Download The Beginning of Plagues

The Beginning of Plagues
Exodus 7:14-25
March 4, 2012
Rev. Sang-Kun Park
Sacramento Korean Presbyterian Church
Do you all know Pastor Rick Warren who wrote a best seller titled ‘Purpose
Driven Life’ and is also the pastor of Saddleback Church? Couple of years ago, he
was sued by the IRS of tax evasion. The charges were due to a problem with
church’s housing allotment. The housing allowances for pastors are exempt from
tax. The problem was with Rick Warren’s housing allowance of $25,000.00 per
month. IRS insisted that in order to skip paying taxes, Rick Warren turned his
salary into a housing allotment and did not pay adequate tax due. Rick’s housing
allotment was about 18 times the housing allotment of an average pastor like me.
Thus it was reasonable for people to misunderstand. Rick Warren also countersued the IRS stating that his housing allotment was legit. He stated that in order
to live in the neighborhood that he was at, he needed that much amount of
monthly house payment. At the time, that was a big issue in America. The court
eventually sided with Rick Warren thus he was not convicted of tax evasion. The
court ruled that Rick did require such amount to live in that kind of neighborhood.
Although Rick Warren was able to escape tax evasion charges, the church
endured much pain and criticism. Not just the congregation of Saddleback but
other believers attacked Pastor Rick Warren just for the fact of being sued by the
IRS of tax evasion.
The non-churchgoers, who could not let go of such
opportunity, also began to attack the church and the pastor.
Although Pastor
Warren was never convicted, who will repay the church and the pastor for all the
hurtful words and pains? The church these days are under constant attack from
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the world with different tactics of the time of the Pharaoh. Not only in Korea and
the United States, the churches around the world are being targeted by the world.
We are currently living in an era where our faith and church are constantly being
challenged and attacked. If we do not take the initiative to protect ourselves, no
one else will. There are times when we ourselves act foolish and contribute to
attacking the church. I believe it is because fundamentals of our faith are flawed.
The ten plagues that have begun in today’s passage could be viewed as
God’s fight in trying to maintain and upright the community of Israel which was
the start of church in the wilderness. As it was in the past and even today, the
world does not like and cannot stand to see the establishment of God’s church
and community. Especially those that are influenced by the works of Satan will
continue to hunt and target the church. As we begin to examine the ten plagues,
we need to correctly understand God’s will so that we can seek God’s wisdom in
dealing with the current state of the church in today’s world. Furthermore, we
need to continue to seek God’s intervention against the evil foes’ worldly tactics.
God knows exactly what the root of our problem is.
At the time, the
Israelites’ problem on the surface was making the bricks without straws being
provided. The biggest problem came down to making the quota of bricks at the
end of the day. The reality was if they didn’t make their quota then they would
be reprimanded by Egyptian handlers’ whips.
However, the true root of the
problem was not something that can be seen through the eyes. The real problem
of the Israelites was deciding who they were going to serve and follow. Pharaoh
not only denied acknowledging and worshipping God, but also he even rejected
the Israelites from serving God. Ultimately, God’s punishment due to Pharaoh’s
resistance was a fight that meant fundamentally determining “Who will we
(Israelites) serve?”
ultimately serve?
Isn’t that battle still going on in our lives?
Isn’t that the problem?
purpose of the ten plagues.
Who will we
We need to clearly understand the
If we are not careful, we can easily miss out on
God’s intended message in lieu of losing our focus and just looking at the
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miraculous signs.
God did not punish the supervisors that were harassing the Israelites. He
did not fill the shortages of straws. He did not provide relief of labor by lessening
the brick’s quota. Those were not the root of the problem. Ultimately, what was
the reason for God’s wrath against Pharaoh?
harassing the Israelites.
It was not because he was just
It was because he prevented and prohibited the
Israelites from serving God. God sent Moses to Pharaoh and explained the root
cause of the problem. Along with explaining the root of the problem, he exposed
Pharaoh’s sins. He pointed out the problems in Pharaoh. Do you know how great
the grace is when your sins are pointed out? This is a point where one’s true self
comes out. Those who are humble will accept and soften their heart when their
sins are pointed out, but those who are arrogant will become more hardened. I
have witnessed countless similar events during my ministry.
