Keep sharing good news without ads.
Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Exodus 7:1-13
This morning we begin chapter 7 with these first 13 verses as we enter into the plague narratives. We're not quite looking at the first plague yet, but the prelude to the first plague. That'll carry us all the way to the last plague in chapter 12 and with that the mighty deliverance of God over the Egyptian army, the crushing of the Red Sea, the Song of Moses, chapter 15.
And so we're sort of made our way up the the hill and now we're sort of on the down slope of what God's going to do to get his people out of the land of Egypt. And as we begin to unfold the plague narratives with these first 13 verses, we want to look at two things arising from the text.
The first is the heart of Pharaoh in verses 1 through 7. And the second thing is the rod of Aaron. More importantly, the rod of God, the rod of the Lord in verses 8 through 13. So these will be the two main concerns for our time this morning.
I want to go through those verses looking especially thematically at those two things. Then we'll circle back to them in more practical ways and I hope there's enough time to conclude with four points of application.
So we've got a lot to get through and with that we'll begin. The heart of Pharaoh, Exodus chapter 7 beginning in verse 1. So that I may lay my hand on Egypt and bring my armies and my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.
And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand on Egypt and bring out the children of Israel from among them. And Moses and Aaron did so, just as the Lord commanded them, so they did.
And Moses was 80 years old and Aaron, 83 years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh. So the first thing we see beginning in chapter 7 is God putting forth Moses to be as God to Pharaoh. It's striking in Hebrew, the translators bring out this idea of simile.
There's no comparative in Hebrew. It's simply, you will be God to Pharaoh. That's who you will be to Pharaoh. As far as Pharaoh is concerned, you will be God to him. That's how close the identity of Moses is to the Lord when he's proclaiming the word of the Lord.
And of course, Aaron will be the prophet. And so here we see the identification and really the Hebrew understanding of what a prophet's main function is, to be the one who carries forth the Word of God, the revealer of what God has revealed.
The ruler of Egypt, of course, Pharaoh thinks of himself as a god. Moses will actually be God to him. That's lowercase g, of course. But you think of the context of this ruler who proclaims himself and the people genuinely believe that he is in fact a living God, but now the living God has come to him.
And now through the plague narrative, that self-divinizing claim will begin to ring hollow. Notice also in these first seven verses, we see a repetition. Remember in Hebrew, the way you emphasize things is you repeat them.
So look at verse 2, tell Pharaoh to send the children of Israel out of his land. Verse 4, to bring my armies and my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt. Verse 5, bring out the children of Israel from among them.
That is the major concern here. Plagues are not plagues merely for the sake of plagues. Plagues are judgments of God for the sake of redeeming his people. The judgments come so that the people of God will be brought out of their bondage, out of the evil empire of Egypt.
And this is all done by these judgments. They're called more than just judgments. They're called signs. They're called miracles. They're signified by the hand of God. And with that also we'll see the hand of Moses.
Signs and miracles also called here in these verses the judgments of God, which are sent forth by his hand. Verse 4, Pharaoh will not heed you so that I may lay my hand on Egypt. Literally the Hebrew, I'll put my hand into Egypt.
This is not a sort of waving of the hand by some detached distant God. Just as he is the God of personal presence, so he is the God who visits judgment in a personal way. He's going to put his hand into the land of Egypt.
Verse 5, the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand upon Egypt. So you have this imagery of God now preparing the downswing of judgment upon the land. Of course, he's also telling Moses that Pharaoh will not heed.
The judgments will not relent until Pharaoh and all the host of Pharaoh is utterly destroyed. And so we're reminded in verse 5 of what Pharaoh had said in the initial encounter with Moses when Moses came with a simple request for a three-day leave.
And Pharaoh said, I don't know the Lord that I should obey his voice. And here in chapter 7 we have essentially the Lord's answer to Pharaoh. You will know who I am when I stretch out my hand in judgment.
Here God is promising that Pharaoh indeed, his people indeed, all of Egypt indeed, all of the surrounding nations will know who the Lord God is. This work, this spectacle of judgment and deliverance will be the byword of the nations.
And of course as it's forecasting to the gospel, to a greater judgment and a greater deliverance, it will be the word that goes to the very ends of the earth. Now how this comes about brings us to one of the more controversial passages in the book of Exodus.
Indeed, one of the more controversial theological debates of which we are fully engaged as good reformed folk. That's verse 3 where we have detail about how these judgments will specifically come upon the land of Egypt.
Verse 3, I.
Will harden.
Pharaoh's heart and.
You could view that as sort of consecutive conjunction and therefore or thereby multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. So verse 3 brings us as so often throughout biblical narrative, there's certain doctrines that leap out at a certain juncture in the text.
We've seen that throughout Genesis and here in Exodus, we see this with chapter 7 verse 3. The hardening of God upon the heart of Pharaoh so that he will not relent, he will not repent, he will not turn back until he is utterly destroyed.
That is Exodus 7 verse 3. It's an imperfect tense of the verb here, which is a verb that will be repeated throughout the plague narrative. In Hebrew, you have these mnemonic devices which are how we learn words.
The verb to harden is kazakh in Hebrew and the way I always remember that is you think of those Kazakhs from Kazakhstan and they're very hard burly men. So the kazakh of God, the hardening of God upon the heart of Pharaoh.
Pharaoh, of course, has already shown himself to be a harsh man. He's a hardened man. He was hard when Moses came and said please the slaves that have been busting themselves all day long every day just give them a three days journeys to go and worship the Lord in the desert.
