The Plagues
Download MP3Invite you to turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 7. Exodus chapter 7. For those of you who it's your first time, we've been working through the life of Moses, in particular the gospel in the life of Moses. For it's not just moral tales, but it teaches us, of our Lord and savior Jesus. And, I want to look at the plagues tonight.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm going to start chapter 7 verse 14. Then the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh's heart is hardened. He refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he is going out to the water. Stand on the bank of the Nile to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that turned into a serpent.
Jeffrey Heine:And you shall say to him, the Lord, the God of the Hebrews sent me to you saying, let my people go that they may serve me in the wilderness, but so far you have not obeyed. Thus says the lord, by this you shall know that I am the lord. Behold, with the staff that is in my hand, I will strike the water that is the Nile, and it shall turn into blood. The fish in the Nile shall die, and the Nile will stink, and the Egyptians will grow weary of drinking water from the Nile. And the Lord said to Moses, say to Aaron, take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over the rivers, their canals, and their ponds, and all the pools of water, so that they may become blood.
Jeffrey Heine:And there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, even in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone. Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded. In the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants, he lifted up the staff and struck the water in the Nile. And all the water in the Nile turned into blood. And the fish in the Nile died, and the Nile stank.
Jeffrey Heine:So that the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile. There was blood flowing throughout all the land of Egypt, but the magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts. So Pharaoh's heart remained hardened, and he would not listen to them as the Lord had said. Pharaoh returned and went into his house, and he did not even take this to heart. Flip over to chapter 9, verse 21.
Jeffrey Heine:Sorry. Chapter 10 verse 21. Then the Lord said to Moses, stretch out your hands toward heaven that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt. A darkness to be felt. So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was pitch darkness in the land of Egypt 3 days.
Jeffrey Heine:They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for 3 days, but all the people of Israel had light where they lived. 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. But Moses said, you must also let us have sacrifices and burnt offerings that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.
Jeffrey Heine: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 what we must serve the lord until we arrive there. But the lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let them go. Then pharaoh said to him, get away from me.
Jeffrey Heine:Take care never to see my face again, for in the day you see my face, you shall die. Moses said, as you say, I will not see your face again. Pray with me. Lord, we thank you for your word and his power to change hearts through your spirit. Again, thank you.
Jeffrey Heine:Lord, we need to hear from you tonight, not from me. This is a story familiar to all of us. So give us fresh ears an open heart to receive your truth. I pray that my words would fall to the ground, and that they will blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, let your words change us.
Jeffrey Heine:I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. We come to this famous narrative. It's the story of the plagues, which is really a sensational story. It makes for a great movie.
Jeffrey Heine:I think a couple of years ago, a movie did come out that had the plagues in it and I think it made God look like the bad guy. As you know there's 10 plagues. We're only gonna look at the first 9 tonight. We're only gonna be really able to study a couple of them. The chapters that we just read are some of the most action packed chapters in all of the Bible.
Jeffrey Heine:Picture Bibles love this stuff. I mean, it's truly sensational. You you read things like Moses, or actually Aaron at this point, getting a staff and striking the Nile and it all turning to blood. You know, or stretching out his staff over the the Nile and frogs coming all up. And one of my favorites is is when he reaches down and he grabs soot, and he throws the soot up in the air and the wind catches it and blows it all over Egypt.
Jeffrey Heine:And wherever it lands, people gets boils all over them. I mean, this is like this is just unearthly things going on here, and it's just fascinating to read, but what do we do with it? I mean it's fun to read, but what actually do we do with this? This stuff happened 3000 years ago. How does it really apply to us?
Jeffrey Heine:Now some people they read the story of the plagues, and they walk away thinking that the point of the story is this, you don't obey God, he will smite you. He will smite you. And and and they'll look at things like tsunamis or hurricanes, and you know that comments that that's right. People sinned. God sent in this hurricane, and he and he just it was to smite and to punish all of these people.
Jeffrey Heine:The plagues are about judgment. Well, they they are to some degree about judgment, but not in the way you would first think. The primary purpose of plagues is to teach us about the Lord, and what your life looks like when you leave him, when he's not the center. They're not simply judgment, and God didn't send plagues just to get the Israelites out of slavery. I mean if God wanted to get the people out of slavery, there's a lot easier ways to do it.
