Exodus 7-9

[00:00:00] is greater than all gods. No one can compete with God. No ideology, no man, no movement, no religion, no god of our making. No goal or mindset or mentality that is contrary to

[00:00:22] Him is greater than Him. God is the greatest. This is the sentiment that we should come away with in studying Exodus 7-13 when looking at the plagues that God unleashed upon ancient Egypt in order

[00:00:43] to deliver His people Israel from their captivity and from their slavery. So today we're going to begin actually looking at God delivering these plagues upon Egypt through His man Moses. Now in our last study together we saw Moses arguing a bit with God. Back in the burning

[00:01:06] Bush episode, Moses had of course offered questions and objected objections designed to push back on the idea that He could be God's messenger, that He could be the one that God would send to deliver

[00:01:22] His people and God had responded to each one of Moses's objections with great patience. Finally, Moses submitted, went to Egypt, found his brother Aaron on the way they came into the land of Egypt

[00:01:39] and began to tell the people that God had appeared, that God had sent them and told Pharaoh that God wanted Him to let His people go. And of course Pharaoh's response was to make their

[00:01:53] slavery harder rather than easier. Rather than let them go in freedom to worship the Lord, He enslave them further. Rather than have a partnership with Israel like they had for so many centuries, Pharaoh asserted Himself as greater than the people of Israel and the people of Israel

[00:02:16] in His mind were His slaves, were His servants. And so a great showdown has been set up between God and Pharaoh, Pharaoh saying who is the Lord? And God is about to show Pharaoh exactly who He is.

[00:02:35] But because things got harder before they got better, because the slavery and servitude increased because of Pharaoh's anger, and because the people of Israel elders included last out at Moses, because things had gotten so severe. Moses at the end of chapter 6 had come to God and said,

[00:02:58] I can't do this. This is not what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm a man of unclean lips. Surely you can't use me for this work. He told God, if His personal inadequacy for the task. If Israelites had not

[00:03:15] listened to Moses and were not following Moses, then Moses in his mind felt, what chance is there that Pharaoh will listen to me if the people of Israel will not. So let's read of God's response or

[00:03:27] reply to Moses in verse 1 of Exodus chapter 7, it says, and the Lord said to Moses, see I have made you like God to Pharaoh and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak

[00:03:42] all that I command you and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. Now I love this because after hearing of Moses's case where he built up his own

[00:04:00] inadequacy before God at the end of chapter 6, here at the beginning of chapter 7, God simply tells Moses to obey. I've heard you Moses, I've heard your argument, I've heard your

[00:04:11] theory as to why I should not send you but here's what you must do, you must go, you must obey. God reassures Moses in a sense here. In his ability through Moses to overcome Pharaoh and lead the people

[00:04:28] out of their slavery, in Egypt, in part of the way that he communicated this to Moses in verse 1, is by telling Moses that he would become like God to Pharaoh. He would be the one interseeding for

[00:04:41] Pharaoh. He would be the one that Pharaoh would supplicate that Pharaoh would come to with requests asking for mercy. At this point of course, Pharaoh thinks he's in charge but by the end of the plague

[00:04:55] episodes, Moses will be, Pharaoh will be approaching Moses, pleading for grace, pleading for mercy, praying to Moses in a sense. And that's why God says to Moses, you have made you like God

[00:05:12] to Pharaoh and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. So all Moses needed to do was go and to speak everything God said in verse 2, that God had commanded him to speak. In other words, Moses was God's

[00:05:26] representative before Pharaoh. Now before we move on in the passage there are a couple of encouragement, if not many more from just these first two verses. First of all, we serve and love

[00:05:37] and know a God who when we bring to him our frailty, when we bring to him our perceptions of our limitations. He says to us, no, you might be limited but I am unlimited and he continues to push us forward

[00:05:54] into the future and the call and the service that he has for us to accomplish. He wants us to push past that discouragement with belief and trust in him. Secondly, there's an encouragement there

[00:06:09] about who we are here on earth today. Obviously, we're not approaching literal Pharaohs today but Pharaoh and all of the trappings around him can be symbolic of the world system that believers are immersed in today. And Moses and Aaron were like prophets to that world system or prophets

[00:06:31] to Pharaoh. They were God's representatives before the world itself, before the perfect man so to speak in the eyes of the world and Pharaoh. And so for us, it encourages us to remember and recall that

[00:06:46] we now on this side of the cross as believers in Jesus Christ are called to be ambassadors for him. We are God's representatives here on earth. Second Corinthians 5 verse 20 says therefore,

[00:06:58] we are ambassadors for Christ. God making his appeal through us and we implore you on behalf of Christ be reconciled to God. This is Paul's attitude and ambassador of reconciler bringing the hope

[00:07:12] of the gospel to the world in which he lived. Okay, but God went on to speak to Moses in verse 3. He says, but I will hard and Pharaoh's heart. And though I multiply my signs and wonders in the

[00:07:26] land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people, the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment.

[00:07:41] The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them. And so here God is declaring, listen what I'm about to do,

[00:07:56] it's going to increase the Egyptians knowledge of who I am that I am the Lord. Everyone would know not just the Hebrews, not just Moses, not just the elders but everyone would know who God was.

