If you know the story of Cain and Abel, it’s an infamous passage in the Bible where an older brother takes the life of his younger sibling. Because Cain becomes such an infamous figure, it’s easy to let his reputation precede his story. But when we do that, we miss out on some important nuance to Cain’s story: namely the great hope that was placed in him.
Tag: faith
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East of Eden – Genesis 4:1-16
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Sermon: Crossing the Red Sea. Exodus 14
5 When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people, and they said, “What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?” 6 So he made ready his chariot and took his army with him, 7 and took six hundred chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them.
8 And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly. 9 The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them encamped at the sea, by Pi-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon.
10 When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. 11 They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt?
12 Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” 13 And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”
15 The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. 16 Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.
17 And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen. 18 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.”
19 Then the angel of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them, 20 coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud and the darkness. And it lit up the night without one coming near the other all night.
21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. 22 And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. 23 The Egyptians pursued and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. 24 And in the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, 25 clogging their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily.
And the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from before Israel, for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.”
26 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.” 27 So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the Lord threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. 28 The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained.
29 But the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.
30 Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 31 Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.
Prayer
Our gracious and heavenly Father,
We again come to you in a Spirit of praise and rejoicing. Lord, we continue to pray for our nation and all of the division that we face. Let us continue to honor you with our lives, our thoughts, our deeds. Let us live as living sacrifices to you O Lord.
We pray that you would bless our time in your word.
In Jesus’ name, amen.
Introduction
We’ve actually covered this passage before. About a year and a half ago.
And I had asked myself “should we do it again?”
And for two main reasons, I decided to.
Perhaps most obviously, we’ve been talking about the Exodus and it makes no sense to skip over the most significant event of the entire book of Exodus, when God actually frees the Israelites from Egypt by parting the waters of the Red Sea.
And although we’ve looked at this passage before, it’s still helpful because it’s God’s word. And a good knife cuts more than once.
And with that very limited introduction, we’re going to get right into our passage this morning. And the plan is to cover the crossing of the Red Sea and close by talking about how that points us to the gospel.
And the main idea I want to make this morning: God delivers his people from slavery to freedom.
In chapter 12, God had brought the most severe plague against the Egyptians when he struck dead the firstborn of all the people in Egypt. When that happened, Pharaoh seemed to finally tell the Israelites to leave.
Fast forward to Exodus 14, and the Israelites are being led out of Egypt, but Pharaoh has decided to pursue them.
Now we saw numerous plagues where Pharaoh
Beginning in verse 5:
5 When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people, and they said, “What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?” 6 So he made ready his chariot and took his army with him, 7 and took six hundred chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them.
We see supreme pride and arrogance on display from Pharaoh.
God has continually shown his supremacy and Pharaoh won’t accept it.
Now Egypt had a well-equipped and well-trained army. They have chariots which was the great military technology of that day.
The Israelites are unarmed.
9 The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them encamped at the sea, by Pi-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon.
I think the movie the Ten Commandments actually does a good job of capturing the drama.
The Egyptians are in pursuit of the Israelites.
With all that God had done for the Israelites, how do they respond?
Do they respond in confidence and faith and trust in the Lord?
10 When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. 11 They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt?
The Israelites see the Egyptians coming for them and they’re scared.
They ask if he’s brought them out into the desert to die.
It’s the first time in their wilderness journeys that they’ll complain about the Lord’s goodness towards them. But it won’t be the last.
They lose confidence in what God can do.
Again, it can be easy to be critical of that. But it’s tempting to lose sight of God when an army is coming towards you. It’s temping to lose sight of God when a situation seems hopeless.
It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture of what God is doing, easy to forget what God has done and how he has blessed you.
Moses gives them a powerful word.
13 And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today.
Fear not. The most commonly given command in the Bible.
God had promised where he was bringing the Israelites.
Exodus 3:17, the Lord said to Moses:
and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey
That’s the land to which God had promised Abraham in Genesis.
He promises again in Exodus 6:6 and 6:8.
And after all the plagues, all the wonders that God had done, the Passover where the firstborn of the Egyptians all died and God spared the Israelites.
After all of that, at the beginning of Exodus 13:3-5, the Israelites were told:
3 Then Moses said to the people, “Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you out from this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten. 4 Today, in the month of Abib, you are going out. 5 And when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you shall keep this service in this month
They had again been reminded of where the Lord was bringing them.
God’s promises are trustworthy!
And yet the Israelites fall into fear. The Israelites were in a dire circumstance in the eyes of the world. I think all of us would be tempted to fear too.
But they had the promise of the Lord.
I think fear, stress, worry, and anxiety are extremely common for us in our society.
