The Creator God vs His Adversary
Exodus 7.8-8.15
Last week Joe preached on Aaron and Moses' first meeting with Pharaoh, the first time Aaron and Moses went to speak to Pharaoh saying, "This is what the LORD God of Israel says: Let send my people to celebrate a feast in my honor in the desert."
And the Pharaoh's response is, of course, very negative. He said "Who is the Lord so that I obey at his orders? (...) I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go" - and the Pharaoh will not only prevent the Israelites from leaving but he will also make their slavery even harsher.
And the reaction of the Israelites, when they see that their situation is worse than before, is rather to say "Well done Moses, eh, well done, we were better off without you." And they no longer want to listen to what God wants to tell them through Moses.
And Moses, in the middle of all this, doesn't really know what to do, because his people don't want to listen to him and even less to the Pharaoh.
Joe told us last week that the main problem at this time is not really the enslavement of the people - but the fact that they don't really know God. And Pharaoh doesn't really know God either, that's why he doesn't want to let the people of Israel go.
So God is now going to settle these two things - he is going to make himself known to Pharaoh and he is going to make himself known to his people - using this confrontation, between him and the Pharaoh.
Yes, this text shows a spectacular confrontation between God on one side and the Pharaoh on the other, but the context not to be forgotten is this initial response from the Pharaoh: "Who is the Lord for that I obey at his orders? (...) I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go.”
This shows that the Pharaoh:
Does not know the Lord - "know" in the sense of knowing who he is, knowing his identity.
Does not recognize the Lord - "recognize" in the sense of knowing what his authority is.
Does not obey the Lord - he refuses to do what the Lord asks him to do.
That's the initial state of things. And this is normal - this man is the supreme authority of the oldest, most developed, most powerful kingdom of his time. He is a god, he has his people, his priests, and people really consider him divine at the time.
So it's not very surprising, ultimately, that his response to the first miracle, the transformation of the stick into a snake, is rather "we have people back home who do that too". The Pharaoh also has his "prophets", who have occult knowledge and who know how to perform miracles.
So we start with a situation of apparent equality - more or less, because there is this detail of a snake eating other snakes, but hey, we can say that the miracle that God gave to Moses, and who had convinced (at least for a while) the Israelites, did not convince the Pharaoh at all.
It is there, with this resistance of the Pharaoh, that God will send these 10 plagues, the 10 plagues of Egypt. And we will see that it is ultimately more like 9 wounds plus 1 wound at the end which is very specific, different from the others, which we will see in two weeks. Today we're talking about the first 9.
And we will therefore see how with these 9 plagues, these 9 scourges, God responds to his adversary, the Pharaoh. An adversary who says he does not know him, does not recognize him, and who resists his will.
The 3x3 plagues
In the reading we read 5 of the 9 plagues, and I encourage you to read the others at home if you have not yet done so. And when we read paying attention to the structure of the text we see that there are three series of three plagues. In each series, a key piece of information about God is revealed to Pharaoh.
The first series
In the first series, we have the waters turned to blood, the invasion of frogs and the infestation of mosquitoes or lice - it changes depending on the translation because we don't know exactly what this word means, but it It's certain that it's a disgusting little insect, in a Parisian translation of the Bible I think we could talk about a bedbug...
In this series, we see a progression of comparing the power of God to the power of Egyptian magicians. At first, the magicians manage to copy the transformation of water into blood... It doesn't help much, but at least it's enough to harden the Pharaoh's heart - he persists in his position.
In the second plague, the invasion of frogs, the magicians manage to do the same thing but... it makes even more frogs! It's even worse ! So the Pharaoh is obliged to call on Moses and Aaron to resolve the problem. But this does not mean that the Pharaoh gives in his position.
And in the third plague - mosquitoes, lice or bedbugs - depending on the translation the magicians try to send back the bedbugs - I think now they have understood that there is no point in bringing in more bedbugs, so they are trying to chase them away. But they don't arrive. And so they are obliged to recognize that this is divine intervention. They are not at all in a situation of equality, they are in a situation of despair. But this does not mean that the Pharaoh gives in his position.
The second series
So God sends a second series of three plagues [we didn't get any plagues from the second series in the reading]: flies that bite - like the "anthrax fly", which you know if you work as a breeder; a disease that causes livestock to die; and ulcers in the skin of people (and animals too).
In this second set of plagues, God introduces a new key piece of information: His people are not treated the same way as Pharaoh's people. God shows this by sending flies, cattle disease and ulcers only to the Egyptians, and not to the region where the Hebrews lived.
"(...) I will deal differently with the region of Goshen where my people live (...) so that you may know that I, the Lord, am present in this region. I will separate my people from the here.”
God has power over the Israelites, God has power over the Egyptians, but God is not indifferent. God shows that he is more than a personification of the forces of nature, of natural disasters that strike blind.