[00:08:13] And it seems that some of the Egyptians even would attempt to convert to the God of the Hebrews when they finally depart from Egypt, there is a mixed multitude. So it appears that there are some who are

[00:08:30] Egyptian by race who say to themselves, man, I've got to be part of this God who has judged all of our God's during these plagues. And so that's what God is predicting. The Egyptians will know

[00:08:46] that I am the Lord. Moses and Aaron, verse 6, did so just as the Lord commanded them. Now Moses was 80 years old and Aaron, 83 years old when they spoke to Pharaoh. Now sometimes in the Bible when

[00:09:03] someone's age is mentioned it's mentioned right before something amazing happens we saw this in the book of Genesis for instance the age of the patriarchs was sometimes given when a miraculous

[00:09:14] birth would occur. And here we learn the age of Moses and Aaron. Moses was 80, Aaron was 83 years old being Moses's older brother. So he was 3 years old when Moses was born. Now this is interesting

[00:09:31] because what you're seeing here with Moses is that his first 80 years of life in many ways were his years of preparation and he would serve the people of Israel as their leader for 40 years until

[00:09:45] the day of his death. So his most fruitful years were actually age 80 to age 120. Now part of this should encourage us that the last third of our lives can be fruitful unto God. Now I don't mean

[00:10:01] to delude you with the idea that you can slough off for the first two thirds of your life spiritually, never abide in Christ, never read the word, never grow in Christ, never learn doctrines, never make

[00:10:14] disciples, never try, never serve, never volunteer and then whenever the last two thirds of your life comes and God knows so magically when that moment occurs he'll begin to use your life. No,

[00:10:26] the first portion of life ought to be spent trying serving, doing, being obedient to the Lord and oftentimes though those will be years of great preparation and then there can be the future

[00:10:38] hope and a person's life of the latter years of their life being incredibly fruitful unto God. Unfortunately, many people will turn 60 years old, 70 years old and say to themselves, I'd love to make a disciple. I'd love to mentor but what I found is that people who have been

[00:10:57] doing that their whole life long or their whole Christian life long, they know how to make disciples. They know how to mentor at age 60 or 70 but when someone has not been doing that,

[00:11:09] up until that point is so difficult for them to enter into the ministry so to speak at that stage of their lives. But here, Moses and Aaron are a bit of an encouragement about the future

[00:11:23] fruit that we can bear in our older years in our last third of our lives. But probably the bigger message that we should gain from seeing this 80 year old and 83 year old man tag teaming in a battle against

[00:11:42] Pharaoh and being victorious in it is something other than just the concept that hey, in our older years we can be used by God in perhaps even more fruitful ways than before. Probably the

[00:11:54] bigger lesson that we should see here is that God is able to use weak instruments for himself. These are men that are past the splendor of their youth. They're past the time of their physical strength.

[00:12:10] They're past the time of being physically imposing. They're past that moment in life and now in their old years. When perhaps many might look at them and say, there's no way God could use them.

[00:12:24] They're old, they're weak. They need staffs to get around instead God is going to use their lives. And if we're honest about this, this is a great picture of all of us because all of us are

[00:12:43] actually poor in spirit. All of us fall far short. All of us in so many ways are weak. And if we can just tap into that understanding of who we really are, that we have weaknesses, that we are poor in spirit.

[00:13:00] And if we can just glory in those things and recognize that even in our weakness he has made strong, it might help us realize that he can use imperfect weak instruments for his purposes here on earth.

[00:13:15] And so Moses and Aaron did with the Lord asked them to do. Verse 8, it says, then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron. When Pharaoh says to you, prove yourselves by working a miracle,

[00:13:29] then you shall say to Aaron, take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh that it may become a serpent. So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded.

[00:13:39] Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh summoned all the, some in the wise men and the sorcerers. And they, the magicians of Egypt,

[00:13:51] also did the same by their secret arts. For each man cast down his staff and they became serpents but Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs. Still, Pharaoh's heart was hardened and he

[00:14:05] would not listen to them as the Lord had said. So Moses and Aaron, they go in, this passage tells us and they throw down Aaron, throws down his staff before Pharaoh. It turns into a serpent.

[00:14:21] But unfortunately, Pharaoh's wise men and magicians and sorcerers, they do the same thing Moses writes by their secret arts. They replicate the miracle that Moses and Aaron just produced but for them with disastrous results. Their snakes were eaten up by Aaron's snake.

[00:14:47] Now the Jewish tradition was that these magicians were named Janus and Janberries. You might recognize those names if you're a student of the New Testament because in 2 Timothy chapter 3 verse 8, Paul says that Moses was opposed by Janus and Janberries. Their names actually aren't in

[00:15:07] the Old Testament story but Jewish tradition had named these men Janus and Janberries. And apparently it was actually their real names because under the inspiration of the spirit, second Timothy chapter 3,

[00:15:20] that's who Paul said they were. Now the question of course is how did they do this miracle? And won't be the first miracle or you know illusion that they produce. They will turn the water into blood

[00:15:37] and they will also produce frogs in the first two plays. Perhaps it was slight of hand some kind of trick like I said and illusion but it's likely that it was some kind of demonic sorcery. They

[00:15:51] were into the occult and all kinds of dark, you know systems of worship. They're in Egypt at that point and it clearly says they're in verse 11 that they did these things by their secret arts

[00:16:06] but Aaron staff swallowed up their staff. This was a sense away for God to declare war on their demonic gods. Yes you might be able to produce this kind of sorceress trick however

[00:16:24] what we have done in producing a serpent from a staff is actually stronger than what you have done is the message God declares war on their demonic gods. Part of the message being that God is

[00:16:37] stronger than their paramount god that being pharaoh himself. You see snakes often represent Egyptian power think of the fairyonic headdress you know which you've often seen in history or images or Indiana Jones. It's often shaped like a cobra for Aaron staff to turn into a snake

[00:17:02] and then consume another snake is nothing less than a direct challenge to pharaoh's power. So his magicians did what they did but God did what he did. This means that God not pharaoh can manipulate nature and that's we're going to see all throughout the plague's god manipulating

[00:17:24] the natural realm. So God has the power to manipulate nature. God is actually going to battle Egypt here in these plagues by controlling nature. It does his bidding just like Jesus,

[00:17:38] calming the storm God is going to do what he wants to do with the elements every part of the elements during these plagues. And a pharaoh might have thought that he was powerful. He might have