But so many of the fears we have are not necessarily even about life and death situations. They’re not usually fears where we are in imminent danger.
We so often live in our minds, and dwell on situations and fears.
I can be terrible at this, by the way. So I don’t want to sound condemning.
But the problem is when we do that, and I know some of you know what I’m talking about, we can really go to some irrational places with our fears.
To some extremes that are never going to happen.
I’m not saying we need to be in denial if we’re fearful.
But in the face of fear, let us also respond in gratitude to God for his goodness.
And again, it can be tempting in the face of fear to make up a story for how things could go that is terrible, everything goes wrong, it’s all bad. That type of worry is not productive. It robs us of joy. It wastes time. It distracts us from the promises of God.
God is a good and loving God who has a good plan for his people in the world.
And he had a good plan for Israel.
Let us respond with gratitude, faith, and trust in the Lord in the times where we’re fearful.
The Israelites made a mistake when they jumped to the worst case and lost sight of what God had promised them, lost sight of the wonderful things the Lord had already done for them.
Moses says: stand firm.
We see phrases translated “stand firm” several places in the Bible, especially in Paul’s letters.
In this instance, what it seems to be saying is to stand still. Stand and watch. Look and see.
Especially as Moses continues this thought.
Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” (Exodus 14:13-14)
He was with them. They’d didn’t have to perfectly understand everything. They didn’t have to have control over everything. Again, I think these are temptations that we all face.
Let us look at what the Lord is doing. At what he has done in our lives and in his church.
Verse 15:
15 The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward.
Go forward?
For the Israelites, with Egypt in pursuit, there are only two directions to go.
Towards the army or towards the water…
But it is in that moment that the Lord will do a miracle that the people could never have possibly imagined.
How could they? God does something that has never happened before it. But that’s what God does.
Verses 16-18 preview what God is specifically going to do.
16 Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground. 17 And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen. 18 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.”
God is leading his people. And the Egyptians are going to follow but it won’t go well for them. God delivers his people from slavery to freedom.
Verse 19.
19 Then the angel of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them, 20 coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud and the darkness. And it lit up the night without one coming near the other all night.
God had been leading the Israelites by a pillar of fire. He had been directing them but he had also been protecting Israel.
And it says that the pillar moved before Israel.
But verse 20 also says that it came between the Israelites and the Egyptians.
Some think that the crowd created some sort of darkness or fog around the Egyptians which temporarily prevented them from following the Israelites.
21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided
The waters part.
I think this is the mental image we probably most prominently have with the sea parting. It’s like in the Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston.
It’s not Moses who does this ultimately. It is God, literally parting the water for his people to cross.
22 And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.
What must that have been like for the Israelites?
All of the miracles that God had done. Being brought into the desert. And now they’re walking on dry ground with the parted waters of the sea on either side of them.
Imagine that for a moment.
They had been given an incredible promise. And here it happens.
God delivers his people from slavery to freedom.
The Israelites make it across safely but then the Egyptians start pursuing them. They’re no longer being supernaturally prohibited.
23 The Egyptians pursued and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. 24 And in the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, 25 clogging their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily. And the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from before Israel, for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.”
It’s ironic. The wheels the Egyptians chariots were getting clogged. The chariot was their greatest symbol of military strength, but here it’s a weakness.
The soldiers of Pharaoh want to turn back. They say that God is against them.
26 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.
God had parted the waters. And now the sea is going to be closed back up.
27 So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the Lord threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. 28 The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained.
In verse 30, the story ends.
30 Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 31 Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.The Lord delivers his people from slavery to freedom.
The Egyptian army is defeated without Israel having to fight a war. Israel is now totally and finally and forever free of Egypt.
Gospel in Exodus
And that brings us to our second part which is looking at the gospel in the Exodus.
For the Israelites, God is using this miracle as an instrument of his grace.
The Egyptians were evil. They have not submitted to God. They have persecuted and oppressed the people of God, the Israelites.
And so the miraculous event God used for the redemption of Israel, he used for the downfall of Pharaoh and the judgment of Egypt.
Every person is going to ultimately bring glory to God. Either you will bring him glory through being an example of the grace of the gospel. Or you will bring him glory as the righteous judge.
And that is the beginning of Israel’s exodus. God acting in mighty ways to redeem his people and fulfilling his promises.
There are a number of parallels between the exodus and the gospel.
The Israelites were in slavery in Egypt. We were enslaved to sin and Christ redeemed us.
The Israelites complain and rebel here. That’ll be a continual theme. We continue to struggle and rebel. But for the person who has faith, Jesus continues to be faithful.
God redeemed Israel to bring them to the Promised Land. And God is bringing us into a land too. To a new heaven and a new earth.
