Diary of a Hardened Heart

Big idea: It took the God-Man Jesus to reach the Man-God Pharaoh. There is hope for the hardened heart.

Intro - Discouragement

We left off in Exodus with the discouragement of Israel and Moses as Pharaoh said "No, you can't go."

Even though failure was part of the plan, they were discouraged.

And then God encouraged Moses to continue, to trust in God and obey God.

But here comes a part that is either really discouraging or really encouraging, depending on which side of the fence you sit on. This morning we are going to take a little trip into the mind and life of Pharaoh in what may have been the worst month any king ever had.

They recently discovered an ancient document, the diary of Pharaoh. I'll be translating loosely into the English as we go.

Pharaoh's Diary

April 1st

That Moses came back today, with his brother Aaron. I laughed at their "let my people go" nonsense and called their bluff on the whole miracle business. One of them transformed their staff into a snake, but my magicians can do that all day, and they did. Granted, Aaron's snake swallowed theirs, but if this is all this "Yahweh" has, I am not impressed.

April 2nd

This morning I was doing my morning ritual bath in the Nile and Moses steps right in front of me as I walk back up on shore. This guy doesn't quit! Again "Let my people go... Yahweh says..."

Aaron does his hocus pocus thing over the River and the water turned into blood. I was still in the river, by the way. Worst bath ever. Now the river smells like dead fish and they're digging wells for my water.

It's not like I'm impressed, my magicians can do the whole water into blood thing. It is the arrogance of this Moses, Aaron and this Yahweh.

April 9th

Again with the "let my people go" stuff. After a week of that bloody river, now there are frogs everywhere. My magicians can do the frog thing, but that just makes more frogs! I suppose I'll just tell Moses and Aaron what they want to hear.

April 10th

Dead frogs from yesterday, now tiny gnats everywhere. I haven't breathed through my mouth all day. Apparently gnats are impressive, my magicians can't manage magical gnats. "This is the finger of God" they say. Ridiculous.

April 11th

Moses interrupted my morning river bath again. "Let my people go!" He needs a new line! Now it's flies everywhere... well, everywhere except where the Israelites live. They are flying in my ears.

I tried to give this Yahweh what he wanted, even 3 days, but Moses had the nerve to call me deceitful from the last time I said he could go. Kings don't lie, we change our royal minds. I plan on changing mine when these flies fly away.

April 13th

All of our livestock are dead. Apparently the Israelites protected their flocks somehow. Obviously, I need my slaves now more than ever to replace my herds.

April 14th

I think I should just ban Moses and Aaron from my presence. They threw soot at me. AT ME! Now we all have festering boils. Great. My magicians won't even show up anymore.

April 15th

Moses with all his storm threats, like Yahweh is God of the Sky too! Half my officials are actually hiding their slaves and livestock.

April 16th

So... we got some bad weather today. A bit of a storm. Okay, worst storm ever. Just about everything that wasn't already destroyed is now.

They tell me it skipped over Goshen where the Israelites live. New plan: move to Goshen.

I guess I have to make friendly with this Yahweh God. Just long enough to make this storm stop.

April 18th

I knew something bad was coming when Moses showed up again. I tried to "let your people go," Moses, but bringing women and kids? I'm not an idiot, your little weekend getaway is something fishy. No.

April 19th

Locusts. Everything we had left is gone. Got to placate "Yahweh" again.

April 20th

Moses' beard, it was dark today. It wasn't just dark: I could feel the darknes

April 21st

Still dark

April 22nd

Still dark.

I tried again to let them have their little worship weekend. They want the flocks. Obviously I need those, those are the only animals in Egypt!

I am done with Moses and Aaron and Yahweh. I am King here, I am Pharaoh here, I am God here. If I see Moses again, he dies.

10: 27 But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he was not willing to let them go. 28 Pharaoh said to Moses, “Get out of my sight! Make sure you do not appear before me again! The day you see my face you will die.”

A Rational Man

One more bad day, one more plague. But you have to wait a couple of weeks for that.

I can understand and appreciate Pharaoh's position here.

He is simply looking out for his best interest in the face of the situation. Everything around him, he can clearly see, if for his benefit and glory. He is, perhaps, the very best example the Man become God. The Man-God always seeks his own glory and power.

A Pharaoh is a God-king, as the Roman Emperors would later consider themselves. "I am so awesome, I must be divine"

As long as Pharaoh saw himself as powerful as this Yahweh, he freely ignored him. As he started to feel threatened by Yahweh, he started to open the negotiations: worship here, okay the wilderness, but just the men... how about just the people... okay everyone.

But as soon as the threat is gone, the situation has changed so of course the decision must be revisited. What is morality to a king, to a God? After all, a God is only answerable to himself.

The hardened heart is the heart of a Pharaoh, the man who says "I am God" and goes about the worship and glorification of himself. Remember the text freely shifts between "Pharaoh hardened his heart" and "God hardened his heart." There is an interplay here and I think it works like this: God initiates the choice, the clash of wills, and each time Pharaoh chooses his will over God's will, that digs him a little deeper, hardens his heart or spirit against God, engrains in him the habit of self-will.

Pharaoh is the Man-God, who places his Self, his glory and power above all.

