Sermonette: The Plagues of Egypt

#284s
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 12-Apr-97; 24 minutes

During this season of the year, it is good to look back on the example of the children of Israel, to see all the wondrous things God did to enable them to leave Egypt. Of course you know that He ordained the Days of Unleavened Bread so we can remember—rehearse—the lessons included in the examples that we see in the Scriptures.

As a matter of fact, all of the holy days are memorials of something. And when you memorialize something, you are supposed to remember what it is that happened, and why it happened, and what that means for us now.

So today we are going to look at the ten plagues of Egypt and hopefully by the time I am finished we will see why God needed to send them on Egypt, and extract a bit of a lesson that we can use now, because even though they happened nearly 3,500 years ago, there are still lessons in there that we can learn.

Let us turn to Numbers 33. You may think, “We need to go back to the first few chapters of Exodus,” but we are going to start here in Numbers 33, because God actually gives a reason why He gave the plagues. We will read verses 3 and 4. Speaking about the journeys of the children of Israel:

Numbers 33:3-4 They departed from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month [which is the first Day of Unleavened Bread]; on the day after the Passover the children of Israel went out with boldness in the sight of all the Egyptians. For the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn, whom the LORD had killed among them. Also on their gods the LORD had executed judgments.

So we can see that the plagues serve several purposes for God. First of all, they gave Israel confidence in God and Moses. They saw through these ten plagues that God was working through Moses, and that He was a very strong God, and they could rely on Him. Of course this did not last very long. They never did rely on God for very long or on Moses for that matter, but it did help.

Secondly, the plagues weakened Egypt in terms of their wealth, of their agriculture, of their leadership. If anything, it made the Egyptians really fearful of what was going to happen next. They were on pins and needles all through that period, right before the children of Israel left Egypt.

But the third point is the one that we will spend the rest of the sermonette on: The plagues showed the absolute weakness of Egypt's gods, and the absolute strength of our God, the true God. So we are going to look into how the plagues pulled down Egypt's gods before their eyes.

The Egyptians were an extremely superstitious people, a lot like maybe the Hindu people of today. They had gods for this and gods for that. There was a god for the tree and a god for the stone and a god for the fish and the god for the water and the god for on and on AD nauseam. There was a god for everything. And everything had a much higher value than we would place on it. They saw cosmic meanings in the most mundane and absurd things.

One of the things I read, I believe it was Will Durant's Our Oriental Heritage, he said that the scarab beetle rolling a ball of dung into its burrow was thought to be a type of RA, the sun god driving his fiery chariot, the sun, across the sky. Now to me that is absolutely ridiculous. What in the world does a scarab beetle rolling a ball of dung have to do with the sun going across the sky? Or with the sun god at all? But like I said, they placed a lot higher meaning on things than maybe we would.

Now many animals were considered sacred to certain gods, and some were sacred to certain cults. Cats, especially black cats, were sacred to BAST, the goddess of music and dance, and later she became the goddess of war. I do not know how she went from music and dance to war, but she did.

The goose was sacred to GEB. He was god of the earth. And the crocodile was sacred to SEBEK, the god of death and burial and protector of kings. I do not know how they put all these combinations together. But that is what they did. And we could go on and on. A bunny rabbit, or a minnow, or something was sacred to some cult or some Egyptian.

But let us go on to the plagues and look at a few of them just to see how they hit directly at some of their gods. Let us go to Exodus 7. This is the first plague on Egypt when the waters of the Nile were turned to blood.

Exodus 7:14-21 So the LORD said to Moses: "Pharaoh's heart is hard; he refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning, when he goes out to the water, and you shall stand by the river's bank to meet him; and the rod which was turned to a serpent you shall take in your hand. And you shall say to him, 'The LORD God of the Hebrews has sent me to you, saying, "Let My people go, that they may serve Me in the wilderness," but indeed, until now you would not hear! Thus says the LORD: "By this you shall know that I am the LORD. Behold, I will strike the waters which are in the river with the rod that is in my hand, and they shall be turned to blood. And the fish that are in the river shall die, the river shall stink, and the Egyptians will loathe to drink the water of the river."'"

Then the LORD spoke to Moses, "Say to Aaron, 'Take your rod and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their streams, over their rivers, over their ponds, and over all their pools of water, that they may become blood. And there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in buckets of wood and pitchers of stone.'" And Moses and Aaron did so, just as the LORD commanded. So he lifted up the rod and struck the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants. And all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood. The fish that were in the river died, the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink the water of the river. So there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt.

This was a ghastly, gruesome type of plague. But God did it to strike at the very heart of Egypt's religion.

