Plagues...they keep on coming. A study in Exodus 8

Introduction

 What would it take to get your attention? Not just now, although now's as good a time as any. I don't want to trouble you, you who have already checked out of this blog and are on to thinking about how long it will take to read this today. How do I get your attention? You who are busy making to-do lists and working on lunch plans, how do I get your attention? How does anyone get anyone's attention?

The average adult attention span is 6 minutes. That's why the comedy and variety shows in the US have a commercial break about every 6 minutes! Other people report that the average human attention span is only 8.25 seconds, which is less than the goldfish's 9-second attention span. (https://www.sambarecovery.com/rehab-blog/average-human-attention-span-statistics)

Author Charles Swindoll once found himself with too many commitments in too few days. He got nervous and tense about it.  "I was snapping at my wife and our children, choking down my food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated at those unexpected interruptions through the day," he recalled in his book Stress Fractures. "Before long, things around our home started reflecting the patter of my hurry-up style. It was become unbearable. 

"I distinctly remember after supper one evening, the words of our younger daughter, Colleen. She wanted to tell me something important that had happened to her at school that day. She began hurriedly, 'Daddy, I wanna tell you somethin' and I'll tell you really fast.'  "Suddenly realizing her frustration, I answered, 'Honey, you can tell me -- and you don't have to tell me really fast. Say it slowly."   "I'll never forget her answer: 'Then listen slowly.'"  

 

Our story today begins in Egypt, but it's not the beginning of the story. This may frustrate some of you. For that I apologize. The story is an episode in a fairly long drama which has already lasted over 350 years and now is in its final scenes.

Let me catch you up if you are new to us today.

Previously in Egypt

Moses is God's choice to lead the Jewish people out of slavery. Moses doesn't always agree with this chosen thing and hopes that God will work it out some other way. God convinces Moses that it's his job to do. So, off they go, Moses and his older brother Aaron. They are 80 and 83 respectively at this time. 

Moses and Aaron went to the king of Egypt, who is called by the title Pharaoh, and ask for a 3-day pass to take the Jewish slaves out for a weekend retreat. The brothers use the phrase, "God wants us to go" and Pharaoh says, "Who is Yahweh?" or in modern talk says, fugetaboutit. In fact Pharaoh makes the lives of the Jewish people harder as a direct result. Ouch.

How will God get Pharaoh's attention? How will he get your attention? How will He get mine? Let's keep investigating in our text today and see what this book has to say to us as 21st Century people. OK?

A plague on your house!

Messianic Jewish scholar Alfred Edersheim writes in his commentary on this text regarding the purpose of the plagues:

"Provoked through the daring of man, who would measure his strength against that of the living God, it was to establish two facts for all ages and to all mankind. In sight of Egypt (Exodus 7:5) and of Israel (10:2) it was to evidence that God was Jehovah, the only true and the living God, far above all power of men and of gods. (Exodus 9:14) This was one aspect of the judgments which were to burst upon Egypt. (Romans 9:17) The other was, that He was the faithful Covenant-God, who remembered His promises, and would bring out His people “with a stretched-out arm and with great judgments,” to take them to Himself for a people, and to be to them a God (4:1-8). These are the eternal truths which underlie the history of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt." (Commentary on Exodus)

This may not seem a kinder or gentler way for the Lord of Heaven and Earth to get someone's attention. How about sending roses or lottery tickets-- not plagues, thank you very much.

Pains draw our attention to the need of repair.  My car went in last week for some body work. It’s all good as of yesterday. What about loud noises in your car. They say the loudest sound a man will ever hear is not the engine of a 747 aircraft or a screaming baby in the movie theater. Rather it's in a new car. The loudest sound you can hear is the first ping or click you hear while driving." It gets our attention.

Suffering was the way for Yeshua to get His message to us. He died on the cross to bring eternal life to humanity. But many walked right past his cross that day, and many don't want to know anything about that to this day.

What about miracles? Won't they get attention?

I don't know how many times I hear from people that if God wanted to make it clear, that is, if He wanted all people to believe in Him, all He would have to do is... and they fill in the blank. He should heal my mother. He should let me win the lottery. He should help Australia beat India in the cricket. 

Again I turn to Edersheim for comment.

“First and foremost, we learn the insufficiency of even the most astounding miracles to subdue the rebellious will, to change the heart, or to subject a man unto God. Our blessed Lord Himself has said of a somewhat analogous case, that men would not believe even though one rose from the dead.”

