Don't Harden Your Heart | Exodus

Pastor Cameron continues in Exodus as Pharaoh digs in against God, and we watch a heart grow hard. Along the way we meet Moses and Aaron, two unlikely men with no special pedigree, reminding us that God's calling is always a gift of grace rather than something we earn. This message is a warning and an invitation: when we resist God's place in our lives our hearts grow cold, but when we yield to Him, He strengthens us.

Exodus 6:14-7:13 | additional: Exodus 5:2, Romans 1:18-28

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Cameron Lienhart

Cameron is the Senior Pastor of Conduit Ministries

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>> Heavenly Father, this morning I ask that as we open your word, your spirit would reveal to us your son, Jesus. That you would reveal to us your character and your heart. Lord, I ask that Pastor Cameron would be in submission to your spirit. And Lord, that we would hear what you have for us today. That our hearts and ears would be opened by the power of your spirit. And that our hearts would be softened and made malleable to your will. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. >> Amen, good morning, Conduit, how are you this morning? It's good to see you all.

We have had a morning here as evidence in the microphone's not working. We've had a morning here where nothing has decided that it's not going to work. How about that?

Including our printer, so I'm preaching off of my iPad and I'm just not trendy enough to do that.

So you're gonna have to bear with me here a little bit. We have been preaching through the book of Exodus and we'll continue for the foreseeable future into the summer. And just walking through the themes of Exodus, which remain the same in pretty much all of the sections of scripture that we see there. A few of the main themes that we see in the book of Exodus is a focus first on God's promises. God makes promises to the Israelite nation. That first promise is that, hey, I'm gonna make sure that your descendants are as numerous as the stars in the sky is what God says. And you're gonna have a land and you're gonna have a people and you're gonna have a place. I'm gonna fulfill the promises that I had made to your descendants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And the Israelites are just kind of looking around and saying, but God, I know that you're a guy that keeps his promises. But here we are in the midst of Egypt, not anywhere close to this promised land, enslaved to our captives, the Egyptians. And so another theme in Exodus is the way in which God displays his faithfulness, even in the midst of circumstances that from a worldly standpoint or

A worldly point of view were meant to destroy people or meant to destroy someone, that God's faithfulness rises to the surface, and he intervenes into the life of those to whom he is called. And he shows up in big ways. Of course, it would be difficult to talk about Exodus without also talking about God's moral law. That God is a God of grace, and he has a God of mercy, and he has a God of love. And he has a God of compassion, but that God also has a standard. And kind of almost one of the first places that we see a standard that's really explicitly articulated is in the Book of Exodus and the Ten Commandments. And a good, significant portion of the Ten Commandments... Take it easy, Joanna.

Gee, ready to hear about the Ten Commandments over there. But a good portion of Exodus is focused on God's moral law. And we're going to talk quite a bit, honestly, about how the moral law given to the Israelites in the Book of Exodus, in the Ten Commandments, finds its way, weaves its way through all of the Old Testament texts into the life of Jesus and the covenant community of us as the Church hears like, "Oh, well, is that old or is it new or is it the same or what we're going to talk about that?" And then, of course, we're going to talk about the presence of God. If you read the last few chapters, several chapters of Exodus, you'll see that God gives commands and instructions. And not just general instructions, but very specific guidelines to the building of a thing called the Tabernacle, which becomes the dwelling place or the sanctuary of His presence among His people. And that becomes a central part to the life of the people of God, is that the presence of the Lord is with us. And everywhere we go and everything that we do is dependent upon God's presence with us, that we can do nothing outside of God's presence.

In fact, to preach part of a sermon that we're going to preach later, in Exodus chapter 33, God in frustration with Moses and the Israelites said, "Okay, you know what? I am going to fulfill my promises and be faithful to you. I am going to send you into the Promised Land. I am not going to break my promise, but I'm not going to go with you. You're going by yourself." And Moses, having this sense of like his, this knowing that the presence of God in our lives and the presence of God in our midst is everything, says, "Lord, I don't mean to be like the comment card type of guy, but if you're not going with us, don't send us." Like, if it's not your presence that's going to lead us there, if it's you, if you're not going with us, Lord, we don't want to go at all because there is danger, eternal danger wrapped up in doing things outside of God's presence. Those are the four major themes in the book of Exodus that we'll continue to talk about, including today. Up until this point, we're going to be in Exodus chapter six today, the second part of Exodus chapter six, starting at verse 13, and then into the first part of Exodus chapter seven.

So we're kind of like cutting two chapters in half. And I drew, I don't know how I drew the straw because I make the sermon calendar, but I drew the straw of preaching on the family record of Moses and Aaron today in the second half of Exodus chapter six. But I think there's wisdom here, and I think there's encouragement here. And I think that the Lord can speak to us here. But up until this point in Exodus and into chapter six, up until this point in Exodus, we have mostly seen or mostly witnessed just the suffering and grief of the Israelites. Honestly, not a whole lot positive has happened up until this point. It's all been like slavery and whining and going to Pharaoh and Moses fleeing and then going to Pharaoh again and saying, "Hey, can we like get a reprieve to go in the desert to worship our Lord for three days?" And Pharaoh's like, "Not only can you not go, but I'm going to make the work that you are doing harder now." Pastor Luke preached last week on bricks without straw, right?