Both the exodus and the new covenant of the gospel are commemorated with meals. As we talked about last week, the Passover meal was celebrated annually, as a reminder for God’s deliverance in the exodus event and for him sparing the Israelites. With the gospel, we celebrate the Lord’ Supper, communion which is a reminder of Jesus body that was broken for our sin and his blood that was shed for our sin.
Exodus was in fulfillment of the promises of God to Abraham for land and to Moses for deliverance from slavery. The gospel is fulfillment of God’s promise of providing a Messiah, a king from the Davidic line, a perfect and spotless lamb to be sacrificed, of giving his Spirit to those who have faith.
In both stories, we see victory in a place where it appeared to be defeat. Israel was caught between an army and the sea. It seemed there was no way out. In the gospel, Jesus died on the cross, where it looked like that was the end of Jesus’ ministry, where it appeared that he had been defeated.
For both the Exodus and the gospel, they are entirely acts of God. It was entirely a work of God in freeing his people from slavery in Egypt and it is entirely a workof the Lord in redeeming us from the penalty of sin.
The exodus and the gospel are both stories of intervening in a situation where there was no hope. Egypt between the army and the sea. And we were dead in sin, and hopeless apart from Christ.
Both events are undeniable, indisputable, irrefutable, unimpeachable proof of God’s love. God loved Israel. And God loves you. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have enteral life (John 3:16). God shows his love that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
Thanks for visiting! Have a blessed day
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Erika Kirk offers amazing grace
Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk spoke at his memorial service yesterday in Arizona. Erika Kirk said “On the cross, our savior said “Father forgive them, for they not know what they do. That man, that young man, I forgive him.” She also said “I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and is what Charlie would do.”
It was an incredible moment and an incredible offer of forgiveness.
One illustration of grace that’s always struck me comes from the late Tim Keller. It’s the idea that all forgiveness is costly.
If I go to your house, and I break your TV, someone has to pay for it.
You might say “You have to pay for that.” Then I’m bearing the cost.
You might say “It’s ok, don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.” Then you’re bearing the cost.
Maybe you say, “I bought insurance. That’ll replace it.” Then insurance is bearing the cost. And the homeowner paid for the insurance.
Maybe we come to an agreement where we both pay for part of it. Then we’re sharing the cost.
Maybe you say “I was actually going to stop watching TV.” It’s still bearing the cost of not having the thing that was yours.
In any circumstance, someone must pay. Because all forgiveness is costly. It’s easy to picture with tangible things that have a monetary cost. But it’s also true with forgiveness.
Forgiving a wrong is costly. And the greater the wrong, the higher the cost. If someone is 20 minutes late for a meeting, that’s annoying, but a pretty small cost. If someone hurts you or someone you love, that forgiveness comes at a much greater cost.
There’s nothing the man who killed Charlie Kirk can ever do to undo what he has done. There’s nothing he can do to earn her forgiveness, there’s no way he can pay her back or make it right.
The only way he could be forgiven by Erika Kirk was for her to freely give it. Because of hate, she senselessly lost her husband less than two weeks ago. Her children lost their father.
It’s easy to understand why she would hate that man. To many, that feeling would be totally justified. But she responds with forgiveness.
Forgiveness is striking.
The Bible says that all sin and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). We all sin against God in the things that we do that we shouldn’t do. We sin in the things that we should do but don’t do. It’s not just occasional. We sin as a habit, as a way of life, as a matter of course. We could never earn forgiveness from a holy God.
The gospel is that Jesus paid the price for our sin on the cross. That there was no way for us to earn our forgiveness, or to pay for it. And so he bore the cost himself by absorbing the penalty that we deserved.
To some, the cross is foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18). To others, it is the power of God for salvation (Romans 1:16-17).
Hatred for that man might have been understandable. Forgiveness for him is glorious.
In the Gospel of Luke, as Jesus is being crucified, he asks God to forgive his killers when he says “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
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Sermon: the Exodus plagues – Darkness. Exodus 10:21-29
Manuscript
21 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to be felt.” 22 So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was pitch darkness in all the land of Egypt three days. 23 They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days, but all the people of Israel had light where they lived.
24 Then Pharaoh called Moses and said, “Go, serve the Lord; your little ones also may go with you; only let your flocks and your herds remain behind.” 25 But Moses said, “You must also let us have sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God. 26 Our livestock also must go with us; not a hoof shall be left behind, for we must take of them to serve the Lord our God, and we do not know with what we must serve the Lord until we arrive there.” 27 But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let them go.
28 Then Pharaoh said to him, “Get away from me; take care never to see my face again, for on the day you see my face you shall die.” 29 Moses said, “As you say! I will not see your face again.”
