Sermon Guide: Exodus 7:1-7 "Pharaoh's Hard Heart"

Key Passage

Exodus 7:1–7 ESV

And the LORD said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.” Moses and Aaron did so; they did just as the LORD commanded them. Now Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh.

Sermon Overview

In Exodus 7:1–7, we meet the God who hardens hearts—not as a cruel puppeteer or powerless bystander, but as the sovereign Lord who strengthens the will already set against Him, so that His name might be known in all the earth. Pharaoh’s resistance becomes the stage for God’s revelation: that He alone is Yahweh, the covenant-keeper who liberates His people and humbles the proud. Every act of judgment and mercy in the Exodus displays His faithfulness, pointing forward to the greater deliverance in Christ. At the cross, the God who once hardened the proud heart of Pharaoh softens the hearts of rebels, revealing His glory fully in Jesus—the One who laid down His own will to accomplish the Father’s.

Sermon Structure

#1 God Strengthens the Rebel

• What is the “heart”?

• What is “free will”?

#2 God Reveals His Name

• Jesus is the perfect revelation of God’s name

• Jesus submitted his will to the Father’s

Questions for Discussion & Reflection

1. This story presents us with a God who is sovereign over our will — neither to override nor to ignore it. Are you comforted or challenged by the idea of God’s sovereignty over our will? Why?

   
   

2. Read Romans 1:18–32. What does this passage and Exodus 7:1–7 have in common?

   
   

3. What does the exodus story reveal about God’s character that could not have been experientially known beforehand?