The Ten Plagues
Notes
Transcript
Miracles are given as signs to attest the word or message that has been given by God. There are two kinds of miracles. Both kinds are found in the book of Exodus.
1) Absolute — God’s acts which are totally beyond the natural or physical realm.
2) Providential — God uses natural or physical things, but raises them to a point beyond the natural and normal, and causes them to be timed in connection with His providential dealings or announcements.
Both kinds of miracles can only be done by the Lord. An absolute miracle is seen in the preliminary encounter with Pharaoh in our text. Examples of providential are seen in the ten plagues which follow.
1. The Preliminary Challenge, Exodus 7:8-13.
1. The Preliminary Challenge, Exodus 7:8-13.
God speaks to Moses and Aaron and tells them ahead of their appearance what Pharaoh will say, and Moses’ instructions to Aaron in response to Pharaoh. He is to take the staff and throw it down before Pharaoh (in his presence), so that it may become a serpent.
When Moses and Aaron displayed this sign before the elders of the children of Israel, they responded in belief. Pharaoh’s response would be different.
Pharaoh’s request of Moses and Aaron to perform a miracle was to prove their divine authority. Their claim was that God had send them. Pharaoh’s response is “Prove it! Work a miracle!”
The Scripture record says that Moses came to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord had commanded. They gave adequate proof of the authority that Moses and Aaron wielded. But remember that authority was not from them, their own power but from their obedience to the Lord and His empowering them to do His work.
Imagine what would have happened if Aaron would throw his staff down and nothing happened except the clattering of the staff echoing in the room. Aaron would have looked quite inept; Moses and Aaron would look quite foolish. But their obedience to the Lord was matched by His power, enabling them to serve the Lord and display His power before an unbelieving Pharaoh and his court.
Aaron had the task of turning the staff into a snake, whereas Moses was told to instruct Aaron to do so. Moses could ask all He wanted, but if the power of the God didn’t make it happen, it would be a waste of breathe to ask Aaron to do that which seemed impossible. With the power of God, an impossible task became a task well done.
I must note here that the display of God’s power came only by obedience. Aaron threw down the staff in obedience to the divine instructions given earlier; when he obeyed, it was the power of God which worked wonders. Our obedience is a vital key to obtaining divine power in God’s work.
Well, Pharaoh got his answer. Moses and Aaron worked a miracle, displaying the Lord’s power before Pharaoh himself. But Pharaoh called upon his “heavy artillery,” his wise men and sorcerers, described as the soothsayer priests (magicians) of Egypt and they did the same--turning their staffs into serpents. But this was not by the power of God .
Every god of Egypt had powers. This is the one thing that we must realize about heathenism. Why did they worship their gods? Because they have powers. The people knew this; they also knew that the powers of one god were not the same as the powers of another god. Sometimes one god would overpower another god. Where is the real power source of each god? The powers behind the gods and idols in the worship of heathenism were demons, who operated under Satan. So Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:19-20
What do I mean then? That a thing sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything?
No, but I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I do not want you to become sharers in demons.
Satan, the devil, likes to imitate divine deeds in order to deceive mankind into rejecting the truth and into embracing error. The confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh is really a contest between all the forces of Satan, which are represented in heathenism, and the power of God. Egypt is a picture of this world system under the authority and control of Satan seeking to keep its captives in bondage.
These magicians in Pharaoh’s court did their work with the power of Satan; they did not take snakes and hold them a certain way to make them stiff like rods so when they threw them down they were free of any restraints and could once again move like snakes; this was real power demonstrated by a real supernatural deity. Scripture warns us of Satan’s deceptive work.
No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.
that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders,
“For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.
Satan has great power, but it is limited. Exodus records that the magicians tried and failed to duplicate the third plague. Only then did they acknowledge the power of God in this.
But you and I need to get into the Word of God to know it well so that we would not be deceived by the false and the phony in the all-important matter of our spiritual lives.
Rods in Egypt were carried by those who had official authority and rank. It would be the staff or rod of Moses, a shepherd’s staff -- a despised rod -- that would demonstrate Moses’s authority as God’s representative with God’s message for Pharaoh. The serpent was an object of worship in Egypt and the rods were a symbol of power and authority.
So the magicians cast their staffs to the ground and they became snakes. But what happened next was not expected by them or by Pharaoh. The staff Aaron threw down swallowed up their staffs. This action showed the superiority of the Lord over the magicians and their source of power. They could cause their their staffs to become snakes, but they couldn’t prevent Aaron’s staff from feasting on them. Here the superiority of God’s power over Satan’s power is demonstrated. This was a clear sign that should have awakened Pharaoh and warned him that the God of Israel was superior to any of their gods.