And so up until this point, it's all been suffering, grief, slavery, hardship, toil, the hardness of Pharaoh's heart, the veiled whining of Moses. "I can't do it, I can't do it." A man who literally has already on the mountain beheld the literal glory and holiness of God. But somehow, in the midst of the presence and the glory and the holiness of God, refused to believe that same God could work through him to bring deliverance to his people. We've seen up until this point in Exodus, an Israelite people who are seemingly, this is the way at least I read it, kind of unimpressed by God. Kind of unimpressed by this God that continues to promise deliverance, but hey, here we are, still in slavery, what's going on? And yet, every time Moses steps forward to advocate before Pharaoh on the behalf of the Israelites to be released from slavery, Pharaoh just makes their life and slavery more difficult. As if something like that were even possible, he does. We see in these first five or six chapters of Exodus, our first real and personal glimpse of Pharaoh, who is the leader of the Egyptian nation,

And Pharaoh was not just some guy in the Egyptian ruling court. Pharaoh was essentially seen as a God, and whatever he said was right and true and perfect, and he ruled in entirety the Egyptian nation. And we see our first glimpse of him, a man who had no regard for a God that was not of himself. "Who is this God that you're talking to me about?" he says to Moses. "I don't know him. I don't regard him." He says in Exodus chapter 5 verse 2, "Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go." So we get the first glimpse of kind of like the archetype of the enemy of the people of God as they are enslaved in Israel. And Pharaoh is really, really, really steeled in his resolve to harness the power of the enslaved people of Israel. He is committed to building his own kingdom, where he stands as God above all else, and he demonstrates a hardness to any and all talk of the Israelites leaving Egypt.

I'm gonna talk about the hardness of Pharaoh here a little bit this morning. And so as the story has read so far, there seems to be like this pressure building in the first six chapters of all of this grief and all of this hardship and all of this slavery and the Lord saying to Moses, "Moses, go and tell Pharaoh to let my people go, and go and tell Pharaoh to let my people go." And Moses being like, "I can't, I can't do it. Who's gonna listen to me? He's certainly not."

God gets Moses some help and his brother Aaron, he still doesn't think that he can do it. It goes to Pharaoh, "Okay, Pharaoh, let the people of God go." And Pharaoh's like, " no." And not only no, but now it's gonna become more difficult.

And so there seems to be this pressure building behind a reality of like God. We do believe you are a God who is faithful and keeps your promises, but it's really, really difficult. It's becoming increasingly difficult to believe the goodness, faithfulness and promises of God when life continues to press down on us as heavy as it is.

See, this is not just a lesson that the Israelite people were learning about the faithfulness of God and the timeline of God's faithfulness, but it's a lesson we learn as well. As many of us do sit in seasons of pain, suffering, hardship, discouragement, toil, slavery, wondering, "Lord, will you show up to deliver?

Will you come and fulfill your promises to bring me out of this place of slavery?"

I know I said we're gonna start in Exodus chapter 6 verse 13, but we're actually gonna start in Exodus chapter 6 verse 9 through 12, because that kind of like underhand pitches the text for today, okay?

If you see in Exodus chapter 9 or 6, I'm sorry, verses 9 through 12, it says this, "Moses reported this to the Israelites." What I mean, what he's referencing there is he goes to the Israelites, the rulers of the clans and the tribes of Israel, and he says, "Here is what the Lord has told me. We are to go to Pharaoh and demand release, and that Pharaoh is gonna harden his heart, but that the Lord is gonna come through, and we are gonna be freed from that captivity in Egypt." So the Lord's like, "Go tell that to the Israelites." So now Moses goes and tells that to the Israelites. "Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage. Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Go now and tell Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to let the Israelites go out of his country.' But Moses said to the Lord, 'If the Israelites will not listen to me, then Pharaoh, why would Pharaoh listen to me since I am a man with faltering lips?'" Now, depending on what version of the,

What translation of the Bible that you have here, you may have like, I read from the NIV this morning. I think this is, can we go back to verse nine? I think it is. You go back to verse nine. Yeah, it says, "They did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor." This is a really, this is a really, it does not reveal the full weight of what the actual like Hebrew text is trying to communicate here. I mean, I get, I was discouraged yesterday because we had friends over and it was cold out.

Right? I was like, "Ah, shucks." You know? But when, so when you, we read discouragement here, we, I want you to be careful not to read it as kind of like a, the Israelites are all like, "Ah, shucks, more slavery."

Because it's not like an, "Ah, shucks" type of moment, right? The word here that actually is translated discouragement is more as like better identified or defined as an inward pressure caused by deep anguish that prevented proper breathing.

