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My Name Will be Proclaimed in all the Earth
My Name Will be Proclaimed in all the Earth Exodus 7:14-10:29 Key Verse: 9:16 “But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” In the previous passage Moses appeared before Pharaoh twice. During the first visit Moses simply presented God’s demand that Pharaoh let His people go so “that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.” Pharaoh’s response was that he didn’t know the LORD and therefor he had no reason to obey him. He simply told Moses and Aaron to get out of his face and to stop keeping the Israelites from doing their work. Pharaoh also imposed new, punitive work rules that brought a lot of hardship and misery on the Israelites. This caused the Israelites to focus on their situation rather than what God was doing in that situation. This turned their head-bowing worship into bitter complaints against Moses and Aaron whom they blamed for putting a sword in the hand of Pharaoh to kill them rather than freeing them from their oppression. The complaints of the Israelites and the hard heart of Pharaoh did not stop God from accomplishing His plan. God spoke to Moses again and told him in great detail what He was about to do and He sent Moses back to pharaoh with the simple message to “let the children of Israel go out of his land.” This time God instructed Moses to perform the first of the three miraculous signs that he had given Moses to prove to Pharaoh that Moses was indeed sent by the God of Israel and was not just appearing before Pharaoh on his own behalf. When Moses performed this miraculous sign by having Aaron cast his staff on the ground and having it turn into a snake, pharaoh’s magicians were able to duplicate this feat and turned their own staffs in to snakes. Yet God proved his superior strength over Pharaoh’s magicians by having Aaron’s snake swallow up their snakes before Aaron reached out his hand and returned his snake to a staff. Still pharaoh’s heart grew hard and he refused to listen to what the LORD had said through Moses. Now the stage was set for God to perform ten mighty acts in Egypt that would primarily do three things. First, it would remind the Israelites that they were God’s chosen people. That he had chosen them and given promises to their forefathers that he was going to keep. Through these signs He was also going to show them that He alone is the one true God who is sovereign over all the earth. Second, these ten signs were going to teach pharaoh exactly who God is. Pharaoh said he didn’t know the LORD so he had no reason to listen to what He said. Well, God was going to introduce himself to Pharaoh through these ten signs and clearly show pharaoh and all his magicians that the Egyptian God’s were absolutely nothing before Him. Finally, through these miraculous signs, performed in the most powerful country on earth at that time, God’s name was going to be proclaimed in all the earth. Today we want to think about the first nine of these signs and how they accomplish these three main goals. May God help each of us to open our hearts and see the one true God for who He truly is so that we can obey his world mission command and proclaim his name in all the earth. As we think about these ten plagues that God sent to Egypt, we have to ask ourselves, why did God choose these particular plagues? Why didn’t God just wipe out the Egyptians or simply soften Pharaoh’s heart to set the Israelites free? Is there any significance to these plagues? There is a tremendous amount of significance to the plagues on several different levels. First, we must remember that the Israelites had been slaves in Egypt for four hundred years. Clearly they still remembered the old stories about how the one true God had called Abraham forth from the land of Ur of the Chaldeans to settle in a foreign land which one day would be given to his ancestors. They must have also remembered the stories of Isaac and Jacob and how the one true God had renewed these promises to them. Most assuredly, they remembered the story of Joseph who was largely the reason they were now in Egypt. However, after four hundred years of being immersed in Egyptian culture they had become become infected by it. We see this time and time again as they wander in the desert longing for the good old days when they sat around pots of meat and enjoyed leeks and onions by the Nile. We can clearly see this infection at Mount Sinai when they built a golden calf to worship – this was clearly a result of the paganism they had seen and learned in Egypt. Moreover, even though they knew the stories about the one true God, they had probably begun to doubt that He could or would do anything about their situation because, after all they had been suffering in bondage for a long time. They must have been asking themselves, who was this one true God and did he have the power to do what he promised. I began to think about what the Israelites knew and what they actually believed when Moses came to them and told them that their God, the one true God, was going to rescue them from their bondage and lead them into the land he had promised their forefathers to give to them. As I said, it had been a very long time since this God had revealed himself to these people. I have no doubt that the Israelites hung onto their belief in God and many of them probably also experienced him in very personal ways, but what they saw every day was not the worship of this one true God, but the worship of many false Gods. The Egyptians worship many gods, most of which had a direct connection with the natural world around them. These gods were often depicted as animals like frogs, flies, cows or bulls. These gods often were representative of things that sustained life like the Nile River, the wind and the sun. And these gods were worshipped every day by the Egyptians living all around the Israelites. This is what the Israelites saw day after day for four hundred years so naturally it would have an effect on them. If it hadn’t completely destroyed their faith in the one true, sovereign God, it surely weakened that faith or had bad influence on it – which, as I mentioned, can be clearly seen in their actions at Mt. Sinai when they made the golden calf. God had to remind his people of who He was. He had to remind his people of who they were in relation to him – they were His chosen people and He was going to rescue them just as he had promised. In order to do this He had to show them that He is the only true God and that the gods of the Egyptians had no power over Him. In fact, He had complete and absolute power over them. Hence God chose ten plagues that not only caused great suffering for the Egyptians, but He chose ten plagues that clearly demonstrated his power over their gods. I began to think about what most Christians think about this God today. After all the promise is essentially the same for us today as it was for the Israelites of Moses time, and next week we are going to see just how similar the promise really is. God promises us that we are His chosen people, that He is going to set us free from our bondage to sin and to lead us into His promised land, the kingdom of heaven. Yet, how many Christians have had their faith corrupted by the faith of the world around them. Most people in the world don’t worship the one true God. They worship many things which take on many different forms. The Hindus have thousands of