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R edeem er Bible Church


Unreserved Accountability to Christ. Undeserved Acceptance from Christ.

The Goal of All God Does


Exodus 7:8-10:29

Introduction
The teaching of the Bible confirms the language of our Confession of Faith: “God,
from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will freely and
unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.”1 There is nothing that happens in the
world that hasn’t come about as the result of God’s sovereign decree. He is in control.
In the words of David, “The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, And His
sovereignty rules over all” (Ps 103:19). There is nothing that God’s rule does not touch.

God has ordained each of our life’s spans: “In Your book were all written the
days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them” (Ps 139:16).
And not only does he determine our life’s spans, but Jesus tells us that not even a
sparrow will fall to the ground apart from the Father’s sovereign control (Matt 10:29).

He is controlling and sustaining and working his sovereign will in all areas of our
existence. From the vastest recesses of space to the nearest garden beetle, nothing is
outside the sway of his sovereignty. His sovereignty rules over all.

And since his sovereignty rules over all, his sovereignty extends to human
sovereigns as well. “For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist
are established by God” (Rom 13:1). Listen to Proverbs 21:1: “The king’s heart is like
channels of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He wishes.” In order
to appreciate the force of this proverb it is important that we understand the nature of
Ancient Near Eastern kings. One writer is very helpful:

[I]n Solomon’s time the king was an absolute monarch. There was no
legislature to pass laws he did not like or a Supreme Court to restrain his actions.
The king’s word was the last word. His authority over his realm was
unconditional and unrestrained.
Yet the Scripture teaches that God controls the king’s heart. The
stubborn will of the most powerful monarch on earth is directed by God as easily
as the farmer directs the flow of water in his irrigation canals.2

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LBC 3.1
2
Jerry Bridges, “Does Divine Sovereignty Make a Difference in Everyday Life?” in Thomas R
Schreiner & Bruce A Ware, Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and
Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1995, 2000), 300.

Manuscript for Exodus 7:8-10:29: The Goal of All God Does © 2004 by R W Glenn
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We find the truth of this wisdom illustrated most vividly in the life of the Egyptian
Pharaoh who was responsible for the severe treatment of God’s people in the time
immediately prior the Exodus.

Even before Moses and Aaron interact with this Pharaoh to call him to let the
sons of Israel go, God tells them that he will harden Pharaoh's heart so that he will not
comply (Exod 4:21). And after their first failure to convince Pharaoh to dismiss the
Lord’s people to the wilderness, Pharaoh’s hard-heartedness and abject hatred for the
people of God manifest themselves in a new policy of intensified oppression: making
the same quota of bricks without the provision of straw.

Then in the beginning of chapter 7, Moses and Aaron are again reminded that
God will harden Pharaoh’s heart, that the Lord will make Pharaoh obstinate to the divine
command to let the people go. And when we read the account of 7:8-10:29, we find
Pharaoh hardening his heart just as God had said. Nine plagues of severe judgment
notwithstanding, Pharaoh would not capitulate to Yahweh’s demand.

Clearly God is in control of the events surrounding the impending Exodus.


Clearly the king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; and he turns it
wherever he wishes.

Why Harden Pharaoh’s Heart?


Now knowing that the Lord has complete sway over this Pharaoh’s heart prompts
me to ask this question, “Where does the Lord wish it to go?” In other words, why does
God choose to harden Pharaoh’s heart? God clearly wants Israel released. Seeing
their affliction, their deliverance is why he has “come down” (3:8). So then why does
God not permit Pharaoh to release the people immediately?

To begin to answer this question, turn in your Bibles to Exodus 7:3.


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"But I will harden Pharaoh's heart that I may multiply My signs and My
wonders in the land of Egypt.”

Here we read that God has chosen to harden Pharaoh’s heart and to put off
Israel’s departure so that the Lord may multiply his signs and his wonders in the
land of Egypt. If Israel were to have been released at Moses and Aaron’s first request,
God could not have multiplied his signs and wonders in Egypt. So God makes the
king's heart stubborn so that he may proliferate his miracles in the land of Egypt.