Jeffrey Heine:Moses, go to pharaoh. Say, let my people go. Pharoah says, no. Dead pharaoh. Another pharaoh comes up, let my people go.
Jeffrey Heine:He's gonna say, yes. Absolutely. There's a lot of ways that you can you can easily persuade pharaoh to let the people go. Why go through all of this drama? Why not just go straight to the 10th plague, death of the firstborn, let the people go?
Jeffrey Heine:The goal of these plagues is that the people would come to know God. Chapter 9 verse 16, Moses tells Pharaoh that the very reason God raised him up and has not killed him yet, is so that the name of the Lord will be spread over all the earth. The people would know his name, Yahweh, I am. And you see this in chapter 5 if you want to turn there, verse 1. Afterwards Moses and Aaron went and said to pharaoh, thus says the lord the god of Israel, let my people go that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.
Jeffrey Heine:But pharaoh said, who is the lord that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go. God sent the plagues to answer Pharaoh's question. Who is Yahweh that I should obey him? Now now you need to keep in mind that pharaoh was a pluralist.
Jeffrey Heine:He believed in many gods. The Egyptians had 100 of gods, and so of course Pharaoh would have expected the Israelites to have their own god. He would have expected them, you have your gods, I have my gods, let's get back to work. Okay? He's a pluralist.
Jeffrey Heine:The question is, why should I have to listen to your God? He he would have made, you know, I worked on university campuses for about 10 years, he would have made an amazing religion professor. And just saying that all religions are the same. He's the kind of person who if in Crestwood has the bumper sticker, coexist. You know, all all of us, can't we just get along, all the religions are the same.
Jeffrey Heine:This is the dominant philosophy today, pluralism. Most Westerners believe that the world would be a better place if everyone would just be a little more tolerant. I mean, who are you to really say that your God is the only God. You can have your God. I can have my God.
Jeffrey Heine:Well, the plagues are the way that God is going to show pharaoh and all of the people who hear this story, us in this room who hear this story, that you cannot hold to this belief. The God of the Bible will not let you hold to this belief. Because he's not just the God of the Israelites. He's the one true God of all of the earth. This is why he strikes down the Nile, and he strikes down the sun, 2 of the main gods of the Egyptians.
Jeffrey Heine:And he says, your God's nothing, I control these things. Yahweh is a true Lord over all of the earth. And God sent these plagues so that we would know this. These plagues are to bring the people to acknowledge of the Lord and there to teach us ultimately about salvation, and I hope to show this to you. Let's look closely at this very first plague.
Jeffrey Heine:The Nile being turned into blood. We don't know if the Nile literally turned into blood. We're not exactly sure. Commentaries are really divided over what that means. It at least means this, the Nile became unlivable.
Jeffrey Heine:Unlivable. It can no longer sustain life. There's a lot of symbolism going on here because if you remember at the very very first story in Exodus, Pharaoh wanted to throw all the babies in the Nile and turn it into a bloodbath. And actually it's Moses who comes later says, no, I will turn the Nile into a bloodbath, so where it can't sustain life. And it was also at the bank of the Nile that Pharaoh's daughter had compassion on him, and now it's Moses meeting Pharaoh himself at the bank of the Nile, and he's asking for compassion.
Jeffrey Heine:And pharaoh says, no. No. And so God strikes the Nile, and he turns it into blood, which is a terrible thing. But really, I don't know if you stop to think this when you've thought through the plagues. It's not altogether that impressive.
Jeffrey Heine:It's really not that impressive. A matter of fact, plague might be too strong of a word. Like I've mentioned before, if God wanted to make a statement, fire from heaven, kill pharaoh. That's a statement. Now turning into blood is a inconvenience.
Jeffrey Heine:It's not really that big of a deal. I mean even Moses's or even pharaohs magicians could imitate that. And so it's it's really not altogether that impressive, and actually all of the plagues when you look at them, or at least most of the plagues, are not that impressive. And they could even be explained away by pharaoh. There's a, you see, pharaoh would have said, well, there's there's kind of a natural progression to these plagues.