[00:17:52] had a grandiose self-image but the plagues are going to demonstrate his absolute impotence that he is nothing and that God has all the strength and power. So they began this with this miniature or smaller sign but notice verse 13 it says that pharaoh's heart was hardened and he

[00:18:15] would not listen to them as the Lord had said. Pharaoh will see him in this passage increase in a hardening of his heart and we'll talk about that in a moment. But to me this little passage is not

[00:18:31] a type or an image but there is a foreshadowing here that is interesting. You have one serpent eating up all the others and you know in a sense you have Jesus he rose from the dead the other founders

[00:18:49] of other religions have all died there no longer alive just like the snakes of the jannis and jambri's staffs are no longer alive. But Jesus is alive he conquered death yet the heart of man

[00:19:04] like pharaoh here in this passage is often still hard towards Jesus even though he conquered death. Let's move on in the passage though and see the first of the plagues in verse 14. Then the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh's heart is hardened. He refuses to let the people go.

[00:19:25] Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he is going out to the water stand on the bank of the Nile to meet him and take in your hand the staff that turn into a serpent and you shall say to him the Lord

[00:19:36] the God of the Hebrews sent me to you saying let my people go that they may serve me in the wilderness but so far you have not obeyed. So God gives Moses now directions they've done the first

[00:19:52] sign with the staff turning into a serpent and now God tells Moses to go down to Pharaoh in the morning at the Nile river when Pharaoh goes down to the water and this will now be the beginning

[00:20:08] of the 10 plagues that God will pronounce upon Egypt and actually it's probably better to call these 10 judgments because some of them are not classical plagues like we would think of in our modern era.

[00:20:24] But God is about to judge Pharaoh and in the thing Moses is to do is to warn Pharaoh about these judgments, you know the Lord the God of the Hebrews sent me to you saying let my people go

[00:20:36] that they may serve me in the wilderness but so far you have not obeyed. Now I'd like to say a couple of words about the plagues that we're about to read of in these next few chapters.

[00:20:48] First of all each plague will begin with the phrase the Lord said to Moses, the Lord said to Moses. So these are initiated by God he's the director the initiator of each one of these

[00:21:05] judgments each one of these signs. So every stage of this is being controlled by God another thing I want to point out is that each episode ends with some reference to the hardening of Pharaoh's heart and

[00:21:21] like I said we'll talk about that in a moment but each episode begins with the phrase the Lord said to Moses and it ends with some type of hardening of Pharaoh's heart. Now these judgments can be

[00:21:35] grouped into three units of three plus one. The 10th judgment is the Passover and so it's a stand alone final judgment but the first nine you can group in three groups of three. The first, fourth and

[00:21:56] seventh judgments at the beginning of each one of them start with in the morning go down to Pharaoh. So they're kind of organized in that way. Three groups of three. The first three

[00:22:11] plagues or judgments. Aaron's staff is going to be involved. The second three no staff will be involved and in the last three Moses' staff or Moses' hand will be involved.

[00:22:27] Another thing I want you to know just to kind of get this in your mind frame as we go through this passage is that the 10 plagues occurred over a period of likely about nine months. Part of the way

[00:22:40] that we know this is because the Nile River rises in July or August and that's the time of the first plague and we know that the 10th plague occurred in April which is the month of Passover so you've got

[00:22:56] yourself eight or nine months between the two. I also want you to know that there are gradual changes that occur throughout the plagues. Stuff was happening to people during these plagues. It wasn't just disaster that we're stuff going on. There were stuff going on in Pharaoh. His reaction

[00:23:19] hardens but gradually he also becomes more and more open to letting the people go. He offers these different solutions, partial freedom until finally he says just let him all go get out of here and never

[00:23:35] return. Also that the attitude of Pharaoh's officials his servants and the general population it changes over the course of these plagues. By the end they're rooting for the people of his

[00:23:48] real to depart and giving them great gifts in order to send them on their way. And also the power of the magicians we just saw these magicians turn what a staff into serpents like Aaron and Moses had

[00:24:01] done but their power is going to decrease dramatically over the course of these plays. They'll be able to produce some signs or some wonders at first but then eventually they'll become unable to do so

[00:24:16] and finally there will come a moment where there are actually victims of the judgments themselves. When we get to chapter 9 they're actually going to experience the boils coming upon them. So they're not able to stop these things. They're power decreases as the episodes unfold. And the last

[00:24:33] thing that I'll say about all the plagues in general before moving on into this plague in particular is simply this. I think they actually happened and the reason that I'm mentioning this is because often scholars and even Bible teachers will try to explain these plagues with natural phenomena.

[00:24:56] But the thing is is that they're written in such a way where it actually makes the text more awkward if these are just natural events. Take the turning of the Nile River into blood for instance. You know, God touched all the water, the fresh water, the Nile River.

[00:25:14] And then the magicians did so as well. It's awkward to read it as just a changing of the color or some kind of bacteria that got into the water because when they dig into the ground they find

[00:25:29] a fresh water supply. It just reads as if, no this is actual blood. The fish are dying. I mean it's a cataclysmic moment and as we'll go through these passages I think you'll

[00:25:42] probably be convinced as well that the natural reading at least of the passages that these are not just natural things that occurred but God directly intervening in the affairs of man and certainly

[00:25:56] God can use just regular natural events in the ways that he chooses but it seems that he is specifically doing this of his own accord in these chapters. And so Moses is called to appear

[00:26:10] to Pharaoh when he goes down to the water. Now it's likely that Pharaoh is going down to the water as a worshipper. When the Nile River would overflow in July and August Pharaoh would actually officiate ceremonies that were commemorating blessings of the river and many Egyptians actually believe

[00:26:37] that the Nile was Osiris's, their false God of Osiris's bloodstream. And so God is going to go straight for the heartbeats, the center point of what made Egypt Egypt and attack the God of the

[00:26:54] Nile so to speak. The river itself. And so it says in verse 17, that says the Lord. Moses continued to speak by this, you shall know that I am the Lord behold with the staff that is in my hand, I will

[00:27:07] strike the water that is in the Nile and it shall turn into blood. The fish and the Nile shall die and the Nile will stink in the Egyptians will grow weary of drinking water from the Nile.