Yet this doesn’t really answer our question fully. In fact, it generates another
one: “Why does God want to multiply his signs and wonders in the land of Egypt?”

Now turn over to 9:14-16.


14
"For this time I will send all My plagues on you and your servants and
your people, so that you may know that there is no one like Me in all the earth.
15
For if by now I had put forth My hand and struck you and your people with
pestilence, you would then have been cut off from the earth. 16But, indeed, for

Manuscript for Exodus 7:8-10:29: The Goal of All God Does © 2004 by R W Glenn
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this reason I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power and in
order to proclaim My name through all the earth.”

In this text we find God himself expressing his rationale for his action throughout
the plague narrative. The Lord through Moses sets forth a two-fold purpose for
controlling Pharaoh in the way we have seen throughout the passage. And it is found in
verse 16: But, indeed, for this reason I have allowed you to remain, in order to
show you My power and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth.
Notice that God’s purpose is singular in establishing this Pharaoh as the king of Egypt.
He says, for this reason, not for these reasons. This is to show that the two
components that follow cannot be divorced from one another. They are dependent
upon one another in terms of cause and effect, which you’ll see as we unpack the
Lord’s statement.

The first prong of God’s two-fold purpose is bound up in the phrase in order to
show you my power. God has established Pharaoh and has chosen to multiply his
signs and wonders in Egypt in order to manifest for the Egyptian king some of the extent
of his might. God wants Pharaoh literally to see God’s unparalleled power in action.
Yahweh wants Pharaoh to know with whom he ultimately has to do. This has been
God’s intention all along cf. 7:17; 8:10, 22; 9:14, 29.

This knowledge in turn will result in the fulfillment of the second prong of God’s
purpose found at the end of 9:16: in order to proclaim my name through all the
earth. The manifestation of God’s power before Pharaoh will result in a worldwide
proclamation of God’s name. So here we have the ultimate aim of what God is doing
with the king’s heart. This is why the Lord has channeled it in the way of obstinacy: so
that all creation would verbally recount and rehearse the greatness of God.

That’s the idea behind the word proclaim. It is not referring to a simple
declaration. It is an act of reiteration, of saying over and over again (in this case) the
name of God. This should not be construed to mean that God envisions all the earth
simply saying “Yahweh” over and over again. So then, what does it mean?

To find out, turn ahead to 33:18-19.


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Then Moses said, "I pray You, show me Your glory!" 19And He said, "I
Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of
the LORD before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will
show compassion on whom I will show compassion."

What I want you to see here is that even though Moses asks the Lord to show
him the Lord’s glory, the Lord responds in the affirmative by saying that he will
proclaim the name of the Lord before him. In other words, the idea is that the Lord’s
name and the Lord’s glory (in a context like this one) are virtually synonymous with one
another.

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Moreover, the proclamation of his name, the manifestation of his glory is bound
up with a revelation of his character. In verse 18, God says that he will make all his
goodness pass before Moses.

Now jump down to 34:6-7.


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Then the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "The LORD,
the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in
lovingkindness and truth; 7who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives
iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty
unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the
grandchildren to the third and fourth generations."

These verses make clear that the proclamation of the name is a manifestation of
God’s glory, which is bound up with a revelation of his character: he is compassionate,
gracious, patient, overflowing with love and truth, faithful, and irreproachably just. There
is no one holy like the Lord. He is splendid and majestic in his holiness, unmatched in
all creation.

By multiplying his wonders in the face of Pharaoh the Lord wants to make clear
that he is who he is—the unparalleled omnipotent sovereign of all creation. In so doing,
he is ensuring that his greatness will be honored in all the earth. God will easily and
mightily defeat the great “divine” king of Egypt.

What this all means is that Pharaoh holds office in order that God may be
glorified and exalted, making his name famous as the unmatched God of wonders. This
is God’s chief interest, the manifestation of the greatness of his own name throughout
the entire world—that the earth would be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters
cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9).

