This "morning" I stayed in bed after I woke up and read Exodus. Not the whole thing, just the part about the plagues and stuff. What I thought was most interesting about this passage was the part where "God hardened Pharaoh's heart." (Ex 7:3) I actually thought of this more disturbing than anything else. Disturbing in the fact that God would "harden someone's heart." So, I looked more into what this meant.
God didn't do this outside of Pharaoh's will. That is, God didn't change anything about Pharaoh. He would've made the same decision regardless of whether God did this or not. What I got out of digging deeper into this passage is that God was looking at this situation and thinking to Himself, "How can I make the best out of this situation?" The best thing that He could think of is that He had to empower Pharaoh to make these decisions to, in time, build him up. Or in other words, there would be a better chance that Pharaoh would come to know the power and who God really is through all of this crap that was about to happen to his nation. Of course, Pharaoh knew that all of these plagues would happen and eventually wipe out his nation, but he still didn't let Israel go.
Another thing that interested me is the progress that was made throughout the this whole plague process. Pharaoh at the beginning was so unbelievably skeptic of the whole situation. The first time that Moses and Aaron go to the Pharaoh, I picture him laughing at the two young Godly men. He says "Show me a miracle." (Ex 7:9) They do. Then Pharaoh summons his little magicians. They do the same thing. Pharaoh's reaction to this is that Moses and Aaron's message wasn't from God because it was duplicated by human hands. Eventually, once you get further into the plagues, Pharaoh starts to admit that he's sinning against God. Still, he's stubborn and doesn't allow Israel to leave. Then, he FINALLY allows them to leave and Moses is all like, dude, we want all of our people to leave, not just the men. And Pharaoh's all like, no man. That's not happening! Still stubborn. Man, what's it going to take to break this homie down!? Finally, after ten plagues, Pharaoh gives up. He admits defeat and realizes that God is bigger and He always will be.
That made me think about how stubborn I can be sometimes. It forced me to take a step back from my life and look at what I'm holding onto saying "No God, I'm bigger than you and there's no way you're getting what you want in this area of my life." Man, that's challenging. Challenging to just admit that I'm not big enough to fight Him. Why even try?! There's no use. I might as well just wave the white flag now. Why should I go through ten plagues with a hardened heart when I could go through none and do God's work to its fullest.
