Exodus 5-10

Transcript (Auto-generated)

This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.

So our reading, as you've already heard, is six chapters. Neil timed it. It'd take about half an hour. So please bear with me. So, obviously it's going to be excerpts.

So we begin at chapter five, verse 22 of Exodus.

Moses returned to the Lord and said, why, lord, have you brought trouble on this people? Is this why you sent me? Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people. And you have not rescued your people at all. Now moving to number six.

So then the Lord said to Moses, now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh. Because of my mighty hand, he will let them go. Because of my mighty hand, he will drive them out of this country. So this is from chapter six, verse six. Therefore say to the Israelites, I am the Lord.

And I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them. And I will redeem you with an outstretched arm. And with mighty acts of judgement, I will take you as my own people and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the lord. So now moving on to chapter seven. Then the lord said to Moses, see, I have made you like God to Pharaoh.

And your brother Aaron will be your prophet. But I will harden Pharaoh's heart. And though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt. And with mighty acts of judgement, I will bring out my divisions, my people, the Israelites.

The lord said to Moses and Aaron, when Pharaoh says to you, perform a miracle, then say to Aaron, take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh, and it will become a snake. So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the lord commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers. And the Egyptians, magicians also did the same things by their secret arts.

Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs. Yet Aaron's heart became. Pharaoh's heart became hard. And he would not listen to them.

Just as the lord had said.

This is verse 14. Then the lord said, Moses, Pharaoh's heart is unyielding. He refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he goes out to the river, confront him on the bank of the Nile and take in your hand the staff that was changed into a snake. Then say to him, the lord, the God of the Hebrews has sent me to say to you, let my people go so that they may worship me in the wilderness.

But until now, you have not listened. This is what the Lord by this you will know that I am the Lord. With a staff that is in my hand, I will strike the water of the Nile and it will be changed into blood. The fish in the Nile will die and the river will stink. The Egyptians will not be able to drink its water.

So, verse 19. The lord said to Moses, tell Aaron, take your staff and stretch out your hands over the waters of Egypt, over the streams and canals, over the ponds and all the reservoirs, and they will turn to blood. Blood will be everywhere in Egypt, even in the vessels of wood and stone. Moses and Aaron did just as the lord had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile.

And all the water was turned into blood. The fish in the nile died. The river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water. Blood was everywhere in Egypt. But the Egyptians, the egyptian magicians, did the same things by their secret arts.

And Pharaoh's heart became hard. He would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the lord had said.

And that's as far as we go. So thanks be to God for his word.

Morning. Good morning.

That's the 11th plague.

Well, I thought you might need something between a long reading and an even longer talk. So I've asked the musicians whether we can sing the very first part of the song.

How great is our God?

No, I like it when a plan comes together.

So, as you've been told, I'm going to talk to you about chapters five through to ten. So I hope you haven't got your lunch early because it will take a while.

One of the songs we've sung is blessed be your name. And that song has a particular poignancy for me because one day when I was teaching in my classroom, I got a message to tell me that my father was seriously ill in hospital and I'd got to get down to Essex as quickly as I could. And on the way down, that song kept coming into my head as I drove on the road marked with suffering, though there was pain in the offering. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Now, sometimes people believe that because they've accepted Jesus Christ, he's going to solve all of their problems.

But Jesus never promised that. In fact, he regularly warned people to consider the cost of following him and pointed out the hardships that they would experience because they were following him. And sometimes we can look at what's going on in the world, or what's going on in our particular lives and wonder, what is God doing? Why is he allowing this to happen? Why isn't he doing something about it?

Why isn't he resolving the situation? And in Exodus chapter five, we have an example of this. Moses first meeting with Pharaoh didn't go well. Pharaoh, the divine mediator between Egypt's many gods and mankind. Pharaoh, who was responsible for maintaining the God given order of things.

This absolute monarch warned by Moses that if he pharaoh, refuses to let the Israelites go, the God of the Hebrews will fall upon them with pestilence. But Pharaoh refused to acknowledge this unknown God.

And in his anger, he decided to impart harsher conditions on the israelite slaves so that they would ignore Moses words. So bad were the conditions that the israelite foreman searched out Moses and said to him, Moses, may the Lord judge and punish you. You have put a sword into their hands. Excuse to kill us. And so we reached the point where our reading began.

This morning, Moses goes to God and prays and says, what on earth are you doing, God? Things aren't getting better. They're getting worse. What's happening here? God?

And God instructs Moses to tell the people exactly what he's going to do. He says to them, I am the Lord. I will free you from oppression. I will rescue you from your slavery. I will redeem you with a powerful arm and great acts of judgement.