[00:27:18] And the Lord said to Moses, say to Aaron, take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, their canals and their ponds and all their pools of water so

[00:27:31] that they may become blood and there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt even in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone. And so again this judgment is pronounced and we're

[00:27:46] seeing that it's an extensive judgment. It's not just the river itself but even the water in vessels would be judged by God. Moses and Aaron verse 20 did as the Lord commanded. In the side of

[00:27:59] Pharaoh and in the side of his servants he lifted up the staff and struck the water in the Nile. And all the water in the Nile turned to blood. And the fish in the Nile died and the Nile

[00:28:12] stink so that the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile. There was blood throughout the land of Egypt but the magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts. So Pharaoh's heart remained

[00:28:25] hardened and he would not listen to them as the Lord had said. Pharaoh turned and went into his house and he did not take even this to heart. And all the Egyptians dug along the Nile for water to drink.

[00:28:37] For they could not drink the water of the Nile seven days passed after the Lord had struck the Nile. Now again we see here that the magicians are able to emulate the sign that Moses and Aaron

[00:28:51] performed. They did the same. It says in verse 22 by their secret arts. Now if all the water became blood when Moses and Aaron did what they did then where did the magicians obtain water to duplicate the

[00:29:06] feet. And it seems like the answer is found there in verse 24 that the Egyptians dug along the Nile for water to drink and it produced just a filtration system from the Nile through the dirt down

[00:29:20] to where they dug and that was the freshwater then that these magicians turned into blood. Notice they didn't reverse what Moses and Aaron had done. They didn't make anything better. They actually just made it worse but still they were able to emulate these men and it says in

[00:29:39] verse 25 seven full days passed after the Lord had struck the Nile. This likely means that this plague lasted for seven days and not that there were seven days from this plague to the next.

[00:29:56] Now before moving on to the second plague I do want to mention and just point out to you the idea of what God is doing here as he judges the Nile River. He is going straight for

[00:30:08] the source of life in Egypt. What did you have in Egypt? You had this Pharaoh who claimed to be divine who communicated to his people that they were infinitely blessed because of him and their

[00:30:26] systems or practice of worship and that that is why they were a prosperous people. I think God looked down upon this civilization and saw that the reason that they were prosperous is because they

[00:30:39] had one of the greatest rivers of the world feeding their land. So their crops were abundant. They were able to eat and drink. You could build in Egypt because you knew that you could sustain life

[00:30:52] in the cities around the Nile River. And so I think God as he looked upon this civilization saw a group that were dependent upon his good creation. He was the giver of a wonderful gift

[00:31:07] to that nation at that time. They had begun to think that they had accomplished this and so God allowed for a judgment upon their paramount God, the river itself and helped them see that that

[00:31:25] source of life then actually came from him and that he was the true source of life. And the reason I mentioned this is manifold. You know for one I find that just in our Christian life there

[00:31:41] are moments where whether we know it or not we become dependent upon something or someone that we should not become dependent upon. And sometimes in those moments God will see fit to show us where

[00:31:56] our real source of life comes from. It's not from the girlfriend or boyfriend. It's not even from the spouse. It's not from the life group. It's not from the job or career. It's not from of course

[00:32:09] sinful pursuits. These are the things that lead to our life and sometimes God will ask us or cause to go through a season or a time where all of that is stripped away and a fresh we learn.

[00:32:26] The source of life is God. He is the one that causes me as an individual to flourish. I think another thing that I want to point out here is that this seems to me to be so emblematic

[00:32:42] of the experience of so many. Sometimes God has to strike the popular concept of the source of life. Of course in our era, in the West many people think the source of life is sexual

[00:32:56] freedom or sexual identity that I am my impulses and desires. Some people think that the source of life is just personal freedom. Doing what I want when I want being mean. Some people think

[00:33:12] that relational happiness is the source of life. Even if it means that I need to leave and depart from a relationship that I've covenanted to stay in. But the reality is that so often God will

[00:33:27] strike what we think is the source of life. Sexual freedom actually leads to bondage, despair, and depression. Personal freedom actually eventually leads to personal enslavement. And when someone pursues their own happiness above obedience to God, they end up finding

[00:33:51] personal sadness quite often. So God here strikes the Nile River as a judgment against the people of Egypt. Let's move on to chapter 8. Then the Lord said to Moses, go into Pharaoh and say to him,

[00:34:06] thus says, the Lord let my people go that they may serve me. But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with frogs. The Nile shall swarm with frogs that shall

[00:34:18] come up into your house and into your bedroom and on your bed and into the houses of your servants and your people. And into your ovens and your needing bowls, the frog shall come up on you and

[00:34:30] on your people and on all your servants. Now this is a wild plague don't you think? And the second plague frogs are produced and they're to appear everywhere. Now this was semi-normal in the land of Egypt,

[00:34:48] around the Nile River in December but not in the month of August. Here's a thing you need to know before we watch. Moses actually performed this sign. They regarded frogs as having divine power.