Perhaps you know that man. Or woman. Perhaps, if we are all honest, we have a little bit of that person within us (or a lot-a-bit). From the very first: "Eat of the fruit... and you shall be like God."

This is sin from the first and is enshrined in our culture today: the Self-made man or woman. Pulled himself up by his bootstraps. He is an individual, blazing his own trail, writing his own story. Strong and independent, got to admire that Pharaoh.

And the first key to remaining Pharaoh in any encounter with this "Yahweh" is to explain away the power with the magic and magicians that you know.

For example:

Scientific Explanation of the Plagues

The volcano Santorini erupted around 1500 BC, sending ash into the air, ash we can still find layered in the soil today. This may coincide with the Exodus events.

Ash changes the PH level of the river, allowing an algae bloom called the Red Tide, making all exposed water sources look like blood and killing off the fish.

Without the fish to eat the frog eggs, Frogs hatch in record numbers, until their population destroys all their food sources and they all die.

Upon piles of dead fish and frogs hatch insects in their millions. First the smaller insects: gnats, lice or midges. Then larger insects like flies.

Insect bites fester and become infected, turning to boils.

Ash in the air causes a mixture of ash and water. That sent high into the air serves as the nuclei for massive ice formations, creating hail of massive proportions.

The hail creates unusually damp soil in an area that sees little rainfall, allowing locusts to lay their eggs in the damp sand: their favorite condition.

Finally, the full ash cloud descends and plunges Egypt into darkness, just like that seen after Krakatoa.

The hardened heart, the Pharaoh heart, looks and finds an explanation and says: see, I need not listen to this Yahweh. My own magicians can do the same thing. I have found the reason, I have replicated the results, and so I can continue being my own God and pursuing only my own glory.

These are not sure-explanations by the way: the timing and possible natural causes are heavily debated and questionable theories.

God of Ages

But even then Moses, or the man of faith, may look and marvel and say, "God, you put this moment into motion when you laid the foundation of the earth, when you set up plate tectonics and the fluid dynamics of liquid magma. All of this so that the very moment I waved the staff or pointed to the sky or tossed the ash, at that moment came the blood, the frogs, the flies, the boils, the locusts, and the darkness. And how, oh Lord, in the path of nature's fury, did you spare your own in the land of Goshen?

That is a greater miracle, not a lesser.

Those With Hardened Hearts

But Pharaoh has explained it all away... or negotiated with God just long enough until "Oh, don't worry about it, it's not a problem anymore. Turns out the frogs just left, never-mind about the whole deal."

Now, I am not concerned that much about Pharaoh, I hardly know the guy.

But I know a hardened heart. I am praying for some hardened hearts.

I have a friend who says he will believe if God writes him a message in the sky.

The Plagues are, perhaps, the ultimate example of why God doesn't simply convert everyone with some divine sky writing. Direct acts of power are not particularly effective means of reaching the human heart. In the fact of ever greater acts of miraculous and, to Pharaoh, undeniable acts of Yahweh God: Pharaoh's heart only grows harder. Only looks out harder for his own interest. Only throws away all pretense at morality and ethics to deceive Moses to make things better for himself.

After all, hasn't Lucifer stood and beheld the full glory of God and chose to grasp for glory rather than bow to it?

Direct acts of power rarely reach the hardened human heart.

Is the situation then hopeless? Is there no hope for the Pharaoh's among us, those who harden their heart in the face of the miraculous. Those who are only concerned with their own kingdom and their own glory? Is their hope for the hardened heart?

Because I know how this story ends, and I have a few Pharaoh's in my life that I love. Maybe that guy was irredeemable and just a backdrop villain for the rescue of Israel... but I don't want my friends to drown!

But what can God do if acts of power rarely reach the hardened human heart.

The God-Man to reach the Man-God

So instead, God showed a different kind of power.

So instead, God chooses a far longer, far more difficult path to reach Pharaoh and all those like him. To reach all the Men who would be God, God became a Man. To reach the Man-Gods came the God-Man.

We see this again and again. Exodus is only the type. Exodus is a prophecy and metaphor written in history, fulfilled in Jesus Christ. God became man to free us from slavery, from death and destruction. And this time he came not only for the people, but also for Pharaoh. He died for Pharaoh's hardened heart as well as Moses' obedient one.

It took a God-Man to reach the Man-God

It took a different kind of power.

Not the threat of punishment from the sky, but the sacrifice of love on the cross.

Not the forcing of dominion from without, but the wooing of His Spirit within.

And not the stick of Moses and Aaron, but the Body of Christ, known as His disciples for the way that we love our Pharaohs.

God sends the God-man Jesus to reach the Man-God Pharaoh in the ultimate Exodus. For "He is not willing that any should perish..."

God can rescue the very hardest heart, it just takes a different kind of power.

What do we do to help? More next week, but we do what Moses did, we obey the commands of God. Foremost of those: we love God and we love one another.

But this we cling to... because we have people in our lives that we love... and we don't want them to perish. We cling to this:

There is hope for the hardened heart.

There is hope for the Man who would be God - the God who became Man.

There is hope for the hardened heart: His name is Jesus

... and let's pray for those Pharaoh's hearts in our lives.