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
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been moving through passages in Exodus and building up to the Exodus event when God frees the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.
But before that happened, there was Pharaoh and his refusal to allow the Israelites to leave.
And so God brought a series of plagues upon Pharaoh which we’ve been covering for the past six weeks.
This morning, we look at the ninth and penultimate plague. Darkness.
In the text, this ninth plague is among the shorter plagues but it still covers many of the same themes which we saw in the previous eight.
As we’ve moved through these passages, we’ve seen an intensification of plagues.
They started as nuisances.
Then the death of livestock.
Disease which caused boils.
Then God unleashed severe weather from the heavens with terrible hail storms.
We saw the ecosystem devastated by a plague of locusts.
And here we come to darkness.
In comparison to what has come before, at first glance, that might seem almost anticlimactic or more tame than its predecessors.
But as we move into this plague, we will see that this is anything but the case.
With that, we’ll jump into our text this morning.
And the first thing that we’ll see is that this ninth plagues comes without warning.
Ninth plague: darkness
Verses 21-23:
21 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to be felt.” 22 So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was pitch darkness in all the land of Egypt three days. 23 They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days, but all the people of Israel had light where they lived.
The first thing that we must appreciate about darkness is that it impacted people in ancient times differently than it impacts us today.
During harvest, you’ll see combines at night. Powerful lights.
We can travel in the dark. Our cars have lights. We have cell phones. We have street lights, and in bigger cities, you see more and more street lights.
None of these were luxuries which were enjoyed in ancient times.
Darkness had a stopping power in the ancient world that it doesn’t have today. It was difficult to travel in the dark – and also dangerous. It’s when unsavory people are most likely to be on the move. And it’s when many dangerous animal predators are most likely to be on the hunt.
And so God brings utter darkness upon Egypt.
Verse 21 says that it was a darkness that could be felt.
Some scholars take that literally and think it’s a reference to some sort of sand storm.
I don’t like to assume that since a dust storm is never mentioned and that interpretation is speculative. I think the darkness being felt is a metaphor. That it was so utterly dark that it caused this visceral response almost like it was tangible.
There’s an intensity of the darkness.
The text says that there was pitch darkness in Egypt for three days.
Think of how disorienting that would be.
It’s not like they had clocks or cell phones they could look to in order to check the time or even what day it was. In ancient times, and undoubtedly in places today, people still use the sun in order to help keep the time.
But with a few days of no sun, how do you know when it is?
How do you know “well it’s been a few hours, or it should be morning now.” You wouldn’t know any of that. Tme would lose all meaning.
Three days in utter darkness.
Three days confined to your house.
Stumbling around.
And a theme that we’ve seen in so many of the other plagues we see again with the darkness, but points back to creation and God’s uncreation of Egypt.
Genesis 1:1-4 says:In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good.
In the beginning, God made the light.
In the Exodus, he takes it away.
And there’s another reason why the darkness would be so disconcerting to the Egyptians.
Yes, darkness made things more difficult and dangerous.
But darkness also once again turned their religious worldview upside down.
Throughout these plagues, we’ve talked about how many of the plagues impacted aspects of Egyptian life which were thought to be under the domain of various gods.
And one of the most venerated of all the Egyptian pantheon was their creator and sun God: Ra.
In bringing about a plague of darkness, after all of these other plagues have shown up the Egyptian deities, the plague of darkness shows the ineffectiveness of their greatest deity.
It also once again showed the powerlessness of Pharaoh.
The Egyptians believed that Pharaoh was a quasi-divine manifestation of Ra.
And yet Pharaoh is powerless to stop the darkness.
I think it’s hard for us to appreciate that mentality and worldview.
I’ve been listening to the audio book “In order to live’ by Yeonmi Park, a woman who escaped from North Korea. And one of the things she talks about in the book is that when Kim il Sung – the grandfather of current North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un – died, how difficult that was for her family to accept. Kim Il Sung has started the Kim dynasty and had so brainwashed the people into thinking that he himself was a god, that when he died, it was hard for some of her relatives to accept.
And I think about the Egyptians and their views of Pharaoh. Believing that Pharaoh was a divine figure.
The plague of darkness would have been earth-shattering.
Philip Ryken summarizes the situation fantastically:
“The plague of darkness proved God’s absolute power over creation. God can unmake what he has made. This is something that all the plagues showed by reversing the six days of creation. The God who made the waters turned the Nile into blood. The God who made green things grow destroyed vegetation with hail and locusts. The God who made creatures swim in the sea and swarm on dry land brought death to fish and frogs. The God who made men and beasts sent them disease and even death. Finally, the God who brought light out of darkness made the light fade to black.”
We continue in our passage.