I know of a Jewish believer whose mother has been convinced so many times of Jesus, but yet she refuses. This mother has prayed and said, "God if you are who they say you are... " and God has answered this mother's prayers. But still she refuses. Yikes, I don't envy her position. I hope she repents before it's too late.

What does it take to get us to faith? What does it take to get our attention?

God did raise Messiah Yeshua from the dead. He has done all He needs to do to convince us of His veracity. What will we do with the Truth, at this point? How will God get our attention?

So here in the text, God uses frogs and lice and flies to seek to awaken the Egyptians. He could have used crocodiles or tigers, but 

"In the present instance he shows the greatness of his power by making an animal, devoid of every evil quality, the means of a terrible affliction to his enemies." (Adam Clarke, commentary on Exodus)

In other words, he chose the small and ineffective to bring His notice to the Egyptians. And they began to get the picture, didn't they? It looks like there is a great divide in the populace viz the king. 

Does separation work to get us to see?

I think of Jacob, our Genesis ancestor, and grandson of Abraham, who was separated from his normal circumstances and watched his wives depart some centuries earlier, leaving Jacob to think about his own situation. It was that night that Jacob wrestled with the angel and the history of the Jewish people took a sudden and powerful change of course.

God uses separation throughout our history to teach us, but do we listen?

The Egyptian magicians could not perform the same miracles, although they kept trying. They failed at making lice, and thus I believe the magicians were among the first to know that their powers were limited and that Yahweh was indeed God over all the earth. Listen to their testimony in verse 19. "This is the finger of God."

Only God can open our eyes and we must not resist

Separation is God's order of the day, and He does it via plagues and via miracles and via powerful displays. John Wimber who died some years ago used to call these "power encounters." God challenging the darkness with His own power and coming out victorious. This is what we see in Exodus 8 today.

So:  What lessons do we learn from today's teaching?

1)        Hardening your heart against God has consequences

2)        As every false religion proves there is a true one, as a copy, however

marred or imperfect, shows there was an original from which it was taken,

so false miracles prove that there were genuine miracles,

3)        When God speaks in whatever way He speaks... will you be listening? Are you still paying attention?

4)        Let us not imagine that God has so bound himself to work by general laws that he cannot destroy things out of the ordinary

5)        His final purpose is to bring Himself glory and to get the confession from us that Yahweh is God and there is no other!

Offering... why should I give, anyway?

I’ve said it, so I imagine you at least have thought it. You are sitting in a large congregation of fairly well-off people, with television cameras recording the preacher, with a large sound system, with new carpet in the foyer and then they ask you either by gently passing a bowl or plate past you, row by row, by row, or some even have what appears to be an entire 2^nd sermon dedicated to the collection. They beg; they cajole; they remind; they ask. But in my mind, I think, “Why should I give money to a place that seems to have plenty already?”

Back in the 1960s in the US, I used to see adverts inviting us to help feed starving children in deepest Africa. They always seemed to have a child, with an extended belly, and they wanted me to send $5 or $500 to feed the malnourished children. Those photos said that there were real needs out there, and my donation might assist in meeting those needs. Against that backdrop I simply couldn’t compare the mostly white pastors asking for funds to add to the swelling coffers and maybe to increase the speed of the coffee machine during the half-hour tea time between the two or three services. 

Maybe you have felt something similar. And then, maybe not. Maybe I’m the only one who considers ‘needs’ that I can see and therefore I am prevented from honest listening to real sharing by the pastor or preacher of the day. If I had listened, I might have heard of all the outreaches that church performs. I might have heard about the hurting people they helped during COVID-19 and all the years previously. I might have heard of the hurting people in the neighbourhood of the church who popped by the building and found any number of folks ready to help them in their need. I might have heard that the television camera needed repair and the people watching it have recently sent letters and emails indicating how the broadcasts are building their faith community significantly. But no, I missed those comments due to my own pride and my closed ears. God forgive me. 

Speaking of closed ears, the psalmist and the writer of Hebrews say something about this. 

