Keep sharing good news without ads.
Exodus 6:2-7:7 What’s Going On?
Exodus chapter 6 verse 2, hear the word of the Lord. God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord. I appear to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty. But by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known to them.
I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel, whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant.
Say, therefore, to the people of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.
I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God. And you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord. Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit in harsh slavery. So the Lord said to Moses, go in, tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to let the people of Israel go out of his land.
But Moses said to the Lord, behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me. How then shall Pharaoh listen to me? For I am of uncircumcised lips. But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, but the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron and gave them a charge about the people of Israel and about Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to bring the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt.
These are the heads of the father's houses, the sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel, Hanak, Palu, Hezron, and Carmi. These are the clans of Reuben, the sons of Simeon, Jemuel, Jamin, Ahad, Jashon, Zohar, and Shaul.
The sons of a Canaanite, the son of a Canaanite woman. These are the clans of Simeon. These are the names of the sons of Levi according to their generations, Gershon, Kohath, Merari, the years of the life of Levi being 137 years.
The sons of Gershon, Libni, and Shemai by their clans. The sons of Kohath, Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uziel, the years of the life of Kohath being 133 years. The sons of Merari, Mali, and Mushi. These are the clans of the Levites according to their generations.
Amram took as his wife, Jochebed, his father's sister, and she bore him Aaron and Moses, the years of the life of Amram being 137 years. The sons of Izhar, Korah, Nepheg, and Zichri. The sons of Uziel, Mishael, Elzaphan, and Sithri.
Aaron took as his wife, Elisheba, the daughter of Aminadab, and the sister of Nashan, and she bore him Nadab, Abihu, Eliezer, and Ithemar. The sons of Korah, Isser, Elkanah, and Abiasath. These are the clans of the Korahites.
Eliezer, Aaron's son, took as his wife one of the daughters of Peruel, and she bore him Phinehas. These are the heads of the father's houses of the Levites by their clans. These are Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, bring out the people of Israel from the land of Egypt by their host.
It was they who spoke to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, about bringing out the people of Israel from Egypt. This Moses and this Aaron. On the day when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, the Lord said to Moses, I am the Lord.
Tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, all that I say to you. But Moses said to the Lord, behold, I am of uncircumcised lips. How will Pharaoh listen to me? And the Lord said to Moses, see, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.
You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you.
Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my host, my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.
Moses and Aaron did so, and they did just as the Lord commanded them. Now Moses was 80 years old and Aaron 83 years old when they spoke to Pharaoh. And the Lord had his blessings at the reading of his holy word.
Well, the traffic stopped, then creeping, and you finally get to see what's causing the holdup. Police cars with their blue lights on, an ambulance, a tow truck, a couple of other cars stop, and you look and wonder what's going on.
Curiosity creates rubberneckers, you know, people who slow down and stare, even if they don't have to. The wreck is on the other side of the road going the other way. Your sight is clear, but there's a traffic jam going your way because so many people will slow down just to find out what's going on.
The kids are making too much noise, much more noise than usual, or maybe worse, maybe no noise at all. And so you open the door and look in, what's going on? Maybe you go to the Brightleaf Hoedown for the first time just to answer that question.
Probably then you don't go the second time. You wanna know what this is all about. Advertisers were selling the event as new, as different, as bigger and better. So you'll come and check it out just to see what's going on.
Sometimes we think we know what's going on, what's happening at a place, but we're wrong. You go to a weight room at a gym, and you look at the people dressed in their shorts or workout clothes, their old weight machines, and you think, you know, they're exercising.
Oh, but look closely. Some are just sitting. Some are talking to other people who are just sitting. And some of the people, you can tell, who obviously need to exercise the most are the ones who are talking the most.
What's going on? Just socializing. Now, people have come here to this building expecting to find a traditional church. You know, they look it up on the internet, Covenant Performing Baptist Church. They get the address.
