Significant to a notion of Divine Determinism is the Exodus. In chapters 7-12 we watch an ongoing interaction between Egypt's Pharaoh and Yahweh (via Moses and Aaron). What does that running exchange reveal to us? What does it reveal to us about freedom from slavery? About freedom of religious expression? About human agency? About how God deals with we, His creations? This is important because the pattern of Exodus is repeated elsewhere through the Bible, not least of which in the book of Romans. And then, because the Lordship of Christ does not stop at the boundary of culture, I examine and explain simulacra. We are surrounded, bombarded even, with simulacra. And that's more true in an election year than ever! Are reality tv shows real? Are piped-in video sermons authentic? Come think and laugh with me!
The Uncensored Unprofessor
376 Ref. vs. Arm. (14) God Hardened Pharaoh's Heart
[music] Good grief! What did you just do? You downloaded a little show about big ideas. Ideas like, "Does God arbitrarily choose some for salvation and damn others?" Ideas like, "Does God capriciously harden people's hearts so that they can no longer choose Him?" Well, I want to welcome you to the uncensored unprofessor. One ginormously important Bible passage for the existence of divine determinism is Exodus 9-12, but the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. Today we'll do an exegetical exploration of this foundational to the Reformed, Arminian controversy passage, Exodus 9-12. But first, spiritual warfare. I think many Christians hear the phrase "spiritual warfare," and imagine angels doing battle with demons. The archangel Michael with a fire-flashing sword brandished against the dragon Lucifer himself in some grand deathmatch. Smoke, lightning flashes, demonic screams. I don't know. But that's not so much the kind of spiritual warfare that the Bible holds out for us. It's really not the norm. No, the more common spiritual warfare is a man putting down a lustful thought in his heart, a woman putting down a covetous impulse in her heart. And then, as the Bible depicts it in both the Old and New Testaments, is how worldly values clash with the realities and values and principles of God's kingdom. This, as you may imagine, my listener plays out in many ways. But one common way, again, as the Bible depicts it, is the realm of power, politics, cultural collisions, the collision of light and darkness that spills out into everyday life. We, and we do see it today. There is a political party that, and they're not even being coy about it, there's a political party that means to shut down freedom of speech, which by extension means for them to shut down freedom of religious expression, which by extension for them means to cancel the freedom for parents to raise their kids as they deem fit, which by extension means the power to protect young children from sexual predation, which means the God-given power for families to do life together as families, which means the ability to provide for, provide for family as family. So, all of this spills almost immediately into economic realms. And economic realms can cause generational suffering and wounding. And all of that in this political party is exacerbated by an open policy of fomenting crime and sex trafficking and drug trafficking in the hatred of authority. You guys? That. All of that is real spiritual warfare, the hatred for life and goodness and truth and agency, all taking root openly in a political party, that is spiritual warfare. And all of that, all of that is sold to us under the pretext of safety and fairness and compassion and love. "E-Ribby, I get a warm fuzzy when you say the word love." The devil comes as an angel of light. He comes to deceive and to destroy, but he's a liar. He's a liar and the father of lies, John 844. And the pastors and churches that won't speak out against this lying spirit, they too will eventually be chewed up and spit out by wicked spirits. It'll just take a year or two longer than what'll happen first to the rest of us, but mark my words, those in the church who are giving all of this a pass, those in the church who give wickedness cover, they will inevitably be eaten too. Oh, and real quick, to establish a contrast, do I think the GOP is the party of God? No, far from it. There is deep wickedness afoot there too. But this is a matter of discernment, a matter of separation and recognition, a matter of reading the times for what they are. And then on the same front, because the majestic lordship of Christ does not stop at the boundary of culture, simulacra. Me, since I was a kid, I've rejected drinking out of plastic cups. Yeah, yeah, I'll do that if there's no other option. But mostly I don't use plastic cups. Why? Well, first, they taint the flavor of my drink. They make me water taste plasticky. Second, I don't like the feel, the aesthetic of plastic in my hand. And just in general, I don't like plasticky things. Tupperware, no, plastic feels fake to me. Feels mass produced to me. Plastic feels and no, I'm not a first cabin only kind of guy, but plastic feels cheap to me. I'm not a fan of plastic. And that takes me to simulacra. Over the years of casting the pod, I've referenced simulacra. Class please say simulacra, simulacra teacher. That's the plural, simulacrum is singular. And it's a term first coined by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. He died in 2007. But Baudrillard said simulacra is the fake, the phony, the copy, the fabricated. But which, and this is key, but which is taken by the observer, which is taken by the audience to be real, to be legitimate. So