Lessons From the Exodus Story part 4

Good morning again, everyone! By the way, this is version 2 of the sermon. If you read my email announcement last night, version 1 was almost done Thursday evening, about 6 o'clock, when my computer decided to take a permanent vacation and corrupted my sermon that I'd spent all day working on. So this is version 2, which was completed about 2.30 a.m. this morning. So we'll see if it works or not. It made sense at 2.30 in the morning. I won't guarantee that it makes sense at almost 11.30 here on the Sabbath. But anyway, we'll get into it and hope everything goes well here. So with Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread quickly approaching now, we have been going through the background to the story of the Exodus and three previous sermons. And some of the lessons that we can learn from the stories there that are recorded for us. And although these events happened some 35 centuries ago, we've seen that many of the lessons that are brought out in the story there are very relevant to our lives today.

And last time we covered the latter part of chapter 4, and then 5 and 6, and part of chapter 7. of the book of Exodus. And we go through a few just quick highlights from what we talked about last time, kind of bring us up to speed. We talked about the kind of circumcision that God wants, which is not circumcision of the flesh, but circumcision of the heart and of the spirit, which under the new covenant would be equated to baptism and the receiving of God's Holy Spirit.

And we also talked about the differences between believing in God and trusting in God. To believe in God really has two distinct meanings. I believe God exists, and I trust in God. So we talked about the differences in that, and how that plays out in our life. And the bottom line, that belief in God must change our lives, that just believing only does not cut it, as we have seen.

We also talked about the very haughty attitude of Pharaoh when Moses comes to him with Aaron, and tells him to let my people go. And his response, who are you to tell me what to do? Basically, we talked about Egyptian brick making, and how that was done, and what it means when the Israelites were required to go out and gather their own straw to make bricks, and how that made it impossible to meet their quotas there. And we also talked about three purposes for the plagues, which God described, to force Pharaoh to release the Israelites, to punish Pharaoh and the Egyptians by great judgments for the suffering that they had inflicted on the Israelites, and also to demonstrate to the Israelites and the Egyptians that God is the true God, and not the gods of the Egyptians. And then we also talked about the concept of collective guilt, and how America was collectively guilty for the the national sin of slavery, and how that played out in the most bloody, highest casualty war, the Civil War, and all of American history, and how in the Civil War we had more men killed in that war than all of America's wars put together before and since. And we also talked about the Germans and Japanese during World War II, and how the Allied leadership viewed the nations as collectively guilty, and thus dropped the atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II. And we left off at Exodus 7 and verse 7, and there where Moses and Aaron are going to see Pharaoh, and to demonstrate to him the miracles that God had promised to show him.

And as we noted earlier, the purpose, the third purpose of the plagues, was to conclusively show to both the Egyptians and the Israelites that God is God, that he alone is the true God, and that he will prove that by the plagues that are going to be directed at the nature gods of Egypt. Egypt worshipped gods over different aspects of nature. Rivers, the sky, storms, the earth, crops, animals, and so on. But God, the true God, created nature and is outside of nature, and far greater than nature. And now we will see in today's sermon how he will prove that the God who created nature rules over nature and everything in it. So now we'll pick up the story here beginning in Exodus 7 and verse 8. And again, I'll be projecting all of these verses on screen for us here.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, When Pharaoh speaks to you, saying, Show a miracle for yourselves to prove that you are who you say you are, then you shall say to Aaron, Take your rod and cast it before Pharaoh, and let it become a serpent. So Moses and Aaron went into Pharaoh, and they did so just as the Lord commanded. And Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a serpent. And I brought my trustee rod slash serpent here with me today. I'm not going to turn it into a serpent before you hear, but just envision something like this. And Aaron throws it down on the ground, and it turns into a serpent. So this is what is being described here. So God begins with this rather startling act, although the Egyptian magicians managed to replicate that act. The wording here, actually let's read it now, verse 11, But Pharaoh also called the wise men and sorcerers. So the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments.

For every man threw down his rod, and they became serpents. But Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods. There's a great depiction of that in the movie The Ten Commandments, which, if you've seen that, you'll probably remember that. So the Egyptians replicate the act of throwing down their staffs, and it becoming serpents. We don't know how that happened.