GPS brings them here. And why? This is a gym. Surprised. And then some people, okay, they maybe they get past that hurdle and they come in, and they expect maybe to find churches they've known it and where, you know, they can get their way.
And there's really very little scripture read and there's assurance of salvation is just kind of passed out to everybody who says a prayer and there's no accountability and membership is meaningless. And evangelism is just something people talk about and no one really, you know, they don't really do it.
And they're bewildered when they find there's actually a church here. We're first curious and perhaps confused and baffled, maybe stunned when what we expect is going on is not really going on. We expect a highway to be for cars to drive fast, not stop with blue lights flashing, people standing around.
We expect kids to be constantly making some noise. You can take that for granted, but not too much. Not quiet. That's really weird. We expect a weight room to be for working out. A lot of people expect a swimming pool is to really for kind of just bobbing around and splashing, you know.
Serious swimmers expect it to be a place for where they can swim laps back and forth. So the splashers and the swimmers have different expectations of what's supposed to be going on. Here in Exodus, Israel knows what's going on, or at least they want to know what's going on.
They had at first believed the message that Moses was going to lead them out of slavery to freedom. But, you know, what we saw last week after trouble and persecution came because of that promise, now they're not so sure.
You know, what's going on with this? And sure, Moses and Aaron had told them what was going on. It was deliverance. It was freedom. It was blessing. That's what they said. But look at us now. We're having to make the same number of bricks, quotas the same, but now we have to gather the straw ourselves.
We're being beaten by Pharaoh's taskmasters. We're being yelled at and called idle. Even Moses is wondering at the end of, you know, he says, he complains to the Lord at the end of chapter five, you have not delivered your people at all.
So the Lord tells him, now you will see. Now he's going to see what's going on. There's two pairs of things going on here. Two pairs. There's revelation and redemption, and there's identification and glorification.
Well, first revelation and redemption. What's going on? God is revealing himself. He begins by declaring in verse two, I am the Lord, literally in Hebrew, Yahweh. That declaration will frame. Notice how frequent it's repeated here.
It frames the beginning and the end of the revelation. Repeating it at the end, and I am the Lord in verse eight. That's the end. He is revealing himself. First, he has revealed himself already, he says.
He appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty. The Hebrew word is El Shaddai. Ha ha, you've heard that before, haven't you? The Lord appeared to Abraham in a dream in Genesis 17 and told him, I am El Shaddai.
Gave him the old covenant sign of circumcision then. When Jacob was helpless, you know, he had to trust his sons. They had to send, he was so desperate, gonna have to send all his sons, including his beloved Benjamin, to back to Egypt where there was this cruel tyrant who had taken one of his other sons prisoner.
He was demanding things from them, and he was suspicious. This man was gonna hurt them, but he had to do it. So he trusted his sons to El Shaddai, and the tyrant turned out to be Joseph. That in the past was the great revelation of God.
El Shaddai, literally God the mountain-like one, like a mountain to us puny creatures, you know, overshadowing, immovable, unconquerable from age to age the same, translated as far back as we can tell as Almighty.
That's how God first revealed himself. Now something new, he is Yahweh, the I Am, the eternally existing one, the free one, who comes down, but not because he was summoned. He cannot be controlled by magic.
His name isn't a magic word that causes him to appear and do our wishes. It's a name that asserts his is-ness. He is the I Am, the one who is because he is, not because we need him, because we have needs, you know, we need a helper, so come help me, God.
He's a genie to grant our wishes, a rescuer to get us out of a jam. Some people think God must be, in fact, you'll hear this sometimes. You know, God must be, fill in the blank, and it's always what they want.
God must be what I want him to be. What they expect is fair. He must be available for them. He must be revolving around them at their beck and call. He is, they think, not the I Am, but he is the, hey, you, you know, hey, you, give me some good luck, give me a girlfriend, give me some money.
