GOD IS KEEPING HIS PROMISES
THOUGH MEN ARE DECEIVED
Exodus 7:8—24

INTRODUCTION

Over the past several weeks as we’ve been studying the story of God’s delivering Israel out of their slavery in Egypt we have seen that his ultimate goal is not saving Israel. He is using the process of saving Israel to accomplish his ultimate purpose. He has stated his ultimate purpose in 6:7, that Israel would know that he is Yahweh, in 7:5, that the Egyptians would know that he is the only true and living God and now again in 7:17, that Pharaoh will know that he is the Creator and Sustainer of all things. This is the ultimate reason God does all that he does: to make known, to reveal the greatness, the glory of his own name. He is out to display the splendor of his majesty throughout the entire universe and he is saving Israel from slavery to do so.

No human in the story up to this point has had any interest in knowing God. Every person, including Moses, has been interested in something else besides knowing Yahweh. Pharaoh and the Egyptians are interested in maintaining Israel in slavery so that they can enjoy the benefits of their free labor and avoid the negative consequences of their becoming a powerful enemy. The people of Israel are only interested in not being slaves anymore. Moses is only interested in success. He is tired of looking like a fool and having his reputation besmirched. He wants action from God to fulfill his word. His goal is not to know God.

It’s hard to blame any of these people for not being interested in God’s ambition to be known. All of them have plenty of pain and plenty to fear to keep them occupied. When you’re a slave it just doesn’t seem very good news to be told that God is at work so you can know him. When you’re terrified that your slaves are going to rebel and murder you and your family in the night, being told that God is working to make himself known is not comforting. When you’re a prophet and nobody will listen to you it’s not encouraging to be told God is working to reveal himself. As human beings, we are just not interested in knowing God as a first priority because it just doesn’t seem very practical. This is especially true when we are in pain or afraid or angry or sad. When you’ve just found out that your newborn child has a profound birth defect, it’s just not very helpful to be told that God is working to make himself known. When your spouse does not show affection to you or respect you, you’re not very interested in the fact that God is at work in the world to display his glory. When you can’t pay the bills, it’s not very practical to learn that God has as his goal that you would know him.

Regardless of what you and I think about the nature of the world we live in and what we think is important, the God who made the world and is working right now to sustain it believes that the most important thing in the universe is that he be known. Everything that is going on in the world and in your life is happening for this ultimate purpose, no matter how unreasonable or irrelevant it seems to you. This is what we are seeing in the story of Israel’s salvation from slavery. Everything God does in today’s passage has no effect. Yet we are told twice in the passage that everything is going according to plan (vv. 13 & 22).

If you and I were really honest we would have to admit that we frequently think that God is not doing a very good job of taking care of his world or his people. In fact, if you just look at the world, from one point of view it appears that God is doing a really bad job of making himself known. The majority of people in the world do not know the great, triune Creator of the universe. The majority of people do not know that he came into the world in the person of Jesus. Evil appears to be winning on all sides. Good Christians suffer while those who live in perversity enjoy all the pleasures this world has to offer. Deception is rampant. People believe the craziest things about God and the nature of the world we live in. Ungodliness and perversity are extolled as virtues while godliness and moral purity are slandered as great evils.

If God’s goal is to make himself known in the salvation of his people from slavery, he sure seems to be going about it in a very weird way. Yet, as I said, we are told that everything that is happening here is happening exactly as God said. This is such good news for us. There is an infinitely wise, powerful, just and loving God at work in all the details of life seeking to make himself known in the salvation of his people. However, there is no way to know that there is a sovereign God working in and through all that happens in the world except by God’s telling us it is so. That is what this passage is about. God tells us, through this story, that the way he makes himself known in the salvation of his people includes many unexpected things.

