I want to look at really Exodus 5 through 15. We're not going to deal, of course, with all of that. And actually, our main focus is going to be on a word study, actually multiple word studies that come together to help us understand this concept of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. Now, there's so much related to...
God's confrontation with Pharaoh through Moses and Aaron and the plagues. I posted a very short article for you about some of the elements in which the plagues display God's power over particular Egyptian gods, which is very interesting. And there are more extensive studies on that.
Some scholars kind of push back on some of it. Just understand that you're going to find disagreement among scholars if you really want to study that. But what I want to focus us in on today is this idea of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, because it is a potentially problematic theological discussion. Someone just kind of reading through the text, or if you just read a particular verse, when you see that the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he would not listen. That that's very disconcerting for people, right?
To just read a verse like that and say, well, why, why wouldn't God want Pharaoh to listen? Why did God take away Pharaoh's freedom to, um, to choose to follow God, right? If he had wanted to.
Okay. So that is a very complex, um, it's a very important discussion that I want us to look at. And the first point that I want to make to you is it's actually not as straightforward as we may, as we may think.
Um, I don't know how easily you're going to be able to see this on your screen. I'll post this for you and understand this isn't, this might not have every single bit of the data on it, but it gives you some ideas of what's going on. The complexity that we see here is that it's, we're not dealing with one Hebrew word.
We're dealing with three Hebrew words. So these first two are the Hebrew word Chazak. The second two are the Hebrew word Chabad.
And the last one. is the Hebrew word kashe. And in the first two, we're dealing with one word but two different Hebrew stems. And remember I told you, stems change meaning. So chazak in both the kol and the piyel and kavid in both the kol and the hifiyel.
Right, so if you just look at the differences in meaning, chazak in the kol means to be strong, but it also means to be firm or to be hard. And so this word in the call is always describing Pharaoh's heart, that Pharaoh's heart is hard. And we kind of get the picture of that metaphor.
It's a stone, right? It's not, it's not pliant. It won't move, right?
The PL then, if this is always describing just a description of Pharaoh's heart, it is hard. The PL then is always the action of the Lord. And this is to make something strong, firm, or hard. So this is the real idea of hardening, right?
Something um, that was already hard here, but now is hardened, um, there. Um, same with the word kaved in the call, um, again, always a descriptor of Pharaoh's heart. Um, this is a very interesting one.
Um, it can mean to be heavy, um, that's kind of a, it's a, to be something to be weighty. Um, and in that sense, this, this word can also mean glory to, to give, to be honored. Um, because if a, person has a lot of weight, they are honored, right? That's kind of how that metaphor plays out.
But it can also mean, and in this case with the heart, this is what it means, to be dull, to be desensitized or insensitive to. Understand the idea of the heart in Hebrew. In English, especially, we think of the heart as the seat of the emotions and the mind as the seat of our reason or intellect. In Hebrew, those two are combined. the heart, the lev, is both the seed of the emotion, but it's also the idea, what we think of as the mind, the seed of reason, of thought, of decision making.
So lev, actually the word, what we often mostly translate as heart in Hebrew often does get translated as mind as well. So the mind becomes desensitized to, or the heart, I mean, it works both ways. And then in the Hithiel, three times Pharaoh makes his own heart dull or desensitized. And then the last time that this word occurs in the hyphial, it is the Lord taking this action.
And then finally, the hyphial of kashe. This is the idea of making something hard or stiff. It's often maybe most...
familiar to you with the idea of God says that the Israelites are stiff, a stiff-necked people, meaning they're stubborn, right? So this is the picture of if you have a dog or an animal, a dog with a leash around, excuse me, a collar around their neck and you hook a leash to it and you're walking along and you want the dog to go that way and the dog sees a squirrel and wants to go that way. What does the dog do? The dog makes its neck stiff. stiff, right?
It hardens, it stiffens its neck so that as you're pulling the leash to go this way, the dog is stiffening its neck because he wants to go that way, right? That's the imagery. That's the picture of the stiffening, the hardening that happens with this word.
Okay, so the first thing we see, there's complexity here. There's not just one action that's happening. There are There's a combination of both state of being and action that I want to look at a little more specifically here. So there's this description word, the call of both to be hard and to be dull or desensitized.
And I've already mentioned this word, the kavod word here a little bit, but let me let me show you just a couple of good illuminating verses. Remember, this is what we do when we do a word study. We want to see, are there other um places that help us see it this idea of being desensitized or being insensitive to being dulled um to um here in Zechariah they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder that's a different word than the stiff neck it's another way to say that it's different words they stopped their ears now here this is the idea of kabod um but related to ears as opposed to heart um so made their ears insensitive to. They desensitize their ears or these two translations are actually kind of saying like they plugged their ears. It looks like a kid.
