Exodus 11
1 My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why are you so far away when I groan for help? 2 Every day I call to you, my God, but you do not answer. Every night you hear my voice, but I find no relief. The opening verses of Psalm 22, written by David, the king, quoted by Jesus, the King of Kings, on the cross.
My God my God.
Why did author, David, blame God for his situation? It was his enemies who had surrounded him, evil men, not God.
And why did Jesus quote this? It was not God who crucified him, who had betrayed him.
What David and Jesus understood was this: God is sovereign. He has all things under his control. And so it is right to go to him and say “why have you abandoned me? Why have you let this happen?
God is sovereign. Bible does not hide this fact – it trumpets this! We try to minimise it because it goes against our Western self-determination, make your own destiny cultural philosophy. And we are fools if we do so. Because what use is a god who is not sovereign. What use is a god with no power? He is no god at all!
This chapter is designed to remind us that God is in control. Just before the final plague is unleashed we are reminded that death is coming, that God’s people will live, and that this will most definitely happen because God is sovereign.
1. The warning: death is coming
4 Moses had announced to Pharaoh, “This is what the LORD says: At midnight tonight I will pass through the heart of Egypt. 5 All the firstborn sons will die in every family in Egypt, from the oldest son of Pharaoh, who sits on his throne, to the oldest son of his lowliest servant girl who grinds the flour. Even the firstborn of all the livestock will die. 6 Then a loud wail will rise throughout the land of Egypt, a wail like no one has heard before or will ever hear again.
Imagine you were an Egyptian at that time. Death is coming. Egypt lies in darkness, devastated by hail, locusts, frogs, gnats, boils, sickness, flies, and blood. And now the final judgement has come. Death hangs in the air.
You have seen your king, Pharaoh, stand against Moses and his god. And you probably agreed with him. After all, this was the god of the slaves! Ridiculous that he could have power over the might of Egypt. But as water turned to blood, as frogs appeared, then gnats, then flies, then your animals died, then boils broke out on you, then hail, then locusts, and finally darkness... you can imagine a bit of nervousness at the beginning, then feeling uncomfortable – maybe their God really is powerful -, then fear, then full-blown terror as you look out at your once beautiful country devastated, ruined – and you see the Israelite area perfectly protected – and a cold dread fills your heart as darkness comes over you like a cloud and you can almost taste death. He is coming. He is coming.
But we don’t have to imagine it. We don’t have to pretend we’re Egyptians. Because we know that death is coming. It is all around us. People die every day. Oh, in our society we’re pretty good at insulating ourselves from death. People die away in hospitals or old age homes. We have a little ritual in church and we let our religious rituals comfort us and then we push it out of our minds. But that fear is always there, in the back of our minds, threatening to come out and choke us. What if the God of the Christians really is there? What if there is Someone out there and I am not right with him. The unspoken fears of the Egyptians. The unspoken fears of the Norwegians.
Death is coming. Death is coming for each one of us. Each of us has over our heads a doomsday clock – and as each second ticks by we are closer to our death. Tick. Tick. Tick. One step closer. Each breath you take is closer to your last.
So how do you live, knowing that you will die?
Pharaoh rebelled against it. He refused to accept the judgement. 10:28 “Get out of here!” Pharaoh shouted at Moses. “I’m warning you. Never come back to see me again! The day you see my face, you will die!”
29 “Very well,” Moses replied. “I will never see your face again.”
Some laugh in the face of death. Take more and more risks, seeking the thrill of being on the edge. Some go out to grab all they can, crush everyone in their path. Some surround themselves with loved ones, pouring themselves out in other people, trying to find peace in being significant and remembered. Others try to block out the world with entertainment and noise and virtual realities. But I think most of us just kind of drift along with a vague unease, just pushing the thought of death to the back of our minds. What we should do, is seek a way out of death. That’s the point of the warning.
You see, God could have just wiped them out without warning, without sending Moses to Pharaoh. Just boom – justice for their cruelty in enslaving an entire people and murdering their children. Justice! He could just wipe us out – wham. Justice for all our sins and rebellion and cruelty. Don’t you ever watch the news and wonder why he doesn’t just wipe us out? Well, because even in the midst of judgement there us mercy. There is a way to live forever. There was light among the Israelites!
