Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Worship Powerful People? | Torah | Exodus 7:1-13

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Who do you view as powerful? Maybe it's a politician, a thought leader or a social media influencer. Do you take their words as truth? Do you find yourself idolizing their opinions? In today's episode, Patrick shares from Exodus 7:1-13 how God not only confronts people in power but those who idolize people in power. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Exodus 7:1-13 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller, and right now we're going through the Book of Exodus. An ancient statue was found in Syria. It was a pedestal with a kingly figure perched on top. And on the pedestal itself, there was an inscription naming the king and calling him, catch this, the image of God. From what we found in other places in the ancient Near East, this kind of thinking was just normal fare. It's how everyone thought.

The human world could basically be divided up into two classes, the ruling class, which was made in God's image, and everybody else who were made to serve the people made in God's image. Now, the only reason why we today find this kind of social stratification absolutely appalling is because we live downstream from the Bible. But if you put yourself into the sandals of an ancient person, it's not hard to understand why they had this kind of logic. I mean, think about it. Kings had power. They made and enforced laws. They oversaw military and police forces. They taxed the population.

They built monuments and monumental structures. They were wealthy. They were honored. They were respected. Now, compare that to the average agrarian farmer or artisan or merchant. It's obvious who was more godlike. It's obvious who was more servile. For whatever reason, we are all, this is part of human nature.

we're all tempted to be over odd by power. I think of Acts 12 when Herod Agrippa gathered together the entire city of Cessaria into the local amphitheater. And he arrives dressed in his finest clothing. In fact, it's interwoven with gold and other metallic substances so that when the sun hit him, he shimmered and he glowed like a living God. And then when he spoke, apparently his speech was so fine that the people in the crowd began to cry out, this is the voice of a God, not a man. God struck him dead for his pride. But not just that. That's not the only reason God struck him down. He also did it because Herod was acting unjustly. Herod was unjustly trying to seek out and destroy the early church. Now, all of these threads I've been weaving, they're interconnected. When a human begins to believe that he or she is a God elevated over other humans,

he also begins to believe that there are no moral limits to his power. I can do whatever I want to do. And tragically, the rest of us as normal people, we are easily suckered into the con. This explains why people, including Christians throughout history, have gone along with the injustices perpetrated by megalomaniacal strongmen like Hitler and Stalin and Mao Zedong. We see their power. We see their wealth. And slowly, overawed by that power, we begin to justify their evil and injustice. We think in our hearts, this isn't a normal human.

this is a God. Moses and Aaron encountered exactly this kind of figure in the person of Pharaoh. The Bible doesn't even name it. It doesn't honor him with a name to make the point that he is not a God. He is in some senses lower than a human because he worshipped himself as a God. He degraded himself. But here's what's crazy. The Egyptian people were overawed by Pharaoh. They weren't concerned by his decree to kill the Hebrew male newborns. They weren't bothered by the enslavement and harsh treatment of the Hebrew people? They weren't disgusted in Exodus 1 when Pharaoh used racial fear of immigrants and foreigners

to stir up the people against the Hebrews and enslave them in the first place. After all, they must have thought, this is not a man, this is a God. And I can't help but see a reflection of myself in this. Maybe you see a reflection of yourself in our own cultural moment, whether it's the cult of celebrity worship, where people follow the opinions and decrees of individuals

who largely haven't even received college degrees, or the cult of celebrity news anchors, where we worship and simply believe and buy into whatever this guy or that gal says on their news program, we think to ourselves, oh, these aren't humans, they're super humans, they know more than we do. How could they be wrong? Or if it's the cult of presidential or congressional worship, where we choose our favorite political figure, and over odd, we defend them no matter what they say and we believe them at every turn. The problem is that when you're caught up in the cult of worshipping a human and that human's opinions, it's almost impossible for you to see it. It's almost impossible to confront.

And so that's why I want you to ask this question. Have I put any opinions or voices above the voice of God? Do I struggle to remember that anyone out there is just a human, just like me, makes errors like me, has foibles like me, sometimes bends the truth to keep his or her power just like me? God loves you enough to confront you because the reality is, again, this is almost impossible to confront. God loves us all enough to confront us. Romans 1 says that when we give our allegiance to idols, God will eventually over time give us over to the idols. He'll stop trying. This is true for the powerful and it's true for those who aren't powerful. If you're powerful and you give yourself over to

your own power and your own self-worship, God will give you. give you over to that power. God will let that power wreak havoc in your life. We see this pattern in Pharaoh. In some passages in Exodus, it's Pharaoh who's hardening his heart against God. But in other passages, it's actually God hardening Pharaoh's heart. You're seeing the pattern of God giving Pharaoh over to his own self- idolatry. We see this in Exodus 7 when Moses and Aaron go into Pharaoh's presence and confront him. God says this to Moses and Aaron. He says, but after they've confronted him, but I will harden Pharaoh's heart. And though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you.

Then I will lay my hand on Egypt. And with mighty acts of judgment, I will bring out my divisions, my people, the Israelites. And the Egyptians will know that I am Yahweh when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it. You see, the cycle is beginning. And here's the bottom line. This is a battle between the gods. and the one true God is not going to lose. The false God of Pharaoh, he will lose.

God is going to confront him, and he's going to confront everyone else who treats him as a God. You'll notice that the plagues, they aren't just directed at Pharaoh. They were directed at the Egyptian people who were worshipping him. Let's pick up again in verse 10. So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as Yahweh commanded them. Aaron threw down his staff in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magician. also did the same things by their secret arts. Each one of them threw his staff down and it became a snake.

But Aaron's staff swallowed all their staffs. Yet Pharaoh's heart became hard and he would not listen to them just as Yahweh had said. This is just the beginning of what's going to repeat. It's just the beginning of what's going to come. And I hope you see a warning in this passage for your own heart. I see a warning for my own heart. You see, I know I am no better than the Egyptians. You are no better than the Egyptians. We are all so easily overawed by power. We're all so easily sucked into our culture's idols and narratives and structures. We can also easily think that the current order of things is just the definitive order of things, just the way it is. But this story and the story of the plague show otherwise, Yahweh will act. Jesus will act to set the world back into joint, to resist injustice, to heal what injustice has broken, to awaken the powerful and the worshippers of the powerful. to their folly, to their idolatry, to their foolishness.

And here's the good news. When Israel flees Egypt, when God rescues them, some Egyptians actually go with them. In other words, there were some people who were once over odd by Pharaoh, but they repented. And they turned from their idolatry, and they turned towards the living God. And they say, God, you are my king. Your opinion matters most. Pharaoh is just a human. I've been trying to prepare myself for what I can only imagine will be another.

terrible polarizing political season. We have elections coming up. And I know I need to prepare myself right now. And this passage helps me to do that because it reminds me that no political candidate out there is a God. No political candidate out there can solve the deep problems with the world. There's only one king, Jesus. To be overawed by him is to be made whole. To worship him is how healing comes. And he will act graciously to wake you and me up to our folly if we turn from him to bring us back to himself. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that's going to help you beat that midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus.

Thanks for listening.