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In our verse by verse study of Romans we are in Rom 9:17; where Paul quotes Exod 9:18; Last time we noted that Pharaoh's resistance only assisted God's plan by causing the entire known world to be evangelized.
We must remember that Amenhotep II was a great man from the standpoint of power and authority. He was an absolute monarch at the peak of his power.
But God's omnipotence combined with His omniscience through His decree is infinitely greater than the power of any tyrant or dictator including modern day autocrats who have even more concentrated power that can be used for evil purposes.
There is no evil that satan can inspire, no power, no authority, and no tyranny that man can devise, that can compete with the power of Jesus Christ. 1John 4:4.
God did not create evil in Pharaoh but Pharaoh by his own free will and self-determination became what he was. God recognized Pharaoh's choices in His decree but God did not originate it as the false doctrine of supralapsarianism alleges.
In fact, Pharaoh from his own free will rejected God's restraints as well as God's Word. While God did not make Pharaoh evil He did use the consequences of Pharaoh's self-made evil to advance His plan.
Therefore God's integrity remains the issue because God's righteousness cannot do wrong and God's justice cannot be unfair.
We looked at Exod 9:18; in the Hebrew and we are now looking at the Greek translation in Rom 9:17; the next word is ""hopos" (and that). This conjunction is used to indicate God's purpose. It is translated "that" or "in order that."
With this, setting up the final purpose clause, is the aorist middle subjunctive of the verb "endeiknymi" (to show, to manifest, or to demonstrate).
A good translation is "In order that I might demonstrate." God is invisible but there are manifestations of His great character that are revealed through God's omnipotent power.
The aorist tense is a culminative aorist the views the demonstration of God's power (the ten plagues) in its entirety but regards it from the viewpoint of the existing results of the evangelism in Egypt and throughout the entire world.
All ten confrontations are in view, but we look at the results in their entirety. The middle voice is the indirect middle that describes God as the agent who performs the action of the verb as a response to Pharaoh's no's.
This shows that the action is completely related to Pharaoh as the subject in a unique way. God used all of Pharaoh's no's as the reason for God to deploy His power so the entire world could see it.
Every time Pharaoh said "no" large parts of the citizens of Egypt fractured and began to say yes that in effect was their expression of their belief in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The subjunctive mood implies a future reference because it is potential, so it is used with "hopos" (so that or in order that) to introduce God's purpose so the subjunctive mood establishes the purpose clause: "In order that I might demonstrate."
Next comes "en" (in) plus the instrumental from the personal pronoun "su" (you): "by means of you." Then comes the accusative singular direct object from the noun "dynamis" (power)" with the possessive genitive from the personal pronoun "ego" (me or of me). God's own power.
We see here that God used Pharaoh's negative volition and his implacable arrogant rejection of God's command to free the Jews to demonstrate His omnipotence.
The ten plagues that are sometimes are called the ten miracles were confrontations that God used to empirically demonstrate His power. Empiricism cannot see God but empiricism can definitely see and understand God's power when it is deployed from eternity into time through the decree.
Each miracle or plague was constructed because of the deceitfulness, the vacillation, the instability, the implacability, and lack of honor in Pharaoh.
The break comes after the first six plagues. When you get to plague #7 we read that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, that simply means He permitted him to continue to live so he could to continue to say no.
Many Egyptians had already responded to the demonstration of God's power in the first 6 plagues. So when we get to Exodus 9:20; before beginning the 7th plague we see that, "He that feared the word of the LORD among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into the houses."
We see that n Pharaoh's court one of his administrators, who governed under him, had already become a believer. The word "fear" really means respect for God that was produced from believing in God and His Word of Truth.
The demonstration of God's power became the means of releasing the Jews from slavery. This was the birth of the first priest/client nation in human history. The evangelization of Egypt and the entire known world was also the result.
Any Jew, Egyptian, Ethiopian or Canaanite who wanted salvation had a clear picture of the source of salvation from the manifest power revealed by means of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. If God had not permitted him to live he could not have said no in those final four confrontations.
It was not until the 6th plague, however, that we read the phrase "God hardened Pharaoh's heart." The mechanics of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart was the removal of all restraints on his negative volition plus keeping him alive with his implacable bitterness.
At that point without any restraint from God Pharaoh's negative free volition put him on a collision course with historical disaster.
Just as God turns the heathen over to their vile lusts, affections, and depraved thinking in Romans 1:24-28; God turned Pharaoh over to his negative volition, his arrogance, his jealousy, his pettiness. And this was the means of evangelizing that generation of history around 1441-1440 BC.
In Romans Paul is comparing the Jews of his day with Pharaoh and to them this was the greatest of insults.
As Pharaoh hardened his heart through maximum negative volition at the time of the Exodus, so the legalistic Jews of Paul's day had hardened their hearts through maximum negative volition toward the grace policy revealed in God's Word of Truth.