The stench of death did not hang over God’s people. God’s favour rested upon them. But for the Egyptians... the sword of the Destroyer was pointed towards them. The Grim Reaper, as we call him, waiting with his scythe to harvest the dead from the earth.
Death is coming. What will you do?
2. The promise: God’s people will live
7 But among the Israelites it will be so peaceful that not even a dog will bark. Then you will know that the LORD makes a distinction between the Egyptians and the Israelites.
From the plague of flies onwards, we’ve seen the Lord make a distinction between his people and the people of Egypt. Although they were affected by the plagues of blood, frogs and gnats, the Lord then showed his power to save.
8:22 But this time I will spare the region of Goshen, where my people live. No flies will be found there. Then you will know that I am the LORD and that I am present even in the heart of your land. 23 I will make a clear distinction between my people and your people.
9:6 And the LORD did just as he had said. The next morning all the livestock of the Egyptians died, but the Israelites didn’t lose a single animal.
9:26 The only place without hail was the region of Goshen, where the people of Israel lived.
They did not suffer from boils or the locusts either, it seems. And of course, when darkness fell, the darkness of judgement and death, Israel had light. 10:22 So Moses lifted his hand to the sky, and a deep darkness covered the entire land of Egypt for three days. 23 During all that time the people could not see each other, and no one moved. But there was light as usual where the people of Israel lived.
The point is this: the Lord can save his people. The word of the Lord can be trusted. When he says “I will save you” we can trust his word!
Have you noticed that the Israelites have pretty much been absent from this story. It’s been Moses and Aaron vs. Pharaoh. We’ve heard nothing from the Israelites. The last we heard of them was all the way back in chapters 5 and 6 – and that was anger and lack of faith! 5:21 The [Israelite leaders] said to [Moses and Aaron, “May the LORD judge and punish you for making us stink before Pharaoh and his officials. You have put a sword into their hands, an excuse to kill us!”
And the people: 6:9 So Moses told the people of Israel what the LORD had said, but they refused to listen anymore. They had become too discouraged by the brutality of their slavery.
That’s it! The Israelites are bedraggled, discouraged. They had given up. No hope. The light had gone from their eyes. They were beaten down. They had no faith in the Lord. They had no service to him. They did not dress in their best clothes, or offer the right sacrifices or do anything to deserve his rescue. And yet the Lord says “I will save you.”
Moses was wandering around in the desert, a failure – and God called him and said “you will lead my people”. Why? Because God. He decided that Moses would lead the people, and so it happened. Did Moses do anything other than muck up his life? No. But God...
The Israelites are likewise “failures”. Beaten down, discouraged. They are not people of faith. Their faith has been knocked out of them. They do not deserve salvation, yet God saved them.
And so too with us. We are not required to dress in our Sunday best, to get our life in order before we come to Jesus. Our salvation does not depend on us any more than the Israelites salvation depended on them! Our salvation comes from the Lord, not from us!
How often we think like that! “I need to get right before I come to God.” That’s utterly foolish.
It makes a mockery of God’s holiness – you really think that you can get yourself right enough to be acceptable to God –seriously?!
And it makes a mockery of the cross. Do you think Jesus would have suffered the agony of death and judgement on the cross if we could simply put on a new suit and try a bit harder and that would make us acceptable? No! It took the firstborn son of Heaven to DIE our death. To take the darkness upon his shoulders and absorb it. We’ll spend more time on this next week, looking at the echoes of the Cross in the Passover here in Exodus.
Because this is a great picture of how God saves. He saves on his initiative, with his power, and, we’ll find out next week, at a great cost. There is a cost to be paid to avoid death. And that cost is a substitute: the lambs that were slain. Representing the Perfect Lamb, the Lamb of God as John the Baptist calls Him, as he gave his blood, his perfect blood, the sinless dying in the place of the sinners, so that we could have life.
It’s all God. He promises. He calls. He commands. He saves. And He pays the cost for that salvation. Praise God!
Praise God for his promise: his people will live.
And that promise is secure, because
3. The Lord our God is the Sovereign Lord
11:9 Now the LORD had told Moses earlier, “Pharaoh will not listen to you, but then I will do even more mighty miracles in the land of Egypt.” 10 Moses and Aaron performed these miracles in Pharaoh’s presence, but the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he wouldn’t let the Israelites leave the country.
Did you notice something odd about the way this chapter was written? It’s going backwards. It’s like the credits at the end of the movie going down instead of up.
