September 1, 2024
Reading: Exodus 6-7:13
Focus: Exodus 6:10-11: Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the Israelites go out of his country.”
Father God, Thank You for all of Your blessings. You are God and should be obeyed. Help us to learn from Your Word today. In Jesus Name. Amen.
Moses had a simple message. This is what God says, “Let my people go.” But Pharaoh was having none of it. Instead, he made it harder for the Israelites to make the bricks that they were forced to make for the Egyptians. God told Moses to go to the people and tell them that God had heard their suffering and remembered the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. To tell them that He would free them and lead them to the land promised to the patriarchs. Moses passed this message on to the people and they would not listen to him because they were discouraged. They had had hope and all it got them was more work.
There’s a lesson for us here. When things go wrong and our patience is tried, we need to realize that God is at work. There is a saying, “When you are doing what God wants and when He is working in your life, Satan is going to try his best to discourage and prevent you from trusting God. But, when you are doing your own thing, Satan is going to leave you alone because you’re doing what he wants, not what God wants.” Problems in our lives develop our patience and work to strengthen our faith. They teach us 1) trust God to do what is best for us; 2) look for ways to honor God in our situation; 3) remember that God will never abandon us; and 4) watch to see how God is working in our lives. When you have big problems, remember that God is bigger than those problems are.
As the Israelites were being worked harder and harder, God was working to prove to Pharaoh that He was God, and not Pharaoh. All of the problems, the work, the suffering would be taken away. When they left Egypt, all the promises that God had made would be kept. This is a portrayal of salvation. We are oppressed by sin and Satan. When we are redeemed, we are freed from sin. He becomes our God, and we become His people. Then He leads us into a new life as we follow him. The people didn’t want to listen to the words of Moses. It seemed that all he did was bring more suffering to the people. He went to Pharaoh and Pharaoh made them work harder and longer. As a leader, all Moses could do was keeping bringing God’s message of deliverance. If you are a leader, keep speaking what God tells you to. Don’t give up. It may take days, weeks, months or years, but the Word of God always brings results. Prayer is the same way. God always answers. It may not be what we want to hear but it IS an answer. Yes, no and not yet are answers.
Think of Moses. How discouraged would he have been. Getting a ‘No’ from Pharaoh and having the people refuse to listen or tell him that all he had done was bring them more suffering. Twice in this section he says, “Since I speak with faltering lips, why would Pharaoh listen to me?” (Exodus 6:12 & 30). But Moses hadn’t really seen God at work yet. Hold on, Moses! God is getting ready to make His power know to all of Egypt is a very real way.
As I said last week, Pharaoh believed that he was god on earth. A descendant of Ra. Moses was, to him, a mere man. But God told Moses to go back to Pharaoh. He had made Moses like God to Pharaoh. Wait! What? It does not say how God accomplished this, but He did. Moses was as God to Pharaoh and Aaron was his prophet. He instructed them, again, to do all that He commanded them to do. He promises in Exodus 7:4-5, that He would lay His hand on Egypt and by the time He was done, there would be no doubt that He was God, and the Egyptians would have not doubt about it.
If there is any question, Exodus 7:7 tells us that Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron was eighty-three. If you will remember, when Jacob arrived in Egypt, he was highly respected due to his age. People did not live into their 60s during this time. Moses, at 80, was considered to be a rare individual. So, Pharaoh may have had some form of respect for him due to his age but not enough to take him at his word that God had sent him. Certainly not enough to agree to the request to let Israelites go to worship God in the wilderness. But God had made Moses like God to Pharaoh.
Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh again. This time, Pharaoh recognized Moses as a peer, but not as one above his own godhood. He told Moses to perform a miracle. Aaron threw his staff down before Pharaoh and it turned into a snake. I imagine it was a snake that Pharaoh was familiar with and was ‘afraid’ of. The cobra. Now the cobra was an impressive snake. It can reach 8 feet long and raise it head about 2 feet above the ground. The hood can spread to about five inches across. On the back of the hood, is an ‘eye’, said to be placed there by a god making the snake the protector of Pharaohs. The venom is so powerful that it can cause respiratory failure within 10 minutes unless treated immediately.
The symbol of the cobra became the symbol of Egyptian royalty. Carved cobras were everywhere in Egypt. Furniture, staffs, armbands and other jewelry. It was part of the crown of the Pharaohs. It is often associated with Ra, and Hathor and Sekhmet – messengers and avengers of Ra. So, if the staff became a cobra, it would have made an impression on Pharoah. However, it did not convince him. He called his own magicians and wisemen. They accomplished the same thing. But, to show that Moses and Aaron’s God was more powerful, their snake swallowed up all those of Pharaoh’s magicians. Even then, Pharaoh would not relent. Little did he know that his refusal would bring on more trouble that he could ever imagine. The ten plagues. Each worse than the one before.
The ten plagues demonstrated the power of God but they were on such a scale that they were remembered for generations throughout the world. They testified of the power of God over all other gods. Each plague was proof that God was more than specific gods of Egypt. We’ll go more into that next week.
Here in this reading, we see a picture of Jesus. He comes to us, offering deliverance. Sometimes we refuse to listen, and we don’t respond. Sometimes we listen but we still won’t accept the offer. But He keeps coming to us with the offer. He will show us His power, either as an answer to something we need in our lives or as a miracle in the life of a Christian that you know. But He keeps trying to get our attention. It may come to the point that the only way He can get us to pay attention is to allow us to hit rock bottom, physically, financially or spiritually. We can still harden our heart and not listen or accept. But He keeps waiting for us to listen and accept. I wonder what would have happened to Egypt is Pharaoh had listened and obeyed. We will never know, because he refused.
Will you listen and obey?
Father God, Thank You for Your perseverance. Thank You that You have provided us deliverance from the bondage of sin through Jesus Christ. Help to always listen and obey. In Jesus Name. Amen.
Food For Thought
- What do you think it means that God “would harden Pharaoh’s heart”?
- Do you think that Pharaoh still had free will to listen and obey or not? Why or why not?
- Why do think that God allowed Pharaoh to persecute the Israelites?
- What do you think that that persecution did for the Israelites?
- Has God ever allowed hard times in your life? What did you do?
