The Shining Forth of the Sovereignty of God (Exodus 7:1-7)
An Exposition of Exodus 6:10-6:30 (Part 3 in a 3 Part Exposition of Exodus 6:1-7:7)
This is part 3 in a 3-part exposition of Exodus 6:1-7:7. It will benefit you to have your Bible open as we work through these passages together.
Our Text for this exposition reads,
7 And the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. 2 You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. 3 But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, 4 Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. 5 The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.” 6 Moses and Aaron did so; they did just as the Lord commanded them. 7 Now Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh.
The Shining Forth of the Sovereignty of God (Exodus 7:1-7)
Since Chapter 3 in the book of Exodus, the bulk of the material we have read has essentially been dialogue between God and Moses. A conversation between the divine Yahweh and the somewhat reluctant, questioning, excuse-making, and doubting Moses. God has called Moses and commissioned him to preach and proclaim the very word of God to the people of God and Pharaoh, King of Egypt. At each step along the way, Moses has doubted his own ability and has questioned the efficacy of his preaching, as if results somehow depended upon him. At one point in Chapter 4, Moses even tells God, "Oh, Lord, please send someone else." Essentially saying to God, "Send anyone else but me."
After he goes and preaches to Pharoah in Chapter 5 and Pharoah responds to the preaching of Moses and Aaron by rejecting the word of God, rejecting the sovereignty and superiority of God, and increasing the persecution, oppression, and affliction of the people of Israel, Moses in despair even questions the goodness of God, asking God, "Why have you done evil to this people?"
What has been really interesting for us to see is that throughout the last three chapters, God, in grace and mercy, has condescended to Moses to answer his questions, to give him assurance and reassurance, to further reveal Himself to Moses, to encourage him to go and to preach. God has repeatedly stooped down to remind Moses that he is sovereign, that he is providential, that he has immutable plans and purposes, and that he intends to use the preaching of Moses to liberate his people from their oppression in Egypt and to execute his justice and judgment upon Pharoah and his nation.
Essentially, we have in 5:1-7:7 the final foray of Moses and Aaron before Pharoah before the narrative of the plagues. The text that is before us is that final scene of that final foray before God sends the plagues, the promised signs and wonders against Egypt. What we have here is a scene that serves to shine forth the sovereignty of God.
Now, when we speak of the Sovereignty of God—we are speaking about the reality that God is in absolute control of the entirety of his creation. He is the Sovereign One, and as such, he is the One True Ruler, King, and God over his universe. The sovereignty of God speaks of the truth that there is not one single maverick molecule in the entirety of the universe, for he is in control of everything.
John Frame writes, "The sovereignty of God is the same as the lordship of God, for God is the sovereign over all of creation. The major components of God's lordship are his control, authority, and covenantal presence. The sovereignty of God is the fact that he is the Lord over creation; as sovereign, he exercises his rule. This rule is exercised through God's authority as king, his control over all things, and his presence with his covenantal people and throughout his creation."1
J.I. Packer writes, "The assertion of God's absolute sovereignty in creation, providence, and grace is basic to biblical belief and biblical praise. The vision of God on the throne—that is, ruling recurs; and we are constantly told in explicit terms that the Lord (YHWH) reigns as king, exercising dominion over great and tiny things alike. God's dominion is total: he wills as he chooses and carries out all that he wills, none can stay his hand or thwart his plans."2
What Packer and Frame write is precisely what we are being shown in these verses. God is sovereign, exercising his Lordship over His creation, and nothing, not Moses' doubts and failures, not Israel's inability to listen, not even Pharoah's evil heart and wicked intentions, can stay the hand of Yahweh or thwart his plans to liberate his people and bring them into covenant relationship with himself.
And so, in this final scene before the plague narrative, we are shown the sovereignty of God before we are shown the omnipotence of God as he wages war on Pharaoh and Egypt, striking them with ten devastating blows of his power.
In these seven verses, the sovereignty of God shines forth in three glaring ways. First, God is sovereign over Pharaoh in position, and therefore God is shown to be sovereign over the kings and false gods of this world. Secondly, God is sovereign over the heart of Pharaoh, and therefore God is shown to be sovereign over the hearts of all men; that is, he is the God who has mercy on whomever he wills and hardens whomever he wills. Thirdly, God is sovereign over the heart of Moses, and in this, we are shown the biblical truth that the sovereignty of God does not thwart our evangelistic zeal, but rather God's sovereignty fuels our obedience and our evangelistic zeal. So let us walk through these verses following this outline.
