Exodus 7:1-13

Hey, everybody.
Welcome back.
Thanks for joining us as we’re live again,
as we are continuing
through the book of Exodus.
I think getting closer to—we’ve been setting up the story,
I think we kind of in the next chapter or so,
we really move into some of the heart
of the story, some of the places of the story that you’re going to know.
So let me start
here, verse 1 of chapter 7,
and then we’ll stop and break some of it down.
The Lord said to Moses,
“See, I’ve made you like God to Pharaoh,
and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet.
You shall speak all that I command you,
and your brother Aaron shall
tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of the land.
But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart,
and I will multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt.
When Pharaoh does not listen to you,
I will lay my hand upon Egypt and bring my people,
the Israelites, company by company, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment.
The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord,
when I stretch out my hand against them,
and bring the Israelites out from Egypt.”
Moses and Aaron did so,
just as the Lord commanded them.
Moses was 80 years old and
Aaron 83 when they spoke to Pharaoh.
So again, one of those parts of the story where not a great
deal happens, except we’re told that it is on the verge of happening.
However,
this
chapter starts with a fascinating verse.
I don’t know of anything like this in the Old Testament,
Michael, where Moses is told by God,
“See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh.” And just to be clear here,
this is capital G,
this is the word God,
“I have made you like God to Pharaoh,
and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet.” So probably in other words,
you’re speaking for me,
I’m speaking to you,
Aaron is speaking to the Pharaoh,
Aaron is going to be a prophet who is convicting the Pharaoh of injustice and proclaiming punishment upon him,
and you will stand behind that as an intermediary,
like I stand behind you.
So there’s not really anything theologically sketchy in this, Michael.
It’s just fascinating
language.
Yeah, like you said, Clint, we’ve not seen something like this certainly yet,
and we’re not going to see anything exactly like it to come.
I want to take a pause here and just pardon me for
a second if this seems a little afield,
but I think it’s helpful to understand some of the early
church, because when the early church read a passage like this,
they saw in it what the
church has called allegorical meaning.
They looked to a passage here like verse one,
they saw this idea, “Be like God to Pharaoh,
your brother shall be like your prophet,” and they saw Moses here representing Jesus,
and the idea,
as they interpreted it,
and they weren’t interpreting it
for its original context,
they weren’t trying to think of what would this meant to the original hearer,
they were thinking what might this spiritually mean,
and one of their takeaways
from texts like this was that we discover and see in Moses a type or a figure, a beginning
of the exhibition of God’s plan,
that someone would be sent who would speak to the powers
that held the people in captivity,
and against that voice there would be no one who could put
up a fight, that ultimately God’s plan would be spoken and lived out,
and Clint, it’s a very different way of interpreting than what we’re used to in the 21st century,
but it was very common
in the early church for them to read a text like this spiritually,
so like you said theologically
we’re not going to have any problems with what’s happening here because one can easily read this
and see how God is essentially making the case that against God Pharaoh has no recourse,
against God’s messenger Pharaoh has no recourse,
that ultimately God is going to win,
but yet the exact
wording here is interesting,
and I do think in many ways it sets Moses off as a particular
and even special character in the Old Testament,
we’ve already talked about this back and forth
between Moses and God,
and here we have a really distinct way of God really calling Moses and
naming Moses and his role in God’s plan.
Yeah,
and it highlights that Moses is going to be the one
who proclaims disaster to Pharaoh, who proclaims threats,
who proclaims consequences,
and yet here again we have a restatement of something we’ve seen,
a prediction that the Pharaoh is not going to listen.
God says I’m going to harden his heart,
and when the
Pharaoh does not listen to you, verse 4,
so it’s already spoken as a fact
that the Pharaoh is not going to give in,
and that God is going to be in contest with the Pharaoh,
that God is going to
essentially beat the Pharaoh down into submission,
and that’s assumed at the very front end of the story.
Then I think Michael,
we get a really fascinating detail,
verse 7,
this first time that I think we’ve seen ages,
the first time that we’ve confirmed that in fact Aaron is the older brother.
So, you know, if you were with us in Genesis,
the idea of the younger brother being primary,
we saw that a couple times.