It truly is grace
when one can accept the sins pointed out to them. That person will live. He/she
will be given another chance.
God’s words do not merely stop at stirring our
emotions and is not satisfied with only pointing out our sins. It causes one to
completely abandon one’s pride and surrender, or continue to reject and fight due
to one’s arrogance.
The ten plagues were God’s fight against Pharaoh.
God did not use the
military or borrow human’s strength, but solely used His wisdom and powers to
fight with disobedient Pharaoh. However, God did not just punish mercilessly like
us even in midst of His anger against disobedient Pharaoh. God’s wrath was not
like our sense of retaliation; full of emotions. It was not even about a fight of
one’s pride. Thus Moses was sent first to clearly explain to Pharaoh. “Let my
people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness. If you reject, I will
send out a punishment. The content of the punishment will be that all waters in
the Egypt will be turned into blood. That will include the Nile River which is a
symbol of abundance and idolized as one of your gods.
plague is so that you will know that I am the Lord.”
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The purpose of this
Thus the beginning of the plague took place. The first plague against Egypt
was turning the Nile River to include all the water systems into blood which
symbolized the very heart of Egypt’s wealth and religion. It was a terrible and
fatal punishment that descended upon the symbol of Egypt’s affluence and
vitality of life.
The Nile River which Egyptians served as god was turned into
blood which meant the death of Nile River. If the Nile River died, then all the
benefits that come from the river will disappear in an instant.
grave situation.
This is a very
Not only the Nile River, but canals, lakes, and ponds all have
turned into blood. Thus they could not even find any water to drink.
At this point, there is a question we need to carefully consider. First, “Why
did God choose turning the Nile River into blood as the first plague?” What is the
purpose and important lesson in turning the Nile River into blood? It is clear that
this is God’s answer toward Pharaoh’s attempt at killing Hebrew’s male children.
Pharaoh attempted to wipe out the Israelites by killing Hebrew male children by
casting them out into the Nile River.
There is no record of exactly how many
Hebrew male children died as a result of being cast out into the Nile River. The
Nile River, symbolizing Egypt’s strength, has now turned into blood thus
becoming a root of Egypt’s pain that was once used as a tool in killing Hebrew’s
children. The situation has completely reversed.
Second, this plague was a prelude to the ultimate fate of Egyptian army
which drowned in the Red Sea.
Both the start and end of the salvation of
Israelites had something to do with water. Then, certainly here blood symbolizes
the death of Egyptian army in the Red Sea.
Third, Egypt’s great civilization depended heavily upon the abundance of
the Nile River. Thus, an attack on the Nile River was an attack on Egypt itself.
The Nile River was one of the four rivers of the great civilizations of the world.
The Nile River was the symbol of the abundance feeding Egypt’s prosperity. It
had been that way for a long time. For farming, Egyptians dug water canals to
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draw water from the Nile River deep into the land.
used all over Egypt.
Those waterways are still
The Nile River periodically flooded to naturally create
numerous lakes and ponds which were also the source of their abundance.
In
addition, there were man-made lakes. The source of all the waters was the Nile
River.
The origin of political governance was about how you treat water.
Throughout the ages, a nation couldn’t be well governed without good control of
water.
Thus, the Nile River wasn’t just a river.
It was the most fundamental
platform to govern Egypt. However, the Nile River was no longer the source of
Egypt’s prosperity and security, and as we would witness later, it would become
the source of Egypt’s demise.
Fourth, to Egyptians the Nile River wasn’t simply an origin of a great
civilization but a godly entity worthy of worship as their lifeline. At the Nile River,
rain begins at the end of June and by the time when the water from Ethiopia in
upstream of the Nile River reaches Egypt which is the downstream, it causes
flooding. And in October the flood water drains out to the Mediterranean Sea and
leaves behind vast fertile delta covered with nutritious silt and clay carried down
along the stretch of 6,700km (about 4,200mile) of the Nile River.
