FREE WILL or PREDESTINATION?
"But I will harden Pharaoh's heart that I may multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt."
What a difficult thought with which to deal. "Harden Pharaoh's heart..." God said He would do that to the then ruler of Egypt, who, according to their pagan religion, was considered to be a god himself.
For those who believe in the doctrine of predestination, the act on God's part of hardening Pharaoh's heart sounds very justifiable and correct. God's sovereignty allows Him to choose who will or not bow to His will.
But for those who believe God has given us a free will, God's declaration seems unjust and outside the realm of Pharaoh's given ability to choose freely. Or is that really what God meant when He said to Moses that He would harden Pharaoh's heart?
A passage in Hebrews makes clear that, yes, God DID harden Pharaoh's heart against letting the children of Israel go free from slavery. But how did He do it? By free will or by His imposition? Or both?
"He again sets a certain day, 'today,' saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, 'Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.'"
There it is! That is God's method of hardening hearts and of choosing who will go to heaven. We all are His participants in those choices. He does it through His goodness.
Truly, all of life is nothing more than a series of choices. We decide what to wear in the morning. We select our breakfast cereal or juice. We push away dessert because of the calories or duck the radar and eat it anyway. We decide what we watch on TV, read in books and magazines, what purchases to make, who we will keep company with and on and on it goes. Choices!
Many or most of our choices are so ingrained within us that they become habits or ways of life. Some we were taught by our parents or caregivers. Others we learned by experience and continue to observe them, because they are the safest way to go or conform to what others around us expect.
Yet, there are those times every day where we must decide, sometimes even on the spur of the moment, whether to turn right or left, to follow this path or that one. Often those tests are called temptations in the Bible. God allows them to enter our sphere or world to see how we will choose to go. They test our character. Will we decide for God and righteousness or against Him?
When we make some of those choices, we should be well aware of the potential outcomes and weigh that against the direction we are headed at that moment in time. Is it a good choice or a bad one? Even if we deem it to be a good one, is it simply a good one, a better one or best for our walking with God and going to heaven? Should we let even some good options go because they are not good enough? Those fine distinctions are both what display our character and also form us more to the image of Christ within us.
So, what does all that have to do with how God hardened Pharaoh's heart? Let's dive into that investigation right now!
God speaks to a person's heart through various methods. It may be through something written on a printed page, especially the Bible. It may be through a person, family, friend or even a stranger by their actions or directions to us. It may be through circumstances good or bad. And it may be through His still small voice heard within one's own heart. But He speaks.
Always, when He speaks, His words draw a line in the sand. The hearer chooses either to listen and take action or to shun and disregard, even run from the proposition---for that's what God's words are: propositions. Either we choose to go with what God has said or we turn our back and a deaf ear to Him.
Each time we listen to Him and choose to follow what He has said, our heart is open to receive more direction from God. He is the One who determines what and how those next directives come, but come they will---and they all will lead us to Him.
Every time we disregard or refuse His direction, we decide against God and shut out His voice. Instead, we choose to follow our own choice and path, effectively shutting Him out more and more. Finally we don't hear Him at all. That process is called hardening the heart. It is a dangerous posture to assume.
It is important to stress here, also, that we do not know and find God through human intellect and reason alone. When He 'invades' our mind with His voice, it is by revelation that comes from Him. We can know about God or know Him as a Person by no other means except revelation. Romans 3:10 says, "...There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God..." We cannot know or find God unless He reveals Himself to us.
OK. Now back to Pharaoh. God made it relatively easy for him to make a choice. Ten times Moses and Aaron went before him with one and the same request: that he let the Israel nation go free. A simple command not complex at all.
At first, in order to let Pharaoh know he was up against God Himself, Moses and Aaron worked miracles with the rods in their hands. They became snakes which ate the snakes that evolved from those of Pharaoh's soothsayers who surrounded his throne.
About the miracles done by Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh, Hebrews 2:5 shows us: "God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the HolySpirit according to His own will." God uses miraculous things to demonstrate to unbelieers that it is He who is speaking to them about Himself.
In such a way, have you not ever been spared having a car wreck by inches? Or did you ever lose your purse or wallet, only to have it returned to you intact with nothing missing? That is not coincidence or a stroke of luck, my friend. It is the kind hand of God, His goodness, pointing you to Himself, whether you call them miracles or not.
Once God had established His presence and preeminence to Pharaoh, who thought himself to be a god, then the message God gave Pharaoh was the same one over and over again. Pharaoh had only one choice to make: Do I let Israel go or not? God gave him that line to cross. Either he sent Israel on her way or he would knuckle down and restrict the people chosen by God to be His own.
Each time Pharaoh refused to listen to "Let My people go," God brought another supernatural plague down on the nation of Egypt. The order in which they came and the type of each plague bore specific meaning to Pharaoh and the people of Egypt. Each one challenged their pagan religion and their gods, one after the other.
For instance, the first plague filled the Nile river with blood. God demonstrated His superiority over Hapi, god of the Nile. The second plague of frogs everywhere came against Heket, goddess of fertility---she had the head of a frog! Frogs were so sacred to the Egyptians that they dared not kill one of them, and when they died en masse, their corpses produced a foud stink all over Egupt! What a god!
And so each plague went, discrediting different Egyptian gods until the tenth and last plague came against even Pharaoh-god himself. Most likely, he had a first-born son that died as happened with all the other Egyptian households that final night. While Egyptian homes mourned their losses, the Israelite homes with a lamb's blod on the doorposts of their homes were spared.