I don’t know that this is related to that,
but it is interesting
that we get told explicitly here Moses is 80,
Aaron is 83 when they go and speak to the Pharaoh.
So when they initiate this audience with the Pharaoh,
when they follow through and listen
to what God has told them,
they’re both relatively old men in the scope of the Old Testament,
less so than our time,
but still they’re getting up there.
Right, and remember that we saw a very impulsive character in Moses in the beginning,
and now we can begin to have some empathy for why Moses might not be all on board with his entire life being disrupted.
The fact that he’s called to be the spokesman,
and the fact that he’s the one
who’s matching wits with Pharaoh, I mean,
there’s a even greater sense of improbability of Moses
succeeding in this effort.
And I just want to point out,
I think the text has gone to great pains now
to make it clear to us.
Moses is not the clear favorite to be the winner in a showdown between Moses and Pharaoh.
I mean,
in a contest, Pharaoh wins every time.
Pharaoh has been winning now for
a generation or more,
and we as the reader are led in to know then that the only way that Moses could win,
Clint,
is for God to step in and to be the one.
And we already have that tipped off of this idea.
It says here in verse, what is it,
five, the Lord speaking,
the Egyptian shall know
that I’m the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites from among them.
No mistake about it.
When Moses is the one who God does miracles through,
it wasn’t Moses who did the miracle.
I mean, that’s the point.
Ultimately, it’s God who’s bringing the people through.
And yeah, it’s an interesting note on the story that we’re told that Moses is 80 years old,
it’s the point he’s called to do this.
Yeah, and again,
that’s not – that is younger,
comparative to the Old Testament than it seems perhaps in our day and age,
but it is still a
kind of humorous moment when there are these two 80-year-olds that are about to march in front of
the most powerful man known in the region of the world and demand that he listen to them.
So, the next scene takes us into that audience where Moses and Aaron go before the Pharaoh.
So, let’s read this.
This is – I love this story.
It’s one of my favorite parts of Exodus.
“The Lord said to Moses and Aaron,
‘When Pharaoh says to you, perform a wonder,
you shall say to
Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh,
and it will become a snake.’ So,
Moses and Aaron went to the Pharaoh.
They did as the Lord commanded.
Aaron threw down his staff before
the Pharaoh and all of his officials,
and it became a snake.
Then the Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers,
and they also, the magicians of Egypt,
did the same by their secret arts.
Each of them threw down his staff,
and they became snakes.
But Aaron’s staff swallowed up theirs.
Still,
Pharaoh’s heart was hardened,
and he would not listen to them,
as the Lord had said.”
So, finally, we get this audience,
Michael.
We get this moment where there’s the first showdown.
Remember, early in the story,
we had the staff.
God showed Moses what happened at the burning
bush.
He could throw it down.
It turns into a snake.
They go before the Pharaoh.
Pharaoh demands a sign.
They perform this sign,
and Pharaoh calls his own people,
who through some trickery,
through some magic trick,
they copy this.
They each are able to do this.
So, they throw down their staffs as well,
and they become snakes.
And then,
just because the Bible wants to get the last one,
but Aaron’s snake ate all of their snakes.
Now, the point of the story is that the Pharaoh’s
heart is still hardened,
and now we move on.
Tomorrow, we’ll begin to look at the plagues
and the way that God is going to buffet Egypt.
But I love this.
Okay,
yeah, you guys could do it,
but my snake ate all your snakes.
It’s just the Bible’s little subtle way of saying,
“Don’t mess around with God.
God’s going to get his way.
God’s ways are better than your ways,
and now all your snakes are gone.”
Be very careful anywhere in the Bible to be in the position here in verse 9 where Pharaoh says,
“Perform a wonder.” You know,
this is God saying this is what Pharaoh’s going to say.
And it’s interesting because God is not a magic trick.
I mean, this pops up in Acts where people are
using Jesus’ name to perform miracles,
and really, really bad things happen.
The idea of misusing
God’s power for one’s own sake is dangerous.
And here, the fact that Pharaoh is willing to confront
or would be willing to demand a sign as if God is some
parlor trick is a really, really
out-of-touch step here in the book of Exodus.
