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Transcript 113B — Why Dod God Harden Pharaoh's Heart?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: I've been working in Exodus on God's dealing with the Egyptians and the children of God being moved out of Egypt. And I'm having an awful time dealing with God's hardening the heart of Pharaoh, and the suffering that all of the Egyptians went through as a result. I've studied this, and I've asked the Lord to show me, and He has. Yet it's still difficult for me to understand. He keeps saying that He can show His glory, and He can manifest Himself. In the Word He says that. And yet it seems that so many people suffered as a result of that. Is that basically the reason that He hardened Pharaoh's heart?
HC: Well, let's look at the real picture, because we have more information about the nature of unsaved man. We discover that an unsaved man is the slave of Satan, he is under the dominion of Satan. And Satan is the father of lies. He is a murderer from the beginning. He is desperately wicked. In fact, God tells us in Jeremiah that man's heart is desperately wicked.
In Matthew's Gospel He says, "Out of the heart of man comes murder and adultery and all manner of terrible sins." So the normal situation, posture, status of man, is that he is a desperately wicked person. Now because of God's love for His creation, because God makes sure that this creation will go along to its predetermined end, God restrains sin in the life of the unbeliever. And so we look at Pharaoh, or we look at the Egyptians, and while deep in their heart they're in writhing rebellion against God, there is still what appears to be some goodness. There appears to be the milk of human kindness, there appears to be some pity, and so on. We see this among all unsaved of the world. We know there's love for the child, we see the citizen's respect for authority, and so on. This is because God is restraining sin.
But the natural habitat of man, because he is unsaved, because he is a slave of Satan, because he is in rebellion against God, is to want to sin and sin and sin, And so we could think of God's hardening the heart of Pharaoh very readily by simply thinking of Him removing these restraints just a little, because the moment God does, Pharaoh will do what comes naturally. He will become a great sinner.
God does this at the end of time. We read in II Thessalonians 2:8-9 where it says: "for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only He who now restrains it will do so until He is out of the way." Restrains what? Restrains sinfulness in the world. He who restrains sin is God. And when God is taken out of the way, that is, when God lifts His hand of restraint, then lawlessness, then rebellion, grows. And so II Thessalonians 2 is telling us that at the end of time there will be massive rebellion against God. Why? Because God has taken His restraint away.
Now why is He doing this? Well, He's doing it at the end of time in order to bring warning judgments upon the world. He's doing it as a curse upon the church, because the church is increasingly going apostate. And so by this means the church is decimated and receives tremendous affliction from God. In the days of Pharaoh He did it against Pharaoh because Pharaoh was grievously sinful in bringing the nation of Israel into bondage and in dealing with them. But ultimately He is doing it in order to glorify Himself, because as Pharaoh becomes more and more what He really is, desperately sinful, which is what happens as his heart is hardened, then God is going to be able to do more and more wonders. He's going to be able to show His power more and more, so that it will be the big story all over the known world of that day.
CALLER: Thank you very very much. Good night.
HC: You're welcome. Good night.