You ever, have you ever been in such a position of grief or anguish or like mental, emotional, spiritual, physical distress that it literally feels like someone's sitting on your chest. You can't breathe. You can't, you like, you can't even begin to process what is going on and what you are experiencing. And it leaves you in this place of like, absolute anguish. This is what is being communicated here in this text. The Israelite people cannot listen to another word. They just cannot hear another word about God's deliverance or God's faithfulness because of the extraordinary weightiness, pressure that the generations of slavery has put upon them. Now, this seems to have such an impact on Moses. Their response to him saying that the Lord is going to deliver them, like the Israelites response seems to have such an impact on Moses that he has another kind of attack of despondency about his ability to actually do the thing that God has called him to do. It's like he got ripped back into this place of like believing that, oh, yeah, shoot, I actually can't do this. Like, look at how just, look at how an anguish they are.

Look at their suffering. Look at all the pain. You're, man, I am believing. I am partnering with your belief that the Lord's not going to show up.

This is a constant problem for Moses throughout his life and ministry. He partners with the sin of the people. He partners with the unbelief. He partners with the idolatry. And in doing so, he decouples himself from the role that God has given to him as prophets to the people.

And so he kind of gets into this cycle and he says it right out. How could I possibly persuade Pharaoh to let the people go if I can't even persuade my own brothers and sisters?

How could I possibly go to the ruler of the kingdom and be like, yeah, you got to let him go and have that really hit home and convince him if when I go to the people that I live with and lead and tell them, they're like, yeah, I don't have time to hear you, Moses.

Feeling alone in the necessity to have extraordinary faith. And so this is kind of where we find ourselves now in Exodus 6, verse 13. Because what I believe, like why do we have a kind of a lineage here in starting at verse 13? It's because I believe that God desired to once again declare to Moses, show Moses, show the people why exactly they were capable to go before Pharaoh to demand the release of the Israelites from slavery. And that it would indeed work even despite the disbelief, the doubt, the fear, the whatever. So I'm not going to read all of Exodus 6, 13 through like 25, partially because I can't pronounce half the names.

Listen, here's a little trick. You want a pastoral trick for reading these types of things? Is that no one really knows how to pronounce the names? And so if you're reading out loud in like a Bible study or something like that, just read it with gusto and confidence.

And everyone's going to think like, oh wow, I was pronouncing that wrong all the time. This guy obviously knows what he's talking about, right? So just go for it and you're going to be just fine. All right. But as a measure to save us a little bit of time this morning, and in case we have any Hebrew scholars in here that actually know how to pronounce these names, we're just going to look at a few of the verses here from the lineage. It seems like kind of a strange interruption into the story.

Like all of a sudden going about, we're moving towards deliverance. We're moving towards deliverance, lineage. What?

I mean, if you're honest that you're reading the Old Testament, you're even reading the New Testament, right? How many of y'all are skipping the genealogies? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're skipping them, right? It's like, ah, names, names, names, names, names, names, names, whatever, all right? We skim it, right? We do a little bit of Holy Spirit skimming over it. Saying, you know, we need a new name for our kid and we're like, ah, we'll try some of those.

It works. All my kids have biblical names, okay? It does work. But what happens here in this lineage in particular is that it seems like, it seems like it stops prematurely. Because it goes about to, he begins to read off the names of all of Jacob's sons, the 12 tribes of Israel, all of those that would be in or compose the Israelite nation. And he starts like this. He goes, these were the heads of their families in verse 14. The sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel, were Hanuk, Palu, Hezron, Carmine, see? Just like that. Just read them like that. These were the clans of Reuben. And then he reads the sons of Simeon in verse 15. And then he goes, and these were the names of the sons of Levi, according to their records. Gershon, Kohath, Marari. And then it goes, and then it stops, and it doesn't follow. The rest of the genealogy as listed doesn't follow the 12 tribes. But it goes off into a tangent in Levi's direction. So like, what is Levi, what is the rest of Levi's genealogy here?

There's this expectation that when he starts to read the names of the sons of Jacob, that he's going to go through all 12, get all the way down through. You know, we're going to hear about Manasseh. We're going to hear about Benjamin. We're going to hear about Joseph. We're going to hear about Dan. We're going to hear about all of the tribes. But he stops at Jacob's third son, Levi, and then traces Levi's lineage to find Moses and to find Aaron.

Why would this be significant? Well, first of all, Moses and Aaron came from not the firstborn son of the tribes of Israel, Reuben, but from Levi, the third son. And then not only, he didn't, he didn't even, he wasn't even born, they weren't even born as the firstborn son of Levi. So they weren't, they didn't sit in a, in kind of like this preeminent, powerful place in genealogies as having been the first born or the, or the preeminent, or the number one in like line to go and do this specific thing. They were born to, in Levi's genealogy, who was the third son, nothing particularly interesting about that. And they weren't even born the first of Levi's kids. They were born the third son or, I'm sorry, the second son of Kohath was, was where they traced their lineage. Moses was not the oldest of his father either. Aaron was older, but Moses was the one that was called by God and Aaron was to come along and serve him. Now, the question is like, why does any of that matter? Why, why does it matter?