What we cannot miss about God’s interest in the spreading of his fame is that his
intention is not regional—it is global. Yes, he wants Pharaoh, the king of Egypt to know
that he is the Lord, but he is interested in Pharaoh’s knowledge not merely for Pharaoh,
but for all the earth. I love what one commentator has said, “Yahweh is no local god,
seeking to best another local deity.”3 No, Yahweh is the king of all the earth. And his
interest in exalting himself over this superpower is global in its scale.

Thus God’s purpose in these events is not simply for the bringing about of
Israel’s redemption; it is so that his saving power and mighty justice might be known
throughout the all the nations. God’s deeds have worldwide implications. And this
interest is not peculiar to the book of Exodus. It is expressed throughout the Old
Testament. The Lord is interested in putting his glory on display before all the nations
and the creation as a whole. As Isaiah the prophet says,

“The LORD has bared His holy arm


In the sight of all the nations,

3
Terrence E Fretheim, Exodus (Louisville: John Knox, 1991), 125.

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That all the ends of the earth may see


The salvation of our God” (Isaiah 52:10).

Yet salvation also implies damnation. As we have seen, God is not bringing
about the salvation of everyone. There are Egypts and there are Pharaohs in the world
upon whom God has chosen to magnify his mighty wrath. Nevertheless, in both cases
God’s glory is put on display.

So then, from 9:14-16 we learn that God is using Pharaoh to accomplish this two-
fold purpose: the manifestation of his power before Pharaoh and the resultant
magnification of his name in all the earth.

This, however, isn’t the only place in the plague narrative that the Lord expresses
his purpose in directing the king’s heart toward stubborn disobedience. Turn over to
10:1-2.
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Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his
heart and the heart of his servants, that I may perform these signs of Mine
among them, 2and that you may tell in the hearing of your son, and of your
grandson, how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I performed My signs
among them, that you may know that I am the LORD."

As you can see, verse 1 contains a reiteration of 7:3: God has hardened
Pharaoh’s heart to perform his signs in Egypt. Verse 2 expresses God’s rationale.
Look at it closely: that you may tell in the hearing of your son, and of your
grandson, how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I performed My signs
among them, that you may know that I am the LORD.

The word that is translated tell is the very same word that’s found in 9:16 and
rendered proclaim. It means to rehearse, to reiterate, to declare. God wants
something to be announced to the succeeding Israeli generations; namely, how he
made a mockery of the Egyptians and how he performed his signs among them.

Note that the Lord doesn’t say that he wants Israel to know simply that he
destroyed Egypt, but that he made a mockery of them. This takes it a step further.

The word translated with the phrase made a mockery is a very interesting word
in the Hebrew. It is sometimes translated “to deal harshly.” But this doesn’t quite catch
the nuance of the term. A few of its Old Testament uses will help us get at what God is
saying here. The word is found in Num 22:29: “Then Balaam said to the donkey, ‘[I
have hit you] because you have made a mockery of me! If there had been a sword in
my hand, I would have killed you by now.’” Here Balaam feels as if the donkey has
made a fool of him by the donkey’s stubborn behavior.

It is also used in Judges 19; a passage in which a concubine is raped. The Bible
says that men “raped her and abused her all night until morning, then let her go at the
approach of dawn” (Judges 19:25). Here the word is used of abuse with a connotation
of degrading and debasing the one abused.

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Another helpful example is 1 Sam 31:4, which records the death of Saul; listen:
“Then Saul said to his armor bearer, ‘Draw your sword and pierce me through with it,
otherwise these uncircumcised will come and pierce me through and make sport of
me.’” The idea is that Saul would have been subjected to humiliating and disgraceful
treatment if he were to be captured while still alive. Maybe his enemies would have
gouged out his eyes and/or cut off his thumbs and big toes, a fairly common practice in
the ancient near East. His enemies would have “made sport” of him in order to magnify
the decisiveness of his defeat.

The same idea as those expressed in the verses at which we’ve just looked is
operative here in Exod 10:2. To make a mockery of the Egyptians means abjectly
and disgracefully to humiliate them. And this is exactly what God did. He did it by
destroying the mighty Egyptian army, by humiliating the most powerful man in the
known world—Egypt’s divine king, and by exposing the impotence of Egypt’s gods.

