I’ve had the privilege of preaching over 450 sermons. In every sermon, I have four goals and those never change.
1. To be faithful to the text
Preaching must begin with the text itself. That might sound like stating the obvious, but it’s not actually where every pastor starts. Many pastors start with an idea “how to be a good parent,” “how to be a good financial steward,” “how to have a happy marriage,” etc. From that thesis, they seek out Biblical texts or passages which support that idea.
It’s my conviction that the better place to begin in preaching is with a Biblical text itself.
Sermons around topics can often take or leave the Bible.
I believe that the best sermons are the ones that are so intimately tied to the Biblical text that they would be incomprehensible without it. The sermon must be grounded in the text. My goal is to let the text speak for itself and to preach that faithfully.
2. To preach the gospel
This is just as important as the first goal. Every sermon should be a gospel sermon. Every sermon should be an opportunity to communicate the Good News of Jesus Christ and that we have an offer of grace and forgiveness from a good and loving savior.
There are two key reasons why every sermon should be a gospel sermon. First, because Christians need to constantly be reminded of the gospel.
In Romans 1:16-17, Paul says:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Secondly, there will almost always be someone listening to the sermon who does not actually believe in the gospel. For that reason, every sermon should be taken as an opportunity to proclaim the message of salvation.
3. To explain how the text applies to life
If the sermon has no real world application, it’s not a sermon. It’s a lecture!
The great 20th century expositor and preacher John Stott said “if there is no summons, there is no sermon.” His point was that if a sermon isn’t calling on the congregation to do something, it’s not truly a sermon.
Application can be challenging. Good application requires having an understanding of the true heart of the text. If the great takeaway from every sermon is “read the Bible more and pray more,” then it is ultimately lazy preaching. Great preaching must be mining for gold in the passage.
4. To preach with clarity
I’ve heard many a sermon that began well and then wandered off into incoherence.
I’ve been in the middle of sermons and thought “what is the preacher even talking about?” Clarity is important in good preaching.
I think the easiest way to preach with clarity is to have a clear outline for the sermon. Honestly, a good outline can be one of the biggest challenges of writing a sermon. Studying the passage is the easy part. Arranging the sermon in a logical way is where a lot of the real work of sermon writing comes in. But it’s the difference between a good sermon and a bad sermon.
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In the final sections of John chapter 1, several theological affirmations are made about Jesus.
In John 1:29-34, John the Baptist calls Jesus the lamb of God.
That language will continue in the following section. John 1:35-36 says:35 The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”
Understanding what that means
In the Old Testament, the sacrificial system was instituted to show that sin needed to be atoned for. Sin required a blood sacrifice. It was a complicated and rigorous system. Sacrifices provided temporary atonement. Certain sins required certain sacrifices.
Sacrifices also required worthy animals. A person couldn’t just pick out an old goat that was about to die. It had to be a healthy animal without blemish.
All of that was meant to point to the greater sacrifice. Jesus is the perfect and spotless lamb who is the true and worthy sacrifice.
And so John calls Jesus the Lamb of God because he is the one who was sacrificed to atone for the sins of all who believe in him.
John 1:37, John the Baptist has just made this statement about Jesus and then: The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.
John the Baptist points to Jesus. His own disciples leave him to go and follow Jesus.
With a respected religious leader like John, that would have been unthinkable. No one wants to lose people.A teacher doesn’t want to lose students. A dentist doesn’t want to lose patients. A hair stylist doesn’t want to lose clients.
But John is happy to point his people to Jesus.
He’s happy to lose his followers to Jesus, because that’s his entire purpose. Pointing people to Jesus.
The text says that they followed Jesus.
Verse 38:
Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?”
Quite the question Jesus asks. It has a double meaning.
Yes, it’s Jesus asking the two men who are following him. But it is also a probing question for anyone who seeks to follow Jesus.
What are you seeking?
“What are you seeking?”
What do you want from Jesus. There are many reasons why people try to find religion or turn to Jesus. But not all of them are good reasons.
If you’re a follower of Jesus, why are you following him?
Being a follower of Jesus is an end in itself. You follow Jesus because you get…Jesus. You get God.
That is the greatest promise that the Lord gives to us. Unworthy sinners are invited to know the God of the universe.
Sadly that’s not always the real heart behind a person’s desire to know Jesus.
What are you seeking?
Some people follow Jesus because they have all sorts of issues and think life will get easier.
And for awhile, that might be true.
But you’re still you. You’re still a sinful person. You still have various habits and areas of sin that aren’t productive. And life is still hard.
You get Jesus.
What about when the going gets tough? Because the going will get tough. And then where does that leave you?For some, they’re left disillusioned with faith because it didn’t give them what they wanted.
But the mistake was that they were looking for the wrong thing.
Some are led to Jesus because they’re sold a false gospel and believe that material blessing and physical health are both always the will of God for a believer.
It’s often called the prosperity gospel. It’s not Biblical Christianity. It turns our desires to stuff and not to God.
There are often blessings which result from the Christian life and living according to Biblical wisdom. But that is not meant to be the basis of being a follower of Christ.
Because the struggles still come.
If our hope is rooted in what we think Jesus will give to us, it leads to a faith that is superficial.
Plenty of Christians can see the flaws in prosperity theology. Yet we’re often still drawn to it.
Especially in America.
Why?
Because, in our heart of hearts, there’s a temptation to think that we deserve things to be good because we like to think we’re good. We pray, we serve, we give, we try to follow God.
We do these things and so it can be tempting to be angry with God when things don’t go the way we want them to.
The Bible does not promise the Christian life will be easy. It promises the opposite.
The Apostle James said to count it all joy, WHEN you meet trials of various kings (John 1:2).
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said:
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:10-12)
You can find verses on suffering in almost every book in the New Testament.