Like for us, we're like, yeah, whatever. I got older brothers. I got older sisters. I got younger brothers, younger sisters. Like you kind of just all go out and make, make, make your, your life what you're going to make it. And, and that is a, that is, that is really a, a Western ideal of understanding the dynamics of family lineages and genealogies. Because in the Eastern world, even now and today in the Eastern world,

Birth order was extraordinarily important and powerful. And the first born son of any family was the one who was to inherit all of his father's possessions, carry on the family name, receive the blessing from the father, be the leader, be the one that got the preferential treatment of the family because it was them and them alone that was to carry on the lineage and the legacy and the power and the calling of the family that had been carried down through generations.

And so, and so this idea that if there was a extraordinarily important mission, job, plan that God had to free the Israelite people from their slavery to the Egyptians, that by cultural rule, God would go to Reuben, the first son of Jacob. And if it wasn't, if he wouldn't go to Reuben, he would go to Reuben's first son. And if Reuben's first son would die, then he would go to Reuben's second son and third son. And then, well, that didn't work out. Okay, Simeon's first son. And so there was a natural pattern of progression that happened. And this was very normal.

What does this tell us about the calling that God somehow, inexplicitly, out of nowhere, put his hands in the hat, pulls out a name. Oh, I guess it's Moses that's going to do this. And meets with him through a burning bush on the top of a mountain when Moses, who had cowardly ran from his responsibility, was now tending the sheep of his father-in-law on a land not his own.

Way out of the realm of what we would consider to be the natural course of this extraordinary biblical leader and hero that would lead the Israelite people into freedom from the Egyptians. What is the point then? The point is this. Moses's calling and election by God had nothing to do with the place or the position that Moses held or stood in the cultural or religious life of the Israelite people. It was purely the election and the grace of God that says, "Moses, you are my man and I will be with you, choosing you." It had nothing to do with his gifts. It had nothing to do with his ability. It had nothing to do with his past. It had nothing to do with his family. It had nothing to do with any of that other than to say, "God chooses those whose hearts follow him."

So the making, so when you read this lineage, when you read this kind of genealogy, we get to this place where God is like, "All right, I want you to hear me one more time, Moses. I know you are living in doubt that you can do this. I know that you think Pharaoh will not listen to you. I know that you think you're a man that speaks with faltering lips and that you'll never be able to measure up to the call that I have upon your life. But I want to remind you of where I called you from. I didn't call you because you were the firstborn of the firstborn of the firstborn. I called you because I see in your heart a special dispensation to follow my heart, to listen to me, to act and move by faith,

To live and pursue my presence and my promises." And so when he gets to the end of the lineage here, he's like, "I'm writing all this to remind you. This is where you kind of sit in the lineage, right?"

And he gets down to like verse 26 of Roman, or I'm sorry, of Exodus chapter 6. And he says this.

He was like, "It was this same Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, 'Bring the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions.' They were the ones who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt about bringing the Israelites out of Egypt." It was these guys, this same Moses and Aaron. There was nothing that Moses or Aaron could do or claim or boast in their own pedigree or fitness for the task to do what God had called them to do. Nothing in their lineage would have pointed towards this special task. And this continues to be the pattern of God throughout the rest of the biblical narrative. That God is not a respecter of the way in which the world classifies people in their spiritual prominence or promise.

This is the way that God works throughout all of biblical history. Think of King David, right? In 1 and 2 Samuel, where the prophet went and be like, "I know that you have a son here and he's going to be, I'm going to anoint him. He's going to be the next king of Israel." Sure of it. He's like, "Okay, I'll bring all my sons. Here's my first son, big, tall warrior. Giant of a man." "Nope, not him, Lord said not him." "Bring the next son." "No, not him, not him, not him, not him." "Well, these are all my sons. Don't you have another son?" And they're like, "Hey, yeah, remember David. He's out in the field raising the sheep." Like, "Oh, yeah, I got David, but he's out there. I'm a short king."

Kind of weird, always playing with a slingshot. I don't know, like, doesn't really like the swords.

I'll bring him here anyway, let's see, right? And David comes in and the Lord's like, "This is him. This is the one who will lead my people. This is the one who will be after my own heart." Right? And it says there in 1 Samuel said, "The Lord, the world looks at the, " what? "Outward appearance, the Lord looks at the heart." Right. So maybe Ruben and all of his sons in Simeon and all of his sons in Levi and the sons before him had all of the outward trappings of men who would lead the Israelite people valiantly into freedom from the Egyptians. But it was the heart of Moses and the heart of Aaron that God saw and said, "I want the one whose heart is right."

A lot of what we do in pursuing our discipleship to Jesus and our own, like, spiritual maturity in growth is to polish the outside of the body that we live in

To ensure that how we appear to people in this room, to those we're in community with, to our family and friends is that, "Listen, I'm a good, God-honoring, church-going, super nice person." Right? And everything here is like spit and polish perfect. All right.

