Hardening of the Heart

But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said to Moses…When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had stopped, he sinned again: He and his officials hardened their hearts (Exodus 9:12, 34).

In Wednesday’s Wilderness Wanderings (say that 10 times fast), I referenced the Biblical idea of hardened hearts. That was a set up for today’s edition.

The story of Israel being redeemed from Egypt is set up as a battle between God and Pharaoh. The Egyptian ruler understands himself as a son of the gods, thus he cannot allow this Hebrew God to have power in Egypt. He cannot show weakness. If he caves in to this interloper, the entire Egyptian religious and political landscape and Egypt’s place in the international scene will disintegrate overnight. Thus, Pharaoh resists God. However, everything he fears happens anyways. Egypt never recovers from its encounter with Israel’s God.

As the writer of Exodus relates this story, a central issue is the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart against God. Our text leaves a question: who hardened Pharaoh’s heart? Was it Israel’s God or was it Pharaoh himself? A brief google search indicates that many have laboured to answer this question. And sorry, I am not going to attempt an answer here.

The story illuminates an issue we ourselves need to address about our own hearts. Our hearts can harden towards God, and we have a part to play in that. Hardening our heart means that we close ourselves against another person. Let us use scripture to illustrate this:

If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need (Deuteronomy 15:7-8).

Today, if only you would hear his voice, “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested me; they tried me, though they had seen what I did (Psalm 95:7-8).

Pharaoh ‘hardened his heart’ by refusing to give in to God. He refused to allow God to be God because he thought that he was a god. I do not presume to imply that any of us want to be God. But we can still close our hearts towards God. There are various reasons why we might do this. Allow me to mention three:

Spiritual Neglect: over the course of time, we pay less and less attention to God and the welfare of our relationship with him. Shattered Trust: when bad things happen to us, it becomes more difficult to trust God. This can lead to a closing of our hearts towards him. Deliberate Disobedience: it happens that a Christian wants something that is wrong. We may close our hearts towards God so that and walk that road of disobedience.

As we read about Pharaoh’s war against God, we may get fixated on who hardened his heart. But then we would miss the invitation to explore our own hearts. Take some time to allow the Spirit to expose the places you have grown cold towards God. The Holy Spirit is in the business of turning hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, eager to follow God.