I will claim you as my own people, and I will be your God. And then you will know, I am the Lord your God. But because of the harshness of their workload, the Israelites didn't listen. How easily do we get discouraged when God does not appear to be coming to our aid? It's a sad truth about the hardness of the human heart, that in times of tragedy, suffering and disaster be that personal.

Or as we're all too aware, on a much wider scale, people have a tendency to turn away from God rather than turn towards him. And so it was with the Israelites. They decided. They doubted God, and they weren't listening to the only one who could and who would save them. So the Lord turned to Moses and said, look, Moses, see, I've made you like a God to Pharaoh.

Through Moses, God was going to make it obvious to Pharaoh, who he should be listening to. And when God calls us to do something, he will provide us with what we need to complete the task. Now, there's a very interesting thing in chapter seven, verse three, because God tells Moses, I will harden Pharaoh's heart. And though I multiply my signs and wonders, Egypt, he will not listen to you.

People ask, how can a God of love deliberately harden someone's heart? The heart represented a person's essence or their real being, and Pharaoh's would be judged. The Egyptians knew that Pharaoh's heart would be judged.

Now, it's interesting, because in the following chapters of Exodus, there are three different words which have been translated into English. Three different hebrew words which have been translated into English as harden. They are gasha, which means stubborn. Chazak, which means resolute, and kabad, which means proud. You see, Pharaoh's weakness was his position and authority as an absolute monarch.

Moses relaying God's commands to him would have been affront to Pharaoh what God could possibly be superior to him? And Pharaoh remained proud of his position. And I don't know if you noticed, but Moses repeatedly makes his demands in public, in a public place, that Pharaoh recognised God's authority. And that would only serve to increase Pharaoh's resolve to maintain his status as a deity.

Even though each sign and wonder would be so powerful that Pharaoh ought to realise who he should submit to.

Pharaoh's pride and anger would make him stubborn and determined not to do so. You see, God knew exactly how Pharaoh's heart would respond to being confronted with his authority, ignoring the chances to repent. Pharaoh's obstinate delay would reap a full demonstration of God's power. And the Israelites and the Egyptians would be left in no doubt that God is lord of all.

So God sends Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh again. Now, Pharaoh is convinced that in any show of strength, he had the power to defeat Moses. So we ask them both to perform a miracle. Aaron throws down the staff of God and it becomes a serpent. Now, we have to understand what's going on here.

It's a bit tricky, but rods and serpents were intimately connected in egyptian priestly rituals of power. Priests are shown on many pictures in ancient egyptian memorials carrying staffs in the shape of serpents. And the magicians who turned their staffs into snakes were more than likely some of the chief priests of Egypt. They were highly learned people, masters of their ancient literary traditions and also the rituals of perceived power. And to the watching Egyptians, when the staff of God devoured the magicians, staffs it foretold the destruction of their authority and the absorption of their power.

A clear warning to Pharaoh that the God of the Hebrews was. Was going to end up in control. But Pharaoh was unmoved. So God delivered his signs and wonders. The first three signs affect the Israelites as well as the Egyptians.

When all the water is turned to blood, they, like the Egyptians, have to dig for water to drink. They had to suffer the frogs in their beds, ovens and in their cooking bowls. They were infested with gnats and lice and fleas, all whilst continuing to suffer brutal working conditions. How did any of this make sense to them that their God was going to free them? Things seem to be getting worse, not better.

When things aren't going well, we cannot always see how God is working to resolve the situation, but you need to know that he is working.

When the Nile turned to blood, the river which formed the basis of daily life and the national economy was devastated. But more importantly, the priests wouldn't have been able to perform their personal purification rites. Frogs were thought to be sacred and should not be killed. But pharaoh begged Moses to get rid of them, to ask God to get rid of them. And there were great heaps of dead frogs piled up.

And while the magicians had been able to replicate in some form these two wonders, the third wonder defeated them. Why? Because the ancient greek historian Herodotus informs us that if they were infested with gnats, flies or lice, they were rendered unclean. They couldn't perform their duties at all. The temples wouldn't be opened each day, which was a requirement to keep the cosmos in order.

In effect, the gods of Egypt had been completely shut shut down.

And the Israelites would have recognised that their God had a greater power than the Egyptians. They would have known what was happening. Egypt's gods were powerless against Yahweh. From now on, God spared the land of Goshen, where the Israelites lived, from the effects of his signs, the Egyptians worshipped flies. Somehow they thought they brought life from death.

So God gave them so many flies, it caused chaos. God's power was clearly evident with his ability to infest one area and leave another alone. The same was true with the death of the livestock and the plague of boils. God was steadily destroying the economy of Egypt and rendering the religious leaders powerless. But at the same time, he was protecting his people from their wrath.

From his wrath.