following in Baudrillard's footsteps, some philosophers call these kinds of products "hyperreal." And today, because of TV, at least initially, and then advertising and the internet and social media, simulacra is everywhere, right? Especially TV is an in-your-face example, survivor, hell's kitchen, the amazing race, America's Got Talent, or any number of sexualized reality TV shows, married at first sight, the bachelor, Vanderpump rules, below deck. I never know whether to believe it's all stage, scripted, or spontaneous. Can you even be spontaneous with a TV camera in your face? But you want more examples? Sure. Commercials. How? How many make you look younger skin creams are there on the market? They want us to believe we can put off father time by purchasing their product. Your life would be so much better if you only spent money on this. And I suppose video games present a kind of in-your-face hyperreality, simulacra, I mean, some people place great stock in their ranked status on a video game. Just one more example, the most obvious example of simulacra? Fake news. When Donald Trump coined that phrase "fake news," he meant it as a kind of political power game, which, of course, it surely is. But fake news is about far more than just politics. The fake news that presents itself to us as authentic is an attempt to reprogram our very lives, our very hearts. The other night sitting there on the couch, because I've been sick for a few days, I was flipping channels and I watched a clip of 60 minutes. I never watched it, but like I say, sitting there flipping channels, they had an inch intriguing story about cyber hackers looting tens of millions from Vegas casinos. It's interesting, right? It's like an Ocean's 11 version 2024. But then as the commentator, the journalist wound up his segment, he had to mention that the cyber hackers even had posts that were homophobic and racist. And I heard him say that and I laughed out loud and said, "Simillacra!" You're telling us you're talking about a demo of 25 years old and younger? That's what he said. That's the demo and you want to pass off homophobia to us? He was playing me. He was playing us. It was an attempt to still further program us to embrace certain moral values. But in all of this, Simillacra, there's an appearance of reality, but it lacks authenticity. You guys, they want us to embrace a plastic world. They want us to hug tightly their curated reality. And I say it's ugly and gross and fake. And just to be fair, just to be nuanced, I'm not bothered so much that a capitalistic market naturally exalts what is, in the end, hyper-real, as I am that so many folks actually consume and celebrate and even enjoy the presence of Simillacra. It's like people are living in a simulated computer game, but they don't recognize that they're interacting with non-player characters. They're not real people, they're interacting with non-player characters. And to wit, MSNBC's Chris Matthews said Kamala Harris is like John Wayne. She's a natural leader. What is that? A Simillacram. A campaign ad that Kamala has out now, she's doing substantial stuff for controlling the border, whereas Donald Trump blocked a bill to increase border patrol. Simillacram. In Minnesota's Tim Walz is a man of the people, a red, white and blue, everyday Joe, Coach Joe, who wants to help all of us. No. He's the governor who gave free healthcare and free tuition to illegal immigrants. What's going on there? Simillacra. Kamala wants to keep American citizens safe. Oh yeah, uh-huh. And that's why she promoted an effort to bail out rioters. In arsonist during the summer of George 2020 mayhem, what the? Simillacra. VP Harris. She's running ads that heighten her deep desire to protect folks across the nation. But she was excited to promote the defund the police movement back in 2020. What on earth? Hyper real. Tim Walz. He's a country boy Joe, right? He just wants to love all the American peeps. Just wants American senior citizens to do well, right? Well the Washington Examiner reports that Walz, as governor of Minnesota, five different times, hosted a Muslim cleric who celebrated Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7th. Are you kidding me? No. It's not a kidding. It's Simillacra. For three and a half years Kamala was effectively kept in the White House basement. She conducted hardly any interviews. She didn't, as borders are, appear once down at the southern border, didn't do much by way of fundraising for Joe By's own election campaign. Why? Um, she's not a skilled speaker. She is a good teleprompter reader, just not a good speaker. She has no charisma. And the reports from her own now-fired staff were that she was awful to work for. And we all know she's not good on her feet in scheduled interviews. It's why she gets labeled word solid so frequently. But today, Hyper real? She is the red, white, and blue equivalent of Betsy Ross. Wait, what? Simillacra. Now back to the art world, critics detest Simillacra. They don't like cheap reproductions. They don't really like expensive reproductions. Similarly, in the East Orthodox Church, copies of icons are looked down upon. Why? Why that rejection of the Hyper real? Why reject mass produced copies? They aren't authentic. They don't represent the truth. You my listener, do you pursue the truth? Don't you crave authenticity? Me? I can't go to a church where the focus is on the video that's played right before the sermon. I won't go to a church where there's a big emphasis on presentation, where the staff focuses on how smooth the transitions from one stage of the service are to the other. I don't care