Pause: God and Hard Hearts
Exodus 7-10
I’ve been on vacation in America for the last two weeks; we got back yesterday morning. While I was gone, Joe and Eduardo taught on Exodus 7-10, in which we see the first nine out of ten plagues that God sends against the Pharaoh of Egypt, because he refuses to let the people of Israel out of slavery.
Ordinarily, we would just continue on to chapter 11 today, but we’re not doing that quite yet. If you remember, while we were going through Romans, occasionally we took breaks to talk about specific topics this book brought up. These topics weren’t the main point of the text, but they were topics that we wanted to address more specifically.
We’re going to do the same thing in Exodus from time to time, because there are some topics here that would benefit from further digging, because of how far removed we are from the place and time in which these events occurred.
I’m sure you noticed the subject I’m referring to if you were here the last two Sundays.
So here’s what I’d like to do today. We’re going to look at God’s hand in the Pharaoh’s actions here (a doctrine called the Doctrine of Reprobation, if you’re interested; that name simply means God’s sovereignty over hard hearts), and then we’re going to take a step back and see what all of this means for us on a wider scale, because even if you disagree with some of the conclusions I’ll draw here, there are a number of truths we see in these texts that are inarguable from the rest of Scripture, and that are really important for us to understand.
God’s Sovereignty Over Pharaoh’s Hard Heart
Just as a reminder in case you weren’t here, in Exodus 7-10 Moses is sent by God to tell the Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to free the Hebrews from slavery. Repeatedly, the Pharaoh refuses. So God sends a series of plagues upon the Pharaoh and the people of Egypt—the river turns to blood, there’s an infestation of frogs, then gnats, then flies, then all their livestock die, then painful boils appear on their bodies, then there’s a crazy hail storm, then a swarm of locusts that eat everything, then darkness covers the whole country for three days. All this time, the people of Israel are left unscathed while the people of Egypt suffer for the Pharaoh’s refusal to listen to God.
These plagues served as both punishment and warning: they were God’s way of saying, "This is how powerful I am, and it can get even worse than this if you persist.”
And we see something repeated several times. Two somethings, in fact.
The first is that the Pharaoh hardens his heart against God’s commands to let his people go. We see it in 7.13, 8.15, 8.19, 8.32, 9.7, and 9.35 (I’ll quote 8.32):
But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and did not let the people go.
That’s what we see on repeat, either the declarative “Pharaoh hardened his heart” or the passive “the Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, as the Lord had said.”
If that’s all there was, we could accept it easily. He hardens his heart against God’s command to release his people from slavery, so he deserves the judgment he received.
But that is not all there is here; Moses doesn’t let us off that easily. We also see on repeat a different side of that same coin. For example (9.12):
12 But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had spoken to Moses.
We see it again, in 9.12, 10.1, 10.20, 20.27, and 11.10:
Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.
On first glance, this is either really disturbing to us, or something we just assume we’re misunderstanding. Surely God wouldn’t do that, right? Surely God wouldn’t do something that would prevent someone from doing the right thing? Because let’s just be clear: this isn’t just a case of allowing the Pharaoh to suffer the consequences of a certain action. Sorry for the spoiler, but he ends up dying in the Red Sea along with his army. This hardening of Pharaoh’s heart effectively separates him from God, forever.
Surely God doesn’t decide that too. Right?
This is a very difficult question to answer, and the answer is debated in Christian circles without end. A lot of Christians say things like, “Well the Pharaoh hardened his own heart, so God just kind of went along with what he was doing and hardened his heart even more.”
The problem is, the text doesn’t allow us that latitude; it doesn’t make that link. In fact, as we’ve seen, it goes in the other direction—God says beforehand, not what will happen, but what he will do. In 7.3-4, once again, he says, I will harden his heart.
And in 9.16, he gives a clear statement of why he does this, and he goes even further than just speaking about the hardening: he tells the Pharaoh that a) it wasn’t the Pharaoh’s bloodline that made him king of Egypt; God himself raised the Pharaoh to that position of power, and b) he explains why he did it. Exodus 9.16:
But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.
Everything God is doing here, he is doing to display his power as God, and to make himself known as God throughout all the land.
