Week 4 Exodus 13-32
What would I do if a guy told me God wanted me to sell my house and give the money to the poor? And that to prove that God had sent him, he would predict several things:
Monday your house will be vandalized;
Tuesday your website will be hacked;
Wednesday your fiancée will marry a real estate agent;
Thursday your neighbour’s tree will fall and crush his garage;
Friday the prime minister of Burkina Faso will be hit by a silver Mercedes Benz driven by a guy named Rufus;
Saturday an asteroid will hit the Sunridge Observatory at 3:36 a.m.
Sunday Niagara Falls will stop flowing.
If each of those things did happen what would I do? Well…I guess I’d do some serious thinking about selling my house.
That’s what makes the Exodus story of the hardhearted pharaoh so surprising. He was able to completely disregard the ten plagues, to dismiss the power behind them.
Pharaoh’s heart was strong and heavy against Moses, against God. Hard as rock. The text goes on to say that the Lord began collaborating with the pharaoh, co-acting with him, supplementing his diamond-hard hardness of heart, making it unbreakably durable.
Pharaoh is like a man who finds his perfect ocean wave and then realizes he’s surfing an irresistible dangerous lethal force. But not to worry, he’s thinking. I’m okay. I’m heading exactly toward where I want to go.
Note: the full story is in Exodus 7-14