It's interesting that the wording here implies that this is some sort of magic or something. But it soon becomes clear that, and we see this at the end here, that this is really only magic in the modern sense of the world, meaning it's some type of illusion to fool an audience. We'll see that a little bit later on demonstrated here. And it's interesting it's proven by Pharaoh's own actions himself, because later on in the next chapter, Pharaoh acknowledges, well, who does he ask to rid Egypt of the plague of the frogs? He doesn't ask his own magicians to do it, because they're unable to. He asks Aaron and Moses to get rid of the frogs. So this suggests that even Pharaoh knows his tricks and illusions and things like that. Again, we don't know how this was done or anything about it other than what is written here. I will note from my studies of archaeology that this kind of fakery to create illusions of miracles and so on was fairly common in the ancient world. I can give you two examples that I've read about. One is, and these are things that archaeologists have actually found, so it explains some of the methodology for these illusions. And one that was fairly common would be to have a statue of a god or goddess, and there would actually be, it would have an opening in the mouth, it would actually have a tube, it would be hollow inside, there would be a tube that would go out behind the statue through a wall behind the statue, and a priest would actually come up and speak through that tube, and it would appear that the voice is coming out of the mouth of the statue. So this was one way they would fake a miracle of this statue of this god or goddess speaking. Another aspect of this the archaeologists have found is some of the temples would have hidden chambers, walkways, passageways in them so that a priest or priestess could suddenly appear seemingly out of nowhere as though they were divine, or in the same way suddenly disappear. And the average person of the audience wouldn't know about these secret passageways and things like that, but archaeologists have found this type of thing. So this type of illusion and fakery was a part of the way the ancient priests and priestesses operated. That's not to say there weren't other demonic influences and things like that, but whether it's actual miracles, hard to say exactly what is going on because we do not, we just do not know. What we do know is that the priest did fake a lot of supposed miracles and divine actions as archaeologists have found. So continuing on, verse 13, and Pharaoh's heart grew hard and he did not heed them as the Lord had said. So God had already foretold that this would not work. Pharaoh is not going to let the Israelites go yet.

So the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh's heart is hard. He refuses to let the people go.

Go to Pharaoh in the morning when he goes out to the water. This is the water of the Nile River near where Pharaoh's palace is. And you shall stand by the river's bank to meet him. And the rod, which was turned to a serpent, you shall take in your hand. So he's supposed to take that along again. So apparently what this is describing is Pharaoh would go to the Nile River every morning. We're not told why. It may have been to go there to bathe. That might be one reason, or perhaps it was to pray to the river god or goddess, in this case, a hoppy, a hoppy, who the Egyptians believed oversaw the annual flooding of the Nile River. And this was crucial to the Egyptians because Egypt's in the middle of a desert, the Nile River, because of the rains, the Nile, the headwaters, are actually up in the heart of Africa near Lake Victoria, if you're familiar with that.

The Nile got its water flow from the heart of Africa. It flows north into the Mediterranean. And during the annual rainy season in Africa, the rains would gather and drain into the Nile. And with them, it would bring literally hundreds of thousands of tons of topsoil with the river. So when the Nile would flood in Egypt, it would deposit hundreds of thousands of tons of fresh new topsoil along the riverbanks. And this is what made Egyptian agriculture so, what made the land so fertile then. It was just incredibly fertile land because of this. They got a brand new load of topsoil every single year, courtesy of the Nile River. So it was incredibly fertile there. And this god, Hape, is the one who was supposedly the god or goddess who oversaw this annual flooding. So something else to notice here is there's a particular pattern that shows up in the plagues. And that is this. Before the first and the fourth and the seventh plague, God tells Moses to go to where Pharaoh will be in the morning, which is at the river there, either again for bathing or prayer, or perhaps both. We're just not told.

And then before plagues 2 and 5 and 8, God tells Moses to go to Pharaoh's palace and to confront him there at the palace. And incidentally, in these three, the plagues are executed by Aaron as the spokesman rather than Moses. And then in plagues 3, 6, and 9, we see that they strike without any specific warning to Pharaoh. So we see this explicit pattern, and it is showing us that that God is at work in the details. There is a divine order to these events as they begin to unfold. In other words, nothing is random. The patterns of the of the plagues follow a distinct pattern. That God is at work in the details. And there is a lesson here for us as well, and that is that God is at work in the details. Here we read about God performing astounding huge miracles, but as we know from our own experiences, God performs minor miracles in our lives as well. It may not seem terribly significant, but nonetheless, they are God's hand at work, even in the small details. So back to the account, verse 16. Next we read God's instruction to Moses on what he is to tell Pharaoh. And you shall say to him, The Lord God of the Hebrews has sent me to you, saying, Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness. But indeed, until now, you would not hear. Thus says the Lord, By this you shall know that I am the Lord. Behold, I will strike the waters which are in the river, with the rod that is in my hand, and they shall be turned to blood. And the fish that are in the river shall die, the river shall stink, and the Egyptians will be loathed to drink the water of the river. And this this contamination of the Nile River is the first of the plagues by which God discredits the false Egyptian gods. This would be a good time to jump ahead a little bit into the story and read what God is doing by these plagues. Exodus 12 and verse 12, he says, Against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment. So he tells us here that each of these plagues is directed towards specific Egyptian gods or goddesses. He's going to execute judgment against them, meaning he's going to show how powerless they are and how false they are, that there's really nothing there to them. And in doing so, he's going to teach a lesson again to both the Egyptians and the Israelites because by now the the Israelites need some retraining in their thinking. They have been slaves in Egypt for a number of generations. Several centuries they have drifted very far from the true worship religion of God from their forefathers from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And they have been thoroughly immersed in the Egyptian culture and the Egyptian religion.

