Dead Man Blogging

James Dobson describes the straight life for men:

“The straight life for a working man is not much simpler. It is pulling your tired frame out of bed, five days a week, fifty weeks out of the year. It is earning a two-week vacation in August, and choosing a trip that will please the kids. The straight life is spending your money wisely when you’d rather indulge yourself in a new whatever; it is taking your son bike riding on Saturday when you want so badly to watch the baseball game; it is cleaning out the garage on your day off after working sixty hours the prior week. The straight life is coping with head colds and engine tune-ups and crab grass and income-tax forms; it is taking your family to church on Sunday when you’ve heard every idea the minister has to offer; it is giving a portion of your income to God’s work when you already wonder how ends will meet. The straight life for the ordinary, garden-variety husband and father is everything I have listed and more…much more.

Happy Father’s Day!

Update

I should have taken more time when I posted this, based on the comments I’ve received. I don’t think Dr. Dobson is _complaining_, and I certainly am not. Instead, he is calling men to live this straight life of self sacrifice and obedience to God.

This “straight life” is not tedious or burdensome. It’s _glorious_. It’s strong, sacrificial, and _manly_. This is what we are called to!

Ephesians 5 says that the relationship between a husband and wife is a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church. The relationship between a father and his children is an obvious picture of the relationship between _the_ Father and His children.

God’s relationship to us is marked by His self-sacrifice. Jesus laid down His life for us. This speaks to the way He _lived_ as well as His death. We are called to die daily for one another, and the obligation to our families is clearly first on the list.

God is glorified by sacrificing Himself for us. Self sacrifice is love. God is love. God’s dealings with us are marked by this self-sacrifice. And He is supremely glorified in it.

Similarly, men - as pictures of God the Father, and of Jesus - are called to lives of self-sacrifice. Not just a glorious “I’d die for you” mentality, but a _daily_ sacrifice. A _living_ sacrifice. God calls us to serve Him by serving our families. And it is glorious for us.

It is glorious to shoulder the burdens of protection and provision. It’s glorious to make sacrifices even with our leisure time. It’s glorious to give up our desires for our families. It’s glorious to take our families to church when we don’t feel like it. This is what God called us to.

After two back-to-back posts with comments turned off, I thought I would have a more open topic to discuss.

I recently disparaged the idea of running a church as a business. I don’t want to get into that, but I do think it would be interesting to discuss some of the formal and informal practices of our church. Just four topics, and none of them have anything to do with music.

1. Do you take notes over the sermon? Why? What, if anything, do you think this demonstrates about your understanding of what church is for and what sermons are for?

2. Is there an American flag (or other national flag, if you are not from the USA) in your church? Why? What do you think about this?

3. Do families stay together for worship? Do infants go to the nursery? Do children go to “children’s church”? Do families sit together, or do the teenagers sit as a group? How welcome would infants and toddlers be? What do you think this indicates about the nature and purpose of the corporate gathering of the church?

4. What sort of formal liturgy, if any, does your church have? Do you recite any historic creed, the Lord’s Prayer, or follow any other pattern beyond the “three songs and a sermon” model? What significance do you think a liturgy has? Is it good or bad?

Here are some more thoughts about my recent post, Church is a Family, not a Business.

One reason it’s important to maintain this distinction, and to realize that we have - consciously or not - adopted the business mindset, is that it has serious ramifications for what we do.

A business has a mission. It needs to increase market share. It has employees, a product, and customers. If you run a church as business, you will inevitably think that you need to “sell” your product, which is _your church_, to your “customers”, who are the people who don’t go to your church.

I know it’s not expressed that way. We _say_ that we are spreading the gospel. But these things are always expressed in terms of attendance and giving, not conversions, and for all our innovations we haven’t increased the proportion of professing Christians in this country. We’re reshuffling the sheep, that’s all.

But what is the purpose of a _family_? A family exists basically to take care of itself. The family grows through marriage and children, and that is good and necessary, but growth is not the purpose. The family exists for the family.

The church is not a missions organization, nor is it a Bible study. It _does_ those things, but they are not its definition. Jesus could have used many illustrations to teach us what the church is. He could have described it as a machine, or a business, or a sports team, or an army. But He didn’t. We are a bride. A family. A body.

We put way too much emphasis on figuring out who the feet are and making sure they stay in the shoe, so we can go for a jog, rather than weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice, and loving and honoring one another.