Most notably, it was Jesus who was unjustly tortured and executed. He told his disciples in John 15: If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
The Apostle Paul was imprisoned multiple times in his life and later executed for his faith. He said in Romans 5:3 we rejoice in our sufferings.
Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians from jail, and was later executed. John the Baptist who’s in our passage this morning. Executed.
The apostles named in our passage this morning: all of them were martyrs.
The world hates the gospel.
The Christian life is hard. And life is hard.
What are you seeking?
Certainly I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with blessings. Christians oftentimes do enjoy blessings in life, because God is good and gracious.
Living Godly lives and living according to Biblical wisdom is the best way to live and so that often bears fruit in life.
But what about when it doesn’t?
Many faithful people follow the Lord throughout their entire lives and continue to suffer and struggle.
What are you seeking? I’m not saying we should desire a life of hardship of drudgery.
That’s not the life God wants for his people. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. But if Jesus is your everything, you can find joy even in hardship, even in suffering, even in sorrow, even in pain.
What are you seeking?
Is Jesus your chief love and the thing that matters most to you?
Do you want to worship Jesus as your Lord and savior or do you think he’s a genie who will grant wishes?
As we continue in verse 38, we see their response. Jesus had asked “what are you seeking?”
They respond to the question with a question
And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), where are you staying?”
They don’t answer the question.
As they try to follow Jesus, perhaps it’s too difficult to spell out exactly what they’re seeking but they ask where he’s staying in the hopes of being with him and being able to talk to him and be in his presence.
He said to them, “Come and you will see.”
Jesus invites them in. He invites them into a relationship. He invites everyone into a relationship, into knowing him.
“Come and you will see.”
Thanks for reading! If you liked this post, please share and subscribe. This post is part of a series where I am looking verse by verse at the Gospel of John.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. 2 For if you refuse to let them go and still hold them, 3 behold, the hand of the Lord will fall with a very severe plague upon your livestock that are in the field, the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds, and the flocks. 4 But the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, so that nothing of all that belongs to the people of Israel shall die.” ’ ”
5 And the Lord set a time, saying, “Tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land.” 6 And the next day the Lord did this thing. All the livestock of the Egyptians died, but not one of the livestock of the people of Israel died. 7 And Pharaoh sent, and behold, not one of the livestock of Israel was dead. But the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go.
8 And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Take handfuls of soot from the kiln, and let Moses throw them in the air in the sight of Pharaoh. 9 It shall become fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and become boils breaking out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt.” 10 So they took soot from the kiln and stood before Pharaoh. And Moses threw it in the air, and it became boils breaking out in sores on man and beast. 11 And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils came upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians.
12 But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had spoken to Moses.
Introduction
We’re continuing in Exodus this morning, and we’re in a section that looks at a series of ten plagues which were brought upon the Egyptians when Pharaoh refused the Egyptians permission to leave Egypt as the Lord had commanded.
Last week we look at plagues two, three, and four.
This week, we look at the next two plagues.
One thing I’d like to say at the beginning. On a personal note…
I love Exodus. I love these passages. It’s my favorite book of the Old Testament.
And part of why I love these passages is because we see these pictures, and on the one hand, they’re such extreme situations. But at the same time, they’re also very applicable.
Because while it was a long time ago and while it was in a different part of the world in a different culture, people are still people. Faith is still faith. Sin is still sin. And God is still God.
And so while it can all seem so far off and far removed from us, one thing that we see over and over in the Exodus is that we’re really not so different from people of the past.
At the outset, I want to highlight the commentary of Philip Ryken on Exodus which I’ve found especially helpful with this ninth chapter of Exodus.
And so we’ll begin with the fifth plague.
Fifth plague: plague on livestock
Verses 1-4:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. 2 For if you refuse to let them go and still hold them, 3 behold, the hand of the Lord will fall with a very severe plague upon your livestock that are in the field, the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds, and the flocks.
4 But the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, so that nothing of all that belongs to the people of Israel shall die.” ’
In the preceding four plagues, we had seen times where Pharaoh was warned.
We had seen times when he had agreed to free the Israelites, until to renege.
But God gives another warning when Moses tells Pharaoh that if he does not release the Israelites, there will be a plague upon his livestock.
Verse 2 into 3 says: if you refuse to let them go and still hold them, 3 behold, the hand of the Lord will fall with a very severe plague upon your livestock
The verse says that the hand of the Lord will cause a severe plague.
It’s noteworthy that in chapter 8, when the Lord brings a plague of gnats, that is the first plague that Pharaoh’s magicians are unable to recreate and they tell Pharaoh this is the finger of God. (Exodus 8:19).
And here, the Lord says that it will be from his hand that this plague comes.
There does seem to be an intensification of these plagues.
This fifth plague is the first plague that brings death.
There have been plagues where death is a result. For instance, fish die when the Nile is turned to blood in the first plague. But the plague was primarily the Nile turning to blood. Or to give another example, during the second plague when there’s an infestation of frogs, the frogs ultimately die.
But the entire purpose of this fifth plague is that it brings death.
And it also foreshadows the death which will happen in the last plague when God strikes dead the firstborn of all of the Egyptians.
That the early plagues were very severe and significant, but they were largely nuisances.
But here, the stakes are getting upped.
The ESV calls this a severe plague.
Some translations will use the word pestilence.
The King James Version uses the term “murrain,” which is not a common word in modern English but refers to an infectious disease.
We don’t know specifically what this plague was, but it does seem to be some zoonotic disease, or multiple diseases which were to cause death among Egyptian livestock.
The passage says:
a very severe plague upon your livestock that are in the field, the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds, and the flocks
So this plague will be wide ranging in its impact.
It will impact the food supplies, it will impact the economy.
I made this point last week, but one of the common things that we see in the plagues is a lot of language which mirrors the creation account in Genesis.
