And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. Exodus 7:3
Does today’s text tell us that God chooses some people for salvation and others for judgment? It might seem so as we read of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart. The result of that hardening was for Pharaoh to endure the incredible plagues that were inflicted on his land, to lose his own son amid hundreds of thousands of others, and eventually perish in the Red Sea. We could assume that without that hardened heart, Pharaoh might well have relented after one or two plagues. But that hardened heart was not God choosing Pharaoh for judgment; it was God accepting the decision that Pharaoh had made earlier when he refused to release the Israelites.
Something we need to recognize in the free will that God has given us is the responsibility that accompanies that free will. From the warning to Adam in the Garden of Eden until now, God holds mankind responsible for our decisions. The wages of sin is death, and the way of the transgressor is hard. ‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap – Galatians 6:7. All those who arrive in the flames of hell do so because God holds them to account for the sin of their lives including the rejection of His offer of salvation. All those who arrive in Heaven do so because we recognized that God held His own Son to account for our sin.
The divine principle of responsibility holds true even after we are saved. Many of the circumstances of our lives are beyond our control, and God will not hold us to account for those. But He does hold us to account for what He has given us: the Scriptures to learn, the teaching we hear, the fellowship of His saints, the guidance of godly oversight, the opportunities to grow as Christians and to serve our Lord.
Are we everything that we could be as a child of God? The Judgment Seat of Christ will reveal where we have come up short. -Jim MacIntosh
Here is the link to the video of this message: https://youtu.be/mbLp1bKzZaA