Light in the darkness – the light in Israel
Because amid the darkness in Egypt, there was one place with light:
Verse 23 ends with:
all the people of Israel had light where they lived.
I mentioned a moment ago that some scholars believe that it was a dust storm.
There are scholars who will try to give purely naturalistic explanations for how they could have happened.
But then several of the miracles give us other details that are hard to explain with a purely naturalistic explanation.
So you read about darkness and say, “It was a dust storm. Dust Storms are a thing. That caused the darkness.”
But then how is it not dark in the Israelite portion of Egypt?
How is it that their sector just happens to be insulated from the darkness?
And so what happens is you almost need another miracle to explain the naturalistic explanation.
The plagues are divine acts of an almighty God.
That’s what we see in the plagues.
That the Lord is absolutely sovereign over everything in his creation.
And so he spares Israel.
all the people of Israel had light where they lived.
What a great picture that is.
In a darkened Egypt, God’s people still had light.
It’s a symbol for how God’s people were to be in the Old Testament and it’s a symbol for how God’s people are to be today.
Because the world is dark.
We’ve spent two years in the Gospel of John. John loves the light and darkness imagery.
The light is a symbol for righteousness and truth. Darkness is a symbol for what is sinful and wicked.
Jesus is the light of the world.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls his followers light.
Matthew 5:14-16:
14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
You don’t have light to keep it hidden.You have light to shine.
And as God’s people, we are to shine his light in the world.
The world is in darkness, but in our church, in our homes, in our families, in our lives, we are called to shine light.
Jesus doesn’t say “you should be light” or “you could be light” or “it’d be really great if you were light.”
He says “you are the light of the world.”
In a dark world, the Lord has given us the light of the world, Jesus Christ.
The light of the world who was the true light.
And that light is meant to shine so brightly in his people that we shine it on the rest of the world.
We shine by loving people. We shine in truth. We shine in sharing the message of Jesus. We shine in pointing people to Jesus.
Are you shining for Jesus?
Do you ever meet someone and it is so obvious when you interact with them by how they talk, how they carry themselves, their countenance, it’s obvious that they know Jesus?
Let us be a church full of people like that.
Let us be people who passionately and unabashedly and unapologetically and fully live to shine the light of the glory of Christ in our community and in our world.
And that will impact people.
2 Corinthians 2:15-16 talks of how the followers of Jesus will impact society. Some in society will respond favorably, others will not:
15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.
Some will respond favorably. Others will not. Who will and who won’t, we cannot control.
We’re just called to be faithful, and trust that the Lord will bless that.
But again as people, and as a church, we are to be the place that’s shining brightest in our community.
We come to the third act of the passage. Verse 24, we see the response from Pharaoh.
Pharaoh’s heart
24 Then Pharaoh called Moses and said, “Go, serve the Lord; your little ones also may go with you; only let your flocks and your herds remain behind.”
Now the passage had previously said that there were three days and nights of this darkness.
It doesn’t specify if that period had ended by this point or if Pharaoh is talking to Moses in the pitch black.
Moses has been trying to get Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to go.
In the most recent plague, Pharaoh tried to allow just the men.
In this verse, he will allow all of the Israelites to go but says that they must leave their livestock.
We again see the incredible pride of Pharaoh that he is trying to still negotiate. He is still trying to save face.
A person can be totally beaten down and defeated and still refuse to look to God in all of that.
Pharaoh really doesn’t have any buying power with trying to negotiate. Him and his kingdom have been repeatedly turned upside down.
And so Moses says in verses 25-26:
25 But Moses said, “You must also let us have sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God. 26 Our livestock also must go with us; not a hoof shall be left behind, for we must take of them to serve the Lord our God, and we do not know with what we must serve the Lord until we arrive there.”
The Israelites go and the livestock goes.
The passage says not a hoof shall be left behind.
They’re taking everything.
How does Pharaoh respond? Contrition? Humility?
Verses 27-28:
27 But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let them go. 28 Then Pharaoh said to him, “Get away from me; take care never to see my face again, for on the day you see my face you shall die.”
Pharaoh’s heart is hardened.
Now as we wind down this morning, I want to revisit that subject. I talked about it over a month ago. The plagues series in Exodus repeatedly mentions Pharaoh’s heart being hardened.
In this verse and others, it says that it was the Lord who hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
In other places, it says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.
And in some places, it doesn’t specifically say the cause but reports that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened.
These are always interesting verses to consider when we think of doctrines like providence and divine sovereignty.
I don’t think that these verses are enough on their own to build entire doctrines.
Pharaoh does harden his own heart. He does that by his sin and by his refusal to listen to God.
We live in a world full of hard hearted people who refuse to obey God.
We’re fallen and sinful.
We choose to sin.
