The Sovereignty of God and the Hardness of Man's Heart

Introduction

Read Exodus 8:1-15

I am always amazed by the amount of people who travel to see great works of man or God and spend the majority of their time on their phones.

Big Idea: Every individual will have to respond to God’s greatness.

Explanation

A pattern takes place in this text: God sends Moses to Pharaoh to ask him to let the Israelites go. Pharaoh refuses. God sends a plague. Pharaoh asks Moses to stop it. Moses asks God, and God stops it. Pharaoh’s heart becomes more hardened to God, and he doesn’t let God’s people go. Rinse and Repeat.

The Frogs (Exodus 8:1-15). are only the beginning of the plagues that would be set upon Egypt. After the frogs would be:

3. Gnats (Ex. 8:16-19)

4. Flies (Ex. 8:20-32)

5. Livestock Deaths (9:1-7)

6. Boils (9:8-12)

7. Hail (9:13-35)

8. Locusts (10:1-20)

9. Darkness (10:21-29)

10. Death of the Firstborn Sons (11-12)

We could spend months mining the smallest of details each section of the narrative. I would recommend that study, but we don’t have enough time for it today. The first step is asking what is similar and what is different. Today, we are going to ask what is similar - four things in particular.

Moses’ God, Yahweh, is the only God.

God shows his power over the earth and everything in it by his powerful works.

Pharaoh, seeing all these works, still hardens his heart against God’s command for him.

God also hardens Pharaoh’s heart that his wrath might be poured out upon the Egyptians for their treatment of the Israelites.

Application

Moses’ God, Yahweh, is the only God.

The plagues are not random. Each plague specifically regards the gods of the Egyptians. There was no Egyptian God of everything like Yahweh; they each had specific things that the were reigned over - Ra - sun, Hoqet (frog) - childbirth.

God takes each Egyptian god’s responsibility, and says, “Yea, actually, I am the boss of that. I made the sun, I made the Nile, etc.

God is absolutely without rival.

Students, there is no philosophy that is too powerful for God. No science contains or disproves Him.

Throughout the Bible, God consistently confronts the smartest, most powerful, and wealthy cultures in the world, and he turns them on their head every time.

Egypt , Assyria, Babylon, Persia. Greece, and the Roman Empire all shook their fist and lost.

We are arrogant to think that simply because we are more advanced than any culture that has ever existed that we anything we say is correct.

If you go to class, and a professor tries to tell you something that disproves God or that Christians are stupid or that God is not real, I want to invite you to come and find me with those questions or find someone who can answer them.

Exodus 8:19: The magicians couldn’t replicate what was happening with the gnats so they said, “This is the finger of God.”

Magician could also be read, “wise man.” The smartest in the most powerful nation on the world had to finally acknowledge that God was doing something that they couldn’t explain or replicate.

These gods represented something physical that the people of Egypt wanted.

a. Power, Money, Strength, Fertility, etc. were all represented among the Egyptian gods.

b. As God kills the bulls in the field, God is showing dominion over the Egyptian god of prosperity, most commonly depicted in the form of a bull.

c. If you don’t think that people in our nation (with our modern sensibilities) would bow down, worship, burn incense, and sacrifice to a statue of a bull, crocodile, lion, or a frog to get more money, power, prestige, or health if they believed that it would actually be granted to them, you are sadly mistaken. Because people do much more foolish things every day.

God shows his power over the earth and everything in it by his powerful works.

We have one perfect designation. God is Creator, and everything else is creation.

Even Satan and his dominion of darkness are no match for God.

Pharaoh, seeing all these works, still hardens his heart against God’s command for him.

Pharaoh hardened his heart towards God in three instances. The other instances, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, Himself.

Before we ask why God would harden someone’s heart, we have to ask, we must be warned against hardening our own hearts against God.

Exodus—Saved for God's Glory The Hardest of Hearts

Pharaoh’s hardness of heart is a warning to anyone who has witnessed God’s power but refuses to receive God’s grace.

Phillip Ryken

3. Pharaoh‘s heart has the ability to expose our own hardness. Hardness of heart is a refusal to acknowledge that God is God and worthy of our obedience.

A. Hardness of heart can mean blatant disregard for God. (Pharaoh asked, “Who is God?” and said, “I will not serve Him.”

B. Hardness of heart can also mean lip service with no action.

Hail, “I have sinned.” - lack of repentance.

C. Hardness of heart can mean bargaining for what we want before we will obey.

Locusts, “Take the men with you.”

D. Hardness of heart means acknowledging God until you get what you want.

Darkness. “Take everything, but leave the livestock,” then “You will die if I ever seen your face again.”

God also hardens Pharaoh’s heart that his wrath might be poured out upon the Egyptians for their treatment of the Israelites.

Exodus—Saved for God's Glory The Hardest of Hearts

One of the mysteries of God’s sovereignty is that he hardens people in their sins, thereby condemning them to their own depravity, which is exactly what happened to Pharaoh.

Phillip Ryken

God exposed Pharaoh as a man and not a god. The king of Egypt was often depicted as a god. We see character flaws. We see unwise decisions. We see blatant hypocrisy. We see severe limitations. We see stubbornness and pride.

God judged Pharaoh for what he had done.

The people of Israel are not subjected to any of these plagues.

4. So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. // Romans 9:16

Conclusion

There is no God like our God. Maybe fear and anxiety and worry have crept their way into your life because you have forgotten that God is good, and God is great. Today, we remember that He is both faithful and able.

When you see all that God went through to redeem and reclaim his people, know that he did that for you too! Jesus went to the cross for you! Walk into a life of redemption.