This, says the Lord, is what I want your children and your children’s children to
know. I want them to know that my triumph over Egypt was so great as to result in their
abject and disgraceful humiliation. I want them to know that I did not merely eek out a
victory. Their defeat was decisive and unforgettable. This is the story God wants
recounted throughout Israel’s generations.

So God’s interest is not merely in having his name known amongst the
generation alive at the Exodus; he wants these events to be “indelibly marked upon the
collective memory of the people of Israel.”4

And the reason why God wants generation after generation to recount with
wonder the story of God’s mighty victory over Egypt is found at the end of verse 2: that
you may know that I am the Lord. God’s exceedingly pronounced triumph over such
a mighty nation manifests that he alone is the Lord; and there is none beside him,
working wonders. And God wants his people to know him. He wants them to believe
cf. 14:31.

So in both cases—in the case of Egypt and in the case of Israel—God’s aim is
the spreading of the knowledge of him in every place and through every generation.

God’s Goal in All He Does


Now then, what is the answer to our original question? What is God’s purpose in
exercising his control over Pharaoh? The answer is that God controls everything for his
own glory. In fact, this is God’s goal in all he does—to magnify his own name.

Our confession is again helpful: “There is but one only living and true God, who
is…working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most

4
Nahum M Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication
Society, 1991), 48.

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righteous will, for His own glory.”5 In all that God does, he pursues his own glory. The
Bible never stops reminding us that this is God’s chief and all-consuming interest.

In Genesis 1, the Bible says that God created man in his own image to have
dominion over the created order. Man’s dominion would be a constant reflection of the
Divine Dominion Giver. Man is given the exalted status of the image bearer of God not
so that he would become self-reliant or otherwise autonomous, but so that he would
reflect the glory of his Creator whose image he bears. God’s purpose in creation,
therefore, is to fill the earth with his own glory.

You will remember the fiasco at the Tower of Babel. What was the sin of the
people? Listen to Gen 11:4: “They said, ‘Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a
tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name,
otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’” They were
interested in pursuing their own fame at God’s expense. Since this is contrary to God’s
purpose he permanently frustrated the effort. God’s purpose is that he would get all the
credit for all of man’s achievements.

Then as we come to Genesis 12, we find these words: “Now the LORD said to
Abram, ‘Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father's
house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will
bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing’” (Gen 12:1-2).
Here we have a very clear contrast to man’s activity at Babel. When man undertakes to
make his own name great he will always take credit for his accomplishments and will
not give glory to God. But when God chooses to make a man great, God gets all the
credit.

We have already read that God’s intention in disposing of Pharaoh and delivering
his people is for the magnification of his own name, for the spreading of his fame. But
his desire for renown does not stop at this point in redemption history. It persists into
the giving of the Law. God says, “You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall
not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God” (Exod
20:3-5). It is God’s jealousy that forms the foundation of his command for Israel not to
worship idols. God abides no competitor—he alone must have the honor.

As salvation history continues to unfold, Israel’s entrance into the Promised Land
is not immediate. They are made to wander the wilderness for forty years. They were
stiff-necked, disobedient, complaining people. And God could easily have disposed of
them at that time. But the Bible says that the reason he didn’t was owing to his
commitment to his own glory cf. Exod 32:11-14.

Once that generation died, once the forty years of testing were completed, God’s
people under Joshua’s leadership began to take their place in the land of promise. The
Lord’s reason for giving the people the land was certainly not due to anything good they
had done; rather, “God went to redeem for Himself [Israel] as a people…to make a
name for Himself” (2 Sam 7:23).

5
LBC 2.1, italics added.

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We could go on and on… We could look to the beginnings of the Israeli


monarchy and we would see that even though God’s people asked for a king in an
expression of their discontent with God’s rule, Samuel says that the Lord would not
abandon his people on account of His great name (1 Sam 12:22). And we could look to
the building of the first Temple, the deliverance in the time of the kings, the exile and
promised restoration to the land throughout the prophets, and the post-exilic prophets
like Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi, all of which would tell us that God’s goal in all he
does is the magnification of his own fame, the display of his own glory.

