Christ in Exodus

FIRST WORDS
To My Friends, Colleagues, Church Fellowship, Curious People everywhere and especially my Grandchildren,
Always know that you are fully loved by God and you are loved by me. I pray that you remember our purpose is to reflect the entire Glory of God.

CHRIST HARDENS PHARAOH'S HEART
What are we to do with this?

If we consider seriously that God is active in the world at this point through Christ, then we cannot relegate this action of God (hardening Pharaoh's heart in Exodus 7:3) to the responsibility of the Father. We cannot simply dismiss it because that is not the way God acts towards us in Jesus Christ.  Would you at some level agree, that this is the way we have usually handled our questions about the plagues, judgment and the hardening of Pharaoh's heart?  These actions were done by a judgmental God (The Father). In contrast to that fierce, judgmental Father we meet Jesus Christ (God Incarnate), and are introduced in the New Testament to the God of grace and mercy who calls us to love and forgive.

What if I am correct in my reading of scripture, and Christ is always the active presence of God in this world from the first verse of Genesis to the last verse of Revelation.  That makes this action by God the responsibility of Christ, just as surely as we will see God in the New Testament as the compassionate and loving action of Jesus Christ when he heals the blind man or forgives the prostitute.  It also means, that this is the same resurrected Christ who will come again with the judgment of revelation when He breaks the seals and sends plagues to ravage the earth.  This is exactly what I believe is happening in Scripture.

This interpretation begs for an answer in Exodus 7:3.  What does it mean to say that Christ will and does harden Pharaoh's heart?

To explore a possible and I believe plausible answer to this, let me take you back to Exodus 6:6-9.  Christ tells Moses to speak these words to Israel, "I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will take you as my own people."  In verse 9, when Moses spoke these words to the people of Israel, they responded like this, "they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor."  In other words, they were so beaten down and discouraged from the abuse and tyranny of the Egyptians that they did not have the capacity to hear words of hope and deliverance.  I hear in this that their hearts were "hard".  I wonder if you have ever found yourself in that situation.  I certainly have.  I have had times in my life where I seemed so caught and transfixed by fear, pain and sometimes anger, that I was not able to hear words of hope that could have resolved the pain in my life.  I don't think Israel was being blatantly disobedient to Christ, I think they simply didn't have the capacity to hear these wonderful words of hope.  With that idea let me talk about Pharaoh.

Is it conceivable, that Pharaoh was in a frame of mind that fear and perhaps even anger was keeping him from responding to the voice of God that would have brought deliverance to Israel and potential prosperity to Egypt.  At the very least, we can conceive this reality, if Pharaoh had listened to Christ from the beginning he would have had an intact nation on which to rebuild their future.  They had received free labor for hundred of years that had enabled them to build one of the most impressive cultures the world has ever known.  Egypt was in a good place and the reality of losing slave labor would have certainly changed their future but not left them desolate.  For proof of this we need only look at the massive step forward the United States of America took when we moved from ideas of nation building on the backs of slaves to nation building by free lives that dream and hope for their own futures.  Is it possible, that the fear, pain and yes even anger which accompanied the call of Christ to set Israel free created a barrier to hearing future hope and framing that voice of Christ in a way that made Pharaoh's heart hard?  I think it is possible, and laying that as a foundation we witness the fight and conflict which develops as Christ will work to free His people and Pharaoh will rebel.  With each successive judgment and plague we watch as Pharaoh considers his options but ultimately chooses rebellion.  In this way, can we not affirm the words of Christ that His actions will harden Pharaoh's heart while at the same time affirming that it is the choices Pharaoh makes which prompt future judgment and plague.  It appears that Christ is ready to relent at any point where Pharaoh is willing to let Israel go.  Is this not a reflection of what Pharaoh has already done to Israel in Exodus 6:9?

For this to be true it must be consistent with the way Christ will teach and act as Jesus Christ.  It must also be consistent with the way our resurrected Jesus Christ will act through the end of time.

To reflect on this, it seems very consistent that Jesus Christ teaches a willingness by God to embrace a rebellious and sinful life the second it will repent (Read Paul's letter to the Romans).  It seems equally consistent to say that Christ did not remove free-will from our lives but left the decision up to us.  In this way we continue to be responsible for our own destiny.  It also makes for an interesting conversation in regards to the "Lord's Prayer" when Jesus Christ teaches this truth.  "Forgive us as we forgive".  In the context of Pharaoh's actions towards Israel, (as they ask to leave and pursue the worship of God in freedom Pharaoh says he will make life harder for them-he takes away even the straw he had previously supplied for the making of brick) we witness Christ making it equally as difficult for Pharaoh.  We certainly see in the book of Revelation the harsh judgments of Christ that once again bring a world to it's figurative knees.  Yet the world will not relent even in the midst of destruction.

I would ask at least an honest consideration of this interpretation for Pharaoh's heart being hardened by Christ.

THE LAWS OF CEREMONY, CLEANLINESS AND MORALITY
I am choosing to wait and deal with this fully at the time we study Christ and His words in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  I will pull this part of Exodus and the "Ten Commandments" into that conversation.  All of those Laws were actually given at this time of the exodus, and so it is appropriate to have that conversation in its entirety as we are actually reading the laws.

Until next week,
Yol Bolsun,
Tim