Pharaoh went down to the Nile River, probably for a religious rite. I think in The Ten Commandments movie they have him making some sort of a water offering, or something like that, to the Nile. And remember, as he is pouring it out, blood comes out of the vessel, and he drops the thing, and blood splatters everywhere. Well, it was probably something a lot like that. Whoever did the research did a pretty good job, I think. It was probably a ceremony to ensure the periodic flooding of the Nile, and it was by this flooding that all their crops were grown. They had to have the floods come every so often to flood the fields for the sediment that was laid down; they had very good soil so they could grow their crops.

Now Egypt itself has been called, “The gift of the Nile” because if there was no Nile, there would be no Egypt. It is their sole lifeline, because they get very little rain, if any. So they were very thankful for the Nile, but they made the Nile into a god, and they called this god HAPI.

Here is a hymn that they sang to this HAPI:

“Hail to thee, O Nile,

that show us thyself in this land,

coming in peace, giving life to Egypt.

O concealed one,

thou leadest the night onward to the day,

a leading that rejoices the heart.

Thou overflowest the gardens created by RA.

Thou givest life to all animals.

Thou water the land without ceasing

from the path of heaven descending,

lover of good, bestower of corn,

giving life to every homestead.”

You see how important it was to them. They worshipped the waters of the Nile.

What did God do? God turned the pagan Egyptian god who gave life to Egypt into a bringer of death, of stench, of suffering, of misery, and fear. If he had wanted to make a bigger statement to the Egyptians, he could not have done it. He struck at their main god, the Nile.

Now this in turn killed, or profaned other Egyptian gods—the fish. The Egyptians considered some of the fish of the Nile sacred: the lepidotus, the oxyrhynchus, the eel, and the carpasensa were all cultish, sacred objects or animals.

Now another thing that we have to understand about this, about what God had done here, was that the ancients believed that their gods were only powerful in a certain land, their own homeland. So Baal in Israel was considered a god of Canaan. And once you went outside the land of Canaan, he was thought to have no power. Then some other god took over.

And if you remember the story of Naaman, I believe it was Naaman, he [back] came into the land to carry home some buckets of earth so he could worship Israel's God, because he believed if he took buckets of earth back to his homeland, I believe it was in Babylon (Damascus, Syria) or something, that then having a bit of Israel in his own country, he could then worship the God of Israel. He did not quite understand that God was the God of everywhere. And He was powerful everywhere.

And you remember that when Elijah made that challenge to the prophets of Baal, he did it on Mount Carmel. There was a reason he did it on Mount Carmel, because that was where Baal’s home was; it was the Mount Olympus of Baal on Mount Carmel. And so what he did was he showed that God was powerful on Baal's home turf. Baal was nothing, and that God was everything.

So what God did here to Egypt was He hit the Egyptians right where it hurt the most. He hit the Nile first. Hit their strongest god.

There is more to this. In addition to losing their drinking water, the Egyptians had to go without bathing for a week. Now you might not think that is all that bad; a lot of people say, “Once a year if I need it or not.” But the Egyptians had a fetish about cleanliness. Among the ancient people, maybe only the Chinese rivaled them for reasons of cleanliness. The priests took four baths a day—two in the morning and two in the evening. That is how much they valued their cleanliness. So God made them feel unclean too. He hit them in a personal area not only in drinking but in bathing.

Another thing is, guess what their favorite food was? Fish! But their diet was almost completely fish because they trusted in the Nile. And so it says all the fish that were in the Nile died. So he hit them in the belly too. God really did a good one on their heads that time.

I want to go to Exodus 8.

Exodus 8:1-4 And the LORD spoke to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh and say to him, 'Thus says the LORD: "Let My people go, that they may serve Me. But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all your territory with frogs. So the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into your house, into your bedroom, on your bed, into the houses of your servants, on your people, into your ovens, and into your kneading bowls. And the frogs shall come up on you, on your people, and on all your servants."'"

And it happened. Pharaoh did not let them go, so God sent frogs.

This also struck at Egyptian religion. The frog was the symbol of the goddess HEKET. She was the goddess of procreation and childbirth. Guess where he hit this time? Sex. They would give offerings to Heket so that they could have children, and their livestock too.

You understand how they got the frog as the symbol of procreation. Frogs are prolific like rabbits. They put out thousands of eggs, and all these little tadpoles come out. It is interesting also that this plague also struck at the Nile in an indirect way, because the frogs lived in the Nile, the god of the Nile produced the frogs. And it was the frog that they thought blessed procreation. So here again God was striking at their religion right at the base of it.

Exodus 9, we will skip to the 5th plague.

