Good morning and happy Thursday. Only one day to the State Fair of Texas. Today we find ourselves in chapter 9 of Exodus and within it we will see God bring plagues 5-7 upon Egypt. We’ll see the pattern mentioned yesterday continue to play out in patternistic repetition. God gives Moses a message, Moses gives it to Pharaoh, Pharaoh scoffs, the plague comes, Pharaoh repents and promises to let the people go, the plague stops, and Pharaoh then breaks his promise and the Israelites stay in bondage. A vicious cycle that will finally halt with the heart breaking, climatic 10th plague.
Recall that each plague is not just a random violent attack upon an unsuspecting Pharaoh and his innocent people. The land is full of hard hearts that reject God and as a result there is rampant idol worship throughout the land. This angers a Holy and Righteous God. On top of this, God has promised to give His people, The Israelites, the promised land and that can’t happen if Pharaoh keeps them enslaved in Egypt. They must be set free and God continues to make the request. By now God has requested of Pharaoh to let the Israelites go no less than 8 times. I would say this is ample. But since Pharaoh will not comply, God continues to bring the plagues. And the plagues He brings are focused directly on the false Gods of Egypt.
The 5th plague is a disease unleashed upon all the livestock of the land. A vicious blow to the economy, to personal wealth and to the base food supplies. The disease falls upon the horses, donkeys, the camels, the herds (bovine) and the flocks (goats/sheep) (Ex 9:3) But take careful notice that it affected nothing in the city of Goshen, the home of the Israelites. (Ex 9:4) God spares the livestock of His people and strikes only the Egyptians. This plague was levelled at Apis (an embodiment of Ptah) the god of bulls. Apis was a black bull and was housed in the second largest temple of the almost 1,000 temples in Memphis, Egypt alone. In fact, the worship of Apis was so prevalent in Egypt it’s believed that when Aaron and the people made the golden calf to worship as Moses was on Mt. Sinai, that it was Apis. So, as God sees all of this Apis worship, he simply sends a disease to kill the very thing that they worship. It must have been quite the blow to see the bulls and cows you worship all start dropping like flies. God was waging war against the hearts that defied Him by worshipping these false gods.
The 6th plague was different. As we would say today, “it got personal.” After Pharaoh refuses yet once again to let the people go, God brings boils upon the people and the animals. (Ex 9:10) We’re told these boils would break out in sores and that it struck immediately. (Ex 9:11) As Moses called down the plague standing in the throne room of Pharaoh, it hit quickly. We’re told that the magicians that served Pharaoh could not even stand before Moses after the boils hit. (Ex 9:11) I’ve heard some speculation that the boils covered every square inch of the body including the soles of the feet, hence they could not stand. Ouch. Because of it affecting the magicians, we’ll see that this plague was a widespread blow to not one, but all the false gods of Egypt. You see there were thousands of temples and shrines to the over 2000 different gods in Egypt. And each one was staffed by magicians or “priests.” Now in order to serve at a temple, the priests had to be “clean” which meant without sickness or blemish. So guess what? Yep, the plague of boils left no one clean to run the temples. Folks, God shut down every temple in Egypt. Where there was a hustle of activity in and around each and every temple to a false god, was now a ghost town. Spider webs and crickets chirping. Nothing. It would have been quite the eerie scene to walk the streets and see all temple worship ground to a halt.
The 7th plague was hail. And this was truly hail of “Biblical proportions.” It destroyed and killed everything it touched. But even here God has mercy and gives the people a warning that it’s coming. The hail was focused at serval gods at once; Nut the goddess of the sky, Isis god of agriculture and Shu god of the atmosphere. The hail destroyed crops, people, buildings, land and animals. Death and destruction from the sky. One time while were living out in San Angelo, Texas we experienced a real West Texas hail storm. I’ll never forget it. It hit quickly and when the hail started battering the windows we knew something was wrong. I grabbed Margie and we stood in the dead center of the living room as the windows starting breaking, the hail violently shattering the glass. It was a truly terrifying experience. After the storm I’ll never forget walking outside to survey the damage. It was devastating. We had a entire bed of beautiful red tulip bulbs that were in full bloom and it looked like they had been ran through a food processor and then scattered where they once stood, a confetti of tulips upon the ground. We had hail damage on our roof, our cars, landscape, basically anything that was outside. Hail is truly destructive. And all of this death and destruction because of a hard heart.
We talked a bit about the hard heart of Pharaoh yesterday but the more the plagues wear on and the more death and destruction occur, the more his heart perplexes me. I guess I could really say more generally, the hard heart of anyone perplexes me.
You see the heart of Pharaoh exists all over our world today. Hearts that are so set in their own beliefs, desires and self-serving pride that they refuse to see the plagues before them no matter how apparent and destructive they may be. Some hearts just will not believe. Why?
When we get to the 7th plague, the hail, we will see that God forewarns not only Pharaoh but the people of the land. God says, (my paraphrase) “there will be great, violent, fatal hail coming upon the land. Any person, any creature, any plant left outside will perish. Therefore, believe my Words and go inside for safety.” But we read in Ex 9:20-21, “Then whoever feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses, but whoever did not pay attention to the word of the Lord left his slaves and his livestock in the field.” The unbelief and rejection of God’s Word brought death, pain and loss.
You know it’s no different today. People that don’t understand God will argue all day long but the same does rings true today. God gives every single person that is ever born a chance to believe. A chance to come and take shelter from the “hail” of life. Will they? Some will and sadly, some will not. Now I realize this sounds more than a little fatalistic, but folks, it’s God’s Words not mine.
Our world today is full of people that don’t know God and don’t know His Word and they will tell you that God is love. And that is true. But my parents were full of more love than I have ever seen and when I openly defied them, I got my rear spanked (and rightfully so.) So why do we think that God is any different? That we can openly defy and deny Him, His creation, His Words, His commands and His Son Jesus Christ and because He loves us, He is somehow bound to do nothing? It’s not scriptural, it’s not what God says of himself and beyond that I would say that it doesn’t even make common sense. God says there is judgement coming but He gives us foresight, He openly tells us. He tells us that the “hail” is coming, but it is up to you to believe it, act upon it and seek safety. Folks, there is judgment coming for those that reject God. Will you listen to God and believe? Or will you harden your heart to the Words of God and stand in the field in defiance as the clouds gather and the hail starts to fall all around you? You see God in His ultimate, undefinable love, gives us a choice. The biggest choice you will ever make.
God bless you.
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