Genesis talks of the Lord’s orderly creation.
The plagues are an orderly un-creation.
In Genesis, man is given charge over the animals.
Genesis 1:26:
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
But here, the livestock is taken away.
Something else that’s noteworthy compared to the other plagues. As I’ve mentioned, many of them are in direct confrontation to Egypt’s pantheon of deities.
Among other things, the Egyptians believed that their creator God Ptah embodied a bull named Apis and that Apis was an intermediary between humanity and the Egyptian pantheon.
The Egyptians would actually keep a live bull in the temple at Memphis which was worshipped. When those bulls died, they were given funerary rights similar to what a Pharaoh was given.
The fact that the bull was such a significant symbol of the divine and of communication with God makes it interesting that shortly after the Israelites were freed from the land of Egypt, when things weren’t going their way, in Exodus 32, in their frustration, they make a golden calf.
There were also other Egyptian deities who could be associated with horns and other cow-like features.
But here in this fifth plague, the livestock of Egypt are under attack.
Continuing in our passage.
Verse 4, as we had seen last week in the fourth plague, the Lord says that he will spare the Israelites from the destructiveness of this plague.’
Verses 5-6:
5 And the Lord set a time, saying, “Tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land.” 6 And the next day the Lord did this thing. All the livestock of the Egyptians died, but not one of the livestock of the people of Israel died.
Something that’s worth nothing in this verse.
The passage says in verse 2 that the plague will be upon the livestock that are in the field.
Verse 6 says when the plague happened all the livestock of the Egyptians died.
Does it mean literally every single animal that belonged to any Egyptian died? I don’t think the text supports that because later plagues will make references to Egyptian livestock.
So either the word “all” there is hyperbole and simply means “a lot of the livestock died.”
For my sensibilities, such a rendering doesn’t bother me. It’s possible that this is what it means.
Or perhaps it means all livestock that was in the fields, because those were the animals who were contracting diseases from each other.
Or perhaps it means all kinds of livestock saw death, but is not meant to be taken as exhaustively referring to every single animals.
The ultimate point is pointing us to the vastness of the destruction.
7 And Pharaoh sent, and behold, not one of the livestock of Israel was dead. But the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go.
Verse 7 is very subtle.
Pharaoh sent.
That’s almost awkwardly worded in English.
It can be easy to overlook because it’s just two words.
The plague has been inflicted. Egyptian livestock have died.
And Pharaoh sent.
What that means is that Pharaoh sent people to investigate the conditions in the Israelite territory in the Land of Goshen.
It’s also ironic.
Because in the Hebrew, the word “sent” is used twice in this passage. At the beginning when talking about letting the Israelites go – sending them out. And here in verse 7, where it talks of how Pharaoh sent people to investigate Israel.
In other words, he sent his people to investigate the Israelites, but he did not send the Israelites into the wilderness, as he had been commanded.
So Pharaoh sends people to scout out Goshen and sees that the Israelites did not suffer the same consequences that the Egyptians had.
Application – a time for choosing
Philip Ryken has a helpful observation on this situation as Pharaoh’s investigation.
And what Ryken gets at is the idea that there can be a time and place for healthy skepticism and questioning. Especially for someone who is not a Chrisitan or who does not believe in God.
There can be a time to investigate the claims of Chrsitianity, to look into the person of Jesus, the evidence for his historical ministry, the evidence for the resurrection, and a number of other topics in the Bible.
But there also becomes a time to trust, a time to believe.
I had a friend in seminary. I’ve tried to get in touch with him over the years, but unsuccessfully.
I don’t think he’s walking with the Lord today.
Brilliant guy.
One of the few people I’ve ever known who I will not hesitate to acknowledge that I know he’s smarter than me.
And he had had a church background before seminary.
But it hadn’t been the healthiest church that he had grown up in and he had a lot of questions, and he had a lot of things he wanted to figure out.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with questions.
But for some people, the questions never stop.
And it’s like you have to have it all figured out before you can believe.
You will never get there.
More than a century ago, mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead and philosopher Betreand Russell wrote their famous book Principia Mathematica – Principles of Mathematics.
In establishing the basic axioms and proofs of math, they famously took 379 pages to get to their definitive proof that 1+1+2.
We can’t explain the whole world before we can live in it. We can’t know everything about God before we can believe in him.
There’s a time to question but then there comes a time to believe.
Pharaoh continues to be given evidence but continues to disobey.
We come to the sixth plague.
Sixth plague: boils
Similar to what we had seen from the third plague, this one comes with no warning. Beginning in verse 8:
8 And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Take handfuls of soot from the kiln, and let Moses throw them in the air in the sight of Pharaoh. 9 It shall become fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and become boils breaking out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt.” 10 So they took soot from the kiln and stood before Pharaoh. And Moses threw it in the air, and it became boils breaking out in sores on man and beast.
Boils.
Just as a reminder from what we’ve seen in these plagues.
Plagues of the ecosystem when the river is turned to blood and the frogs are driven from the river.
We’ve seen plagues which caused nuisances such as the gnats and flies.
We’ve seen plagues that impact the animal kingdom such as the death of the livestock.
And now we see physical suffering with this plague of boils.
It’s some sort of skin disease.
Various conditions such as leprosy, smallpox, and skin anthrax have all been suggested as possible causes.
Whatever it is, it’s undoubtedly unpleasant.
Moses is told to take handfuls of soot from the kilns and to throw them in the air.
Bricks without straw
There is irony in that. In Exodus 5, Moses first goes to Pharaoh with the command to let the Israelites go into the wilderness in order to have a feast to God in the wilderness.
Pharaoh goes out of his way to punish the Israelites and make their lives just a little bit more difficult.
Exodus 5:6-8:
6 The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, 7 “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as in the past; let them go and gather straw for themselves. 8 But the number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them, you shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle.