And, of course, the greatest expression of God’s interest in putting the beauty of
his manifold perfections on display is found in the person of Jesus Christ, who “is the
radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature” (Heb 1:3).

And this Jesus who represents the ultimate and perfect display of the Father’s
surpassing greatness understands himself and his work in the light of glorifying God as
well. Listen: “Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me
from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.’
Then a voice came out of heaven: ‘I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again’” (John
12:27-28). What could be clearer? Jesus and his father see the work that Jesus is
about to accomplish as redounding to the glory of God, as certainly making it shine in
the darkness.

And since Jesus’ life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, heavenly session,
and triumphant return cannot be divorced from one another, we see God magnifying his
glory in the second coming as well. The Lord will return “to be glorified in His saints on
that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed” (2 Thess 1:10).

Finally, Jesus’ return in power and glory on the clouds of heaven will usher us
into the beauty and splendor and majesty of the new heaven and the new earth, which
exist to radiate God’s glory: “And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine
upon it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Rev 21:23).

I couldn’t sum it up better than this:

Every Christian will have either a God-centered or a man-centered


theology. The Christian who gives the Bible its due will learn that, just as the
chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever, so also the chief end
of God is to glorify and to enjoy himself forever. He will learn from Scripture that
God loves himself with a holy love and with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength,
that he himself is at the center of his affections, and that the impulse that drives
him and the thing he pursues in everything he does is his own glory!6

His Will Is Bent on It


Now, with all that we’ve said and all that we’ve seen; it should be without
question that God’s goal in all he does is the magnification of his own glory. This is
6
Robert L Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (Nashville: Thomas Nelson,
1998), 343.

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what God wields his sovereign power to protect—the fame of his own name. He will do
nothing to undermine what is his chief aim. His will is bent on exalting himself.

Perhaps this sounds rather unbecoming of the God who calls us to a life of
humility. Usually we use a sentence like, “His will is bent on exalting himself” for
megalomaniacs, like Hitler, Stalin, Hussein and even Pharaoh. In fact, this is precisely
what we find predicated of Pharaoh in our narrative.

In 9:17, after the Lord tells Pharaoh that he has established Pharaoh’s reign for
the purpose of showing Pharaoh the Lord’s power and proclaiming the Lord’s name
through all the earth, the Lord says, Still you exalt yourself against my people by not
letting them go. In other words, Pharaoh’s will is bent on exalting himself. He is
exalting himself at the expense of God’s people.

Later in 10:3-4, the Lord says something nearly identical to what he says in 9:17.
Look: Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, “Thus says the LORD,
the God of the Hebrews, ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me?
Let My people go, that they may serve Me. For if you refuse to let My people go,
behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your territory.’” Pharaoh’s will is bent on
exalting himself. Here he is exalting himself at God’s expense—in defiance of God.
Pharaoh will not bow the knee to exalt the Lord, so the Lord will break Pharaoh’s legs to
see him prostrate before him.

God and Pharaoh Self-Centered


So Pharaoh’s will is inclined toward selfish exaltation for which he has found and
will find himself the recipient of disastrous national and personal consequences. At the
same time, God’s will is also inclined toward selfish exaltation, which presumably is a
righteous inclination. How can this be?

Perhaps this will help. For Pharaoh to be self-centered Pharaoh must be


Pharaoh-centered. For Pharaoh, Pharaoh is at the apex of his affections. Now if
Pharaoh’s self-centeredness is essentially Pharaoh-centeredness, then it follows that
God’s self-centeredness is essentially God-centeredness. Thus we may say that God is
God-centered.

Now let me ask you this: is it right to be God-centered? Absolutely; then God
should be God-centered. For him to do or to be anything less would devalue his
position as the end of all things, and Paul’s words that we have sung this morning would
be meaningless. We would never be able to sing, “For from him and through him and to
him are all things” (Rom 11:36). And we would never be able to agree with God’s
statement that he is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end (Rev 1:8).

