Shattering Substitutes #2: Stubbornness

“But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants.” 

—Exodus 9:34

Are you stubborn? What do you do when you don’t get your way? Have you made getting your own way an idol? You know that it’s idolatry when it controls your joy. If you have made getting your own way the determining factor of your happiness, then you are guilty of idolatry and substituting your way for God’s.

If we are honest, we must admit we are fairly stubborn people. We think that we are the center of the universe, stars in the movie of life, and as one t-shirt so aptly put it, “kind of a big deal.” We want what we want when we want it. Even advertisers promote this mindset by pushing such slogans as: “Have it your way” (Burger King), “Obey your thirst” (Sprite), and “Just do it” (Nike). We are a consumeristic society that says, “The customer is always right.” It’s about our wants, our desires, our dreams, ambitions, etc. Everything is about us—or so we are led to believe. Think about it—go to your local mall sometime and check out how it’s laid out. It’s laid out and marketed as a one-stop shop. It’s about offering you anything and everything you could ever want in one location. It’s all about you.

When we foster such thoughts we are in the danger zone because we start projecting our own individual tastes and preferences onto God. We begin transferring our consumeristic mindset to spiritual matters. Wrongly believing we can have it “our way” we begin to pick and choose what we want of God as if we were at a buffet table. “I would like a little love here. And oh, there’s some spirituality. I would love that!” “Give me some kindness and charity, and I’ll take a side of tolerance and acceptance on the side!” Such thoughts are ridiculous, but they are exactly how we view and treat God. As Woody Allen so famously said, “The heart wants what it wants.”

Pharaoh was a little bit like us. Being Pharaoh meant he was considered to be a living god. He was the end all of everything, the complete sovereign, which is why he had such a difficult time with God’s demands as delivered by Moses. Time and time again God would command him to let His people go out of Egypt, and time and time again God would send a plague showing that He alone was God and Pharaoh was powerless. But just as soon as Pharaoh would plead for relief and God would give it, he would harden his heart and not let the Israelites go. It was only at the final plague, at the death of the firstborn, that he finally acquiesced and let the Israelites go. But even as they were leaving his heart was hardened yet again, and he pursued them (Exodus 14:8).

It is true there is a mystery to Pharaoh’s heart being hardened. God said He would harden Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 4:21, 7:3, 14:4), which He did (9:12, 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10, 14:8). We also read that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened (7:13, 14, 22; 8:19, 9:7, 35). And lastly, we read that Pharaoh hardened his own heart (8:15, 32, 9:34). What are we to make of this? Here we come to deep water. We know that God is sovereign over these events (cf. 4:21; 7:3), but Pharaoh was also responsible for his actions (cf. 8:5, 32). It might appear that God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart would relieve Pharaoh of responsibility for his own actions, but that is not the Bible’s view. God, instead, enables to happen that which Pharaoh himself already desired.

And why did God do so? God hardened Pharaoh’s heart to bring Himself glory and reveal Himself to His people (Exodus 7:5; 10:1-2). Psalm 95 uses the phrase in order to warn the Israelites so that they would not make the same mistake as Pharaoh did (see Psalm 95:8). And Hebrews uses Psalm 95 to warn us, so that we might prevent an “unbelieving heart,” which would lead us “to fall away from the living God”—Hebrews 3:12 (cf. Hebrews 3:7-4:7).

God desires that we glorify Him by loving Him with our entire being and doing what He has set forth in His word. When we insist on our own way, or attempt to unite God’s way with ours by taking what we want and leaving behind what we don’t like, we are setting ourselves up to be God and thereby are guilty of idolatry.

Beloved, we must shatter the substitute for the Savior by striking down our own stubbornness. We cannot insist on our own way; to do so is disastrous to the soul. Inevitably, if we do not give ourselves to Him and place ourselves under His Lordship, we will suffer. As C.S. Lewis so insightfully wrote, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done’"—C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 69.

Every path man pursues apart from God ends in one place—hell. Abandon your stubbornness and submit to the Savior! Only in following Him is true joy found! Anything else ends in destruction! Amen.