Psalm 40 (a psalm of David) says, “Sacrifice and (meal) offering You have not desired; My ears You have opened; Burnt offering and sin offering You have not required. Then I said, “Behold, I come; In the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your Law is within my heart.” (verses 6-8)

Speaking to the Lord, King David prays and reaffirms what God wants. It’s not the multiplied sacrifices that could have abounded in the tabernacle. God didn’t require all those. David then prophetically voices the words of Messiah, “Behold I come…I delight to do your will”

Various translations of the verse show “My ears you have opened.” Or “you have given me an open ear.” One commentary says, “Literally, Ears hast thou dug for me, which can hardly mean anything but “Thou hast given me the sense of hearing.”^[1] Even Edersheim weighs in and is helpful here.^[2]

No wonder the writer of Hebrews changes the Hebrew rendering to match the Septuagint verbiage of “a body” and the verb from “boring or digging out the ear” to “prepare a body.” It might even be like a synecdoche, that is the figure of speech where a part is used for a whole like “The White House” instead of saying “The United States” or “Australia lost by 3 wickets” meaning the “Cricket team of Australia lost.”  So we could say that the ear, and thus hearing or obedience to the Lord, represents the body that carries out the will and the words of God. 

As I ponder the ‘sacrifice and offering’ that God doesn’t require, but that he is interested in our whole body’s response to his love and invitations, what can I say but “here am I. Ready to do your will, Oh God.” If I really understand the psalmist and the writer of Hebrews, David was not writing about himself, but rather about someone, or rather Someone to come who would have his ears bored out, like a servant who indentures himself to the master for a season of significant length. 

“But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife and my children; I will not go out as a free man,’ then his master shall bring him to God, then he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him permanently.” (Exodus 21.5-6) Of course permanent doesn’t mean after the Year of Jubilee, nor the end of a man’s life. But rather it means “for a significant length of time.” However, Yeshua has indentured himself to the Father forever. Even so, He is not as a slave. He said, “The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. (John 8.35) Yeshua has let his own ear be dug; he has given his body to the Romans for crucifixion and was buried. Then in that same body, albeit a resurrection one, he rose and ever lives as the Son forever. Behold, he came, to do the will of the Father. That was the ‘sacrifice and offering’ that God desired. And with that sacrifice, all of us can be set free from our own sin and shame. 

Back to that church and my listening, or rather my not listening. Offerings should be the result of hearing, of recognition not of need, so much as of what God requires. Does God want me to be faithful to my local congregation? You betcha. Then I ought to support it financially. What if they don’t really need my money? That doesn’t matter. There are times when congregations have plenty and times when they are in dire straights. Our responsibility is to be faithful and serve the congregation faithfully. What about missions? Should we support various short or long-term outreaches? Of course, we should. As the Lord leads us, we can send large or ongoing regular gifts to a mission so that they can keep up the ministry they believe God wants them to perform. 

Behold I come.

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[1] The Hebrew verb to pierce (כָּרָה = H3738) in Psalm 40:6 is the same triliteral root for the Hebrew verb to prepare (כָּרָה = H3739). For example, this second verb (כָּרָה = H3739) appears translated in 2 Ki 6:23 as "prepared." In other words, both verbs have the exact same triliteral root, but have different meanings. The LXX translators had thus understood the verb in this verse not as H3738 ("pierced"), but as H3739 ("prepared").Additionally the LXX translators understood the word "ears" as metonymy for obedience. Thus the proper rendering in Hebrew would be that the Lord prepared the ears of David for obedience to the Lord. In contradistinction, the ears of King Saul were unprepared: 1 Sam 15:22 (NASB)

In the passage of Psalm 40:6, the LXX translators did not limit the idea to the unstopping or unclogging of the ears of David, which would have been the translation of (כָּרָה = H3738), which means to pierce (or to dig into, as if unstopping of unclogging the ears). The LXX translators went farther: they understood that the Lord had prepared (כָּרָה = H3739) the ears of David in order for him to hear the voice of the Lord, and thus to obey. If and when the ears obey, then the whole person follows, and in this regard King David as a person (his whole body) was a type of living sacrifice to the Lord.

 ^[2] Even in Edersheim we read, “Gen. 4:25. The language of Eve at the birth of Seth: ‘another seed,’ is explained as meaning ‘seed which comes from another place,’ and referred to the Messiah in Ber. R. 23 (ed. Warsh. p. 45 b, lines 8, 7 from the bottom). The same explanation occurs twice in the Midrash on Ruth 4:19 (in the genealogy of David, ed Warsh. p. 46 b), the second time in connection with Ps. 40:8 (‘in the volume of the book it is written of me’—bim’gillath sepher—Ruth belonging to the class מגלת).” (Edersheim, A. (1896). The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (Vol. 2, p. 711). APPENDIX 9 LIST OF OLD TESTAMENT PASSAGES MESSIANICALLY APPLIED IN ANCIENT RABBINIC WRITINGS)