Straw was used in the brick making process because it helped add some stability to the bricks and also helped with the drying process.
Apparently, the Israelite brickmakers had been given straw but when Moses asked Pharaoh to allow them into the wilderness, as a punishment, Pharaoh made them get their own straw without reducing their quota of bricks.
Now when we come to our passage in chapter 9, the residue from those bricks that the Israelites had been forced to make is taken from the kiln and thrown into the air and the Lord uses that to bring a judgement upon the Egyptians.
This sixth plague inflicts both man and beast.
As we’ve seen in other plagues, this one takes aim at the religion of Egypt.
The Egyptians had several deities associated with healing, and yet here the Egyptians are afflicted with boils but not upon the Israelites.
11 And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils came upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians. 12 But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had spoken to Moses.
Once again, we see a scene which is almost comical.
The magicians are the people who had recreated the first two plagues.
The plague of gnats, they could not duplicate.
The third and fourth plagues, they didn’t even try to do.
And now we’re at a plague of boils, and they’re in so much pain that they can’t even stand up in front of Moses.
They’re totally ineffective.
It’s also a play on words with verse 10 which says that Moses and Aaron took soot from the kiln and stood before Pharaoh.
But the magicians cannot stand before Moses.
It’s true physically, and it’s also true Spiritually.
They and their false gods have been totally defeated.
Pluralism
In our day and age, pluralism is the flavor of the month.
We like to affirm what others believe and treat other ideas like they’re all equally valid.
But we cannot do that when it comes to faith.
Yes, we must always be courteous, and loving, and gracious.
But we cannot compromise on what we believe.
We can be loving but also lovers of truth..
I made this point last week, but for the various sentiments that people give about religion of “no faith is any more true than any other” or “all roads lead to god” or “all religions are basically teaching the same thing.
All throughout the Exodus, we’re seeing the Lord God and the fake gods of the Egyptian pantheon and it’s again and again pointing us that the Lord is true and that the Egyptian religion was false.
But that’s true today for any competing religion.
When people say that no religion is any more true than any other or that all religions are equally valid, that is making an absolute statement about the religions of the world.
That’s not open minded. It’s arrogant.
If there is one thing that all religions agree on it’s that they’re not all the same as every other religion.
Throughout the Exodus, the Lord is showing himself to be true.
Throughout the history of his people in the Old Testament, God showed himself to be true.
Through the ministry of Christ, God has shown himself to be true and for his promises to be true.
Through the resurrection of Jesus, God has shown himself to be faithful.
And God has been faithful to his church for almost 2,000 years. God has been faithful to change lives. God has been faithful to bless his church and to bless the ministry of the gospel as it has gone throughout the world.
It says in our passage that the magicians couldn’t stand. I take that both literally and figuratively.
That they couldn’t stand because of the painful boils, but that they also could’t stand up to the Lord.
Similarly to what the Psalmist says in Psalm 1.
Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
4 The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
Psalm 1 contrasts the person who delights in the Law of God against he person who does not.
And in verse 5 says that the wicked will not stand in judgment.
And the point of that is that the wicked have nothing to stand on before a holy God.
And Pharaoh’s magicians cannot stand a they’re afflicted by this plague, because they are in sin and are opposing God.
We cannot stand before to a holy God.
But the good news of the gospel is that we have someone who could, because he was the Son of God, he was righteous, he was sinless, he was holy, he was God himself, the word of God who became flesh.
Jesus.
While we are fallen, he is gracious and allows us to be forgiven and to go into the presence of the Lord.
That’s the good news of the gospel.
That when we believe in Jesus,
the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:10-11).
Thanks for listening! I hope this sermon blessed you.
John the Baptist came to point to Christ, to witness to Christ, to be the bridge between BC and AD.
In John 1:29, John the Baptist sees Jesus.
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
It’s very possible that John himself did not realize the full magnitude of what he was even saying when he uttered those words.
But it’s impossible for a Christian to miss the meaning. Behold, John commands. Look to Jesus. Look upon the lamb who takes away the sins of the world. A profound theological statement about Jesus and what he did.
Sacrifice and the lamb
Jesus is the perfect and spotless lamb who is sacrificed for sins. It’s a theme that we will see throughout John’s Gospel.
Many of the Old Testament sacrifices call for a lamb. Isaiah 53 has a passage of the suffering servant and talks of a perfect lamb being led to slaughter. There’s the Passover sacrifice where the Israelites scarified lambs before the Exodus and where it was an annual holy day.
And here Jesus is called the Lamb of God.
The ultimate and greater sacrifice. He’s the lamb who takes away the sins of the world. It’s not that sin is just written off or no longer matters. Just the opposite. Sin matters a great deal but it is Jesus who takes away sin, takes away the penalty for our sins.
He takes away the sins of the world. That’s not saying that he takes away the sins of every individual person. John talks about “the world” several times in his gospel and other writings. It is Jesus who bears the penalty for a fallen humanity and for everyone who believes in him.
John the Baptist continues speaking in verse 30: This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.
This is similar to verse 15. There John said: ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’
And what John is doing is looking back at his early prophesy, as pointing to one who was greater than him and he sees Jesus, and he says “this is that man.” John gets at his specific purpose.
Verse 31: I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.”
Where John says he did not know Jesus, don’t get too caught up in that. The point isn’t that John the Baptist literally did not know Jesus but that he did not previously know Jesus for who he was: the promised messiah. John was called to baptize so that the savior of the world would be revealed. That’s not primarily about John, it’s about the Lord and the divine plan.
John’s call to repentance, John as the voice of one in the wilderness, John as a witness to Jesus, all of this was part of the divine plan for John’s ministry and purpose in the world as the forerunner to Jesus.
Verse 32: And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”
This is referring to when Jesus was baptized.
