A Hard Heart

February 6, 2018

The Exodus story in the Bible never ceases to amaze me. What it teaches about leadership is invaluable, and something most people I’ve seen in positions of leadership have apparently never understood. Then there is the purpose of all the plagues God brought upon Egypt; repeatedly he tells Moses that he is working his signs and wonders so that his people would know that he is Yahweh, that there is none like him, that the earth belongs to him, and that he makes a difference between the unbelievers and his people. Over and over, we read, “that you may know...” God doesn’t want us ignorant of his power, but unfortunately, too often we settle for the weak and miserly power of this world, and miss out on the deliverance with which he stands ready to save.

One of the most difficult themes of this story is the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. At the outset, God makes it clear that he is going to harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he will refuse to let the people go until Egypt is devastated. This is not the kind, benevolent, and harmless God so often depicted in Sunday School and other popular literature and preaching. This God strides through the heart of the story with transcendent majesty and authority. It’s interesting though, that it all begins with Pharaoh hardening his own heart. It begins passively enough; “Pharaoh’s heart grew hard.” (7:13, 22) Then in 8:15, “he hardened his [own] heart”—implying that he made a deliberate and conscious decision. Following this, in 8:19, the passive, “his heart grew hard” before again in 8:32 the active, he “hardened his heart.” The hardening is then passive in 9:7 (his “heart became hard”), before the LORD hardened his heart in 9:12. 9:34 has Pharaoh hardening his heart at the end of the eighth plague, and from then on, God did the hardening in 10:1, 20, 27, and 11:10.

It is (to me) an interesting study in the psychology and progression of Pharaoh’s resistance to what God is doing. It was a classic contest of power, God vs. Pharaoh, winner take all, loser lose everything. Except for one thing: it wasn’t necessary for it to play out as it did. Had Pharaoh let Israel go early on, he would have retained power and prestige. As it was, he lost it all in his insistence on holding on to what he illegitimately claimed as his own. Lest the lesson be lost on us, whenever we hold tightly to what we believe are our own rights and privileges, we end up hardening our hearts against the work of God, and God himself. Ultimately, in this power struggle, we will find God himself against us. I don’t know exactly when we cross that line, but there always comes a time when if we refuse God, that self-hardening of our hearts becomes confirmed by God himself. May I never allow myself to get to that place! Tonight, I am thankful for the Scriptures that give me plenty of examples of how not to live, as well as the example of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit to live as I should.