Trust God's Goodness

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Return to Pharaoh and make your demands again. I have made him and his officials stubborn so I can display my miraculous signs among them. I’ve also done it so you can tell your children and grandchildren about how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and about the signs I displayed among them—and so you will know that I am the LORD.” [Exodus 10.1-2] 

We need to think long and hard about this passage before we draw conclusions about God being unpredictable about who He loves and who He hates (as it would seem in the passage above). God's goodness is something we can trust, so we need to be careful in how we understand the passage above.

First off, God hates human pride and will give no opportunity to it whatsoever. This explains why God does not even acknowledge that Pharoah hardened his own heart (but that is was instead God Who did it)! Pharoah would like to think he could be so arrogant against God, but, as God had it recorded for posterity, God was in full control, not Pharoah. 

Furthermore, and as has been explained in previous articles, the very thought of God being all-powerful triggered Pharoah's pride and caused him to hard-heartedly resist God in every possible way. God knew this pride existed and could therefore anticipate that Pharoah's hardness of heart, as well as the backdrop it would provide for the miraculous plagues, would ultimately display God's glory. God made a spectacle of Pharoah's sin, not out of predestination, but out of Pharoah's easily predictable (see Exodus 7.13) predisposition to pride and hard-heartedness.

Otherwise, people should 'duck' around God because they cannot reliably trust His goodness.

Father, I am grateful that I can trust Your goodness. I am also grateful that I can declare Your goodness to others with all confidence! You are good! So be it.