God Hardened Pharaoh's Heart
- Diana
- Jun 21, 2023
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 7, 2024
Starting in Exodus 7:3 God hardened Pharaoh's heart and would not let the Israel people leave Egypt to be free after years of slavery. I've been really touched by this story of how God wanted to free His Israelite people from the slavery in Egypt under Pharaoh. But God wanted to harden Pharaoh's heart in order to demonstrate His power to everybody when God performed miracles so that people would see and believe in Him.
"...And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh will not heed you, 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.” - Exodus 7:3 NKJV
What made me want to do a post about this miracle was because of the world we live in now. Do you ever wonder why people in power do things that seem evil or against their country's best interest? Maybe we need to consider that God might be "hardening" the person's heart in order for God to make people call out to Him for help or because God is going to demonstrate His power with signs and wonders again. Following is the verses where God hardened Pharaoh's heart: Exodus 9:12, 10:1, 10:20, 10:27, 14:4, 14:8, and 14:17.
Something else that occurred to me is that the people that God freed from bondage in
Egypt were living with very little while under Pharaoh's rule, and so when God set them free God had the Jews gather up all the valuable possessions from the Egyptians so they were compensated for their labor. But the problem with this is that these Jews then turned against Moses, when Moses was on the Mountaintop talking to God, and the people made a golden calf out of the gold they collected to make themselves a "God" to worship.
The same thing is happening now in our day. The people of the world that have turned their heart against God, and that have so much wealth or power are not thinking they need to worship God because they now worship the wealth that they have created. A lot of these wealthy people think that they have gotten where they are all on their own. If you look at the communities that have very little wealth, or are low-income, these people are mostly the strongest ones with their faith in God. These needy people, or communities, do not have the wealth blurring their sight from God. It is not that God doesn't want us to have what we need but He doesn't want us to want "stuff" over Him! If we ask God for help He will be happy to help us.
God Says Do Not Worry
“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
“So why do you worry about clothing?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
The other thing that is happening in the world today is the new feverish embracing of the "transgender" ideology. I believe this is happening for the same reason it did in the time while Moses was on the mountaintop receiving the Ten Commandments from God. The people that were waiting for Moses to return had just escaped Pharaoh and Egypt and had been living in great poverty as slaves. But before people had the Ten Commandments there were no "rules" with behavior. The people waiting for Moses started to "corrupt" themselves.
Then God said to Moses "They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!’ ” And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people! Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.” - Exodus 32:8-10
Moses then pleaded with God and said "Why should the Egyptians speak, and say, ‘He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ” So the Lord relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people." - Exodus 32:12-14
Just as with Moses, Jesus wanted us not to worry about what would happen to us when it was said: "For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord."- 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17
I hope I have given you reason to not worry about what you see happening but instead give your heart over to God. If you haven't already, I hope that you will get a Bible in order to see how God loves us and what He wants for us.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." - John 3:16
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