“Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may do these miraculous signs of Mine among them, and so that you may tell your son and grandson how severely I dealt with the Egyptians and performed miraculous signs among them, and you will know that I am Yahweh.”” (Exodus 10:1–2, HCSB)

During the ten plagues which God sent to the Egyptians, the Pharaoh still rebels against God. From time to time though, the Pharaoh seems to be ready to submit to God’s demands. Just when you think the Pharaoh was going to submit, you read: “God hardened His heart.”

Why would God do such a thing? Why would God intentionally cause the will and desire of a person to be unresponsive to God’s will? God has a purpose to hardening hearts. The purpose is to show His glory so that it will be a testimony for other people to come to Christ.

We only know that God hardened the Pharaoh’s heart because the Bible tells us. But in life, we may not know that God is working behind the scenes. We may think that the person is simply evil. Just as the young man who bombed the theatre in Aurora, Colorado during the screening of The Dark Knight Rises last month, we may attribute these actions to mental illness or Satanic activity. While this may explain part of the reasons for the action, it is not the complete story. God uses these events to reveal to us that He works in the lives of people to display His glory – but we have to look for God’s work among the evil. We have to concentrate on the miracles, not on the evil.