40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 72 (Exodus 8:16-10:29)

Episode Date: February 14, 2017

Chad Bird and Daniel Emery Price continue talking about the plagues God sends on Egypt. Lice, boils, flies, locusts, hail, death of livestock and darkness. They cover it all on their way to the final move God makes to deliver His people. Check it out! 

welcome to another episode of 40 minutes in the old testament i'm daniel emery price joined by chad bird chad how are we doing today hey i'm good i am uh i'm looking at uh i'm looking at a day of plagues we've got we've got several coming up here it's going to be a this is going to be the podcast of plagues at least for today is i feel like it's going to be all plagues today all plagues today but this uh the good news is that if all goes according to plan we're actually going to cover all of them up to number nine. We're going to save the 10th, of course, because that's the biggest one. And we have to talk about it in connection with Passover. So there's a whole lot that we'll have to save for that. But the goal, anyway, is to work our way through the

rest of them. We started them last week, so we have a couple under our belt already. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, we dare not delay. All right. Well, let's jump right back into the plagues then. So, everybody, thanks for listening. As always, if you joined us last time, then you know we're in about halfway through with Chapter 8 of Exodus. and uh we we've covered of course the first plague is well known it was the turning of the the nile into into blood and uh that lasted for seven days and the longest of the longest of the plagues that we know of and then next came our uh our beloved frogs where the whole land was full of full of frogs and and i might mention something now in connection with that that i don't think that I mentioned last time. I know I did mention that many of these plagues seem to be a direct

slap in the face to the deities of Egypt. So the Nile was associated with one of the Egyptian deities, and here it turns to blood. So a slap in the face of the Nile god. But there was also a goddess who was connected with frogs. Frogs were seen as somehow representative of her, And she was connected with fertility. So some people speculate these frogs were kind of a slap in the face to that goddess because she was connected with fertility and childbirth. And of course, the Egyptians had had been commanded by Pharaoh to throw the Israelite children into into the Nile River. and we see that maybe not a very clear correspondence with all of these various plagues but with a number of them anyway there's a direct correlation between the plague or some aspect of the plague and one of the gods or goddesses in the Egyptian pantheon we do know

and I mentioned this last time we do know that these plagues were not simply God's attack against fair on the Egyptians, but this was really what the Greeks called a theomachy, which is a battle between gods. So there's a battle between Yahweh and these

false gods of Egypt that are taking place in which Yahweh is demonstrating that he is the one and the true God, and that all of these other supposed gods are nothing more than vanities. So, anyway, that's the Nile, and then

the frogs so let's uh let's go with uh let's go with the rest of them the third plague the the third in these first sequence of plagues is really three triad three sequences of plagues one two and three and then four five and six and then seven eight and nine so the third and final in this first sequence are uh the the uh gnats or mosquitoes or lice or however you want to However you want to translate this. And this is one that just happens. You may remember last time I was talking about the structure of the plagues. And in each of these triads, these groups of three plagues, the third one in each one, the third and the sixth plague and the ninth plague, they just happen like that.

There's no forewarning. They just befall the land. And so Aaron stretches out his staff and all of a sudden you've got insects, you know, whether they're gnats or lice or mosquitoes or something like that. They're over all the land of Egypt. Now, what's significant here, I think, I think is significant, is the source from which these gnats or mosquitoes or lice come and they come from the dust. so Aaron is supposed to take his staff and he's supposed to strike the dust of the earth and this dust becomes these insects that swarm throughout all the land and the thing the reason I think that's significant is because if you look through the whole biblical narrative at dust dust is significant because of its symbolic message of human mortality as well as humiliation

We talk about, you know, we're dust to dust, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. There's a lot of biblical verses that talk about someone being pushed down to the dust or lowered to the dust or falling in, falling in the dust. So the dust here is is important, is an important part of this plague because it it is it is a symbolic of the humiliation to which Egypt in favor are being are being subjected. And then, of course, the gnats or the mosquitoes or the lice are this irritation on humanity, this reminder of the fact that Pharaoh and the Egyptians are still rebelling against the word of God by not letting the Israelites go. I know this. If it was, in fact, lice and my wife was Pharaoh, that'd be it right there. Those Hebrews would have done been let go. There would never have been ten plagues.