Farmers
planted seeds between November and February, and harvested between March
and May. The most important thing to agriculture in Egypt was periodic flooding.
If the flooding was irregular, the yield would be poor, and if the Nile River didn’t
flood, the farmland would become barren. Egyptians believed that the gods of
the Nile River caused periodic flooding so that they could have abundant crops.
Two of such gods were Khnum and Hapi. And Nilus was a deity worshiped as the
governor of the Nile River. It was believed that Pharaoh came out to the river
early in the morning to worship the gods of the Nile River.
According to the
papyrus records discovered most recently, Pharaoh often came to the Nile River
early in the morning to worship the gods. You can imagine how shocking it must
have been for Pharaoh to witness the water of Nile River turning into blood.
God commanded Moses to “strike the water of the Nile” with the staff.
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The word ‘strike’ here means to break or to kill. When he struck the Nile River, it
wasn’t simply splashing of water but condemnation of the gods of the Nile River
Egyptians worshiped. It was God who struck the Nile River. Blood symbolizes
death. Thus, God struck the Nile River to death. By striking down the Nile River
which was deified and worshiped by Egyptians as the source of their fortune, God
shook Egyptians’ idolatry from the root.
What we should focus on here is not what happened to the Nile River, but
the fact that it was God’s judgment on Egypt. For God, the main purpose of this
wonder was to let Pharaoh and Egyptians know that “I am the LORD, God.”
Look at the reaction of Pharaoh when the water of the Nile River turned into
blood.
He summoned his Egyptian magicians to mimic the wonder.
Without
disappointing Pharaoh, the magicians also could turn water into blood by using
their secret arts. By doing so, they could drag down God to human level. ‘Not
just God, we can also perform the same wonder.
So, we cannot accept His
authority,’ they must have thought. They fell into an illusion that they became
like God by mimicking His wonder. The same illusion was used by Satan to tempt
men in the Garden of Eden. Satan uses the same tactic even now. ‘Why does
God monopolize on the absolute authority?
Shouldn’t your thoughts and
philosophy have as much value and authority as God’s? Thus, there is no reason
why you should be less than God!’
Isn’t this the thinking of modern Pharaoh?
The root of this type of thinking is Satanic and against God. Therefore, Pharaoh
couldn’t acknowledge the authority of God.
Rather, his heart was even more
hardened against God.
However, it is really foolish and pitiful.
If Pharaoh’s magicians had real
power and were to demonstrate it, they were not supposed to turn water into
blood.
Instead, they should have turned the blood of the Nile River back into
water. Their tricks drove Pharaoh and Egyptians into worse situations. We don’t
know whether there was water that didn’t turn into blood or water could be
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obtained by digging a hole in the ground.
Even the water that was barely
obtained for the demonstration by Pharaoh’s magicians was also rendered
undrinkable by them.
How foolish!
They couldn’t do anything to mitigate the
suffering of Egyptians for water shortage.
What was seriously bad is that the magicians gave false confidence to
Pharaoh and Egyptians. As a consequence, they couldn’t see the seriousness of
the situation.
If the magicians couldn’t do anything, and thus Pharaoh and
Egyptians could accurately see the situation, they could have given up earlier
without suffering further. It could have saved a lot of tragedy. Little knowledge
is dangerous and can become sources of tragedies.
True knowledge makes
human beings humble before God. However, the worldly knowledge tries to lower
God to our level and destroy our faith. This is what Pharaoh’s magicians did.
Thus, forgetting the fear and the meaning of the plague in which the Nile
River water turned into blood, Egyptians put all their efforts into finding drinking
water.
The wrong influence of the magicians’ trickery was this enormous.
Without fearing God or realizing what they were up against, Egyptians were
swarming around looking for water. They truly didn’t understand that their thirst
wasn’t really because of lack of water. In the book of Amos 8:11, God declared,
“when I will send a famine through the land -- not a famine of food or a
thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.” How
fitting this word is for the situation in Egypt!