And we already saw that not only was he harsh in the way he refused that three-day leave, he was also harsh in demanding that they do more labor as a result of the imposition in his court. So in this very depiction coming out of chapter 5 toward chapter 7, we do not begin.
With a God.
Who maliciously and viciously and vengefully begins to harden and calcify and mutate the gentle, sweet heart of an adoring, wise, philanthropic ruler. No, no, no, that's never the case. This is not Pharaoh who does blood drives and scoops out the ladles at the soup kitchen down on the corner in Alexandria.
This is not Pharaoh who sheds a few tears when Sarah McLachlan sings and puppies are shown sort of limping around. That's not how God brings judicial hardening. Pharaoh was already a hardened man. He was already unyielding.
He was already unrepentant. He was fully fallen, as all of us are brought into this world, fully fallen. But at the same time, we must say that does not mean that God is merely reacting to the condition of Pharaoh's hardened heart.
That's really important, and I want to spend some time elaborating this point. We must say that Pharaoh was already a hardened sinner, already rejecting the Lord, the call of the Lord, the word of the Lord, the threat of the Lord.
We already saw that in chapter 5. He already is a hardened sinner, refusing to repent unto the Lord. That's been established. But that does not mean, in light of chapter 7, verse 3, that God is merely reacting to Pharaoh, as though Pharaoh gets to decide how his heart will be, what condition his life will take, and sort of curtail the judgments or mercies of God thereunto.
No, no, no, no. God is sovereign. He is the one who holds the heart of the king in his hand to do with it as he pleases. God is sovereign. Pharaoh is not. So though Pharaoh has a hardened heart, and he's in many ways confirmed in that hardness by God, we must see that as a sovereign, judicial hardening upon Pharaoh.
Pharaoh would not repent, and now he cannot repent. That's judicial hardening from the Lord. What we must carefully avoid, of course, as Charles Simeon would remind us, is to imagine that the Lord could infuse any evil principle into the heart of Pharaoh.
That's why we say it's a judicial hardening. This is God exercising His work as a righteous judge. This, Simeon says, God never did. And He never will do to any of His creatures. And so we commonly speak in this way.
He gave Pharaoh over to his own corruptions. He didn't infuse or write corruption into the heart of Pharaoh, but rather removed any restraint, removed any glint or receptivity of mercy. He gave him fully over to his own corruption, his own abasement, his own evil influence.
As James 1 .13 points out, God is not the author of evil. We do not have these naturally sweet bents about us, where if only our eyes were opened, we would gravitate toward the light. And we're all naturally desiring to have a very close walk with the Lord.
No, who we truly are are haters of God, those who despise the light, those who reject the authority of His Word. That's what humans are like, apart from the grace of God. And so we look at God's sovereignty here.
It's not reactive, and yet it does confirm Pharaoh in the hardness of his heart. And this is a judicial hardening by God's sovereign hand. John Calvin puts it this way. The opponents of this doctrine, meaning God's judicial hardening, the opponents of this doctrine foolishly and inconsiderately mixed together two different things.
Since the hardness of heart is the sin of man, but the hardening of the heart is the judgment of God. Every person who has a hard heart to the Lord must answer for that hard heart. Even when that heart has been confirmed, further hardened under the judicial hand of God.
Man is responsible for his abject refusal to repent and believe all that the Lord has commanded. The hardness of heart is the sin of man, but the hardening of the heart is the judgment of God. If we'll ever see that clearly, we'll see it here in Exodus chapter 7 through 11.
So I ask the question, does our theology adequately understand both God's judicial hardening of a sinner's heart and also the self-hardening of a sinner's heart? Can we account for both the self-hardening of Pharaoh?
As we'll see subsequently throughout the narrative, Pharaoh hardens his heart and Pharaoh hardened his heart. We'll see that Pharaoh does in many ways correspond to that judicial hardening of God, of his own free will.
He hardens himself. And yet that does not make God the reactor, for God is the sovereign actor. Does our theology adequately understand the hardening of a sinner's heart by the hand of God and also the self-hardening of a sinner's heart by their own free choice?
The Apostle Paul reflected on this very question in Romans chapter 9. And you remember the context of Romans 9 through 11 is answering the question, why, if Jesus was the promised Messiah to the people of Israel, that largely speaking, Israel had not received him as such, but had rather rejected him.
And as such, now they were blinded, hardened to the very judgment of God. And of course, Paul begins chapter 9 with this great plea, this great exclamation. He would be willing to trade his own salvation for the sake of being able to save his countrymen according to the flesh.
But then he begins to go on to understand this is all part of God's sovereign act of election. And so he brings up things that we've already seen in the narrative from Genesis. God's choice of Jacob over Esau.
The promise of God being preserved in unexpected and surprising ways. And he begins to elaborate this. By chapter 9, verse 14, we read this. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? You haven't got close to the doctrine of sovereign election if that's not a valid charge.
If you dance around it in such a way that God is reactive and man is sovereign, then there's no reason for someone to object. Is God unrighteous?
How is this fair?
How could it be that God ordains in this way? Doesn't that make God unrighteous? So if you don't get to that charge, you're not understanding sovereign election rightly. Well, Paul's got to that charge.
And here comes the objection. Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy. I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.
So then, Paul reasons, it's not of him who wills. It's not of him who runs. But it is of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says this to Pharaoh, For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, so that My name will be declared in all of the earth.