But we don't fool the Lord. The Lord is not confused about who we are. The Lord sees our hearts.

The Lord knows our every thought and motivation. The Lord knows the things that we love and desire. The Lord knows what are the affections of our soul are. And that is what he looks at and that is what he wants to refine. And that is what he wants to change. And that is who he will call. Call to do great things for his kingdom. Call to do small things for his kingdom. Call to do anything for his kingdom. Is the one whose heart is turned towards a desire to please him. Not a heart that's perfect. Moses was far from perfect even at this point in the story of Exodus. And Moses continues to show his imperfection like any one of us do. But one thing Moses is, is committed to hearing the Lord. And even when he is afraid, moving forward in faith, knowing that the Lord will be with him. Knowing that the Lord goes with him.

So you may be standing also kind of in this place of self-doubt over God's purpose for your life.

My man, I can really resonate with the story of Moses. Nothing significant about where I came from or my family. My lineage. In fact, I hope people don't look back there.

I'm plotting my own course. I am walking with God from this. You might be sitting in that place. Well, my background or my past kind of disqualifies me from really doing anything significant from the Lord. I want to please him. My heart is turned towards him. I have repented. I am moving in faithfulness to God. But I just think everything behind me disqualifies me or what I don't have or what I do have. I'm just not going to be able to do it. Let me tell you, let the story of Moses and this kind of interrupted genealogy in the middle of Exodus chapter six remind you that God's like, no, no, no, no, no, let me remind it is this Moses and Aaron, the third of the third of the third of the third, not the first of the first of the first of the first, way down in the lineage of cultural importance that I chose. And I can choose you too. I will choose you.

Now, this section begins to look back into Moses' many protests over God choosing him. Moses is saying many, many times already in the first six chapters, "Lord, not me, not me, not me, not me. Do you know what I am? Do you know what I'm not? Do you know what I don't have? You know what I can do? You know who this is? Do you know what the circumstances are?" And God uses this moment to speak into that or speak back into that doubt and fear, but he also uses it to speak forward into the future fear, into the future doubt that Moses would have.

He looks kind of like in this verse in like verse 28 here, we haven't read it yet. "Now when the Lord spoke to Moses in Egypt, he said to them, "

So like in the midst of all of the doubt and all of the fear and all of the unknown, and then God being like, "But yeah, I chose you from nothing to come and do something great. Isn't that enough? I chose you?" He comes in once again with this kind of like period at the end of the sentence statement in Exodus 6.28. "Now when the Lord spoke to Moses in Egypt, he said to him, 'I am the Lord.'

Now go and tell Pharaoh of Egypt everything that I have told you." This is kind of a benign type of statement when you just read it like, "I am the Lord, go and tell Pharaoh of Egypt everything that I have told you." But if you read it with a little bit of intentionality towards what has happened in all of Moses' doubts, we can't do this. And what he's trying to get Moses to the place of believing, then it brings a little bit more significance. And he was like, "Listen, I am the Lord."

I've told this story before. I'll tell it again, because I think it expresses a little bit here.

We live in an old farmhouse, and it creaks and cracks. And when the wind blows or when there's a thunderstorm and there's like, it can get pretty noisy. And I got a lot of little-- I got-- we've got little kids. And often-- so take my-- take my daughter up to bed, and she kind of has a bedroom on the far side of the house away from the rest of-- away from the rest of the kids. And she will often wait at the end of the hallway that leads down to her bedroom at night because it's scary, and she doesn't want to go, right? And then-- and then I will come up to like, walk her down the hallway and tuck her in, and she will make me-- I'm like, "Okay, we can go." And she still won't go.

And-- and-- and a lot of times, like kind of somewhat in frustration, I want to say, "Listen, I am your dad. I am here with you."

Like-- and then hope that she kind of like connects the dots, "Oh yeah, dad's here. Why would there be anything that I would fear down the dark hallway?"

But often, what it required-- what it requires is me not just being with her, but me going first.

Me leading down-- and then-- and then when I go first, she's like, "Oh, the monsters will get him first, and I'll be fine. I don't know.

Or just-- there's just the comfort of like, "Oh yeah, I remember now my dad is here. There is nothing that can harm me." And that is a little bit of the kind of like the premise in this verse in verse 28, where-- where God says to Moses, "Moses, I am the Lord."

Here, supreme, sovereign, powerful, creator of all things. I created Pharaoh. I knit him together in his mother's womb.

Everything that Pharaoh worships, I've created. All that he has, I've given to him, right? I am the Lord. And I'm telling you to go do this.

Now go to Egypt and talk to Pharaoh. So God is trying to yell gently into Moses' spirit.

Do you not know who is sending you? Do you not know who is going with you? Do you not know like the-- who I am?

And it's clear that even Moses at this point doesn't really understand who God-- who the Lord really is.