I know that sounds cold, but let’s put that feeling off to the side for a moment; I promise we’ll come back to it. We need to reckon with the simple reality that once you see this happening in Exodus, you start to see it all over the Bible. We won’t read all these texts now, but here are just a few examples, if you want to look them up later. We see God acting in this way—that is, taking sovereign action over things we usually think of as our domain—in:
• Joshua 11.20,
• Psalm 92.7,
• Proverbs 22.14...
Now I know you might be thinking, those are all passages from the Old Testament; surely things changed in the New Testament, right?
Sorry, no. We also see it in:
These are just a few examples of many, many others I could give. When I first saw this reality in the Bible I started marking a little triangle in the margin next to any verse where we see God exercising his sovereignty over things we usually think of as belonging to us. When I had gone through the whole Bible, there was at least one triangle on nearly every page.
An Explicit Example: Romans 9.17-24
But the passage where we see this reality laid out the most specifically is, of course, in Romans 9. We’re just going to read a handful of verses from Romans 9, so that no one might think this only applies to what happened to the Pharaoh.
The context of Romans 9 isn’t any one, localized situation, but the much larger issue of the salvation of the Jewish people: why are some Jews saved, while others reject Christ? Paul actually gives the example of the Pharaoh in v. 17, quoting Exodus 9.16:
17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
In other words, it’s not only the Pharaoh whom God may sometimes decide to harden.
Our reaction to that verse, if we’re reading it for the first time, is going to be strong and swift: “How is that fair?!”
Paul’s one step ahead of you; he anticipates that question in the next verse (v. 19):
You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?”
That’s exactly the question, isn’t it? And Paul’s answer is brutal and perfect, because he doesn’t even attempt to answer it. His answer is, essentially, “You’re in no position to even ask that question.” V. 20:
20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?
And there it is. This is tough, but please listen, because it’s one of the most important things we may ever see in the Bible.
At first glance, it will seem that Paul is describing God acting in a very un-Godlike way. It’s hard for us to imagine God making some for “honorable use” and some for “dishonorable use”, preparing some for destruction and preparing others for glory.
That’s a hard thing to wrap our brains around, much less our hearts. But I’ll share with you what helped make sense of it for me. In v. 22, Paul says (in the form of a hypothetical question) that God has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.
Why would God need to be patient with those he has prepared for destruction? Wasn’t that part of his plan all along? If it was part of his plan to harden their hearts like the Pharaoh’s, why would be need to endure them with much patience?
The answer is simple: These people whom God judges desires the sin that they pursue, and because God is patient, he doesn’t punish them immediately, like they deserve. He allows them to live their lives, during which they’ll experience pain, yes, but also happiness. And whatever happiness they experience during their lives on this earth is happiness they do not deserve, because they were never once coerced into disobeying God.
No one will stand before the throne of God at the day of judgment and say, “I didn’t sin against you willingly.” When we sin against God, it’s because we desired that sin more than we desired his righteousness.
This is why Moses is so careful to show both sides of that same coin in the Exodus account: God hardens Pharaoh’s heart…but the Pharaoh also hardens his own heart. It’s never one-sided.
So God’s judgment against all sinners is always perfectly just.
And here’s the important part: God’s judgment against sin makes his power known. God’s judgment against sin displays his right and his authority and his justice to not let sin go unpunished. God’s mercy brings him glory, absolutely—and thank God for that, because otherwise no one would be saved. But his wrath against sin brings him glory too.
So to summarize: why does God show mercy to some? In order to make his glory known.
And why does God harden some? In order to make his glory known.
You see, it’s not just God’s grace that brings him glory. His wrath brings him glory too.
Are We Free?
Now at this point I know some of you will be asking a simple question: are we really free? If God is the one who “has mercy on whomever he wills,” and who “hardens whomever he wills,” do we ever really have a choice in the matter?
The first thing we have to understand when we ask a question like that is that the Bible doesn’t ever give a clear answer, because that’s just not a question it’s trying to answer. The question of our own free will is a relatively modern question (only going back the last five hundred years or so); it was not on the biblical authors’ minds at all. They do talk about freedom, but it’s almost always freedom from sin, not freedom to do what we want to do.
Someone put it this way: the Bible isn’t there to answer all of our questions; the Bible is there to show us what questions we should be asking.
That said, there are answers to these questions which we can infer. And the explanation I’ve found the most coherent with what we do find in Scripture is a concept called “theological compatibilism.” You don’t need to remember the name, but the concept is really important.