Therefore, Paul's now repeating his argument. He has mercy on whom he wills and whom he wills he hardened. Is Pharaoh the primary actor in Romans 9, verses 14 through 18? No, that's not how Paul understands it.
God says, I have raised up Pharaoh, and I have refused to show him mercy, and I have hardened his heart, as the God who shows mercy to whom he wills and hardens whom he wills, for this very reason, I'm going to show My power in him, so that My name will be magnified in all of the earth.
That's what he's doing as Exodus begins to unfold. That's what he's always doing when he shows mercy to those who receive mercy, and when he hardens those whom he hardens. He is the sovereign God who does everything that pleases Him.
G .K. Beal has an excellent article where he sort of painstakingly works through Exodus 4 -14, and really in a careful way engages with every instance, whether explicit or implicit, of the hardening activity of God.
At the end of the article he asks four questions. I'm just going to kind of summarize his answers as best I can. But he asks four questions from Romans 9 in light of his study of Exodus 4 -14. The first question is this.
Who is the ultimate cause of Pharaoh's hardening? There's those who reject the idea, and really they end up being on the other side of Paul's argument. They're the ones saying this isn't fair. God is unrighteous if you believe these things.
So they're the opponents of Paul, theologically speaking, and they're the ones that would also say God never sovereignly, primarily, ultimately hardens Pharaoh's heart. Rather, Pharaoh hardens his own heart, and then God just kind of lets him be in that state.
So Beal asks the question, who is the ultimate cause of Pharaoh's hardening? And the answer is, God is the ultimate cause of Pharaoh's hardening. At no time in Exodus will we see Pharaoh's will being exercised independently of God's influence upon his heart.
Everywhere we see Pharaoh reacting, we see the influence of the Lord upon him. Second question. If the hardening is associated with God, is it an unconditional judgment? Or is it conditional with respect to Pharaoh's sin?
In other words, does God just say, I'm going to harden your heart, and that's that, because I have chosen to do this? Or is it because Pharaoh already was hardened, he already was a sinner, and based on that condition, God is now acting in judgment toward him?
Well, Beal reasons this way. It is never stated throughout Exodus that the Lord hardens Pharaoh in judgment because of some prior condition within him. The only purpose given for the hardening of Pharaoh's heart is that it will glorify the Lord.
That is the only reason that the text explicitly states. For this reason, the Lord hardens his heart. For the sake of his glory, that his name may be known in all of the earth. Therefore, it has to be unconditional.
Third question. When Paul is answering the objection that God is unjust or unrighteous, and that's coming off of rejecting Esau and choosing Jacob even before they were born or had done anything, does he give some reasonable explanation for God's rejection?
And here's Beal's answer. Neither Moses nor Paul leaves any room for the idea, even the hint, that God is unjust in his dealings with Pharaoh. Paul mentions Exodus 9 -16, where he quoted from, to affirm the justice of God, and he also seems to be alluding to the summary of that hardening throughout the entire passage.
All that God's name would be proclaimed in all of the world. Listen to this. If God had not repeatedly hardened Pharaoh, there would have been no drawn-out series of plagues. And therefore, there would have been no worldwide proclamation of God's power.
In this way, Paul sees the hardening of God as the key to the proclamation of the divine name. Do you understand the logic of why Paul's including this in his larger argument in Romans 9 -11? Why hasn't the heart of the Israelites melted at the risen Messiah?
Paul's reasoning through Exodus. He's reasoning through the sovereign hand of God, and he says, don't you understand? God has blinded them. God has put a veil over the Scriptures to this day. God has bent their backs and darkened their minds.
God has hardened their hearts for this very reason. So that in this rejection and in this affliction and in this persecution, God's judgment would come in such a way that His name would be magnified throughout all the world.
That's how Paul begins to understand the judicial hardening of God. And then of course, one of the other claims that's famously made. If you're interested to go a little deeper with this, you could look at a debate about 10 years old now between Thomas Schreiner and Brian Abbasiano on this very issue.
The argument was Romans 9 -11 is really dealing with historical nations. Sort of communities of people rather than being able to speak at all to a sort of Calvinistic doctrine of individual election or reprobation.
But I think Beal's right to argue if it's true for the nation, it's true for the individual. If there's an election of a whole people and there's an election of every person that makes up that people, you can't escape the individuality of God's sovereign election in this way.
So it speaks not only to the historical event of Exodus, but it speaks to the very heart of our eternal salvation. Three times as we move forward, we'll see God described as hardening Pharaoh's heart.
Chapters 4, 7, and 14. Six times we'll see the Lord actually harden Pharaoh's heart. 9, 10, a couple places in 10, 11, and 14. Seven times we'll see that hardening expressed as a divine passive, meaning the Lord isn't mentioned, but it's put in a passive construction so the Lord is the implied actor.
And then only three times out of that 20-something times, three times is Pharaoh said to harden his own heart. If Hebrew emphasizes things by repetition, then we have it pretty plainly. God is the one who has the heart of the king in his hand to do with it as he pleases.
Divine hardening, self-hardening, these things are interwoven. They are as interwoven as divine sovereignty and human responsibility. If you've come to SLBC around chapter 3, this was a large part of our discussion.
The God of the first cause and secondary causes that he employs. But these things are mysteriously interwoven, and sometimes we can't see the gaps between them. They're sort of meshed together in such a way that we know God ultimately is sovereign, yet not sovereign in a way that precludes man's responsibility.