Jeffrey Heine:They can all be explained in that terms. And so, you know, you have after the Nile turning to blood, the very next plague is frogs. Makes sense. The Nile becomes unlivable. Frogs have to leave.
Jeffrey Heine:So of course, they're gonna flood into the land. Frogs all die. So now what's going to start swarming around? Little insects, little gnats are going to start going around everywhere, and then little flies are going to start going around everywhere. And so now you got this bad water and you've got flies going everywhere.
Jeffrey Heine:So what's going to be the next thing? Disease. So then the cattle begin to get sick, and they start getting all sick. All the cattle are sick. So what's the next thing that happened?
Jeffrey Heine:Then the humans begin breaking out and boils over their skin. It's a very natural progression. And you could see pharaoh explaining all this away, you know, this is just we've had these things in the past. As far as miracles go, it's not that impressive that can be explained away. And so you have to ask a question, why is God choosing to free Israel this way?
Jeffrey Heine:Why is he doing this? Almost every commentary I've read says that what you are actually seeing happen here is what you would call uncreation. You're seeing the natural world begin spinning into chaos, chaos spiraling down into chaos. You're witnessing uncreation here. The natural world is is slowly beginning to become unglued, spiraling out of control, and finally in that second to last plague, it even descends all the way back darkness before there was light, before God brought any balance, any order into this world.
Jeffrey Heine:It's uncreation, back to where it was formless and void. And you can even see this, and and we'll look at this in the weeks ahead in Israel's deliverance when they cross the Red Sea. It's an act of creation. One of the very first creative acts God had was he separated the land from the water. And you see that again through this new creation when Israel goes through it.
Jeffrey Heine:But all of these plagues can be seen as uncreation. I know that's not a word, but it's the best one that fits. Water systems, vegetation, animals, weather systems, even light and darkness were all created, held in balance by God. God says, you don't want me in control? And he starts letting go of control.
Jeffrey Heine:You don't want me in your life, I will back out of your life. And you begin experiencing the consequences. Now when the Egyptians saw God acting this way, and someone thought, that's not impressive, we'll try to act like God. We have the same power, and a lot of us we we feel the same way. And and so the sorcerer has gotten together and they see Aaron strike the Nile and it turns into blood and they say, hey, we can do that.
Jeffrey Heine:We can be like your God. And the ironic thing is Moses has to just laugh. It's like, okay, you just made your problem doubly worse. If we had some blood, now it's all blood. Maybe the same thing to frogs.
Jeffrey Heine:Frogs cover the land and and the sorcerers go, okay, we could do that. Here's even more frogs. You gotta be thinking, well, why did you send even more frogs? All they could do is make it with through all of their power, all of their pride. When they tried to act like God, all they did was make the situation much worse.
Jeffrey Heine:They couldn't redeem anything, when they tried to be like God. What God is teaching us through this these plagues is, if we remove him from our lives, we begin to fall apart. Do not think of these plagues as you do something wrong, and God is going to smite you. He's gonna smite you. He's gonna say, take that.
Jeffrey Heine:It's about removing them from your life and beginning to disintegrate. And it starts small, starts as an inconvenience, and it starts spiraling and spiraling out of control. And what happens to the natural world happens to all of us. You see this in Romans 8 when it says that all creation is groaning, waiting to be set free from its bondage, that word bondage that we've been looking at. All creation is in bondage.
Jeffrey Heine:It's in slavery. Our sin doesn't only affect us, it affects all of creation. When Adam fell, when he sinned, his sin affected creation. What's one of the first things that happened? Thorns, thistles grew.
Jeffrey Heine:It it affected the created world. And then right at that moment, Adam began to start being uncreated. He started returning to dust. The moment he sinned, all of a sudden his body started going through decay. Wrinkles started growing, old age started happening.
Jeffrey Heine:He began to feel uncreated, and ultimately he will return back to dust. And we see, I'd say we feel this disintegration every time we sin. Let's just look at a couple of sins. If you look at worrying, you know God tells us in Philippians 4, don't worry about anything, but we worry. What happens if you were really really worried about the economy?