The false knowledge provided by the magicians of Pharaoh was blocking the
truth. Why do you think such a false teaching exists? It is to sort out truthful
hearts from the false ones. If you serve God just because you don’t have any
other choice, it is neither truthful worshipping nor serving.
If someone serves
only God rejecting all false ones because it is right to do, although all kinds of
falsehood and heresies imitating God are prevalent, that is true faithfulness,
worship, and service. That is the reason why Satan has existed since the time of
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Garden of Eden, and why evils disguising the Spirit of God realistically exist even
now.
Also
the
reason
why
Pharaoh
and the
Egyptians were
easily fooled by the magicians was because they were arrogant after all. The
arrogant are easily listen to the false teaching, but do not react to the Word of
God.
Therefore, thank God when He lowers you, because there is no greater
grace than that.
Here we realized once again that miracles are not the only and conclusive
evidences to confirm the Sovereignty of God.
As shown in the great event of
Exodus, not all people who eye-witnessed miracles themselves clearly understood
and recognized the existence of God.
Therefore, it shouldn’t be our interest
merely to eye-witness numerous miracles, but to believe the living God and His
works through the miracles eye-witnessed.
In today’s passage, verse 17, God proclaimed “With the staff that is in
my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into
blood.” Obviously it was Moses and Aaron who hit the Nile with the staff. But
God is saying that He personally grabbed the staff and struck the Nile.
God
places Himself and the envoy of God in the same level. Therefore the refusal of
Moses is same as the denial of God. We are prone to see people only. Then we
make foolish mistakes not seeing God. And it was no exception for Pharaoh. He
did not even imagine that God was standing right behind Moses.
He was just
looking a particular Jewish old man who could do some magic. Then it made him
unhappy and the whole country unfortunate.
When God fights against the forces of evil, He takes away the blessing of
nature they have been enjoying.
See the case of Egyptians.
They were no
longer able to drink water any more. Who could even imagine that the day would
come when no one could drink the water from the Nile which seemed to run
forever without going dry? No one dreamt the day would come when there would
be no fish from the Nile, which was their pantry, where they used to go fishing to
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fill their empty stomach whenever they wanted to.
Now they had to wander
around to dig the ground deeper to find water.
But if you think it over, it was not the Egyptian’s problem only. Could we
drink the water from the river without hesitation? The civilization is developing
rapidly and the advantages we are enjoying are much more than what we had 10
years ago. We live this world where we can control it in our hands using a tiny
smart phone. However every hospital is packed with patients and most of people
who walk around are most likely patients. The emergency room is reminiscent of
the battle field.
The people in the most civilized countries, as well as the
devastating Egypt, can hardly go out after sunset.
What do you think the
reasons are why the world has degraded this badly? Because God is claiming His
sovereignty against man’s sin.
What is the use of doing the four- river
refurbishment project, working on canals and developing Internet if God takes
the blessings away?
No one can be assertive before the throne of God because of the amazing
glory of God. However, each individual enhances his name and forgets what he
truly is since the glory of the God is invisible on earth. They just don’t act what
they ought to do, but try to expand their power. They are so anxious to treat
others like their slaves. It must be so ridiculous to God. Where is the purpose of
faith?
After the Nile changed into blood, the fishes were killed and the water was
ill-smelling and undrinkable. I guess they at least tried to drink the water since
they meant the water was undrinkable. In fact, the original language indicates
that the taste of the Nile had a severe tangy flavor and caused nausea.
The
undrinkable water was not the only threat to the Egyptians. The river that they
believed as the source of life turned to the river of death and was decaying.
Don’t you think the Pharaoh was amazingly stubborn as he could not see the
power of God and acknowledge Him under the strong smell of death? If he were
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a just average person, he would damp down his stubbornness when the
enormous disaster occurred. But we can find the ultimate of arrogant human
being from Pharaoh who was persisting his own reasoning and sticking with dead
stubbornness.
It is quite reasonable for Pharaoh not to budge at all despite being totally
cornered.
His trusted magicians certainly lived up to his expectations.