God is Sovereign Over Pharaoh (7:1-2)
We are shown first that God is sovereign over Pharaoh in position. We see this in the way that God positions Moses to be superior to Pharaoh so that even the prophet of God, the mouthpiece of God, is superior to the self-professed deity and King of Egypt.
In Chapter Six, there was this repeated refrain that served as an inclusio bracketing the genealogy of Moses and, in particular, Aaron. You will notice it in 6:12, "But Moses said to the LORD, 'Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me. How then shall Pharaoh listen to me, for I am of uncircumcised lips?'" And see it again in 6:30, "But Moses said to the LORD, 'Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips. How will Pharaoh listen to me?'" So, then Moses' objection and concern is that Pharaoh will not listen to him.
The last time Moses spoke to Pharaoh, Pharaoh did not listen and increased the severity of the persecution of the Hebrews. The last time Moses spoke to the Hebrews, they did not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery. So now, Moses is concerned that Pharaoh will not listen to him.
To this objection, God answers his concern in 7:1, "And the LORD said to Moses, 'See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet." Now it is important for us to understand that God has not made Moses to be an actual God. He has not caused him to be divine or to have some form of deity. We must remember that Pharaoh and the Egyptians considered Pharaoh to be divine. Pharaoh considered himself to be a god, to have the status and attributes of a deity. So, when God tells Moses that "I have made you to be like God to Pharaoh," he is telling Moses that Pharaoh will listen to you; that is, he will give you a hearing because I am putting you on an equal position with him.
It should be noted that the Hebrew in this verse is more emphatic than the ESV's translation. The ESV translates it as a simile, "I have made you like God to Pharaoh." However, the Hebrew uses stronger imagery, “I have made you a God to Pharaoh.”3
Moses is not merely being positioned on equal footing with Pharaoh; he is being positioned superior to Pharaoh. Moses will stand before Pharaoh as a god, even having his own mouthpiece, his brother Aaron. As Pharaoh saw Moses standing before him with his own prophet, Pharaoh would have immediately understood that Moses was claiming divine status.
This was the practice of Pharaoh himself. He considered himself to be divine, so he would have a spokesman issue all of his commands. Using this spokesman or prophet would also distance Pharaoh and his divine status from the mere humans around him. Therefore, when Moses comes in with his own spokesman or prophet, Pharaoh immediately knows Moses is at least claiming to be on equal footing with him. In fact, God is declaring that Pharaoh is no god at all and that even Moses is superior to him because he brings the very words of the One True God.
Peter Enns comments,
"In Egyptian royal ideology, the pharaoh was considered to be a divine being. So by calling Moses God, Yahweh is beating Pharaoh at his own game. It is not the king of Egypt who is god; rather, it is this shepherd and leader of slaves who is God. And this Moses-God defeats Pharaoh in a manner that leaves no doubt as to the true nature and source of his power: He controls the elements, bugs, livestock, fire from heaven, and the water of the sea; he even has authority over life and death. Moses is not simply like God to Pharaoh. He truly is God to Pharaoh in that God is acting through Moses."4
So we begin to see our point, the God of Moses is the Sovereign One; in fact, he is so superior to Pharaoh that even his prophet, his representative, is sovereign over Pharaoh.
Now, verse two is clear that Moses is not really a god. He is a servant, an agent, a representative of Yahweh upon the earth. And he is given a divine commission, "You shall speak all that I command you and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land." God calls Moses to deliver an unadulterated message given directly by God. There must be no deviation and no omission to this message.
Moses is operating under the authority of Yahweh and therefore is to deliver verbatim "all that I command you." This is the role of the Prophet. God speaks to Jeremiah (1:7), "Do not say, 'I am only a youth'; for to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak." And again in 1:17, "But you, dress yourself for work; arise, and say to them everything that I command you. Do not be dismayed by them, lest I dismay you before them." The prophet is not a commentator on current events. He does not work out for himself his own message. He does not think to himself what will grab the people's attention and then carefully craft a speech around the wants and desires of the people. Instead, he gives to the people the message that he has divinely received.5
Two points of application are derived from these verses. The first thing that we see is that the ordinary yet mysterious means by which God communicates his message is through human messengers. "Philip Graham Ryken writes, Aaron was the mouthpiece of Moses, who was the mouthpiece of God. When God had something to say to Pharaoh, he did not shout from Heaven but spoke through one of his servants on earth. This is the way God usually communicates."6 In the Old Testament, God spoke through his prophets who served in the role of covenant enforcers and preached, "Thus saith the Lord…." In the New Testament church today, God's continued ordinary means of grace is the preaching of his divinely inspired word through broken and flawed human instruments. When a pastor rightly divides, properly exegetes, and faithfully teaches the Bible, he is leading you to feast and be sustained by the very words of God. So, let me encourage you not to forsake the ordinary means of grace and of God's communicating with you through the simple preaching of God's word.
