God’s Intentions for Performing His Signs (the Plagues) on Egypt -- Exodus 10:1-2

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may perform these signs of Mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son, and of your grandson, how I made a mockery of the Egyptians, and how I performed My signs among them; that you may know that I am the Lord.”
 

It is interesting that after the seventh plague God momentarily suspends His focus on Pharaoh (and what all these plagues are intended to show him and the Egyptians) and focuses once more directly on Moses, Aaron, and the children of Israel explaining His intentions for them in all this display of His powers.  He shares with Moses that He is performing these signs of His among the Egyptians in order that Moses (and it is assumed other men of Israel) will be able to tell their sons and their grandsons (and other future generations) of what God did for them.

Backtracking just slightly, we note that God here also says that not only did He harden Pharaoh’s heart, but He also hardened the heart “of his servants”.  Commentators seem to be, for the most part, silent on this.  In trying to find some basis for this phrase, my search took me back to a phrase I had missed in Genesis 9:34 – the immediately prior portion of Scripture we looked at in this study.  That verse reads as follows, “But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned again and hardened his heart, he and his servants.”  And our current passage tells us that God had a hand in that as well.  When God pursues His plan for His people and His Church, and requires them to overcome the enemy, we can be sure that while one man may be pivotal in the plot, many others who have a similar heretical view of the Almighty often abet him.  I believe we are seeing this in various governments around the world today.  The Enemy first cultivates his leaders and then works on getting them followers to accomplish his work.  We see this principle at work in the cabinets of some governments around the globe.  And so it was in the case of Pharaoh and his servants.

We know that God will not be mocked.  But here we also see the Almighty telling us that He wants us to know and remember how He “made a mockery” of the Egyptians.  Now one may challenge that as being unlike the character of God, or unfair given His advantage, and so on.  May I suggest that if one is tempted to do so, there is a possibility that he/she has not understood the Sovereignty of God and Who He really is.  Also, God does not always choose to mock His adversaries without cause.  He seems to do so when they mock Him and we clearly saw signs of this earlier in Exodus.  In Exodus 5:2 we read of Pharaoh asking, “Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go?  I do not know the Lord….”  And Pharaoh also displayed a type of mockery when he twice said, “I will let you go, just stop the plague” and then twice changed his mind.  We cannot play like that with the Almighty.

There is currently a well-known song called How Great Is Our God that comes to mind as being most relevant here.  I share the lyrics with you below.  You can hear Chris Tomlin sing his song at this url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKLQ1td3MbE .

The splendor of a King, clothed in majesty
Let all the earth rejoice
All the earth rejoice

He wraps himself in Light, and darkness tries to hide
And trembles at His voice
Trembles at His voice

How great is our God, sing with me
How great is our God, and all will see
How great, how great is our God

Age to age He stands
And time is in His hands
Beginning and the end
Beginning and the end

The Godhead Three in One
Father Spirit Son
The Lion and the Lamb
The Lion and the Lamb

Name above all names
Worthy of our praise
My heart will sing
How great is our God

How great is our God, sing with me
How great is our God, and all will see
How great, how great is our God

I think it is important for us, as it was for Moses and the children of Israel at the time, to realize that what God did from the beginning of time, including how He ultimately freed His people from the bondage of the Egyptians, and how He continued to bless them, then providing them (and us) with a Savior, as well as what He still does for us – all of it is a series of facts that need acknowledging, sharing, and explaining to all generations.  We have been tasked with that great responsibility but also that great honor and opportunity to be messengers of God’s involvement in the world.

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[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

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What Is That In Your Hand? -- Exodus 4:1-5

Then Moses answered and said, “What if they will not believe me, or listen to what I say?  For they may say, ‘The Lord has not appeared to you.’”  And the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?”  And he said, “A staff.”  Then He said, “Throw it on the ground.”  So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from it.  But the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand and grasp it by its tail” – so he stretched out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand – “that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.”

Matthew Henry says this is the chapter that concludes God’s discourse with Moses by the burning bush, at the time of giving him his great assignment – to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.  As we delve into the fourth chapter of Exodus, we are again confronted with Moses’ own lack of confidence in both himself and God’s plan.  He asks God, “What if the children of Israel you’re sending me to don’t believe me or don’t listen to me?”  Here come the seeds of doubt.  God is asking him to do something the successful results of which would require an intervention of the Almighty, but Moses can only perceive it from a human perspective.  And so, he doubts its likely success. 