Let me ask you something else: is God supremely valuable? Of course. Thus
says the Lord, “To whom would you liken Me And make Me equal and compare Me,
That we would be alike?…Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and
there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me” (Isaiah 46:5, 9). Well, if the

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Lord is supremely valuable (and he is), then he should value himself supremely.7 For
him to value anything more would mean that there was something or someone more
valuable than him in the universe. It would mean that there was something outside of
God to which he should pay homage. And thus he would cease to be God.

So you see only if God is not supremely valuable, only if God-centeredness were
unrighteous could we say that God’s interest in the magnification of his own fame would
be sinfully selfish. Such a condition could not, of course, exist, because no one is as
great as God. And God controls everything each day in order to protect what he values
most—the manifestation of his own excellence.

Selfish Exaltation Devalues the Supremely Valuable


This is what makes Pharaoh’s self-centeredness so heinous. God has created
the world, continues it in its operation, and acts in his providence for the expressed
purpose of making his glory known. Thus our chief duty is to seek the glory of the Lord:
“Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor
10:31). For anyone to behave contrary to such a purpose is to commit cosmic treason.
And aren’t we all profoundly guilty in this respect?

Let me make a public confession of my own pride. Thursday night after I finished
my evangelistic sermon for our Friday night meeting, I was feeling unhappy with the
message. Frankly, I thought it was lame. But then the next morning during my private
worship I began to probe why it was that I thought it wasn’t very good.

I was appalled (but not surprised) at my conclusion: I thought that it reflected


poorly on my abilities as a communicator, as if to say that I was creating a work of art. I
was upset not because I felt the sermon did not honor the Lord, but because as a
sermon I found it rather pedestrian. And what I cannot abide is being pedestrian. I
want to be important. I want my messages to be profound. I want people to be wowed
by my insights and profundity. I want glory for myself apart from the blessing of God—
indeed, I am willing to sin in order to get it. How ugly!

Do you see how subtly we become exactly like Pharaoh? I know I do.

But maybe you want to rush to Pharaoh’s defense. After all, his heart was
hardened by the Lord so that he could multiply his signs to the praise of his glory.
Pharaoh’s guilty of nothing!

Wrong! Pharaoh is indeed culpable for his own hard-heartedness. While it is


true that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart it is also true that Pharaoh never once acted
against his will. He did not want to let the people go. Instead, he refused—he
refused—to humble himself to Yahweh, he refused to bow the knee to a superior
majesty, which is what resulted in the catastrophic destruction of his nation.

7
Jonathan Edwards, “The End for Which God Created the World” in John Piper, God’s Passion for
His Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1998), 168.

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Do you see how committed God is to his program of self-glorification?! Can you
appreciate the lengths to which he goes in creation to protect it? God takes himself
very seriously. Thus says the Lord, “For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For
how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another” (Isaiah 48:11).

This is what makes our pride so serious. Though I doubt very seriously that any
Christian would say, “Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go?” we
exalt ourselves in so many other subtle ways. Pride is not limited to boasting, but to the
feelings of superiority we have when we are thought of as smart or attractive or skilled
or talented or strong or fast or wealthy or anything else you value.

Whatever we have we have received and whatever good we enjoy has been
given to us by the Lord so that he may see his own reflection in us. So in order for a
moment to be prideful, we need never say something as crass as the king of Egypt, all
we have to do assign a superior value to the mirror image rather than to the face in front
of it. How often are we guilty of this?

So then let us repent of our selfish exaltation and sing with all our hearts for the
glory of the Lord to be made known through all the earth. And let us say with Isaiah the
prophet, “Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; Your name and
renown are the desire of our hearts” (Isaiah 26:8 NIV).

Redeemer Bible Church


16205 Highway 7
Minnetonka, MN 55345
Office: 952.935.2425
Fax: 952.938.8299
info@redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.solidfoodmedia.com

Manuscript for Exodus 7:8-10:29: The Goal of All God Does © 2004 by R W Glenn

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