Secondly, since God is the most Sovereign One, those who preach his word are bound to preach the word of God. The content of our preaching must be the content of the Scriptures. When we gather together for corporate worship, you and I do not need to be entertained; we do not need to be pacified; we do not need to be distracted. We need to behold the glory of God as displayed in the word of God. We need to hear a message from God. We need for God to communicate with us.
Furthermore, the means that God has chosen for that communication to take place is through the ordinary practice of the preaching of his word. "For man does not live off of bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the God." We need to have our souls and our spiritual lives sustained and nurtured by the faithful exposition of the life-giving word of God. We need to be reminded that the prophets' and the pastors’ commissioning is not to scratch itching ears. It is to speak all that God commands. We need men to "dress themselves for work; arise, and say to them everything that God commands you." Preaching must be the expounding of the word of God to the people of God, unadulterated and unaltered.
Now, this also applies to every believer, for when you go into the world, the world is waiting on you to bring to them the word of God. Your responsibility is to share that word with them, to proclaim the Gospel to them, and to do so accurately, for their souls depend upon it. They need to hear of the Christ that you know has come to save your soul, so give him to them. Our God is sovereign over salvation, and he has commissioned us to go and preach “all that I command you.” (Exodus 7:2, Matthew 28:18-20)
God is Sovereign Over the Heart of Pharaoh (7:3-5)
Secondly, in verses three through five, we are shown that God is sovereign over the heart of Pharaoh. This necessarily implies that if God is sovereign over the god-king Pharaoh, surely he is sovereign over the hearts of all men.
Even though God has made Moses to be a God to Pharaoh, he hardens the heart of Pharaoh so that, "Pharaoh will not listen to him." Here, God says to Moses that he will harden Pharaoh's heart. God has already promised to do this in 4:21; here, he is reiterating his promise. This word harden here means "to be difficult' or "made stubbornly." It is the idea that Pharaoh will continue steadfastly to refuse and reject the word of God.
Now, two things are essential for us to understand here. First, we must understand the polemical nature of God hardening Pharoah's heart. John Currid writes,
"Ancient Egyptian texts teach that the heart is the essence of the person, the inner spiritual centre of the self. Pharaoh's heart was particularly important because the Egyptians believed it was the all-controlling factor in both history and society. It was further held that the hearts of the gods Ra and Horus were sovereign over everything. Because Pharaoh was the incarnation of those two gods, his heart was thought to be sovereign over creation. Yahweh hardens Pharaoh's heart to demonstrate that only the God of the Hebrews is the Sovereign of the universe."7
In the Exodus account, Yahweh is waging war against the false pagan gods of this world, proving that they are no gods at all, and he begins by exerting his dominance over Pharoah.
Secondly, we must understand that God is not making Pharaoh evil.
God never acts upon someone who is morally neutral. Morally neutral people do not exist. Pharaoh is wicked and evil. He is a robber of the glory of God. He is a blatant and willing idolator and deceiver, and servant of the Serpent. And like you and I, he has no right to make a claim upon the mercy of God. What God did to Pharaoh here is what God says that he will do to those wicked sinners who continue in their sin and wickedness, rejecting God and refusing to repent. He gives them completely over to their sins.
Paul writes in Romans 1:24-29,
"Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.”
This is what God has done to Pharaoh. He has hardened his heart; he has given him over to a debased mind; he has declared him to be a reprobate.
Now, before we begin to rebel against God here, questioning his fairness, listen to the words of Paul in Romans 9:14-18,
"What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." So then it depends not on human will or exertion but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.”
Paul argues that it is not man's position to determine how God is supposed to act. Instead, it is our responsibility to simply acknowledge the sovereignty of God over the heart of man and to bow before him, acknowledging our own unworthiness to be counted among the number of his elect.
