The whole of Exodus is God answering this question from Pharaoh and Moses
The moses asked God who he was, Israel asks Moses who is this god who sent you, and Pharaoh has asked the same
God is about to answer in the most epic way the world has ever seen
Pharaoh has said no so God flexes who he is with a series of 10 plagues and it is in the plagues where the hardening of heart comes
The burden of exodus 5-15 is to answer who God is and what he does
The rest of the book of Exodus, and in particular the manner in which the Lord will deliver Israel, will shed further light on the meaning of the name. And Israel will come to know her God
that he alone is god
one thing that makes Pharaoh so opposed to God and so critical in defeating is that Pharaoh was worshipped and believed himself to be god
this was a battle to answer not just the name of our God but if he alone was god
Pharaoh’s defiant response, then, serves as the theological context for the section. The remainder of the exodus account is the answer to Pharaoh’s question
This is a cosmic war
The plagues arent parlor tricks
They are intentional epics in a war to prove God alone is God …not Pharaoh…
‘I am the Lord’ declares the Lord’s supremacy over other gods
The plagues show he is supreme over nature
Pharaoh’s genocide was anti creation so God meticulously is taking Egypt back to a precreation void to start all over and take back all that sin and evil have stolen
What Pharaoh’s Part is For
What Pharaoh’s Part is For
The theme of “hardening” the heart occurs twenty times between Exodus 4 and 14
Three times Yahweh declares that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart (Ex. 4:21; 7:3; 14:4).
Six times Yahweh actually hardens Pharaoh’s heart (Ex. 9:12; 10:1; 10:20; 10:27; 11:10; 14:8).
Seven times the hardening is implied to be done by God (Ex. 7:13; 7:14; 7:22; 8:19; 9:7; 9:35; 14:5).
And three times we are told that Pharaoh hardened his own heart (Ex. 8:15; 8:32; 9:34).
First it is clear that at really no point was Pharaoh independent from God’s influence thats clear
This is really important because of what we have seen the reason for Exodus was
GK Beale makes a huge point to help us answer what is going on: the hardening of heart is a war against the Egyptian idea that Pharaoh was god and the belief that Pharaoh’s heart was the all-controlling factor both in history and society and nature
Second Moses was giving them a chance to let the people go without a single plague
The messages of God’s prophets to the lost always included the disaster but the promise of hope and life IF YOU RETURN TO ME
Jonah has a message for Ninevah what he records is only part of the message god gave him
The great sermon of Jonah was short and sweet- you got 40 days or God is going to overthrow you”
But implied always in a prophets message was but return to me
The king of Ninevah obviously knew this in Jonah 3:5-10
Then the people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth—from the greatest of them to the least.
When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he issued a decree in Nineveh:
By order of the king and his nobles: No person or animal, herd or flock, is to taste anything at all. They must not eat or drink water. Furthermore, both people and animals must be covered with sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God. Each must turn from his evil ways and from his wrongdoing. Who knows? God may turn and relent; he may turn from his burning anger so that we will not perish.
God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—so God relented from the disaster he had threatened them with. And he did not do it.
Repent and return to me is always the message
Pharaoh is responsible for his rejection of God’s offer of life and obedience
We see clearly that God knew what Pharaoh would do and uses the rejection of who He is as God alone to achieve the epic salvation of His people
God has done this before in Egypt
Joseph in Genesis is sold into slavery by his brothers and suffers horrific injustuce for almost all of his life
But in the end the evil of evil men was ordained and used by God to bring about the saving of Isreal
Joseph says himself “What you meant for evil God intended for good”
God knows all of what we will do
He has created a world out of all the possible combinations of human choice to bring about His glory and save all of those who He knew would choose Him
He has always used the evil we choose to show His glory in saving his people, you and me
The greatest attrocity the universe has ever known was the murder of God on the cross
we spit on the one who created us
The creator was nailed to a tree he created to bleed out
But it was the use of this horrific evil god used to bring about the salvation of His people
He used the evil of death to steal the keys from the grave
God knows the evil we choose and is still in complete control to use it to bring about our salvation
The Exodus points to the cross
If the whole bible is about Jesus then we have to see how even the exodus points to the coming exodus of us from the slavery of death and lonliness and cancer and regret to the freedom of eternal life in a place better then eden
At the cross horrific evil was used for good
The Romans were used by God to crucify Jesus
Did God’s using of them make them no less responsible?
But even on the cross a roman soldier was given the offer of life and repented and believed
Thirdly we see Pharaoh is responsible for what he chose and what God sped up and used to answer the original quesiton…who is this god that I should listen to him …
Pharaoh hardens his own heart
When Pharaoh saw that the rain, hail, and thunder had ceased, he sinned again and hardened his heart, he and his officials.
this is after the plague of hail and lightening crushed everything in sight
After each plague pharaoh is like a college kid who drank too much
He is the drunk college kid hugging the toilet. God if you make this stop ill never drink again. The next night they are doing keg stands
His repentance is never real
He is interested in a useful god who serves him not a Lord of Lords he owes following too
This is huge for all of us
What is the human heart that is hardened
What was happening to Pharaoh and to us
Proverbs 4:23 in Other Translations
23 Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
23 Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.
Matthew 15:19 For from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, slander.