Sometimes I wonder if we all do not have a little bit of Moses in us.  We sense God telling us to do something, but we immediately forget Who it is that is telling us, and we consider the possibility from our own human limitations.  And that often results in our not venturing forth for and with God.  We are, in that sense, as Charles Price once said, “prophesying Christians, but practicing atheists”.

Moses thinks he can meet God’s argument with a fairly strong one of his own.  He asks Him, “What if the people say ‘The Lord has not appeared to you.’?”

I remember a situation in my own activities that required a type of deliverance from someone who was being uncooperative and destructive on a team we were supposed to be working together on.  After prayerful consideration and attempts to reach out to the individual personally, as well as a failed effort to meet with them and one or two others, the matter then had to go before the whole team.  But the Enemy continued to try and work his way into my mind, saying, “What if the team does not believe you?  What if they don’t agree?  What proof do you have that your way is the right way here?”  That is not too unlike what Moses was thinking as he contemplated the meeting between himself and the children of Israel first, and then Pharaoh.

It is interesting to note here that the proof Moses believed the people would be looking for was evidence that God had appeared to him.  They wanted to know that God was in this.  As leaders, when we come up with a plan or a project or a decision, people want to know that somehow we have assurances that this is God’s will or God’s plan or the decision God led us to.  Moses knew that just like those we feel we have to satisfy today, his people needed to have signs.  God knew it too and He agreed.

But we also need to point out as Matthew Henry and others do, that this request for a sign for the people was perhaps unnecessary for Moses to make as God had already told him in chapter 3, verse 18, that “They shall listen to your voice.”  But before we criticize Moses for insisting on a sign, however, we need to ask ourselves how we may have acted.  Would we have taken God at His word the first time He said something like that to us?

So God shows Moses what was available to him to overcome the objections anyone might raise.  “Take that walking stick, that shepherd’s crook, in your hand and throw it on the ground.”  Notice the ‘stick’ was already in Moses’ possession.  He just had to use it.  God had already given him the means by which to show His presence in his life.  But it was in following God’s words that the tool became powerful.  As Moses threw it on the ground in response to God’s instruction to him, the staff became a serpent, a living creature, an object of fear.  Imagine a dry, dead stick had become a living thing.  Even Moses fled from it.  Just like the Israelites would do when Moses did this before them.  It was not the sight of the snake that would scare Moses or the children of Israel, but the fact that God changed a piece of ‘dead’ wood into a living organism.  This God of ours could take something that has no life in it at all and give it breath.

Sometimes when we use the tools that God has given us – prayer, fasting, His word – God brings about outcomes that amaze and surprise, often to the point of frightening, even us.  So much so that sometimes we want to shrink or treble a bit behind the results we had asked for.  Thus it was with Moses.

And God had a solution for that as well.  “Moses,” He said, “Stretch out your hand and grab the snake, by its tail.”  Oh no, not the tail – that’s the most dangerous way to grab a snake.  Moses, who had been a shepherd for many years, knew that.  Yet here he demonstrates his faith by reaching out and grabbing the snake in just that manner.  As Moses did that, the serpent became his walking stick again.   Yet he himself was not harmed in any way.   Moses here learns a lesson that we all need to learn – we can complete what God tells us to accomplish or undertake, no matter how uncomfortable it may seem to us.  For me, going into that meeting with the whole team to confront the conflict in our group, could not be imagined to be a comfortable experience, yet if it were of God, as Charles Stanley says, “that trial does not make one a victim, it does not stop one from being a child of the King”.  Difficult? Yes.  Uncomfortable?  Yes.  Impossible?  No.

 
And then God said, “That’s how they’ll believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.”  They want signs and miracles?  They’ll get them.  And God again used His all-time most common name, “the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has ”.  His name has not changed.

Let us also not lose sight of the fact that these miracles, as it was with the miracles in the New Testament, were done for a purpose – “that they may believe”.  If you and I are to expect miracles in our life, they need to be for that purpose and that purpose alone – that others may believe in the Lord.

Moses’ current objection is overcome, but will that be sufficient?  We would do well to ask ourselves the same question.  When God answers our first hesitation in such a powerful way, do we accept His direction, or do we put up more objections?

[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

Thanks for dropping by. Sign up to receive free updates. We bring you relevant information from all sorts of sources. Subscribe for free to this blog or follow us by clicking on the appropriate link in the right side bar. And please share this blog with your friends. Ken Godevenos, Church and Management Consultant, Accord Consulting.  And while you’re here, why not check out some more of our recent blogs shown in the right hand column.  Ken.

 

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.