Someone has complained that churches that are not run as corporations can be frustrating, and indeed they can. I’ve been frustrated before. Maybe some people do need to be quietly and privately spoken to about the reasons they oppose certain changes. But on the other hand, maybe it’s a good opportunity for us to learn to submit to one another. That saintly lady who has been running the nursery entirely unlike a daycare for years - well, maybe we submit and defer to her and avoid hurting her feelings by charging in with new ideas and new workers. Perhaps she deserves some more respect. I know she does. To this day, she won’t have anything to do with the nursery. Shame on us.

There is an elderly couple that sits behind us, usually, at church. Sunday before last I noticed that they only sang a couple of the songs. That was all they were familiar with. The youth was rocking and clapping and having a grand time. And the church members who ought to be the _most_ honored and respected, stood quietly. We’re all about yuppies and youth, and who cares about the old people. They’ll be dead soon anyway.

This is not the way we run our families. We honor our parents and grandparents. We are patient with one another. We defer to one another all the time. Why isn’t church that way?

Aside from Matthew 5:13-16, I am hard pressed to think of many passages of scripture that have been more abused by the modern American church than 1 Corinthians 12.

That passage teaches us that the church functions as a body. We learn that the same Holy Spirit gives us different gifts, and that no gifts are to be denigrated or despised. “25 That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. 26 And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.” _This_ is the point of the passage. It teaches us to care for one another.

But then we middle class Americans get ahold of this. Capitalism and industrialism are so ingrained in our minds that we don’t read the passage this way. Instead, we apply our values of ruthless efficiency and turn the body into a business. We read this passage and think “Aha! What we need to do is make sure each person is ‘plugged in’ where he or she belongs.” So we invent all sorts of ways of measuring our SHAPE, we interview and evaluate people, all in the interest of _efficiency_.

We don’t phrase it that way, of course. We describe it as “finding where you fit” or “serving where you are gifted”. We’re not striving for “efficiency”. No, we’re “trying to reach the lost”. It’s all about evangelism, doncha’ know.

I have some training and experience in interviewing and hiring. Of course, you are interested in finding the right person to do the job you have open. And you want to take into account things like his personality. You don’t want too many strong, aggressive people, or too many followers. You need a good balance there. And all that is well and good for a business, but it’s no way to run a family.

There was a TV series that my wife used to watch. On one episode, one of the main characters got amnesia and was trying to figure out how to fit back in with his family. At one point, his grandmother brought him his “favorite meal” and watched in delight as he ate the first few bites. After she left, he grimaced and turned to another relative. “Why did I eat this stuff?” The answer was, “Because Grandma made it for you and she thinks you love it.” This young man was willing to pretend to enjoy and appreciate a meal because Grandma made it for him. _That_ is how you run a family. That is how you treat a body. Lovingly, not efficiently.

Compare that with the business world. A minister was talking to me once and he said he was used to working in the business world where if you didn’t cut it, you were just fired. There were high standards and you were expected to meet them. If you don’t do your job well, you get disciplined and terminated. Maybe it’s a good way to run a business. But that’s not how you treat family.

The church is not a business, an organization, a team, or an army. We are not on a battleship. There are a couple of times that “athlete” and “soldier” are used to depict that _individual_ Christian, but never corporately. We are always described in _organic_ terms. Branches of a vine. Trees in an orchard. Sheep in a flock. Members of a body. Members of a family.

I grew going to small churches. I’m thinking of one in particular. The music minister couldn’t sing. His daughter played the piano, and did it well. We always sang the same twenty or thirty songs. An elderly lady ran the nursery. Same lady, every week. It could have been done better, but it was “her” nursery and we left it alone. We wanted to do some remodelling but couldn’t because Sister Susie and Sister Sarah put the plaster on those walls and textured it with their own fingers, and it would hurt their feelings if we tore it down. So we didn’t. One of the Sunday School teachers was a sweet foreign lady who didn’t even speak good English and had no discernable lessons. We could have replaced the sign with a nicer one, but Brother Joe donated the money for that sign before he died, and his family (who still went to the church) would be terribly upset if we did. So we didn’t. But on the flip side, Sister Susie played the piano on occasion. That wouldn’t be a big deal, except for her arthritis. She would play, knowing full well that it would give her a bad case of arthritis for a day or two and she’d be in terrible pain. Sister Sarah had diabetes, but that didn’t stop her from cooking food for the church suppers. She couldn’t eat it, but we did - and it was good.