about transitions. I could never go to a church. People drive to churches where they sit and watch a video of the pastor preaching. I could never do it. I want authenticity. No, I crave authenticity. And that means I'm 100% fine with clunky. I'm 100% good with a stammer here and there. I'm 100% good with a singer who doesn't act like a rock star on the platform. Wait, what is going on this morning? The worship leader isn't wearing a funny hat. I'm not at church for the presentation. I'm not there for the hyper-real, I want the authentic, I don't want a plastic Christianity. So how is it possible that so many millions of Christians settle for a non-player character way of life, and that's the true problem with simulacra, millions celebrated as authentic? Why? Why choose that for your family? Why choose that for the future of our nation? Why, oh, holy, God, why choose that with regard to your faith? Will you pray with me? Oh, Lord, help your church not to be silent when evil is being committed. Heal back her eyes, help her to see what's going on, Lord. And then once she has that awakening, pour courage down into her heart. Blow your Holy Spirit into her spirit. For the sake of the salvation of the world, wake and shake and sift your church, raise up your remnant glory to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen. Welcome to episode 14 in my Reformed Arminian Controversy Series. It's been eye-opening for me to observe reality through the Reformed and Arminian debate. It's been a good foil for my own reflection, a good foil to force me to re-examine my own worldview. And you may know this, but the standard Reformed take on Exodus 7 through 12 is that God sovereignly, secretly, softens and/or hardens people's hearts. God hardened Pharaoh's heart. And the Reformed say that both the Old and New Testament shows the same dynamic. God can do whatever He wants in people's hearts. He can do whatever He wants with people's hearts. He can even, through those people's participation, save or damn them. God's that sovereign. So I think it's good to look at Exodus 7 through 12, and next week we'll look at Romans 9. I want to look at these passages carefully to see if that is, in fact, what the Holy Spirit is trying to teach us. So let's peer into Exodus 7 through 12. God sends Moses and his brother Aaron, A.A. Ron, to Pharaoh with the repeated command, "Let my people go, so that they may worship me." And through that, we learn not only that God is opposed to slavery, which is what everyone always thinks about, but we also learn that God is opposed to those who prevent the worship of Him, that's woven all through the text. And we learn by that the seeds of freedom of religion are biblically sown. Freedom of religion is sown deep into the ancient imagination, and that last clear up through today. But back to Exodus, 83-year-old Moses says to Pharaoh, the Lord says, "Let my people go." And Moses said that to Pharaoh 11 times. He said it in chapter 7 verses 2 and 14 and 16. He said it in chapter 8 verses 1 and 20 and 32. He said it in chapter 9 and verse 1, 13 and 17. He said it again in chapter 10 and verses 3 and 7. At verse 7 of chapter 10, Pharaoh's own court tells him, "Boss man, let that people go." And finally, sort of, because that's the way it all sort of goes in the passage, finally Pharaoh says, "You can go," in chapter 9, verse 28. He says that after the plague of hail and lightning and thunder, he said, "You can go, but once the storming stopped, he hardened his heart," chapter 9 verse 34, "and he refused yet again to free the Hebrews." 11 times, Pharaoh was told, "Let God's people go." But through all of that, Pharaoh's heart was hardened. At the beginning of this Exodus, at the beginning of the 10 plagues, God had predicted, because God can see into the future without causing the future to happen, God had prophesied to Moses that Pharaoh's heart would be hardened, made resistant, made stubborn, against the claims of Yahweh. We first learned that in chapter 7 verse 3. And that phrase, "His heart was hardened," or that phrase, "He hardened his heart," variously appears in chapter 7 verses 13, 14, 22, 23, and in chapter 8, 15, where Pharaoh hardens his heart even after he said he would relent due to the second plague of frogs covering the land. Again in chapter 8 verses 19 and 32, there in 8, 32, that's after the fifth plague, the swarm of flies. His heart was hardened in chapter 9, 7, and chapter 9 verse 12, "The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh." And that's the first time we hear that phrase, "The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh." That's the first time here after Pharaoh had hardened his own heart eight times. We hear it still again in chapter 9 verse 34. It's in the passive, the whole process of plagues was making Pharaoh's heart more and more stubborn. And again we hear it for the second time in chapter 10 verses 1 through 2. The Lord tells Moses, "I have hardened Pharaoh's heart and the heart of his officials so that I may make fools of them." And that phrase, "The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart," is repeated still again in chapter 10 verse 20, after the eighth plague of locusts. And again in chapter 10, 27, after the ninth plague, darkness blotting out the sun God. And finally after the tenth plague, death of all of Egypt's firstborn. We read about that in chapter 11 verse 10. Ten times Pharaoh hardened his own heart, or his heart became hardened when the passive voices used. Ten times he became more stubborn. Ten times he became more resistant to the command of God. And again those