gods all of which have their own little image. The Muslims worship what they think is the one true god, but it appears to be a god devoid of all love and compassion, unable to forgive and certainly unable to save us from our sins. The Jews claim to worship this God, but when he came and visited them, they didn’t like what he had to say and so they rejected him. Many other people worship things that we wouldn’t consider God’s at all like money, pleasure, good clothes and good food. As Christians, as human beings, we are bombarded with images of these false types of worship every day and I think it has a very negative effect on the faith of Christians. Some may even begin to doubt that God can or that God even wants to save us out of this. God definitely can save us from all the evil we see around us. As Paul says all we have to do is look at God’s creation that surrounds us. If God can create this entire universe down to the smallest detail don’t you think that he has the power to bring you to where He is? Of course He does. And how can anyone doubt that God wants to save us? God sent His One and Only Son, not just to be with us, but to die for us. God literally gave up His life so that we might have life. Think about that for a second. If you are willing to die for someone doesn’t that mean that you are willing to save that person? That is exactly what God did for each of us. Second, we must remember Pharaoh’s answer to Moses when Moses first appeared before him. Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD and I will not let Israel go.” Pharaoh thought that he was god. He thought that he had all the power and that God was nobody. Pharaoh also had some very powerful magicians serving him whom I sure he thought could do more powerful magic than Moses. In fact these were very powerful magicians – they were able to duplicate the first three miracles Moses performed, but there was a huge difference between them and God. The first miracle they duplicated was turning the staff into a snake, but God displayed his power over them by having Aaron’s snake eat their snakes. The second and third miracles they were able to duplicate – in other words to make the situation worse - but they could not reverse them. God could reverse what He had done and just to show God’s absolute authority over the situation Moses even let Pharaoh pick the time he would get relief from the frogs. By the time Moses got to the third plague, the gnats, the magicians could no longer even duplicate the miracle and they had to admit to Pharaoh that “This is the finger of God.” This is truly an amazing admission from these magicians, but it seems clear that they were not referring to the one true God but rather to their own sense of what a god was. This can be seen in the facts that it took seven more plagues to convince Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, in chapter 9:20-21, before the plague of hail, the Bible says there were still some of Pharaoh’s officials who didn’t fear the word of the LORD and in chapter 10:1 God says that he hardened the hearts of pharaoh and his servants. So then what did they mean when they said that “This is the finger of God?” If we look at the ten plagues, we can see that the first nine relate to or attack directly Egyptian gods. The first plague is an attack on the Egyptian god Hapi who was the god of the Nile and fertility. It is even possible that Pharaoh was at the Nile that morning when Moses met him to offer worship to this god (although we don’t know for sure why exactly he was at the Nile that morning). The plague of frogs was an attack of the god Heket (or Heqet) who was represented by a frog and who, oddly enough, was the god of fertility. There are a number of different gods who could be the focus of the plague of gnats but I think the most likely would be the god Geb, who was the god of the earth and therefore had “authority” over the dust of the earth which Aaron struck to produce the gnats. Again with the flies there are a number of gods which could be being attacked here, but two gods Re and Uatchit were depicted as flies in Egyptian hieroglyphics. There is also another strong candidate Khephri who was depicted as a beetle, but was considered the god of insects. The fifth plague on the livestock appears to be a direct attack on the goddess Hathor and the god Apis who were both depicted as cattle. There were two main Egyptian gods that associated with healing so the plague of boils can be seen as a direct attack on both Isis and Sekhmet. The seventh and eighth plague, hail and locus, are an attack on three gods, Nut (the sky goddess), Set (the storm god) and Osiris (the crop fertility god). The ninth plague of darkness was a direct attack not only on Ra, the god of the sun and probably the greatest of the Egyptian gods, but it was also an attack on pharaoh himself because he was often regarded as a manifestation of Ra here on earth. By using these ten plagues, God was teaching pharaoh exactly who He is – He is the god that is sovereign over all the earth. There is no other god beside Him. God clearly demonstrated his power over all the gods of Egypt. I believe that God used these specific plagues to speak to pharaoh and all the Egyptians in a way that they could all clearly come to know and understand that the God of the Israelites is the one true God with absolute sovereignty. Third, God’s ultimate purpose in using these ten plagues is that his name might be proclaimed in all the earth. Let’s look at our key verse 9:16, “But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” God has a purpose in everything that he does and that purpose is very simple: that all people on earth might come to know who he is and worship him as God. God raised up pharaoh and he even hardened his heart in order that his mighty deeds could be performed and all people of earth could hear about them, fear the LORD and worship Him. Pharaoh was stubborn and he didn’t think he needed to listen to God, but because of his stubbornness and unwillingness to listen God’s word was being boldly proclaimed to whole world while pharaoh’s whole world was crumbling around him. God’s plan and his purpose cannot be stopped by any man, and, in fact, the harder someone tries to resist God’s plan and purpose, the more clearly it is revealed. There are many great examples of this principle throughout the Bible but the best example of this principle is Jesus. The more the religious leaders tried to persecute Him and shut Him up the more popular He became. Finally the religious leaders tried to shut Him up for good by killing Him, but God raised Him from the dead, brought him back to heaven and sent us the Holy Spirit. Now that message is being proclaimed in all the earth. Why? It is simply because that is God’s plan. At the end of each gospel Jesus gives his disciples the great commission or the world mission command, but Mark 16:15 sums it up the best: “He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” God wants to use each of us to proclaim his name in all the earth. We have to make a decision, are we going to be like pharaoh and make God destroy us and everything we hold dear to accomplish this, or are we simply going to surrender our life to Jesus and let him use us the way he wants to in proclaiming the gospel in all the earth. Either way God’s name and his gospel message will be proclaimed in all the earth. |
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