You might think of what did the Egyptian, what did the Israelites do after they are freed and Moses goes up to Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments and he doesn't return at the time they expect and what do they automatically revert to? They revert to worshiping a golden calf. A golden calf was a very common symbol in Egyptian worship. We'll talk about that a little bit later as we go into this. They had a specific bull and cow gods, the Apis bull and the Hathor, who was a cow goddess. And they're commonly depicted like this with a solar disc representing the sun between their horns. So the golden calf that the Israelites made probably looks something very much like this one here. So Aaron, the Israelites insist that Aaron, the priest, make a golden calf for them, which he does. And then what does he tell them? He says, this is your god that brought you out of the land of Egypt. And this shows how corrupted the Israelites had been by generations in this environment of all these Egyptian gods and goddesses. So this is something to keep in mind as we go through these plagues here, that God is executing his judgments against these false gods and goddesses of Egypt. And that was to educate both the Egyptians and the Israelites that these are false gods. These are no gods at all. I should mention, too, that Egypt was a very idolatrous society with many different gods and goddesses. To pick up a phrase from the sermonette, you couldn't stand in Egypt and swing a dead cat without hitting some god or goddess, that the Egyptians worshipped. They worshiped all kinds of things there. They had so many gods and goddesses, it's hard to keep track of them all. Most of the sources I looked at describe between 70 and 100 different gods and goddesses that they worshipped. And many of these took the form of animals, which you see this reflected up here as well. Here's Horus, for instance, the the hog-headed god. Here's Hathor with the horns, represented by a cow. Others we'll show later on here. So many of them were represented in the forms of animals. The Egyptians worshipped all kinds of animals. They worshipped oxen, cattle, rams, dogs, cats, hippopotamus, crocodile, cobra, frogs. Various kinds of insects, serpents, fish, trees, birds. You name it, they they worshipped it.

So God says he's going to judge these various gods by the plagues. And we'll see many of these, again, directed at these specific gods and goddesses. I should mention also that these plagues are not things the Egyptians had never seen before. They've obviously seen frogs, because frogs are going to live all around the Nile River. They've obviously seen biting insects, things like that. But what makes these plagues unique is the way God intensifies the existence of these creatures. It multiplies them greatly so that they do become a plagues. They become totally out of balance in the ecosystem there. And also, God sends these plagues at the timing of his choosing. He controls both the intensity of it and the timing of it. And that is where the miracles come in. So they are all much, much worse than they normally would have been. And they come exactly when God tells Moses that they're going to happen, to prove that God is the one that is behind him. So again, every one of these is an insult to the Egyptians. So let's talk about the first plague, which is a plague on the Nile, turning it to blood.

The Nile, it's discussed its importance to Egypt a little bit. This is a satellite image of Egypt. This is the land of Egypt. Here's Sinai Peninsula. Israel is up here. This is called the Nile Delta. And see this green strip here? That is where the Nile River runs. And what is outside of that?

Nothing but some incredibly desolate desert. One of my favorite descriptions of Egypt in the ancient world is that it was a kingdom that was 600 miles long and a mile wide.

And what that means is you've got a 600 mile long Nile River, and only about a mile only about a mile wide was green and fertile because of the flooding that I mentioned. The rest of it is just this absolute moonscape of desert, the way we traditionally view that. And again, the Nile would deposit all this all this rich dark black topsoil there from the flooding every year. So it was incredibly fertile just within this very narrow strip. A mile wide is a little bit a little bit exaggerated. It's more like three or four miles through irrigation and so on. But again, a very narrow country with a very small area that is fertile.

And the Nile River is incredibly important for that, for agriculture. It's also their major transportation system because it's dangerous to travel through the desert. You can die out in the desert. So they used a lot of boats for shipping and commerce and transportation on the Nile, as we see here in this photo.

So it was kind of their interstate highway system of their day. And all of their trade and commerce depended on it. So what happens? Well, this first plague is a punishment on the Egyptians for what they had done with an in the Nile River, which was to throw the Hebrew baby boys in to drown, or to be eaten by the crocodiles, or by the fish there. And so much since the Egyptians had shed so much blood, they're in the river.

God said, you want blood? I'll give you blood. I'll give you blood to drink. So he turns the Nile into a river of blood. Several other interesting things about this. There were presumably many Egyptians who denied or ignored their evil in partaking of this genocide of the Hebrew baby boys. And in this plague, by turning their main water source into blood, they really can't deny their guilt. They really can't deny it because here is evidence of the obviousness of their crime. The Nile being turned to blood. I might mention also the Egyptians were a very war-like people.

The Israelites weren't the only peoples they oppressed. They commonly attacked the other surrounding nations. And we see this reflected in the Bible a number of times when the Egyptians are invading and they're fighting other empires like the Babylonians, like the Hittites, like the Assyrians, and so on. And Israel is kind of caught in the middle a lot of times and becomes a battleground there. And here's a tomb painting of one of the Egyptian pharaohs going out in his chariot. And he's fighting here against the Nubian peoples who were to the south of Egypt as we understand it.

So here's the great big pharaoh and he's obviously defeating and trampling on his enemies here. So they were a very, very war-like people. The Israelites weren't the only slaves. They enslaved other nations as they conquered them as well. So continuing then in verse 19, then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, See to Aaron, take your rod and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their streams, over their rivers. That's probably referring to canals there, over their ponds, and over all their pools of water, that they may become blood.