The I Am does not exist simply to meet our needs and fulfill our wishes. He doesn't intervene in our life because he is required to. Like when you have him under contract, he has to show up and do our bidding when we want him to, because we said the magic centers prayer, or even we have the right name, and that right name just kind of, you know, it's like pushing a button on the machine.
It makes him do what we want him to do. No, if the El Shaddai, the name El Shaddai, insisted that God was all-powerful, all-sufficient, the name Yahweh insists that he is free. It's not derived from anyone, he is this I Am.
He is the one who is, and yet the next thing he reveals about himself in verse four, so he's developed two things already. He is God Almighty, El Shaddai. He is the I Am. He is, the next thing he reveals in verse four is that although perfectly free, absolutely free, he has covenanted himself.
He's made a commitment. He's bound himself to certain people, and he has promised what he is going to do for them, and that in part is what's going on here, and really throughout the whole Bible. Many people today think of freedom.
You have freedom, and you have commitment. You can have one or the other, but you can't have both. They're mutually exclusive. You can be free, or you can be committed, but, you know, you gotta sacrifice one for the other.
You can be free and single, or you can be married. Commitment, we think, constrains, and so we get the common problem of Christian people today who think that they're, quote, freedom, and Christ means that they should be free of any commitment to the body of Christ, the church, so they'll go here or there, depending on, you know, where the gospel sing is, where the homecoming is, where the revival is.
That's the old-time religion way. Maybe the new way is where the praise band is the hottest, and the videos are the best, and the guy in the jeans and the untucked shirt is giving the best series on marriage and sex.
That's the new style, right? They might love a good sermon, and if they're of the old style, they might be some of the loudest to shout, amen, but they don't wanna be tied down to a church. They want to be free, and yet here, the Lord reveals Himself as absolute and free, and yet, in verse four, in His is-ness, and in His freedom, He established, it says, His words, verse four, He established, literally, the word means cut.
He cut a covenant. He made a commitment. In Genesis 15, just after tithing to El Elyon, God Most High, Abraham wonders, you know, what's next for him? What's going on next for me? And God tells him to set up a covenant cutting, literally cut the animals in half, and normally, both people in a covenant would go through the animals and say, hey, what happened to these animals happened to me if I break this covenant, this commitment, and yet, in Genesis 15, only symbols of God go through the animals.
The Lord's saying He is making a covenant. The free one is committing himself, is binding himself to keep his promises to Abraham, and the entire rest of the Bible is the story of God doing that, of keeping His covenant, His commitment.
Well, here, the people are out of the land, they're enslaved, they're oppressed, they're in trouble, their baby boys are being thrown in the river, and they're wondering, what's going on? The Lord tells Moses He made the covenant to give them a promised land, and in verse five, I've heard their groaning, and I have remembered my covenant.
I know I'm bound to do this, I'm gonna do it. It's not that he ever forgot, but that's what they are beginning to feel. We've been forgotten, we're enslaved, we're being killed. God must have forgotten us, but that's not what's going on.
The Lord says, no, He remembers. He always remembers to do what He's committed Himself to do, and so now, He will begin acting in a way that can be seen by us people to fulfill the promises of the covenant.
So what's going on here? God is revealing Himself. He revealed Himself in the past as El Shaddai, God Almighty, now as Yahweh, I Am, and the covenant-keeping God, and so there's revelation, and there's also redemption, and the Lord will keep His covenant and redeem His people, and then for six verses, I should say, no, from verses six to eight, the Lord pronounces the seven I-wills of redemption.
In verse six, the Lord says to Moses, say, therefore, therefore, because of who I am, Almighty, I Am, covenant-keeping, say, I Am Yahweh, pronouncing His name again. What's going on here? Well, God is speaking.
Why declare that? I Am Yahweh. He's saying, pay attention. He's introducing Himself. Great man, like the president comes in, and ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States. Here, God is saying, I Am.
This is the real God speaking, not what someone feels God should be like. By the way, you wanna know, when you're probably just about to hear nonsense, someone says, I feel God is like blank by blank.