And before the next three signs and wonders, God gave Pharaoh this. By now, I could have lifted my hand and struck you and your people with a plague to wipe you off the face of the earth. But I have spared you for a purpose, to show you my power and to spread my fame throughout the earth. But you still lord it over my people and refuse to let them go. If you don't, I'll send more plagues on you.

Then you will know I am the Lord. There is no one else like me in all the earth. And as an example of God's grace, he also warned pharaoh to gather whatever crops and cattle remained after the previous events and shelter them from the coming storm of hail and lightning. Now, even though some of Pharaoh's servants heeded the warning, Pharaoh ignored it. Everything left out in the open was destroyed by hail.

And when Pharaoh. Sorry. When Moses warns Pharaoh about the locusts and pharaohs, officials say, dont you know that Egypt lies in ruins? Pharaoh continued to try and save some of his prestige by trying to negotiate with God and impose his restrictions on who could go and worship. The locusts destroyed all the crops that had not reached maturity.

When the hail fell, there would be no harvest in Egypt that year. Famine was on the cards. And then came three days of complete darkness, which for the Egyptians, symbolised death.

Goshen, however, remained in light the symbol of life. God was still protecting his people from his wrath.

Pharaoh summoned Moses. By now, it's obvious that God, through Moses, is in complete control. And Pharaoh still refused to submit his authority. And now Moses refuses to accept Pharaoh's final conditions. So the only option open to Pharaoh was to remove the messenger.

The high priest of Egypt threatened to kill Moses. His reasoning was very similar to the religious leaders during the life of Christ. They too refused to draw the appropriate conclusions from Jesus signs and wonders, his life and ministry. So they decided to kill him.

Now, the Egyptians worshipped a wide variety of nature gods, and each of these signs and wonders was specifically directed against those egyptian gods. The message was a simple one. The God of Hebrews is far more powerful than all of your gods put together. Though it has been suggested that the plague can be related to a series of natural phenomena which may have occurred in ancient Egypt. But such explanations do not account for the presence of blood in the wooden buckets and the stone jars everywhere in Egypt.

The flies, some say, are attributed to the dead frogs. But there were no flies in Goshen. But they had heaps of dead frogs. And some say the darkness was a sandstorm. But the Egyptians would have recognised that for what it was these people, such attempts to explain God's signs and wonders are just replicating the magicians, attempts who try to belittle and undermine the power of God.

They're just trying to say that God isn't who you think he is. But these signs and wonders give us a tremendous sense of God's control over the creation that he has made. And the magnitude of the plagues indicate how great God is. God also chose the times that these events took place. And they all began when the staff of God was raised.

And they stopped when Moses, at Pharaoh's behest, prayed to God for them to end a demonstration of God's power in a world that was closely related to nature.

We live in a technological consumer society. The gods that are worshipped are wealth, status, celebrity, social media and its influences possessions, particularly brand names and postcodes, academic achievements, careers, entitlement, self righteousness. The list goes on. As Christians, which of these gods are we still putting our trust in?

What does God have to do to demonstrate the futility of these modern gods against the supreme authority of Jesus Christ and his command to love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and to love your neighbour as yourself.

Be warned, the book of Revelations tells us that over half of these signs will occur prior to Christ's second coming.

Do you know anyone like Pharaoh?

You see, God knows our hearts. When does my pride, when does my fear of losing face? When does my resolve to have things done the way I want, when I want, prevent me from truly trusting God and submitting to his authority?

What about you?

Sometimes, even when we know what following Christ requires us to do, we can be reluctant to comply. Like Pharaoh, we try to put limits on what our following of Christ entails. But God is merciful. He gives us countless chances to repent 70 times seven, far more than the chances he gave pharaoh.

But be warned, however, like Pharaoh, our hearts will be judged. And in Matthew chapter seven, Jesus says, not everyone who calls out to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my father in heaven will enter.

The Israelites were going to have to do something next that demonstrated their absolute trust in God before he carried out his next wonderful, which would conclusively show that he has absolute control over life and death.

Now, as Christians, we have something better than the staff of God with us. We have the Holy Spirit living in us, and we need to trust that he will find a way for us. Even in our darkest moments, God will be working, and his holy spirit will give us the strength to overcome those situations. Why? Because we have a great God.

How great is our God, whose name should be blessed in all circumstances? For through his son, Jesus Christ, he has made a way for us to be redeemed.

Will you heed his warnings? Will you follow Christ?

I'll end in a prayer.

Heavenly Father, soften our hearts, Lord, we pray. Help us to know you more clearly, love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly in Jesus name. Amen in the scriptures, and to recognise exactly who he is and what he's done and what we need to do to respond to that. So thank you. We're going to sing again.

We're going to stand if we're able to sing. Way maker, which describes this God as the way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper and light in the darkness. So let's sing together. Stand if we're able. Thank you.