https://youtu.be/JiAmjMmeok4
In our verse by verse study of Romans last time we ran out of time before we could finish Rom 9:16; We saw that the verse has inputs of desire and work from man and one from God. When we stopped we were noting God's input of grace.
"But from the God who has mercy" the definite article "ho" makes it monadic so it sets up an ablative singular that is used as a relative pronoun whose antecedent is "Theos" (God) so we have "the God." The perfective present tense describes a continuation of existing results.
It refers to a fact that has become reality in the past that is emphasized as continuing as a present reality. The active voice: God's justice produces the action of the verb at two points: salvation adjustment to God's justice, resulting in the imputation of judicial righteousness and eternal life; and maturity adjustment to God's justice resulting in the imputation of super grace blessings from God to the spiritually mature believer in time.
God is telling us that He has a plan for us when He imputes human soul life to us at the moment we were born biologically; that is the first imputation. Then comes the imputation of Adam's original sin that was the second imputation that is the basis for the potential blessings from God's grace.
The potential is salvation because in God's grace policy condemnation must precede salvation. Condemnation comes from the imputation of Adam's sin so the potential for salvation is set up at physical birth.
The potential shows that God has mercy because the potential is the provision of the doctrine of the gospel, that establishes the initial hope that is absolute confidence that when you believe in Jesus Christ you have eternal life. Rom 1:16;
God' demonstrates His mercy to us through His love when He saves us when we adjust to His justice by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. Rom 5:8;
God has provided a potential that goes along with the hopeless situation of having human life that is imputed with Adam's original sin resulting in spiritual death. The simultaneous imputations place man into a totally hopeless situation at biological birth. But the potential from the second imputation plus the doctrine of the gospel plus the hope of eternal life, is from God's mercy.
Neither human desire nor human works can extract blessing from God. There is nothing man can do, think, work for, or devise to bring blessing from God since in eternity past God has already created His grace system.
God's blessing is an imputation from God's justice to capacity righteousness from metabolized doctrine at the point of spiritual maturity and thereafter because God can only provide His blessing where there is capacity to receive His blessing.
God's imputed blessing is designed to glorify God as the tactical victory in the angelic conflict. The tactical victory compliments the strategic victory of our Lord Jesus Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension and session.
Expanded Translation Rom 9:16; "So then it is not from who desires (blessing), and not from him who runs (after blessing), but from the God who has mercy."
Rom 9:17; Starts with the explanatory use of the postpositive conjunctive particle "gar" (for) with the nominative singular from the noun "graphe" (writing or scripture) referring to Old Testament (the TANAKH).
With it is the generic use of the definite article "ho" (the) making it monadic so it describes the writing as being unique as God's sacred Word of Truth plus the present active indicative of "lego" (to say, to speak, to communicate).
The present tense is a historical present that is used to describe a past event as though it was a present occurrence. The active voice: the Old Testament canon, specifically what was written in Exod 9:16; produces the action of the verb.
The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of the fact that this is part of the canon of the writings of scripture and that Exodus is a part of the story of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart that actually begins in Exodus 9:12.
The singular indirect object from the definite article "ho" (the) plus the noun "Pharao" (Pharaoh) is the direct object. In the Hebrew "Pharaoh" has the suffix "h" but there is no letter "h" in the Greek. Pharaoh is the official title for the kings of Egypt. This begins Paul's quotation from the Hebrew of Exod 9:16;
The verse starts out with a "waw "in the Hebrew, plus an adverb "olam" (But on the contrary). Then we have a preposition, "be", that should be translated "because."
The object of the preposition is "abur" that is a conjunction that means "this." so we have (because of or for this (purpose). So the first phrase is "But on the contrary, for this purpose."
"have I raised you up" the hiphil perfect singular from the verb "amad" with the second person singular suffix referring to Pharaoh Amenhotep II. This tells us that Jesus Christ controls history not national rulers.
"God raised up" means that God permitted this man to grow up and to succeed his father as the ruler of Egypt to fulfill his role in history. Amad means to stand, to establish, to appoint, to maintain, or to preserve.
The hiphil stem is the causative stem so the hiphil it can be translated "I have established you or I have caused you to stand." In effect this means, "I have allowed you to live."
Next we have another prepositional phrase, the same "be abur" again, meaning "for this purpose." God had a reason for permitting a very obstinate, contradictory, obnoxious person to lead Egypt.
Then we have the hiphil infinitive from "raah" that means to cause to see or to show. It also has a second masculine singular suffix that refers to Pharaoh Amenhotep II, so it is translated "for the purpose of showing you" or "in order that I might show you."
Then we have the sign of the accusative case and with it a noun in the masculine singular, "koach", referring to God. It means "power" the suffix, means "my" so we have (my power).
Our translation so far: "But on the contrary for this purpose I have established you, in order that I might show you my power." The rest of it says, "and in order that my name may be declared throughout all the earth."
"Shem" (name) means person, fame, reputation, or name). Here it refers to "reputation" so we have (so that that my reputation).
Then we have a qal active participle from "saphar" (to engrave, to print, to write or proclaim) plus a prepositional phrase that explains the purpose "in," kal which is "all," and then "ha eretz" (the world) so we have "in all the world."
Translation Exod 9:16; "But on the contrary for this purpose I have established you, in order that I might show you my power; and in order that my reputation may be proclaimed in all the world."
This verse is in between the sixth plague of the boils and the seventh plague of the hail. Between these two plagues our Lord has a special message for the Pharaoh that in Paul's genius becomes a very special message for us.
Up until this time Pharaoh had always hardened his own heart using his own negative volition. Then there was pressure from the plagues and this caused him to initially say yes, and then when the plague ended he said no.
