Hello everyone.
Today, I will be sharing insights inspired by what happened to Pharaoh’s heart.
The story of Pharaoh’s experiences of resisting God’s request of him can be found in Exodus chapters 7-12. I want to encourage you to read over these chapters. If you don’t want to read these chapters yourself, please know that you can listen to these chapters for free here.
God is a loving God. He is pleading with humanity: begging us to respond to His loving and just influences and to be transformed into loving and just people. However, we all do have a choice as to how we respond to God’s loving influences.
In the case of Pharaoh, no miracle of God was enough to truly lead him to surrender all to God, for good. He was so determined to keep the children of Israel as slaves in Egypt. He did not want to let them go. The last plague where his first-born son died was enough to bring him to allow God’s people to leave Egypt (Exodus 12:29-32), but he eventually came chasing after them and went down into a watery grave in the sea (Exodus 14).
I don’t know who is reading this tonight, but if you are reading this tonight, whoever you are, no matter what your past or present, please know that God loves you and that He has been drawing you with His love. (Jeremiah 31:3) Jesus wouldn’t have died for you if He didn’t love you, and He did die for you. (Romans 5:6-8)
When we recognize that we have failed in various ways in our lives-even in big or very big ways, but we are repentant of our sins, and we long to be transformed by God, we can know that we are responding to God’s loving influences. He has been reaching out to us and we are feeling drawn towards Him. (Micah 7:8-9 ) When we feel vulnerable and frail in our spiritual walks, but we are coming to God, we can know that God dwells with us and that we can press into His love without any fear. (Isaiah 57:15)
This being said, if every effort of God to reach us makes our hearts become harder than before, we have reason for serious concern.
Listen my friends, God’s corrections can result in good results if we will take them with the right spirit.
“I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me: he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness.” (Micah 7:9)
Or…we can choose to respond like Pharaoh did to evidence after evidence of God’s power and His directions for us, and we will not be benefitted by this decision.
“But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:23-24 (KJV)
What do the messages that God sends to us do to our hearts? Do we respond with defiance or mockery or with humility and acceptance? It’s up to us. Pharaoh could have been set free from his own bondage to the darkness in his heart, and he could have let God’s people, whom he held as slaves, free long before he did. But his own ways were more important to him, and he fell because of his own stubbornness. He did not allow himself to understand that God intended to save him from a way of life which, in addition to harming those whom he oppressed, harmed him.
Pharaoh could have learned what it means to fellowship with God, who longed to save him from spiritual bondage just as He longed to save the children of Israel from physical bondage.
Jesus died for us. May we not be so calloused as to allow His love and justice to have no effect in our lives.
Learn and Grow 4ever 