Only three. Three, man. She'd been like, blood nile, frogs, maybe we can deal with. As soon as everyone had lice, she'd be like, that's it, we're done. I know a number of people that if the first plague had been mice, then it would have been all over. Or cockroaches. Just imagine if the first plague had been cockroaches.

That would have been it for most people. My wife would have been like, the lice would have been too much, But if you really wanted to end it in a hurry, you could just go, like, we're going spiders right out of the gate, and it's just over with. Yeah, you know, you almost can tell that God wanted to draw this out to ten plagues because he didn't use cockroaches. Or spiders. Or spiders. Because then no way we would have had ten plagues. We would have been all over much sooner.

But he didn't. Instead, we have a bloody Nile and frogs hopping all over. and now we have lice. And interesting here, you may remember that the magicians somehow were able to sort of duplicate the first two plagues, but not this one. It says the magicians tried with their secret arts to bring forth gnats, but they couldn't. And so they had to confess to Pharaoh, this is the finger of god so even the even the magicians are are uh are giving up and telling pharaoh hey hey you know what you might should pay attention to this because you know we can't duplicate this this is obviously some kind of divine power that's bringing this about

but pharaoh predictably his heart was hardened he wouldn't listen to them just as the lord had said I think it's interesting that when the when the magicians were able to duplicate the magic arts, Pharaoh listened to them. But now that they can't, he won't listen to them. So it doesn't matter. His heart is going to harden either way. OK, so this is this is the first first grouping of three, the bloody Nile, the frogs and now the gnats. And still Pharaoh is not listening. So we're going to start over with the second grouping of three. and the first of these is uh normally translated as flies the hebrew is our rove which uh is as best we can tell is something like a uh it only occurs here so it's a little bit ambiguous as to what it means but probably something like mixture like various kinds of animals um we know that the

the greek translation of the of the hebrew called the septuagint as well as the the jewish early jewish scholar first century jewish scholar named philo they uh they identified this as the uh as some sort of fly uh called a dog fly or stable fly it's a blood sucking fly and if you've ever been around a blood sucking fly you know how bad uh you know how bad these are um i grew up in texas and of course this would have been a different kind of fly but uh we had uh if you get close to water, they had blood sucking flies. We call them white flies. And when they would get to get on you, or I grew up riding horses a lot. If they'd get on the horses, the horse would go crazy. If you're on foot, you'd go crazy and do anything that you can to get away from them

because they bite, they suck your blood, they're painful. And so that, if that's what that is, then that kind of gives you an idea as to what this plague is going to be like. so uh it's just like the first of these uh god tells moses to go out present himself to pharaoh to make his demands and then to warn him that if he doesn't do this then this is what's going to befall him and there is one there is one thing about this fourth plague that's that's different and this difference is going to extend through the rest of the plagues as well If you look in verse 23 of chapter eight, it says God is speaking here. He says, I'm going to put a division between my people and your people.

He's talking to Pharaoh. And then he says tomorrow the sign shall occur. So this is the first time this didn't affect the first three plagues. But this is the first time that God makes abundantly clear that his plagues are directed not against just kind of the totality of the population, but specifically against the egyptians and and pharaoh so for the rest of the plagues whatever happens you know whether it's uh the boils the disease or the hail or the darkness all the rest of them there's a clear there's a clear barrier that exists between where the israelites are predominantly living in goshen and where the rest of the egyptians are so this is this kind of a as you go through the plagues not only is there an intensification they get worse as time goes on

but there's also a narrowing where god makes it clearer and clearer that his plagues are directed against the oppressors of of his people so you've got this division that that takes place and uh it happens there's these insects all over the place the land is laid waste they're in the houses of pharaoh the houses of his servants they're they're all over the land and then just like we've seen before just like we'll see several times after this pharaoh gives in but only a little he does this over and over and over he'll try and let the israel to get out from underneath the plagues he'll ask them to pray for him he'll ask them to just make it stop and then he'll they'll make these promises but they're only halfway promises about letting them actually go

