Turning the page…
Turning the page…
Glory · God the Father
Scripture says Pharaoh hardened his heart, and it says God hardened it, and it will not let us flatten either statement into the other. The pattern Scripture shows is judicial: God gives people over to the unbelief they have chosen, weaving even their defiance into His purpose to display His power and His mercy, while His own warnings plead with everyone to soften today. The doctrine is meant less to satisfy curiosity than to press one urgent question: am I hearing His voice today?
https://glorystudy.com/questions/why-does-god-harden-hearts · Scripture quoted from the World English Bible
Exodus 9:13-17
As you read: God declares why He has carried this confrontation this far: to show His power and have His name proclaimed. Then watch what Pharaoh does with that.
13Yahweh said to Moses, “Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh, and tell him, ‘This is what Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, says: “Let my people go, that they may serve me.
14For this time I will send all my plagues against your heart, against your officials, and against your people; that you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth.
15For now I would have stretched out my hand, and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth;
16but indeed for this cause I have made you stand: to show you my power, and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth;
17as you still exalt yourself against my people, that you won’t let them go.
Isaiah 6:8-13
As you read: Isaiah is sent with a word that will judge those who refuse to hear it: hearing, they do not perceive.
8I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am. Send me!”
9He said, “Go, and tell this people, ‘You hear indeed, but don’t understand; and you see indeed, but don’t perceive.’
10Make the heart of this people fat. Make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed.”
11Then I said, “Lord, how long?” He answered, “Until cities are waste without inhabitant, and houses without man, and the land becomes utterly waste,
12And Yahweh has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
13If there is a tenth left in it, that also will in turn be consumed: as a terebinth, and as an oak, whose stock remains when they are felled; so the holy seed is its stock.”
Romans 9:14-24
As you read: Paul faces the objection head on: mercy and hardening both belong to God's purpose, endured with patience.
14What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? May it never be!
15For he said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
16So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy.
17For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I caused you to be raised up, that I might show in you my power, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”
18So then, he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires.
19You will say then to me, “Why does he still find fault? For who withstands his will?”
20But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed ask him who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?”
21Or hasn’t the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel for honor, and another for dishonor?
22What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath made for destruction,
23and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory,
24us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles?
Hebrews 3:7-19
As you read: The warning from Psalm 95 rings through the chapter: hear His voice today, and do not harden your hearts.
7Therefore, even as the Holy Spirit says, “Today if you will hear his voice,
8don’t harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, like as in the day of the trial in the wilderness,
9where your fathers tested me by proving me, and saw my works for forty years.
10Therefore I was displeased with that generation, and said, ‘They always err in their heart, but they didn’t know my ways;’
11as I swore in my wrath, ‘They will not enter into my rest.’”
12Beware, brothers, lest perhaps there be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God;
13but exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called “today”; lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
14For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm to the end:
15while it is said, “Today if you will hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts, as in the rebellion.”
16For who, when they heard, rebelled? No, didn’t all those who came out of Egypt by Moses?
17With whom was he displeased forty years? Wasn’t it with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?
18To whom did he swear that they wouldn’t enter into his rest, but to those who were disobedient?
19We see that they were not able to enter in because of unbelief.
Any honest answer has to hold two strands together. Again and again the narrative says Pharaoh hardened himself: 'when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart,' and 'Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also.' And just as plainly, before a later plague we read, 'Yahweh hardened the heart of Pharaoh.' Scripture refuses to let the story collapse into 'only Pharaoh did it' or 'only God did it'; both lines run through the whole account from beginning to end.
“But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart, and didn’t listen to them, as Yahweh had spoken.”Exodus 8:15
“Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and he didn’t let the people go.”Exodus 8:32
“Yahweh hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he didn’t listen to them, as Yahweh had spoken to Moses.”Exodus 9:12
Paul describes a solemn judicial pattern. Because people exchanged the truth of God for idols, 'God also gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness,' and again, 'God gave them up to a reprobate mind.' Isaiah was commissioned with words that would 'make the heart of this people fat,' ears heavy and eyes shut, so that a message offered for healing became the instrument of judgment on those who would not have it. Hardening, then, is not God dragging unwilling hearts away from Him; it is His giving-over of hearts that first shut Him out.
“Therefore God also gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves,”Romans 1:24
“Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting;”Romans 1:28
“He said, “Go, and tell this people, ‘You hear indeed, but don’t understand; and you see indeed, but don’t perceive.’”Isaiah 6:9
“Make the heart of this people fat. Make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed.””Isaiah 6:10
God tells Pharaoh, 'for this very purpose I caused you to be raised up, that I might show in you my power, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.' Paul draws out the mystery: God endures 'vessels of wrath made for destruction' 'with much patience,' 'that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy.' None of Pharaoh's defiance frustrated God; it became the dark backdrop against which rescue was displayed and mercy became visible.
“For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I caused you to be raised up, that I might show in you my power, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.””Romans 9:17
“What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath made for destruction,”Romans 9:22
“and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory,”Romans 9:23
The warnings themselves prove the door stands open. Three times Hebrews rings the bell: 'Today if you will hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.' A command not to harden makes no sense if hardening were irresistible. The psalm itself pleads, 'Today, oh that you would hear his voice!' And Peter explains the patience behind every delay: the Lord is 'not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.' If you want a soft heart, bring that desire to Him; the warnings prove the door stands open, today.
“while it is said, “Today if you will hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts, as in the rebellion.””Hebrews 3:15
“for he is our God. We are the people of his pasture, and the sheep in his care. Today, oh that you would hear his voice!”Psalms 95:7
“Don’t harden your heart, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness,”Psalms 95:8
“The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some count slowness; but is patient with us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”2 Peter 3:9
Paul's conclusion is not a shrug but a summons: 'See then the goodness and severity of God. Toward those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in his goodness.' Hold both without trimming either one. And take Jesus' open arm as the last word toward anyone who worries about this doctrine: 'He who comes to me I will in no way throw out.' The question the doctrine finally leaves us is not 'why did He harden them?' but 'am I hearing His voice today?'
“See then the goodness and severity of God. Toward those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in his goodness; otherwise you also will be cut off.”Romans 11:22
“All those whom the Father gives me will come to me. He who comes to me I will in no way throw out.”John 6:37