For His Glory...

Exodus 14:1-4
Exodus 14:15-18

Recently, I have had several discussions with other believers about the "hard things" about God. This passage and the whole story of the Exodus is one of them. Several times during process of God rescuing His people from the Egyptians the Bible says, "...but the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart." While that is difficult to understand, I do believe that part of the answer as to why the Lord would choose to do this is found in scripture. Simply put, it was for His glory.

We were reading this story in our family devotion last week and one of the questions was: "Why did Pharaoh not let the people go?" Joel said, "because he was mad and he didn't want to." True. But, we also tried to explain to him the truth that God had "hardened" Pharaoh's heart. While he did not ask any questions about this, my spirit has always struggled with this answer. As we were finishing the story and I was silently struggling with the answer I had given my child, I began to realize that the Egyptians had been surrounded by the Israelites for hundreds of years. However, they still did not believe that God was the true God. They worshiped false Gods.

Possibly some of the Egyptians were converted to Judaism, but most of the country's religion was based on polytheism. They had over 2000 gods they worshiped! How could they have been in the presence of God's chosen people for so many years and remain virtually unchanged? When I began to look at this matter from that perspective, my thoughts began to change.

While most of my life I have looked at that passage and truly thought that it seemed unfair, now I am beginning to see how God bestowed His grace upon the Egyptians. For centuries, the Egyptians lived in total disobedience to Him even though the truth was right there in front of them. Although we see the judgment of God poured out on them through the plagues, how many Egyptians truly did "know that [He] is the LORD" as a result of what happened. How many of their lives were changed because of what they had seen?

We may never know the full answer to this question, but statistics tell us that as many as 20% of the population of Egypt today are Christians. In an area where Islam reigns and persecution is fierce, this truly is a miracle.

While there will always be things that are difficult to understand about God, we can all believe wholeheartedly that He is good, abounding in mercy, and worthy of glory.