Man, though he's unable to do otherwise, must give an account to God. Divine hardening and self-hardening. But God is the primary actor. So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.
So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens. Let's talk about the rod of Aaron secondly, and we'll come back to that. The rod of Aaron, beginning in verse 8. And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, When Pharaoh speaks to you, saying, Show a miracle for yourselves, then you shall say to Aaron, Take your rod, cast it before Pharaoh, let it become a serpent.
So Moses and Aaron went into Pharaoh, and they did so just as the Lord commanded. And Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a serpent. This is the last sign before the first plague, where we're going next week in chapter 7.
This is not a plague itself, but rather a sign that we've already somewhat seen in chapter 4. Remember that when Moses himself was filled with doubt, God commanded him to take his staff in his hand and cast it to the ground, and it became a serpent.
And then he picked it up, and it became a staff in his hand again. So we've seen the serpent staff before, but here in chapter 7, there's some slight differences. First of all, the serpent that it becomes is not the same noun for serpent.
Here it's tannin. It could literally be translated dragon. Certainly serpent still fits. In chapter 4, it was nakash. Also, this is not Moses' staff, but this is Aaron's staff, and the miracle has a very different form.
It doesn't end with the staff being returned to Aaron's hand, but it ends with it consuming all of the other staffs. And I hope you remember, because I don't want to spend too much time reviewing, the significance of that serpent image.
That, of course, was the symbolic power of divinity for Pharaoh. You go and see the famous death mask of King Tutankhamun. You can see many other examples from just about any pharaoh. There is a coiled serpent over their forehead.
That is quite literally the most prominent crown or representation of their monarchical power. It would have been represented by several Egyptian deities, chief among them, Wadjet, sort of goddess of the lower realm.
Very interesting, because we have all sorts of references to the lower realm under the pharaoh's swallowing up the north. We're going to see this swallowing up language. I'll get to that in a moment. But here you have, again, the same showdown.
The serpent being the godlike claim of Pharaoh, the symbol of Pharaoh's power, of his boast and arrogance against the Lord. And so here, Aaron cast down that symbol, that serpent, over against the serpents of Pharaoh.
Remember, we looked at Ezekiel 29. "'Speak and say this,' says the Lord God, "'Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, "'the great monster that lies in the midst of his rivers.'". That monster there, that's a tenon.
It's a serpent. Most likely an immediate reference to a crocodile or some serpent-like creature. Pharaoh's being likened to that. Here in verses 8 through 13, we're reminded of the main issue. Not only has the plague, the judgment of God, come to deliver the people out of bondage into the land where they can dwell with the Lord, but ultimately we see the judgment has come over and against the enemy of God, which is not Pharaoh, but the sort of satanic, demonic influence upon Pharaoh.
It's God versus Satan. And if you don't see that here as clearly, you will see it by the time we get to chapter 11, because the Exodus plagues are taken up in Revelation 11 through 22 in this very way.
This is the showdown between the Lord and the lowercase g of the earth, the prince of the power of the air. Verses 11 through 13. Pharaoh called the wise men and the sorcerers, the magicians of Egypt.
They also did in like manner with their enchantments, for every man threw down his rod, and they became serpents. If you've seen the movie, we've seen it a little too much, I think, since we began Exodus, the prince of Egypt.
You have two figures. They're not named Jannes and Jambres as they could have been. Paul mentions that in 2 Timothy 3, verse 8. But you have these sort of colorful characters, and it's all animated. They do their little dance and spell, and they have all their sort of smoke and mirrors.
So one assumption is that these are sort of magicians like you'd see in some act in Las Vegas. You know, big stage, and the assistants come with the tuxedo, and all the things are sort of rotated around, and rabbits come out of hats, and doves fly off, and the tables are separated.
That's one view. This is simply a very carefully manicured deception. The other view is this is legitimately supernatural, and I have to say I'm of that latter view. I don't think this is merely a charade or a parlor trick in the court of Pharaoh.
I think these court magicians, the Hebrew noun is kartumim, these would have been like sacred scribes. You could almost think of them as more priest than magician, and they're involved in the occult. We have all sorts of papyri that speak to curses and bindings and ways of performing essentially witchcraft, and I have no doubt that there was some supernatural element to what they did.
Magic was prevalent, and Pharaoh would have been impressed. Yes, actually, we have sort of divine authority on our side as well, and we recognize that Satan masquerades himself as an angel of light. Jesus warned Matthew 24 against false signs and wonders, and He doesn't say they're fake.
He just says they're false. So miracles, even apparent miracles, can be performed under the agency of satanic influence. You see that if you read Acts very carefully. The slave girl who's under the divining power of Pythona, she's able to speak of Paul and follows him around almost in a trance until she's delivered from that demonic possession.
I don't want to go too deep into this trail, but there's no reason to de-supernaturalize texts like this, especially when we're recognizing that the showdown between Moses and Pharaoh is the showdown between the Lord and Satan.
Of course there's going to be counterfeit signs, signs and wonders that deceive many away from the Word of God. Just as it will be even now. The most important thing that happens is the result. Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods.
That's the significant outcome. They may have been able to replicate the sign, but God ends up being sovereign nevertheless. Aaron's rod ends up consuming the serpent rods of these false priests. God then uses this as a way of forecasting to Pharaoh what will happen to him.
It's a very specific verb that's being used. We haven't seen it that often. We saw it, for instance, I think the last time we saw it was when Cain killed Abel and the earth was forth to swallow, gulp up the blood.
