Just In Word, Just In Deed - Part 2
Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 2 viewsNotes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Last week we considered Paul’s third Old Testament proof of the sovereign and saving work of God in salvation in God’s statement to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and compassion on whom I will have compassion.
Paul’s intent here is two-fold: 1) he is intent upon magnifying the sovereign work of God’s grace in salvation and minimizing or eliminating the boastfulness of human pride. 2) he is intent upon demonstrating the truth of this doctrine not from logic or through some sort of theologizing, but by the word of God as given to Moses.
Up to this point then, we’ve seen that salvation is dependent upon the following: God’s promise and the response of faith from the story of Isaac, God’s eternal choice and timely call from the story of Jacob, and God’s mercy from the declaration to Moses. We now turn our attention to the story of Pharaoh as Paul utilizes it to demonstrate that both hardening and mercy come from the sovereign hand of God and serve His purpose in history and in our lives.
This week’s lesson will serve as a part 2 to last week’s where we considered Paul’s proofs for God’s justice, the first being divine salvific dependence, in other words that salvation depends on God. This week we will consider the second proof, being divine salvific desire, in other words, salvation comes to men according to the desire of God.
The Second Proof: God’s Works through Pharaoh
The Second Proof: God’s Works through Pharaoh
So as we mentioned, we come now to the fourth of Paul’s references to the Old Testament, specifically the work of God as seen in the lives of Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, as recorded by Moses in Genesis and Exodus.
But Paul now takes a fourth text from Moses to demonstrate the reality of God’s sovereignty in an even more powerful way, by referencing the story of Moses and Pharaoh and the Ten Plagues.
Paul says:
For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.”
So right off the bat we can observe that God raised up Pharaoh for two reasons: a demonstration of power and a proclamation of glory.
But the larger context for both Moses and Paul is this plague narrative, which has been going on since chapter 4, and will continue into chapter 11. We’re familiar with the story. God commissions Moses to warn Pharaoh of the plagues, then bring the plagues, and by means of God’s judgment, force Pharaoh’s hand into freeing the Israelites.
Paul, by virtue of verse 18, wants us to look specifically at Exodus in light of the hardening of Pharaoh. While Paul’s direct quote of Exodus doesn’t mention hardening, he does mention it in the next verse and therefore we need to briefly digest this idea as it relates to Pharaoh in Exodus.
Let’s take a look at this narrative of Pharaoh briefly as we seek to understand Paul here in verses 17 and 18.
The Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.
“But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart that I may multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt.
But the magicians of Egypt did the same with their secret arts; and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and did not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and he did not let the people go.
And the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not listen to them, just as the Lord had spoken to Moses.
But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned again and hardened his heart, he and his servants.
Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he did not let the sons of Israel go, just as the Lord had spoken through Moses.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may perform these signs of Mine among them,
But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the sons of Israel go.
But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he was not willing to let them go.
Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh; yet the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the sons of Israel go out of his land.
‘It came about, when Pharaoh was stubborn about letting us go, that the Lord killed every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beast. Therefore, I sacrifice to the Lord the males, the first offspring of every womb, but every firstborn of my sons I redeem.’
“Thus I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will chase after them; and I will be honored through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.” And they did so.
The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he chased after the sons of Israel as the sons of Israel were going out boldly.
“As for Me, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and I will be honored through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen.
This word harden is the primary word used to describe Pharaoh in Exodus 4-11. In fact, we know very little about him other than that he is hard-hearted and obstinate, and he has a strong hatred of and opposition toward Israel and Israel’s God. This opposition, this enmity if you will, indicates that Pharaoh is part of the seed of the serpent who would be at odds with the seed of the woman, here figured in the people of Israel. If one reads Moses’ writings in light of themselves, that reality becomes clear. Moses’ entire presentation of Pharaoh here is compelling because if you remember, Moses was raised in the royal house of Egypt. Given the timelines, we can reasonably assume that Moses had a close and familial relationship with this Pharaoh. It seems likely that he would have been a nephew or perhaps even a younger half-brother. Yet Moses provides basically no description of this Pharaoh other than that he is hardened. And it is this hardening that has captured Paul’s attention, and therefore we should look carefully at it to understand Paul’s second point here.
First of all, we need to look at the wording here. Pharaoh is described as hardened 18 times over the course of these chapters. There are two details that we need to examine here.
Active vs passive hardening. Moses splits his descriptions in these chapters. Pharaoh is both passively hardened by an external force, namely God, and actively hardens himself by his own will and volition. Moses intentionally alternates between these two verb forms. So what we see here in effect is that Moses is indicating that God decrees Pharaoh’s hardening, and Pharoah himself also freely chose to harden himself. This might initially appear to be a contradiction, but Moses is demonstrating here what theologians have called the proximate cause of events and the remote cause of events. We would deny that God is the proximate or active cause of Pharaoh’s hardening, for God prompts no one to turn away from himself. We would affirm that hardening comes only from demonic influence and human choice. God’s decree that Pharaoh should be hardened is the remote or passive cause. In other words, God simply does not intervene in Pharaoh’s active hardening of his own heart, and thereby passively allows him to continue in his hardness, in his wickedness, and in his evil. This is corroborated by Paul’s teaching back in chapter 1, that apart from the intervening grace of God, all men are given over to what they most desire: wickedness and evil continually. This is seen nowhere more clearly than in Exodus 9:34-35 “But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned again and hardened his heart, he and his servants. Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he did not let the sons of Israel go, just as the Lord had spoken through Moses.” Moses records back to back instances of Pharaoh’s hardening. He actively hardens himself and sins, and then is passively hardened directly afterward, and all this is according to what the Lord spoke through Moses. So we see active and passive hardening, proximate and remote causation.
