Transcript: I was just wondering what your thoughts were on Exodus 9:12. Did Pharaoh have free will? Let’s go to Exodus 9:12 together: “But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh and he did not listen to them as the Lord had spoken to Moses.” Absolutely, this is great as an example of our social media world. We tend to live in a world where we catch snippets of what people say and often out of context, and then we misunderstand what they mean. This happens a lot, and it’s something we have to guard ourselves against. I have to guard myself against it. I hear a teacher say something, and I go, “Whoa, that didn’t seem right,” and I don’t realize what the context was when they said it. Then I think they’ve got bad teaching, but in reality, sometimes it’s just that I got it out of context. So here, let’s put this in context, okay? The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh.

Let me see if I can find the passages I’d like to share with you on this. I’m searching for Pharaoh’s heart being hard because it occurred several times in the book of Exodus. We were just in Exodus chapter 9. Here’s us in Exodus 12: It says that Pharaoh’s heart grew hard and he did not heed them as the Lord had said. Okay, well, Pharaoh’s heart grew hard—that’s interesting. But that’s not something that it says God did; that’s something that Pharaoh’s heart is doing. So God’s not directly doing this. It’s important to recognize this because this matters when we understand the causal nature of what happened to Pharaoh’s heart. So the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is hard,” right? But what happened? Well, his heart grew hard on its own in this case, in this particular situation.

Let me see, we have in verse 14 and verse 22, Pharaoh’s heart grows hard again, and he doesn’t heed them. This is when Moses does the snake thing, the exhibitions do their things, and all this stuff, and his heart grows hard again. It’s not God as the agent here, and it could easily have said God hardened Pharaoh’s heart here, but it doesn’t. It says that his heart grew hard. We get this other times as well. Exodus 8:19: Pharaoh’s heart grew hard again; it’s just this thing his heart is doing on its own. God is not directly causal in that. And then finally, we get to your passage, which is Exodus 9:12. Well, I guess I could go to 9:7 first. The heart of Pharaoh became hard again, okay, but this is again he’s on his own. And then chronologically, finally, at the end, we have God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and that was in Exodus 9:12, the passage of the verse you gave: “The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh.”

What are we getting from this? It’s not just a single action on behalf of God, that God is actually just hardening Pharaoh’s heart. I have a whole study on this topic I’m going to link, but I’ll give you guys the quick summary. So mods, if you can find my study “Why God Hardens Hearts” and post that in the video description or in the live chat, I’ll put it in the description down below if you’re watching later—it’ll be there momentarily. The issue here is this: God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, but the question is, how did this take place? Well, it took place as Pharaoh hardened his own heart through seeing the things God was doing and choosing to reject them. Moses gives a sign; Moses brings a plague; Pharaoh sees it, hardens his heart, and decides not to let the people go. It happens again, and his heart becomes hard again. So Pharaoh is active in the hardening of his own heart. This is key; this is very important.

What we see in the end is that the picture of God hardening hearts is that there are people who, because of their own sinful attitudes, are disposed against God. God shows them miracles, God shows them light, God gives them truth, and because of their attitudes, they reject the light, they close their eyes to the truth, and they become harder. So God, by showing them Himself in glory, effectively hardens their hearts because they are wicked. Do you understand what’s happening here? I like this analogy: When I was a kid, there were times when I would want to ask something of a parent, and I knew if I asked them right now, they would just get mad and say no for sure. If I’d asked them, I would have hardened their hearts because they were in an attitude that would have made them say no to me because that’s just the way it was.

This isn’t like I wouldn’t recommend this as parenting advice—don’t be like that, don’t make your kids check your eye expressions before they know if they can talk to you or not—but that’s how it was. In the same sense, God knows, “Hey, Pharaoh is so against me in his attitude that when I show him miracles, when I show my miracles and I demand for him to let my people go, he will harden his own heart. If I ask him now, he’ll harden his heart.” So God hardens his heart by showing him miracles, hardens his heart by demonstrating his power, hardens his heart by demanding he let the people go. God’s not hardening his heart by doing heart surgery; He’s hardening his heart by confronting wicked Pharaoh with light, and Pharaoh closes his eyes. This is what Jesus does in the Gospels: When He shows His miracles to the Pharisees and they reject Him, it hardens their hearts, but only by Him doing the very thing that would soften the heart of the person who’s open to God.

So we don’t see this single-cause thing where God just grabs someone’s heart and goes, “I’m going to make you reject me.” But no, it’s like, “You’re going to reject me, and as I show you more light, you’re going to reject me even more because you’re going to harden your heart. I’ll harden it by showing you more light.” That’s how I see it, and I get into great detail, sharing a ton of different scriptures on the topic of God hardening hearts, in the video I’ll link in the live chat as well as down below.

I think all those things are important, and Galatians 6:1 is a good one to memorize for this type of issue.

See original video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JNbdt2mZ5E