MAIN POINT

God’s plan to make himself known by saving his people amazingly includes…

I. Giving into rebellious human demands (vv. 8-10)

We saw last week that God mercifully, through the power of his promises, gave faith to Moses and Aaron. God enables them to do his impossible to do will. Now look at the first thing he tells them that is going to happen when they do his will. He tells them that Pharaoh is going to demand that they prove that God has appeared to them by performing a sign. He is going to require a supernatural display of power by Moses and Aaron as proof of their claim to come from the “God of the Hebrews.” What is shocking is that God tells Moses and Aaron that they are to comply with the pagan, hardhearted king’s request. He tells them that Aaron should throw the shepherd’s staff of Moses and it will turn into a snake. They’ve already seen this happen two other times and so they have no question that it will happen again. They even know that the staff turning to a snake worked to convince skeptical people on one occasion, when they did this in front of the elders of Israel in 4:29-31. God has given them a method that worked before and so there is no reason to expect it won’t work again.

Before we think about how weird this is that God gave into the demand of a pagan king I want to make another point. There is, within the evangelical, bible believing church, a false teaching that is growing in its influence. It is called Open Theism or Free Will Theism. It is more than possible that you have come under its influence without knowing what it is called. Its primary claim is that human beings have free will. They claim that God never interferes with human choice. What this has to mean then, according to this heresy, is that God does not know what humans are going to do. It is impossible to know what humans are going to do until they do it because we are free. If God knows the future choices of free people, then their choices really aren’t free. But, they assert, we know that men are free and therefore God cannot know what men will do before they do it. In short, they claim that God does not know the future. I don’t know if any of you have been influenced by this position but let me make sure that you notice in v. 9 that God knows that Pharaoh is going to ask for a sign, in fact he knows the exact sentence Pharaoh is going to speak. Regardless of how you handle the relationship between God’s will and human will you cannot say that God does not know the future choices of human beings. God’s knowledge of the future is perfect and complete. There is nothing that is going to happen in the world that he does not already fully know.

This brutal, proud, hardhearted king and oppressor of God’s people demands that God prove himself and shockingly, God complies with his demand. Aaron throws down the staff and it becomes a snake. Let me ask you a question. What would happen if President Bush commanded Secretary of State Colin Powell to do something and Secretary Powell responded by saying, “Prove you’re smarter and stronger than me by doing something I can’t do and then I’ll think about doing what you say? Do a thousand push ups in 10 minutes and then I’ll call the ambassador to China.” He would be immediately fired. Those under authority do not have the right to demand that their superiors prove they have the authority to give a command. How much more is this the case when it is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe commanding a lowly worm of a man to obey? According to Romans 13, this Pharaoh not only exists as a human being by the will of God but he is king of Egypt by the will of God. You would expect God to respond here the way Jesus responded when the religious teachers demanded a sign from him. “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Why didn’t God just say to this insubordinate man, “the only sign you are going to get is your destruction and Israel going free?”

The world is full of insubordinate people who have no interest in knowing God but who have demanded from God that he take care of them and, shockingly, he has taken care of them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people who are living in open defiance of God’s laws and of Christ who have told me of the ways that they have demanded God show them his kindness and he has done so. People naturally believe that what they think about God and how they are living are OK. They use the fact that nothing bad is happening to them as evidence that God accepts them. Most people take it as a matter of course that they have the right to demand that God prove himself before they are obligated to trust him and obey him. The fact is that every moment of every day God is revealing his supernatural power in and through creation. Every moment God is giving every belligerent human in the world overwhelming evidence of his power and grace in giving breath and sight and food and sunshine. Every human knows they did not create themselves and they do not decide to go on living and they do not decide to keep the rain falling. Yet, every human being demands these things as their right. We complain when we don’t get the good things of life in the measure we believe we deserve them. After all, we deserve a break today. Astonishingly, God graciously keeps giving into the demand of sinful humans to prove his grace and power. He does it so that everyone will know he is God. However, we see in Pharaoh’s response the typical human response to this gracious revelation of God.