Well here, Aaron's rod is swallowing up their rods. God is forecasting to Pharaoh what will happen to him because the next time we come across this verb will be in chapter 15. It's the next time this relatively rare verb is used.
As Moses begins to unleash his song of deliverance in chapter 15, he says, you stretched out your right hand and the earth swallowed them up. It's the only other time it's used between chapter 7 and 15.
So here, if Pharaoh has an eye to see it, if his heart hadn't been hardened under the judgment hand of God, he would have recognized this was a sign of what was going to happen to him. But tragically, how do we end?
Verse 13, Pharaoh's heart grew hard and he did not heed them. The greatest miracle in the world cannot change a hardened human heart. What does Jesus say in reference to the rich man and Lazarus? They have Moses and the prophets.
If they won't hear them, they won't even believe a man that's risen from the dead. That's not a manner of speaking. That is the truth. I think Jesus was seen by many and not necessarily believed by all that saw Him.
It takes the grace of God to change the hardened heart of a sinner. And we see that, and we will see that very clearly with Pharaoh. So the bookends of what we've read, look at verses 3 and 4. I will harden Pharaoh's heart.
Pharaoh will not heed you. Verse 13, Pharaoh's heart grew hard. He did not heed them. That will be the sad refrain that takes us all the way up to chapter 12. The hardened heart under the judgmental hand of God.
The self-hardening influence of Pharaoh upon himself. The stubborn, resistant, unrepentant way that he sets his own nation on a path toward ruin. He will not heed even the miraculous judgments of God.
So we see the heart and the rod. These are the two things we've brought out of these first 13 verses. The heart and the rod. We see first and foremost that God acts according to His own sovereign pleasure.
We saw that clearly in Romans 9. We could spend all day looking at verses to support and reinforce that claim. God acts according to His pleasure.
For His eternal purpose.
He does it in a way that's righteous and no one can question Him. Though no one can run away from or outside of His will. And so if you have ears to hear, you're hearing because you've been given ears to hear.
If you have not been given ears to hear, you're not hearing anything we're talking about anyway. This is all from the hand of God according to His good purpose. You keep reading Romans 9, He makes it very clear why He allows vessels of wrath.
To be prepared beforehand for destruction.
But we also see in the midst of that sovereignty of God's hand upon the heart of a sinner, we also see this, that that judgmental act of God is very much a confirmation of hardness or a giving over to hardness.
And again, one of the biggest straw men's that Calvinists have to face is the idea that we would all be naturally good and respondent to grace if God just were not to harden us in our corruptions. That is not the case.
He gives them over to their own corrupt nature. He gives them over to be further held in bondage though they're already in bondage by their own free choice and desire. It's really important we establish this point.
He left Pharaoh to the influence of Pharaoh's own debased corruption. Read some Romans 1, 24 -28. He gives them over. Psalm 81 makes the same point. 2 Thessalonians 2, beginning in verse 10, all makes the same point.
And that means that we have reason to think that God will deal the same with us if we resist his will. Though there already is a hardened heart and there already is corruption, God's judgment, his judicial hardening had not yet fallen upon Pharaoh.
Now, please listen.
We're all corrupt.
We're born into this world corrupt. We all have corrupt nature. We're all under that bondage of sin. But that doesn't mean we've all been met with the judicial hardening of God. The judicial hardening of God comes when the Word is rejected.
When the light is barked away. When the manifold mercies and grace of God.
Are continually and insistently.
And willfully spat upon.
And trampled upon,.
That is when the judicial hardening of God, the giving over, comes upon a sinner. It's very important that you hear that. It does not mean that apart from grace, you will somehow in that corrupt state be able to leap toward God.
You'll have no desire to do that. It just means that you can always be more hardened than you have been if you persist in rejecting the Word of God. If you persist in refusing to hear the invitation of God.
He will not strive with man forever. There comes a time when the apostles dust off their sandals and they go to the next town. So you may come, and because you come, you think as long as you have access.
To the ministry of the Word,.
You'll have opportunity to, when you're ready, 13 years later, relent and actually obey the command of God. No, no, no. You're not hearing. Pharaoh had plenty of access to the command of God. It was far too late.
Ten times over. He had already been judicially hardened. And more tragic still, in this judicial frame, when God hands someone over.
To their own corruption,.
He's essentially handing them over to almost unmitigated influence of the evil one. It's more tragic still. It's not just that He removes the preservation of His mercies, the providence of His beckoning pleas, the embrace that's held out.
If you would but come, if you would but humble yourself in turn,.
Why will you perish?
And when the sinner obstinately, stubbornly refuses, says, no, no, it will be my way, my ambitions, my desires.
I refuse to bend the knee.
I refuse to become a Christian. I refuse to contort my life to be in accordance with that Word. It will cost me too much. It's too painful. Frankly, I'm too selfish. Too in love with the world. Too in love with my own life and my flesh.
I will not do it. Maybe I'll do it 40 years from now. When God removes that gracious influence, those gracious opportunities, He's not just removing His grace, He's essentially removing restraints and protections and allowing the evil one to have greater sway and influence than ever before.
Simeon points this out. We know from the history of Job how great things he can affect for the distressing of even the most eminent saint. It's not a judicial hardening. It's just a removal of God's protection.
And look what Satan can do to Job. Much more, therefore, we can suppose Satan to prevail over one who's a blind and willing subject. If he's able to subject Job to that kind of torment, apart from God's protective grace, what will Satan do to one who does not have that grace?
