Session 163: Exodus 3:18-10:29

3:24  God is serious about the Sacraments!(Circumcision, which in OT  prefigures baptism.)   Ignore them at your peril!  (Moses would have been killed!) Sacraments are not merely symbolic, they impart needed grace, and they “mark” us as being members of the family of God.

Moses had to realize that he couldn’t do ANYTHING without God.

The plagues correspond to the defeat of Egyptian “gods.”  (See handout.)  They show there is only one omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God.

God is in control of the natural and the supernatural, however the plagues came to be.

“The same sun that softens wax also hardens clay.”  (The same thing can affect different material in different ways.)  So it was with Pharaoh’s heart.

In several places, it says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and in others it says Pharaoh hardened his own heart.  There is not a contradiction here between God’s sovereignty and man’s free will.  Pharaoh was obstinate and rejected God, and God allowed that rejection, thus “hardening” Pharaoh’s heart.  God even USES Pharaoh’s rejection to “soften” (for a while, at least!) the Israelites’ hearts.

Handout - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mnK9febKPuxIQwJDVvG0rlO0xk2q9tWl/view?usp=sharing