We’re responsible for our own sin.
But in God hardening the heart of Pharaoh, I think that points us to how God can use sinful people who refuse him for his own divine purposes.
God doesn’t harden the heart of someone who otherwise would have loved him or obeyed him.
Again, God doesn’t cause Pharaoh to sin.
But God does utilize a sinful Pharaoh for his divine and eternal purposes. We see that throughout the Bible.
In the prophets, we see God using entire kingdoms as instruments of judgment upon the Israelites. Kingdoms who were pagan such as the Assyrians and the Babylonians.
In Jesus’ day, we see pagan Roman officials such as Herrod.
And we see it with Pharaoh.
His heart is hardened to God. He will not listen and so he will instead be an object of God’s judgment.
Don’t feel sorry for him. Pharaoh is not a victim. He’s guilty of his sins. He sins against God and his people.
And there will be consequences for that. And the wheels are now in motion for one final plague.
Moses leaves Pharaoh and says in verse 29:
“As you say! I will not see your face again.”
Pharaoh would soon meet the God whom he continued to refuse to obey.
Chapter 11
I close by reading chapter 11, which is the final warning for the final plague.
Everything else the Lord had said would come to pass came to pass. And after nine plagues, God promises one final and ultimate plague upon Egypt. After all of the refusal to release the Israelites, God will strike down the firstborn of all of the Egyptians.
The Lord said to Moses, “Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely. 2 Speak now in the hearing of the people, that they ask, every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor, for silver and gold jewelry.” 3 And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants and in the sight of the people.
4 So Moses said, “Thus says the Lord: ‘About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, 5 and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. 6 There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. 7 But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.’
8 And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, ‘Get out, you and all the people who follow you.’ And after that I will go out.” And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger. 9 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh will not listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.”
10 Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.
Because of sin, Egypt will bear great consequences.
Next week – Lord willing, we look at the tenth and final of the plagues of Exodus.
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Sermon: Studying the Exodus plagues – Hail. Exodus 9:13-35
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Sometimes we ignore warning signs.
Pharaoh was given several.
A person ignores the check engine light, ignores something a doctor tells them.
CEO’s ignore warning signs of issues in their companies.
Cyber security experts warned Equifax that their data was vulnerable and could be easily breached. They didn’t listen and they were hacked. The data breach compromised the data of 145 million Americans.
Companies like General Motors and Toyota have been warned about safety issues in cars and ignored whistleblowers.
Pharaoh has seen his kingdom turned upside down by a series of plagues and yet continues to resist the one thing that has brought the promise of relief.
Sending the Israelites into the wilderness.
We’re continuing in the plagues of Exodus. This morning, we look at the seventh. Hail.
In many ways, a tremendous hailing thunderstorm SEEMS like the stereotype for a good plague. The heavens opening up and unleashing destruction.
And with that, we’ll jump right into our passage this morning.
- Pharaoh warned
Beginning in verse 13:
13 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Rise up early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, “Let my people go, that they may serve me.
So as we saw in the first and the fourth plagues, Moses is instructed to confront Pharaoh in the morning.
There’s actually a pattern to the plagues where they go in three cycles, each consisting of three plagues.
And across the plague cycles, there are similar patterns to the first plague in each of the three cycles. There are similarities to the second plague in each of the three cycles. And there are similarities to the third plague in each of the three cycles.
So the first nine plagues are in these cycles of three. The tenth and final plague is totally separate from what comes before it.
As we’ve talked about various creation themes in the Exodus, I also think it’s interesting how much order there is to the plagues. Genesis gives an orderly creation. Exodus gives an orderly uncreation.
Before we continue in our text, I have a question.
Why?
Who has this all happened?
What’s this all been for?
This is the seventh plague.
There will still be three to come.
Ten divine judgments from the Lord upon Egypt.
Why?
Why didn’t God just free the Israelites?
Why didn’t he just teleport them from Egypt to the promised land?
Why didn’t he just strike Pharaoh dead and have a new Pharaoh who would be more sympathetic?
Why didn’t he just start with the last plague first and have Israel freed then?
So often, I hear people ask why God does the things he does.
A person praises God for being healed of a disease.
Someone else asks “why’d God give it to you in the first place?’
A person talks about God’s protection in being rescued from a natural disaster.
Someone else asks why God allowed that to happen in the first place.
So often, we want to ask why God allows any bad things, but we never question why a God gives sinful people in a fallen world any good things.
Whenever we look to why God does something for his people, a person can always ask why God didn’t do things differently.
But verse 15 says something very important.
15 For by now 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. 16 But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.
Let’s not overlook this.
I want to read it again. This is what the Lord had said to Pharaoh.
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.
