Case study: the hard heart of Pharoah. Source: the book of Exodus.
The hardening of Pharaoh's heart or anyone's heart is an extremely serious matter. The heart of the unbeliever can become hardened (Exodus 6 ff). The heart of the believer can become hardened (Heb. 3:8, 13, 15; 4:7). To harden one's heart begins by saying "NO!" in the face of and while staring at God's will. The process of hardening occurs when a person says, "NO!" repeatedly to God's will.
From a case study based upon the book of Exodus, we can see the symptoms a person, a church, or a nation will exhibit which clearly show a hardened heart, a heart and mind that stand ramrod straight against the will of God.
The symptoms of a hardened heart are:
1. A willingness to do things that are irrational. We see this as Pharaoh continued to say no even in the face of one plague after another, especially those which had a direct, deleterious effect on him, his wife, and his family even to the point of the death of his oldest son. Amenhotep II had seen nine previous plagues come true down to their last detail, yet when warned about the coming of the Death Angel, he still shouted, "NO!" He refused to let Israel go.
2. A willingness to do things that lead to one's own destruction. The Pharaoh's hardness against the will of God led to his own death by drowning.
3. A willingness to take others down and to harm, even destroy them in the process. The Egyptians suffered because of Pharaoh's repeated "NOs!" His "NO!" wrecked their economy with God's turning the Nile against them, ruined their water supply (except what they could dig out of the ground), damaged their crops, destroyed their food supply from the Nile (fish). Their health was damaged by frogs, gnats, and dog flies, a species which causes widespread blindness. In all of this, Exodus records Pharaoh's "lack of concern."
4. The loss of the ability to discern right from wrong. Right becomes wrong and wrong becomes right. This is seen all through the plagues of Egypt. In the beginning, the sorcerers, according to Pharaoh, were right; the old fool Moses is wrong. We see this moral failure in the doctor who recently told a woman contemplating abortion, "If the baby is born alive, I'll break its neck." And our neighbors to the north furnish another example of this moral loss: Every elementary school in Ontario, Canada, will be forced to fly the gay pride flag for at least one week in June, which is Pride Month in the province. Greater Essex County District School Board nearly unanimously voted on the motion last week; the only dissenting voice on the board was swiftly shut down.
5. The overwhelming desire to save face. Amenhotep II and his people believed he was a god. To acquiesce to the old man Moses would be a blow to his pride. (His poll numbers would go down.) In the face of overwhelming evidence of the fallacy of evolution (the Secon Law of Thermodynamics, a professor at SMU said, "It (evolution) had to have happened anyway."
6. A hard heart will disregard any and all consequences of its actions in order to pursue its predetermined rebellion.
7. A hard heart will believe lies and deceptions, even to the point of clear evidence presented to the contrary. Even when Pharaoh was told by his court that something supernatural was happening, when he saw Moses' predictions, one after the other fulfilled, he still shouted, "NO!" He was in his bunker of unbelief and he wasn't coming out, no matter what, for nine plagues, that is, for one year of saying, "NO!, NO! NO!"
8. A hard heart will deflect and change the subject when confronted. Pharaoh says the Jews are lazy and underperforming in their assigned tasks when Moses' demands their exodus.
From the above infamous eight, the Christian is forewarned: it is a dangerous thing to say "NO! NO! NO!" to God and to continue in a persistent sin. A teacher in seminary refused to say "NO" to his pattern of lust and eventually broke into a woman's house, assaulted her, and is in prison today. A pastor refused to say NO to the same pattern, committed adultery, lost his house, family, and endured the humiliation of his own son's spitting on him.
The advice of Proverbs and I John 1:9, over and over again is to turn from "NO!" to "YES!"
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