Man, I'm not going to listen to you, right? That kind of idea. So they stopped their ears.
They plugged their ears in order not to hear. This is this word here, this idea of making my ears so they don't work the way they're supposed to. Think about now that related to the heart.
I'm making my heart. So that does not do what it's supposed to do, right? I'm not going to give attention to. On the other hand, in Isaiah, behold, the Lord's hand is not so short that it cannot save, nor his ear. Again, this is related to the ear specifically as opposed to the heart, but neither is his ear so dull that it cannot hear.
And remember, we're supposed to have, if we reflect who God is, our heart should be as God's heart, which is not dull. not desensitized to. So we go back to this idea of Pharaoh's heart and Pharaoh is making his heart. So notice that when this happens, the idea of the state of being of Pharaoh's heart from the very first evidence, from the moment when the staff, when Moses has his staff turned to Aaron, has the staff turned to snake, Pharaoh's heart from the get-go is described as hard. And then again at the first plague, at the third plague, and at the seventh plague.
All of those moments, Pharaoh's heart is described as being hard. Whereas it's described as being dull, desensitized, insensitive, at the first plague. And again after the fifth plague.
So we have consistently this emphasis on the fact this is the state of being a Pharaoh's heart. It is hard. It is desensitized. It is dulled.
It is not responding in the way it should respond. And then there's this move from state of being also to action. But look at the progression here.
When the Lord takes the action of taking Pharaoh's hard, desensitized heart and then making it hard with an action, he announces that in advance in chapter 4. He says, God knows in his omniscience. Outside of time and space, he knows that ultimately he will be stepping in to do this. I think we must emphasize that inside of time and space, as we go through all of the earlier signs and then through the first five plagues, we would argue that Pharaoh has a true chance to respond to God in... in the way that he should.
And yet he doesn't. We see that he doesn't. And so then it is at the sixth plague, not until the sixth plague, and then again at the eighth, the ninth, the tenth, and then again at the Red Sea, God says he steps in and actively hardens Pharaoh's heart. Same with this idea of making the heart. desensitized, making the heart dull.
Pharaoh does that at the second plague, at the fourth plague, and at the seventh plague. So not only is Pharaoh's heart desensitized, he actively works to make his heart desensitized. Again, if it were the ears, it would be the imagery of he's desensitizing, dulling the ears by stopping them up.
He's dulling his heart. He's at, you know, the ways. How does Pharaoh go about dulling his heart?
We'll look at that briefly in a minute. And then the Lord doesn't do that until the eighth plague. This idea of stiffening, again, the Lord said before the staff turns into a snake, the Lord stiffens Pharaoh's heart.
That's early, but then Pharaoh has done this again by the tenth. The real progression that we see, and that's the second main point. Oh, I should come back.
The real progression that we see. is in these two, that Pharaoh is taking the action before the Lord ever steps in and takes the action. Again, the Lord does not step in here and take this action until the sixth plague.
The New Testament does quite a bit with this idea. So going to Romans chapters 9 through 11, kind of the pinnacle, what the whole book of Romans is kind of leading to, God talking about he... hardens the heart of the Jews so that for the salvation of the Gentiles. So God, Paul uses this kind of imagery. But I would send you to Hebrews chapter three.
Let's go there just briefly. Talking about how using this idea from quoting from the Psalms, but this idea of how the people hardened their heart. And then this is what the author of Hebrews tells us. Take care, brother. brothers and sisters, that there not be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God, but encourage one another, exhort one another day by day, daily, so long as it is still called today, so that, what's the purpose of this encouraging, of this exhorting, so that none of you will be hardened by it.
The deceitfulness of sin. The deceitfulness of sin is now what can act upon us. So note the idea of the state of being, right? I need to ensure that what is in me is not an evil, unbelieving heart because that state of being, when acted upon by the deceitfulness of sin, will cause the hardening of a heart, is what Hebrews chapter 3 tells us.
So in this complexity, there's also this progression. And the question I think we ask is, what is the posture of my heart? What is the state of being of my heart?
This is, I use the clay imagery. My pastor recently used the butter imagery. I like this idea now of the image of butter or clay.
What is this posture, the state of being of my heart? So that when God's action takes place, how the type of heart I have will respond in different ways. Obviously, think about the idea of the sun and butter versus clay. What is butter going to do when acted upon by the sun?