But what's going to become clear in like half a chapter is that everyone is going to know who this Lord really is.

Next week, we're going to talk about the plagues. Be a fun one. Talk about the plagues.

But I want to talk about one more little point here. It's not very little, but one more thing that we see here in Scripture. Let's go to Exodus chapter 7. We're just following along. So we've got through the genealogy or the lineage. We've got through Moses saying to the Lord,

"Since I speak with faltering lips, why would Pharaoh listen to me?" And in chapter 7, it says, verse 1, "Then the Lord said to Moses, 'See, I have made you just like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.'" That's just a way of God saying, "Hey, look, I'm going to speak to you. You're going to speak to Aaron. Aaron is going to speak to Pharaoh."

"You were to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt, and with mighty acts of judgment, I will bring out my divisions, my people, the Israelites, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it." Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord commanded. Now, there's this little point here in Exodus. Pastor Luke talked a little bit about it about it two weeks ago. There's this little point here in Exodus that often causes some like, I don't want to say consternation, but questions about the fairness of Pharaoh's role in the plagues and the judgment brought upon Israel. And, or on Egypt, I'm sorry. And that really comes out of like verse three, where the Lord says, "You're going to go to Pharaoh, and you're going to demand that he let the people go, but I'm going to harden Pharaoh's heart, and he's not going to let the people go."

And this isn't the first time that the Lord has said this to Moses. He said the same thing back in chapter four, verse 22. Then say to Pharaoh, "This is what the Lord says. Israel is my first-born son, and I told you, and he's going to harden his heart." Right? Here is something, here's a general principle I want us to understand that we're going to talk about a little bit more.

When we, not just Pharaoh, when we, you and I, when we fight against God's lordship in our lives,

Our hearts progressively become hard towards him. When we fight against God's lordship over our lives, then progressively and gradually our hearts become more and more hardened towards God. Meaning when we, when we stand in a place of, "Lord, I'm, yeah, like, great. I'm just, I'm not surrendering my life, Lord. I'm not laying down my own purposes. I am not, I'm still going to continue to follow my own will and my own heart and my own desires. Yeah, I'm going to do the, like, the following you thing and, like, the, the religious Christian thing, but you're not, you're not going to be Lord over my life. I am still Lord of my life.

I, I still, I still make all the decisions for me. I still determine, I still determine the way that I'm going to live, the decisions that I'm going to make, the values that I'm going to hold, the places I'm going to live, the people that I'm going to be with, the things that I am going to do. Lord, I get it. You have all these rules. You have all these standards. You have all these values. That was great 2000 years ago, but I'm going to do me.

When we reject God's Lordship over us, our hearts become hard. And over time, as our hearts become hard, we have less and less and less ability to hear the Holy Spirit's conviction or just speaking to us. And so we actually get pushed into a place by virtue of our own decisions of being unable to now, to live under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, because we have so fully hardened our heart towards His voice in the past.

And this is what we see in the life of Pharaoh. One of the first times that Moses and Aaron approached Pharaoh with the request to let the people go, they were told this in Exodus 4.22. Then say to Pharaoh, this is what the Lord says. "Israel is my first born son, and I told you, let my son go, so he may worship me."

What is significant about this is that Moses telling Pharaoh that Israel was God's first, remember, most pre-evident, most special, first in line son,

Struck at the very heart of Pharaoh's own self-deception about who he was in light of the God of Israel.

Pharaoh, it is said, believed himself to be the only son of gods, meaning a God in Himself. Pharaoh believed himself to be the only son of God. And so when the Lord told Moses, "Hey, go and tell Pharaoh, it's actually Israel that is my first born, and let them go, so they may come worship me, " the way that it hit Pharaoh's ears was, "You are not who you think you are in light of who God is."

The God of Israel is Lord of all creation. It is not you, Pharaoh. Know your role and let the people go.

The Lord's proclamation of Israel as first born was to speak to Pharaoh that he wasn't as important as he thought. And so what we all come into this point sometimes and many times in our lives, what are the choices that we have when we are brought face to face with a truth or the truth that calls us out of the lie that we are living?

When we are encountered by a truth, the truth that directly speaks to a lie we have believed in our heart, maybe about ourself, maybe about someone else, maybe about something else, maybe about God, we have a choice when we are encountered with the truth.

One choice is we can submit to that truth, align our lives and our hearts with it. Say, "Lord, thank you for the conviction that allows me to see the truth of your word as it's in opposition to the thing that I was believing in my heart or was doing in my life. Thank you for allowing me to see that truth. I now submit and put myself underneath your truth, Lord, because you are Lord of my life. I am not Lord of my life." So we can submit to it or we can double down on the lie.

We can double down on the sin. We can double down on the deception and we can begin to believe our own hype. It's not that big a deal, it's no real big thing.

I know that this is something against the heart of God and the word of God and the truth of God, but listen, I'm just going to do my own thing and trust that God knows my heart. God knows your heart.