God’s plan to make himself known by saving his people amazingly includes…

• Giving into rebellious human demands
• And…

II. Giving people over to deception (vv. 11-13)

God does exactly what Pharaoh asks for. He gives him a sign, a display of supernatural power that is out of the ordinary. Now how does Pharaoh respond to this gracious kindness of God? In asking for a sign he appears willing to give in, if only God proves himself. However, once God does exactly what is demanded, he does what every human does by nature. He seeks to obliterate what is blazing in front of his face because he does not want to know God. What he wants is to enjoy the fruit of Israel’s labor and avoid the retribution of the enslaved people. He loves error, not truth, so he calls for deceivers. He already knows what is true, he knows how to be happy, and so he seeks to cover over the evidence that proves he is wrong. He invites those who are accounted wise and spiritual and who have authority in spiritual matters in his culture to come and do the same thing. He looks for an expert to explain away the miracle. Here is the natural response of every human to God’s revealing himself to him or her. We seek to prove that what we’ve just seen does not prove that God has authority over us and that we must listen to him.

When God reveals himself to us and tells us what he requires, it is our instinctual response to run for cover. We talk as though we want to know the truth but when we are told the truth, we look for ways to cover over the truth so we don’t have to obey the truth. Paul told Timothy that this is man’s natural response in 2 Timothy 4:2-4, “Preach the word. Be prepared in season and out of season. Correct, rebuke and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound instruction. Instead to suit their own desires they will gather around themselves a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” This is exactly what Pharaoh does here. He doesn’t like the implications of what has just happened and so he looks for a way to justify his ignoring God. He does it by inviting his magicians to come and when they come each of them throw down their staffs and they also become snakes. However, Aaron’s “staff” swallows all the “staffs” of the magicians. God makes plain that while these men have the power to duplicate a staff becoming a snake, it is his power that is ultimate. The struggle between God and Satan, between God and rebellious man is not the struggle between beings coequal in power. God is alone and supreme in his sovereign power and nothing can thwart him.

Do you see how astonishing this is? God is the one who decided what “sign” Moses and Aaron should give to Pharaoh. It was God’s idea to have the staff turn into a snake. Yet, he knew that Pharaoh’s magicians were able to do the same thing. He knew that Pharaoh would be able to come up with an explanation as to why he didn’t need to listen to God’s word through Moses and Aaron. If you were trying to convince somebody to listen to your prophet would you pick a miracle that you knew his magicians could duplicate? If you were going to persuade people that the eternal Son of God became a man, would you have him be born to an unwed teenager in a backward country? What we see here again is that God’s primary goal isn’t to convince Pharaoh to listen, it is to make himself known in the world and God thinks this is the best way to do it, contrary to what we would naturally think. God is showing off his glory all the time but he does it in ways that men can easily duplicate or explain away. It takes far more than a miracle to persuade a sinner that God exists. It takes much more than a display of divine power to convince a sinner that the only way to be happy is to depend upon God alone to be happy. God has placed all kinds of ways for us to deceive ourselves close to hand. There is a ready explanation for why I don’t need to change, to not do what God tells me to do, all around me. The famous pastor and reformer, John Calvin, says in his commentary about Pharaoh’s calling for the magicians, “This severe and terrible vengeance upon Pharaoh ought to inspire us with terror, lest, in our hatred of truth, we should seek after deception.”

Friends we must be very careful. God is intentionally revealing his grace and power in ways that are easy for fallen humans to explain away. It was no trouble for Pharaoh and his wise men to come up with evidence that justified their ignoring God’s word. They were motivated, not out of a desire to know the truth but out of a desire to deny what they didn’t like. We are all naturally like this. We are looking for ways to excuse our unbelief and disobedience. When you read the Bible or listen to a sermon and you disagree with something you see or hear because of what it might require of you, don’t automatically look for a way to explain it away. When the evidence of God’s grace and his truth don’t seem sufficient to you, be careful that you don’t seek to be deceived. God has placed many opportunities for deception in the world and he is under no obligation to keep sinners from deceiving themselves. We must plead with God for mercy to keep us from seeking deception. We must honestly and humbly seek the truth for ourselves and talk with others in order to ascertain if this is a revelation from God or am I turning aside to myths and away from the truth.

