Feb 1, Ex 7-9
Exodus 7. God takes some time to encourage Moses, assuring him the He, Yahweh, will be doing all the working. This includes hardening Pharaoh’s heart to accomplish what it is that God wants to accomplish. One major thing/theme - Pharaoh said earlier that he didn't know this Yahweh - well, Yahweh is going to make it very clear in the next few chapters just who He is and that Pharaoh knows exactly who He is. The Egyptians will never forget who He is after this either. We also learn here early in chapter 7 that Moses is 80 and Aaron is 83! No wonder Moses had a staff, it probably also served as his walking cane! Aaron was obedient to God and threw down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants. It turned into a snake. Pretty cool party trick. So, the Egyptian magicians did the same thing. These where Their staffs turned into snakes. Then Aaron’s snake ate theirs. When you think of magicians, you probably think of Las Vegas, with a guy who has a trick box and has a girl who gets sawed in half, and is full of equipment that is all an illusion. But you would be wrong. These ‘magicians’ were highly respected Egyptian priests who used magic and the arts of witchcraft to communicate with the gods. We are not told in Scripture much more about these secret arts, as historically, these magicians did numerous things like this. Ancient culture was more interested in the events than that of the details. What we see here is that they can copy God’s miracles, but cannot sustain them (Aaron’s snake eats theirs…). Satan is often a ‘copy cat’ of what God does. Take for example the beauty of marriage. Satan takes that and twists it to try to make people believe that you can have the harmony and happiness of marriage without being married, only to see our culture falling to pieces around us because of all the brokenness and disobedience to God. What other things Satan has copied? Pretty much everything. He is an imposter. A fake. A phony. Anyhow, back to Moses and the magicians… Pharaoh’s heart was hardened and Pharaoh would not listen to Moses and Aaron/God. This will be a recurring theme in the next little bit.
God knew that Pharaoh would be walking down to the water in the morning and told Moses to meet him down there and explain again the Yahweh wants His people free and to affirm that an example of God’s mighty hand is the first plague (first of ten) - Moses and Aaron turn the Nile river from water to blood, literally. Every bit of water stored from jars, rivers, canals, pools - all the water from the Nile turned to blood. Nasty. Think about that for a second. All the water turned to old blood. Imagine the smell. Then we get a sneak peak into reality… Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded. We can read right over this, but think about what these 2 senior citizens are actually doing… They are telling the King to let all his money making servants leave, so they can go worship a God he has never heard of. Not a real high likelihood. It would be comparable to going to a local berry farmer during harvest season and telling him to let all of his Mexican employees leave to go back to Mexico for a special feast that he has never heard of or remotely cares about. I am assuming the berry farmer would not be inclined in the least to let his Mexicans go (I am not being racist, you can pick any people group you would like for this story…). And we are told here the same thing as earlier, the magicians copied again by their secret arts. As the chapter ends we read that for 7 days the water was blood. That is a long time to be without water…
Here is a great chart from my study Bible... take a peek:)
Exodus 8. God gives a good warning again to Pharaoh through Moses and Aaron. In life, when God warns - God delivers. God here warns about a plague of frogs, and He delivers. Again, the magicians copy. Pharaoh begs Moses and Aaron to ask their God to take them away and that he would then let the people go. So, Moses pleaded to God and God honored Moses’s prayer and all the frogs died. But… once all the frogs were dead, Pharaoh changed his mind. Typical for a lot of us in life, isn't it? When we are in our hardships, we look to God for help. When it gets better, we tend to forget about God. In military terms, these are called ‘bunker prayers’ - when you are about to get shelled and shot to death, you promise God all kinds of things. Then the bullets stop, and often times, so does the soldiers convictions to follow through with the promises. We cannot do this or be like this. God will hold us to our promises and we should want nothing more than to serve Him.
Then we have the plague of gnats and the magicians could not copy it! They told Pharaoh - this is the finger of God! Pharaoh did not listen to them, God was right again. God the prophet said that Pharaoh would not relent yet.
The fourth plague - the flies. God sent a swarm of flies onto everyone - except his chosen people, the Israelites, in the land of Goshen. Remember Goshen? That is where Pharaoh and Joseph set up Jacob’s family - the Israelites… God put a division between the Egyptians and the Israelites visually with this action of flies. Pharaoh did the same bunker prayer begging for it to be over and recanted when everything was fine.
Exodus 9. God wants His people free and to come and serve him, so Yahweh brings on the fifth plague - all the livestock die. Pharaoh did not let God’s people go. So, God brought on a plague of boils, yeah boils. The magicians could not even stand before Pharaoh because of their boils! The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not let God’s people go. So, God brings on the seventh plague - hail. Hail like nobody has every seen before. As a side note, you know how so many people are asking what their purpose in life is? Well, we find out here what Pharaoh’s purpose is: “But for this purpose I (God) have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth. You are still exalting yourself against my people and will not let them go.” - God said that. Then God gives the warning about the hail and basically if you leave anything outside - animal, slave, anything - it will die. Some people did not listen to the warning, and you can guess it - they lost all their livestock and slaves. Granted, no hail fell on the Israelites in Goshen! Pharaoh admits his ‘sin’ and asks Moses to take it away. Again, when Pharaoh sees it go away, he rescinds his promises to let God’s people go. Pharaoh may have had good intentions, but good intentions are worthless - it is the actions that count. It is easy to serve God when we are getting something out of the deal or when our life is going easy. That is fine, but our faith counts when we are tried and tested. Will you pass the test?
For a more in depth study on the relation between the 10 plagues and the gods that they represented, please see my wife’s blog on it. She has done a fabulous job researching it and presenting it.
To sum it all up:
- Obey God even when its crazy and lacks any sense of logic
- Bunker Prayers - we should want nothing more than to serve Him and follow through with the promises that we have made. He does hear them.
- Good intentions are worthless - it is the actions that count. So make em count!!
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