Exodus 9:1-4 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go in to Pharaoh and tell him, 'Thus says the LORD God of the Hebrews: "Let My people go, that they may serve Me. For if you refuse to let them go, and still hold them, behold, the hand of the LORD will be on your cattle in the field, on the horses, on the donkeys, on the camels, on the oxen, and on the sheep—a very severe pestilence. And the LORD will make a difference between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt. So nothing shall die of all that belongs to the children of Israel."'"

The fifth plague struck many of the Egyptian gods and goddesses. The way it did this was because many of the types of livestock: cattle, rams, donkeys, horses, oxen, and camels were sacred to different gods, different cults. And it also struck directly at Pharaoh, who was thought to be a god himself, and the priesthood which was serving the gods. The reason that it struck at them, the Pharaoh and the priests, was that they had the largest herds in all of Egypt. So it made them broke.

Just a few examples here: The cow or bull was sacred to Aus, Ta, Ra, Hathor, Anubis, and Minu. That is six different gods there. And the ram was sacred to Amon, and Knu. And I do not know what gods the camels and the donkeys were sacred to, but you can bet that there was a sacred to some cult for them in Egypt. And others of the plagues, we will not go through the other ones, they struck at still other Egyptian deities.

But I pulled these out because these were probably the most recognizable. You may have seen pictures of hieroglyphics where they have a lot of these animals as objects of worship.

But what does it tell us, New Testament Christians? (This is where we are headed. I mean all these examples do not mean anything outside of the context of what it means to us as New Testament Christians.) Well, plain and simple, God sends plagues on us too. You ever thought about it that way? We call them trials, but they are plagues nonetheless. From the moment He first calls us, we go through a continuing process of coming out of Egypt. Egypt is symbolic of the world, of sin, of Satan's system, of our human nature. And we never really seem to completely come out of it. We are always still in there; we have one foot back in there, or we want to keep some ties to it in some small area of our lives.

God wants to root that out. He wants nothing of the old world, the old self, the old way of doing things to remain, because it is against Him; it is against what He wants us to be doing. So he sends us plagues, trials, tests. He does this to force us to see our gods, and get rid of them.

Now it was very blatant among the Egyptians, because they had gods that they actually put up made of stone or wood or metal or whatever, and they bowed down to them. But we have gods of a different sort.

Let us go to Deuteronomy 6. God gives Israel a warning here, before they go into the land.

Deuteronomy 6:14-15 “You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are all around you (for the LORD your God is a jealous God among you), lest the anger of the LORD your God be aroused against you and destroy you from the face of the earth.”

See, He does not like other gods competing with Him whether they are money, car, health, pride; you name it. Just about anything can become a god, but He does not want to give these other gods a place in His children's lives. He wants it all for Himself. He is a jealous God, and He will fight those other gods in any way He can.

And why does He do this? To show us that our gods are foolish, impotent, and worthless; that only He can help us. We so often lean on our gods, but they are weak. They cannot do anything for us. And He, God, considers punishing those gods, even if it hurts us to be a worthwhile thing. Even a little pain, if it brings us to a point where His purpose is fulfilled in us, then it was a good thing.

Pain is not easy to endure. And we all know that. But often it is pain that brings about the end, the goal, that God wants to produce. It gives us the character that He wants. And you know, He let his people Israel suffer through the first three plagues too. But it worked. They did leave Egypt.

I was going to go to Colossians 2:13-15. I will not do that now. But it just basically says that God goes up against those principalities and powers that we allow to come into our lives and He makes a public spectacle of them. It is kind of interesting. He puts them up on a show in a parade like they used to do in Rome—the vanquished. The conquering Roman army would bring a great parade of vanquished enemies and parade them down the main streets of Rome to show their power.

God does the same thing. He will parade your gods in front of you once He has conquered them. He wants to show you who to trust.

Now what this does is the same as He did for Israel. In the end, it liberates us from the bondage of those false masters, those false gods. Paul says in Romans 6:16-22 that we were once slaves of sin, but now we are the slaves of God. But bondage to God is easy in the long run. In fact, in that same section of Romans, Paul calls it the glorious liberty of the children of God. So it is a good thing to be a slave of God. It produces extremely good fruit, which is eternal life, and eternal life is the ultimate freedom.

Let us go to II Corinthians 4 to close.

II Corinthians 4:16-18 Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

So God is at work destroying our old impotent gods for our own good.

In Hebrews, Paul calls it the chastening of the Lord. Chastening hurts. But the hurt, the trials are proof of God's working in us and with us. We can take pleasure, believe it or not, and rejoice in that. He is showing Himself strong before all our gods.

So we can thank God for the redemption and the liberty He has given us, and then use the freedom that we have to continue on unburdened by false gods in our march to the Promised Land, the Kingdom.

RTR/rwu/drm