The Plagues in Exodus

We see in the book of Exodus something that seems awfully unsettling, God bringing ten plagues among the Egyptian people. Along with those ten plagues, we read something in the text that says "God hardened Pharaoh's heart." These two separate, but correlated, instances give a lot of us a really confused or bleak picture of who God truly is. Often we tend to "just not believe" that God actually did these things, skip this part of scripture or just leave ourselves unknowing why these things are written in a Holy Book that claims God is "all-loving." And this with good reason. But what I want to show is that these seemingly contradictory passages are really not contradictory at all. And that our reasoning for skipping over this passage is simply a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of what the Lord is really trying to get across. Let me show you what I mean.

So what we see in Exodus is that God brings ten plagues among the Egyptian people that are under Pharaoh. Three of these plagues that we will look at (for the sake of not making this ten pages) are the Nile being turned to blood, darkness falling across the entire land and the hail that rained down and destroyed much of the Egyptian livestock and those who had not went inside. Most of us look at this and ask ourselves why God would do something like this. The explanation is not apparent, nor is is able to be found without a bit of study. But what we see is that God brought these plagues on the people... for the people. The three plagues I have mentioned above each have a false Egyptian god or goddess attached to them. Hapi is the Egyptian God of the Nile (Plague of the Nile), Ra the Egyptian god of the sun (Plague of darkness), and Nut is the Egyptian goddess of the sky (Plague of Hail). What the Lord is trying to show these people here is that He is much more powerful than their false gods. They are praying to, and worshiping, these idols that will do absolutely nothing for them. Their mind has already been made up. God has seen that they will not turn to Him by any other means, so as a last resort He is going to show them that their gods are nothing compared to who He is. Each of these plagues lines up with a false god whom the Egyptians of this time were worshiping.

You see, these plagues were meant to turn these people away from the vanity of worshiping false idols to serving a God who has the power to create and destroy, to love and to care for, to save and to condemn.

The Lord says in Exodus 9:15 "For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth." But this wasn't His purpose or His plan, He wanted to allow these people to be free of such awful slavery, slavery of worshiping something that will provide nothing. As Exodus 9:16 states, "But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." God wanted to show them His power so they would turn from their truly ignorant ways.

This idea flows directly into the actions of the God we see today. God continually allows suffering in our lives so that we will grow to realize that we can trust in Him for everything and that we do not need to rely on "false gods" to bring us fulfillment. What these false gods will do is bring us true destruction and true condemnation. God is willing to go to the deepest depths for you.

The hardening of Pharaoh's heart-

This, similar to the ten plagues, is an extremely difficult section of scripture to cope with if we do not understand the full meaning of what is written. Time and time again throughout Exodus the words "God hardened Pharaoh's heart" are written. This, at it's face value, seems to be saying that God caused Pharaoh to turn against Him, or to sin. When we look at the text in it's original language we see that the word qashah (in Hebrew and Greek) actually means to stiffen or to strengthen. The idea being presented in this phrase (eg. Exodus 7:3) is that God allowed, or stiffened, Pharaoh's desires that were already in his heart. God did not cause Pharaoh to sin, but God did give Pharaoh over to what he already wanted. The Lord will not force us to believe in Him. He would rather deliver us over to our desires (Romans 1:24a) so that we can live a falsely meaningful life, than force us to do something that we have our heart set against. We, beings of free will, have the choice whether we want to follow or believe in God or not, and He will honor that by not forcing us to follow or believe in Him.

This correlates to what is taught in the New Testament. James 1:10a and 1 Corinthians 15:32 speak of how we should do everything we can that is presented to us on this Earth because, if that is what we so choose to do, God will not stop us from doing so. 1 Corinthians 15:32 says that if there is no resurrection of Jesus, if His work meant nothing, if He is a nobody, then we should "eat and drink for tomorrow we die." If we do not want to believe in God, then He will not force us to. James 1:10a speaks of how the rich should be boastful that they are rich because eventually all of their possessions and, inevitably, their entire life will burn up leaving nothing behind. So we might as well enjoy the pitiful things that we have now.

If we want to spend our entire life praising and worshiping what is here, then we are free to do so. But I tell you that the God of Creation has much more to offer you.

Revelation 3:20 "I (Jesus) stand at the door and knock If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me."