ten instances follow eleven face to face encounters between Moses and Pharaoh where Moses said to Pharaoh, "Let my Hebrew people go free so that they can worship their God." And what do we see in all of that? I mean, what do we see with respect to the very formed notion that God can arbitrarily harden someone's heart? Well we see that Pharaoh had, mucho repeatedly, hardened his own heart when he heard the word of the Lord. Through all of that you guys, God was patient with Pharaoh. Unbelievably patient, are you kidding me watching all these plagues happen across the land? But it wasn't until after some ten times where Pharaoh hardened his own heart ten times of resisting the word of God that God finally hardened Pharaoh's heart and we're told that some three times. So what's our takeaway from this slice of these five chapters? Well first, like we noted at the beginning, God can see the future. Pharaoh will harden his heart. And second, that God lets people exercise their own agency. That's something that the Bible teaches across 66 books. God lets people exercise their own agency for a long time. Because ten times Pharaoh, despite seeing the power of God on a kind of grand display, ten times Pharaoh hardened his heart and said no to Yahweh. And after all that, finally God said, okay, amen. You want to resist my word? You want to oppose me ten times now with the grandiosity of the plagues? Okay, amen. You can have what your heart wants. And so now I'm going to say amen to your own heart's desire. But now the tables are turned. Whereas you said no to display your own agency in power, I will make a fool out of you. Don't you know? It's a fool's errand to oppose the living of God. Exodus is teaching us you guys that eventually our opposition to God will catch up with us. Because it's the way the universe is wired. It's the way God is wired. It's the way God wired us. And still more from this passage we learn that God gives people authority and influence over others such that they can become leaders. But even with that kind of authority and influence they don't get to, they can't, change God's plan. Pharaoh's heart was hardened by God after he resisted ten times. Pharaoh wouldn't let the Hebrews go. God wanted Pharaoh to change his own heart. God gave Pharaoh the opportunity to do that, but Pharaoh did not. So God takes Pharaoh through ten plagues, hoping one of those will finally cause Pharaoh to repent and change his heart. But across all that he doesn't. So God says amen and speeds up the process that Pharaoh had chose for himself. Studying this passage I watched a Jewish rabbi who said, "The hardening of the heart was not what made Pharaoh evil." The hardening of the heart was Pharaoh's stubborn ability to tolerate the plagues, to not be overwhelmed or impressed by the plagues. No, God wanted Pharaoh to let the Jews go because it was the right thing to do, not because he was impressed or terrified by a plague. So there's the progression with Pharaoh. First he hardened his own heart, then after some time God hardens Pharaoh's heart as an amen kind of punishment. And with regard to the Reformed read on this, we learned that God was not arbitrarily like some divine lightning bolt striking Pharaoh with hard heartiness. God the sovereign puppet maker doing this and doing that even to a mighty ruler like Pharaoh. No, that's not the story. That's not even close to careful exegesis. No, God allowed Pharaoh to choose, choose his own response, choose how he'd exercise his own agency, and then finally God said, "Well, if that's what you want, I'll use even that to accomplish my will." But guys, this is not. This is not about arbitrary divine selection. The Reformed are in error to read it that way. And frankly, the Apostle Paul will repeat the theme of Exodus on Pharaoh in Romans 1. Paul writes, claiming to be wise, they became fools. They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or forefooted animals or reptiles. Therefore, because they did that, God gave them up in the lusts of their heart to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever, amen. For this reason, God gave them up to their degrading passions. And Paul writes again just a few verses later, verse 28, "God gave them up to a debased mind to do things that should never be done." So Romans 1 echoes the Exodus pattern about Pharaoh. God calls someone to truth and repentance and lie to the truth. And through that God is patient. God is so long-suffering. And then, when people are stubbornly committed to their sin, God abandons them in judgment in which they are living. He says, "Well, if that's what you want, then amen. Have at it." But God will still be God. God will still be glorified. That's the biblical pattern. Here's the dealio today, you guys. I was going to add an entire exegesis about Romans 9, because it's another critical passage about the Reformed notion of divine determinism. Jacob, I have loved. Esau, I have hated. It's a singularly foundational chapter in the Bible for Reformed notions of divine determinism. But like I mentioned earlier, I've been fighting the flu or some kind of bug for the last three days. And as I look back on it, I think Romans 9 may well deserve its own entire episode. There's so much going on there, so much that needs to be carefully framed and unpacked at the exegetical level, so I'm going to do that next week. Thank you so much for joining me. God bless you. I cherish your thinking with me. God bless you and keep you. And until next week, please everyone go and turn on your beautiful God-given brains. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]