God is saying “I could have wiped all of you out.”
Verse 16 begins: But for this purpose…
But for this purpose all of this is happening.
But for this purpose I haven’t wiped you out.
But for this purpose I’ve brought these plagues.
The Lord says: But for this purpose, I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.
God is doing all of this to show his power and for the glory of his own name.
Is that vain to do?
The gods of our age
The Egyptians had their pantheon. They had their gods for various areas of life.
They had gods for the things that they valued. The river was central to their lives, so they had gods of the Nile. Family was important, so they had fertility gods. They cared about the afterlife too so they had gods of life and death. Their agriculture mattered to them so they had gods of the crops, gods of the livestock.
Our world makes up gods too.
We think we’re so different from ancient peoples.
Everyone, regardless of if you’re the most devout person of faith or the most ardent atheist, everyone has something that they value above all other things.
And whatever that thing is is your god.
In our day, we can worship family, money, success, accomplishments, pleasure, leisure, possessions, security, health, politicians, celebrities, and sports. Just to name a few.
Those are the areas where we can put our hope, where we can try to get our meaning, and the things and people that we can glorify.
None of those things are bad in themselves.
But they all make bad gods.
And so God has kept the Egyptians alive, he’s kept Pharaoh alive for the purpose of his own glory.
Because in the Exodus, God is glorified both in his redemption of the Israelites, in his signs, in his sparing of the Israelites, in parting the waters of the Red Sea, in leading the Isrealites in their wanderings, in being faithful to his covenant promises.
God is glorified in all of that.
But he is also glorified in his judgment against Pharaoh.
God’s name is proclaimed throughout the whole earth because of these plagues.
Why ten?
Ten is pretty hard to ignore.
One could be ignored.
Two might be thought of as a coincidence.
But God brings ten blows upon Egypt and upon Pharaoh leaving no doubt that he is the Lord.
We’ve talked a lot about how the plagues confront the Egyptian pantheon of gods. In doing ten plages, that gave God even more opportunities to show his power over the false gods of Egypt.
So in both his redemption of the Israelites and in his judgement upon Egypt, God’s name is being proclaimed, God is being glorified.
All men will bring God glory in the end. You will bring him glory through being an example of his grace or you will bring him glory through being an example of his righteous and holy judgement.
And so yes, God could have crushed Pharaoh right from the start but he has not because he is concerned about his glory.
God’s concern for his glory is something that some people don’t like.
If God is infinite, why does he care about his name going out in the world?
Isn’t that insecure?
C.S. Lewis gives some helpful insight in his book “Reflections on the Psalms.”
This is a long excerpt, but I think it’s incredibly powerful and helpful.
C.S. Lewis
Lewis says:
“The miserable idea that God should in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain author presenting his new books to people who never met or heard of him…”
Lewis goes on to say:
“Even if such an absurd Deity could be conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don’t want my dog to bark in approval of my books….”
“But the most obvious fact about praise – whether of God or anything – strangely escapes me. I thought of it in terms of a compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.”
“The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, college, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humbles, and at the same time most balanced and capacious minds, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least…”
I’ll pause from the quote for a moment.
So what Lewis is saying is that he used to think of God like a woman needing to be complimented, but he realized that truly enjoying anything ultimately results in praise.
We praise what we love.
Lewis says:
“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completed the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with.”
Lewis says that “the worthier the object, the more intense the delight.”
And one final quote from a few paragraphs later, Lewis says “The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy him.”
The byproduct of knowing and loving an infinite, almighty, eternal, holy, and righteous God is that we glorify him.
Because to glorify anything else is to glorify something less than God. That is first of all sin, but it is also aiming short of what is greater. ,
Verse 17, the Lord says to Pharaoh:17 You are still exalting yourself against my people and will not let them go. 18 Behold, about this time tomorrow I will cause very heavy hail to fall, such as never has been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now.
Once again, we see God’s power that he can predict the timing of this plague.
But even in this warning, the Lord tries to give some gracious advice.
- The Egyptians warned
19 Now therefore send, get your livestock and all that you have in the field into safe shelter, for every man and beast that is in the field and is not brought home will die when the hail falls on them.” ’ ”
So they’re warned about the great hailstorm that’s coming and also warned to bring the livestock into some sort of shelter.
It’s also ironic that the passage tells them to “send” their livestock into shelter.
We saw in a previous plague that Pharaoh sent people to investigate the effects of one of the plagues in Egypt yet he wouldn’t send the Israelites into the wilderness.
Here, he’s told to send his livestock into shelter.
But still he won’t send the Israelites into the wilderness.
They’re all continuing to use the same Hebrew word for send.