Yet with each plague Pharaoh's heart made the choice to not listen to what God said to him thrugh Moses, Aaron and the plagues. His heart hardened more and more against God. By the tenth plague he had heard and seen His voice so many times and refused to listen so often his heart was a brick!
So, we can see that ten times God gave Pharaoh the opportunity to obey Him and serve the real God of the universe. Nine times God demonstrated His omnipotence by sending countrywide plagues that afflicted the Egyptians, but not Israel. Nine times out of nine Pharaoh refused to give up his paganism and submit to the authority of the Living God. He failed to seize the moment to know this God of Moses and Aaron...the very One who gave him each breath he breathed.
The final plague was devastating. So deep and painful was the loss of a child that Pharaoh reneged on his previous decisions to keep Israel in bondage. He gave Moses the go-ahead to leave with his people and leave they did! On short notice, the Israelites fled with their herds while the Egyptians licked their wounds of death.
Fast forward a few days and Israel was at the shores of the Red Sea. Her back was against a wall of water with no way to escape as Pharaoh, who had reconsidered, was pursuing hot on their heels. With all the spoiling of the land that had brought Egypt to her knees, Pharaoh was not going to let free slave labor escape his clutches, after all.
How quickly Pharaoh had forgotten that God spared Israel during the plagues. Did he not know God would do that again? No. Pharaoh had said 'no' to God so many times he had been given over to a reprobate mind written about by Paul in Romans 1. Because Moses and Aaron listened to and obeyed God in their flight from Egypt, He protected the entire Israelite nation and led them across the Red Sea on dry ground. Behind their safe flight, God caused the walls of the parted sea water to crash on their enemies, wiping out Pharaoh and his pursuing army. The remains of their trapped chariots can be found on the floor of the Red Sea to this day.
Not one Egyptian must have beens spared to take back the message to Egypt that even Pharaoh himself had perished in the Red Sea. Pharaoh-god had been swallowed up by the sea water with all his army, horses and chariots.
It is a principle of God that He deals with His human creation through His goodness. Romans 2:4 says, "Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, no knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?"
Again, fast forward years into Israel's wandering in the wilderness. God through Moses warned Israel about the very thing that Hebrews warns of: "If you hear His voice, don't harden your heart." However, God put it a different way in Exous where time and again God provied for Israel's needs. He gave them manna and quail for food on a daily basis. He made water flow from a rock. He sheltered them day and night with the cloud and pillar of fire. He gave them the Ten Commandments and the tabernacle so He could fellowship with them continually. God poured out His goodness on Israel.
Yet, the people grumbled against Him. He continued to pour out His provisions on them, but eventually Israel became more enamored with the provisions than she was with her Provider. Provisions meant to demonstrate the loving heart of God for His chosen people became idols to the people until they were hardened against God and all His interventions in their individual and national lives.
God's outpoured goodness on Israel throughout the hundreds of years they were a monarchy were intended to be a choice God gave them way back in Deuteronomy 6:10-13:
"Then it shall come about when the LORD your God brings you into the land which He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you, great and splendid cities which you did not build, and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you eat and are satisfied, then watch yourself, that you do not forget the LORD who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall fear only the LORD, your God, and you shall worship Him and swear by His nane."
The very objects and provisions God gave Israel to point them to their Heavenly Provider instead snared their hearts when they became enraptured with all their riches and forgot from Whom they came!
On the other hand, Pharaoh, who did not know and worship the true God, was given proof of God's omnipotence through the overwhelming plagues He poured out on Egypt---plagues their gods could not control or conquer. He was revealing Himself to a pagan nation so they could choose to turn from their false and demonic gods to Him. He would be their salvation.
Instead, ten times Pharaoh chose NOT to follow God! His heart hardened more with each rejection of God's good warning! Essentially, he brought damnation on the entire people of Egpypt through his deliberate choices.
One last truth was spoken to us by Jesus in John 6:44, when He said, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him."
No one of his own accord determines when he will give his heart and life to God. In other words, if a person shuns God and His goodness until another more convenient day, he cannot of his own will decide if and when he will be born again. Jesus said the Father must draw a person. One who has repeatedly closed hs ears and heart to the wooing voice of the Holy Spirit may never hear His voice again. If he doesn't, he will not be saved, pure and simple.
That is why the writer of Hebrews quotes, "Today, IF you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts..." In another instance, the writer says, "He (God) again fixes a certain day, 'Today,' saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, 'Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.'"
It is through His goodness to us as creatures created in His image that we may allow God's goodness to bring us to the feet of Jesus in repentance for our sins. Or, we can fall in love with the good things He gives and does for us, even denying they originate in God, and let them dominate and rule our lives instead--we harden our own hearts against Him!
Oh, yes, God's goodness to us does bring us to Jesus for salvation. Likewise, God does harden hearts by revealing Himself to them through His goodness and His voice. And, yes, we harden our own hearts by rejecting God's voice spoken through that goodness showered on us. God causes us to make a choice with every blessing He pours out on us. We decide what we will do with that goodness---make it our god or turn to God, the Provider. We determine whether our destinaton is heaven or hell.
This subject is inexhaustible. So much more could be written and expressed. Suffice it to say God gives us opportunity after opportunity in many ways and settings to hear His voice and to follow where He would lead us: to salvation and life in HIm. "If you hear His voice, do not harden our hearts." If we don't listen, we have only ourselves to blame for the outcome.