[00:35:03] Actually, I had a goddess that had the form, it was in the form of a woman with a frog's head on top of her shoulders and frogs for that reason were not to be killed as they were considered

[00:35:17] a sacred animal. Okay so you can imagine how badly this plague is going to go for these people with that kind of worldview. This was an attack on that false god called Hechit or Hechit, wife of

[00:35:34] Knum who was usually represented as a frog. Okay so this goddess is going to be judged by God. And the Lord said to Moses in verse 5, say to Aaron, stretch out your hand with all your staff

[00:35:46] over the rivers, over the canals and over the pools and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt. So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt and the frogs came up and covered

[00:35:58] the land of Egypt. But the magicians, they did the same by their secret arts and made frogs come up on the land of Egypt. Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said,

[00:36:10] plead with the Lord to take away the frogs from me and from my people and I will let the people go to sacrifice to the Lord. Moses said to Pharaoh, be pleased to command me when I am to plead for you

[00:36:22] and for your servants and for your people that the frogs be cut off from you and your houses and be left only in the Nile. And he said, tomorrow Moses said, be it as you say so that you

[00:36:34] may know that there is no one like the Lord our God. The frogs shall go away from you and your houses and your servants and your people they shall be left only in the Nile. So Moses and Aaron went

[00:36:46] out from Pharaoh and Moses cried to the Lord about the frogs as he had agreed with Pharaoh. And the Lord did according to the word of Moses, the frogs died out in the houses,

[00:36:57] the courtyard and the fields and they gathered them together in heaps and the land sank. But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite he hardened his heart and would not listen to them as the Lord had said. Now a couple of comments about this second wild plague.

[00:37:16] First of all we see again that the magicians were able to do the same. No relief, only duplication making matters worse. But again I think this was sorcery. I think there were tapping into demonic powers to produce the same thing that Moses had done. But the big

[00:37:35] development in the second plague happens in verse 8 when Pharaoh approaches Moses and says, plead with the Lord to take away the frogs. This is a significant shift. He wanted his magicians to remove the frogs but they couldn't so he has to acknowledge the Lord.

[00:37:57] He acknowledged the ability of Moses to mediate with God for the restoration of normal conditions in Egypt. This is powerful. It was a turning of the tables so to speak. Moses going to Pharaoh, asking, or excuse me, Pharaoh going to Moses, asking Moses to do something

[00:38:19] for him, pleading with him. Moses has to ask for something to go. His request let the frogs go. And of course Moses has been saying, God says, let my people go. So if you want me to let the

[00:38:34] frogs go then let my people go. That's the idea. There's this shift now where Pharaoh has to come to Moses. Now it's hilarious to see that when Moses says, when should this happen, rather than

[00:38:49] saying today, right now immediately Pharaoh says tomorrow. This is so typical of the way that we are with so many of the sins of life, things that are terrible but we think they're so great and we say

[00:39:06] tomorrow, I'll deal with it tomorrow. I wanted to go from my life rather than saying no today is the day of salvation. So there's a little clue here in tomorrow that Pharaoh's heart would again be

[00:39:20] hardened and of course that's what we see there in verse 15 there was a respite and he hardened his heart and would not listen to them just like God said. The third play goes like this. Verse 16,

[00:39:34] then the Lord said to Moses, say to Aaron, stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth so that it may become nats in all the land of Egypt. And they did so. Aaron stretched out his hand with

[00:39:48] his staff and struck the dust of the earth and there were nats on man and beast. All the dust of the earth became nats in all the land of Egypt. The magicians tried by their secret arts to produce nats but

[00:40:01] they could not. So there were nats on man and beast. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, this is the finger of God but Pharaoh's heart was hardened and he would not listen to them as

[00:40:14] the Lord had said. Now in this third play the way that it said in our English translation is nats. It's possible that it means mosquitoes. It's obviously an ancient and Hebrew words.

[00:40:29] It's hard for us to know exactly what kind of insect this was but it's an attack on a God that they had called Gibb that was the God of the land, the God of the dirt itself. And what's interesting

[00:40:44] here is that the Egyptian priesthood they were fanatics about cleanliness. You know they were always participating in various washings and shavings to emphasize their cleanness, their purity. But here the dust is struck. The dust of the earth becomes nats. It's climbing everywhere they would

[00:41:07] have felt so unclean. And here we learn that the magicians they ran out of their power. They could not reproduce these insects or these nats that were on man and beast. And so they were unable

[00:41:25] to continue on. Then the Lord, verse 20, said to Moses, rise up early in the morning and present yourself to Pharaoh as he goes out to the water and remember I told you this first and second

[00:41:38] and third set of three plagues would begin with going out to the water to Pharaoh. So here we have our second group of three plague four five and six begins with Moses going out to the water.

[00:41:50] And say to him that says the Lord let my people go that they may serve me or else if you will not let my people go behold I will send swarms of flies on you and your servants and your people

[00:42:01] and into your houses. And the houses of the Egyptians shall be filled with swarms of flies and also the ground in which they stand. But on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen where my

[00:42:12] people dwell so that no swarms of flies shall be there. You may know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth. Thus I will put a division between my people and your people tomorrow this sign shall

[00:42:26] happen and the Lord did so. There came great swarms of flies into the house of Pharaoh and into his servant's houses, through all the land of Egypt the land was ruined by the swarms of flies.

[00:42:42] Now what these flies are again it's another insect is hard to know exactly what this animal is. They might have actually been biting the people in the land not just flying around but biting insects.

[00:42:56] The Hebrew word indicates a bit of a mixture of flying insects so there might have been all sorts of flying insects cruising around at that time and of course there were various Egyptian

[00:43:09] gods that were dedicated to different insects and so it's possible that this is a judgment on all of these false gods. But the interesting thing in this fourth plague is that God would make things

[00:43:22] different for the people of Israel. He said in verse 22 I will set apart the land of Goshen. That's where the Israelites dwell. So they weren't going to experience this particular plague. And this is fascinating to us. Listen, here's how it works when we experience trials sometimes even trials

[00:43:42] that are a result of God's judgment here on earth. Sometimes God will do this. He will particularly preserve his people. He will protect us. He will keep us out of danger and out of harm's way. Other times we will endure the same trials as everyone else.