And there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in buckets of wood and pitchers of stone. So interesting, this is obviously talking about the Nile River, but it goes beyond that, as we see here. Also storage reservoirs, canals of water, even jars and buckets of water that people have in their homes are turned into blood. And verse 20 then, Moses and Aaron did so just as the Lord commanded. So he lifted up the rod and struck the waters that were in the river in the side of Pharaoh and in the side of his servants.

And all the waters that were in the river turned to blood. And a few things to point out here. I want to talk about the meaning of this word, all, which will show up a couple of times here. There was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. All the waters that were in the river were turned to blood.

Some Bible critics, and some people can get confused about this, because as we'll see in just a few verses later, there's some water that is not turned to blood. We'll see this later with a plague on the animals, where it says, all the animals were struck by this plague. And yet, just a few verses later, we see animals that are clearly not struck by that.

What's going on here? In Hebrew, this word that is translated all can at times mean all, as in the sense of the English word all. When we use all, it means everything. It's all literally everything, everyone, everything that is a part of this group. The Hebrew is not quite like that. It can mean that, but generally it's talking about the majority, or the large majority of something.

For instance, we see phrases like, all of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron. Does that mean literally every one, every single one, you know, from babies up to elderly, complained against Moses and Aaron? No, it's obviously doesn't mean literally every single one. It means the majority, a large majority of it. In the same way, we might say, you know, if you went to the grocery store on Tuesday this week, you might tell somebody, I went to the grocery store and everybody was there. Well, it doesn't mean literally everybody was at King's Super or say, or Costco or something like that.

No, we use the term rather loosely, and that's kind of the way the Hebrew uses this word all. You'll see also phrases like, all of the land of Israel mourned after because somebody had died. And it just does not mean literally everything as we use the word in English. There's just not a good way to translate that particular word into English the way we use the word all. It's not that something's wrong with the Hebrew word, it's just that we don't have an equivalent word to match it. So the translators did use this word all, which to us means literally everything, everyone, but did not necessarily mean that in Hebrew.

So, did want to make that clear here because it'll come up a couple of times in these plagues. So continuing on, as it says here, this happened to the waters, all the waters of Egypt. However, as we see, there are some water that is not turned into blood here in just a minute.

So continuing verse 21, the fish that were in the river died, the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink the water of the river. So there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. So this is a complete catastrophe. The water is polluted, it's toxic, they can't use it for drinking, for bathing. The fish, which is one of the Egyptians major source of food, is wiped out because the fish die. So this is a devastating plague to the country.

How was it a judgment against Egypt's gods? Well, because the Nile was so important to the Egyptians, they had several gods who were responsible for the Nile River, and it's continuing to flow, and the continuing flooding, and so on there. And these were some of the Egyptians' greatest gods, and one of these was Khnum. Khnum, he was worshipped as the guardian of the Nile River, and he's usually depicted as a human being with a ram's head, as we see in this illustration here. So this is one of the primary gods of Egypt, the god overseeing the Nile. Another god the Egyptians worshipped is called Hapi. Hapi, this may have been the god that Pharaoh was going to worship in the morning at the river. He was viewed as the spirit of the Nile, and he was the god responsible for overseeing the annual flooding of the Nile that deposited all this rich topsoil there and refertilized the land every year. You can see some marsh plants on top of his head there. These would have been some of the common plants that grew along the banks of the Nile River, so he's represented in that way. Another of the greatest gods of Egypt was Osiris.

Osiris, who is the god of the underworld, and the Egyptians viewed the Nile River as his blood stream. And now it was, interestingly, literally like blood to the Egyptians. And you can imagine the terror of the Egyptians as they see their life-giving river that is the heart and core of the nation. And now it is a giant stinking cesspool with tons of dead fish rotting along the banks. And these three gods, Knome and Hoppe and Osiris, are powerless to prevent this from happening. They can't do anything about it, so they are shown to be impotent in the face of the power of the god of Israel, who does these great miracles.

Why start with a plague on the Nile, and why a plague of blood? Well, again, it's because God is a god of judgment, a god of justice. And what the Egyptians had done for several generations, from when Moses was born until now, when he returns, 80 years later, they've taken thousands, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, we just don't know, of tiny, helpless Israelite babies and thrown them in the Nile as part of this genocide against the Israelites. And again, so much blood has been shed, and now the river is turned to blood in return. And he does this because he is a god of justice and judgment. So, this should be a lesson to us as well, that God may delay his judgment, may delay his justice, but God doesn't sleep forever. And eventually, because he is a just God, because he is a god of justice, there's going to be consequences for sin. It's going to come back. And when that happens, you better watch out, because again, he is a god of judgment and justice, and vengeance is his. And we see this being played out now for the generations of sin on the part of the Egyptians. Let's talk about this plague a little bit here. What was it? Was it literally turned into blood?