This is sort of like Iran today. When we bomb them they say yes then we stop bombing they say no. Maybe Iran is to the USA what Egypt was to Israel.
So what he has really said all the way through this event is 18 major no's. Those "no's" are described as Pharaoh hardening his heart from his own free will because he is doing exactly what he wanted to do.
But when we get to the seventh plague and suddenly we read in verse 12, "And the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart and he did not listen to them (Moses and Aaron)."
Exod 9: 14; these plagues are being sent to the right lobe of Pharaoh's soul. Pharaoh is personally not only going to feel the pressure but he will link up his thinking with his emotion and his volition, and he is going to have the privilege of saying no and for establishing the all-time record for saying no to God.
God did not reach into Pharaoh's heart and just put him on negative. All He did was to give him greater opportunity to say no to God than anyone in history.
Exod 9:15; God's omniscience in eternity past knew all of the facts; the actual and the probable. The probable is never fed into the decree, only the actual. The probable is verse 15, "if I had destroyed you and taken you off of the earth."
So the printout is this passage tells us that God is keeping all of them alive so that Pharaoh can do the will of God by saying no to God because God will take his no's from now on as a demonstration of His power, not only to the Egyptians but to the entire world.
And in this way a whole generation of people scattered throughout the earth who have positive volition at God consciousness are going to respond. The entire world is going to be evangelized and many people are going to be positive at God-consciousness and positive at gospel hearing.
Exod 9:15; records God's omniscience and reveals the alternatives that did not occur and therefore were not fed into God's decree.
Exod 9:16; "In contrast to what I did not do, this is what I am going to do." So this demonstration of divine power has already been mentioned in Rom 1:20; "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes-His eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made. So that (the human race) is without excuse."
We see here that until the 6th plague the Bible is consistent in saying Pharaoh hardened his own heart. In other words, as a free agent he uses his own sovereign volition as the ruler of Egypt to say no. He hardened his own heart through negative volition from his negative free will.
But no one up to this time in history had ever been able to say no as many times as Pharaoh would from this point in time. At this point God hardened Pharaoh's heart that means He gave him the opportunity to carry his negative volition to the maximum.
We understand now that we are discussing the heart as part of the soul, invisible yet real, the hardening of Pharaoh's heart or right lobe. This man has developed remarkable scar tissue of the soul from his negative volition because he has been exposed to the truth and he has rejected it over and over again.
The hardening of Pharaoh's right lobe in BC 1441 becomes the means of evangelizing the entire world. This is illustrated by the fact that 45 years later Rahab was saved in Jericho because she had heard about what happened in Egypt. Josh 2:10-11;
God's justice gave Pharaoh numerous opportunities to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as Jehovah Elohim. He rejected them all. Pharaoh saw many demonstrations of God's power, designed to evangelize him personally, but he refused as described in Exodus 7:13.
When our Lord Jesus Christ was hanging on the cross Pharaoh's sins were imputed to Him and judged, along with everyone else's that means that Jesus Christ died for Pharaoh's sins.
Furthermore, God was not willing that Pharaoh should perish: 2 Pet 3:9. Pharaoh had many opportunities for positive volition, as per Exodus 7:22; 8:15, 32; 9:34,35.
In other words Pharaoh's free will was negative. Each No response added scar tissue to his soul and gave him more strength to say no again to a greater extent than anyone who has ever lived.
With great scar tissue of the soul from saying no repeatedly God provided more opportunities to intensify the manifestation of His power. This is the context in which God hardened Pharaoh's heart after the 6th plague.
Unbeliever reversionism results in locked in negative volition from scar tissue of the soul that results in implacable maladjustment to God's justice. Therefore beginning in Exodus 9:12 we have it for the first time, "The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart."
God's justice gave Pharaoh maximum opportunity to express negative volition by keeping him alive and exposing him to plagues 7,8,9 and 10. This is recorded under the category, "The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart" - Exodus 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:8.
God hardened Pharaoh's heart by giving him more opportunities to say no than are normally permitted. God actually preserved Pharaoh and kept him alive in great human power and authority to demonstrate that God's power is infinitely greater than human power and human authority.
In fact, legitimate authority is an extension of divine authority because it is a delegation of divine authority. To keep Pharaoh alive to say no as many times God impressed upon the entire world the greatness of God's power both to condemn Pharaoh and to deliver Israel.
Therefore the hardening of Pharaoh's heart or the extension of his negative volition as the expression of the scar tissue of his soul was the mean of evangelizing the world of that day.
While others were being impressed with the power of God Pharaoh was being impressed with his own power, his ability to say no and still live. His negative volition, his free will to resist God only increased his arrogance.
Pharaoh did not understand that his expression of human arrogance and power revealed to the entire world God's omnipotence. This became a factor in both God-consciousness as well as gospel hearing not only for the Egyptians but for Jews and the Canaanites as well.
Therefore we have the pattern of Rom 2:5; that becomes the perfect description of the Pharaoh. "But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourselves in the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment is revealed!"
Not until, then, the 6th plague did God harden Pharaoh's right lobe, which God did by removing all restraint from the expression of his negative volition. After God hardened Pharaoh's heart he still had several opportunities for repentance or a change of mind about the Lord Jesus Christ. Exodus 9:27; 10:16,17.
God's purpose in the hardening of Pharaoh's heart is stated in Exodus 7:3-5; where it is prophesied. God's second purpose is described in Exodus 9:16, the evangelization of the world. That purpose is reiterated in Paul's quotation of Exodus 9:16 in Romans 9:17.