Hard hearts ... a study in Exodus 7

Introduction 

Knowledge is an odd thing. When we were kids and sat the HSC or studied in school, we at times hated the requirements of knowledge especially teachers, the acknowledged brokers of knowledge. Eddie McGuire has made lots of money and given away heaps on "Who wants to be a millionaire?" testing people's knowledge of the most trivial bits of data. Newspapers are filled with knowledge, and the internet almost sells itself in speed to get information to you. You should know and you should know it now. And right now, there are people buying the astrological charts for the year so they can know what their year will be like. Knowledge is good money. 

Your response to life determines the next stage of your life. Do you believe this? What you did on New Year's Eve and what you are doing this morning and what you will do this next week...they all play into a greater scheme of things, called your life. And your life is integrally linked with others and with the Almighty, even if you are not sure there is even a God who notices, much more demands from or cares about you. 

Let me ask you, do you have a soft or a hard heart towards God? Do you know that He, more than Santa, knows if you are sleeping or if you've been good or not-so-good this year? The condition of your heart, soft or hard, will determine what happens to you in the months and years to come, and bring you satisfaction or redemption or trouble or plagues. And the bottom line of all God's dealings with us as people is, may I quote, "then they shall know that I am Yahweh." This phrase is found here in Torah in both relating to the Jewish people and the Gentile nation who had enslaved us. It's found in Ezekiel 28 about the returning Israel and its future blessing, and it's found in Ezekiel's narrative 57 other times. More than any other prophet he wanted everyone to know that what happens and what would happen would be designed for one major purpose: for people to know that Yahweh is God. And no other. And this was downright evangelistic, in his day and in ours. 

Knowing doesn't mean you know, you know?

 Burghardt DuBois, the great black educator, sociologist, and historian, upon completion of studies at Fisk and Harvard Universities and the University of Berlin, was convinced that change in the condition of the American black could be affected by careful scientific investigations into the truth about the black in America. As a result, he proceeded. His research was flawless and his graphs and charts impeccable. After waiting several years and hearing not the slightest stir of reform, Dr. DuBois had to accept the truth about Truth: Its being available does not mean it will be appropriated. Information is often confused with knowledge. And knowledge confused with wisdom.

 And there's no way to keep up, is there? Knowledge is exploding at such a rate--more than 2000 pages a minute--that even Einstein couldn't keep up. In fact, if you read 24 hours a day, from age 21 to 70, and retained all you read, you would be one and a half million years behind when you finished. Arthur Clarke said, "For every man, education should be a process which continues all his life. We must abandon, as swiftly as possible, the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40--and half the things he knows at 40 hadn't been discovered when he was 20? " (Clarke in The View From Serendip.) We play Wordle and Sudoku and…Quizzes and knowledge and information, that's something on which many of us right brainers will thrive. But is it enough? 

Let's look at the text In today's story, we see the central characters Moses and Aaron on the Hebrew side; Pharaoh on the Egyptian side. I sometimes feel that I'm watching ESPN or Fox Sports when I read this section. The sports commentators interview the parents of the stars on both sides. They tell us of their family background and what would make them good players. Verse one tells us that the ministry of a prophet in God's perspective is one of mediation. "You will be as God... Aaron shall be your prophet" This means that Aaron will be more than a sidekick in a buddy movie; he will speak for the deity. He will mediate between Moses and Pharaoh. This was God's answer to Moses' excuse in chapter 4 of Moses' seeming inability to speak well. We've spoken about the ordinariness of Moses before. He was not so great. Let me compare the celebrations I watched with Patty and Anne the other night. We went to the midnight show of the fireworks in North Sydney. Great views from McMahons Point. And for a moment the bridge was ablaze and the sky lit up. In fact for 20 minutes or so. And then the smoke drifted past and the ships again moved in the harbour. The crowds of 750,000 of my closest friends and I tried to catch the bus and the train back to our homes. It took about 90 minutes for me to make the usual 20 minute trip. What made the fireworks so spectacular included the making of an ordinary thing into an extraordinary thing. The bridge is ... well, a bridge, and as bridges go, it's pretty ordinary. A great feat, when it was built over 70 years ago, to be sure, but hey, it's a bridge of steel and concrete. Nothing to get 3/4 of a million people to come watch each night.

Maybe that's a subplot of this whole Exodus story. The unlikely hero Moses, the ordinary leader of the pack, takes the 3 million ordinary people out for a spin in the wilderness. Or at least, he is trying to convince Pharaoh that this should take place. Just a simple house party, that's all he wants.

The whole point was not for the Jewish people to escape; the whole point for God was that all the world would know He was God. This is a huge point and one that we to this day, still miss. God is not content to get people off from prison or out of sickness or into good feelings, if that's their preference. He wants all people in all places to "Know that He is God" and that there is no other. Knowledge matters, not just to your school teacher or to Eddie McGuire. It's for you and me...and the object of our instruction is the Living God.