The heart is the core of who you are
It is what makes you do what you do
It is what you really believe about god and answer lifes biggest questions
It is that causal core of Pharaoh that never melted to love the true god
And we are all in the same place
We are born with a hardened heart toward god
We are all hard hearted to God and we think obedience to Him is a kill joy.
We want a uselfull jesus but dont really believe our good is found in his design for anything like sex or money or relationships. that is the universe shattering definition of sin.
That God would show mercy to make any of us alive and soften our hearts to the gospel at all should blow us away.
If we are honest with ourselves we know this.
Even if we are dishonest with ourselves God in His love knows this and knows we need a knew heart not simply some bible knowledge
That is the promise of Ezekiel 36:26-27
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances.
he wants sons and daughter not robots and slaves
He will not force anyone to repent and believe
He will do the impossible to lay it out in front of you
He will stop at nothing in the word and in the person of Jesus to show you 2 Peter 3:9
The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.
But you have to repent and believe
Pharaoh did not
God knew he never would
God knew he had a cosmic war to fight to show who alone was god when the people thought Pharaoh was god in the flesh (so did Pharaoh)
So he put on display his power to use even the worst the human heart can do to display his power and name and character
The Question in the Question
The Question in the Question
There’s an important part of the original question i want us to see because it is critical to get right to know the character of god
The question was The Question is Why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart basically condemning him to hell leaving him no chance to be saved?
Does God choose to send people to hell
Pharaoh’s life in Exodus gives us alot of answers
Pharaoh had the greatest display of God’s love and mercy and rescue and purpose in front of him the world would ever see before the cross.
And in the face of it he said no I am god. So god said your will be done.
That is true for all of us
There is a hard to grab truth in all of this but it answers the question
First we are operating here form the reality that hell is a real place
That in and of itself is unpopular but true id be a liar and terrible pastor if i said Jesus himself was a liar
But who is responsible for it
Let this radically change how you answer this question in the question
C.S. Lewis famously said “The doors of hell are locked from the inside”……
He goes on: ”There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'THY will be done.' All that are in Hell choose it."
He will say to those who reject him thy will be done
Paul says this in Romans 1:28
And because they did not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God delivered them over to a corrupt mind so that they do what is not right.
That is the reality
At some point God says thy will be done
that is what he did to Pharaoh
Chad Bird says so well the truth of our nature and choices and what God truly wants: “Though the Father did everything necessary to save them in Jesus Christ;.though he sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world but to redeem it;.though he desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth; indeed, even though God actively and willfully seeks out the lost,.nevertheless there are some who steadfastly refuse to have anything to do with him.
That was Pharaoh That is us
That is our heart
All of us are born with that sin nature
We are “by nature children of wrath” (Eph 2:3), “enemies of God” (Rom 5:10), and cannot by ourselves even say “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor 12:3).
BUT God says Ephesians 2:4-9
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! He also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so that no one can boast.
He led a greater exodus then Pharaoh saw when he rose from the dead
He killed the things we are enslaved too
Most of all he lived the life of wanting God for us so we can be with him if we repent and believe
John 15:16- You did not choose me but I chose you
Ephesians 1:4 He chose us before the foundations of the world
He knew we by nature would not choose him…so he did the impossible to give those who would believe a new heart
Chad Bird again: “If there is anything in all creation worthy of rejoicing over, it is that God the Father desires our presence with him in Paradise.
And not only does he desire it, in Jesus he has prepared a place for us, done every single thing necessary to get us there. He loves us, saves us, calls us, makes us his children. He has promised, "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned," (Mark 16:16).
That is why Paul pulls all of this question forward in the New Testament
he quotes the very purpose for the evil of Pharaoh’s rejection of God
What Romans 9 is For
What Romans 9 is For
What should we say then? Is there injustice with God? Absolutely not! For he tells Moses, I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then, it does not depend on human will or effort but on God who shows mercy. For the Scripture tells Pharaoh, I raised you up for this reason so that I may display my power in you and that my name may be proclaimed in the whole earth. So then, he has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
Is God unjust in giving us over
Paul says no in light of the cross
He raised Pharaoh up to power but Pharaoh though it was his own effort that did it
He thought he was god
But God showed who he was in that he took the worst evil and worked it to save his people
That we may know our salvation is not due to any religious effort we do
mercy is the lords doing
Mercy and patience when we tell him time and time again we are ones who are in control
2 Peter 3:9 is his heart toward his rebellious creation
The patience to not destroy this place and be right in doing so
The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.
that he would save rebellious people at all should leave us in awe
The gospel is absurd
It is the greatest scandal in the universe
It is absolutely absurd that he would want us
The cross shows how much he wants us to repent and believe
he did everything necessary to make it real
For those who repent and believe
Chad Bird sums this all up as we close : What more needs to be done? Nothing, nothing at all.
I don’t care who you are, or what you’ve done. I don't care if you think you're the most evil, rotten, messed up person in the world: God the Father, in Jesus Christ, wants you to be with him. That is his character.
He is calling you by name. Everything is ready. The feast is prepared. Salvation is won. Christ stands there, smiling at you, loving you, forgiving you.
Hell is for the devil and his angels. it was never meant for us.
Heaven, in Jesus Christ, is for you. Believe it. There is nothing truer in the world.
Tell him thy will be done because you were made for it in this life so he will not look at you in the next and tell you thy will be done
ADVERTISEMENT