And, Clint,
the idea that Aaron’s staff is swallowing
up the others is a textual way of pointing out that this isn’t going to go well for Pharaoh.
But the text has this really interesting theme that has now been repeated over and over again,
that Pharaoh’s heart has been hardened.
And that language is
significant because as the
miracles continue to happen,
as the signs, as we call them,
become more and more severe,
we as the reader do naturally begin to start questioning at what point,
dude, are you going to give in?
Like, when do you get the point?
And the author here wants to make it clear
that Pharaoh is not really in control.
He never has been in control.
That God has determined
that his heart will be hardened,
that he will not respond to this.
And so even the claim that
Pharaoh is the one deciding whether the sign and wonder is good enough is refuted by the text.
It’s to say, now, he doesn’t even get that.
He doesn’t even get credit for the idea that he could pick
which sign determined that it was God or not.
God is the one in the driver’s seat of the story, which, Clint,
the New Testament does have some reference to,
and it is somewhat troubling,
the fact that God is hardening Pharaoh’s heart.
That’s not really in today’s conversation, but
the Scriptures take this very,
very seriously, even outside of Exodus.
And I think that that’s an interesting note.
Yeah. Well, to your first point, Michael,
this is not a contest among equals.
This is decided
before it ever began.
This is so one-sided.
There is no underdog here.
There’s God, and there is the Pharaoh who will inevitably and ultimately and completely,
without doubt,
be subject to what God wants.
Having said that, there is this language,
and it moves around a
little bit.
We’ll try to identify it as we get there.
There are moments when God says,
“I hardened his heart.” There are a few moments when it says the Pharaoh hardened his own heart.
And in our text this morning or today,
it just says that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened.
His heart was hardened.
And sometimes God gets credit for that.
Other times, it doesn’t seem that God takes credit
for that.
It’s a strange theme that runs through this book that Pharaoh refuses or is unable or,
in some measure, is kept from seeing the truth and obeying and hearing what God demands of him,
probably related to this idea that the Pharaoh started this fight and God is ultimately also
using this moment to punish him for what he’s done to the people.
But we will keep an eye on that
because it occurs a lot,
and we’ll point out when it does.
Clint, have we encountered other stories
with the same kind of revelation theme?
I’m thinking through Genesis,
certainly the story over and over again is that God blesses the descendants of Abraham,
that they continue to multiply, and this is attributed to divine blessing and action.
But I guess I’m curious,
this idea of God’s divine revelation in the bush, the burning bush,
now you have this snake coming
out of the staff and then swallowing another snake.
We know that there’s this whole litany
of signs that are to come.
There’s a sense here in which Exodus is showing a God who reveals
in a supernatural beyond human explanation kind of way,
even beyond just the blessing of a people
and resources and multiplication.
It strikes me, unless you disagree, that there is kind of a
new note happening here about God’s ruling and overruling in this archetypal relationship with Pharaoh.
I think more than the stories of Genesis,
Michael, this story focuses on
the sort of “power of the world” versus the power of God.
And I think this story is more adversarial,
whereas in Genesis, there are enemies.
But here,
that enemy is not Abram’s enemy or Joseph’s enemy or whoever.
It’s God’s enemy.
It is someone who has claimed divine life and death authority
over God’s people, over what God has already claimed.
And I do think that gives…
This is a…
I want to be very careful with this language,
but this is in some way a battle between
God’s small g in regard to the Pharaoh and capital G in regard to Yahweh.
But I think that very much makes this a kind of signs and wonder and destruction and public observable
kind of story.
I think that’s a very fair insight.
Yeah. It’s interesting.
We will continue down this path, friends.
It’s only going to become more
and more heated as Pharaoh continues to buck against this growing reality that the God of Israel
possesses the kind of strength that Pharaoh could never imagine.
And yet locked into that is a kind
of pride and hubris,
a hardening,
and it will reach a breaking point, as we know.
But don’t miss the story because as it builds,
it will only get more magnificent.
Yeah.
If you can join us tomorrow,
I think we get our first glimpse of what are some of the
repercussions of the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart,
and they’re not good.
Not good for Egypt.
Thanks for being with us today.
We will see you tomorrow, friends.