With that being said, I want to make a point of application concerning our own preaching. Here, Moses is called to go preach a message that he is told on the front end will be impossible to be received. We read this as, "Go preach this message knowing that you will not be successful." But to think in that way is to make an error. This is because success in Moses' preaching ministry will not be determined by Pharoah's response. Success will be determined by his faithfulness to preach all that God has commanded him to preach, and the same is true for you and me today. It does not matter how eloquent we are, how charismatic we are, or how gifted we are at oration; there is nothing that we can do to cause someone to believe in the message that we preach. God must sovereignly regenerate a dead sinner. God must remove their heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh. God must give them the eyes of faith to see and believe. We are utterly dependent upon God sovereignly acting in grace upon the unbeliever because there is nothing we can do to save them. Therefore, you and I will be deemed successful in ministry based upon our faithfulness and obedience to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I serve with a group of five men in my local church who feed the homeless community and engage in street evangelism. For a decade, we have been laboring in this work every Wednesday and Sunday evening. I have no idea how many people have heard the Gospel through the efforts of these men. I have no idea how many souls have been converted to Christ through their labor. However, I do know of one man, one brother, who, through this ministry, has been converted to Christ, baptized, discipled, and brought into the membership of the local church. In a decade, I know confidently of one saved soul. Yet, by all worldly accounts and by most all church growth models, this ministry is a failure and a waste of valuable resources. This text reminds us that numbers or converts do not determine success in ministry; rather, it is determined by faithfulness to the message and obedience to the great commission. And this gives us peace to persevere in ministry within the local church and out on the streets. You and I, like Moses in Exodus 7, will be deemed successful based on our obedience to the command to share and preach the word of God.
Now, I want to focus in on verses 4 and 5 for a moment because I want you to see God's plans and purposes in sending Moses and Aaron to preach, in hardening Pharoah's heart, and in sending the signs and wonders.
These signs serve a two-fold purpose. First, the signs are the execution of God's judgment against Egypt. In 7:8 through 12:32, as God strikes Egypt with blow after blow, he is executing his judgment against this wicked and cruel nation for their utter depravity and sinfulness before God. They are not innocent bystanders. He judges them for their rejection of God, idolatry, rampant wickedness, oppression of Israel, and the brutal slaughtering of the firstborn of Israel. The first purpose of the plagues is the execution of God's judgment against Egypt. God says in verse 4 that these are “great acts of judgment.” It is a sobering reminder to us today that nations are judged in history, and our nation will be no different. In fact, the list that I just gave for the reason God judges Egypt could easily be said of our nation.
Now the second purpose of the plagues is evangelistic in nature. That is, they are purposed to lead to the knowledge of God and to salvation. This is especially true for the Jews; God says, "I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt." The word' hosts' there speaks of military divisions. This military term means that rather than fleeing disorderly in haste; the Israelites would march out of Egypt like an army arrayed for battle. They will be saved. God brings the plagues as a means of saving and liberating his people.
But God's actions also have an evangelistic purpose for Egypt. In Chapter 5, when Moses first went to preach to Pharaoh, Pharaoh responded with, "Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD." Well, now God says in verse 5 that one of his purposes in bringing the plagues is so that "the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord."
What God is saying here is that through the plagues and the judgment that is executed upon the land, the Egyptians will come to know that there is a true God, and His name is Yahweh, and that he is the God of the Hebrews. God's evangelistic purpose is that his name would be known among the nations and that the nations would turn to him as the One True God. The purpose is that the nations would respond like the Thessalonians, who "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God." (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10)
We read in Exodus 9:20, when the seventh plague of hail is promised, "Then whoever feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses." These are Egyptian servants of Pharaoh who have come to know the name of Yahweh and to believe in the power of Yahweh, and act upon the preaching of the Word of Yahweh. I also am led to believe that many Egyptians joined Israel in the Exodus from Egypt. When the Exodus is recorded in Chapter 12, 12:38 tells us that a "mixed multitude also went up with them." This mixed multitude consists of people who do not naturally or ethnically belong to Israel aligning themselves with Israel; surely some of them were Egyptians who came to know the Lord through the plagues.
By way of application, we must understand that our preaching serves this same dual purpose even today. Our primary goal in the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the evangelism of the lost and dying world around us. We go out into the world telling sinful men that they have violated the law of God, they have rebelled against the Creator God, that they have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that the abiding wrath of God is against them. We inform them that their greatest need in this world is to be reconciled to the holy and righteous God they have sinned against. We then tell them of God's glorious grace in Jesus Christ, that he loved us in such a way that he sent his only begotten Son to live a perfect life for us, to die upon the cross in our place, and that Christ as our substitute bore the wrath of God that was due to us for our sins, and that he rose from the dead on the third day defeating sin and death on our behalf. And we plead with sinners to repent of their sins and confess Christ as Lord and receive the glorious eternal benefits of salvation in Christ Jesus. That is our primary goal in evangelism.
However, we must also be aware that in the mysterious sovereignty and providence of God, he also uses the preaching of the Gospel message to confirm sinners in their unbelief. Preaching will have its intended effect; it will never return void.
