Download 01-20-2013 He Can Turn Water into Blood Epiphany 2 There is an

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Divine Savior
Exodus 7:14-24
ILCW (alt)
01-20-2013
He Can Turn Water into Blood
Epiphany 2
There is an interesting contrast between today’s Gospel reading and the
sermon text. Did you notice it? In the Gospel Jesus changed water into wine. In
the reading from Exodus, God changed water into blood. Most people are familiar with Jesus’ first miracle. They understand why he did it—to protect the host
from the embarrassment of running out of this common beverage and perhaps to
provide a wedding gift to couple.
I’m not so sure people are as familiar with the miracle here in Exodus or
understand why God did it. Perhaps even Christians aren’t aware that both miracles were acts of love from the same God. The Lord turned the water of the Nile
river into blood because He loved both the Israelites and the Egyptians. But did
you know that He still turns “water into blood” today? He has a loving reason
whenever He does so. Join me in learning an important lesson from this miracle.
1) The Lord still turns what the world values into revolting symbols of death; 2)
But for His people these disasters are signs of deliverance.
God’s chosen people, Jacob and his sons and their families had been
invited to settle in Egypt by Joseph who had become 2nd in command in Egypt.
There was a famine at the time and so Joseph gave them the fertile land located
in the Nile delta to live. Over the centuries, the status of God’s people changed.
They were no longer treated as privileged guests of Egypt, but like slaves. Their
slavery grew more and more unbearable until they finally cried out to the Lord.
The Lord answered their prayers by sending Moses back to Egypt to convince the
Pharaoh to let Israel go back to the Promised Land.
Moses’ first audience with the Pharaoh didn’t make much of an impression—even though God gave Moses the ability to perform a miracle. The Pharaoh wasn’t about to free nearly a million slaves and wreck the economy.
So God sent Moses to perform another miracle to convince the Pharaoh
to listen. He told him to strike the water of Nile with his staff. He promised that
He would turn the whole Nile River system into blood.
It would have been hard to understate the importance of the Nile River
to the Egyptians. Without the Nile, Egypt would be a desert. Their whole economy revolved around the Nile. It provided them with fish. It’s annual flooding
irrigated their crops. It provided them and their livestock with easily accessible
drinking water. The Egyptians saw the Nile as a god that daily provided for them.
They called this god Hapi and worshiped him. As long as the Nile flowed and
overflowed each spring, Egypt would thrive.
But the Lord doesn’t just want people to thrive here on earth. He wants
all people to be saved—even the Egyptians who had been so cruel to His people.
Since no one can escape Hell without putting their trust in Him, the Lord had to
reveal Himself to the Egyptians and show that the deities they were worshipping
were merely part of His creation. So the Lord sent Moses to interrupt the Pharaoh while he was worshiping the Nile River and say, “This is what the Lord
says: By this you will know that I am the LORD: with the staff that is in my
hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood.” (vs
17) God was about to get every Egyptian’s attention. They would not only learn
that He was more powerful than their god but that He had the power to take
away their livelihood and life.
With this miracle the Lord underscored the power and faithfulness of
His Word. When Moses took the same staff —that he had thrown down in
front of Pharaoh and turned into a snake, and struck the Nile, the river and all
standing water in Egypt became blood. The primary meaning of the Hebrew
word that God used here is blood. That water didn’t just turn red. It had the
consistency and properties of blood. It rendered this water undrinkable and
inhospitable to fish. This treasured natural resource, this source of life and
wealth suddenly became a disaster and symbol of death. God had not only taken away their source of life, He had rendered it a useless, repulsive, liability.
To survive the Egyptians had to look elsewhere for water.
Notice the Lord took what the Egyptians loved, worshipped, and depended on and rendered it useless and detestable. This would be repeated over
and over again in the days and weeks that followed. He sent nine more plagues
on Egypt which left no doubt that the Egyptian gods were powerless. He sent a
plague of frogs so the Egyptians would detest frogs even though one of the
Egyptian gods was portrayed as a frog. He sent three days of darkness to show
them the folly of worshipping the Sun god. The Lord systematically destroyed
everything the Egyptians valued and treasured or put their hope in—crops,
livestock, health, family. He turned each into a revolting disaster. But He did it
all out of love. Because He wanted them to hunger for a real and faithful
source of life—Himself, the only true God.
