My friends Charlene and Kana and I have now arrived at Exodus in our Bible Reading Plan. Exodus, where God’s acts of both liberation and judgment are in full force and public. I plan to come back to this post very soon to list here my friends’ and my thoughts.
In the mean time, I’m just yearning to see what is actually stated about the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart as in the Bible between Exodus 4 and 14.
After making umpteen notes from Exodus and listening to several sermons (while working on my photos in the background), I found this neat summary by Walt Kaiser on the net:
- “In all there are ten places where ‘hardening’ of Pharaoh is ascribed to God (4.21; 7.3; 9.12; 10.1, 20, 27; 11.10; 14:4, 8, 17).
- Pharaoh hardened his own heart in another ten passages (7.13, 14, 22; 8.15, 19, 32; 9.7, 34, 35; 13.15).
God revealed himself. his power, supremacy, love for his people, hatred of sin through the signs and wonders of the plagues. God exercised His freedom as a holy, holy, holy God to justly
carry out His judgment on Egypt and to graciously liberated His people from slavery.
Pharaoh bucked and dived, dug in his heels and stubbornly refused God’s “Let my people go.”
I look from Pharaoh’s heart to my own heart without Christ: a heart of stone, hard and cold, calloused and angry and unbelieving that does not want to hear what God revealed and did in Jesus.
I bow in humility and with a song of deliverance that Jesus came, that He sought, that He found and that He melted my heart with His love!
This is why it is dangerous not to call sin, sin: it’s our root problem, it’s our inheritance from Adam that led to a dead, stone-hard heart. But Christ came to give life to ANYONE WHO BELIEVES HIM, a heart of flesh that loves Him and people. A life filled with the Spirit and life and love and glad obedience. A life lived to find out what pleases God and live for His Will.
Once again my new heart bows in humility for His conquering grace in my life in Christ - my hope of glory!
God hardened Pharaoh’s heart…..I would like to go to the beginning of Romans and chapters in Hebrews to see how/if this fits in with God giving rebels over to their own sin in his judgement. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.