All four gospels agree that John was a witness to the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus. The Holy Spirit is another significant theme of the Gospel of John. Jesus promises to give the Holy Spirit to his believers in John chapters 14, 15, and 16.
In the Old Testament, there were passages that talked of the Spirit being with God’s anointed one.
Isaiah 42:1:
Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
There are others, but just to give a sense of it. John sees that moment. We see Jesus: fully God and fully man having the Spirit descend on him. I used to think “why would Jesus need the Holy Spirit when he’s God?
But I was asking the wrong question. “Why wouldn’t Jesus need the Holy Spirit?”
All three persons of the Trinity are God. All three of them work in perfect unity. They are all equal in eternity, holiness, glory, and power.Again, Jesus is both fully God and fully man, but it is because he is fully man that he needs the Spirit.
And just as he enjoyed fellowship with God during this ministry, because Jesus is also fully God, it makes sense that Jesus would likewise enjoy the fellowship of the Spirit during his ministry.
John sees this moment. He’s a witness to the Spirit descending upon Jesus. And John says in the text that He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’
The same Spirit who filled Jesus during his ministry is given to all people because of Jesus’ ministry. The Spirit equips us with gifts, convicts us of sin, sanctifies us to God.
Romans 8:16 says that the Spirit bears witness that we are children of God.
The Spirit bears witness to those who believe. The one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than John the Baptist. Because we’re blessed to have more of the story.
We have the risen lamb.
Believe in the lamb. Turn away from sin. Point others to him.
Final thought
John the Baptist had a ministry to do for a time in history.
He was not perfect. He was just a man. He lived a shorter life than Jesus. Much of his life was spent in seclusion.But he was faithful.
Yes, we don’t have the ministry that John the Baptist had.
He had a once in history ministry. He was the forerunner to Jesus.
But just because someone has a different ministry or a different way to serve, that doesn’t mean that the ways you can serve the Lord are insignificant. No one would know who John the Baptist was without Jesus. Jesus is the thing that gives relevance and meaning to his life.
But for anyone who’s a follower of Jesus, that’s the case. It’s Jesus who gives meaning. John’s ministry was to point people to Jesus. But that’s the ministry in which every follower of Jesus still shares in.
Pointing people to Jesus in word and deed. Following where the Lord leads. Walking in faith. Standing up for the truth of God.
Those things are a call which all Christians share.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus talks of John the Baptist and says:
I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he” (Luke 7:28).
No one before John was greater than he.
Yet Jesus says that for those who come after, the one who is least in the Kingdom of God is greater. The reason isn’t because we have anything great in ourselves.
It’s because we have a fuller picture of who Jesus is and a fuller picture of God’s revelation to the world.
John did have a once in history ministry to fulfill but he didn’t live long enough to see the fruition of Jesus’ ministry. He never heard about the resurrection or saw the risen Christ.
What are you doing to serve the Lord today? It can be tempting to think that we don’t have what it takes to serve God.It’s not about your own abilities and your own power. John the Baptist was an effective minister without a lot of resources.
You don’t have to have a lot of money to serve God faithfully. John the Baptist certainly did not have that. He came from the wilderness. Other gospels tell us that John wore a garment made of camel’s hair.
You don’t have to have all of the degrees and credentials. John the Baptist didn’t have that….he came. from. the wilderness.
You might think you’re too old. John the Baptist had a ministry that was shorter than Jesus’s. His public ministry was incredibly short lived. You don’t have to have decades of ministry to have a ministry that matters.
You just have to follow the Lord, to love the Lord, to serve the Lord.
What are you doing to serve the Lord? What are you living for?
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25 Seven full days passed after the Lord had struck the Nile.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. 2 But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with frogs. 3 The Nile shall swarm with frogs that shall 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 kneading bowls. 4 The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your servants.” ’ ”
5 And the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Stretch out your hand with your staff over the rivers, over the canals and over the pools, and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt!’ ” 6 So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. 7 But the magicians did the same by their secret arts and made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.
8 Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, “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.” 9 Moses said to Pharaoh, “Be pleased to command me when I am to plead for you 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.” 10 And he said, “Tomorrow.” Moses said, “Be it as you say, so that you may know that there is no one like the Lord our God. 11 The frogs shall go away from you and your houses and your servants and your people. They shall be left only in the Nile.”
12 So Moses and Aaron went out from Pharaoh, and Moses cried to the Lord about the frogs, as he had agreed with Pharaoh. 13 And the Lord did according to the word of Moses. The frogs died out in the houses, the courtyards, and the fields. 14 And they gathered them together in heaps, and the land stank. 15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
Prayer
14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
Introduction
We’re continuing in Exodus this morning.
In the Book of Exodus, God has chosen to redeem the Israelites from Egyptian slavery but when the king of Egypt refuses to let his people go, the Lord brings a series of judgments on Egypt.
Last week, we looked at the first of those ten plagues.
Today as we cover chapter 8, we look at the next three plagues.
And for most of the month of October, Lord willing, we’ll be looking at these sections in Exodus.
And with that brief introduction, we’re going to jump right back into the text this morning.
We will be looking at the second, third, and fourth plagues which are all found in Exodus 8.
Second plague: frogs
Chapter 7 ends with the first plague where the Lord turns the waters of the Nile River red. The last verse of chapter 7 says:
25 Seven full days passed after the Lord had struck the Nile.
So it gives us a little indication of time.
Now we don’t have those notes with all of the plagues.
Someone asked me a very good question: “how long did these plagues last?”
We don’t know for certain.
Jewish tradition holds that the ten plagues lasted about a year. Some scholars believed they lasted for a few months.
But ultimately, we don’t know for sure.
But even if it was a few months, considering how these were wreaking havoc, it probably felt like a much longer period of time.
So examining this second plague.
Chapter 8, verses 1-2, the Lord sends Moses to warn Pharaoh:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. 2 But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with frogs.