God’s plan to make himself known by saving his people amazingly includes…

• Giving into rebellious human demands
• Giving people over to deception
• And…

III. Requiring his people to confront a deceived world with His word (vv. 14-22)

In v. 14, God speaks to Moses and tells him the obvious. “Pharaoh’s heart is hard and he refuses to let Israel go.” Moses witnessed this fact and he knows, as the end of v. 13 says, that this is exactly what God wants to happen. It’s like God is saying to Moses, “The plan is working perfectly. You did what I said and Pharaoh did exactly what I told you he would do. He is completely resistant to my commands and refuses to do what I’m telling him to do. Now, because he refuses to listen, I want you to go to him early in the morning and give him another message.” Isn’t this odd? God tells his servant that he wants him to keep preaching and performing his miracles to a man whom he knows is going to refuse to listen.

This isn’t the only time God told one of his prophets to do this. In fact, most of the time in the OT, this is exactly what God told his prophets. “I want you to keep telling these people to repent and trust me but they are not going to listen. And it is my will they don’t listen.” This is the story of the OT. God persistently talks to the Israelites through his prophets and they keep on disobeying him. It was the same for Jesus. John 1:10-11 says, “He was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” It is the same for the disciples of Jesus. He sends us into the world and what we discover is that the world hates us because it hates Christ. Yet we are commanded to keep telling the world God’s word. We are to continue presenting the truth of the gospel and showing the glory of God in Christ even though the world is hostile to Christ and continually looking for ways to discount the gospel. God is working to make himself known in the world and his work includes us persistently proclaiming the gospel to hardhearted and deceived people. Now we know that eventually God’s plan to save his people is going to be successful. We know that eventually Pharaoh lets the people go and they escape their slavery. Just as we know one day Christ will return and resurrect all his people into eternal life. However, right now, at this moment, all Moses knows is that God is telling him to command a man to do something that he isn’t going to do.

In vv. 20-21 we see that Moses and Aaron say exactly what God tells them to say and they do exactly what God tells them to do. They are 100% faithful. However, they are complete failures—if success is defined as Pharaoh listening to them and obeying what they say. However, if success is being faithful, then they are successful. Every pastor, every parent, every Christian, every church must be so very careful to define “successful” ministry the way God defines it. The fact that your children do not trust Christ or that no one responds to your teaching or that your church is not growing does not mean that you are not being successful. (Neither is it true that if your children believe and your church is growing that you must be doing something wrong.) The response of people to what we do and say is not a sure sign that we are or are not doing God’s will. The question is simply this: am I doing what God has told me to do and saying what God wants me to say? We are not in charge of what happens. God’s plan to make himself known includes our faithfully living out the gospel and teaching the gospel and having no one respond to the gospel. This is what is wrong with books like the “Prayer of Jabez” or “The Purpose Driven Church” or “The Purpose Driven Life”. It is what is wrong with much of American Christianity. There is this underlying assumption that if we live right and believe right and do right, then our influence will grow, our ministries will expand, our families will flourish. Growing influence is not a sure sign that you are being faithful to God. It’s not wrong to want others to trust in Christ and to grow in holiness but whether a person responds or not is not the determinative factor in whether or not I’m doing God’s will.

God’s plan to make himself known by saving his people amazingly includes…

• Giving into rebellious human demands
• Giving people over to deception
• Requiring his people to confront a deceived world with his word
• And…

IV. Giving men over to worldly concern (vv. 22-24)

Again notice that what God told Moses and Aaron to do he knew that the magicians could duplicate, yet he told them to do it. However, again, their duplication was not on the same level as what Moses and Aaron did. Moses and Aaron turned all the water in Egypt, which all came from the Nile river, into blood. Every fish in the river at that moment died. All the water was so foul in all the land of Egypt that it could not be drank. This condition lasted for seven days. When we are told in v. 22 that the Egyptian magicians did the same things by their secret arts we know that what they did was not as extensive because whatever amount of water remained as water was not very great. They did not turn all the water in Egypt to blood and kill all the fish for seven days. What they did was turn some small quantity of water that they obtained from somewhere, into blood.