V1 Then the LORD said to Moses. V4 we go backwards 4 Moses had announced to Pharaoh. V9 further back still! 9 Now the LORD had told Moses earlier
Why? Why is it written like this? Chapter 10 ends with the dramatic argument, and you will never see me again! You should go straight into chapter 12. Instead, the author steps out and says “now remember, it is GOD who has arranged all this and who has control”. Why did God want him to write it like this? It seems God wants to emphasise His sovereignty, his absolute control over all things.
Something that struck me in reading these chapters is the Bible’s attitude to “and God hardened Pharaoh’s heart”. For us, this display of God’s complete sovereignty is a problem. We get…uncertain about it, and try to explain it away, or to minimise it. You know… the lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart and RESCUED THE ISRAELITES!
The question is then, what is wrong with me? Why am I embarrassed by something that God is clearly not embarrassed by, nor were his people. They exulted in his sovereignty.
I think many problems we have with God, I think our lack of faith in so many areas, our need to twist the gospel to suit us, our mass of false teachers with prosperity gospel promises and your best life now self-help Christianity come from this: we don’t actually believe that God is sovereign. Which really is the same as saying that we don’t believe God is God. Because if God is not sovereign, he is not God. If God’s creation is outside of his control – well, his words are meaningless, his promises do not matter, his judgement can be avoided. He just becomes another entity in creation, one of the gods like Zeus or Thor or Odin or the “Jehovah” of the Witnesses or the “God” and “Jesus” of much modern Christianity.
But the God of the Bible. Wow. He can harden Pharaoh’s heart, just like that. He can plunge a nation into ruin and suffering for standing against him. He wipes out nations for rebelling against him. Even his own people are judged and found wanting and he sends the Assyrians to wipe out the Northern Kingdom of Israel – and it was utterly wiped out, never to rise again. Who is this God?
You know, what matters is not your attitude to God. That’s pretty much irrelevant. What matters is God’s attitude to you. Are you an Egyptian or an Israelite? Are you in darkness or in light?
So the smart thing to do is to beg him for mercy! Because nothing else will work. No amount of bowing and scraping or wheeling and dealing or little offerings or obedience or will change that. There is no way we can get the upper hand. He is utterly superior to us and totally immutable. Immutable is a good Bible word meaning unchangeable, unable to be affected in the sense of manipulating him. We know he is affected by our sin and our suffering – the Lord is with his people. But his emotional attachment does not leave him open to manipulation. He is immutable. High above. Sovereign. He does what he wants when he wants.
And that is good. Because it means that when he says he will judge the wicked it means he will judge the wicked and all the evil that has ever been done on this earth will be dealt with. No-one will escape. Justice will be done. Death, eternal death, is coming for all, no matter how great they once were. All those dictators and warlords – all will stand before God.
And it means that when he says he will save his people it means he will save his people. All those who are in Christ will be saved. His promise is secure because there is nothing outside of his control nothing can interfere with his plans or trip him up. Praise God!
Ps 105 Give thanks to the LORD and proclaim his greatness. Let the whole world know what he has done. 2 Sing to him; yes, sing his praises. Tell everyone about his wonderful deeds… 25 ...[H]e turned the Egyptians against the Israelites, and they plotted against the LORD’s servants. 26 But the LORD sent his servant Moses, along with Aaron, whom he had chosen. 27 They performed miraculous signs among the Egyptians, and wonders in the land of Ham. 28 The LORD blanketed Egypt in darkness, for they had defied his commands to let his people go. 29 He turned their water into blood, poisoning all the fish. 30 Then frogs overran the land and even invaded the king’s bedrooms. 31 When the LORD spoke, flies descended on the Egyptians, and gnats swarmed across Egypt. 32 He sent them hail instead of rain, and lightning flashed over the land. 33 He ruined their grapevines and fig trees and shattered all the trees. 34 He spoke, and hordes of locusts came— young locusts beyond number. 35 They ate up everything green in the land, destroying all the crops in their fields. 36 Then he killed the oldest son in each Egyptian home, the pride and joy of each family. 37 The LORD brought his people out of Egypt, loaded with silver and gold; and not one among the tribes of Israel even stumbled. 38 Egypt was glad when they were gone, for they feared them greatly. … 45 All this happened so they would follow his decrees and obey his instructions. Praise the LORD!
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