3.096 Pharoah's Hard Heart

3.096 Pharaoh's Hard Heart In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as Savory Salt.

Hello my friends, it's a new day with new opportunities. Choose you this day whom you will serve. How long has it been since you reviewed the Articles of Faith?

Welcome to the new week as we have wrapped up the Easter Week here. Didn't Sabrina do a great job yesterday with her testimony combined with "The Living Christ"? I know we've done "The Living Christ" before, but Sabrina wanted to jump in and try out her first podcast episode.

She did such a great job and added her own testimony there to "The Living Christ". So grateful that she's jumped in there and shared her thoughts with that as well. This week as we take a look back into Exodus, I got to tell you during Easter Week, I think it was really tough for me not to dive into these Exodus chapters as we're reading Exodus 7-13, which includes the Passover here.

Because of the experiences of Christ and the symbolism inside of there, I said, look, I can hold off, I can hold off. And so Easter I tried to bring some different points of view there to the life of Christ so that we could focus on the events leading up to the Passover here this week. Now inside of it we have just a quick review in the Articles of Faith, number 8 reminds us that we believe the Bible to be the Word of God as far as it is translated correctly.

And a lot of people think that that's an interesting statement as I talk with them and share that idea with them. But most of them agree that through years, thousands of years, the Bible certainly has come to different translations and different ways it is read and interpreted. And that takes us a little bit into the context of what we read inside of our Exodus chapters here, especially pertaining to Pharaoh.

So keep that in mind. We're going to do our verse for today and then talk a little bit further about that. Concept with Article of Faith number 8.

Our verse is Exodus chapter 7 verse 3 and we see this event here is going to happen multiple times throughout these chapters and so I wanted to bookmark it here so that we can see it and see perhaps what it means for us in our lives as that's the key with Savory Salt anyway. Verse 3 says, "And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt." Now as you read that it sounds like the Lord is saying that He is the one hardening Pharaoh's heart. At which point that interpretation you kind of say why in the world would the Lord harden somebody's heart?

Everything that we look at when it comes to the invitation to follow Jesus Christ deals with a personal choice, an agency in following Christ. All of His invitations are just that, they're invitations to follow or not to follow. So it seems weird here until we take a look at the footnote in 3a and we realize that we have a Joseph Smith Translation here.

There are many places where the Joseph Smith Translation helps with our understanding of the gospel through the Old and New Testaments. It's a shame it wasn't completed by the time that Joseph Smith was martyred and so we only have parts of his translation. But look what happens in verse 3 when we read it through the Joseph Smith Translation lens.

It says, "And Pharaoh will harden his heart, as I said unto thee, and thou shalt multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt." Now, isn't it interesting that through that translation correction, we see that it's Pharaoh hardening his heart through all of these events. And we see it in other translations here. We see it throughout these readings that Pharaoh hardens his heart.

My friends, this hard heart is an interesting concept. It reminds me that regardless of those witnessing miracles, if they are not prepared to witness them, including us if we are not seeking and prepared to have those miracles be testimonies in our lives, then our hearts will simply be hardened and we refuse to accept them as miracles in our lives. We see this as an example here with Pharaoh who continued to harden his heart over and over and over again.

We're going to see so many pestilences and challenges and Pharaoh continues to harden his heart through them. May you and I take that as an example to understand and to hold the context that we get to choose whether our hearts may be softened by the power of Jesus Christ in our lives. He absolutely invites, we absolutely hold the key through our choice and agency.

May you and I choose to follow Christ and in turn soften our hearts to the knockings of the Spirit in our lives, to those promptings, those insights, and ultimately allow us to see and witness miracles in our lives and know that they come from the Lord is my hope and witness today. That's all for today, my friends. You and I have come here for such a time as this.

Step forward in faith and let's be savory salt. We will be here tomorrow and we hope you are too.