Because Christ became sin, died, rose again and ascended, He has conquered sin and death and stands as victor over Satan and all his forces of evil. The outcome of the contest is already settled and final; the drama is enacted only to reveal the complete defeat of Satan for the whole world to see. The Lord wants His people Israel, the Egyptians and the world to be able to know this so that those who choose to follow Satan are without excuse.
But verse 13 tells us that in spite of this powerful sign, Pharaoh scorned the miracle and would not accept it. God is not to be blamed here. Why? Because Pharaoh had already hardened his heart and God was simply accommodating him. Pharaoh had said earlier that he did not know the God of the children of Israel, nor did he acknowledge Him. Now he has evidence of the superiority of this God to those his court magicians knew, but he rejected the evidence.
When you reject divine truth the consequences involved include having your heart hardened so you will not believe divine truth and thus will come into judgment. That is a scary state for you to be in. Those who reject Christ harden their heart and make it more difficult to believe in Him the next time the appeal is made to believe Christ.
The Lord had repeatedly predicted Pharaoh’s rejection of divine truth, starting at Exodus 3:19. Pharaoh’s rejection only confirms the Word of God. Sinful men will not stop the work of God. The evil they do will only confirm God’s truth.
God will now bring His judgment upon the gods of Egypt as well as the power behind them, Satan.
Introduction to the ten plagues:
Introduction to the ten plagues:
The ten plagues, in one word, are as follows:
1. Blood, 7:14-25
2. Frogs, 8:1-15
3. Lice, 8:16-19.
4. Flies, 8:20-32
5. Cattle, 9:1-7
6. Boils, 9:8-12
7. Hail, 9:13-34
8. Locusts, 10:1-20
9. Darkness, 10:21-29
10. Death, chapters 11, 12
There is a movement in these plagues. They move from the external to the internal, from the natural to the supernatural, from the mediate display of God’s power to the immediate display of God’s power, from the earthly to the heavenly.
There is an increase in severity as well. At first there is discomfort, then there comes suffering moving toward destruction and ending in death.
There are different ways that these plagues can be ordered or divided. The first nine plagues are attacks on certain gods in the Egyptian pantheon. The tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, is the basis for Israel’s salvation. It is the only plague in which there was a commemorative element assigned: the yearly Passover celebration. The tenth plague also was an attack on all the gods of Egypt and it was a judgment that fell on anyone who made no blood provision for salvation, whether Israelite or Egyptian or foreigner in the land.
Another arrangement is that you group the first nine plagues in groups of three. Then we see that plagues #1 - #3 = loathsome; #4 - #6 = painful; #7 - #9 = destructive and grievous; beyond the Egyptians’ experience. Other examples:
Plagues #1 - #3 = inflicted by the hand of Aaron using the rod; #4 - #6 = inflicted by the hand of the Lord; #7 - #9 = inflicted by the hand of Moses.
Plagues #1, 4, and 7 are the first of each series. Before each of these plagues, there is a long wait and/or warning before the plagues with those plagues being announced “in the morning;” plagues #2, 5, and 8 have a short warning that merely announces that the plague is coming; then we have plagues #3, 6, and 9, which occur with no announcement or warning.
The last of each series of three plagues defeats the magicians of Egypt. At the third plague they recognize that they were no match for the power of God that was displayed. When the sixth plague struck, these magicians were made unclean and could not even come before Pharaoh. At the ninth plague, there is a complete breakdown between Moses and Pharaoh.
The first three plagues were upon all in Egypt. Starting with the fourth plague, the Lord makes a distinction between the Egyptians and the Israelites.
If we take the plagues and group them in twos, we discover that the last plague of each pair is more severe than the first plague of the pair and each succeeding grouping of two plagues is more severe than the preceding group.
There is also a correspondence when the plagues are arranged in an inverted parallelism. So when we do this:
1. Blood
2. Frogs
3. Lice
4. Flies
5. Cattle
6. Boils
7. Hail
8. Locusts
9. Darkness
10. Death
We observe the following:
The first plague is blood, the symbol of death; the tenth plague is death, whereas the application of blood is the symbol of life.
The second plague of frogs (symbolic of demons in the New Testament book of Revelation); whereas the ninth plague, darkness, is characteristic of the demonic kingdom.
The third plague of lice (from the dust of the ground), whereas the eighth plague of locusts are covering the face of the ground.
The fourth plague of flies was specifically kept out of the land of Goshen in Egypt; so too the seventh plague of hail was specifically kept out of the land of Goshen.
Both the fifth and the sixth plague caused cattle to suffer.
Many, but not all, of these plagues will also be a part of the end time tribulation, the final judgment against Satan, his forces of evil and mankind who rejects God’s only way of salvation.
for He says, “At the acceptable time I listened to you, And on the day of salvation I helped you.” Behold, now is “the acceptable time,” behold, now is “the day of salvation”—