God had already shown himself to be powerful, now he shows that he is powerful and intentional. He preserves those who have made a covenant with him.
Later in Exodus, in Chapter 33, God will say to Moses: "I am gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I have compassion on whom I will have compassion.".
When we say that, that God deals differently, that he makes a separation, we come to the revelation of God as a judge, as someone who is not indifferent to what we do.
And, moreover, in the gospels we also see, in many of Jesus' parables, a separation between the sheep and the goats, the good grain and the weeds, between those who are known to the Lord and those to whom the Lord says “I don’t know you”.
One could imagine that faced with this revelation, the Pharaoh could possibly be tempted to obtain the favor of God, or to maybe join the people of Israel, to be in the camp without flies.
But the Pharaoh is still stubborn, still hardened in his position. He still resists the order to let the people go. And this is what triggers the third series of plagues, where things will become even clearer for the Pharaoh.
The third series
The last three plagues are still growing in strength: there are hail and lightning storms which cause the death of flocks and people; the locusts that eat all the plantations that survived the hail; and darkness which covers Egypt for three days, without the sun shining.
The text makes it clear that these are incomparable situations: there has not been such a strong storm since the beginning of Egypt, there have never been so many locusts, and - this is implied by hyperbole - there has never been darkness so thick that one could touch it.
But what remains clear in this last series above all is the authority of God over the Pharaoh. God lays his cards on the table, and he says it clearly: he could have gotten rid of the Pharaoh a long time ago. If Pharaoh stands, it is because the LORD keeps him standing, the heart hardens, so that his name may be known.
So in the very fact that he resists God's plan, the Pharaoh ends up having a role in God's plan. He may present himself as an adversary of the Lord, mockingly saying that he does not know the Lord, but he ends up increasing God's reputation.
It is perhaps in response to this that the Pharaoh pretends to repent. We hear him say "I have sinned, I ask for forgiveness", but God lays his cards on the table again - he knows it is a lie. Pharaoh cannot pretend to be repentant before a God who sees hearts and who is even sovereign over the hearts of men.
Knowledge of the Creator
So in these three sets of three plagues, the Lord makes himself known to Pharaoh as a mighty God - much more powerful than Pharaoh,his gods or their magicians; he makes himself recognized as a God who judges, who acts differently depending on people; and he shows that even his resistance cannot escape him.
But these lessons also serve the Hebrews, who did not really know their God well - and we saw in last week's sermon that they no longer really wanted to hear about God.
Deep down, they didn't fully believe that God was stronger than Pharaoh.
Or they didn't fully believe that God would care about them.
Or they thought that Pharaoh's resistance defeated God's plan.
But the Lord shows that it is quite the opposite: he is powerful, he is not indifferent, and his plan is not defeated by Pharaoh.
This was not only a revelation to them, the Hebrews of that generation, but also something they should tell their descendants.
These 9 plagues also contradict a politicalist or idolatrous vision of the world. In any political culture, particular domains of existence are each assigned their own god - each domain, each phenomenon, will have its god or goddess. The god of the river, the god of wild animals, the goddess of the harvest, the god of storms, etc. Egyptian religion was like that.
And we see that the Hebrews had given in to this vision of things too. Not explicitly - we don't see the Hebrews worshiping Ra or Osiris, no, we're not talking about that. But they do not attribute all areas of existence to the authority of the Eternal.
They don't want Moses to confront the Pharaoh because it might be worse. The God of Abraham is now for them a family God, of their tribe, of their home, but not a universal God, who could act on the Pharaoh, on Egypt, or even on all creation, and therefore not a God who could truly set them free.
But these 9 plagues reveal an Eternal One who is not limited to a particular domain of existence or creation. He is the creator God. It acts on wild animals and herds, on water and dust, on rainand on the sun, on order and on chaos. Not the god of a thing.But the God of all things.
And I don't know how obvious this link was for the people who experienced those moments, but certainly it was clear for the first people who read this written text: there is in the choice of vocabulary of this text full of links to the creation story in Genesis.
I haven't noticed it myself, but fortunately several people who have studied this text more deeply than I have noticed it and put it in books - fortunately. But there are plenty of words or whole expressions that are borrowed from the creation story that are used here.
But I will cite only one example, but there are many others: In the last plague, God says "let there be darkness" - a reference to "let there be light" of Gen 1:3.
There are plenty of other examples like this, enough that we can say that this is an intentional connection between the two texts, and also obvious to first readers of this text.
This reaffirms that the Eternal is the God who created everything, that he has control over everything and that he can undo the order he created or manipulate it whenever he wants, according to his will.
Whose shoes are we putting ourselves in?
So, when we look at a text to think about what it means for us today, we often ask ourselves “whose shoes are we putting ourselves in”? Who should I identify with?
