I guess we can assume that Pharaoh asked for a miracle from
Moses and Aaron to prove themselves to him since they did the trick with the
staff turning into a serpent. Pharaoh is
unimpressed, his magicians can do the same.
On the other hand, as the serpent that was Aaron's staff swallowed the
others up, the magicians went home without their staffs. Surely that should have told Pharaoh
something. Apparently, not so much as
you would think as Pharaoh's heart was hardened against Moses and the
people. The Lord commands Moses and
Aaron to go out and meet Pharaoh as he goes to the river in the morning and say
that the Lord, the God of the Hebrews is commanding him, Pharaoh, to let these
people go and serve the Lord. For anyone
to command Pharaoh would be a great affront to a man who thought himself to be
a god and for this Lord to say He was God of the Hebrews rather than Pharaoh a
further insult. To demand that these
servants of Pharaoh be released to serve this God would seal the deal. All of this might explain why Pharaoh's heart
was hardened, he was greatly insulted by all these things. The sign of turning the Nile to blood would,
at first, seem to represent that this God was not simply a god of the
wilderness but a God who was over even the Nile, the life blood of the nation,
that which made the nation great, but Pharaoh's magicians can do the same. Why he would want them to is another matter,
but perhaps Moses has simply done a trick, that this has nothing to do with a
God acting in any way.
Does the church take marriage as seriously as Jesus
does? One of the reasons the world
doesn't care what we have to say about gay marriage is that we have done little
to prove we actually value marriage all that highly. We have told a generation or two of children
that we are willing to put up with divorce whatever the cost may be to them and
they no longer look to the church for its opinion on the issue. Their hearts are hardened against the church
for the pain it has caused by the failure to take a biblical stance on
marriage. We need to repent and recover
the sense that we are responsible for the marriages among us and be willing to
get our hands dirty to help save them. I
don't think it is a coincidence that we have these two issues of marriage and
how to deal with children coupled in the Gospel. If we want to make headway morally we need to
remember our Gospel responsibility with respect to families.
Paul says that we are the aroma of Christ to all, to those
are perishing as well as those being saved.
To some, we stink in their sight, as the Israelites said of themselves
before Pharaoh, their hearts are hardened against the Gospel. To those being saved, we are to be a pleasing
aroma. Have we a particular and distinct
aroma or are we too much like the world around us to stand out? We are to be those who display the glory of
God, those who reveal Jesus to the world.
Like the statement Moses is commanded to make before Pharaoh, we are to
say to the world that we don't serve your idols, we recognize that this world
has no claim on us whatever, it has nothing to offer us that we don't have in
Him. Our allegiance is to no one and
nothing in this world, only to the One who created and redeemed us, the giver
of all good things, the One who "always" leads us in triumphal
procession no matter our circumstances.
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