Sermon Tone Analysis

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*The Plagues of Egypt; the Plagues of Pride*
*February 14, 1999             Exodus 4:18 – 12:51*
 
Seven times in these chapters, God says to Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” (See 5:1; 7:16; 8:1, 20; 9:1, 13; 10:3.)
This command reveals that Israel was in bondage, but God wanted them to be free that they might serve Him.
This is the condition of every lost sinner: enslavement to the world, the flesh and the devil (Eph.
2:1-3).
Some, like the Hebrews, will eventually listen to God’s message of deliverance, but others, like Pharaoh, will be hardened with self-exalting pride and be destroyed by the wrath of God.
 
“Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice?” was Pharaoh’s response to God’s command (5:2).
When we envision ourselves as a god, why should we be compelled to listen to another?
The world has no respect for God’s Word; it is “vain words” to them (5:9).
Pharaoh called the words of God a lie.
Moses and Aaron presented God’s command to Pharaoh, and the result was more bondage for Israel!
The sinner will either yield to God’s Word, or resist it and become hardened (see 3:18-20 and 4:21-23).
In one sense, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart by presenting His claims, but Pharaoh himself hardened his own heart by resisting God’s claims.
The same sun that melts the ice also hardens the clay.
Unfortunately, the people of Israel initially looked to Pharaoh for help rather than to the Lord who had promised to deliver them (5:15-19).
No wonder the Jews were unable to agree with Moses (5:20-23) and accused him instead of encouraging him.
Believers who are out of fellowship with God bring grief to their leaders instead of help.
Moses certainly was discouraged, but he did what is always best—he took his problem to the Lord.
God encouraged Moses in chapter 6 by reminding him of His name (6:1-3), His covenant (6:4), His personal concern (6:5), and His faithful promises (6:6-8).
God’s “I AM” and “I WILL” are enough to overcome the enemy!
What is sin except that which holds us back from serving God, like it held  back Pharaoh - and yet God’s power is greater (6:1).
God’s purpose in allowing Pharaoh to oppress Israel was that God’s own power and glory might be known to the world (6:7; 7:5, 17; 8:10, 22; see Rom. 9:17).
We, like the Hebrews, can become so oppressed by our own situation that we cannot see or hear anything else (6:9), but God delivers us.
Sometimes God uses us to show others that he is God (7:5).
When Aaron threw down the staff of Moses and it became a snake that swallowed up the competition (7:12), it is symbolic of God’s ultimate power over evil.
Perhaps it is symbolic of God’s sovereign will that evil must ultimately be destroyed by itself because of its opposition to God’s natural law.
God threw down his snake, the magicians threw down their snakes, and God’s snake consumes the magicians’ snakes.
The stage is set: Pharaoh refused God’s command, and now God would send His judgments on Egypt.
He would fulfill His promise in Gen. 12:3 to judge the nations that persecute the Jews.
He would reveal His power (9:16), His wrath (Ps.
78:43-51), and His greatness, showing that the gods of Egypt were false gods, and that Jehovah alone is the true God (12:12; Num.
33:4).
The ten plagues that God sent upon Egypt accomplished several things: *(1)* they were signs to Israel, assuring them of God’s power and care, 7:3; *(2)* they were plagues of judgment to Egypt, punishing the people for persecuting Israel and revealing the vanity of their gods, 9:14; and *(3) *they were prophecies of judgments to come, as revealed in the Book of Revelation.
Note the escalating sequence of the plagues.
They fall into three groups of three each, with the tenth plague (death of the firstborn) set last.
Each group begins with Moses personally going to warn Pharaoh as he went out to the Nile in the morning, perhaps to worship, and closes after Moses pronounces a plague without warning.
They increase in severity.
They did not happen in rapid succession, taking perhaps up to a year to become complete.
God offered them to Pharaoh as visual aids in understanding who God is (12:12).
Each plague is specifically against one of the gods of Egypt: the Nile as the source of life became polluted by blood as the substance of life, the frog goddess Haqt as the symbol of resurrection died in heaps, the fly god Uatchit became ineffective as the gnats and flies brought the defilement of uncleanness which prohibited the worship of the other deities, Hathor the cow-goddess and Apis the sacred bull were rendered impotent by anthrax, the gods and goddesses that controlled health and safety (like Seth) were attacked in the plagues of boils, hail, and locusts, the mighty sun god Ra as chief of gods could not compete with the one true God as creator of light, and Meskhemit the goddess of birth and Hathor her companion could not keep the firstborn safe from the hand of God’s judgment.
The last plague was even an attack on Pharaoh himself as a deity.
The ten plagues begin and end with blood (Hebrews 9:22, “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness”).
When a person will not obey God willingly, God will often bring to bear circumstances that force him to obey God unwillingly.
*Discomfort:  By this you will know that I am the Lord.
(7:17)*
 
1.
Water to blood, (7:14-25) 
         
a.
Cycle 1:  Moses appears before Pharaoh (7:16) in the morning at the river to warn him (intimately).
b.       Natural Explanation?:
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