ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK EXODUS DR. DAVID ADAMS #34 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> When I was reading this section, I was troubled by the fact that God would harden the heart of Pharaoh. I have been. I found myself wondering how in the world I could preach on a text like that or even what I would say about it if I had to cover it in Bible class. I mean, how could a loving God harden the heart of Pharaoh? Could he do the same thing to anyone? Would he? >> One of the reasons that this passage seems so problematic to us is that we tend to take it out of its context and to universalize it, to make it something more than is actually being said here. And as a result of doing that, as a result of decontextualizing, that's the big literary word, as a result of taking it out of its context, we then, therefore, try to soften it, to make it fit our idea of who God should be or what God should do. And we say things like "Well, God isn't really hardening Pharaoh's heart. What he's really doing is sort of confirming Pharaoh in his sinfulness" or something like that. Well, let's take a look at what the text actually says in Chapter 7 Verse 3. We read, "I will harden Pharaoh's heart" -- this is God speaking. "I will harden Pharaoh's heart so that when I multiply my signs and wonders in the lands of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgement. Then the Egyptians shall know that I am Yahweh when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them." Well, what's this about in its context here? In the context God is saying that he's going to harden Pharaoh's heart so that he can demonstrate to the world that he is the true God. That by the signs and wonders he will do, Pharaoh will be forced to give in to his will. And therefore, he will demonstrate to the Hebrews, to Pharaoh and the Egyptians and to the whole world, that Yahweh alone is the true God who has power over creation. The gods of the Egyptians cannot stand up against him. So when we look at this passage, the first thing that we need to realize is that this is not a question of the salvation of Pharaoh. We're not talking in this text about Pharaoh's eternal destiny or whether Pharaoh will go to heaven or hell. The issue here is God is creating a situation in which he can demonstrate his power to the world. If Moses had simply gone to Pharaoh and Moses had said "Let my people go" and Pharaoh had said, "Okay. You can go," well, part of God's plan would have been accomplished. He would have brought the Hebrews out of Egypt. And he could take them onto the Promised Land. But God wouldn't have demonstrated even to the Hebrews much less to the Egyptians or to the whole world that he was the one true God, more powerful than the gods of the Egyptians. So in order to reveal who Yahweh really is, Pharaoh must oppose God's plan to give God the opportunity to defeat the gods of Egypt before the whole world on the stage, you know, that is set. So this is not about the salvation of Pharaoh. It's really not about Pharaoh at all. By showing Egypt who Yahweh is, Yahweh is in a sense even being gracious to Egypt. You know, if by seeing that Yahweh is the true God, then Pharaoh and all of Egypt at least have the opportunity to acknowledge him in faith and to recognize who he is. In fact, as we'll see later in the text, Pharaoh does that. It doesn't last. But he at least does recognize that Yahweh is the great and true God. This does raise another question. And that is the question of God's omnipotence. Now, how are we to understand it? And this is in a class in the doctrine of God so I don't want to spend a great deal of time on this. But I do want to point out that in the context of the book of Exodus here, the omnipotence of God and the fact that nothing happens apart from God's will should be a great comfort to us. The fact that God is omnipotent is, you know -- shows us that he is able to deliver on his promise to save us. Because the true God is not like the false gods of the ancient world, none of whom is actually in control of things. The true God is in control. He is able to do everything that he wants. He is able to accomplish his will in every sphere of activity. Therefore, we can have confidence that God is able to deliver on our -- on his promise to save us. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***