We do not indeed know from any expressed declarations that Satan was interfering in the work of Pharaoh. But, Simeon says, when we think of how he instigated David to number the people. Remember, David took the census and it brought the judgment of God.
Or how he prevailed upon Peter to deny Christ. Or upon Judas to betray Christ. Or how he filled the heart of Ananias and Sapphira. But they might lie even to the Holy Spirit. And then finally, we're told that he works in all of the children of disobedience.
We can have no doubt that he was very active in the heart of Pharaoh. It's not just the hardening of God. Giving over someone to their own hardness, their own corruption. It's all that comes with that.
You're brought over now. You're prey in ways you've never been prey before. You thought Pharaoh was harsh. Wait till you see what the demonic power behind Pharaoh will do. So we see the heart, and we see the rod also.
The rod, which is symbolic of the judgment of God. The rod, of course, is an image of power. An image of judgment. Rod is used in this way, speaking of discipline. Rod will certainly be emblematic of the judgments of the victory of God when it's in the hand of Moses.
And we see here the judgment of God in the form of this rod. The rod that swallows up all of the arrogance,.
All of the boast,.
All of the might of Pharaoh's empire. Thomas Manton was reading an excellent exposition he gave from this text. And he began to bring out this idea of the judicial hand of God. And he says, thinking through all of the plagues, he says, I observe that Pharaoh now and then had his devout pains.
We'll see a few times where he seems to be on the verge.
Of okay, alright, alright.
You can go, just come back. You can go, just leave your cattle here and go. We see him on the verge of a softening it would seem. And so Manton says, I observe that even one under this judicial hardening, they may have some relenting, and yet still never come to true repentance.
So don't look around and say, well, I'm not spitting at the things of God.
I'm here, aren't I?
And in fact, sometimes I even feel warm and gooey inside at certain things that are shared and sung. You know, sometimes I almost shed a tear. And yes, I'm not a Christian, not by any stretch of the imagination.
But surely I'm not under the judicial hardening of God. I wouldn't have had these experiences otherwise. Look closely at Pharaoh. You may have some relenting. That doesn't mean you're not under the hardened condition of God's judgment.
So ultimately this shows us our need for divine grace. Just like we cannot know who is truly of the elect just by immediate observation. Certainly there's fruit that belongs in the Christian life, and that fruit can speak to assurance in many ways.
But we cannot just know who's elect, neither can we know who has received that judicial hardening from the hand of God, because they've just continually resisted Him. But all of us can be encouraged to know that where God is swift to judge, He's even more generous and abounding to show mercy.
We should not think of a God who's looking for every occasion and opportunity to harden and hand someone over to their own corruption. We should understand that we serve a God who is full of cascading mercy.
And if He's looking for anything, He's looking with great long-suffering and patience that sinners would turn from their sinfulness. And while He prevails, while He tarries, that they would run to Him and find Him to be the very one who as the prodigal father runs toward them.
And so hear and see the very things that we're trying to establish here. Remember Lot's wife, Jesus says. Remember Lot's wife. The Word of God is to be received with immediate response, with immediate reverence.
You don't sit and wait until sometime later, because sometime later never comes. Today must always be the day of salvation if there is to be salvation. And every day you have not received salvation is a day you risk, you invite that judicial hardening of God.
The stakes could not be any higher for you. We live as though our lives don't come to the brink of eternity until the very end, and we just think, hopefully I make it to my deathbed and then I can make things right with the Lord.
No, friends.
Every day is on the brink of eternity. Every day you risk that hardening of God that may dictate the course you take for the next 30 or 40 years of your life. Remember Lot's wife and seek the influence of the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit of God alone can take away the heart of stone and put in its plate a heart of flesh.
This is not something that you can do. This is not something that God expects you to do. This is something that God promises He will do by His own Spirit. He will remove the heart of stone and grant a heart of flesh.
Listen to me, when it comes to the sovereignty of God, it is not that you must make a choice to become born again so that your heart of stone will be taken out and you can receive a heart of flesh. No, no, no, no.
Remember, God is the One who shows mercy to whom He wills. You must be born again by the Spirit of God so that He can take out your heart of stone and He can give you a heart of flesh as He gives you faith and repentance and all that comes with what Christ has secured through the cross.
You must be born again. And yet, that work is a work of God entirely out of your disposal. So, how can you be born again? What must you do if you can't make yourself born again the second time around, a spiritual birth, just as you couldn't make yourself born the first time around physically?
What can you do? What must you do? You must do what Scripture commands you to do. Repent and believe upon Him. Forsake your sins and run to Him. Receive the Gospel. Bow your knee in obedience. Ask the Lord Jesus Christ to be Lord in your life.
Ask Him now to be your Savior. Lest you risk His hand of hardening. Four points as we come to a close of what we need. Let's take a big step back from things we've been talking about now for the past 20 minutes or so.
Four quick points. Keep in mind where we're going in this narrative. Pharaoh is the symbol of satanic opposition to the people of God. Egypt right now is the symbol, the nation, the empire of fallen man, the Babel spirit as it were, which represents the attempt to thwart the redemptive purpose of God in creation.
Because the seed of promise has been brought through the line of Abraham, through Jacob, now into Israel. No wonder we find Israel in this bondage under the evil empire of the fallen one. And in God's redeeming work, He's not just redeeming individuals out of some abstract metaphorical pit.
