Exodus chapter 7, and we'll read
from verse 1. And the Lord said unto Moses,
See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother
shall be thy prophet. Thou shalt speak all that I command
thee. and Aaron thy brother shall speak
unto Pharaoh, that he send the children of Israel out of his
land. And I will harden Pharaoh's heart,
and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh shall not hearken
unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine
armies. and my people the children of
Israel out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians
shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch forth mine hand
upon Egypt and bring out the children of Israel from among
them. And Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded them, so
did they. And Moses was fourscore years
old, and Aaron fourscore and three years old, when they spake
unto Pharaoh. And the Lord spake unto Moses
and unto Aaron, saying, When Pharaoh shall speak unto you,
saying, Show a miracle for you. Then thou shalt say unto Aaron,
Take thy rod, and cast it before Pharaoh, and it shall become
a serpent. And Moses and Aaron went in unto
Pharaoh, and they did so as the Lord had commanded. And Aaron
cast down his rod before Pharaoh and before his servants, and
it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh also called the
wise men and the sorcerers, Now the magicians of Egypt, they
also did in like manner with their enchantments. For they
cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents. But
Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods. And he hardened Pharaoh's
heart, that he hearkened not unto them, as the Lord had said. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. We left Moses last week, if you
recall, complaining to God because God had not delivered the children
of Israel, had not delivered Pharaoh, his people, and Pharaoh
had made their lives worse. The heads of the families of
the children of Israel were becoming impatient with Moses. Pharaoh was not listening and
Moses felt disheartened and he felt frustrated and that's how
we left him last week. He was praying to God and asking
God why God wasn't doing anything. Now we kind of, that was at the
end of chapter five, we've kind of skipped through chapter six. I haven't read from chapter six,
but I am going to just touch upon it. It kind of divides into
two parts. The first 13 verses are what
I'm going to mention right now. The second part is a bit of a
genealogy telling us about Moses and Aaron and their different
families and their children and that sort of thing. Do please
read it at your leisure if you would like to do that. But let
me just give you a brief overview in a moment if I may. Chapter
6, at least in the first part of it, is basically the Lord
giving Moses a talking to. As if to say to Moses, That's
enough. It wasn't so much a rebuke as
just an emphatic reminder of all that the Lord had done. As
if to say, you need to remember, Moses, that I have a purpose,
and I have a people, and I have a plan, and I have a promise. My purpose, Moses, is to fulfil
my covenant and glorify my name by saving my people. My people
are Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all who follow them in faith
and are brought to experience salvation by the imputed righteousness
of God, as was Abraham. Abraham believed God, and it
was counted to him for righteousness. And God said, I've got a plan
as well. And my plan is to devastate Egypt. with a series of terrible plagues. I will break Pharaoh because
he has hurt and he has exploited my people and I will destroy
his power. The Lord said, I've got a purpose,
I've got a people, I've got a plan and I've got a promise. And that
promise is that I will deliver the children of Israel out of
their bondage, out of their captivity and I will bring them into the
land of Canaan and you will lead them forth. So that we read in
verses seven and eight of chapter six. And I will take you to me
for a people, God speaking. And I will be to you a God, and
ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you
out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring
you in unto the land concerning which I did swear to give it
to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, and I will give it you
for an heritage. I am the Lord. And that brings us to this chapter
seven now. And chapter seven kind of resets
and restarts Moses in his task, having dealt with the fact that
Moses had this little problem, this little moment of panic,
this little moment of doubt. And the Lord, having reminded
him of all that the Lord was going to do, who he was, and
his purpose, and his plan, and his people, and his promise,
now sends Moses for a second time to Pharaoh. And the Lord
tells him that he will go into Pharaoh as a god, and Aaron will
be his prophet. And what the Lord means by that
is that Moses was to represent God before Pharaoh. He was to be God's ambassador,
God's messenger, his agent and ultimately also his instrument
to inflict upon Pharaoh all the judgements and the plagues that
God had in store. And God also clearly tells Moses
that Pharaoh would resist all the requests to let the people
of God go until the Lord brought out his people by great judgments
or the plagues that would follow. God calls them his great judgments. And this is about to begin. Moses was told that he had to
show a sign to Pharaoh and the sign was that Aaron would cast
down his rod and it would turn into a serpent. And you might
think, well, that would be pretty impressive if Aaron was to throw
down his rod on the ground. We've seen this before. Remember,
that's what the sign was that the Lord showed Moses at the
burning bush with Moses' rod. And he was to show that to the
leaders of the children of Israel, to show that God had been with
him. And now Moses was to Aaron, I'm
sorry, was to do a similar thing with his rod before Pharaoh and
before his servants. And you might think that would
be a pretty impressive thing for these men to see and the
court of Pharaoh to behold. But instead what we discover
is that very thing was used to harden Pharaoh's heart. Next
week we're going to start thinking, if the Lord allows and enables,
we're going to start thinking about the first of the Lord's
ten plagues on Egypt. But today, just before we get
into that, I want to bring a couple of points about this passage
which I think might be of help and encouragement to us. Here's
the first one, and there's just two. The first one is this. Do you ever wonder why God doesn't
get on with doing what he has said he's going to do. Why doesn't
he just get it done? Why is it that there often seems
to be a delay, often seems to be a waiting for the Lord to
act? Maybe you sometimes feel like
that. Moses did, Moses did. That was
the reason for his prayer and indeed his discomfort at the
end of chapter five. And it was the reason why God
had to give him this talking to in chapter six and remind
him of God's purpose and plan. But Moses was saying, Lord, everything's
in place. Why are you holding back? The
only thing that's happening now, God, is that your people are
suffering more. What he was saying was they're
suffering more than they need to. Moses was also aware that the
children of Israel were losing patience. And he was also aware
that Pharaoh seemed to be prevailing over Moses. And there seemed
to be no good reason for the Lord not to press ahead and get
this job done. But here's the lesson for us,
and it's not an easy lesson for us to learn. The lesson is this,
God's timing is perfect. God's timing is perfect. We often read in the Bible, maybe
you're familiar with some of these little phrases, some of
these little sayings, but we often read when we're reading
the Bible, oh, let me just remind you, every word in the Bible
is important. Every word. We sometimes read
a verse and we think, oh, that's the important part of the verse.