God knows it and he sees that it has no desire to submit itself to him, but only to create a life of your own lie.

Our hearts, when we do that, a very dangerous thing begins to happen. Our hearts become hard.

Oftentimes people will say, "Well, it's so unfair. Pharaoh didn't even have a choice. God just hardened his heart. He couldn't even let the Israelite people go if he wanted to because God hardened his heart towards that."

There are 10 places in the Bible where it says that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. You know that there are also 10 places where it says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.

Universally speaking, throughout the whole biblical narrative, we have as many examples of Pharaoh being like, "Now I'm doubling down on this. I am the king. I am the Lord and I will not let the people go."

Interestingly enough, the word that the scripture uses that we interpret here as "harden, " if you look at it here, the word "harden" is the word "hazak, " and the word "hazak" or "harden" means to strengthen the resolve of a decision that has already been made.

So when we read in Exodus that God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, we could, by using this understanding of "harden, " which is the biblical understanding of "harden, " we could then kind of rewrite that verse to say that the Lord strengthened the resolve of the decision that Pharaoh had already made to not let the people go.

That it wasn't as if Pharaoh was neutral in the situation and that God pushed him over to hardness, but that Pharaoh had demonstrated a continual rejection of any Lord other than himself. And so he was not going to be told what to do about anything or anyone ever. He had resolved in his heart. The people are staying. They're going to be my slaves. They're going to build my kingdom.

And so when the scripture says that God just hardened Pharaoh's heart, it's like that God strengthened Pharaoh's, God strengthened the resolve of Pharaoh's own decisions.

Meaning he like said, "Okay, have what you want. That's what you want? Have it.

That's how you, that's your heart? Fine. Okay. It's yours." God strengthens the positions of our hearts.

Pastor Luke shared a quote, a Puritan quote two weeks ago in his sermon. He said that the same sun that melts the ice hardens the clay.

That when our heart's posture sits in a place of humility and kindness and gentleness and love and affection for the Lord, that the Lord comes and hassock our heart. Strengthens the resolve of our hearts towards the decisions that we have already made. Or my heart is going to be humble. I'm going to be gentle and kind and loving and compassionate and obedient. And when worship full of you and the Lord looks at that, it was like, "Okay, more of that. More of that." Here you go. Here you go. Strengthening our hearts towards the decisions that we have already made.

And the same is true over here. I don't want anything to do with you, Lord. Live in my own life. I will make my own decisions. I will have my own values. I will chart my own course. And the Lord is like, "Have it all then. Have it.

Take it." And this is not just an Old Testament principle. This is what we see.

If you were here whenever it was we did that last year. Seems like three years ago where we taught through the book of Romans. Remember that, the letter to Romans. In the very first chapter of the letter to the Romans, this is what Paul says happens when a people begin to reject the truth about God.

Romans chapter 1, he will go here. We're going to end here in Romans, okay?

Romans chapter 1, starting at verse 18. This is heavy. This is a call, one, to allow the Holy Spirit to shine a spotlight on wherever you fall, wherever your heart and soul falls in this reality or this dynamic, okay?

Paul says, starting in Romans 1 verse 18, the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven, okay? That should make us be like, "What?" "Against who?" "Where is the wrath of God being revealed?" "Against who is the wrath of God being revealed?"

"Against all of the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness."

Since what made me known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them, for since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power, and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse. The first thing that Paul says here is like, "Hey, the wrath of God is being revealed against those who suppress the truth of God

By their wickedness and by their brokenness." He was like, "You don't even need to be super theological." Super spiritually mature. Paul says, "Even the invisible qualities of God are evident in creation."

And so the suppression of the truth of God himself is a place where God's wrath is being revealed. And then he goes on to a new kind of category, verse 21, for although this is where most of us stand, I think, usually, if you're in this room, you go to church maybe, you may be in a place where you're like, "I don't even know if God exists, but I'm here. Praise God for you. We prayed for you this morning."

But many of us, I think, often kind of fall into this next category. Verse 21, "For although they knew God, " okay, I know God, yep, "they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to them him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened." So this is like, you know God, you know the truth about God,

But you are not treating him as God. They did not glorify him as God nor give thanks to him. It's like, yeah, I know that there's a God in heaven. I know that he created me. I know he has a standard. I know he has values. I know he has a desire for my heart. But I am, yeah, it's not for me. These people, they either glorified God nor did they give thanks to him. It's like they lived as though God was just a passive,

Just a passive viewer of their life, but not the God of heaven whom, who demanded out of his holiness, worship, adoration, and a life aligned with him. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.

In exchange the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles, they fell into idolatry. They idolatize themselves, the world, the creation, aspects of their life, relationships, other people, their own thoughts, preferences, and opinions. Because listen, we all serve something. And when we harden and darken our heart against the Lord, we create for ourselves other gods to serve. They are gods of our own creation. Things that we can now align our life and heart with. But they are idols leading us into death and darkness.

So what does God do in a situation like this, where there's just an absolute rejection of truth?