Verse 20:
20 Then whoever feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses, 21 but whoever did not pay attention to the word of the Lord left his slaves and his livestock in the field.
It’s interesting that among Pharaoh’s servants, some do believe in the Word of the Lord here. Some take the advice and do bring in the animals.
Now the phrase that they feared the word of the Lord is found only here in the entire Old Testament.
The Bible talks a lot about a fear of the Lord.
But here, it talks of a fear of the Word of the Lord.
Does that mean that they had faith?
I don’t know if the text gives us enough to say that definitively, but as I’ve pointed out before, Exodus tells us that there were at least some Egyptians who did become followers of the Lord.
When the Israelites prepare to leave Egypt in Exodus 12, the passage refers to a mixed multitude.
Exodus 12:37 mentions the Israelites:
37 And the people of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children.
But then the following verse says:
38 A mixed multitude also went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds.
The point is that there are people who are not ethnically Jewish who are part of the Exodus.
And there will be other references to non-Israelites.
Exodus 12:48:If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it
So what that’s saying is that if a non-Israelite male wants to become Jewish, once he’s circumcised, he will be treated just like any other Israelite.
And then there are people who are not Israelites that we see elsewhere in the Bible.
Melchizedek, Caleb, Rahab, Ruth, the Queen of Sheeba, the Samaritans, among others.
Even in the Old Testament, when you have a defined people of God in Israel, there is still a message for the world that God can redeem them.
The New Testament has much less emphasis on a specific land, but instead focuses on a gospel that is for the whole world.
And it’s possible that we get one of the earliest glimpses of this in Exodus 9 as some of Pharaoh’s people begin to take seriously the Word of the Lord.
In following his instruction, it does show a certain deference to God.
So some Egyptians take the word seriously. Their livestock is protected.
Others disregard the warning of a storm.
Keep in mind that the threat of a thundering hail storm would seem just about as probable in the middle of Egypt as we would feel about being told a volcano was going to erupt and cover us all in ashes.
That might be a slight exaggeration, but not by much.
The part of Egypt that the Exodus events are taking place in receives on average far less than an inch of rain per year, and sometimes no rain.
So our idea of a big summertime thunderstorm is pretty rare there.
But with seeing the other plagues, even as improbable as a hailstorm might have seemed, some took it seriously.
We come to our third scene.
The plague.
Seventh plague: hail
Verses 23-26:
23 Then Moses stretched out his staff toward heaven, and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire ran down to the earth. And the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt. 24 There was hail and fire flashing continually in the midst of the hail, very heavy hail, such as had never been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.
25 The hail struck down everything that was in the field in all the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And the hail struck down every plant of the field and broke every tree of the field. 26 Only in the land of Goshen, where the people of Israel were, was there no hail.
Incredible destruction.
Thunder.
The passage says lightning ran down from heaven. I take that to mean lightning.
And hail.
I once saw a hailstorm when I was at Trinity basically cover the ground in a couple minutes.
It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
A few things to note about this seventh plague. Hail is often seen in the Bible as a sign of divine judgment. We see that in books ranging from such as Joshua, Psalms, Isaiah, and Ezekiel.
The passage says that the hail destroyed crops, but it’s actually the same Hebrew word for vegetation that’s used in creation, once again showing the uncreation that is happening in the plagues.
And as we again have seen in other plagues, this is an attack on various Egyptian deities over the sky and over weather.
The Lord is showing his power over all of them.
Pharaoh wants to talk to moses.
Verse 27:
27 Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, “This time I have sinned; the Lord is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong.
Now that’s very significant. Pharaoh acknowledges sin.
Now we will see that this is short-lived, but it’s interesting that he even begins to acknowledge that his own actions are wrong.
Repentance matters.
But just saying sorry or saying you’re wrong is not repentance.
Repentance also involves a change.
Pharaoh asks Moses to plead with the Lord to stop the storm. He says I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer.
In verse 29, Moses says that he will plead with the Lord.
“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 is the Lord’s.
Moses does this.
And the chapter ends in verse 34-35:
34 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. 35 So the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people of Israel go, just as the Lord had spoken through Moses.
Pharaoh had indicated that he was repentant but when it came to putting that repentance into action, we see that he again reneges on the deal.
Conclusion
The Lord does not desire empty words or meaningless repentance.
He doesn’t want empty acknowledgement while we’re still totally going to do what we want and continue in sin.
He desires followers who will come before him in worship and reverence.
He desires faith.
God wants us to recognize our sin and our need for his grace.
As David said in Psalm 51:17:
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
And the good news of the gospel is that Jesus welcomes us to come to him.
Though we have hard hearts, he promises to remove the heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh.
Jesus welcomes us to find grace, and life, and forgiveness in him when we come to him.
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