It will either soften or harden the heart of those who hear it. It will either lead to salvation or damnation. It will either draw people to Christ or harden people in their sin. Some people believe it and are eternally saved, while others reject it and are lost forever.
And we must know that it is the sovereign will of God that softens or hardens human hearts under the preaching of the word of God. It is our responsibility to be faithful to preach it, for we can have no effect upon the hearts of sinful and dead men. We simply preach Christ and him crucified. Our preaching serves God's purposes to call out the elect of God unto salvation through repentance and faith and to confirm sinners in their unbelief through their outright rejection of the Gospel call. It is all God’s doing, for we have no power in ourselves to effectualize the inward call of the Gospel upon man’s heart. Salvation is dependent upon the sovereign workings of God alone.
God is Sovereign Over the Heart of Moses (7:6-7)
Lastly, in verses 6 through 7, we are shown that God is sovereign over the heart of Moses, his servant. There is often the desire to push back against the view of God's supreme sovereignty over all creation. The argument is that those who hold this biblical view of God will be complacent in their evangelism. This is clearly unwarranted and unbiblical. What we learn from the Bible is that the sovereignty of God does not thwart our evangelistic zeal, but rather God's sovereignty fuels our obedience and evangelistic zeal.
In this passage, Moses is given a final glimpse of the sovereignty of God, and it literally changes everything. Exodus 7:6 is climatic in this narrative. It may seem insignificant, but everything from Exodus 3:1 has led to this point. Moses is no longer questioning, doubting, or making up excuses. When we read, "Moses and Aaron did so; they did just as the LORD commanded them," it is almost shocking. What has changed in the mind of Moses? He has finally come to understand the sovereignty of God, and this fuels his obedience and his preaching. The same thing should happen to each and every one of us when we glimpse the sovereignty of our God. Knowing who our God is should drive us to obey and faithfully preach Him. From this point onward, Moses stands bold and confident before Pharoah. You and I should have the same confidence as we stand in the gap between God and lost men to preach the Gospel of God. Our God is sovereign, and he has commissioned us to go and make disciples of all nations. Let us go with confidence, boldness, and zeal.
Allow me to make one more point of application before we close. Dwight L. Moody observed that "Moses spent forty years in Pharaoh's court thinking he was somebody, forty years in the desert learning that he was nobody, and forty years showing what God can do with a somebody who found out he was a nobody."8 Notice that Moses begins his ministry at the age of eighty. Moses begins ministry in what he understands to be the end season of life: It is Moses who writes in Psalm 90:10, "The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away." For the older Christians, take heed. You may be prone to think that you are in the final season of your life and that your times of service and ministry are all behind you. You must see in Moses that at the age of eighty, he still had forty years left of God-glorifying service. As long as you have breath and life within you, God has plans and purposes and uses for you in his Church. The young people in the church are in desperate need of your wisdom, maturity, and ministry in their lives. They need to hear of your decades of faithfulness and perseverance; they need to hear of God's sustaining grace in your life; they need to hear of the hardships and pitfalls that await them. Invest in them and walk alongside them.
Whatever you do, do not throw in the towel thinking that you have put your time in, and now you can sit back and do nothing. May we all be resolved that we will end life and ministry well, joined to a local church, submitted to the authority of elders, participating in the ordinary means of grace, not forsaking the assembling of the saints, embracing Christian fellowship, praying for the church and the lost, and proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Chase
I pray these expositions have been enjoyable and edifying for you. My goal has been to help us behold the glory of God in Christ Jesus and model sound exposition from a portion of Scripture that many of us have likely not sought to study deeply. May God bless you and keep you.
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight,
O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.”
—Psalm 19:14
Frame, John, The Gospel Coalition. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/topics/sovereignty-of-god
Packer, J.I., Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1993), 33.
Currid, John, A Study Commentary on Exodus: Exodus 1-18, vol. 1, EP Study Commentary (Darlington, England; Carlisle, PA: Evangelical Press, 2000), 154.
Enns, Peter, Exodus: NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), 181.
MacKay, John L., Exodus, Mentor Commentaries (Fearn, Ross-shire, Great Britain: Mentor, 2001), 130.
Ryken, Philip Graham, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 196.
Currid, John, A Study Commentary on Exodus: Exodus 1-18, vol. 1, EP Study Commentary (Darlington, England; Carlisle, PA: Evangelical Press, 2000), 113-114.
Quoted in, MacKay, John L., Exodus, Mentor Commentaries (Fearn, Ross-shire, Great Britain: Mentor, 2001), 130.