He's quite literally delivering them over from spiritual forces that would prevail against them. From powers and principalities that eyes have not seen. The liberation of Christ as a conqueror and as a victor speaks exactly to this.
And so what do we need to keep in mind? What would God require of us as we, like Moses, go and declare the Word of God to the powers that be, as we anticipate perhaps judgments of God unfolding in our land, in our world?
What are we to do as Christians when the hostility and the persecution rises up? When the oppression increases? When the judgments of God begin to cascade toward us? What are we to do?
Four points.
First, we're to live by faith. If Moses and Aaron have to do anything at this juncture, they have to live by faith. And this is something we'll see again and again. They did all according to what the Lord had commanded.
So they did.
That's what living by faith looks like. Doing what God has commanded. Doesn't matter how difficult it is. Doesn't matter how much it puts you out. How much it scrapes against your flesh or your desire.
If God has commanded it, you must obey it. That is the life of faith. Time and time again, we see an unbelieving world around us with all of their arrogance and all of their power. And if we could cast down one sort of righteous serpent, they can cast down a dozen.
And it's so easy for us then to sort of lose heart. The church seems so weak. The church seems so vulnerable, so powerless. Things that we try so hard to do, like sand slips away through our fingers. We look at the wicked around us and it seems everything they do is immediately successful.
It seems that their shadow terrorizes the people of God. It seems that they have all the influence, all of the current, all of the flow. Of course, they're fueled by the powers and the principalities.
They serve, whether bewittingly or unbewittingly, they serve the power of the prince of the air. And we need to recognize that a life of faith may require a lot of patience for that one serpent to swallow up all of the opposition, but it will happen.
Even as it happened here, and it must have been a great encouragement to Moses. You can replicate, but you can't win. You can multiply, but you can't win. God will always swallow up the opposition in victory.
We need to be reminded that that's what the life of faith requires.
Faith.
We believe that God has won the ultimate victory. We know that all opposition, every weapon formed against us,.
Will fail.
We know that in God, in the refuge of the city of Zion, we are secure. So God wants His people to live by faith. Secondly, and part of living by faith, we need to know the truth and we need to love the truth.
We need to know the truth and we need to love the truth. Pharaoh loved that his little court magicians could come out and conjure up some replicating miracle and sign, and his proud heart was gratified.
And so Moses and Aaron had to press on in faith, and they had to know what was true, not what the magical papyri of these priest scribes said, but what the Lord God had revealed. They had to know what was true, what God had said was true, what God said would unfold, not what Pharaoh would say or dismiss or vainly march around.
Not only did they have to know that truth, they had to love the truth. Because you will not know the truth rightly unless you love the truth. It gets back to understanding, as a Christian, it's not an intellectual ideology.
It's something comprehensive to everything. It's not intellectual data that we import into our brains, and that's why we're Christians. We adopt an outlook. We adopt certain principles. We have 21 rules for life, and that makes us Christians.
No, that's just knowing something. You haven't actually known the truth of the Gospel unless you love the Gospel. And love relates to knowledge in a very significant way. And so notice in 2 Timothy 3, beginning in verse 7, Paul warns against Jennys and Jambres, these very court magicians.
And he likens them to the false teachers that were having some sway in the churches. And he says, these false teachers,.
Always learning,.
Never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jennys and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth. Men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith. And they will progress no further.
Their folly will be manifest to all as theirs also was. And then Paul, in 2 Thessalonians 2, he speaks of the coming of the lawless one. This working of Satan. This is all right here in Exodus 7. He talks about the power and the signs and the lying wonders.
And he talks about this unrighteous deception that has sway over those who are perishing. And he says this, because they did not love the truth. They did not love the truth that they might be saved. Do you see the difference?
One way of Christian life says,.
You can always be learning.
And never come to the knowledge of the truth. And what does the genuine knowledge of the truth look like to Paul?
It looks like you love the truth.
You love it.
It animates your thoughts. It gives you a reason to get up early. It becomes your meditation in the watch of the night. You love it so much, you're willing to put some skin in the game. You won't abandon it, even when it's unpopular.
When there's seven serpents in front of you, and they're all the type that would spit and mock and scoff, you love the truth so much, you're willing to bear that. In fact, you invite it, because you're looking for an opportunity.
You love the truth so much, you want it to be loved by others.
It's a love of the truth.
That shows we have come to a true knowledge. You need to examine yourself and say, am I someone that could be described as always learning but never coming to the love of the truth? Third, we need to pray for opportunities.
And with opportunities, we need to pray for boldness. When we're talking about not just Pharaoh in the flesh, but the satanic principle behind Pharaoh. We're talking about powers and principalities. As Paul says in Ephesians 6, our struggle is not against flesh and blood.
It's against these very things. It's against the rulers, not only of this world, but of the sort of spiritual forces of the heavenly realms. And after depicting how the Christian is to withstand the assaults of this larger reality by putting on the armor of God, in Ephesians 6, 19 and 20, Paul says, pray on my behalf so that utterance would be given to me and I would be able to open my mouth and make known with great boldness the mystery of the Gospel, that I may speak boldly as I ought to speak.
He asks for the same thing in Colossians 4. Verse 3, pray that God will open a door.
For the Word.
Friends, you will not find what you're not looking for and you will not look for what you're not praying for. You will not find what you're not looking for and you will not look for what you're not praying for.
We don't find opportunities.
Because we don't look for opportunities. Because we don't pray for opportunities. Paul says, I'm going to be in a different city.