There are several possible natural explanations for this. And I won't, I don't take a position one way or the other. Well, one thing we do see throughout these plagues is they are natural occurrences, but again, God controls the intensity and the timing of it. Some of the naturalistic explanations of this are it turned a reddish color because of a lot of red sediment, of which there's a lot of it in Africa washed into the river and turned it reddish colored with the sediment. Another explanation that ties in with this as well. You've probably heard of red tide in some of the Gulf Coast states and so on. It's an algae or bacteria that gets in the water and turns it red and makes it literally toxic. It's perhaps something like this is going on as well. This is bacteria that is washed down in these warm waters of the Nile River and disturbed the oxygen balance which killed off the fish and in turn produces a stench from all the decaying fish. So whether it's natural things or whether God literally turns it to blood, we're not told. But regardless of which way, it is clearly a miracle that these things happen on this massive scale in the timing at which God commands for it to take place. And that's what we see in several of the plagues. Just because it may have been natural phenomena doesn't mean it was still was not a miracle because God is still obviously in control of these events. Continuing on then with verse 22, then the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantment. So this is quite interesting here. This also shows that there is still some fresh water still left there. So when the Hebrew says, all the waters of Egypt were turned to blood, that doesn't mean literally all because there's still some. Whether it's ponds, pools, fountains, water buckets, we don't know. But the magicians are able to replicate this miracle of turning it to blood.

But I find this rather rather humorous in one way because the Egyptian magicians are so eager to show they are as good or is better or better than Moses and Aaron. So what do they do? They say, look Pharaoh, we also can ruin our water supply like Moses and Aaron did. Have you ever thought about it that way? They're so eager to outdo Moses and Aaron, they also pollute, they destroy part of what little fresh water is left in the nation. That must not have made Pharaoh particularly happy there. Yeah, they prove they can replicate this miracle, but they end up ruining more of their own water supply. So that's really quite funny and quite sad if you think about it there.

So continuing, verse 22, and Pharaoh's heart grew hard, and he did not heed them as the Lord had said. So Moses doesn't panic, doesn't get discouraged. He knows that God told him this is what would happen, that Pharaoh would continue to refuse to let the Israelites leave.

And Pharaoh turned, verse 23, and went into his house. Neither was his heart moved by this. So all the Egyptians dug all around the river for water to drink because they could not drink the water of the river. And seven days passed after the Lord had struck the river. And now we come to chapter 8, which is a second plague, which is of frogs. And we read about that beginning here in verse 1. And again, the presence of frogs would not be unusual there in Egypt because, again, a lot of marshes, canals going off from the Nile. So this has been a very good environment for frogs to breed and multiply. But this plague, as we'll see, is different.

Verse 8, chapter 8, verse 1, And the Lord spoke to Moses, Go to Pharaoh and say to him, Thus says the LORD, Let my people go, that they may serve me. But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all your territory with frogs. So the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into your house, into your bedroom, on your bed, into the houses of your servants, on your people, into your ovens, and into your kneading bowls. And the frogs shall come up on you, on your people, and on all your servants.

Then the LORD spoke to Moses, say to Aaron, Stretch out your hand with your rod over the streams, over the rivers and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up on the land of Egypt. So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. So the land is just filled with millions and millions of frogs here. And frogs were one of the animals that the Egyptians worshipped. One of their more popular goddesses was Hekhta. Hekht.

And she was commonly depicted with the head of a frog. Just not somebody had won a date, particularly there, but had the head of a frog and the body of a woman there. And frogs were viewed as sacred by the Egyptians because they lived in two worlds. They lived in water and on land. And that was very rare. There just aren't many animals like that. And they were considered so sacred that in Egyptian religion, killing a frog was punishable by death. Even if you accidentally stepped on a frog and killed it, you could be executed for that as a capital crime.

So there are a couple of ironies here in this story. Hekhta, incidentally, was viewed as the goddess of birth. And so she controls reproduction. And yet what's happening in this plague? Reproduction is totally out of control. The land is covered by millions and millions and millions of frogs here overflowing the land. And at the same time, they're so sacred that if you even step on one to kill one, that's punishable by death. And yet the ground is just covered by frogs. So where can you step here without stepping on a frog? There are frogs everywhere in the ground, in the houses, in their beds, in their cooking ovens, in their bowls that they eat out of just everywhere. So I think God has a bit of a sense of humor here that the Egyptians outlaw stepping on a frog, and frogs are just everywhere. You can't walk without stepping on a frog and squishing them. And in so doing, they're violating their own laws against this.

And finally, the plague ends, the frogs die off, and the people have to go out and gather all these rotten, stinking, decaying frogs and gather them up into heaps. So much for their sacred animal here. They multiply, millions of them show up, and then millions of them die, and they have to clean up all the bodies of this creature that they view as sacred here. So again, this shows that God is far more powerful than their goddess of birth and reproduction. And also tying in with this, this may also be a punishment for the killing of the Hebrew babies, the Hebrew baby boys, because this hecht is the goddess of reproduction and childbirth. So this may be another punishment directed toward this goddess of childbirth. It's interesting, this plague is commemorated at Passover today in Jewish families. Actually, the children sing a song about this, and it goes like this. One morning when Pharaoh woke in his bed, there were frogs on his head, and frogs in his bed. Frogs on his nose, and frogs on his toes. Frogs here, frogs there. Frogs were jumping everywhere. And this is a song that the Jewish kids sing at Passover. It's not quite as good as the shark song, or caterpillar, caterpillar, but it's kind of catchy there, so maybe we'll do that sometime for a variety show. Continuing on with the story, the magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs on the land of Egypt. And here, like the plague of turning the water into blood, we see the magicians of the Egyptians do the same miracle, and actually multiply the plague on the land. Again, because of their desire to outdo Moses and Aaron. They too can multiply this plague on the land, so that Pharaoh wants them to get rid of the frogs, and instead they multiply them. So what happens? Then in verse 8, then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron and said, and treat, or asked the Lord that he may take away the frogs from me and my people, and I will let the people go, that they may sacrifice to the Lord. So here, Pharaoh's motivation is to have more frogs, but to get rid of the frogs that are already there. And he actually ends up rather than his own magicians, he asked Moses and Aaron to get rid of them. So he's realizing that, yes, these men are not really miracle workers. They're fakers, that the power to remove these frogs actually rests with Moses and Aaron, not his own magicians. So on some level, he's now coming to realize his magicians are illusionists and tricksters and not real miracle workers. It's also interesting that here we see that Pharaoh, for the first time, uses God's name, Yahweh, the Lord, as it shows up in our Bibles. He asked Moses to pray to Yahweh on his behalf.