There's a lot of blessing to be had in reading the unimportant
parts as if they were important. Maybe you're familiar with some
of these little phrases. it came to pass. In due time, at the appointed time, at the
set time, the time cometh when it pleased the Lord. Those little
phrases and lots like them Remind us what the wise man said in
Ecclesiastes chapter 3 verse 1. To everything there is a season
and a time to every purpose under the heaven. See that? See what
he's saying there? He's saying that there is a time
to every purpose under heaven. So What we perhaps should have
done there, when I said to you that God was telling Moses that
he had a purpose and a people and a plan and a promise, we
also might have added that he had a precision. He had a precise
appointed time for all that was to happen. From the smallest
to the greatest events, every event in this world is precisely
ordained by God. Do you know that in eternity,
before the world began, before there was even time, before there
was the world, the triune God, agreed together, Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, when, when the Lord Jesus Christ would come
into the world. They agreed the precise moment
when that would happen. And everything that happened
in the world before that time looked forward to it. the time
when Jesus would come. And everything that has happened
after is based upon that moment when the Lord Jesus Christ came. So that Paul can tell us in Galatians
chapter four and verse four, when the fullness of time was
come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the
law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might
receive the adoption of sons. See that little phrase there,
the fullness of time? These are the little phrases
that we just gloss over sometimes, and we don't give them their
full weight of importance. I can't answer questions like,
why the tears of hungry Hebrew children were so necessary? Or why that it should take Almighty
God a month to do what he could do in a moment? I don't know
the answer to those questions. All I can say to you is that
all of these things had their appointed time and the timing
of the Lord is perfect and he teaches his people by these appointed
times to be patient, to wait upon him, to watch and to pray
and to trust. Proverbs chapter 4 verse 11 says,
I have taught thee in the way of wisdom. I have led thee in
the right paths. And those right paths are shown
to us at the right time. Paul could say in Romans chapter
eight, we know that all things work together for good to them
that love God, to them that are called according to his purpose.
Why is that? Because the Lord is working all
those things together for his glory and for his people's benefit. And just quickly another little
lesson from these verses. What is this thing about the
Egyptian enchanter's sticks turning into snakes? Why did that happen? Were they really able to do that?
Yes, yes, I think they were. Yes, it seems as if they were. Was it a trick? Was it the devil? Was it God who did it? Well, God, we must remember,
is always the first cause of things, right? Let's not fail
to recognise that. Nothing happens without God.
Nothing surprises God. Nothing confounds or confuses
God. But let me tell you what I think
was happening here in Pharaoh's court with these sticks and with
these snakes, these serpents. I'll tell you what I think is
happening because the same thing happens for a few occasions when
it comes to the plagues that Moses calls down upon Egypt. There is a degree to which these
enchanters are able to replicate these plagues. Here's what I
think was happening. I think that God let these Egyptian
magicians copy what Aaron's rod did in order to increase the
pride and the anger of Pharaoh and his court. When Aaron threw
down his rod and it became a serpent, I don't doubt that there was
a gasp and everyone stepped back from the snake on the ground.
But when Pharaoh called his wise men and his sorcerers with their
enchantments to, as it were, fight back, to resist what had
happened in their presence, and what I think they most probably
did by some form of conjuring or trickery. That reaction, that response
would make Pharaoh very proud. As if to say, well there you
are Moses, you can't beat me, you haven't beat me, I've been
able to do what you've been able to do. You brought your prophet
Aaron with his stick and I've got my magicians with their sticks. Is that the best you've got? But when Aaron's rod swallowed
the sorcerer's rods, the pride which Pharaoh felt now turned
to anger and pride and anger hardened Pharaoh's heart. These two sins of the heart are
entrenched and fixed in all of us. Pharaoh's hatred for Moses
and his hatred for Moses' God made him even more determined
not to allow Israel to leave. even when his country was being
destroyed before his very eyes. And the human heart is proud
and angry against God. It's deceitful and it's wicked. And unless God softens our hearts,
unless God gives us a tender heart by grace and mercy, and
shows us the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, upon whom to believe,
in whom to trust, we will all likewise perish with Pharaoh
and his people. Because we're proud and we're
angry at God. We're rebels before him by our
nature. May the Lord be merciful to us
all and may he give to us hearts that are tender and open to the
calls of love from the Lord Jesus Christ and the promise of peace
which is in the gospel. For his name's sake. Amen.