Let me tell you, it was not efficient. There were two men, mentally retarded men, who came to our church. They stunk to high heaven. I mean, they stunk. One of them in particular. He did not bathe apparently. He got a pew all to himself. But he was there, and he was part of us. No, it was not efficient. But it was good.

How does that compare to the typical “church as business” you see today? Where the pastor thinks he’s a CEO and they use marketing to “reach” people. The churches that have long since abandoned the neighborhoods to relocate near the freeway. Where you audition for the choir and have to take “spiritual gifts tests” to determine where you “fit” based on your “SHAPE”. Where the nursery is run like a daycare, replete with formal looking “policies and procedures” given to parents and posted on the wall outside. Where you “fire” volunteers who just aren’t cutting it.

Churches that are run like businesses look good. They have brutally functional buildings. Big multipurpose rooms that can go from “sanctuary” to “gymnasium” in 10 minutes. The “worship team” puts on an excellent show. You’re neatly organized and packaged and deposited in your assigned cell group. They’ll take care of ministering to you. The human resources department church has a folder on you full of your transcript spiritual gift test results, your resume ministry experiences, etc. They do an excellent job matching you with an opening. The programs and services of the church have been professionally tweaked to match the interests and needs of the customers targeted people groups. The church’s professionally designed logo and slogan are stamped everywhere. It hums with all the efficiency of a well oiled machine.

And as Church Inc rolls forward, swelling the rolls and the coffers, you might just turn around for a second to see what it left behind. You might just find a smelly retarded man, a piano player with arthritis, a song leader who can’t sing, and a dear lady who used to run a nursery. There is no place for them in this business. You’ll find them in an inefficiently designed brick building in the middle of a lower class neighborhood, miles from the freeway. Tell them I miss them.

If I were to get in a time machine and go back, say, 10 years and meet myself, my 20 year old self would not like me very much. Ten years ago I was a premillenial dispensationalist and an Arminian to boot. I was caught up in the “wretched urgency” of evangelism and did not value the church highly enough. I probably would have liked seeker sensitive churches (cf Romans 3:11) and certainly enjoyed praise and worship choruses. Today I am, to a greater or lesser extent, very different.

I thought it would be interesting to sort of chronicle what happened. I’m not sure I’ve ever really thought about it that much. But I see that I am starting to diverge theologically more and more from established evangelicalism, and particularly from my own church.

I was raised in typical small Southern Baptist churches. I went to Sunday School, Children’s Church for a while, and of course in the youth group. I sat with the other teenagers in church. On Sunday nights the congregation (all hundred of us) were allowed to request certain hymns, and I always got a kick out of requesting newer music.

When I got to college, I was involved in Campus Crusade for Christ and BSF. I was discipled by another guy in college. I handed out Four Spiritual Laws tracts. I walked up and down the beach over spring break witnessing to strangers. I had awesome spiritual emotional experiences that stayed with me almost ten whole minutes after the meetings or conferences were over.

After I graduated and got married, we joined another small Southern Baptist church in the area. I was on committees. I opposed spending money on lots of things because, after all, we could use that money for _missions_. I taught a class on the Baptist Faith and Message. I was involved in church politics.

The first thing to go was my Arminianism. In college - while walking along the beach handing our Four Spiritual Laws tracts - I remember talking with one of the CCC staff guys. We were discussing Total Depravity. At the time, I was an Arminian, and thoroughly ignorant. He presented me with some scriptures that clearly taught Total Depravity, and I believed them. There wasn’t much else I could do.

Some time later, I was debating with some Campbellites in an online discussion forum. They were winning, because all they were doing is taking Arminianism to its logical conclusions. I knew they were wrong, but I couldn’t find the chinks in their case. All I could see is that the results were logically sound, but inconsistent with Scripture.

Over a few weeks, I came to see that I was losing and being forced into Scripturally inconsistent positions, because I had started from wrong premises. The premises were not supported by scripture, so the conclusions couldn’t be, either. I realized that the only consistent way of understanding the Bible in matters of salvation was to be a Calvinist. That one was hard. But soon I saw that God _didn’t_ wait on my to “allow” Him to save me. He regenerated me, so I repented and turned to Him according to my new nature. It took some time for that one to really sink in. One might argue that it still hasn’t sunk in.