[00:44:03] For instance, right now in my country and the United States there are millions of people that are missing. 50 million or so babies that have been aborted over the last 40 years or so.

[00:44:21] That means that in the years to come we are going to pay a very natural price. I'm sure that God will intervene in some very direct ways but I can't presume to always know what those ways are.

[00:44:34] But there will be indirect consequences of our actions. It's going to be hard for us to pay for the retirement of the next generations. We're going to have a depleted workforce. There's

[00:44:46] going to be a lot that we don't have who knows if the cure for cancer was in the mind of one of those aborted children. We just don't know all the ramifications of those sinful acts but

[00:45:02] God's believing people are going to experience those consequences right alongside so many others. So there are times that we endure the same trials or brokenness or fallenness at everyone else. At other moments things will be worse for us. Jesus talked about the

[00:45:22] coming age or persecution for the body of Christ and all over the world. There are Christians for whom life is more difficult because they are a Christian. And at all times,

[00:45:36] in a sense as God's children we have the unique protection of God. Even if He lets us go through it, He is watching over us. He is walking with us through the valley of the shadow of death. He is

[00:45:48] comforting us. He is our shield and our glory and the lifter of our head Psalm 3, verse 3. So sometimes we're protected. Sometimes we go right through it and sometimes it's worse for us

[00:46:00] than it is for others. Here in this judgment God began protecting Israel in a unique way. It would have shouted to all of the Egyptians now on their fourth judgment from God that the God of the Israelites

[00:46:17] was different. And the Israelites were a different people and that they should listen to what the Israelites had to say. Listen brothers and sisters, if God wanted to just wipe the Egyptians out in one massive movement He could have but this gradual, progressive ushering in of the

[00:46:35] judgments was designed by God to produce repentance in the hearts of the people who received it. All of this was done, verse 22, so that they might know that God is the Lord. So again,

[00:46:48] He's giving them time to repent, showing them who He is. Then Pharaoh, verse 25, called Moses and Aaron and said, go sacrifice to your God within the land. This was Pharaoh's compromise. Don't leave just here within the land. Go sacrifice to God. But Moses said in verse 26,

[00:47:11] it would not be right to do so for the offerings we shall sacrifice to the Lord our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice offerings abominable to the Egyptians before their eyes

[00:47:24] will they not stone us? We must go three days journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord our God as He tells us. It's a here, Moses lets Pharaoh, no listen if we start sacrificing animals

[00:47:38] right here inside the Egyptian borders because you worship so many of these animals, the people of Egypt are going to freak out, will be accused and condemned so we've got to get out of town in order

[00:47:52] to sacrifice as we feel led to sacrifice to our God. So Pharaoh said in verse 28, I will let you go to sacrifice to the Lord your God and the wilderness. Only you must not go very far away,

[00:48:06] plead for me. Then Moses said, behold, I'm going out from you and I will plead with the Lord that the swarms of flies may depart from Pharaoh, from his servants and from his people tomorrow.

[00:48:17] Only let not Pharaoh cheat again by not letting the people go to sacrifice to the Lord. So Moses went out from Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord and the Lord did as Moses asked and removed the swarms of

[00:48:30] flies from Pharaoh, from his servants and from his people, not one remained but Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also and did not let the people go. I love this here, Moses accepts the counter

[00:48:48] offer of Pharaoh who said in verse 28, you must not go very far away, he accepts and says, okay, I'll pray to God but he speaks boldly to Pharaoh and says don't cheat us again. It's remarkable.

[00:49:02] Moses is becoming the prominent or the stronger figure as Pharaoh has become a lesser and weaker. But again, verse 32, Pharaoh hardened his heart. Let's go on to the chapter 9 and look at plague number 5. Then the Lord said to Moses, go and Pharaoh and say to him,

[00:49:23] thus says the Lord the God of the Hebrews, let my people go that they may serve me. For if you refuse to let them go and still hold them behold the hand of the Lord will fall with a very

[00:49:33] severe plague upon your livestock that are in the field, the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds, and the flocks. But the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock

[00:49:44] of Egypt so that nothing of all the belongs to the people of Israel shall die. And the Lord said a time saying, verse 5, tomorrow, the Lord will do this thing in the land. And the next day,

[00:49:56] the Lord did this thing. All the livestock of the Egyptians died but not one of the livestock of the people of Israel died. And Pharaoh sent and behold, not one of the livestock of Israel was dead

[00:50:08] but the heart of Pharaoh was hardened and he did not let the people go. Now again, when God judges the livestock kills the livestock here in this fifth plague many of these animals were considered

[00:50:23] sacred by the Egyptians. So again, God is judging their gods. There was actually a male god of fertility that was often represented as a bull or a goddess of the sky that was in the form of a

[00:50:37] cow that was being judged here by God. Now this would have been in January when the cattle were led out to pasture after the Nile subsided its inundation upon the land. And so they're out there

[00:50:53] grazing and God judges these cattle that are fattened up as they eat the grass on the banks of the Nile. And all verse 6, the livestock of the Egyptians died. Now it's likely that there was some

[00:51:08] livestock that was kept out of pasture and in the stalls because later in the passage we will see a reappearance of at least some livestock. So it seems that it's the livestock that's in the

[00:51:19] field as it says that perished in this fifth plague. In the sixth plague it says verse 8, and the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, take handfuls of foot from the kiln and let Moses throw them in the air

[00:51:33] in the site of Pharaoh. It shall become fine dust over all the land of Egypt and become boils breaking out in sores on man and beast through all the land of Egypt. So they took foot from the kiln

[00:51:45] and stood before Pharaoh. And Moses threw it in the air and it became boils breaking out in sores on man and beast. And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the

[00:51:56] boils for the boils came upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians. But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh and he did not listen to him as the Lord had spoken to Moses. In this sixth

[00:52:10] judgment boils are spreading throughout the land of Egypt and the delivery mechanism is interesting set from the kiln. The very thing used to make bricks, the thing that people of Israel had to

[00:52:28] do in their forced servitude by Pharaoh. They bring this foot in this residue from the kiln, this symbolic action. It's like your insistence on enslaving this people is the very thing

[00:52:43] that will lead to your demise, Pharaoh. They probably carried this end of Pharaoh. They throw it in the air and as it spreads symbolically in a sense boils began breaking out all over the land.