Theological compatibilism says that yes, human beings are free…but our freedom is limited. Not just human beings, but every created thing, is free to act in accordance with its nature. For example, I’m not free to fly like a bird, because I’m not a bird; I’m a man. No matter how much I may want to do it, it’s not in my nature to do so, so I’m not free to do it. (I’m free to try, but it won’t work.)
When we’re left to our own devices, we have a sinful nature. Paul says in Ephesians 2 that we were “dead in our trespasses and sins.” Our nature is to sin. So we are absolutely free to do whatever we want—but what we want is to sin against God. (And again, that’s why we’re guilty: because we want it.)
But when God saves us, what does he do? He gives us a new nature—a holy nature, a nature that is able to fight against the sin in our bodies. So finally, we are really and truly free. When we sin, it’s because we want to sin, but when we obey God, it’s because we want to obey God.
So true freedom isn’t the freedom to do whatever we want; it’s the freedom to desire what we ought to desire.
Now, I know I’ve lost a few of you here. I know the feeling. I grew up hearing the exact opposite of much of what I’ve said here today, and I distinctly remember the first time I heard someone preach on this subject. The pastor in question basically walked through Romans 9 and said, “If you’ve read this text and thought you must be misunderstanding something—like, this can’t possibly true—you’ve probably understood just fine. What Paul seems to be saying here is exactly what he is saying.”
That was a really hard day for me. I sat down as I listened to that sermon, and I stared off into space for about an hour, my mind reeling. I was really upset, because I didn’t want to accept what I was hearing. At the same time, I couldn’t dispute the fact that I could see it clearly in Scripture. That following week, I tried over and over to dismiss it, to find a way to argue it away, so that I didn’t have to grapple with it. But I couldn’t.
So at the end of that week, I had a conversation with God. I said, “God, I don’t like this; I don’t understand how this is good news. But at the same time, I can see that you say this in your Word. So I have a choice. Either I can ignore this part of your Word, at which point I may as well ignore all of it. Or I can accept it even if I don’t understand it, and trust that you know better than me, and that it’s good news because you say it’s good news.”
So obviously I did that, and I’ll tell you, over the course of time, these truths that made me so uncomfortable at first have become the things I lean on for assurance when I’m feeling unsteady. Because if God is that in control of every aspect of his creation, that means he’s completely in control of every aspect of my faith, and that is the only way I would ever possibly make it. If my success in the Christian life is up to me, then I’m doomed. But fortunately, it’s not up to me.
Four Undeniable Truths
Whether or not you agree with what I’ve said so far, there are four truths displayed in this text that are, I believe, completely undeniable from Scripture. You can debate and analyze what the Bible says about our freedom, but I do not believe you can debate these truths.
1. God judges sin.
Sin is man’s rebellion against God, our natural inclination to move away from him and to try to be our own masters. All sin—from the greatest to the smallest—is as offensive to God as it could possibly be, because it is treason against a good and loving Creator. There are no degrees of impurity here—whether it’s a drop of poison in the barrel or a gallon, the whole barrel is unusable.
The proper response to sin is judgment. We might think that’s excessive, but we only think that because we’re the ones being judged. When someone sins against us, we desire judgment; we want justice to be done. And that’s right.
So God, because he is just and righteous, must and does punish sin. To put it another way, none of the plagues he sent against Egypt was unfair. That judgment, and more, is what we all deserve, not just the Pharaoh. God judges all sin.
2. When God judges sin, he has the right to judge as he sees fit.
Sometimes when kids misbehave, they get this weird idea in their head that they can negotiate the punishment. They disobey, so we confiscate a toy for the foreseeable future, and they say, “No, not that one; I lost this one.” And they hold up a toy they weren’t even playing with, hoping that will be enough.
That doesn’t work with parents, and it certainly doesn’t work with God. God is the Creator of all things, and the Judge of his creation. He gets to choose what judgment looks like.
But—
3. His judgment is always just.
In Deuteronomy 32.4, Moses sings:
“The Rock, his work is perfect,
for all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,
just and upright is he.”
If we ever look at a judgment God renders against anyone in the Bible, for any reason, and if we find that judgment too severe, it is because we are underestimating the gravity of sin. God’s judgment is always just. If he ever leans further in one direction, it is in the direction of compassion—he shows human beings far more patience than we deserve. God’s judgment is always just.
