Moses continually asks Pharaoh to let the people go so that they may go and worship God.

“I will redeem you with an outstretched arm….”Moses delivered this amazing prophetic statement to the Hebrew slaves. God was telling them that He would redeem them from the yoke of slavery. He is telling us that He will redeem us with outstretched arms on the cross of Calvary. The people did not listen then. Do the people listen now?

Then the plagues came. And Pharaoh repeatedly hardened his heart.

Interesting comment in the commentary on page 103. Pharaoh avoids God through procrastination, compromise, and insincere repentance. Sounds like us today, doesn’t it? And to add insult to injury…with each attempt at resisting God, Pharaoh’s (our) heart gets harder until we are so unaffected by God’s influence in our lives that nothing could get our attention, not even with the death of God’s only Son.

As Christians we have the circumcision of the heart.

Rom 2:29
No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man's praise is not from men, but from God.

Phil 3:3
For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh--

Col 2:11
In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ,

Only through Jesus can have the circumcision of a hardened heart.