The Showdown begins – Act 1, Scene 1
Exodus 7 (selected verses)
7 The Lord said to Moses, 3 ‘I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and I will multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. 4 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 judgement. 5 The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out from among them.’ 6 Moses and Aaron did so; they did just as the Lord commanded them. 7 Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three when they spoke to Pharaoh….
14 Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Pharaoh’s heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go. 15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is going out to the water; stand by at the river bank to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that was turned into a snake. 16 Say to him, “The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you to say, ‘Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness.’ But until now you have not listened….
20 Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord commanded. In the sight of Pharaoh and of his officials he lifted up the staff and struck the water in the river, and all the water in the river was turned into blood, 21 and the fish in the river died. The river stank so that the Egyptians could not drink its water, and there was blood throughout the whole land of Egypt. 22 But the magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts; so Pharaoh’s heart remained hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
God clearly explains to Moses that going up against Pharaoh will be a frustrating and difficult experience. God will, in fact, make Pharaoh stubborn so God can demonstrate that God is greater than Pharaoh. If Pharaoh gave into too easily, then it would be easy for people to say, “The people of Israel got lucky, that is why they are free.” But if Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let the people of Israel go, then in the end it would be clear that God was behind what was happening. If Pharaoh consistently resisted, then when he finally gave into God it would be a dramatic moment. A moment where people would say, “God is in this.” And they would give glory to God. Pharaoh’s stubbornness would lead to the Israelites recognizing that it was God who saved them.
With that warning Moses at age 80 and Aaron at age 83 went to meet Pharaoh as Pharaoh was by the shore of the Nile River. The first plague, in response to Pharaoh’s hard heart, was the water in the Nile, and all the other open water in Egypt, turned to blood. Not only was it impossible for people and animals to use the water, but all the fish in the Nile died. The whole country smelled bad.
While this was a problem, Pharaoh did not believe that God was behind it, because his magicians were able to do the same thing, turn water into blood. Pharaoh was unwilling to admit that God was behind what was going on. (The magicians just made things worse – they were unable to turn the blood back into water.)
Pharaoh’s attitude is a warning against being so rooted in our own understanding of things (so stubborn) that we fail to see God at work in unexpected ways. The signs of God at work are often missed because people are not expecting God to be at work. May we be on the look out for God at work in the world.
PRAYER:
Open our spiritual eyes, Lord, to see you at work in the world. Open the eyes of our heart, Lord, that we may see you in unexpected places. Open our spiritual eyes, Lord, so that we do not miss your action. In Jesus’ name. Amen.