And I had just told you that through these plagues God comes to address the ignorance of the Pharaoh and the Egyptian people about who he is, and that he addresses at the same time the ignorance of the Hebrew people about who he is.
So we can put ourselves in the place of these two groups who have things to learn.
The Great God of Everything
In the same way as the Hebrew people, we often need to rediscover this God who is not only my particular god, the god of my tribe so to speak, but the Creator and Lord of all things.
As Joe mentioned last week, when we are faced with a financial problem, a health problem, deep emotional distress, we can begin to forget, or even ignore the extent to which God is also Lord of these aspects of our life. life. We say to ourselves, yes the Lord is God and I recognize him but... he has nothing to do or wants to do anything about this particular subject. About my slavery. About my finances. About my singleness. About my colleagues. About my future.
But it is not as a particular god of a specific realm of existence that God revealed himself in the plagues. It is like the Creator God who is sovereign over all creation. Who is sovereign even over the human heart. There is no area that is truly off-topic for him.
And the New Testament reiterates this for us in a slightly more concise way, even if less graphically, when Paul says, speaking of Jesus Christ:"The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him everything was created in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, thrones, sovereignties, dominions, authorities. Everything was created by him and for him." (Cl 1:15-16)
All domains, in the sky and on the earth, the visible and the invisible, nothing escapes its perimeter and nothing is really irrelevant.
And the two peoples, the Hebrew people and the Egyptian people, in this passage, were able to testify, in different ways, to the greatness of God.
It's not a greatness that makes us say "wow, that's amazing" - an exclamation of someone simply impressed. There is also a feeling of fear, of fear which is added naturally - we say to ourselves with our buttons "I hope this power does not turn against me". Maybe you're thinking "ah, but that's the God of the Old Testament" - but I have to remind us that Jesus preached a lot about God as the final judge, who will leave nothing really hidden, and the The way Revelation presents the power of God may make us think that these plagues in Egypt are just an early version...
So neither those people at that time, nor we today, can afford to have an image of God that is very watered down, that eliminates what might be frightening or that limits Him to a particular area of life.
After the revelation...the hardening?
And it might shock some people, perhaps, if I say that we should try to put ourselves in the shoes of the Pharaoh. Maybe someone will say to me "ah, but I'm not opposed to God, I'm part of his people, etc etc". Alright.
But it is still, with God, the protagonist of this passage. And we see, in all the wounds, a refrain, a repetition which says that the heart of the Pharaoh was hardened. This means that he persists in his sin, that he does not want to listen, that he does not want to be corrected, that he does not want to give in. And we see that his hardening of heart does not really depend on the particular characteristics of each wound - if the magicians manage to reproduce the wound, he has a hardened heart; if the magicians do not arrive, his heart will also be hardened. His heart is hardened in either case.
Atstart in the first plagues, we read rather that the Pharaoh hardened his own heart, then, later, we read rather that God hardened the heart of the Pharaoh. It's an interesting question about who hardened Pharaoh's heart, and it will be part of next week's sermon as I understand it, but here is what is important for us today: it is not not a phenomenon exclusive to the pharaoh. It is not even a phenomenon that is limited to those whoconsider outside of the people of God.
In Psalm 95, and in the letter to the Hebrews, we can find the following appeal:“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart”. This call is intended for people who consider themselves as belonging to the people of God, but who are entirely capable of doing the same thing as the Pharaoh: that is, having their hearts hardened, insensitive to what God wants to teach us, what God asks of us, what God shows about himself.
Indeed, we will see later in Exodus that God did not save people with the most tender hearts when he saved the people of Israel from slavery. There is much Pharaoh in each of these people and there is much Pharaoh in our own nature. And I could tell you of situations where I stubbornly recognized myself as a little Pharaoh, where I walked very proud and very stupid towards my own ruin.
And this is not only common, it is almost the rule: God reveals himself to us when we are still his adversaries. When we are still saying, like the Pharaoh: I don't really know him, I don't really recognize him and I'm not going to do what he wants me to do. It is often through this confrontation that God reveals himself.
Last week Joe told us that the Exodus tells a story where God comes to meet a people and to have a lasting relationship with those people. And that this is not possible without this people being able to know God, hence the need for God's revelation. But following this revelation, what does it produce in us? A purely intellectual knowledge accompanied by a rejection of what it demands from us? Or a trust, which commits us to a relationship?
What happens after God comes to break our paradigms, after he comes to show his greatness and our smallness? What happens after God refuses even our compromise proposals and continues to assert his will over ours?“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.”
It is paradoxical to see a text where God hardens the heart of the Pharaoh and at the same time a call not to harden one's own heart. It's paradoxical, but it's a real call because"Today, if you hear his voice", it is not too late.
In Romans 5:8 Paul tells us, "But this is how God demonstrates his love toward us; while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." We have all been in the position of the Pharaoh. But we don't need to stay there.