September 2, 2009

Break or Be Broken

Now that we have answered the question of what the LORD really wants, this should shed some light on his anger and judgment towards Pharaoh and Egypt.

Is it possible that even in anger and punishment God was choosing for the Pharaoh’s highest good?  Can you be angry at someone because you love them?  Many parents would say yes:  even punishment should be motivated by love and concern for someone’s well-being.

Sometimes as Christians we don’t remember this.  We use words like “justice”  and “God’s will” as a copout for our inability to explain the suffering we see.  But surely justice has a goal and is not an end in itself; otherwise God would not respond to repentance—he would just wipe people out or make them miserable.  [See also Jeremiah 18:7-11; the Lord planned destruction for Judah, but did not want to enact it.  He would rather see them repent.]  But it seems like God has something else in mind.

If a child says a dirty word and his mom puts soap in his mouth, I’m sure she has a few things in mind:

  1. The child’s future.  If he is allowed to say that habitually, he could end up in worse trouble later than a mouthful of Irish Spring.
  2. Her character.  The boy has to know that she means business about curse words, that she is not okay with it and will not pretend to be.
  3. The other children.  They likewise need to see that adults don’t like or tolerate cursing.

The character of everyone involved would be affected negatively by a mother’s inaction.  So there is a future at stake, and punishment is the best consequence.  But the thing to notice is that the mother is not thinking merely about what happened—but about what could happen.  The punishment is not about the past, but the future.  What could happen if I take this lightly?  What could happen if I allow this to become a habit?

Punishment is a best consequence, not a desired end, but a means to reconciling (not destroying) the relationship.  When we view punishment (or justice) as an end in itself, we have lost sight of the relationship it was meant to heal.  The attitude of punishment and rebuke should be “maybe, if I do this, I can have my friend back.”

I believe this is the LORD’s attitude.  This is not a placebo meant to explain all suffering, because we know that we have an enemy too (see Job 1 and 2); the problem is more complicated than that.  But this can help us see purpose in some suffering.

Personally, I don’t think I would be walking with Jesus today if I had not gone through some suffering.  When my future seemed to be on a knife-edge, for the first time I cried out to God and asked him to show me what on earth I am here for.  “The way of transgressors is hard,” and rightly so.  It is difficult precisely because it is against reality, and in that difficulty is an opportunity to ask questions, to make things right.

The Pharaoh’s suffering was caused by the LORD, but it was also a result of the Pharaoh’s choice to disobey.  He was warned at the beginning:

The God of the Hebrews has met with us.  Now let us take a three-day    journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the LORD our God, or he may    strike us with plagues or with the sword.  (Ex. 5:3)

Not only that, but he was warned six other times in the midst of the plagues.  “This is what will happen if you don’t let my people go …” and he still disobeyed the Lord.  The most poignant of these warnings comes right after the sixth plague and before the plague of hail:

This is what the LORD …  says:  Let my people go, so that they may worship me, or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you … so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth.  For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth [that is, if punishment were the desired end]  But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.  (Ex. 9:13-16)

The LORD points out again that he desires even for Pharaoh and the Egyptians to know his character!  “That I might show you my power”—he wants the Pharaoh to see how great he is.  He also says—I am not using all my power—I could have just wiped you out.  You see, if the point was only to get Israel out, he could have zapped the Pharaoh with lightning and had it over with.  But the Lord has a goal here:  “that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth” (9:16).

Imagine if a great world leader and his advisors repented and confessed publicly—”Jesus is Lord!” What if the President and his whole Cabinet became born-again?  That is the equivalent of the possibility that was there.  The Lord really did want them to believe his words and know who he was, and with each plague, he gave them another opportunity to repent.

So the Pharaoh had only two choices:  to break under the pressure, or to be broken.  E. Stanley Jones puts it this way:  No one breaks the laws of reality; the laws will break him.  Jesus said of himself, “He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed” (Mt. 21:44).