The point is our heart

Remember I asked you about your heart earlier? Is it soft or hard? This is more than a momentary condition. This is a way to determine your future, better than a tarot card or palm reader. Is your heart soft towards God or is it hard?

Pharaoh hardened his heart and as a result God hardened it yet further. "Vaani ak'sheh et lev pahro"  

Remember, what God wants though is not to show His own bossness. He doesn't want to make life easy for us Jews. He has one thing to communicate and to get through to us: this is to get Egypt to the place of admitting Yahweh is God.

Ex. 7.5 And the Egyptians shall know that I am Yahweh.

Actually the Hebrew is not the people of Egypt only, but the land of Egypt. Mitzraim shall know that Yahweh is God and that there is no other. The river Nile is considered as a god to the Egyptians. The Almighty is saying, "don't look to Sydney Water" or to either the Warragamba Dam and the Prospect Reservoir. 

This is crucial in our lives as well as the history of the Egyptians 3500 years ago. To whom do we look when things are messy? To what do we run to find peace and meaning? It's 2025, where will I find new life?

Pharaoh hardened (literally "strengthened") his heart (verse 13) and as a result would not listen. The word speak (dabar is used 5 times in this text, Shema is used 4 times; tsiva (command) is used 4 as well) is not just a conversational devise by the author; it's a reminder of how this works. If you listen, you do. If you don't listen, you won't do. How simple is that? When Pharaoh hardened his heart, the result was 'he did not listen" (verse 13, verse 22)

Consider the major testing of the Jewish people later on in the wilderness. Psalm 95 records this.

“Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, As in the day of Massah in the wilderness; When your fathers tested Me, They tried Me, though they had seen My work.” (verses 8-9)

How did they harden their hearts, but by not listening to the voice of the Lord and demanding what they wanted. The people of Israel did not listen to God and chose to listen to popular reason and personal demands. God help us in our days to avoid the popular and the reasonable demands of the media and the society. May we follow the Lord in all our hearts and with all our beings.  Don't harden your hearts. Listen to God and do what He says.

Yeshua was speaking with Moses and Elijah one day. The Bible records what happened. ' While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and behold, a voice out of the cloud, saying,  “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!” (Matthew 17.5).  This was God speaking. Don't miss it, friends in Sydney!

From God's beckoning to us, we learn that what matters is not our creativity of ministry or our activities in His name, but listening to Him and doing what He wants, and what he principally wants is for us to Follow Yeshua. Malachi the final Older Testament prophet said this “If you do not listen, and if you do not take it to heart to give honor to My name,” says the LORD of hosts,  “then I will send the curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings; and indeed, I have cursed them already, because you are not taking it to heart." (2.2)

OK, note the condition of your heart. It's not a permanent condition. What you have done in the past is changeable. You can harden it as Pharaoh did, or you can soften it. How, you ask? By admitting to the Lord you have hardened it, and asking Him to forgive you and to make your heart new in Him. 

The Bible uses another term for this. 

‘Thus says the Lord GOD,  “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. And I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight. For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36.22-26)

The text uses the term "heart of flesh". This depicts what Moses in Exodus 7 and I'm trying to communicate. God wants you moldable and fleshy, not rocky and stone like. He wants you to yield to His purposes and to know Him personally. That's the message today.

Tomorrow we will speak about preparation from chapter 8. But let me hold back about that until then.

Conclusion: What lessons do we learn from today's teaching?

1)        Hardening your heart against God has consequences

2)        Plagues are not God's original idea for the people of Egypt

3)        Mediation is a principle for a prophet and his main job

4)        The Egyptians should have been smart and copied the good things of Moses and Aaron and not the plagues!

5)        Jesus is God's ultimate answer and the one to whom we should be listening, with all our fleshy hearts.

Hardwired for relationship

What is it about reality tv shows and the human condition?

My Kitchen Rules

So you think you can dance?

It started with Survivor, and now each night on Aussie TV, and I'm guessing where you are also, the assortment of shows continues relentlessly. Australian Idol, So you think you can dance, My Kitchen Rules, The Block, The Apprentice, the Bachelor, the list continues ad nauseum. But someone thinks this makes sense. And someone else knows it makes dollars and cents. Abundantly. Why is that?

Sociologist and New York University professor Eric Klinenberg teamed up with actor/ comedian Aziz Ansari to unpack relationships in a book that was released this month. Ansari constantly chased love as wannabe ladykiller Tom Haverford in TV show Parks and Recreation, and contemplates the strangeness of online dating throughout his standup comedy.

Modern Romance, their collaborative book, used a rigorous and data-led examination of how we date. The pair conducted hundreds of interviews with people from Japan to the American midwest to gauge how love, sex and relationships have changed with the advent of networked technology.

They even set up a research forum on Reddit, Modern Romantics, which asked questions like “Has anyone tried an ‘open relationship’? What were the rules? How did it go? Would you do it again?” and “Has anyone hired a consultant to help you put together an online dating profile or worked with a dating coach? How’d that go?”