Closely following on the heels of that was an awful church split. The pastor preached on Hebrews 13:17 and was asserting authority that the Bible gives him, to lead the church in a direction that it should go on one issue, and a direction that it shouldn’t go on another issue. It was really just a power struggle, but it brought up the question of church governance. A friend and I started working through the relevant passages of scripture, and I quickly became convinced that the Biblical pattern is for a church to be led by a plurality of elders. This did not go well in a Baptist church.

After the church split, I found myself without a church home. I searched and searched. I didn’t have a lot of criteria, but I did have some. I visited the closest thing this county has to a seeker sensitive church. I visited fundamentalist Baptist churches in the area. I visited lots of Southern Baptist churches.

Finally, a Christian man at work told me about a new church in the area. The catch was, it was a _Bible_ church, not a _Baptist_ church. That was a real hangup for me, because I had always been a Baptist. It seems silly right now, but that was a big part of my identity. When I had exhausted the possibilities of staying in a Baptist church, I finally gave in and visited this Bible church.

After visiting for a few weeks, I felt like it was a real possibility. I largely agreed with the theology. It had all the energy and excitement of a new work. It was elder-led. It had “small groups”. The preaching was informative and challenging. So I visited with one of the elders and went through dozens of questions with him. We joined this church.

I’ve always tried to take seriously the parts of the Bible that tell us a man has the responsibility for leading his family. I realized that there was more to it than “be really extra nice to your wife” but it was hard to find good teaching. So I joined an email list that I thought would be encouraging. I got a lot more than I expected, much of it good. This was my first real exposure to godly men who didn’t hold to the theology I had grown up with. Most of them were Presbyterians. Gasp! The horror! Baby baptizers! Not only that, they didn’t even believe in the Rapture!

And yet, they seemed so _normal_. Growing up with such ignorance of the rest of the church, I honestly thought that people who baptized babies or didn’t believe in dispensational premillenialism simply didn’t take the Bible seriously. And here these men were, who took the Bible far more seriously than me.

Hopefully, I was wise and humble enough to mostly ask questions. I didn’t try to set them straight. At least, not usually. But I became aware that there were plenty of other ways of understanding these issues that were honoring to God and treated the Bible very reverently. My exposure to reformed Christians in the blogosphere also helped somewhat with this, though not as much.

Getting very close to the present, I started to study and try to understand this theology. I got a couple of those “Four Views of This” and “Five Views of That” books. I was very disturbed to see just how _reasonable_ most of the non-dispensational views were, and in comparison how weak dispensationalism seemed.

I’d always had a “funny feeling” with the typical premillenial dispensational eschatology. It seemed very odd to pull a few passages from Daniel and Ezekiel, with a few New Testament passages, to come up with this complicated scheme. I felt (and I mean _felt_, not _thought_) that it ought to be a bit plainer than all that. And I was never too cool with the antinomian understanding of grace vs law. It seemed awfully plain to me that all the OT saints were saved just as we are - by grace through faith, even though that faith was not always very clear and the manifestation of it has changed through time. So I was almost _relieved_ as well as being disturbed.

Another stream of this has been my long interest in simple living. I think this mostly comes from my grandma. But it has made me open to and interested in a certain way of living. I’m miserably failing at leading a quiet life (1 Thess 4:11) but it remains a goal.

Somewhere in there, I heard of a man named RC Sproul, Jr. I knew of RC Sproul Sr, so I knew this man was probably sound theologically. And he was committed to helping Christians learn to lead simple, separate, and deliberate lives. At least three streams converged here. I was growing more interested in Reformed theology. I was interested in a life of simplicity. And I knew that we were to be separate from the world. Here was a man teaching about all three. I emailed him a couple of times, and bought some books and tapes.

I also found a pretty decent set of blogs that were like me. They were homeschoolers. I don’t recall when I decided to homeschool, but it was within the last 4 years. They were generally Reformed, family oriented, separate, and lived simple and deliberate lives. I found a fair amount of material online to help me understand this vision of how Christians ought to live.

And something that kind of solidified my decision to start walking down this path was a discipleship group where we read through Ecclesiastes. I was reading passages like Ecc 5:18-20 and it struck me that this was not at all in line with what I had learned in church. It’s a slow, calm, full, joyful life, full of very material pleasures. Oops, I guess I was a Gnostic.

Right now I am trying to understand and sort out dispensationalism, progressive dispensationalism, covenant theology, and even new covenant theology. All of which makes my head swirl. As does eschatology. I think I am leaning covenant theology and postmillenial, but I am so dizzy I can’t tell.

