AP

Exodus 7:1  Then the LORD said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.”

Throughout these chapters of Exodus that deal with the LORD God’s, judgement of the Ten Plagues on Egypt we are repeatedly told that ‘the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart’, and the Apostle Paul, in Romans 9:17-18, confirms this truth:  “For Scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’ Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.”  This very confronting statement by the inspired Apostle presents a big problem to our human sensibilties.  Paul even anticipates our objection with an ‘explanation’ (with which we still struggle because of our imperfect and incomplete understanding): “One of you will say to me: ‘Then why does God still blame us?  For who is able to resist his will?’  But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? ‘Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?  What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath – prepared for destruction?  What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory – even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?” (Romans 9:19-24).

God makes two things very clear in his Word: Firstly, we are all responsible and culpable for our actions; and secondly, we can only be saved by his Sovereign Grace alone.  We can know from these two truths that there will be no blaming in hell and no boasting in heaven.

The LORD God sent Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh as his personal representatives and voice.  Through them he graciously gave Pharaoh the choice (over and over again in his mercy) to voluntarily subjugate his authority as King of Egypt to the rightful Creator, King and Ruler of the whole Universe, or to give vent to his arrogance in persistent opposition to his Maker.  In this ultimate sense, by giving Pharaoh this choice again and again, God ‘hardened’ Pharoah’s heart (because with each plague it became harder) just by giving him the continued opportunity to ‘prove’ the already firmly established hardness of his heart.  In Adam, we are all born with the same ‘heart disease’ as Pharoah.  But God, in his grace, gives us the opportunity to respond to his mercy with the offer of a ‘new’ heart: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” (Ezekiel 36:25-27) He does this in Jesus! (2 Corinthians 5:17).  The Author of Hebrews presents the ultimate question to each one of us: “How shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation?” (Hebrews 2:3)

– Bruce Christian