So apparently he's now coming to realize, hey, there is something to this God of the Hebrews, and ask him to get rid of all this plague of frogs. Verse 9, and Moses said to Pharaoh, Accept the honor of saying, When I shall intercede for you, for your servants, and for your people to destroy the frogs from you and your houses, that they may remain in the river only. So to more fully convince Pharaoh of God's power that God is in charge, Moses lets Pharaoh select the time when the plague of the frogs will end, and they'll be removed. So Moses lets Pharaoh choose the time. And verse 10, so Pharaoh said, Tomorrow. Yes, get rid of them tomorrow. And he and he, Moses said, Let it be according to your word, that you may know that there is no one like the Lord our God. It's interesting, this phrase, There's no one like the Lord our God, appears four times during the stories of the plagues here. Why does it repeat? Well, because, again, a major theme or lesson of these plagues is of revealing the true God to humanity, that you may know that there is no one like the Lord our God. And this is a primary purpose of God's word and a primary purpose of God's people through the years to let other people know there is no one like the Lord our God, far different from the gods of this world. Verse 11, continuing, And the frog shall depart from you, from your houses, from your servants, and from your people. They shall remain in the river only. Then Moses and Aaron went out from Pharaoh, and Moses cried out to the Lord concerning the frogs which he had brought against Pharaoh. So the Lord did according to the word of Moses. And the frogs died out of the houses, out of the courtyards, and out of the fields. They gathered them together in heaps, and the land stank. But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, what happens? He hardened his heart and did not heed them, as the Lord had said. So he had said he would let the Israelites go, but as soon as the plague is passed, he refuses to allow that to happen. And God had told Moses this is exactly what would happen. He would still stubbornly refuse to let the Israelites go. And this is quite remarkable as the Egyptians are cleaning up these tons of stinking, rotting frogs. Pharaoh changes his mind and says he's not going to let the Israelites go.

And now we come to the third plague, verse 16.

So the Lord said to Moses, Say to Aaron, stretch out your rod, and strike the dust of the land, so that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt. And they did so, for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and struck the dust of the earth. And you might realize here, Egypt is 98% sand, so there's sand everywhere when it talks about dust. This is what it's referring to, all the sand of Egypt there. And it became lice on man and beast. All the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of Egypt. Now the magicians so worked with their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could not. So now they can't replicate the miracles as they were before. So there were lice on man and beast. So now we see a difference. The magicians can't duplicate this, and they are struck by the plague itself, as we'll see here. So we see here another lesson of the Exodus, and that is that it is God alone who controls things, who controls the universe, who controls the natural world. The Egyptian magicians are not able to duplicate that.

Verse 19, then the magician said to Pharaoh, this is the finger of God. But Pharaoh's heart grew hard, and he did not heed them, just as the Lord had said. Now notice here, I mentioned in one of the previous sermons about hardening his heart. What does that mean? Up to this point, what we've seen every time that it is Pharaoh hardening his own heart. Every time up to this point, it is Pharaoh hardening his own heart. And only with the later plagues does it say that God hardens Pharaoh's heart. We talked about that earlier, so we won't go into that at this point.

But this shift in language here seems to signify that had Pharaoh wanted to let the Israelites go, he could have. He could have, but he steals himself, which is hard. He hardens his heart. He strengthens his heart, is what it literally means there in the Hebrew. But later, God will harden his heart to carry out his plan and purpose. But it does indicate that here, Pharaoh could have. He's his free choice. He has free reign to do what he wants. But, as we've seen, he's already changed his mind multiple times and refused to allow the Israelites to go free.

And at some point, apparently, he gets so bad, he is so hardened, that he loses his opportunity to do that. Okay, so what about the Lys? Which god of Egypt was that directed against? There was a particular god, Geb, a major god of the Egyptians, the great god of the earth. And that's why he's depicted as green, because he's the source of plant and vegetation growth and so on. And the Egyptians gave many offerings to Geb for the bounty of the earth, the huge crops that were grown there in Egypt. But in this case, the crop that comes up from the ground isn't wheat and barley and good things like that. The harvest, the crop that comes up, is lice. Biting, itching, lice.