The comparison of the Jews to the Pharaoh of Egypt was as insulting to the Jews as their negative volition was insulting to God. The unbelieving Jews of Paul's day had rejected their true spiritual heritage and replaced it with a genetic biological heritage.
The unique origin of Jewish race through positive volition toward Jesus Christ, and doctrine resident in the soul on the part of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, had not alerted the Jews to their failure; a failure stated in the promise of Rom 9:6; - "All Israel is not really Israel."
The unique origin of the nation comes from the contrast between the positive volition of Moses and the negative volition of Pharaoh, plus the fact that Israel was the first client nation to God in history, should have alerted the Jews in Paul's time to the importance of positive volition toward Jesus Christ by believing in Him for salvation.
The hereditary people of God had become heretical in the pattern of Ishmael, Esau and Pharaoh, three gentiles that they detested.
God does not rob man of his free will; he is still a creature of self-determination but God does use the free will of Pharaoh to advance His own plan to evangelize the world and to free His people from slavery.
Man is not robbed of his self-determination by the sovereignty of God he is actually provided with a greater historical opportunity to express non-meritorious positive free volition to enter God's plan.
In this chapter and the next Paul makes a grace appeal to the Jews of his day. God the Holy Spirit, then, uses Paul's appeal to relate visible historical disaster to a to their rejection of Jesus Christ who is the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Jehovah Elohim, and the Shekinah glory.
Rom 9:17; Next we have the conjunction "kai" (and) with the repetition of "hopos" (so that) plus a verb in the subjunctive mood to indicate the continuation of the purpose clause "and in order that."
The subject in this final clause is the nominative singular of the noun "onoma" (name, reputation, fame, or person) with the possessive genitive singular from the personal pronoun "ego" (of me or my).
Then we have the aorist passive subjunctive of "diagnele" (proclaim or broadcast everywhere, far and wide) the final purpose clause is "in order that my name might be proclaimed everywhere far and wide."
The constantive aorist tense views the action of the verb in its entirety. This is describing the evangelism of the entire world. The passive voice: the person of Jesus Christ receives the action of being proclaimed everywhere.
The subjunctive mood creates a purpose clause. Here we see that God's purpose of worldwide evangelism will result from the hardness of Pharaoh's heart and use of his great human power and authority to try to stop God's plan.
Expanded Translation Rom 9:17; ""For the scripture says to Pharaoh (Exodus 9:16), I have caused you to continue in history in order that I might demonstrate my power by means of you, and in order that my name might be proclaimed throughout the entire earth (everywhere)."
In this verse we see Pharaoh and his opposition to God actually becomes a monument to God's power. The more he resisted God by saying no from his free will the greater God's power was deployed through the plagues.
The fact is that God permitted the free will of Adam to cause the condemnation of the entire human race so that He might redeem the entire human race through the work of Christ on the cross is a similar principle.
God permitted Adam's sin in order that He might present Jesus Christ and His work on the cross in receiving the imputation and judgment for all personal sins to mankind as the redeemer of the world.
We see in this passage that God permitted Pharaoh's negative free will to operate to the maximum so that the people of Egypt and the entire world in that generation would have the opportunity to receive Jesus Christ as savior.
God permits the worst so that the best can come from it. That shows us that God's plan continues whether historical trends are negative or positive in fact we see here sometimes more is accomplished in negative periods than in positive periods. This is the principle of Gen 50:20;
The fact that God's decree results in election, foreknowledge and predestination of the believer in Jesus Christ reveals the glory of eternal salvation to the person, the plan, and to the grace of God.
This principle of doctrine does not detract from the fact that mankind is a free agent who is responsible for his own actions and his own decisions.
The highest freedom of man is the utilization of God's grace to completely triumph over evil. There no divine foreordination of sin, human good and evil, although it was known by God's omniscience in eternity past.
Remember that the word "predestination" is a printout of God's decree that only applies to believers in Jesus Christ.
While sin, human good and evil are permitted they are constantly being overruled by God's sovereign omnipotence and integrity. Therefore, Jesus Christ controls both history and the devil's world through His overruling will.
Only believers in Jesus Christ are adopted at salvation as the adult sons and heirs of God. Gal 3:25;
There are several categories of this adoption depending on which dispensation a person lives live in.
The adoption of the Gentile family of God comprised of all believers in the dispensation of the Gentiles from Adam to Abraham;
The adoption of the Jews or Israel comprised of all Jewish believers in the dispensation of Israel - from Abraham to Christ and the Tribulation;
The adoption of God's royal family of God comprised of all believers of the Church Age Pentecost AD 30 to the Exit Resurrection;
The adoption of the Millennial population comprised of all believers during the Millennial reign of Jesus Christ from His 2nd advent to the Gog revolution.
Each one of these categories demands spiritual adoption and that was Paul's great burden for his people the Jews of Israel. The Jews do not inherit from God through natural birth even though they are the legitimate genetic descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
They possess the biological genes of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but they are not adopted spiritually by of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob until they personally believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. John 3:3; John 3:5-6;