go to sacrifice and uh here he says go sacrifice to your god within the land now the demand was to let them go three days journey into the wilderness but pharaoh's not ready for that he wants him to sacrifice right where they are but uh i say no you can't do that we've got to sacrifice away from egypt what we sacrifice might mean abomination to to the egyptians and so we've got to go three days journey into uh into the wilderness and pharaoh uh tries to uh exert his authority here by saying okay i'll i'll let you go but you can't go that far away. And by the way, pray for me. So he's still trying to maintain his control over the situation and demonstrate that he is the one who's ultimately needing to make this decision

instead of simply submitting to the will of God. So Moses goes out. He prays for the removal of the insects and that's what happened god takes away the swarms of the insects from pharaoh and his servants or from all the people not one remained and then we hear what we've heard before what we'll hear again but pharaoh hardened his heart this time also and he didn't let the people go so there's plague number four he's still not giving in yeah i think plague five is gonna do it i don't think it is uh i don't think so it is interesting you know here you have the the pharaoh hardened in his heart and you have you know before this i mean god said this would happen right but god said you know i will i will harden his heart and um and this is a this

a a big theological point where like somehow there's this dance that that happens with with pharaoh and god where pharaoh will harden his heart and the text will say that that pharaoh did it the pharaoh hardened his heart and then uh and then you'll have eventually you know in other places at the beginning and then at the end sort of bookend uh you have god like god hardening his heart um and so there'll be like sometimes you'll have this controversy depending on what the what theological stream you're in about you know well so did did god harden pharaoh's heart or did like did pharaoh harden his heart like how how does this work right and uh i think and i think the answer is sort of just yes yeah if you look at uh at the whole sequence of how the pledge

are laid out with regard to the hardening of pharaoh's heart there's a there's a almost uh balance equal balance between the the number of occasions when it says that favor hardened his heart and the number of times when it says that god hardened his heart and i i believe the way this the sequence it works is like for the first the first half it says favor hardened his heart And then second half, that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. So you've got to keep both of these realities in mind here. Pharaoh hardened his own heart and God hardened his heart. Because as Pharaoh does nothing on his own, we've got to keep that in mind.

In him, we live and move and have our, in God, we live and move and have our being. So he is propelling, he is compelling everything that happens. except in pharaoh's case as god compels him as god propels him forward pharaoh is pushing backward and so there's a there's this compression that's going on so uh is god hardening his heart yes is pharaoh hardening his own heart yes both of these realities are at play and who's to blame pharaoh's to blame because he hardens his heart and god hardens his heart because god is the one who continues to push him and to push him in this direction as pharaoh is pushing and pushing back back against him yeah this is this is sort of the danger of hardening your heart is that um

you know i mean this you have this in the new testament where it says you know like hey don't harden your heart as in the days of pharaoh right um this is because uh eventually god might just give you what you want yeah that's really what this is right yeah this is this is god that that that's the way that often works i mean if god gives you what you want if you if you want this life of supposed freedom and independence from his will and his ways then really what you're getting is captivity uh it's a self-devised captivity and so he is uh he is letting pharaoh have his way and his way ends up in the hearting of his own heart and of course his eventual death and and destruction yeah yeah it's always dangerous when god gives you what you want

yes because uh what the what the heart wants is uh is not what god wants never never make the mistake of assuming that uh what your heart wants is the barometer of what god's will is is for you because as jeremiah says the heart is deceitful above all things so uh the last thing that we should do is trust our heart it's probably the most untrustworthy thing in the whole in the whole universe this is true amen amen all right so uh hardening of the heart takes place once more so let's move on we've got uh we're half we're almost halfway through so plague five is where we are now. And this is a pestilence that moves now toward the livestock of Egypt. So, I mean, there's been irritation. The first one was a huge inconvenience. You do have fish dying in the first