Next, the conditions of this plague are noted.
Verses 3-4:
3 The Nile shall swarm with frogs that shall 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 kneading bowls. 4 The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your servants.” ’ ”
So in the first plague, we saw the Nile itself as the source of where the plague would strike.
Here the plague will be something that comes from the Nile River.
And as a reminder, the Nile was really the lifeblood of Egyptian life. They depended on it for their drinking water. It was the source of water that they used for agriculture. Egypt gets very little rainfall. The main source of river water for the Nile comes from further south in Africa during the monsoon season and then flows up into Egypt.
And so the first two plagues are both plagues of water.
And Pharaoh is told that these frogs are going to be everywhere.
A swarm of frogs. And that word “swarm” in the Hebrew is the same word that is used in Genesis 1 in creation.
Example, Genesis 1:20:
20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.”
In the plagues, there is actually a lot of language that refers back to creation. Because for the Egyptians in their rebellion, the plagues are an uncreation.
That passage says that they’ll be in Pharaoh’s bedroom, on his bed, and into the homes of his people, even their ovens and kneading bowls will have frogs hopping out of them.
It’s almost comical. It probably wasn’t for the Egyptians and the Israelites, but everywhere you look, there’s just frogs hopping out.
And ribetting!
It’s also significant that the text mentions frogs will be in Pharaoh’s bedroom.
The two Hebrew words used there which the ESV translates bedroom are found together only five times in the Old Testament.
In four of the five instances – including our passage this morning – it’s a passage which is talking about the vulnerability of a king, even in his own bedroom, a place you would think would be as secure and protected as any in his kingdom. But even the place where the king sleeps can be under threat.
Pharaoh might be the king. He might have a lot of political powers, societal powers.
But at the end of the day, he’s just a man.
What’s the thing that makes you feel most secure?
It’s really amazing how quickly the facades of the things that give us security can be gone.
Meditation – losing everything
I was reading this week about female judges in Afghanistan. The danger that they’re in. How quickly, in just a few weeks, their lives have been totally turned upside down. On the run, in hiding, in danger. Bank accounts frozen. Totally dependent upon others right now.
Security can be taken away.
Some of us can rely on our money. That can be taken away.
I had a relative who was the CFO of a company. The CEO had embezzled money which was supposed to go for things like payroll taxes. The CEO ended up going to prison. While my family member hadn’t done anything illegal, CFO’s do have certain legal liabilities and he was financially held accountable.
A person who had exercised integrity for a lifetime and worked hard for a lifetime paid dearly for someone else’s crime and had almost all of his assets liquidated when he died.
For some, that’s where our hope is. And it can be taken away.
For some, we can want to rely on our health.
I remember starting off at a restaurant job a few years back. In our new employee orientation, they had us fill out a questionnaire. One of the questions was something like “what’s the most important thing to you?”
I said faith.
Our manager also answered the questions. And though he had a wife and kids, said that the most important thing to him was nutrition.
Priorities.
Well you can be the healthiest person in the world. You can do it all right.
And still get cancer.
The person who popularized jogging as a fitness activity in the 1980s died of a heart attack while jogging.
I think of powerful people. I’ve always been struck that much of Ronald Reagan’s post-presidency, he was dealing with the effects of Alzheimer’s disease. I’ve always thought of what that must have been like for his family and secret service agents. You’re interacting with a man who had been the most powerful man in the world but who was ailing, aging, and undoubtedly came to a point where he couldn’t even remember the substantial and historical life that he had led.
No matter how powerful a person is, they still die.
Life is fleeting.
And whatever we want to put our security in, if it’s not the Lord, we will lose it. It will not sustain us. It will not protect us.
It’s interesting. We live in a time when there’s so much we can seem to control.
So much of human history was and is a battle against the elements. But in the comfort of our own homes, we get to decide the temperature.
Our basic needs are met.
We have modern medicine. We aren’t starving.
We have options over entertainment.
We have mobility and freedom about where we choose to live. Something else that has been the exception throughout much of human history.
We have options about what we do for employment. We aren’t surfs. We aren’t bound to be somewhere or do something we don’t want to do.
We have so many options and choices in our society.
And so it’s easy to feel like we have so much control of our own lives. It’s easy to look at all of our forms of security we surround ourselves with.
Yet life is so fragile that all of us can have our world’s turned upside down at any moment by a phone call about someone we love, or our own health. Or an accident can happen and totally change everything.
And the one constant, the one thing you are guaranteed to have is a faithful God.
And so let us as Christians not forget that God is all we ultimately need.
In Psalm 46, the Psalmist says:
1 God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah
6 The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
10 “Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”
Everything can be collapsing.
But nothing is ultimately meant to sustain us but God.
And so Pharaoh is warned that even in his own room, in his sanctuary, the frogs will be there.
They will be everywhere.
In verse 5, Moses is told by the Lord to tell Aaron to stretch his staff over the waters and the frogs inundate the land.
Something that perhaps added insult to injury is that the Egyptians believed in a fertility goddess named Heket.
Heket is depicted as having the body of a woman but the head of a frog.
It’s ironic when you remember that in Exodus 1, Pharaoh had ordered midwives to kill the newborn Israelite males.
And here it’s almost a mockery of Egypt’s own fertility goddess as the lands are overwhelmed by frogs.
Verses 6-7:
6 So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. 7 But the magicians did the same by their secret arts and made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.
We’ve previously seen this a couple other times.
Pharaoh’s magicians have been able to recreate the signs.
We don’t know how.
For the first plague, when the Nile River was turned to blood and the magicians also did the same thing to water, Pharaoh seemed to use that as a justification to not believe in the miracle he had just witnessed.
But in verse 8, Pharaoh’s response is striking.
8 Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, “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.”
Even though his magicians could do the same thing, he realizes that there is divine power at work.
