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Exodus 9:13–16
“This time I will send all my plagues on you yourself, and on your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth. . . . For this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth” (vv. 14–16).
How should we understand God’s purposes in salvation and judgment? Probably most Christians would say that the Lord saves and judges in order to rescue the people He loves and to punish those who reject Him. Certainly there is truth in that response, as texts such as John 3:16–17 indicate. Yet we would err if we were to limit God’s purposes in salvation and judgment to those, or even if we were to say that those things constituted God’s primary reason for acting to save and to judge.
In truth, the Lord brings salvation and judgment chiefly for the purpose of manifesting His glory. His goal is to fill the earth with the knowledge of His glory and to have all creation recognize Him for who He is (Isa. 40:5; Hab. 2:14). We find this purpose of God highlighted in today’s passage, wherein our Creator tells Pharaoh that He has, in a sense, been going easy on the Egyptian king. At any point, the Lord could have wiped all Egypt off the map, for He has the power to do so (Ex. 9:15). Yet God has chosen not to do this. Why? So that in the increasing displays of His might against the hard heart of Pharaoh, He will see His name “proclaimed in all the earth” (v. 16). The resistance of Pharaoh and the sins of Egypt against the Israelites are serving God’s greater purpose of revealing Himself in all His incomparable glory and strength in the earth. The Egyptians stand against the Lord so that He can fight against them and reveal Himself both to Egypt and to the entire world (v. 14). In bringing the Egyptian empire to its knees, God will prove to all creation that He is the only true Lord and Maker of all.
To put it another way, God acts primarily for the glorification of Himself. Moreover, as many theologians throughout church history have recognized, He has to do this. The Lord Himself is the highest good, and so it would be a sin even for Him to put anything before Himself. Salvation and judgment have many lesser and important purposes, but their chief end is so that all creation will know that the Lord is God. God is unashamedly God-centered.
Once we realize this, we begin to understand why history unfolds as it does. Wicked men seem to prevail for a time only so that the Lord can better make Himself known. Matthew Henry comments, “God sometimes raises up very bad men to honor and power, spares them long, and suffers them to grow insufferably insolent, that he may be so much the more glorified in their destruction at last.”
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
God acts in creation for the purpose of revealing Himself to all that He has made. We are part of this glorious plan of His to show His glory to creation, especially when we worship Him and testify to His might and goodness. Let us do these things as we are able so that all might know the might and grace of our Creator.
For Further Study
- Isaiah 12
- Revelation 15