And lastly:
4. His judgment displays his glory.
This is what we saw in Romans 9, and it’s what we see in Exodus 9: when God judges sin, that judgment glorifies him just as much as his compassion. Because God isn’t only love; he is also justice, and wrath against sin. And we should be infinitely thankful that he is just, because that means that for every injustice we have suffered or observed, there will be justice. Whether it’s today, or in a year, or in ten years, or in fifty, God always judges sin, and his judgment is always just, and his judgment shows us what kind of God he is: a righteous God, who is perfectly pure in right, who loves what is lovely and hates what is hateful. He is a good God.
Three Benefits of these truths
One last thing before we finish up: why does any of this matter? Why is it helpful to talk about these truths? They’re uncomfortable, and they’re hard to understand, and we don’t like to think about them. So why should we?
There are many reasons, but I’ll leave you with three benefits these truths will have on our lives if we sit with them and allow them to work on us.
The first is simple humility—a healthy fear of God. We’re so used to thinking in terms of what we need or what we want from God, but God doesn’t exist for us; we exist for him. When we know that our salvation depends entirely on him, and that he would be in the right to harden us as he hardened the Pharaoh, it puts us in our proper place, reminds us that it is only by his grace that we are saved. So believing what God says, that he shows mercy on whom he wills and hardens whom he wills, helps us to be humble before him.
The second benefit of these truths is that they require us to be absolutely submitted to God’s Word—even the parts that are difficult for us to accept or hear.
If you’re new to the faith, and you’re unsettled by this doctrine, it may be hard to hear that this is not the only difficult doctrine in the Bible; there are plenty of doctrines that are difficult for us to accept, and if we are to follow God, we have to make a concerted effort to submit ourselves to all of his Word, and not just the parts that we’re comfortable with.
The last benefit of these truths we’ll see today is a passion for God’s glory.
I’ve talked a good bit about God’s glory today. In case it’s not clear what that word means, God’s glory is all of his attributes—his love, his power, his wisdom, his justice, etc.—made visible. When we see God for who he is, in all the fullness of his character, we see his glory.
That may be tricky for some of us, because we might place more importance on some of God’s attributes than others. For example, most people would say God’s love is his most important attribute, citing 1 Corinthians 13.13: So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
The problem is this verse isn’t talking about God’s love, but ours; Paul never says that love is the best thing in God—he said it’s the highest virtue that could be present in us.
But God’s glory cannot be put in a bottleneck: it cannot be reduced to his love, as if his other attributes do not bring him glory. God’s justice is just as important to his glory as his grace. God’s wrath is just as important to his glory as his love. God wills to display the fullness of who he is, not only a part of who he is. That necessarily includes a display of his justice and his judgment against sin.
If we choose to trust God that he knows what he’s doing when he hardens the Pharaoh’s heart, it will be because we place more value in his glory than in our own understanding.
And—please hear me—we have to do this. We absolutely must place more value in his glory than in our own understanding, because if we don’t, we will never fully accept why Jesus Christ had to come and die. We’ll see Christ’s life as a mere example to follow, and his death as a mere symbol of sacrificial love, and his resurrection as a mere image of victory over evil.
But Christ’s life, death and resurrection are far more significant than that. Christ lived a perfect life in our place because we couldn’t do it, and if any of us were to be saved, a perfect human life had to be lived, to fulfill God’s covenant with his people. Christ died the death we deserved in our place, because all sin deserves punishment, and the only appropriate punishment against sin is infinite punishment—something no ordinary human being could ever endure. Christ was raised so that he might apply his perfect life and his perfect death to us, sinners as we are, his death might be counted as ours, and so that we might share in his life.
These are truths we can never adequately understand, and if we are to accept them, God’s glory—seeing God for who he is—has to be more important than our understanding of how it all works.
The same is true for all these other doctrines as well. When we accept that God is absolutely sovereign over all aspects of salvation and judgment and creation, we do so because we know his glory is more important than our own understanding of how this all works. If we wait to understand it all, we’ll never accept anything more than a surface-level “Jesus was a good teacher” kind of faith, which isn’t faith at all.
But if we desire to see God’s glory, we’ll accept even those truths we don’t understand, and trust that God understands what we don’t. And in so doing, we will see his glory. And that glory will be our greatest comfort in life and in death: knowing that God is in control, and he is faithful to fulfill his promises, and he is wise and good. These truths are spiritual weight for our souls, the things that keep us steady when the waves begin to crash over us. What a gift it is to serve a God who is incomprehensible!