Jeffrey Heine:You're really worried about the economy. You start stressing over every Dow report, every little point that goes up and down and begin stressing. You start checking the Internet, you know, every hour to see how your stocks are doing. If you've got stocks, that you, you can no longer really enjoy work because you start looking at your coworkers no longer as friends, but more as competition. Who's going to keep the remaining few jobs that are there.
Jeffrey Heine:And so you begin having a bitterness to them and you begin just thinking, I've got to outperform them and all sudden joy becomes elusive and and this worry starts taking over and what happens is you're disintegrating. God's no longer the sinner. And this started small, but he begins spiraling out of control. Or what about coveting? God tells us not to covet.
Jeffrey Heine:But what happens if maybe you covet somebody's life? You know, they've got a really good job. They have a great life. You know, may maybe great kids, a really good spouse, and you make a good bit of money, and it's just an easy life and you're envious of it. And then that coveting begins to grow a little bit, and so you start having a bitterness towards them, just slightly.
Jeffrey Heine:And at first, it's just an inconvenience, but then that bitterness grows to the point where you actually find yourself smiling when something bad happens to them. You're like, that's right. We can't all have easy lives, can we? Look at that. And then you begin hoping that something bad happens to them.
Jeffrey Heine:And then all of a sudden you never have any joy anymore. What has happened? On creation. You've removed God from the center and you have started to spiral downward. You're wasting away.
Jeffrey Heine:Now, you wouldn't say God is punishing you, no more than a doctor punishes somebody by saying you have high cholesterol. He's not he's not he's not doing that to judge you. He's just telling you, hey, if you do these things, this is what happens. This is what happens to you. He's not saying, do this and I'll smite you.
Jeffrey Heine:He says, when you leave me though, you suffer consequences, because I hold everything together. And that is what God is doing in these plagues. Look at the 7th plague of hell found in Exodus 9 verse 15. For by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you had been cut off from the earth. Go to verse 18.
Jeffrey Heine: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. Now therefore, sin, 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. Then whoever feared the word of the lord among the servants of pharaoh, hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses. But whoever did not pay attention to the word of the lord, left his slaves and his livestock in the field.
Jeffrey Heine:And so you see these plagues, they really are a form of judgment, but not in the way you first think. If God wanted to kill these people, if he wanted to kill pharaoh, he could have just done it. But look what he does when he sends hell. Hey, I'm gonna send hell tomorrow. So this is what you do.
Jeffrey Heine:I don't wanna hurt anybody. You all go in your houses, get your cattle, bring your cattle in the houses, nobody gets hurt. Okay? I'm sending the hell tomorrow. That's how he sends the plagues.
Jeffrey Heine:And he says that some people actually believed him. Some Egyptians, they're beginning to know the lord. And we'll look at it in a few weeks, some of the Egyptians actually left with the Israelites. The plagues are about salvation. They're about salvation.
Jeffrey Heine:It's it's obviously about the salvation of Israelites, but it's also about the salvation of the Egyptians. He's pleading with them to be saved. You know, it's amazing that not one person in the plagues up to this point has been killed. Plague is such a harsh turn. Not one.
Jeffrey Heine:He's bending over backwards to preserve life, not to destroy it. These plagues point to how we are to be saved. I do not want you to walk away from here thinking that the point of the plagues is for you to try really hard, really really hard to be a better person because you're just gonna fail, you can't do it, and you certainly can't do it out of fear, fear that God's gonna punish you or send you some kind of plague, actually that's anti gospel. That's not the gospel. And we looked at this this summer, but fear cannot change your heart.
Jeffrey Heine:It cannot change your heart. Fear can make you outwardly a great person, but inside, your heart is just as self centered as before. If fear is your motive for being that person, that good person. For instance, you don't lie, and fear is your your motivating factor to not lie. If you're in a business and you think if I lie about this and my boss finds out about it, I'm fired.
Jeffrey Heine:Fear keeps you from lying. Or you can do a religious spin to it. I can't lie because if I lie, God will be mad at me. God will fire me. He'll smite me.
Jeffrey Heine:And so whether you're religious or irreligious, if fears are your driving factor, you know, it will keep you moral. But the problem with it is it doesn't change the heart. And sometimes fear can actually make you sin. What if you didn't do the report that your boss told you to do? Said, did you do it?