Well, it's going to melt, right? What is clay going to do? It's going to harden when acted upon by the sun, by action. It's going to harden until ultimately when a final action happens, think the 10th plague, what happens?
to that hard-fired clay, well, it just shatters. The end result of my posture before God is laid low, right? But this, with butter, it's in a picture of submission and of giving myself.
With clay, it's a picture of being just shattered. And so I think that's the call that we have. is what is the posture of my heart? The Holy Spirit needs to come and change the very posture of my heart so that I am better before God.
Let's look very briefly at the ways Pharaoh postured himself. If I go to 1.10, we see that he acts shrewdly, or you might check some different versions. You might find the word wisely, because it is just the word that we often translate wise or wisdom. But a wisdom, an evil wisdom of our fallen world, right? His shrewd action against God's people that he was seeing as a threat to him were enslavement and murder, a wisdom, but a very perverse, a very twisted, a very fallen, sinful wisdom that we have there.
But he acts shrewdly. That's the posture of his heart. posture of protecting himself. We also see in 8 and 17, he also doesn't see here, he doesn't look at humanity and see humanity.
He sees the Hebrews and sees in slaves, he sees life that is not worth keeping. And in 8 and 17 of chapter 5, when the people are, when the Hebrews are being oppressed even further, make bricks with no straw, And then the Hebrew overseers come and say, please stop. We can't handle this. What's Pharaoh's response? You're lazy.
He does not see the truth and the validity of the plight of the humans, the human beings, those created in the image of God before him. That is a deceitfulness of sin, right? That we don't imbue the people that we see with... full humanity. We also see in chapter 5 verse 9, this is when Pharaoh says, make them work harder so that they pay no attention to lies.
Of course, he's talking about what Moses is saying to them about the truth about who God is, and so not being able to distinguish truth from lie. And then ultimately for me, chapter 5 verse 2, how do I see the posture of Pharaoh's heart? Pharaoh says when Moses and Aaron came to him and tell them that the Lord says to let the people go, Pharaoh responds, who is the Lord that I should obey him and let people go?
I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go. So this heart that refuses to acknowledge, to know, to see who God is, is these I think are some... pictures of what Hebrews 3 calls sin's deceitfulness that is seeking to take a heart that is already evil and unbelieving and harden it to the point of complete rebellion against who God is. Okay, the last thing I want us to look at when we think about the hardening of the heart. So the idea of a progression, I think, is most important that people see is that God does not just jump in from the very beginning and say, okay, I'm never going to give Pharaoh a chance.
Pharaoh has multiple opportunities, but Pharaoh's heart itself is already in a state consistently that is against God in different types of ways. And then Pharaoh comes in and makes his heart that in different types of way. the idea of desensitizing his heart, taking action on his own heart. And so I think that's a very important theological point that we help people see as they're processing and understanding what's happening here. The other thing I think it's very important that we ask is what is God's purpose here?
And we see that in a few key passages. Let's go through those just very briefly. In Exodus 10, the Lord says, go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart. God says this is kaved here.
So this is that desensitizing idea. I have made his heart dull. I have desensitized his heart and the heart of his servant so that I may perform these signs of mine among them. And that you may tell him the presence of your son and your grandson, how I made a mockery, how I made fools of the Egyptians, and how I performed my signs among them. So that, I would say this is kind of the ultimate so that, so that you may know that I am the Lord.
So one of God's purposes here. is to let his people know who he is. Remember when Moses first came, they weren't in verses chapters five and six, they weren't sure how to react.
And so God is, this is a moment, this Exodus, this whole Exodus moment is a moment of God making himself known to his people. But then look in Exodus chapter 14. So this is at the Red Sea. I will harden Pharaoh's heart. This is Chazak here, that making it hard.
He will chase after them. And I will be honored through Pharaoh and all his army. And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord. So this is also about God, not just for his own people, but this is truly God revealing himself to the world through this major superpower at this moment of the Egyptians, right? God will be honored.
By the way, this is the word kavod. This is the same idea of being... dull being weighty, but this is when it applied to God, this is God being honored. And that's a little, that gets a little confusing. Okay.
Um, and then the Egyptians will know and keep going here in chapter 14. Um, I will harden the heart to indigenous so that they will go in after them into the red sea and I will be honored. Um, then the Egyptians will know when I am honored. So those same ideas, keep in mind this idea of, of God, God's revelation to the world. So that he becomes known and is acknowledged and is honored as God. I think this is a picture of grace that we see.
This is going to come up again in the golden calf and our discussion on the golden calf. So just keep that in mind. Ultimately, though, what is the purpose of the entire Exodus experience?