one, but the main inconvenience was the fact that you couldn't drink the water. They got frogs all in your bedroom. And then thirdly, you're eaten up with gnats or lice. And then on top of that, you get flies next that are biting, that are stinging. But the fifth plague takes it up a notch because here we have a pestilence that befalls the livestock of the Egyptians. Once more, Moses goes out and he makes his demands. He makes his warning that this very severe pestilence is going to fall on the livestock the horses the donkeys the camels the herds the the flocks but again there's going to be a distinction a division between those of the israelites and those of the of the egyptians and the same thing befalls them again

the plague comes and uh all the livestock of the israelites were spared the livestock of the Egyptians were afflicted with the plague. And we read once more at the end of this one, but the heart of Pharaoh was hardened and he didn't let the people go. This I think is interesting because this plague, because it affects the cattle, the living creatures of the Egyptians, demonstrates, if you look at it in a very broad way, the impact that human sin has upon the rest of creation. I mean, we see this already back in Genesis when Adam and Eve's rebellion against God affects not just them as human beings, but now you have thorns and thistles, and now you have the death of animals now you have the natural enemies within uh within the

created order so our sin has an effect upon all of creation it just doesn't just affect me and you it affects weather it affects crops it affects animals it affects the totality of creation so sin floods out from the human heart to pollute all of creation that's why all of creation that's why our world is so messed up not just humanity but our entire world and so this plague which is in many ways kind of an intensification of what's wrong with the world a pointing a pointing out of that is expanding from just the the people of egypt to the animals of egypt as well you got to keep in mind as we go through each of these plagues that every single one of them is is eschatological that is it points toward the they are like little uh movie trailers of the the great

movie to come at the end of time because all of these plagues are are uh looking forward to the final collapse of the final collapse of creation before the the advent of the son of god and the recreation of of heaven and earth so you got to look at these plagues in kind of a cosmic perspective because each of these is an indication of our window into what's going to happen at uh at the end of time not only because of destruction but also because of the the recreation that's going to take place when the final Passover happens and those who are covered in the blood of the Lamb are spared and Christ returns not only to destroy but also to recreate a new heavens and a new earth. So it's good to look at these plagues not in historical isolation

but to see them as these theological windows into the broader history of god with the with the entire entire world yeah yeah i mean the the the reason things have to be recreated the reason that there has to be a new heavens and a new earth the reason all things have to be made new is not because god somehow uh didn't do as well as he could have when he when he first created the earth like it's pretty good but it's gonna be it's gonna be real real good when i when i do it again because there's a couple of things now that i'm looking at it that i would have done i would do a little differently yeah i did it a little different and when i get when i get on a round two boy oh boy uh no it's it's because it was good and and we were good uh everything was good

he called it all good uh the problem is it's all corrupted now and that's our fault so so the earth itself the very the very earth itself is is corrupted um this is this is why it's uh it's turned on us and and uh the nature itself uh takes us out uh that's that's all the manifestation and the effects of of sin yeah yeah sin is always cosmic in scale it's never simply personal it's always cosmic and so we if we have eyes to see we can look around creation every day and really see the preaching of the law we see how our sin has infiltrated every aspect of creation in one way or another to to corrupt it and then and we can also see in that then the the great need for this cosmic recreation that's going to take place when when christ comes comes again

okay so uh that was i was plague five now we got to we got another one coming up here we got moving on to plague six and uh this one is boils on both man and beast so moses and aaron are supposed to go to like a kiln where you would like bake bricks and to take they're supposed to take soot from the kiln and take it in front of pharaoh and throw it up in the air and this dust from the kiln is going to spread through all the land of egypt and become boils that breaks out these sores that are going to break out both on people as well as animals and that's what they did they went to pharaoh they threw it in the air and it comes down it spreads and now you have boils breaking out on the people and even the even

the magicians are afflicted these boils and so they couldn't appear before pharaoh anymore because their bodies are are oozing with these with these sores now you would think by now that favor would be learning his lesson but if there's anything these plagues tell us it is the is the recalcitrant mulish stubbornness of the human heart because once more even after plague six favor's heart was not softened and it's here we begin to see this transition because it says and the lord this is verse 12 of chapter 9 and the lord hardened pharaoh's heart and he did not listen to them just as the lord had spoken to moses so now we have this transition i was talking about earlier with not pharaoh hardening his heart but the lord hardening pharaoh's pharaoh's heart