Jeffrey Heine:Fear. Yes, I did. Yes I did. Fear makes you sin. Fear makes you not sin.
Jeffrey Heine:It's an outward element, but your heart is completely unchanged And you see this even in school, you know, when when a teacher tells a student to do something and and they're scared, maybe they're taking a test, I'm not gonna cheat. Why? Fear. If I get caught, I'm expelled. Then they go out to the playground, peer pressure.
Jeffrey Heine:Hey, aren't you gonna do this? Aren't you gonna do this? Fear. Yes. Fear keeps you from sinning.
Jeffrey Heine:Fear makes you sin. There's only one thing that changes the heart and that is the gospel. Because in the gospel, we have no problem saying, yes, I am completely a sinner, but I fear not judgment because Christ has been judged for me, and that changes your heart. We have no reason to fear because of the death and the resurrection of Jesus. That's what these where these plagues ultimately point.
Jeffrey Heine:These are just as Exodus is that Moses's Exodus is a little e, and Jesus's was a big e, these plagues are with a little p. And the plagues that Jesus took on on the cross are a capital p, and we're gonna look at that next week. Look at when we have this final plague, chapter 11, the 9th plague. Sorry, chapter 10 verse 21. Get my chapters confused.
Jeffrey Heine:Then the lord said to Moses, stretch out your hands toward heaven that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to be felt. So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven and there was pitch darkness in all the land of Egypt for 3 days. I love the Hebrew language. When I was at Bison, I took a extra year of Hebrew because it just it was just so fun, and, it it's very tangible, very action oriented. It's good.
Jeffrey Heine:It's full of great imagery. And so what it uses here says, this is not your normal kind of darkness, like when you turn out your lights. This is a darkness you can feel, and instantly, you know what they're talking about. That darkness that creeps in on you. A darkness you can feel.
Jeffrey Heine:The kind of darkness isolates you. Where you have no clue if somebody is standing this far away from you, because you can't see a thing. This is darkness is a tangible sign of God's absence at this point. God is light in whom there is no darkness at all. And when the darkness that one could feel has covered this land, it is a visible sign that God has left.
Jeffrey Heine:His presence has left. Now it's with the Israelites. They have light. So this isn't an eclipse. The sun didn't say stuck on the other side of them, you you know, the earth or anything like this.
Jeffrey Heine:No, the Israelites have light, but the Egyptians grouping in darkness. Much like, in Revelation when the city of God and it comes, and it says that in the middle of the city, God's presence is is there and there will no longer be night, because his presence is our light. It's our light. Now this darkness, this supernatural terrifying darkness actually is pointing us forward. 1400 years forward from this event to something very similar, and you see it on the cross.
Jeffrey Heine:Where on the cross, Jesus, just like Moses, stretched out his hands, and a supernatural darkness covered the land. A darkness that you could feel, the darkness that he felt in his bones, that isolation, that abandonment, all the way to the point where where Jesus on the cross cries out, my God, my God, you have left me. Your presence is gone, And what we're seeing here, is judgment. The judgment that these plagues pointed towards. Jesus is now feeling to his core.
Jeffrey Heine:He is taking on the plagues with a capital p, so that we can be free. Receiving ultimate judgment so we can have ultimate liberty. He felt the darkness. He felt the isolation. Even from his own father, so that we would not have to.
Jeffrey Heine:So we wouldn't have to. And then after that plague of stretching out his arms and darkness covering the whole land, Jesus is the one who fully embraced the next plague, death of the firstborn. Death of the first born, the first born of all creation, which is what we're gonna look at next week. And when I take a pass over meal together as we look towards that. Does this move you?
Jeffrey Heine:Does it move you? I mean, does it do you feel yourself being freed as you look at this? I hope so it should, because we don't ever have to live in bondage again because of the work of Christ. He has taken on the plagues so that we might be saved. Pray with me.
Jeffrey Heine:Lord, we thank you for your work on the cross. The work in which all these plagues, all these little bits of judgment point forward to. You fully embrace the darkness. You fully took on death so that we might not have to. We thank you for that, and I pray that that would move us, that in light of such love, we would be changed.
Jeffrey Heine:And I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