And their god, Geb, is shown powerless to prevent this plague as well. It's interesting also how this affects the priests of the gods of Egypt here that we encounter. The Greek historian Herodotus, who lived several centuries BC and traveled to Egypt and wrote a lot about Egyptian history, he tells us that the Egyptian priests had to perform a lot of cleanliness rituals to carry out their duties. And he wrote, quote, the priests shaved their bodies all over every other day to guard against the presence of lice or anything else equally unpleasant while they are about their religious duties. The priests too wear linen only and shoes made from the papyrus plant. These materials for dress and shoes were the only ones allowed to them. They bathed in cold water twice a day and twice every night and observe innumerable other ceremonies beside. So this was what was required of the priest in order to be able to serve their gods. But one of the things they had to do was shave all the hair off their bodies every other day to prevent lice, because lice would prevent the priests from carrying out their duties in the temple. So now that the lice are affecting the priests, well, what does that mean? It means the priests can no longer go to the temples to lead the worship of the people in honor of these Egyptian gods and goddesses.

Because the priests themselves are now considered unclean and unsuitable to carry out their priestly duties. So this is a blow not only against Geb, the god of the earth, but also against all the priests there, the pagan priests. So again, God is showing them who is really, really in charge. And the land is infected with lice, making every person and every animal miserable. But the priests can't even go into the temples to pray to their gods to have the plague of the lice removed, because they are unclean, because they themselves are infested with lice. And now we come to the fourth plague. And on the surface, the next one, which begins in verse 20 here of Exodus 8, sounds a lot like the plague of lice, but it's probably quite a bit different, as we'll see. Verse 20, And the Lord said to Moses, Rise early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh as he comes out to the water. We see again a repeat of this pattern here about where Moses appears to warn Pharaoh. Then say to him, Thus says the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me. And notice here that there's a new concept introduced. It's not just a matter of going and giving sacrifices to God, but also, Let my people go, that they may serve me.

So we see another thought introduced here. It's not just a matter of freeing the Israelites, but freeing them so that they can serve God, which they're not able to do so long as they are slaves. Verse 21, Or else, if you will not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies on you, and your servants on your people, and into your houses. The houses of the Egyptian shall be full of swarms of flies, and also the ground on which they stand. Two things here. One is the original Hebrew has a wordplay, which Hebrew writers love. They show up again and again in the Old Testament. The wordplay is on the word sinned. I will sin swarms. What the Hebrew literally says, if you will not sin my people, I will sin swarms of flies. So something's going to be sent. Either the people are going to be sent away into freedom, or God is going to sin the swarms against him.

And the other aspect to bring out here is this word swarms of flies. Of flies is added by the translators. It literally just says swarms. It doesn't say what it swarms of there in the original Hebrew. And we'll see this is important a little bit, a few verses down here.

Okay, verse 22. And in that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, in which my people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there, in order that you may know that I am the Lord in the midst of the land. I will make a difference between my people and your people. Tomorrow this sign shall be. So now God adds another miraculous element to the miracles, and that is, now the plagues are only going to affect the Egyptians. God is going to set apart and protect his people who are in the land of Goshen, there in the Nile Delta. So this plague will only affect the Egyptians, and not the Israelites. The Israelites have suffered through the previous plagues, thereby by implication. So God wants Pharaoh to realize that he is the god of everywhere, not just of the Israelites, but the god of everything, every place. And he can control what happens in here. And we also see here a specific timing, that this is going to come the following day, which shows God's control over the timing of this plague. Verse 24, And the Lord did so. Thick swarms came into the house of Pharaoh, into his servants' houses, and into all the land of Egypt. The land was corrupted because of the swarms. And again, all flies was added by translators. So what's going on here? The Egyptians didn't have a god of flies, but they did have a god of a swarming insect. And that insect is another creature that the Egyptians considered holy, which is the scarab beetle. The scarab beetle. How many of you are familiar with June bugs? They were... okay, those of you... yeah, okay. Think of a June bug. This is very much what it looks like, about the same size. These are very common in Egypt. And if you go to Egypt, you'll see these in the souvenir shops everywhere, ranging anywhere from about the size of your thumbnail up to literally the size of coffee tables. You can buy your scarabs. It's a very popular souvenir there. And it's a symbol of Egypt. And for literally thousands of years, the Egyptians made scarabs. And here's what they look like. This is about the size of one of their fingertips. And you can see the beetle shape on one side, and then it's flat on the bottom. And they would commonly inscribe these with symbols and hieroglyphs and texts and so on.

To say... and these are very handy for archaeologists. Archaeologists love them, because they typically say, this is made during the reign of Pharaoh so-and-so.

So they're very handy for dating archaeological strata there. Very good for that. And they find them all over Israel, all over the Middle East, as a matter of fact. So what were these scarabs? Well, they're actually a form of dung beetle. A dung beetle. An insect that feeds on manure.

Now, why the Egyptians would want to consider an insect that feeds on manure wholly, I don't know. But they did. So again, this shows how warped some of the Egyptian religion is. But what's significant about this is these animals... these beetles were very destructive because they're kind of like termites. They had very strong jaws and could literally chew through wood. So in small numbers, they're not a problem, but when they're multiplied into the millions, you've got a real problem, because they will chew through anything that is wood, which in Egypt is quite a bit.

