Exodus 7-9, Matthew 15:29-16:12

Sorry I lapsed. I had a severe sinus infection and couldn’t even breathe. I was one finger typing short responses on Facebook and it would wear me out. A couple days were so bad that Rob had to read me the passage over the phone! We are back on track now I think. So let’s get into Moses.
First of all, I found the weird way they broke up the passage distracting. So I’m just going with chapter 7-9. We go from the moment that Moses and Aaron approach Pharaoh through the seventh plague. I want to point out that God easily could have just had Pharaoh let them go. In verses 1-7 of chapter 7 God lays out the plan to Moses just so that he knows what to expect. Specifically in verses 4 & 5 God says that he is doing this to show his glory to the Egyptians so that they will know who he is. That seems kind of harsh, but when you really think about it, it often is necessary. How often do we turn to God when things are not so bad? Isn’t that when we start to get comfortable and stop focusing so much on him? It is when we are at our lowest that we focus on God and our walk with him. How often have we had to go through plagues just to see the amazing God we serve for who he is? Is that his fault or ours? I would contend that it is ours.
On their first approach of Pharaoh, he insists that they prove they have the authority to even address him. So without speaking, Aaron threw his staff before Pharaoh where it became a serpent. The magicians of Pharaoh did a lot of chanting and dancing and all and finally turned theirs into it. Aaron’s staff ate them up. That cracks me up. God doesn’t need a lot of fireworks or whatever to do miracles and his miracles will always trump those of anyone else. The Bible doesn’t object to magic for any reason besides that it is the wrong way to try to gain power. We need to rely on God and draw our power from him. Yet, Pharaoh rejects it and his heart is hardened even though it’s obvious that God has overcome his magicians.
Now we go onto the plagues themselves. The first one attacks the heart of Egypt. The Nile was the lifeblood of the land and the home to one of their greatest goddess. This plague doesn’t just touch the Nile though, it touches all water in the land. Yet again, just because his magicians can create something similar on a much smaller level, Pharaoh rejects God’s power. I think we are like this often as well. If someone else can give us a little bit of joy or part of our desires, we’ll forget God for awhile. It looks stupid when we read it about Pharaoh but we miss how we copy that behavior. As my friend Brett says “Splinter, meet plank.” Lol Each of the plagues struck at a different Egyptian god. The second plague was against the godess of amphibians. Here we see something different than the first plague. While the magicians can make more frogs, they apparently can’t get rid of those there already. So Pharaoh begs Moses to get God’s help. God already knew that Pharaoh was not going to give in yet, so he didn’t totally give them relief. He merely killed the frogs, one irritation for another basically. Next came the lice which the magicians could not duplicate, and in verse 19 we see them admit that they could not do divine works. After the lice come the flies. I am so glad I was not living in Egypt at this time, these plagues are awful. Now finally with this plague he gives his people a breather. This is the first place he shows a difference between the Israelites and the Egyptians. The fifth plague is pestilence. Verse 9:6 is a little odd. It says that all the livestock died, yet later we see more livestock. So either this passage actually means most of it, or they took the livestock of the Israelites after theirs died. I have no idea. Next we come to the plague of boils. This one was so bad that it hit the magicians themselves and they couldn’t “stand guard” with Pharaoh in front of Moses. Our final plague for today is the most extensively described. Moses gives a very long warning and we see many of the Egyptians begin to believe. They put their families and livestock away in the houses. There was so much hail and lightning that the crops were destroyed. When I lived in Georgia we had a hail storm like that once, it completely decimated the surrounding fields and farmers lost everything. There was no going and getting food from the next state over though here, so because of his hard heart, Pharaoh probably shoved his people into a famine. In 9:27 we see something amazing. Pharaoh was thought of as a god. That meant he didn’t make mistakes. Yet, we hear him admit he is sinful. That is huge. He claims to repent but as soon as things are okay again, he goes right back to sinning. Oh how like Pharaoh are we? That is scary. We claim that we repent but then we turn around and do the same thing again after the pain of the results wears off. I pray that God always reminds me gently of the pain of not walking with him so that I can stay on the right path.
Okay, Matthew. Again, I’m a little confused by how they broke this up. In verse 31 we see that Jesus is ministering to gentiles. That is why Matthew makes the statement “glorified the God of Israel”. Again he feeds a multitude. In chapter 16 we move into one of my favorite passages but we end right in the middle of it. Peter is my favorite apostle, probably because I am so like him. The very first part of this chapter deals with Jesus addressing those that deny him. He refers to leven which is often used as a symbol for evil in Jewish culture. He totally called out the Pharisees for not being focused on seeing God’s truth in front of them. They are too busy trying to divine things from nature and can’t see the spiritual truth in Jesus himself. We will talk about Peter’s confession tomorrow. Good to be back.
Tomorrow’s reading is Exodus 10-12 and Matthew 16:13-28.