He tells Moses to plead with God to take the frogs away and says that he will allow the Egyptians to leave to make sacrifices.
Just as a reminder, at the beginning of Exodus 5, when Pharaoh is first given the command to release the Israelites, Pharaoh says:
Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.”
But here Pharaoh is finally forced to acknowledge the power of God.
Even after his magicians had done the same miracle.
Because the fact that the magicians can copy the miracle is not as important as the fact that they cannot undo the miracle.
God shows his power in the Exodus just as much from his ability to stop the plagues as he does to start them.
9 Moses said to Pharaoh, “Be pleased to command me when I am to plead for you 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.”
So Pharaoh has just told Moses to ask God to make it stop.
And Moses is like “just tell me when.”
God is that powerful.
Moses and Aaron bring this before the Lord. The plague ceases.
Yet Pharaoh does not uphold his end of the bargain.
Verse 15:
15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
Pharaoh reneges on the deal.
It’s the first time he does this in the plagues, but it won’t be the last.
Third plague: gnats
16 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 gnats in all the land of Egypt.’ ”
No warning on this plague.
In the first two plagues, Pharaoh had been warned. But after he reneges on his promise to free the Isratelites, they are immediately stricken with this third plague.
Couple notes on this third plague.
The least amount of Biblical space is given to this third plague.
It’s the first plague that does not involve water. Instead, Aaron is instructed to take his staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats in all the land of Egypt
We again see creation language here. In creaton, God makes man from the dust of the earth. When he makes his covenant promise with Abrham, he promises in Genesis 13:16 that his offspring will be so numerous that they will be like the dust of the earth.
But in the plagues, God makes gnats from the dust of the earth.
In this plague, we also see a difference of ecosystem. No longer does the plague come from the water but from the dust of the earth.
Something else to consider. The ESV and most English translations use the word gnats. It’s also the word that the earliest Greek translations of the Old Testament used, which predate Jesus, so those go back a ways.
King James uses the word lice.
In the Hebrew, there can be different meanings here. It’s some sort of small winged creature that causes a nuisance.
And bugs can be a nuisance.
And whatever bugs these are, it probably doesn’t help that the frogs and fish are all dead, who would normally help to somewhat control insect populations.
Mosquitoes
I think of when I used to live in Minnesota. There’s a joke in Minnesota that the mosquito is the state bird. Minnesota is known as the land of 10,000 lakes. The county that we lived in by itself had over 1,000 lakes. Water everywhere. Which meant in the summertime that there were misquotes everywhere.
They could be unbearable. Minnesota is the only place I’ve ever been that I’ve had a mosquito land on top of clothing and bite me through it. You get to late summer and you start hoping for a couple of cold nights just to kill them off.
The bug game
There’s a famous baseball game from 2007. It was game 2 of the American League Division Series and featured the Cleveland Indians hosting the New York Yankees. In the 8th inning, leading 1-0, a swarm of midges – which are tiny mosquito like insects – flew off of Lake Erie and onto the field. They also swarmed the pitcher’s mound.
Play had to be stopped while players could be sprayed down with bug spray. But with a 1-0 lead, the midges got to Yankee relief pitcher Joba Chamberlain. The infestation seemed to clearly impact Chamberlain’s accuracy as he threw two wild pitches, walked two and blew the save.
The Indains would go on to win the game and the series.
Infestations of bugs can be disruptive.
And in Exodus, from the dust of the earth, we see this miraculous sign of the infestation of gnats.
Verse 17:
17 And they did so. Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and there were gnats on man and beast. All the dust of the earth became gnats in all the land of Egypt.
So the plagues are affecting both people and animals.
Something else that’s important to keep in mind.
These first three plagues are also impacting the Israelites.
They’re a judgment against Egypt, but the Israelites are dealing with these plagues as well.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says in Matthew 5:45:
he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
It rains on the saint and the sinner.
Now in later plagues, God will start to spare Israel.
But there’s no promise in life that as Christians we will be insulated from the same difficulties as the rest of the world.
Christians also live in places that suffer from natural disasters. We aren’t in a bubble and protected from them.
Christians get the same diseases that the rest of the world gets. Christians face layoffs.
Christians suffer injustice, abuse, assault, and death.
Because even though we’re God’s people and we are righteous in Christ and redeemed because of the gospel, the world is still fallen.
Romans 8:22-23 says:
22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
The impacts of sin are cosmic and global.
But as we said in our first point, the bedrock of our lives is meant to be God.
The cynic looks at the faithful person who suffers and calls them a fool for their faith. Asks why they believe in a God who wouldn’t spare them from various sufferings.
The person of true faith knows that the greatest thing that God can give is himself.
And that though we live on in a fallen world, that we have God. We have his promises.. We have the means of communication with him through prayer. We have the means of experiencing and growing with him through the Holy Spirit. We have the opportunity to serve him through his church. We have the opportunity to worship him, to enjoy fellowship.
We have the opportunity to live abundantly in him.
So yes, because the world is fallen, we are still affected by that. But because we have God, we can overcome that. God is greater than our circumstances. He’s greater than our challenges.
I touched on this in the last plague, but we feel like we have so much control over our lives, and my concern is that it can make us feel like our circumstances are king.
But one of the things that truly befuddles the world is that sometimes the times of greatest struggle, greatest suffering, greatest pain, greatest need can be the times where we have the greatest experience of God and knowing him.
And so through these first three plagues, the Israelites are exposed to the same difficult circumstances of the Egyptians.
18 The magicians tried by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they could not. So there were gnats on man and beast. 19 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 the Lord had said.
This is the first of the plagues that the magicians are not able to recreate.
As Pharaoh came to the edges of acknowledging God, so too must the magicians.
But that doesn’t mean that they become believers.
We can know something about God but that doesn’t mean we’re a follower of him.
God doesn’t want vague acknowledgement.