They were actually worse than termites. Termites at least stay around ground level. These things can fly anywhere, go anywhere, and eat up anything that's made out of wood. Was this plague directed at another god of Egypt? Yes, it was. The Egyptian god Kepper. Kepper. And he's commonly depicted with the head of a scarab. This is exactly what the tomb paintings of him look like. And he was viewed as the god responsible for the sun moving across the sky and staying in its regular orbit. So how was that connected to a scarab beetle? What was the connection? Well, the dung beetles, again this photo, would roll balls of manure into round balls, and they would roll them across the ground and bury them so they could feed on them later. And the Egyptians thought that in the same way that these dung beetles rolled balls of manure and moved it across the ground, that that's what Kepper is doing in the sky with the sun, like the dung beetle. So that's why they associated those two together.

They also viewed the scarab beetles as divine since the beetles emerged from carcasses of dead animals and from manure. And because of this, they were viewed as representing rebirth and resurrection, which is an important concept in Egyptian religion. The Egyptians know that what's going on is literally the beetles are just laying eggs in the manure or in the dead decaying thing, and they hatch out later into beetles. They had nothing to do with being divine, but the Egyptians didn't know about this life cycle. So when this swarm of creatures, likely dung beetles here, invade the land, they get into everything like the earlier plagues of the lice and the frogs. And this also is a direct affront to this god, Kepper. Here he is shown to be incapable of controlling these highly destructive insects that are now chewing through everything there in Egypt. Houses, buildings, equipment, agricultural tools, things like that. So God again shows this particular Egyptian god to be utterly powerless.

Verse 25, then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron and said, Go, sacrifice to your god in the land. This time Moses and Aaron don't come before Pharaoh. They wait for Pharaoh to call for them, and then they go. And it's interesting that Pharaoh now concedes even less than what he had agreed to previously. Earlier he had said he would give them permission to leave Egypt for a brief period. Permission that he later revoked, changed his mind about. But now he tells them they can worship their god, but they have to stay in Egypt to do this. Why this change of conditions, we're not told. That's just what it says. Verse 26, Moses said, Moses comes back with a brilliant comeback here, which I'll explain. Moses said, It is not right to do so, for we would be sacrificing the abomination of the Egyptians to the Lord our God. If we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, then will they not stone us. Well, what's he saying? Really, this is awkwardly translated in English, but what he's telling Pharaoh is the animals that the Israelites would sacrifice are the sheep and the rams, which are one of the Egyptians' gods. And the Egyptians would consider it sacrilege, an abomination for the Israelites to sacrifice the animals they worship as gods to sacrifice those animals to worship in honor of the God of Egypt. So, because of this, because the Israelites sacrificing these animals wholly to the Egyptian gods, this might provoke pandemonium. And violence and the Egyptians might want to start stoning the Israelites, is what Moses responds here. It's a very logical argument. Hey, we can't stay in Egypt and do this, because it'll create this uproar among the people. We have to leave Egypt to carry this out.

And it's interesting, there's really quite an insult here against Pharaoh's gods, because he says, we're going to go to the wilderness and sacrifice your gods to our god. Verse 27, we will go three days' journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord our God as He will command us. And Pharaoh said, I will let you go that you may sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness, only you shall not go very far away. Intercede for me. Ask your God to remove this plague, in other words. Then Moses said, indeed, I am going out from you, and I will entreat the Lord that the swarms may depart tomorrow from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people. But let Pharaoh not deal deceitfully anymore in not letting the people go to sacrifice to the Lord. So Moses now directly rebukes Pharaoh for playing games, for assuring him he will let the Israelites go, and then reneging on his promises here. So Moses gets a little pointed to Israel. He says, don't deal deceitfully with me anymore. Stop lying. And going back on your word, in other words. So Moses, we see now, is becoming more and more assured he's negotiating with Pharaoh on a position as equals or even even as superior to Moses as a result of these plagues. It didn't start out that way initially. It was go to Pharaoh and say, please, may we do this? Now it's, we're going to do this. And that's end of story. Stop lying and changing your mind.

Verse 30, so Moses went out from Pharaoh and entreated the Lord. And the Lord did according to the word of Moses. He removed the swarms from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people. Not one remained. But Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time also. Neither would he let the people go. So as with the early, other early plagues, Pharaoh again hardens his own heart once the insects have been removed. So there's a lesson for us. Don't keep doing the same thing when it's bringing disastrous results here. And Pharaoh, like a lot of leaders throughout history, has proved to be disastrous for his people. You might think of what Adolf Hitler brought on his people during World War II. Paul Pot and Cambodia, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein, others like this who have brought disaster on their people. They claim to love their people and serve their people, but they bring disaster on them. And it's one of the sad lessons of history that so many leaders are like that. Here's just one of the earliest examples of disastrous leadership. He's a good example of how not to be to be a good leader. Let's see.

Okay, we're coming up on the end of time, so I'm going to go ahead and break it off here.

And we'll plan to cover several more plagues, but we'll just wait and talk about those next time in a couple of weeks then. So that will conclude our sermon then, and have a good rest of the Sabbath day. I look forward to seeing all of you next week.