Later the Lord would treat Israel the same way whenever they began
putting their hope in people or things other than Himself. Remember when the
Israelites made a golden calf and proclaimed that this was the god that brought
them out of Egypt. The Lord had Moses grind up that idol into powder and put
it in their drinking water. He transformed their god into a bad taste in the water. There were times when Israel put their hope in their army. The Lord would
let a smaller enemy force defeat them and let the enemy enslave them. Sometimes God’s people made alliances with other nations to protect themselves
only to watch their allies become unreliable and useless. He did it always out
of love. He was training them to put their trust in Him alone.
Time after time, he Lord changed “water into blood.” This is the way
He has always dealt with unbelief and idolatry. He takes the thing or person
that people value or trust and turns it into a disaster or reminder of death.
That’s why we shouldn’t be surprised by what we see around us today. The
Lord is still taking the things that we value, treasure and trust and turning them
into disgusting disasters. Maybe we should mention a few examples. The freedom we enjoy here in America is a gift—not unlike the Nile River. Yet when
we love our freedom more than His Word, He lets our freedom turn into disgusting disasters. When we value personal freedom above obeying God, He
lets freedom degenerate into the stinky sight that we see all around us—
perversion and pornography, abortion and euthanasia. When we defend a woman’s right to kill the babies that she doesn’t want to keep, should we be sur-
prised when God lets madmen kill the babies she wants to keep? When we
look to our government to supply us with what we need instead of God,
should we be surprised when we end up with a fiscal mess? God was willing
to turn the beautiful Nile River into a stinky red blood pool because people
were worshipping it rather than the One who created it. He is ready to do the
same with anything that you or I love or trust more than Him!
Why? Because He is a merciful God who wants to save you! Like
the Pharaoh and the Egyptians found out, there is no life, no hope, no salvation apart from the Lord. The bloody messes that are becoming all too common these days are God’s warnings to those who harden their hearts. It is just
the beginning of His judgment.
Aside from the fish in the Nile, this first plague had no fatalities. It
only affected the Egyptian economy. But when God turned the Nile to blood,
God’s people suffered, too. But He saw to it that they viewed it differently.
When the water changed to blood it was the beginning of their deliverance.
When Jesus told his disciples about the awful things they would see,
hear and experience before he returned at the end of time, his purpose wasn’t
to scare them. He called these awful events “the beginning of birth pains.”
(Mt 24:8). He told them to “lift up their heads because your redemption is
drawing near.” (Lk 21:28) When you see God turning His creation into a
bloody mess, you will know your deliverance is right around the corner. It is
evidence that the Lord is working on your behalf.
Let’s remember that the same Lord who turned the Nile to blood,
turned water into wine at a wedding in Cana. You could say that miracle
marked the beginning of our deliverance. You see, our Savior didn’t perform
that miracle just to save the hosts from embarrassment. It was the first of
many miracles that identified Him as the Messiah. The One who once called
himself living water allowed himself to be changed into a bloody mess by the
soldiers and lifted up on a cross. The scene on Golgotha was every bit as disgusting and repulsive as the bloody Nile River. But He acted out of mercy and
love for us. It was not just a reminder of the death disobedient creatures like
us deserved—it was the death we deserved.
Moses reported that after he struck the Nile with his staff, “Blood
was everywhere in Egypt.” (vs 21) When God changed His Son into a bloody
mess, it flowed everywhere. Not to repulse, but to satisfy God’s justice for
our stubborn unbelief. Not to make us thirsty but to quench our thirst for forgiveness, freedom from Satan’s slavery and eternal life. When God struck his
Son, He performed a miracle that provided believers everywhere with an
abundance of joy just as Jesus provided wine in abundance at Cana.
Two miracles—separated by thousands of years—both acts of love
by the same Lord. In one He changed a rich natural resource into a stinking,
bloody disaster. It was a warning that when we consider any thing more important than the Lord, it is likely to become a stinking mess. In the other, He
changed ordinary water into a premier wine. It was a sign for that both disasters and moments of joy in the lives of believers are a prelude to His deliver-