I am also starting to value the church more highly. I mean the corporate worship service, not the programs. I am leaning towards more liturgical worship, because my understanding of worship is starting to encompass much more than three songs and a lecture. I am trying to value the legacy of faith that we received from those who have gone before.

I’m trying to understand what a Christian life ought to look like. I’m losing my Gnostic religion. I’m losing my “busyness is godliness” religion. I’m understanding godly living and Christian service to be in the small things. I don’t have to light a fire and start a ministry that will change the world. If I pursue a close walk with God, lead my family, look to my wife’s sanctification, raise my children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, work diligently and enjoy the work itself as well as the fruit of my labor, spend time with a very few good friends, go to worship regularly at my church, serve a little bit at my church (e.g., by teaching theology), take care of my extended family and my church family, I’m full. There’s not a lot of time to do much else. And that’s OK. No, it’s more than OK. It’s good.

Robert from 10 years ago might not like the Robert of today, but that’s his loss.

The most common arguments I get against Calvinism have precious little to do with Scripture. People very rarely say “so, what do you make of this verse here?” It happens sometime, but it is not that common.

Instead, I get frequent appeals to consequences. This is an argument of the form “If X is true, then Y would follow. I don’t like Y, so X must not be true”.

There is a valid form of argument that goes “If X, then Y. Not Y, so not X.” This assumes that Y has some truth value. It’s a proposition that can be evaluated as true or false.

In an appeal to consequences, Y does not have a truth value. It’s not measured as true or false.

For instance, yesterday people complained that a belief in unconditional election and God’s sovereignty leads to fatalism and a loss of urgency in evangelism. They are wrong in those assertions, but the argument was also wrong.

As Biblical absolutists, we must believe the Bible. We cannot have any problems, objections, or embarrassment about what the Bible says. Once we understand what it says, we must be willing to obey it, regardless of the consequences.

So, if the Bible does teach God’s sovereignty, then we must believe it whether or not it makes us fatalists. If the Bible teaches us election, we must believe it, even if it takes away some sense of urgency in evangelism. Now, in my opinion, it _does_ take away that “wretched urgency” and that’s a _good_ thing. But it doesn’t matter. We must believe the Bible.

I get the same arguments when I advocate separation from the world (2 Cor 6:14-18). I’ve rarely had anyone respond to the passages I quote or the commentaries and preachers I refer to as having taught this very same thing. Sometimes I get an arrogant dismissal of them, “They are missing the whole point of Christianity!” But I almost never get someone to actually respond.

Instead, I get an appeal to consequences. “No, if we were to separate from the world, then how could we possibly _reach_ the world? Don’t you know that salt in the shaker is useless?”

The assertion that Christians are called to reach the world is absolutely true, and utterly relevant to the larger discussion of how we relate to the world. But it is completely useless as an argument against separation. If the Bible teaches separation, we must “come out from among them, and be ye separate”.

The better way to handle the Bible is to realize that the Bible teaches election and God’s sovereignty. The Bible also teaches man’s responsibility and the necessity of evangelism. We then see that God’s sovereignty does _not_ lead to fatalism or laziness in evangelism. But we were able to do this without trampling all over the Bible.

Similarly, the Bible teaches Christians to be separate from the world. It also teaches us that it is impractical and undesirable to _leave_ the world, and that we are to go into the world to build the kingdom. The right way to handle this is to not compromise any of those teachings, but to understand them in light of one another. It’s not a question of “How can I reach the world if I am separated from the world?” The question is, “How can I reach the world _while_ I am separated from it.” And then you realize that, just as a city on a hill is visible by virtue of not being in a valley, we are visible to and reach the world _because_ we are separated from it.

One of the clearest examples of God acting sovereignly and freely is in His bringing Israel out of Egypt. God was very clear that His plan was to harden Pharaoh’s heart so that God could glorify Himself by visiting judgment on the Egyptians.

Just before God initiated the ten plagues, He sent Moses again to Pharaoh. He told Moses “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them.” (Exodus 7:3-5)

God announced His plan to Moses: God would harden Pharaoh’s heart, so that God would have an opportunity to “multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt” and “lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring fort … the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments”. The result would be God’s glory: “the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD”.

