Lobbied hard by Moses, and enduring a staggering round of catastrophes, the Pharaoh of Egypt refuses to liberate his Hebrew slaves. The theological rationale? "Pharaoh's heart was hardened." Does God sponsor or even compel evil in someone's heart?
But recall that we don't zoom in on a single verse and expect it to carry too much theological freight. If we read the broader story, we detect a fascinating pattern: at first, in Exodus 7 and 8, it is Pharaoh who hardens his own heart. The verb, kabed, means "grew heavy": Pharaoh's heart ossified, and sank like a stone. We are deep into the story, in Exodus 9, before the text says "The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart." Repeatedly, Pharaoh steels himself against God - but this God is more clever than the most conniving tyrant, so God lets Pharaoh be Pharaoh and uses that sinking stone heart to dramatize God's own glory!
The fact that the mighty Pharaoh clung with all his desperate might to the Hebrews, but still lost them, is eloquent testimony to the unthwartable power of God - and the Pharaoh, who pretended to be divine, was humiliatingly debunked in the process. As we will see in future emails, God is not merely frustrated by evil, but can actually use evil to achieve God's good purpose. Preaching about God's perfect freedom, Paul alludes to Pharaoh's hardening (Romans 9:17).
This pattern of hardening alerts us to a peril we all face. We turn away from God, we ignore God - and some hardening happens in us. Evil gathers momentum, or as St. Augustine suggested, "When sinful desire is served, it becomes habit, and when habit is not resisted, it becomes necessity." We get stuck, we shackle ourselves in a chain of habit. God grieves, God pleads, God bends over backwards to lure us back - but when we consistently refuse to say "Thy will be done" to God, God says to us, "Thy will be done." Or as Paul wrote, God makes the truth plain to us, "but we exchange God's truth for a lie... So God gives us up to our passions" (Romans 1:26).
Human nature can be stubborn; and in the Bible it seems that the more we have, the graver the danger of our hearts growing brittle and sinking. Pharaoh was haughty, or as Moses chided him, "How long will you refuse to humble yourself before God?" (Exodus 10:3) - a superb question for all of us. Like Pharaoh, we see disasters all around; can we pull back the curtain and perceive the hidden warning that we find ourselves in a world bent on rebellion against God? and that we must have attentive hearts, softened by the mercy, justice and strange work of God? Do we risk habitual revolt against God, with the possibility that God will "give us up" and harden our own preferred hardness?
James
james@mpumc.org
Sunday's sermon on the call of Abraham (Genesis 12) may be heard if you click here.
The complete email series on Bible Questions can be found if you click here.
Coming up:
eBibleQuestions14 - What about the Laws of the Old Testament?
eBibleQuestions15 - Why so much warfare in the Bible?
eBibleQuestions16 - What can archaeology tell us? and not tell us?
