God and our hard hearts

Ever feel like a 2 year old when you study scripture… why, why , why....

Intro

Have you ever seen the cables of a suspension bridge? There are different parts to the suspention bridge, there's the foundation, the towers, the deck That you drive on, there’s the main cables, and there’s the hangers that connect the deck to the main cables. Now of course each part of the suspention bridge is important. But some parts play a bigger role or are much more apparent than others. For example, the main cables. The main cables are the cables that run from one side to the other. They are the cables that the weight of the deck of the bridge is supported.

If you would have spoken to me a year ago, I would have told you that marriage was part of the Bible. Maybe, the foundation or one of the main towers. But now I understand that marriage is more like the main cables. It runs from end to end. It bears the weight of many of the stories in the Bible.

With this knowledge, I would like to preach to you about God and hard hearts.

Exodus 10

The question I have been asking since we resumed our series on exodus is, why?

Why did God keep hardening Pharoah’s heart. The answer is so that God could perform all the plagues. Because all the plauges were really attacks against the Egyptian god’s. because, as Romans 9:17-18 “For the Scripture tells Pharaoh, I raised you up for this reason so that I may display my power in you and that my name may be proclaimed in the whole earth. So then, he has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy and he hardens whom he wants to harden.”

He hardened Pharoah’s heart so His name would be proclaimed in the whole earth. But why?

Why would God spend all this time on Pharoah? Then I realized, that he’s not.

He’s not focusing on Pharoah, hardening his heart, and sending a plague and hardening his heart and sending a plague.

His focus is on Israel. The people who he made a covenant with or to put it another way, the people who God married.

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While in Egypt, the Isralites started to worship Egyptian gods.

Now guys, husbands, let me ask you something. What would you do if you found out your wife was turning to other men? When she needs money, she calls this guy. When she needs something fixed, she calls this guy. When she wants hope, she calls that guy.

There are many things we might want to do, but if you love your wife deeply and you are jeleous for her, you would show her, that you are better than them. The guy you think can fix something… I am the one who can truely repair. The guy you think has money… I am the one who truely provides. The guy you think can give you water, I am the one who truely satisfies your thirst.

The reason why God hardened Pharoah's heart is because Israel’s heart was already hard. Israel would continue to struggle with hard hearts. Throughout the OT, it points this out. You can see it time after time, how they continually turn away from God and are unfaithful to Him.

That is why, in the book of Hosea, the Israelites described as a women of promiscuity.

This is wh