God uses creation to proclaim His power and greatness. God spoke through prophets to proclaim His word. God spoke through His Son to preach the Gospel and reveal the heart of the Father. And God continues today to use His people to declare His name and His salvation among the nations. But would God use someone who denied God as the one true God? Would God use someone who viewed themselves as a god? Would God uses someone who continued to arrogantly dismiss God despite God revealing himself to them?
Exodus 5:1-2 gives us an exchange between Moses, Aaron and Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt. These verses read: Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’” But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.”
Pharaoh brashly says, “I don’t know the Lord, I don’t recognize his authority and I am not going to obey him.” It is a blatant denial and rejection of God. And if you are familair with the events of the 10 plagues against Pharoah and Egypt, Pharoah continued to reject God even though the power of God was clearly seen by everyone.
Now when we read this account of Pharaoh we would not necessarily think that Pharaoh would be a part of God’s plans for global missions. And God did have a purppose and plan for Pharaoh went it came to accomplishing His desire to be made known among the nations.
In Exodus 9:16 the Lord spoke to Pharaoh in the middle of the plagues and said these intriguing words: “But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”
The Lord tells Pharaoh that he raised him up to this position of authority and power so that the name of the Lord would be proclaimed in all the earth.
How would that happen?
Pharaoh would have had a reputation not only as one who was a ruler of a great nation but he also would have been viewed as being divine. He was viewed as one of the gods and not mere flesh and blood. To humble Pharaoh you would need to be a god yourself. And God was going to declare to the world that His Name is above every other name even the so-called gods.
And so right in the middle of these ten plagues against Egypt God reminds Pharoah and everyone who reads this account in Exodus that God is interested in making His name known and exalted. among all the earth. Why does God do this? Because God is about His glory. This is why creation declares His glory. This is we humanity was created for His glory. This is why everything we do we are to do for His glory.
And God will use whatever means it takes to accomplish this whether it be His creation and a man who thinks he is a god.
What should that tell us about how God wants to use our life and our churches? He wants us to outwardly declare His name to the world. He wants us to give Him glory among the nations. Everything about our understanding of God and the heart of God shold should propel us with holy motivation and urgency to declare God among the all the peoples of this world so that His name is exalted and worshipped.
