Intreat the Lord your God.
Lessons
1. God’s hasty judgments may work hasty passions in sinners, though no repentance.
2. Vengeance may make persecutors call in God’s servants for help as hastily as they drove them out.
3. Double confession of sin may hypocrites make under plagues, yet not in truth.
4. Proud persecutors may be forced to confess their guilt against men as well as against God (Exodus 5:16).
5. Hypocritical oppressors may desire forgiveness of God’s people under plagues, as if they would sin no more.
6. Wicked persecutors under judgment are earnest with God’s servants to intercede earnestly for them.
7. It is only death which wicked sinners deprecate.
8. Hypocrites pretend upon deliverance from death, as if they would sin no more, or desire no more mercy (Exodus 10:17). (G. Hughes, B. D.)
A false repentance
I. It proceeds from the impulse of the moment, and not from conscientious conviction.
II. It is marked by selfish terror, and not by a godly sorrow for sin.
III. It craves forgiveness of an immediate offence, rather than a thorough cleansing of the heart.
IV. It confides in the intercession of a fellow-mortal, rather than in the personal humbling of the soul before God. Christ is the only Mediator.
V. It regards God more as a terrible Deity whose wrath is to be appeased, than as the Infinite Father whose love is better than life.
VI. it expresses a promise of amendment which is falsified by previous dissemblings.
Lessons:
1. To be sure that our repentance is genuine.
2. To bring forth fruit meet for repentance in daily conduct.
3. Not to pass a hasty judgment on the repentance of men. Half the Revivalists of the day would have called Pharaoh a true convert; time tests conversion. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Pharaoh’s imperfect repentances
Dear children, when any one confesses with sincerity, “I have sinned”; when he says this to God, and not merely to man, be sure that he is never rejected. But let us observe what was wanting in the repentance of Pharaoh.
1. Belief in God, He called Him the Lord your God. He spoke of Him as of a stranger. Now, it is impossible that any person or child can love the Lord until he feels himself reconciled to Him by faith, until he can call Him the Lord my God.
2. Pharaoh had humbled himself before men, rather than before God.
3. He besought the prayers of others, instead of praying for himself.
4. He asked the forgiveness of the servants of God, instead of seeking pardon from God Himself. If he had said, like David, “I acknowledge my sin unto the Lord,” he might have added like him, “And Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.”
5. Pharaoh did not concern himself about the salvation of his soul. He intreated, not that he might be delivered from sin, but only that “this death” should be taken away from him; he did not think of eternity, but only of the plague under which he was suffering.
6. Lastly, remark that the king still cherished secret designs in his heart; his submission was not unreserved. We have begun as it were to repent; but as long as we are not willing to renounce all, to follow Jesus, our repentance is of no avail. Pharaoh said, “Go ye, serve the Lord, only let your flocks and herds be stayed.” His heart was not yet submissive, thus his repentance was vain. (Prof. Gaussen.)