[00:52:55] Now they of course worshiped gods that were gods of healing and gods that had power over disease and so God is expressing his power over these false gods. It's also possible

[00:53:12] that these boils had something to do with the genitalia of men and women. And this would have been an attack on their goddess of sex and fertility and reproduction indicating that God was displeased with their behavior. But even with all of this having occurred, the Lord hardened

[00:53:36] the heart of Pharaoh. It says there in verse 12, the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh. Now this has often led to a question or discussion amongst believers in our modern era. Who was it that hardened Pharaoh's heart? You know God predicted for told prophesied that Pharaoh's

[00:53:56] heart would be hardened and that he would actually harden Pharaoh's heart. Up to this point in the passage, for the most part it's Pharaoh who hardens his heart but now we see in verse 12 of chapter 9

[00:54:10] the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. And this often has led into great debates between people about the sovereignty of God and the question of human free will. Was Pharaoh freed? Actually repent. Was he freed to receive God's grace or was he destined to this kind of behavior? And one

[00:54:31] thing that needs to be pointed out is that Moses who wrote Exodus, he made no attempt at resolving the issue. He didn't try to offer commentary. Well it was Egypt, excuse me, it was the Pharaoh

[00:54:45] first who hardened his heart and then God came in and shorted it up later. It was nothing like that. It was just, you record it what happened? It was true. Pharaoh hardened his heart and also God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Both of them are true. Chapter 4, chapter 7, chapter 9, chapter 8,

[00:55:06] chapter 10, you've got both that occur in Pharaoh's life. And I think that only in the mystery of who God is, the transcendence of who God is. Can we understand both? I believe that Pharaoh

[00:55:21] was supposed to repent of his sin that he was supposed to submit to God but also believe that God was sovereign and declaring that Pharaoh would have his heart hardened and that he would be involved in

[00:55:33] hardening Pharaoh's heart. And so God is sovereignly expressing himself over this man. He was doing these things for his own glory. It says in Romans chapter 9, verse 15, all I have mercy on whom

[00:55:48] I'll have mercy. I'll have compassion on whom I have compassion. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I've raised you up that I might show my power in you and that my name

[00:56:00] might be proclaimed in all the earth. So God has mercy on whom every wills and he hardens, whom every he wills. So again here in this moment, here is Pharaoh, his heart is hardened by God

[00:56:14] himself. I can't blame God, I can't see any injustice in God. But on the other hand, I cannot completely understand precisely how this word. Pharaoh hardened his heart, God hardened Pharaoh's heart,

[00:56:30] the Bible teaches that both are true and I'll leave it there. Then the Lord verse 13 said to Moses, rise up early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh. And say to him,

[00:56:44] thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, let my people go that they may serve me. So now here as we approach that seventh plague, we get a clue that this is the third set of three plagues because

[00:56:57] the Lord tells Moses to go down in the morning and present himself to Pharaoh and to give him directions. And again, pleading let my people go. So this is the final set of three plagues.

[00:57:11] Now this is interesting because the book of Revelation actually follows a similar type of outline. There are seven, not three, but seven seals. At the end of the seventh seal, the opening of the seventh seal reveals seven trumpets of judgment. And the seventh trumpet blast leads to seven

[00:57:34] bowls being poured out upon the earth of God's wrath. Seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls. But three sets of each. So there's some similarities here in the time of the Exodus being poured out upon Egypt. Three, three and three are three sets of judgments from God.

[00:57:57] And they do seem to increase in severity just like they do in the book of Revelation. Here you have hail and locusts and darkness coming upon the land here at the end. Now I know that

[00:58:10] some people believe that the book of Revelation is entirely symbolic. But here's a thing. I don't see symbolism in the book of Exodus. These things occurred. So why couldn't it be that these things would occur not symbolically, but actually in the future era just as Revelation shows us.

[00:58:34] So just food for thought as we consider God's word. For this time verse 14, I will send all my plagues on you, yourself and on your servants and your people. So that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth. For by now God said,

[00:58:52] I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence and you would have been cut off from the earth. So here God tells Pharaoh a little secret. I could have rather than

[00:59:05] send you plague after plague. I could have simply brought severe and swift judgment by putting out my hand, but I've been merciful. I've been trying to cultivate or repent in hard within you

[00:59:20] and your people. But I'm doing these things so that you may know verse 14 that there is none like me. Again, this is a direct attack on the false gods and false religion and paganism that was practiced

[00:59:34] by Pharaoh and the Egyptians. All their gods were impotent and God is powerful. He's the only true God. But this is the final warning that Moses is giving to Pharaoh. But for this purpose verse 16,

[00:59:50] I've 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 here announces

[01:00:04] why Pharaoh is who Pharaoh is. He's been blessed by God. He's grown a powerful nation because God has raised him up to show God's power over the most powerful man in the world.

[01:00:21] In fact, this is one of the things that we as modern believers are supposed to get out of this passage of Scripture. Sometimes we become impressed with or despairing because of world rulers

[01:00:36] and we think that their power is so unlimited and we fear what they might say or do to us as his people. But instead, we should trust the power of God. He is stronger than even Pharaoh himself.