dude boils would be crappy oh yeah you know i think of job as he sat in the ashes scraping his sores with the potsherd, or poor Lazarus as he sat at the rich man's gate and the dogs would come and lick his sores. Just a disgusting image of

what happens to the human body. Yeah, you get this idea that Pharaoh's sitting there on his throne or whatever the heck it is that he sits on. He's all covered with boils, but he's trying to look

royal and telling Moses how he will not let them go. This is not a thing. This is fine. I can handle these boils. It's like the guy you know is miserable. Yeah, he's trying not to scratch them

while Moses is standing. Yeah, dude. Oh, man. It's fine. It's fine. Is this all you got? Oh, man. There's so much... When you're covered in boils and you're just like, no. There's so much pride and defiance involved in that.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's why these plagues are such a clear insight into the human heart. Because instead of softening, it hardens even more. is kind of all of sinful humanity reduced down to one man. He is the representative sinner here in that his hardening, repeated hardening of his heart more and more is indicative of just how far humanity has fallen from God's will and God's ways. Yeah. All right.

Plague seven. We're not done yet. Now we're going to start our third and final sequence of three. We had four, five, six, and now we're going to have the third group of three. We're going to begin with the bad stuff falling from heaven, the hail. And just like with number one, just like with number four, so now with number seven, the first in this sequence, Moses getting up early in the morning, presenting himself to Pharaoh, making his making his demands.

Now, this one is a little bit different because this is a this is a much longer introduction to what's about to what's about to happen. Moses goes into into great detail about why this is happening and its intended effect. Let me give you a sample of what I mean. In verse 14 of chapter nine, he says, for this time, I will send all my plagues on you and your servants and your people so that you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. So if Pharaoh had not got it by now, he should be getting it because Moses is making it abundantly clear that things are about to get even worse. God is upping the ante And the message he wants to send Is that every single one of these

Plagues that have come Is an indication Of the incompetence Of the Egyptian deities It's a slap in the face As I said earlier To the whole Egyptian pantheon To show that in fact

They are not gods They are nothing more than Empty names into which the Egyptians have poured divine qualities. And so what he wants the Egyptians to know is that he is the only God and that all of their gods are nothing more than vanities. And then he goes on to say something else very significant.

He says, for this cause, I have allowed you, he's talking to Pharaoh, allowed you to remain in order to show you my power and in order to proclaim my name through all the earth. That's very significant. It doesn't say to proclaim my name through all of Egypt, but to proclaim my name through all the earth. This is a very important verse in this whole plague narrative,

chapter 9, verse 16, because it indicates what we've been talking about in the last few minutes, that the message of these plagues is not restricted to a single nation, in a single historic occurrence. The message of these plagues is intended for the whole world for all time. That's why they're so important. That's why the Egyptians are told in a few more verses, I think it's the next plague, to tell their children and their grandchildren about these, because these narratives are to be passed down from generation to generation as the stories that illustrate in graphic form the power of God and his grace toward his people.

So we know, for instance, that these became part of the hymns of Israel. Psalm 78 and 105, for instance, recount the plagues. They only have seven of them. They only recount seven of them. But part of the way that the memory of the plagues was kept alive was not only through the reading of Exodus, but also through the singing about the Exodus. So the poetry of Israel, the hymns of Israel, were another way in which these plagues were remembered so that later generations would understand that they are part of the story and that these stories are indicative or illustrative of the power of God, of the grace

of god of the exclusivity of yahweh that he and he alone is is the one god throughout throughout all the earth so it's the hail that is going to happen here and uh it was uh it was the kind of hail that is going to bring about total destruction we're not talking about a roof here or there that that is damaged but instead the whole land is uh is rocked by this hail so that the animals that were left outside were killed the trees were stripped of all their leaves the crops that were in the fields were were destroyed there was thunder there were lightning flashes and this severe hail that that fell everywhere in the land of egypt except in the land of goshen where of course the israelites were it might not seem like this huge deal i've only i've only been in

