Our Scripture for today is Exodus 10:20
“But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the children of Israel go.”
We know the story of Moses going before the Pharaoh and demanding that he let the Hebrews leave Egypt and go worship God in the desert. Each time God would motivate the Pharaoh by sending a plague upon Egypt: water turned to blood, frogs, gnats, flies, pestilence, etc. Time after time, the pharaoh would agree and then renege on his word.
Six times the Bible would then add, “The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” Skeptics have used this to prove that the Pharaoh wasn’t the bad guy. It was God who was making him change his mind.
This is foolish reasoning. God never leads us to do evil.
One writer explained how the Lord hardened the Pharaoh’s heart.
Take a piece of wax, a piece of meat, some sand, some clay, and some shavings, put them on a fire. Each of them is acted upon by the same agent, yet…the wax melts, the meat fries, the sand dries up, the clay hardens, and the shavings blaze.
Another version of this is to imagine taking a pound of butter and a pound of clay and put them both on a sidewalk in 100 degree weather. What would happen? The same sun that dries and hardens the clay would melt the butter.
What happens depends on the essence of the butter and the clay.
In life, the same circumstances makes one person better and one person bitter. One person hears the Word of God and is made better. Another hears the same word and is made angry.
It is not what is done to us, but what we do, that determines our destiny.
Lonnie Davis