[01:00:52] Then God goes on verse 18, behold about this time tomorrow I will cause a very heavy hail to fall. Such as never has been an Egypt from that day it was founded until now. Now therefore send

[01:01:06] get your livestock and all that you have in the field and to save shelter for every man and beast that is in the field and does not brought home will die when the hail falls on them.

[01:01:17] Then whoever feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh heard his slaves and his livestock into his houses. But whoever did not pay attention to the word of the Lord left his slaves

[01:01:28] and his livestock in the field. You know, I've often thought of this response to God's warning about the plague of hail as a great emblem of how I want to live my life. Remember what Jesus said

[01:01:44] when he concluded the sermon on the mount. He talked about the man who built his house upon the rock and the man who built his house upon the sand. These men responded in different ways

[01:01:56] they did different things. And when I read this little passage, I see two responses. There's the person who feared the word of the Lord, who respected God's word, who thought he was telling the truth and

[01:02:09] because of that they acted in a certain way. Their lives changed because they respected God and his word. They expected that hail stones were about to start falling and so they behaved accordingly.

[01:02:22] But the people who didn't pay attention to the Lord or pay attention to his word, they also acted accordingly and they left their livestock and their servants out in the fields and they were

[01:02:35] struck with the hail. So to me this has always been beautiful and emblematic of the kind of life that I want to live as I'm reading the word, as I'm in Bible study, as the spirit is searching

[01:02:50] me with the scripture. I want to respond to what he tells me to do. I want to fear the word of the Lord and apply it to my life and act rather than say that was a nice Bible study. That was great

[01:03:05] it was moving and I really enjoyed it and then to walk off as if nothing has changed. Then the Lord said to Moses, stretch out your hand toward heaven so that there may be hail in all the

[01:03:22] land of Egypt on man and beast and every plant of the field in the land of Egypt. Then Moses stretched out his staff toward heaven and the Lord sent thunder and hail and fire rained down on

[01:03:34] the earth and the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt. There was hail and fire flashing continually in the midst of the hail. Very heavy hail such as it had never been in all the land of

[01:03:45] Egypt since it became a nation. The hail struck down everything that was in the field and all the land of Egypt both man and beast and the hail struck down every plant of the field and broke

[01:03:56] every tree of the field. Only in the land of Goshen where the people of Israel were, there was no hail. So now again as I said at the beginning of the teaching Moses in these final three

[01:04:09] plagues he is the one stretching out his hand not Aaron and his staff. Then Pharaoh sent verse 27 and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, this time I have sent the Lord is in the right and I

[01:04:24] and my people are in the wrong. Plead with the Lord for there has been enough of God's thunder and hail. I will let you go and you shall stay no longer. Now this is a half confession from Pharaoh

[01:04:37] as much as it's sounding better and getting better here at the half confession he says, this time I have sent. This time I have sent as if he hadn't sent previously. So a half confession perhaps

[01:04:52] you've heard a half confession before something like I'm sorry that your feelings are hurt. Like well okay that's not really admitting anything here Pharaoh gives a half confession. This time

[01:05:07] he says I have sent Moses said to him, as soon as I have gone out of the city I will stretch out my hands to the Lord. The thunder will cease and there will be no more hail so that you may know that the earth

[01:05:20] is the Lord's. But as for you and your servants I know that you do not yet fear the Lord. God, the flags in the barley parentheses were struck down for the barley was in the ear and the

[01:05:31] flags was in bud but the wheat and the emmer were not struck down for they are late in coming up. This gives us a little time marker February or January is the time that the flags and the barley were

[01:05:45] in the bud and they were struck down by the hail so crops are now being destroyed because of these flags. So what we're seeing here is creation and total chaos. You know as we wrap up this chapter

[01:05:59] and as we wrap up this study we're seeing creation and total chaos. The flags in a lot of sense are creation reversals. Animals being harmed rather than helping humanity or harming humanity, the

[01:06:21] frogs coming into the homes stinking upon their death. Light as we're going to see ceasing and darkness taking over waters becoming a source of death rather than life. And of course creation

[01:06:37] is meant to be a blessing but here it's become a curse but it's creation in chaos like at the flood. But this is God expressing his power over it. Like he did at Mount Carmel when a

[01:06:54] Elijah called down fire, lightning to consume the sacrifice or when Joshua asked for the sun to stand still in battle or in the future when the lion and the lamb lie down together or the resurrection

[01:07:09] of Jesus. All of these things are above nature God over the natural realm. And so it can help us see here you have creation and chaos that can actually give us hope of the coming day where

[01:07:25] the order will be restored and no more chaos will occur. So Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh and stretched out his hands to the Lord and the thunder and hail ceased and the rain

[01:07:37] no longer poured out upon the earth but when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased he sinned yet again and hardened his heart. He and his servants. So the heart of Pharaoh

[01:07:49] was hardened. He did not let the people of Israel go just as the Lord had spoken through Moses. God is so patient here with Pharaoh time after time he withholds the plague. He

[01:08:05] intercede. He gives the man mercy and this actually should be thought of whenever we talk about or discuss the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. God was always responding to even the half true or the half confession or the half repentance of Pharaoh. God's in control he knows what he's

[01:08:31] going to do he knows what Pharaoh is going to do but still he's responding to this man. By the end of our study today what began with Moses asking for Pharaoh to do things. Now we're

[01:08:46] seeing Moses really is in that position of authority and Pharaoh has to come to him but still Pharaoh would not let the people go. And again as we look back upon this story I think it's meant for us not

[01:09:02] to simply think about plague after plague but to think and to meditate upon the power of God. How God saved Israel out of a calamitous environment how God saw their pain and agony in heartbreak

[01:09:18] and how God rescued them because that same God who was powerful then is powerful for us today. God bless you church.