Hebrew verbage. Another detail we need to examine is the actual Hebrew wording for the hardening of Pharaoh. As Moses alternates between the active and the passive, he also alternates between these two words for hardening. One is chabod, and the other is hezeq. Moses uses these two words interchangeably. Chabod is typically translated something like weight or heaviness. So we could say that Pharaoh’s hard was weighed down into sin and evil. However, this word is also translated honor or glory, as in Exodus 14:4 ““Thus I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will chase after them; and I will be honored through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.” And they did so.” The other is typically translated something like strength or power, so we could say that Pharaoh’s heart was strongly or powerfully opposed to Israel and Israel’s God. But I believe Moses is making a subtle wordplay here. Every time we hear of Pharaoh’s hardening, just like in 14:4, we are reminded that in the midst of that, God’s power and God’s glory are on display.
And that is the reason that God gives for his hardening of Pharaoh, that his power would be demonstrated and that his name or his glory would be proclaimed.
How so? God’s power and glory are on display as he systematically dismantles the false gods of Egypt, and they are perhaps even more clearly displayed as He leads Israel out of bondage in the Exodus, and all of this comes as a result of Pharaoh’s hardness. In a very real sense then, what Pharaoh intended for evil in the hardening of his heart, in his oppression of Israel, and in his refusal to let them go, God intended for good in demonstrating his saving power and glory and redeeming a people for himself.
This whole narrative pictures in a clear and powerful way that same doctrine we mentioned briefly on Thursday night in the context of the angels’ envy of grace, that doctrine of felix culpa, the fortunate fall or happy fault. The Exodus is a clear and beautiful picture of the Lord using the evil of Pharaoh for two things: first, as Paul says, to demonstrate God’s power and glory in tearing down that evil, and second, for the good of his people. Think about it this way: apart from the evil of Pharaoh, there is no slavery of Israel. If Israel is not enslaved, there is no Exodus. If there is no Exodus, national Israel is robbed of their most precious account of the power of God and eschatological Israel is robbed of the greatest picture of their own salvation and freedom from slavery and bondage to sin. And if Israel, both nationally and eschatologically, is robbed of these things, God is ultimately robbed of praise and glory. Israel didn’t just merely know in their heads that God had freed them from slavery. They experienced it. Likewise we, as eschatological Israel, do not merely know in our heads that God has freed us in Christ from our sins and misery. We have experienced it. No Pharaoh, no experience of deliverance, for historical Israel or for us.
Listen to the words of John Owen:
Works of John Owen: Volume 2 Digression 2: All Solid Wisdom Laid up in Christ—True Wisdom, Wherein It Consists
Here, now, doth the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God open itself. A design in Christ shines out from his bosom, that was lodged there from eternity, to recover things to such an estate as shall be exceedingly to the advantage of his glory, infinitely above what at first appeared, and for the putting of sinners into inconceivably a better condition than they were in before the entrance of sin. He appears now glorious; he is known to be a God pardoning iniquity and sin, and advances the riches of his grace: which was his design, Eph. 1:6. He hath infinitely vindicated his justice also, in the face of men, angels, and devils, in setting forth his Son for a propitiation. It is also to our advantage; we are more fully established in his favour, and are carried on towards a more exceeding6 weight of glory than formerly was revealed. Hence was that ejaculation of one of the ancients, “O felix culpa, quæ talem meruit redemptorem!” Thus Paul tells us, “Great is the mystery of godliness.” 1 Tim. 3:16, and that “without controversy” We receive “grace for grace;”—for that grace lost in Adam, better grace in Christ. Confessedly, this is a depth of wisdom indeed. And of the love of Christ to his church, and his union with it, to carry on this business, “This is a great mystery,” Eph. 5:32, says the apostle; great wisdom lies herein.
So we see that God raises Pharaoh up, places him in a position of power, and endures him and his hardening, as Paul will say just a few verses later, with much patience a vessel of wrath prepared for destruction, so that He might make his saving power and glory known to vessels of wrath prepared for mercy.
The Second Inference: Divine Salvific Desire
The Second Inference: Divine Salvific Desire
Paul now in verse 18 summarizes what he has been teaching us from verse 6 onward:
So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.
Paul thus expresses in no uncertain terms the absolute freedom and the absolute sovereignty that God possesses in the exercise of His will. God is the fulfiller of his own promises, he is the distributor of his own mercy, and he is the author of his own redemption.