Klinenberg, meanwhile, is similarly steeped in the study of modern relationships. His book Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, published last year, examined how solo living has become so prevalent in recent years that there are now more people living alone in the US than nuclear families living together.

So my question remains. What is it about reality tv shows and the human condition?

I believe we are all hardwired for relationship. 

I read a long thesis from the UK while studying for this blog. It's here online . Written by Val Gillies for Families & Social Capital ESRC Research Group, of South Bank University and published 12 years ago, the historical review of sociology is excellent and well worth a long-read. Val looks back at trends and evaluates the changes in society over generations, focusing principally from the 1960s onwards.

For instance, "Raymond Firth and colleagues(1969) also focused on middle class families, emphasising the continued significance of selected or chosen kin relationships. These studies were extremely influential and spurred a new interest in social networks, communities and more specifically kinship systems. Although such topics eventually fell out of favour they have recently been revived by social capital theorists attempting to measure the value of social connectedness. The major focus in the 1960s and ‘70s was on determining the norms of obligation and reciprocity governing such relationships, in the context of a general consensus that kinship ties are the closest and most committed (Crow and Allan 1994)" 

 

Gillies goes on to discuss 'companionate marriage,' "As Janet Finch and Penny Mansfield (1991) point out, the notion of ‘companionate marriage’ emerged as an ideal amid a post-war concern to consolidate and stabilise family life. Emphasis was placed on the principles of ‘partnership’, sharing and greater equality between the sexes, and the advent of a new, more home-centred family life. Sociological writings, particularly the community studies of the 1950s and 60s, commonly drew on and reproduced this companionate ideology when theorising about family."

 

The term "Companionate marriage" of course would widen in the next few decades into homosexual and other partnering types. But the point is that people want relationships, and although 'family' as traditional is not always the norm, the value of real people really speaking into real people's lives is continuing. 

 

This one section about modernity and 'individualisation' really spoke to me. "Beck and Beck-Gernsheim’s ‘individualisation thesis’ articulates a similar picture, suggesting that a new age of modernity has replaced the old predictabilities and certainties of industrial society, bringing with it new risks and opportunities (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995, 2002). They argue that these changes have fundamentally altered the experience of love, sexuality and family life, placing intimacy at the heart of detraditionalised life. Liberated from precepts and conventions individuals become authors of their own lifescripts, but while this process of ‘individualisation’ weakens and challenges traditional social ties of kinship and marriage, love and intimacy are ever more sought after to ease the isolation of this autonomy: ‘For individuals who have to invent or find their own social setting, love becomes the central pivot giving meaning to their lives’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995: 170).

 

All this to say that I believe we are hardwired for relationships. We need others. We need to know and be known by others. We want to be human with other humans. And whether these relationships are forced as in arranged marriages, or simply as two young people find each other and marry, or we are hoping for that selfie with another who is prominent in footy or The Bachelor, we want to know and be known. 

 

The problem of course, with the reality shows is two fold. One, they are not real. The camera crew and others on production staff also fill 'the island' or the 'kitchen' or the home to be renovated. The scripts are carefully edited; the dangers filmed but rarely truly shown. The second problem is that we might know of bit of the back story of their journey of the candidates for Dancer or Singer or Talent of the show, they in fact, know nothing of us. No relationship is actual. It is entirely voyeuristic. We know what we know about them. They know nothing of me or you. We are 'the audience' and 'the fans whom I would like to thank for voting for me. I love each of you,' says each winner, but they don't really love us. They don't know us at all.

 

Our desire to be known and to know is thus dissatisfied. We fail in relationships. And yet, we are still hardwired for them. So where can we go? 

I believe, as you might expect, that it all begins with relationship with God. He is to be known, and has made it clear how that happens in the pages of the Bible. He wants to be in relationship with us, but we fail a fair bit. Consider these phrases, all from the apostle Paul:

1Cor. 1.21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

Gal. 4.9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again?

Titus 1.16 They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient, and worthless for any good deed.

Knowing God is about knowing Jesus. He said as much in his final (listed) prayer, "And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Yeshua the Messiah whom Thou hast sent." (John 17.3) This is the key to eternity. Knowing Yeshua as Messiah and knowing His Father, from whom all good things come. Yeshua said, "My sheep hear My voice and I know them, and I give them eternal life." (John 10.27-28) Knowing whom to follow and whose voice it is ... that's eternal life. Being in relationship with Him makes all things new. 

Then He gives us others, in families, or in congregations, or around the world via Skype and online LiveChat who are in fact, family.  The apostle John said, "if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin." (1 John 1.9) This fellowship is real and deep. It's personal and much better than a cheer or cheerleader on a Television reality show. 

No wonder John said moments earlier, "what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Yeshua the Messiah." (1 John 1.3)

Hardwired for relationship? It all starts with the Almighty. Get right with Him and then you will find others, also cleansed by His love and forgiveness, with whom you can share abundantly.  Want to try that one on?