Pharaoh hard heart

And the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him: 

And that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son's son, what things I have wrought in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that ye may know how that I am the LORD. Exo 10:1-2

 

 

How God hardened Pharaoh's heart

 

I. By a manifestation of rich mercy, which ought to have melted the heart of the king.

II. By a manifestation of great power, which ought to have subdued the heart of the king.

III. By a manifestation of severe justice, which might have rebuked the heart of the king.

IV. By sending His servants to influence the heart of the king to the right. God did not harden Pharaoh's heart by a sovereign decree, so that he could not obey His command; but by ministries appropriate to salvation, calculated to induce obedience—the constant neglect of which was the efficient cause of this sad moral result.

Lessons:

1. That man has the ability to resist the saving ministries of heaven.

2. That when man resists the saving ministries of heaven he becomes hard in heart.

3. That hardness of heart is itself a natural judgment from God.

4. That hardness of heart will finally work its own ruin.

(J. S. Exell, M. A.)

 

The plagues

 

So, allowing all that may be called romantic, supernatural, to fall off from this story of the plagues, there remains all that God wanted to remain—three things:—First, the assertion of the Divine right in life. God cannot be turned out of His own creation; He must assert His claim, and urge it, and redeem it. The second thing that remains is the incontestable fact of human opposition to Divine voices. Divine voices call to right, to purity, to nobleness, to love, to brotherhood; and every day we resist these voices, and assert rebellious claims. The third thing that remains is the inevitable issue. We cannot fight God and win. "It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks." Why smite with feeble fist the infinite granite of the infinite strength? Who will lose? The certain result will be the overthrow of the sinner: the drowning of every Pharaoh who hardens himself against the Divine will and voice. Now that I come to think of it, have not all these plagues followed my own obstinacy and hardness of heart in relation to things Divine? We speak of the plagues of Egypt as though they began and ended in that distant land, and we regard them now as part of an exciting historical romance. I will think otherwise of them. The local incident and the local colour maybe dispensed with, but the supreme fact in my own consciousness is that God always follows my obstinacy with plagues. Dangers are rightly used when they move us to bolder prayer; losses are turned into gains when they lift our lives in an upward direction; disease is the beginning of health when it leads the sufferer to the Father's house. Pharaoh had his plagues, many and awful; and every life has its penal or chastening visitations, which for the present are full of agony and bitterness, but which may be so used as to become the beginning of new liberties and brighter joys.

(J. Parker, D. D.)