But there’s a challenge here: Not only does God have mercy on whomever He desires, whomever He wills, whomever He wants, but He also, on the flipside, hardens whomever He desires, whomever He wills, whomever He wants. That’s tough. That’s tricky. That goes against our sensibilities of a God who loves people and who desires all to come to repentance.
There are many ways to approach this idea that God hardens whoever He wants, and unfortunately we don’t have the time to dig in to all the different approaches. However, I would point you to John Murray’s and Charles Hodge’s commentaries on these verses for an in-depth explanation of the different views.
For our purposes this morning, I will simply allow Paul to speak for himself. When Paul speaks of God hardening those whom He desires, he is speaking in the context of Romans 1, specifically verses 24, 26, and 28, where Paul speaks of God giving men and women over, first to impurity, then to degrading passions, then to a depraved mind. For God to harden someone is simply for Him to remove His hand of restraint. For Him to remove common grace. For that person who is, to borrow from pop culture, on the highway to hell, to simply have the brakes removed from their bus. This was the case with Pharaoh. He was, as all men are, dead in his trespasses and sins and desired only evil continually. God removed restraint from his life, thereby hardening him.
This is what theologians call the doctrine of reprobation. Robert Letham provides a helpful definition here:
Systematic Theology 5.8.1. The Meaning of the Terms
Reprobation refers to God’s decree to pass by the nonelect and ordain them to wrath on account of their sins in accord with his justice
There are typical three objections to the character of God when we come upon this teaching of Paul that God hardens whom He desires. These objections were addressed variously in the Middle Ages by Augustine, Peter Lombard, and Thomas Aquinas, and can be summarized as follows:
Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 1: Revelation and God Doctrinal Focus: How Could the Good God Choose to Damn Some People?
1. The God of reprobation commits injustice. In response, the Augustinians insisted that election to salvation grants eternal life by grace alone, but reprobation consigns people to damnation on the basis of the demerit of their sins. Election and reprobation involve no injustice on God’s part, for no sinner deserves mercy; neither is grace based on foreseen merits, but all deserve damnation and can be saved by grace alone (Rom. 9:11; 11:6).
2. The God of reprobation causes sin. In response, the Augustinians denied that God is the author of sin, for he executes predestination as the sovereign distributor of all good. God’s reprobation does not compel anyone to sin and does not infuse sin into anyone, but it is God’s will to permit sin and to harden sinners by not imparting grace.
3. The God of reprobation is unloving. In response, the Augustinians said that God loves all his creatures and does good to all of them, but is free to exercise his love as he chooses. God did not choose to give eternal life to all, but to give to some sinners the eternal punishment they deserve by abandoning them to their sins. Therefore, God is the source of all good, but the sinner’s damnation arises directly from himself, in accord with the prophetic word: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help” (Hos. 13:9).
Anyone who tries to make these arguments that God is unjust, unloving, or causes sin, is making a very important and very false assumption: they are assuming the basic innocence of humanity. They are expressly denying the word of God through David who says “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”
Let me be clear here: Hardening is what we all deserve. Reprobation is what we all deserve. In Adam we are all sinful, all dead in trespasses. God owes us nothing, for we have done nothing but hate him, despise him, insist that he is not God and that we are, take his good gifts and ascribe them to anyone or anything else that our minds can conceive. And then having done all that, we have the gall and the nerve to expect God to do us a favor? How foolish! How arrogant!
We should understand ourselves rightly as Jonathan Edwards did, like a spider over a boiling pot, hanging on only by the cobweb of common grace. God need only take his finger, touch the web, thereby removing his common grace, and we would all plummet into the boiling waters of hell, and that deservedly.
Understood in that context then, what should shock us is not that God would harden men and give them over to their wickedness, but that God would have mercy on anyone! If we understand that God’s power and glory are demonstrated and proclaimed through His just punishment of sin, then we truly have no recourse: God has absolutely no compulsory reason to save anyone.
Yet nevertheless, in order that His power and glory might be demonstrated yet more, He has mercy. He redeems his elect out of the pit. He pulls them up from the miry clay, indeed he calls them forth out of the grave, like Lazarus, and puts His spirit within them like Ezekiel’s field of bones. He doesn’t have to. Indeed he could and should leave the bones to rot. He could and should leave Lazarus in the grave to continue to stink. He could and should leave us dead in our trespasses and sins,
in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.
This should elicit at least two responses from us:
Humility. We must know where we should be. And that knowledge removes all arrogance. We should not and indeed cannot boast in ourselves, but only in the Lord who withheld His judgment and justice and instead, for the sake of Christ, extended mercy. As Paul says elsewhere, boasting is excluded. There is no place for pride. As those who have had God’s mercy extended to us, our only option is humility.
Fear. Michael Reeves defines Godly fear as joyful trembling. God’s mercy poured out on us is a cause for joy, but also a cause for trembling, for reverence, for awe, because we have seen the sheer magnitude of the power of God in his sovereign and saving grace.
And it is this fearful humility that we will turn our attention to next week, as we consider Paul’s exhortation to humility before God’s sovereign and gracious decrees.
Join us next week as we continue our exploration of God’s sovereignty next week.