Hey, join the Journey family. We are about to enter 21 days of prayer and fasting as a church,

starting February 1st. Over these 21 days, our goal will be to enjoy prayer more together

as a means of connection with God. To help, we'll send daily prayer prompts and host two

nights of prayer and worship. To opt into our daily prayer prompts and learn more,

visit watermark.org slash pray. All right, all right, join the journey family, friends, and guests.

You're listening to Join the Journey podcast with your host, Emma, daughter. Thanks for joining.

Today, we're reading Exodus 7 through 9 answering the question,

why did God harden Pharaoh's heart? And if we're honest, it can seem kind of unjust for God

to harden Pharaoh's heart and then punish him even more severely because of it. So,

before we go any further, I want to establish something very clearly. God is good all the time

in every place and God is also just all the time and in every place. And there's a level to which

we cannot perfectly understand his goodness, his grace, his sovereignty, or his justice,

but nonetheless we can say

with certainty, he is sovereign all the time and in every place, he is good all the time,

and in every place, and he is just all the time and in every place. This will become more apparent

when we get to Exodus 34, which reads, starting in verse 6,

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed.

The Lord, the Lord, God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression

and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.

Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generations.

God is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, he is forgiving,

but he is also just. So, before we go any further, we have to recognize that today's reading

...