i was in one really really bad hail storm where it was like crazy amounts of hail and big hail and i mean and it like just was it destroyed everything uh it was i mean car windshields gone all gone yeah you couldn't go outside in it i mean it would have just probably killed you probably yeah it's like it's so and that's just like a regular you know i mean it's a bad hail storm but it's not a plague like i don't know what the size of this hail is going on but uh but this particular hail was was fairly big but it's about golf ball sized hail and just just getting dumped like crazy and uh yeah there's no you can't do anything like depending on how long this goes on like you can't go outside everything gets destroyed and and it's also

when it starts doing stuff like that starts falling out of the sky there is this sense in which you know like i mean like bugs and boils and things like that but maybe maybe you could somehow get it in your mind where a guy can somehow manufacture that like he's like released lice on us or like release some kind of disease on us and we're getting all getting boils it's pretty hard to manufacture like crazy hailstorm yeah you can't just pull that one off by magic no yeah we had a we had a hailstorm that hit san antonio uh a few months ago and i had a i had some people describe their neighborhoods to me as a war zone yeah i mean it was really was uh tremendous loss of property, roofs, windshields, windows in homes, trees.

It was an amazing and scary sight to see what kind of destruction was falling from the sky. And that's what happens in Egypt on an even greater scale than what any of us have seen. And yet, once more, Pharaoh hardened his heart. And he did not let the sons of Israel go. So we got a couple more. We got a couple minutes. So I think we can work our way through at least the ninth plague here. We're almost to that stopping point.

The eighth plague are the locusts. And I was looking at some statistics here. This is pretty amazing. One scholar says that, if I can find it here, one square kilometer. just wrap try to wrap your mind around this one square kilometer can contain 50 million locusts and in a single night they can devour as much as a hundred thousand tons of vegetation i mean this is documented stuff because these locusts still do plague parts of parts of the world. And the devastation that they leave behind is just mind-boggling because they really, they

leave nothing green. They destroy, they devour everything. And that's what happens here with the eighth plague. In fact, it's so bad that Pharaoh's servants are begging him to just let the Israelites go. They're like, how long will Moses be a snare to us? Let him go. Let him serve their god and pharaoh almost almost almost agrees except he only wants the men of the israelites to go and worship and to leave the women and the children behind as uh as as uh as the means whereby the men are to be brought back they're like they're held in bondage so that the men will mineral return and uh of course moses says no god says no and so the plague continues until finally pharaoh begs that they stop that uh god take away the insects and he does and interestingly he

drives all the locusts get this he drives them by a west wind into the red sea where they're all drowned which of course is a foreshadowing of exactly what's going to happen to pharaoh and his egyptians in a couple more chapters and then let's just wrap up with our ninth plague this is three days of darkness a darkness that is that is tangible it's described as a darkness which may be felt you know we talk about fog it's so thick you could cut it with a knife this was darkness so thick that you could cut it that you could feel it that just kind of enveloped you and pressed against you a dark and thick a thick darkness that lasted for three days over over the land over the land of egypt and uh just to kind of kind of wrap this up now with a with a

thought that kind of puts us in a more positive direction this night plague which precedes the death of the firstborn is a picture of the three hours of darkness. These three days of darkness is a picture of the three hours of darkness that's going to befall the world at the death of the firstborn son of the Father, except there, things are going to be very different, because in that plague, in that ninth and tenth plague, which befalls the Son of God, then that brings about ultimate redemption not only for us but for all humanity and for and for the whole world and so things are things are reversed from what you see what you see here happening in egypt yeah man and that's it we are we're out of time but uh we're right up on that 10th foot play uh i think

anyone who's uh went to sunday school ever in their life knows that that's that's the last one and tons and tons to say about it, so we dare not go there until next week. But we'll have a lot to say about this 10th plague, which is going to be the final straw that broke the Pharaoh's back. Guys, thanks for hanging out with us. It was a plague-y episode. I know it was very uplifting, but, you know, hang in there.

there's good stuff going on next week we're going to see how it is that God does finally deliver and redeem his people and there's just tons and tons of Christological stuff going on so thanks for hanging out and we will

see you next week Thank you.