This is in chapter 6. Also occurs back in chapter 4 in different wording. Say therefore to the sons of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the labors of the Egyptians, and I will rescue you from their bondage. I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments, talking about the plagues.
Then, then I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. picture of the relational nature of the covenant. And you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brought you out from under the labors of the Egyptians. And I will bring you into the land. So the whole picture of the covenant here, which I swore to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you as a possession.
I am the Lord. This is the ultimate purpose. The ultimate purpose here is for freedom, for freedom of God's people, not just freedom from bondage, but freedom into the full picture of the covenant, of God's people being transformed fully into God's image, right?
God's people dwelling in God's place, the land, with full access to his presence for the purpose of bearing his image in, with, and for the entire world. I mean, that is the ultimate purpose. purpose and God is that purpose is going to happen.
And the hearts that are involved have a true choice to posture themselves in such a way to respond to God's action in a way that submits to his, to his action and actually allows them to participate in his action or to be shattered before God, um, in an unwillingness to participate. in that action. And it is the heart that Pharaoh had developed in himself actively doing things along the way that ultimately resulted in his being shattered in light of God's ultimate purpose. But in the process, God does reveal himself to the Egyptians and begins that ultimate purpose of bringing all humanity into saving relational knowledge of.
God. Very complex situation. Again, I'll post this for you so you can see this.
The last thing I want to do really quickly, oh, Exodus chapter 14, the way God works. We often want God to work in very specific ways, don't we? Let's look really briefly at just a few things.
So tell the Israelites, God says at the beginning of chapter 14, the Israelites are out. They're gone. They've made it out. Tell the Israelites to turn back, God says. and encamp near Pi-Ha-Hirot, between Migdal and the sea.
They are to encamp by the sea directly opposite Baal-Zephon. Pharaoh will think the Israelites are wandering around the land in confusion, hemmed in by the desert. So God is using a strategy of apparent confusion to bring about ultimate victory for his people.
Then I will harden Pharaoh's heart and he will pursue them. But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army. And the Egyptians will know that I am Lord. So we see that same purposing.
This is the move of God to get his people completely away from the Egyptians through this strategy of apparent confusion. How much that it felt. Okay, keep on going down to verse 10. The Israelites look up, they see the Egyptians marching after them. And how do the people respond?
How do we respond? We're terrified. And they cried out to God.
Weren't there enough graves in Egypt? Moses answers in verse 13, do not be afraid. Stand firm. And you will see the deliverance of the Lord. That the Lord will bring you today.
The Egyptians you see today, you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. And indeed, verse 19, so we say, how is the Lord going to fight for them? The angel of God, who had been traveling in front of Israel's army, withdrew.
Wait, what? Withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front. Now back in 322, it said neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people, right? This was the assurance, the physical manifestation of God's presence.
They could always see it in front of them. It left. It left from leading, from being in front and moved behind. And what was the purpose? coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel, right?
Those moments when I feel like, wait a minute, God's not where he always is. I don't, God's, wait, wait, God, what's happening? God has moved to a place of protection.
Throughout the night, the cloud brought darkness to one side, but light to the other. So God, though it feels something changes, something's different, God's presence moves. I am never outside of the touch of God, the illumination of his light.
So neither went near each other all night long. Of course, you're not going to want to leave the light to go to the dark. But then what happens? Moses stretched out his hands over the sea and all that night, the Lord drove back the sea with a strong east wind. I don't think we often see this.
Hollywood doesn't do this. They lived in the midst of a hurricane for an entire night, right? And Until the waters were divided and the Israelites went through on dry ground. But then, of course, the Egyptians pursued them.
And during the last watch of the night, verse 24, the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army. What did he do? He threw them into confusion. So our strategy of apparent confusion at the beginning is real confusion that God unleashes upon the Egyptian army.
He jams their wheels. And the Egyptians say at the end of 25, let's get away from the Israelites. The Lord, Yahweh, is what we have there, is fighting for them against Egypt.
Think about the purpose of God to make himself known, to make himself honored before the Egyptians. It happens right here. And then, of course, the waters flow back so that the... The army is engulfed.
But look at verse 29 through 31. Here's the purpose. Always looking for that purpose. The Israelites went through the sea on dry ground with a wall of water on their right and on their left. That day, the Lord saved Israel.
Think about what we said back in chapter six, right? This was one of God's purposes from the hands of the Egyptians. And Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore.
And when the Israelites saw. The mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians. The people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses, his servant. We're going to see how God is working that fear in them, ultimately for his purpose throughout the rest of the book of Exodus.
Thank you.