Probably what you hear next is total nonsense. Okay, it's just, I mean, tell me what God has revealed, not what you feel. But anyway, but here God is speaking, and this is the true God. Not what someone feels He should be like, and He might be very much different than what you expect.
Here, He reveals the seven I-wills of redemption. Notice that starting in verse six. Seven times God says, I will. First, I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. Now, they had believed that before, at least for a while, but then the Egyptians made their burdens heavier, and so now they don't believe.
But the Lord promises that He will do it. Salvation is first from something. It's out of bondage to Egypt, to sin, to the world, the flesh, and the devil. That's why somebody who claims that, you know, I'm saved, but they're still living as just as much a slave of sin as before, needs to be told, you know, you look like you're still a slave.
You haven't really been saved from anything. He needs to be told to examine himself as to whether he really is saved, whether he really has been set free, and Christ is in him. Well, second, God says, I will deliver you from slavery.
Now, Moses had been complaining at the end of chapter five, you know, what's going on here, God? You have not delivered them at all, and the Lord promises He will do it. It's part of the covenant He has made.
He has bound himself to deliver His people, and a key word here, it's actually spelled out in Hebrew, it's not just implied, not just part of the verb, one of those kind of things, it's spelled out, is you.
I will deliver you. By far the most controversial of the doctrines of grace is the one about you. You know, about who in particular the Lord will deliver. Has God simply just made, you know, has He just made salvation available?
He's put it out there, you know, like people make mashed potatoes available at a buffet. It's, you know, it's entirely up to you whether you want any. Want some mashed potatoes? I mean, salvation? Oh, you'll pass?
Well, it's up to you. In that view, then the Lord hasn't covenanted to deliver anyone in particular. He just made deliverance available in case someone, you know, maybe, might, somebody, you want anybody?
Want some? You want some? Want some redemption? Maybe? It's here. You want it? It's like that. We're free in that view. We are free, because we're the ones who make the decision, and God is bound. He's not free, right?
Because He has to take anyone who might decide to opt in, maybe even Pharaoh. What if Pharaoh decides he wants to believe? That messes the whole plan up, doesn't it? That's what many people expect is going on with salvation, but here in verse six, I will deliver you.
You know, it's not just like, I'm gonna be going out of Egypt now. Anyone that wants to come with me is welcome to come along. It's not what God says. I'll deliver you. It's the people the Lord has committed Himself to who are delivered.
Now, third, I will redeem you. This is the third verb used to describe the act of salvation, and it's a picture, really, of our salvation. Bring out, deliver, redeem. Literally, it means I will act the kinsman redeemer.
That's the close personal relation who buys us back, you know, out of slavery, out of debt. It's the price payer who takes care of us. It's like Boaz did for Ruth. We'll be looking at that by the end of this year if you know that story.
Boaz was the kinsman redeemer who redeemed Ruth. The Lord has already said that Israel, His people, are His firstborn son. So He's a close personal relative of His people. And so here He says He will be their kinsman redeemer.
He will be the price payer who buys us our freedom, who saves us from our burdens from slavery. Now, being saved from, being bought back, is called redemption. That's redemption. Now, here that redemption is done, God says, with an outstretched arm and great acts of judgment.
Now, here in Exodus, the greatest of those acts is to kill the firstborn son. Finally, God will redeem His people by not only judging and killing the son, but also by raising Him from the dead. Fourth, in verse seven, I will take you to be My people.
The Lord has covenanted that His saving these particular people will result in them becoming His people. That's the result of this. You know, we're not only saved from something, from slavery, but also for something.
Most importantly, for God Himself, be in a relationship with Him. Chapter five, verse 15, it's the previous chapter. Now, the Israelite foreman, if you remember, described themselves to Pharaoh as your servants.