Such is the love of humans for sin and their hatred for God that it takes very little to convince them not to believe the truth. I knew a Christian guy who, while in college, wrote a cartoon strip that he actually had syndicated. I don’t remember what the name of the strip was. I do remember one cartoon that he wrote. Three college students were hanging out and in the first frame one of them asks the other two, “How do you think the resurrection of Jesus took place?” In the next frame each of the two students give their answer. The first one says, “I think that God miraculously raised him from the dead, just like the NT says.” The other student says, “I think that Jesus was a member of an extraterrestrial race of beings and one of their spaceships came and transported his body out of the tomb and onto the mother ship.” In the third frame the two students ask the guy who originally asked the question, “What about you? What do you think happened?” He says, “I think I’ll go with the scientific view.” While that is funny, the fact is that there actually are people who think that it is more rational to believe that Jesus was an alien than to believe the NT record. The fact that many millions of people believe that the assertions of Dan Brown in his book, “The Davinci Code”, are actually true is not surprising. That there are people who would rather believe that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, they had children, and his ancestors are still alive than that Jesus is the Son of God who died on the cross for our sins is not in the least astonishing. That people can actually look at the world we live in and at the complexity of organic life and of living systems and yet believe that this all came into existence through a process of chance is not at all amazing. Sin is irrational. Humans would rather believe anything than believe that there is a God to whom they are accountable and who requires them to undergo a radical reorientation of their loves, their beliefs and their behaviors to please him.

The magicians turn a few bowls of water into blood and Pharaoh compares this to all the water in Egypt turning to blood, all the fish dying and all the water being undrinkable for seven days and he decides that this astonishing miracle is no greater than what his gods can do and so he doesn’t need to listen. Notice in vv. 23-24 how he and the Egyptians respond. He goes to his own house and does not concern himself with the nasty water. For seven days he ignores the foul stench and undrinkable water. He has servants to dig his wells and he has wine to drink and he has business to attend to. He is insulated from the effects of the plague and so he pays no attention to it but pays attention to the affairs of his own house and job. The people of Egypt, however, cannot avoid the fact there is no water to drink. They must dig wells for water, something they never had to do in their lives. So they are consumed with survival. Like Pharaoh, they live in sight of the bloody water, the stench of it is in their nostrils but rather than take to heart what is going on they consume themselves with survival. Both the rich and the poor ignore the facts surrounding them out of concern for living on earth.

This is the condition of men upon the earth. We are so taken up with the affairs of our lives that we are oblivious to the overwhelming evidence that surrounds us. Our eyes see, our nostrils are full, yet we are preoccupied with the pleasures of life or our jobs or just surviving and so we don’t see, we don’t smell. God is out to make himself known and he has given overwhelming evidence of his glory in creation and in the church. We must not allow ourselves to be so consumed with the practical matters of life that we do not see or hear what is everywhere around us. What we see in Pharaoh and his people is what is natural to us. Do you remember the parable Jesus told of the wedding banquet (Luke 14:15-24)? The king is having a wedding banquet for his son and he invites all the people of his kingdom to come. One after the other they all turn down the invitation. What are their excuses? One is getting married, another has just bought a piece of property, and another just bought a new yoke of oxen. In other words, the things that prevent them from seeing the glory of the invitation to the wedding of the king’s son are not perverted living but the simple pleasures and pursuits of life. More people are going to be in hell because they loved a nice lawn than because they loved alcohol. More people are blind to the glory of God in the gospel because of a love for shopping than because of a love for stealing. More people deny the power of Christ because they have to work two jobs than because they have two wives. The people in this story are human beings, just like us. Their blindness is our blindness. I beg you to not ignore the overwhelming signs of God’s glory because you are so taken up with the affairs of life.

God’s plan to make himself known by saving his people amazingly includes…

• Giving into rebellious human demands
• Giving people over to deception
• Requiring his people to confront a deceived world with his word
• Giving men over to worldly concern

© Copyright 2004 John Swanson.
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