He wants committed followers who believe and trust in Jesus.
These passages don’t give us any “you believe what you want, and I’ll believe what I want.” This passage doesn’t give us “all roads lead to God.”
There is truth and falsity.
Fourth plague. Flies.
Something that’s noteworthy is that when you look back to the second plague, ultimately it says that the frogs died.
The text never tells us that the third plague ended, so it’s possible that it persisted and while future plagues are happening, the Egyptians are still dealing with gnats.
Fourth plague: flies
So for the third plague, the Lord brought it without warning.
Fourth plague, Pharaoh is warned again. Similar to the first plague, Moses is told to get up early in the morning and go to Pharaoh and warn him.
The end of verse 20 into verse 23 says:
Thus says the Lord, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. 21 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, and into your houses. And the houses of the Egyptians shall be filled with swarms of flies, and also the ground on which they stand. 22 But on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, where my people dwell, so that no swarms of flies shall be there, that you may know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth. 23 Thus I will put a division between my people and your people. Tomorrow this sign shall happen.”
Again Pharaoh is told to let the people go so that they can serve the Lord.
Swarms of flies is the threatened plague.
Similar to the previous plague, the word “flies” in the Hebrew can mean more than one type of winged insect.
I think when we hear of flies, we immediately think of the house fly.
That’s possible. And a plague of house flies would be miserable. One fly in a room is enough to put even the nicest person on a mission to kill.
Others have suggested various types of beetles might have been in mind.
The Greek translation associated this fly with dog flies, which are a type of fly found in Egypt which bite and suck blood.
Ultimately it’s another incredible nuisance.
Unique features of this fourth plague.
It’s noteworthy that the first two plagues come from the water. The third plague takes the dust of the earth to create gnats. And the fourth plague is flies.
So water, earth, and now air. God has used all of these classical elements to exact judgement and show his divine power.
It’s also noteworthy that the Lord is working through smaller means. We saw it in the last plague with gnats and here we again see it with flies. The Lord can use the big things such as weather and nature. But he is also powerful over the small things.
He’s God on the macro and the micro level.
This plague highlights the power of God in that he can localize the plagues.
It’s also the first of the plagues where the Israelites are spared. I talked in the last plague about how God’s people suffer as the rest of the world suffers. And to this point, the Israelites had as well.
But God shows his favor for the Isreaelites by sparing their lands from this plague and all subsequent plagues.
It shows God’s grace. And it shows that God has a distinct people. It’s a theme throughout the Bible. There is a people of God. In the Old Testament, we rightly associate that with Israel. Although if you read in the Exodus, there are clearly people with the Israelites who are not ethnically Jewish. So there were those who were joining the Israelites.
In the New Testament, we have a savior who has grace that is less focused on one nation, and is extended through his followers to advance his gospel to people of every tribe, and tongue, and nation.
So the Israelites are spared from the wrath in the plagues going forward.
For this plague, it doesn’t even make reference to Pharaoh’s magicians attempting to replicate it.
Pharaoh is ready to make a deal with Moses.
Verse 25:
25 Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, “Go, sacrifice to your God within the land.”
Now if you’re not paying close attention, that can seem like Pharaoh is making a significant concession.
But he isn’t.
Pharaoh was called to surrender and to allow the Israelites into the wilderness to worship the Lord. He tries to negotiate. Tries to bargain. Says that they can worship within the land of Egypt.
Sometimes we try to hold back from God.
Sometimes when God is asking us to give up something, when God is asking us to do something, we try to play games and negotiate.
What do we do when we feel that the Lord is calling us to something difficult? When we’re challenged?
Do you have an area in your life right now where you’re holding back from God?
It might be different things for different people.
It might be something with how you use your time. But you’d have to have less time for another activity or hobby you enjoy.
It might be with investing in a relationship with someone, but justifying why you don’t because you don’t have the time, or assuming they probably already know the gospel, or they might think you’re weird, or they’d never want to talk about that.
It can be something you’ve felt God calling you to for awhile and you keep holding back.
Pharaoh was very far from God. He couldn’t bring himself to surrender to God.
But so often, even as Chrsitians, we struggle to do that too.
Pharaoh offers that they make sacrifices in the land.
Verses 26 and 27, Moses explains why that wouldn’t be right. They’re in Egypt. They need to ultimately be obedient to what the Lord has commanded, and it would also be an offense to the Egyptians to do their religious practices in Egypt.
The final five verses of this chapter.
28 So Pharaoh said, “I will let you go to sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness; only you must not go very far away. Plead for me.” 29 Then Moses said, “Behold, I am 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. Only let not Pharaoh cheat again by not letting the people go to sacrifice to the Lord.” 30 So Moses went out from Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord. 31 And the Lord did as Moses asked, and removed the swarms of flies from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people; not one remained. 32 But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and did not let the people go.
Once again, as we saw in the second plague, Pharaoh permits the Egyptians to leave but when the plague is lifted, he reneges on the deal.
And so the cycles continue.
He has paid dearly and suffered greatly, but there will be much more pain to come as Pharaoh continues to resist the will of the Lord.
A plague of frogs, a plague of gnats, a plague of flies.
As I close, I have this simple thought in looking over the plagues of Exodus.
It’s amazing to consider the love that the Lord has for his people and the great lengths that he goes to in order to redeem his people from slavery in Egypt.
God turned the world upside down to free his people.
And on the cross, Jesus turned heaven upside down to redeem us.
In Exodus, we see the lengths God went to in order to free Israel.
At the cross, we see God’s only son dying so that we could be redeemed.
We see Jesus himself, the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity giving up his life so that we could have life.
So as we study these passages, I hope that these are edifying, I hope that these events are interesting, I hope that these messages are informing.
But more than anything else, I pray that they be pointing us to the tremendous love that God has always had for his people.
