Discussion Jumpstarter
Study leader reference - not a definitive answer
Question 8
In the Pharaoh example, the speaker distinguishes “God raised him up” from “God created him to condemn him,” and describes “judicial hardening” after repeated self-hardening; what would it look like in real life for a person—or a church culture—to cross the line from resisting God to being “given up” to hardening?
Another way to ask: The teacher says Pharaoh was hardened after hardening himself many times, not created just to be condemned. In real life, what might it look like for a person or church to keep resisting God until they become “given over” to a hard heart?
Discussion Jumpstarter
Direct Answer
The transcript suggests crossing that line looks like persistent refusal even when God gives repeated light and opportunity—so much that God finally “gives you up” to the path you’ve chosen. In a church culture, a parallel would be continually resisting correction and truth until stubbornness becomes settled and self-reinforcing.
- He rejects the idea God “created Pharaoh… so that I could condemn him,” saying instead God “raised him up” (allowed him to reach Pharaoh’s position) because God “foreknew how Pharaoh was going to operate.”
- Pharaoh had “every opportunity to repent,” seeing “miracle after miracle… still rejected it all.”
- Contrast with Nineveh: they repented with “not… a single miracle,” just Jonah’s warning.
- Exodus pattern: first “Pharaoh hardened his heart,” later “God hardened his heart.”
- He defines “judicial hardening”: after you show “it doesn’t matter what I do for you… you’re still going to harden,” God says, “Okay… I’m going to give you up to that hardening.”
- He applies the concept nationally to Israel: they hardened themselves by “rejecting their own Messiah… persecuting… Christians,” then God “gave them up.”