That's who they were, that was their identity, Pharaoh's servants, his slaves. But here the Lord is saying that what He is about to do will change their identity. When the Lord saves people, it's not just that now they'll have fire insurance and they were going to hell and now they can be confident they're going to heaven, but other than that, they can go along, live as they were.
It changes real salvation, who they are. They are no longer slaves of sin, part of this present evil age, servants of Satan. They are children of God. Now, fifth, it changes their relationship with God.
I will be your God. But isn't He everyone's God? That's kind of redundant. Of course, you know, God is God, right? He's everyone's God. Well, no, not really. Oh, He's the only God, but many people live as if their God was their belly.
You know, they live for what they can eat or drink, for the sensations of their body, some for sex. Maybe their God is money. You know, that's what they're serving. Jesus said, talk about those who are serving money.
Some think they can do that. They can serve money and God at the same time. Yeah, they understand. Okay, maybe I have to sacrifice some church, some prayer, some pursuit of God in order to make my money, but they think somehow they can balance the two gods.
Jesus says it can't be done. Oh, you can balance a little bit of religion with business, but you can't really balance money with being in a relationship with God. God wants all your money, all of you.
If God has truly saved you, He will be your God. And you will know in the middle of verse seven that I am the Lord, your God, who has brought you from under, let's just say your burdens, whatever they are.
What's going on in your life now if you're truly saved? Revelation and redemption. So what's going on in your life now? You know the Lord and you know that He, not your belly or sex or the dollar or relationships or business, He is your God.
Well, six in verse eight, the Lord has redeemed you from something, slavery, bondage and death, and redeemed you for something, a place to live in God's richest blessings. I bring you into the land, I will bring you into the land that I swore.
Now, before it was to bring them out, now it is to bring us in. We're not just called to be separate from the world, to not watch certain movies and not do this or not do that, not to come out from among them.
We're called to follow the Lord into an abundant life, to go into something that's better than what we left. Well, seventh and finally, at the end of verse eight, the Lord says, I will give it, that abundant life, that living in God's blessing and presence to you for a possession.
The key word is give. It's a gift handed to us. Now, sure, we know, you know, in the book of Joshua, that they had to go out. You think about how they got that land eventually. And you think, well, how is it a gift?
I mean, those people had to go out, they had to muster their troops, they had to organize them, they had to strategize, they had to be ready for battle, they had to do actual fighting. Yeah, but we also know that the Lord caused walls to fall down and the sun to stand still and huge hailstones to rain down like artillery.
You know, the Lord gave it to them. And us, you know, we have to be ready to fight sin. We have to apply ourselves to not be conformed to the world. We have to be transformed by the word, which means we have to read it, we have to study it, we have to listen to people who have studied it.
We have to put our, to death, our flesh, to resist the devil. But you know, when we get the victory, it's because the Lord gave it to us. It's not you pat yourself on the back, man, I was disciplined, I, no.
The Lord gave it to you. The Lord has committed himself to give us everything he promised. Well, those are the seven I wills of redemption. And the Lord ends by once again, declaring revelation at the end of verse eight.
I am the I am. So what's going on here? Well, the remainder of the passage from chapter six, verse nine to chapter seven, verse seven is about the identified and the glorified. First, though, wait, get ahead of ourselves.
There's the dejected and the rejected in verse nine. So Moses told the people what God had revealed that he will redeem and they, ah, they don't want to hear it. They forget that. And they, we had believed that before.
You know, they had believed it before. He did some signs. He told them about the burning bush. Aaron probably gave a really rousing speech. Maybe they blew trumpets and dance. Maybe Miriam got her tambourine out.
It was probably like a pep rally. It's going to be great. Victory is near freedom. And the result, at least for now, they got their work multiplied. They're being threatened. Now they're in trouble. So they're thinking, you know, we don't want to hear anything more about deliverance, redemption, promised land, blah, blah, blah.
They're dejected. And so Moses is rejected. He, it says he, it says they, the people have a broken spirit as though they can't believe anymore. Too much disappointment. People often don't believe God's promises because their spirit is broken.
Their hopes have been dashed too many times. And so they're not even willing to try to hope it might be real this time. You know, they've heard about victory over sin and they've meditated and memorized scripture and claim promises and yet the sin persists.
And so they just kind of give up, float along. Maybe they've heard about churches claiming, we're a biblical church, committed to the word and what's really going on. Sometimes it's just a show. They've tried the ministry maybe, threw themselves into it, gave everything they could to make it a success, but they were betrayed and let down and then burned out.
So they're unwilling to try again, not willing to trust anyone again. They're dejected. And that leads them to reject God's promises. They aren't, they just aren't willing to take the chance on being disappointed again.
Well, that's what's going on with Israel. But with Moses and Aaron, they are being charged and recharged. From verses 10 to 13, the Lord renews his charge to bring the people out of slavery. Moses says that now Israel isn't even listening to him.
Well, you know, what makes you think God, that Pharaoh's gonna listen to me when Israel won't even listen to me? Especially since he says, you know, he's not a great or he's not a holy speaker or doesn't know how to say things with authority.
And God says, that doesn't matter. The Lord charges the brothers again, lead the people out. It's not about your skills. Salvation doesn't depend on that. What's going on here? Well, human saviors are being identified.
God has called Moses and Aaron. These two particularly. And so they are identified in verses 14 to 27. And in their genealogy, tracing their ancestry back to Levi. That's the priestly tribe, proving that these two could stand between the people and the Lord.
They could represent people to God. Not just anyone can do that. I know everyone today thinks anyone can do that, but they can't. And Moses and Aaron can. And you must come from the right line. So what's going on here?
Notice in verses 26 to 27, at least three times, it makes clear that it was these two brothers, not anyone else, not these other guys. They're saying they're gonna be the leaders. It's not an impostors.
It's not any self-appointed prophets relying on their magnetic personalities and their powerful rhetoric. No, it's these two brothers who will be the human saviors. It's one who's stammering. Okay, he's boring to listen to, backed up by his brother.
Two brothers, one's 80, one's 83. These are the Moses and Aaron to whom the Lord gave this charge. It was they. In case you wanted to think it was someone else. It was they, this Moses and this Aaron.
Got it? They're being identified. And the Lord is showing that he identifies exactly whom he chooses to save his people. That's why you don't need to go looking for gurus online who's got the newest thing, who has a sense of wow, wonder about it.
And there are retreats in the mountains who sends a thrill up your spine. He's spoken from heaven. He's identified the right one. This is my son in whom I am well-pleased. Listen to him. What's going on here?
Well, first there's God's charge and now there's God's equipping. Lord declares again, I am the Lord. And now the charge in verse 28. Tell Pharaoh, King of Egypt, all that I say to you. And so for the third time, Moses complains.
He's just not up to the task. He can't speak well. He doesn't have a sense of gravity. No sense of holiness to him. You know, when he speaks, you're not thinking, wow, he's a powerful guy. He's not the kind of speaker who commands your attention or the respect of emperors.
And so the Lord says to him in chapter seven, verse one, that God has made him like God to Pharaoh. You know, just as God speaks to a prophet and then the prophet speaks to the people. So here Moses will speak to Aaron and Aaron will speak to Pharaoh or Moses.
So the Lord has equipped Moses with a speaker, his brother. But what's going on here with that? Why? What is God doing all this for? To save his people? Okay, but all people? What about Pharaoh? You know, in that last passage from chapter seven, verse three to verse six, the Lord reveals what this is all about.
He declares in verse three, I will harden Pharaoh's heart. And this is the second of the hardening of the heart pronouncements. And once again, God says, the Lord says he is doing it. What's going on with that?
It's not what we would expect, is it? And when someone is not doing what you expect them to be doing, you have to wonder, are they wrong? Or are your expectations wrong? You know, if they are lifting weights in a weight room that you've expected to chat, are they wrong or are your expectations wrong?