And it says it three times in verse 24, 26, and 28 here in Romans chapter one. "Therefore, God gave them over in their sinful desires of their hearts." In the Romans case, "to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another."

This is the words right at the beginning. "He, therefore God, gave them over to their sinful desires."

What did he do? "He strengthened their resolve to make the decisions that they had already made." He gave them over to them. He gave them over to their decisions. He gave them over to their desires. He says it here in verse 24. Then he says it in verse 26. "Because of this, God gave them over to their shameful lusts." Then in verse 28, "Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done." Consistently, consistently, consistently, the word speaks that like, listen,

"God will give you over to the desires of your heart with a continual rejection of him as Lord, so that your heart now becomes darkened and hardened, no longer knowing, perceiving, or receiving the things of God."

Reality is that God did not just unilaterally decide that Pharaoh would have no choice or will in the matter of the hardening of his heart. Pharaoh displayed his hardness of heart and God allowed him to continue to travel in the direction of his very willful destruction.

God gave him over to the worship of his own self, his own heart, his own foolish attempt to be God himself.

The question usually becomes, well, like, "Well, if I was going to do that, I would want God to stop me."

Would you though? Would you want God to stop you? God, I'm going to do this thing that I know you do not want me to do.

So if you don't want me to do it, please come and stop me from doing it.

God's like, "Why would I stop you from doing the thing that you want to do?"

Maybe the change is not, "Hey, God, stop me from doing the thing that I want to do, but that I know that you don't want me to do. I'm going to go ahead and do it unless you stop me."

How about don't do the things that you know God doesn't want you to do and your heart won't turn hard.

Do the things that God wants and he will strengthen your heart towards it. Because here is the warning and then I'm going to read a poem. I know it's a poem day. I'm going to read a poem and then we're going to be done because this is going to be like they're kind of teeing up the sermon for next week.

The reality is that hardness of heart doesn't always have to be the end of the story. God is so gracious and so kind and so pursues us even in our hardness of heart that our hardening our heart towards the Lord does not have to be the end of the story.

But consistently, the way that the Lord breaks, consistently what we see in scripture, the way that the Lord breaks through the hardness of our heart is through calamity.

When our hearts become hard and we no longer hear the voice or conviction of the Lord, the only way that God's grace can penetrate the hardness now is through calamity.

And what we see in the Egyptians case is that God breaks through the hardness of Pharaoh's heart with plagues that destroy the nation that he was God of.

And he had no power whatsoever to stop it. Even in like the life in the example of the apostle Paul who had hardened his heart against the revelation of Jesus Christ as Messiah and the resurrected Jesus met him on the road to Damascus and how did God break through the hardness of Paul's heart? You're blind. Blind. You. Now go to the very people that you were coming to, that you were going to kill and they'll pray for you and heal you. Talk about like bowing in humility after he had been struck with literal blindness and could do nothing on his own. And that was a fairly quick calamity that came to resolution.

The story of Pharaoh is not a universal decree of how this always goes but it is a cautionary tale.

I'm going to read this poem by a guy named William Ernest Henley. The name of the poem is Invictus. You know this poem? You ever heard this before?

Out of the night that covers me. This is a poem that is meant to describe the figure of Pharaoh. Okay, the hardness of heart. Out of the night that covers me. Black as the pit from pole to pole.

I thank whatever gods may be. For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not wince nor have I cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody but not but unbowed. This is Pharaoh-like, third or fourth plague. I'm still going. Not going to convince me.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade and yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate and I am the captain of my soul.

And what the Lord is going to say to Moses, to Aaron and to Pharaoh is I am about to show you that you are not. You are not the master of your fate. You are not the captain of your soul. I will show all of Egypt my mighty works my powerful right hand so that all may know that it is I and I alone who has brought them out of slavery.

The call this morning, worship team you can come back up, the call this morning, not, listen I want to be really clear, the call this morning is not a call to live in a place of fear,

In a place of wondering about the Lord's disposition towards us. Is God angry with me? Is God going to make my heart hard? No, it's not a place of fear, it's a place of recognition that the trajectory of our heart towards the Lord whether in good things or in bad is something that he will come behind and strengthen. He was not going to drag you into obedience. He's not going to rip your own will from your hands to make you do believe, think, feel, value the things that he values. He's going to allow the freedom of your own choice because he

Woos us with his love. He doesn't cry us with his judgment. And so the call for us this morning is to step into a place of saying, "Lord, I do not want my heart to be hardened by my own decisions. So Lord, would you come and point out in me any offensive way of my heart, any path that I have taken that has rejected you as Lord and God of my life, that my heart may return to faithfulness in you and that I may avoid the hardening of my heart that rejects you as Lord." That is our prayer. Amen. Lord, would you make us a sanctuary, not a place built by human hands, Lord, but a people built by your spirit, that we would carry your presence, that your presence may rest with us and dwell with us in Jesus name. Amen. Conda, you are loved. Have a great week and we'll see you next time.