They
were able to turn water into blood just as Moses and Aaron did. "Is that the best
Jehovah can do? My magicians can do that much!" He mocked, as his arrogance
hardened his heart even more.
He had brushed off God's signs as mere
widespread, and deadly natural disasters.
Pharaoh did not even consider the
cause and effect of what was happening before his eyes as he dismissed God's
signs as something that could naturally occur.
For example, the Nile River was also called the Red River when red mud
would suddenly wash down the banks from upstream and turn the water red, or
when an overgrowth of certain plankton would turn the river red. However, this
was obviously different from those natural occurrences.
Redness of the river
caused by mud or plankton did not cause the fish to die or rot and cause a stench.
Still Pharaoh continued to hold on to his beliefs. He wanted to believe in what he
believed.
Do you know that this kind of beliefs, so called act of faith also exists in the
church? Please, do not confuse selective and erroneous beliefs, that are held on
to quite stubbornly, as faith. I have warned you several times already that these
types of beliefs are "blind faith," fanaticism or superstition.
About 3 years ago, in Seoul Young Deung Po police station, a 73 year old
former pastor Song, who had accepted church money claiming that she would
heal illnesses of church members, was arrested for fraud. March 2008, Song was
a pastor of a church in Young Deung Po District when Lim (49 years old) was
battling against last stage of lung cancer. Song said, "pray and you will be well,"
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receiving $160,000 and $2,000 worth gold bracelet.
In the same year, April,
Kang (21 years old) was diagnosed with severe panic disorder. Song told Kang's
parents to go to Israel and pray that the evil spirit may be exorcised. In return
Song
received
another
$133,000
totaling
over
$300,000
in
2
months.
Investigations revealed that the victims completely believed their pastor and
gave their offerings willingly as they were dedicated members of this church over
many years.
In 2009, however, Lim died of lung cancer and Kang's condition
further worsened as the time for treatment was so delayed while waiting for
healing. The police reported that they suspect there are more victims, and will
further investigate into the matter.
I will not further comment about this incident.
I encourage you to
formulate your own opinions with your knowledge of the Bible and common sense.
But just in case, if you would neglect the Truth and only believe in what you wish
to believe in like Pharaoh, then we have a real problem! The fact that they were
swindled out of $300,000 is not the most important. It is a greater loss that they
were robbed out of their faith!
The plague of blood was a sign of destruction.
Referring to judgement.
This showed supremacy of Jehovah God over the gods of the Nile.
No, to be
more precise, it was not about supremacy but rather that there is no other "god"
but God to begin with.
Still, because the Egyptian magicians were able to
replicate the signs, Pharaoh's heart hardened ever more.
There is no way to tell whether the people of Israel suffered due to the
plague of blood or not as there is no record. But we can speculate that if the
Israelites had clean water in their district, then the Egyptians would not have dug
for water, but would have rather gone to get clean water there. As they did not
do this, and additionally, as it was not specifically written that the Israelites did
not suffer, I think that they suffered with the Egyptians. If they also suffered,
then what could this mean?
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For the past 430 years, it seems as though God was silent towards Israel,
and was not present among them while they were suffering due to forced, hard
labor and oppression as slaves. It seemed as though God did not care and did
not exist at all.
Perhaps, this was why they believed that the God of their
forefathers did not exist or had abandoned them.
However, the sign of the
plague of blood was not for the Egyptians, but rather as evidence of God's
existence to the Israelites.
It was an undeniable evidence of God's movement
among them.
This is true of suffering today. We can see that the church is suffering right
along with the world. Not only those unethical people who have caused global
instability and danger, but those who have kept the faith and guarded their
conscience are suffering too. That is especially why we must put our faith into
action!
Even though we are living in this world full of hardship, whether we
continue to rely on God's help or not is our personal choice. I hope that each of
you will faithfully hold fast to God who is ultimately victorious. Although it feels
like the 1% is trying to move the remaining 99% to put their faith into action,
remember that the ultimate Lordship belongs to God. I bless that each of us will
persevere in times of suffering similar to the plague of blood with faith in
Almighty God.
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