You wanted to splash and play around, but the lap swimmers keep running into you. You're baffled. What's going on? You know, you wanted to come to a church and you find it's a gym. What's going on with that?
Who's wrong? We expect God to be saving often. Many people do now. God to be, many people expect, because it's just been drilled into them, that God is saving everyone. That's what they expect. But here he's hardening someone's heart.
What's going on? Well, here, since God is doing it, right? He must be right, and our expectations must be wrong, right? You with me so far? We're confused if we expect one thing and find it's really something else.
Here, God is hardening Pharaoh's heart. He's not doing what many people expect God to be doing. Last Sunday at gym, someone spoke up and said, God wants everyone to be saved. I simply asked, did God want Pharaoh to be saved?
And the obvious answer, the kid got right, no. But he's puzzled by those two things, because there's one thing is what he's been told, and then there's one obviously looking at the passage. So you better start rethinking your expectations.
Here, God has identified the human saviors, and now he will show what's really going on. So be ready to rethink your expectations. Starting in verse three, the Lord says he will harden Pharaoh's heart.
He will multiply signs and wonders, but Pharaoh will not listen to you. Even with Aaron doing the speaking, what's going on? Why tell Pharaoh to let the people go while hardening his heart, while doing miracles that should convince him, should convince anyone, while sending Aaron, the good powerful speaker, to tell him?
Why not soften his heart, give him grace, transform him, give him ears to hear Aaron's moving speech making? That's what many people would expect God to be doing, expect would be the case. They expect that to be God's main goal.
The main thing that is going on with God, they expect, is that God is saving everyone that he can. There's other people he can't. But he is saving everyone that he can. But of course, they expect he can only save those who soften their own heart, and summon God with the right prayer, and say the right words.
So what they think is going on, both here and in the whole, you know, all of life, is this great drama in which God has made salvation available to everyone, but promised salvation to no one, no specific people.
There's no particular people that he is saving, they think. This is an open door for whoever wants to come in. So they think the gospel then shows us we're all individually worth Jesus dying for. It's about our worth.
It's about, you know, our choice, our sovereignty. God then is about us, they think. And so they would expect, I guess, that God's great wish, his mission, his work, what he's striving to do, above all, is that everyone, even Pharaoh, be saved.
And yet, here, clearly, he isn't. What's going on here? God is going to do miracles, great acts of judgment, in verse four, that should convince and impress anyone. He's equipped Moses with Aaron to speak powerfully, but he's also hardening Pharaoh's heart.
Why? Well, he tells us why, in verse five. The Egyptians, Pharaoh at their head, shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.
As God tells Pharaoh, it's even more clearly in chapter nine, two more chapters, and as the apostle Paul repeats in the book of Romans, for this very purpose, I have raised you up, Pharaoh, that I might show my glory in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
Now, Pharaoh had scoffed, who is the Lord? I don't know the Lord. Now, the Lord is going to ensure that they all know who he is. So, what's going on? The salvation of God's people, sure. But the salvation of everyone?
No. The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he would not believe and be saved. That's baffling to many people. It goes against everything that they expect because they don't understand the main thing that is going on here and everywhere.
God is being glorified. Yes, God will save people, his people. But our expectations are wrong if we think that is all that is going on here or with God, as though God were all about helping us, all of us.
If it were, why not save everyone? Why not soften Pharaoh's heart and save him, give him faith to believe the Lord's message? Because that's not what's going on. It's not all about our worth, our freedom, our glory.
God is not all about us. It's about God's glory. And he's decided that he is most glorified when he saves people, his people. And when he shows his power and judgment to others that he will not save. God is so great that his purpose isn't just to help people.
It's to glorify himself. He's so loving that in glorifying himself, he does save his people. So what's going on here? God is saving some and always glorifying himself. Now, the real question, what's going on with you?
It should be, it must be that you too are always glorifying him.