Thoughts in Exodus

Thoughts in Exodus by John W. Ritenbaugh

Exodus 4:21

"And the LORD said to Moses, When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go."

  Exodus 7:3

"And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt."

  Exodus 14:4

"Then I will harden Pharaoh's heart, so that he will pursue them; and I will gain honor over Pharaoh and over all his army, that the Egyptians may know that I am the LORD.And they did so."

God allows some people to be very difficult to deal with. "And the Lord said to Moses, 'When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go'" (Exodus 4:21).

It was not mere happenstance that this Pharaoh was particularly hardheaded, nor was he merely reacting to circumstance. God allowed him to be intractable in order that His own purposes could be fulfilled.

God did a similar thing to Ezekiel before Israel: Behold, I have made your face strong against their faces, and your forehead strong against their foreheads. Like adamant stone, harder than flint, I have made your forehead; do not be afraid of them, nor be dismayed at their looks, though they are a rebellious house. (Ezekiel 3:8-9)

If God will do this for one of His servants, a prophet, why can He not do it to Pharaoh, who, though an enemy of His people, is also serving God's purpose?

Exodus says Pharaoh's heart was hardened nineteen times, and of that total, ten say God hardened Pharaoh's heart and nine that Pharaoh hardened it. This shows a balance. Undoubtedly, Pharaoh had a proclivity toward stubbornness, but God allowed it and helped it along.

This suggests that on occasion God will use free moral agency to suit the purpose He is working out. If life and our destiny to be in the Kingdom of God is all a matter of free moral agency, then free moral agency is supreme, not the Creator God.

This is further underscored on other occasions revealed in the Exodus events. The sovereign God's power, when combined with Pharaoh's God-aided stubbornness, produced a calamity of monumental proportions for Egypt and glory for the eternal God. God says in Exodus 7:3-5:

And I will multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh will not heed you, so that I may lay My hand on Egypt and bring My armies and My people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out My hand on Egypt and bring out the children of Israel from among them.

His ultimate intention in allowing Pharaoh to be stubbornly opposed to God is that God's people Israel be set free and so "the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord..."  His good purpose is to deliver His people from oppression and to deliver His people's oppressors from their spiritual blindness and sin.

When the struggles you face seem to have no easy solution, you may trust that the Lord who loves you is orchestrating all the circumstances around you to your perfect good, even as He was the circumstances that faced the Israelites.

Furthermore, He was maneuvering the events to the good of the opposition as well.  Because our God loves all mankind, He is ever striving to bring all men to a knowledge of Jesus and His saving truth.