Pray. Pray for opportunities.
Pray that my mouth is open.
Pray that the door is open.
Pray that I have boldness. He's looking for opportunities, not haphazardly. If an opportunity shows up, give me the faith to take it. But he's actually preparing himself in prayer. I recognize I'm in the midst of this infernal fallen world.
The sway of the evil one is over so many who are in bondage and they can't even imagine. They don't yet feel the chains of that misery.
Maybe some do.
There's a hardening of the heart. Maybe some have been.
Judicially hardened by God.
Maybe others are ripe unto salvation. God, give me an opportunity. Give me utterance. Give me boldness. I know where I go. I'm going to be a stench of death to many. Oh, but God, open my mouth. I want to be a fragrance of life to some.
You won't find what you're not looking for. You won't look for what you're not praying for. Do we pray that God would open a door for us? Do we pray that God would give us boldness that we lack? No, actually, we just don't seek opportunities because we lack boldness.
So we don't pray for opportunities because we're not bold. Paul says, fine, then pray for boldness so that you'll seek opportunities. There's no excuse to not seek the open doors. And that leads me to the fourth and last point, just to summarize again.
First and foremost, to live by faith. Second, to know, and with that, to love the truth. Living by faith, knowing in a way that you love the truth, which leads to praying for opportunities, praying for boldness, if we're not praying for opportunities.
And then fourth, to do more for Christ. To do more for Christ. Legalism, someone cries. Sometimes we think that way. Well, Christianity's wonderful. I don't have to do anything. You have to do more for Christ.
I love what F .B. Meyer said in a devotional on Exodus 7 -5. He says the whole purpose of the judgment of God upon Pharaoh was to display his name, to display himself, his power in the world. And he says, you know, believers are the world's Bibles.
They should be able to study us to know something of God Himself. We have the Scriptures, and thereby we know the Lord. And Meyer says, there's a lot of people in the world that don't have the Scriptures, and you are going to be Scripture to them.
Just like Moses is going to be God to Pharaoh. As a believer lives by faith, as a believer loves the Word, knows it intimately because of that love, risks things for it because of that love, obeys all that it commands in this living by faith.
And as he prays for boldness and opportunity, that's a believer that God is going to work mightily through. And the world is going to see that. People are going to see that. Let me close with a great quotation from Spurgeon.
Spurgeon, preaching from this very text. I shall not say any more upon the subject. I only pray that the Lord would give His church a larger number of consecrated men and women. And asking of you, for I make a point of it, to remember that this must always be a labor of love.
If it is to be acceptable, it must be a labor of love. No man ever does anything for the Lord acceptably, which he would rather not do. No man ever gives to the Lord acceptably, that which he would rather withhold.
The service of Christ is perfect freedom to serve Him day and night. It's to enjoy perpetual liberty. Only you try it, dear brother or sister. Listen to this. This is so marvelous. I love this. Normally, how would you counsel someone who's very weak?
I'm so dry. I'm so weak in my faith. My life, if I'm being honest, I'm just full of anxious thoughts and doubt. And so many things are kind of not going well. I'm stumbling back into old patterns of sinfulness.
I'm being duped by temptation left and right. I just don't know what to do. It's like, well, you just need R &R. Let's get you out of church life. Don't worry about praying and evangelizing. Don't worry about making those studies.
You need intensive care. You just need to rest up and have some soup and kind of let people leave you alone. Spurgeon goes the exact opposite. I love this. You that are low in your grace, weak in your faith, doubting, unbelieving, do more for Christ.
Do more for Christ. Make your consecration more perfect. And then your light will come forth as brightness. And the glory of your soul will be like a lamp that burns. When Moses and Aaron feel tempted because they're low in their faith, and they're not bold, they're not praying for boldness, and they're not looking for opportunities, they need to recognize that they are to do even more for the Lord.
And as they engage even more fully for the Lord, as they consecrate themselves more fully to the Lord, as they free themselves and make sacrifices in their lives to open themselves up to greater service for the Lord, then they'll be brought out of that low estate.
Then they'll be brought to a place to pray with great boldness and to know and to love the truth of God and to live by faith and not by sight. You that are low here this morning, do more for Christ. Do more for Christ than you did last week.
Do more for Christ and His kingdom than you did last year. Do more for Christ so that you can live by faith, so that you can love the truth of God, so that you can look and pray for opportunities.
With great boldness.
Do more for Christ. Let's pray. Father, make us doers, not just hearers. Bless this Word to us, Lord. We pray if there are those with self-hardening that have yet to find Your judicial hardening upon them, Lord, may this very day You be calling them to Yourself to do a great work, to bring the new birth, to cast out the heart of stone that's kept them in darkness and misery far too long.
Give them a heart of flesh to know You, to love You, to give all for You. May sinners wonder that men and women so much like them would be so different from them, be willing to lose their very lives and all that they own for Your sake.
May they be provoked to wonder at the persecution of Your righteous ones, at the afflictions of the faithful. That they would count those things as joy. They would see themselves as worthy, Lord, if it draws them toward You, if it advances Your kingdom.
May they wonder at such love and why they lack it. We here as well, Lord, even as believers, may we look at our own lukewarm estate, see how little we do for You, how much we do for ourselves, may we lament.
And in that low place of doubt and low faith and low graces in our lives, Lord, may we do more. By Your Spirit, may we do far more for You, the One whom we love because You first loved us. In whose name we pray, amen.