God gave Pharaoh multiple opportunities to respond to His warnings and let His people go from Egypt, yet they went ignored. God gives many warnings in the Scripture that are not excused by God if someone chooses to merely not heed or listen or fully understand the warning and go one’s own way. God will not excuse the “country song Christianity” mentality that says, “I’m not accountable for what I don’t know in the Bible. I can be a good-ole-boy style Christian and make it to Heaven just fine. I don’t need to be one of those “dyed in the wool,’ all-in, committed church goers.”
Pharaoh repeatedly rejected Moses and Aaron’s warnings from God and chose rather to give into a hardness of heart that hurt his own family and household, as well as the lives of thousands upon thousands of Egyptians. They came to him repeatedly asking him to let God’s people go and worship Him. Repeatedly Pharaoh either directly or passively displayed and unreceptive hard heartedness to this corrective action of God in his life and his people’s, and it always resulted in a plague. When someone ignores the warnings of Scripture or refuses to avail oneself of the clear teaching of Scripture it will have consequences on them and incur a negative ripple effect in our lives.
The command was clear and simple, as are most of God’s commands in Scripture. The way of salvation is clearly through relying completely—100%–on Jesus by faith in His finished work, not by our own works to try and earn favor. God’s word clearly encourages believers to not forsake church attendance (Hebrews 10:25), yet how many professing followers of Jesus Christ are not gathering with their local church Sunday after Sunday. God’s Word clearly challenges us to invest in the younger generation and pour truth into them and point them to God (Deuteronomy 6:1-25), yet how many believers make excuses for some reason, some fear, some concern for why they are not the one to serve in the kid’s ministry at the church. God’s Word warns against vices, impurity, moral compromise, carnality, un-teachability over-and-over again, and yet there is still hard-heartedness.
It is so very important for each of us to take a moment and pause and seek God’s face for any hard heartedness in our lives and then confess it and forsake it and replace it with biblical actions. Things could have gone differently for Pharoah. He could have responded to God’s Word with willing obedience. He could have let the children of Israel go. He could have become a supportive ally of Israel and been a part of the hall of faith along with Moses. He could have foregone all the turmoil of the nine plagues and the many deaths of the tenth plague. But he kept doubling down: “No one’s going to tell me what to do. Not God. Not His messengers. Not anyone else. I’ll do things my way. No one gets to lead me, instruct me, guide me, or tell me how to live my life…” He paid dearly for it. How many sons and daughters will professing believers have to lose to a lost and broken world because sports and other activities were more important than being in church and modeling a Spirit-filled life to them? How many more, until we admit our pride, turn from it, and replace it with doing things God’s way? The wonderful news is God’s grace is able to soften the hardest of hearts.
How to Pray:
- Please show me any areas where I am hard-hearted?
- I will repent of it, acknowledging my pride.
- What would You have me to replace it with?
- Thank You for the transforming power of Your grace.
Caleb Walker 
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