Of course, God did not have to drag Pharaoh, kicking and screaming, into disobedience. We are all by nature children of wrath, we are all naturally enemies of God. Pharaoh was in rebellion against God, as are all unregenerate men. So in some senses it’s true that God didn’t so much harden Pharaoh’s heart as He let Pharaoh’s heart go its own naturally hard way. It’s also true that for the first few plagues the Bible says “Pharaoh hardened his heart” and not until the last few plagues does it say “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart”. These are valid points. But they are utterly irrelevant. God announced His plan from the beginning - He would harden Pharaoh’s heart for the express purpose of sending the plagues on Egypt. Whatever mechanism He might have used, God was clear about His plan and His motives, and openly acknowledged His role as the one who hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

In fact, God says that He raised Pharaoh up for precisely this purpose. He wanted to smite the Egyptians and glorify Himself by delivering Israel. “And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had spoken unto Moses. And the LORD said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me. For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth. For now I will stretch out my hand, that I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence; and thou shalt be cut off from the earth. And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.” (Exodus 9:12-16, emphasis added) And again, in Exodus 10:1-2 “And the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him: And that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son’s son, what things I have wrought in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that ye may know how that I am the LORD.”

God has no qualms about exercising His sovereignty over Pharaoh. He raised up and preserved Egypt so He could smite Egypt. God got more glory because He delivered Israel from Egypt, a powerful nation. He hardened Pharaoh so that He could perform signs and wonders to demonstrate that He is God alone.

Moses could have gone in and negotiated with Pharaoh. Pharaoh was afraid of the Israelites anyway. Maybe they could have worked out a deal. And then, Moses would get all the glory as a skillful politician.

What if Pharaoh had let the Israelites go after just a few plagues? Several of the first few plagues can be attributed to natural causes. At that point it would appear that Pharaoh was just superstitious and the Israelites were fortunate that a series of bizarre, but utterly natural, events happened and Pharaoh interpreted it as a divine message. Would God get all that much glory if Israel was delivered due to a bunch of frogs?

We see in Exodus 10:20, 10:27, and 11:9-10 that the Bible clearly states “the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart”. It’s true that this follows several statements that “Pharaoh hardened his heart”, but this does not detract from the teachings about God’s sovereignty. We know that God always intended to harden Pharaoh’s heart. He said so from the very beginning of the story. Even if you want to say that God didn’t harden Pharaoh’s heart until Pharaoh had hardened his heart repeatedly, God still hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Saying that God gave Pharaoh a few chances first, does not strengthen the case against God’s sovereignty. He hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

God continually hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and send harsher and harsher plagues, until He gloriously delivered Israel by slaughtering the firstborn of each house of Israel. Little babies died that night, who had done nothing good or bad. And that was God’s plan all along. This is the God we serve.

But there’s more. After Israel left, God spoke to Moses again. “And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they turn and encamp before Pihahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baalzephon: before it shall ye encamp by the sea. For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in. And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, that he shall follow after them; and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may know that I am the LORD. And they did so.” (Exodus 14:1-4). God comes to Moses and says, “Hey, pretend that you are lost. Watch what I do this time!”

Israel had already been delivered. If that was God’s only goal, it was accomplished. But that was not His goal. His goal was to glorify Himself. “I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may know that I am the LORD”. That is what God is concerned with - His glory. He is glorified in redeeming us, and He was glorified in delivering Israel. But He is also glorified in condemning some, just as He was glorified in killing the Egyptians in the sea.

Pharaoh heard that the Israelites appeared to be lost, and - just as God intended - he pursued them. “And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel” (Exodus 14:8). Again, this was God’s plan and He caused Pharaoh to pursue Israel. He said that it was His plan, and the Bible explicitly credits Him with Pharaoh’s heart again being hardened.

Now you’d think, wouldn’t you, that when the Egyptians chased Israel, at some point they would give up? For starters, there was the whole pillar of cloud and fire. That would certainly intimidate me. And then, when God parted the sea and “the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left” (Exodus 14:22) - wouldn’t you think even the boldest Egyptian would turn back?

Well, they probably would have. Except God hardened their hearts again and made them do something truly insane. “I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall follow them: and I will get me honour upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen. ” (Exodus 14:17).

God’s plan was to get glory for Himself. Even 40 years later, Rahab told the Israelite spies that the Canaanites were terrified because they knew what God had done to Egypt (Joshua 1:8-11). He was glorified by delivering Israel, but He was not content to simply deliver Israel. He did it in such a way that brought Him great glory. This involved excercising sovereignty, particularly over Pharaoh, to give God the opportunity to punish Egypt.