Who’s in charge here? Well, Pharaoh didn’t think there was any question about it – of course he himself was. He was the most powerful man in the richest, most powerful country in the world. No one could tell him what to do, and he certainly didn’t have to pay the least bit of attention to the representatives of a people who were nothing more than his slaves.

But that was before the Nile River turned to blood. That was before the frogs and gnats and flies overran the country. That was before all the livestock died, and boils covered all the people and hail flattened everything living in the fields. Time after time, Pharaoh would beg the God of his slaves to give him some relief. But every time the relief came, Pharoah went right back to his proud, self-sufficient ways.

And don’t we all prefer to think we are in charge, at least of our own lives? Oh, sure, when we are scared or in big trouble we tend to pray, and we might even make promises to serve God more consistently. But how well do we keep those promises once things improve? And when things are going the way we think they should, it’s so easy for us to imagine that we are in control. It’s so easy for us to turn our backs on God and live according to our own reason or experience.

That’s why these few verses of Scripture are so shocking. For here God doesn’t just tell Moses about the signs and wonders, the great acts of judgment He will send on the Egyptians. God also says that he will control Pharaoh’s reaction to the plagues: “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart” (Exodus 7:3). No, regardless of what we might want to think, none of us are by any means in charge. Of anything. Not even of ourselves.

But why did God say He would send all those plagues? So that “The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord” (7:5). That’s the good news – God is always working out the circumstances of our lives to reveal His glory to us and to others, to bring us to the point of surrender to Him so that we might be saved from our pride and our arrogance and our rebellion against Him.

So, let’s not harden our hearts against God. Let’s give up the delusion that we are in charge, and surrender to Him, living in the light and truth of His sovereign grace.

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.
2 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.
3 But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt,
4 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.
5 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.”
6 Moses and Aaron did so; they did just as the LORD commanded them.
7 Now Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh.