Blogging Exodus 10:1-20
3 So
Moses and Aaron came in to Pharaoh and said to him, “Thus says the Lord God of
the Hebrews: ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me? Let My
people go, that they may serve Me.
4 Or
else, if you refuse to let My people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts
into your territory.
5 And
they shall cover the face of the earth, so that no one will be able to see the
earth; and they shall eat the residue of what is left, which remains to you
from the hail, and they shall eat every tree which grows up for you out of the
field.
6 They
shall fill your houses, the houses of all your servants, and the houses of all
the Egyptians—which neither your fathers nor your fathers’ fathers have seen,
since the day that they were on the earth to this day.’ ” And he turned
and went out from Pharaoh.
“Rock-bottom” is the lowest moment of a downward journey. But when
you hit rock bottom, you stop falling for a while. Things are at their worst so they’re not
getting any worse. Hitting rock-bottom can cause a moment of peace and clarity
during which you change perspectives.
Rock-bottom is the moment when you’re supposed to decide that the only
way you can go is UP. Some people hit
rock-bottom and start climbing up.
And some people hit rock-bottom and start digging.
Exodus 10:1 says that God had hardened
Pharaoh’s heart. But the Hebrew word for
hardened in that verse is kabad or kabed which can mean hard
or heavy. After 7 national cataclysms in rapid
succession, all of Egypt’s fish
were dead. It’s food stores were ruined
by frogs, flies, and gnats. It’s herds
had been wiped out --- twice, in turn by disease and flaming hailstones. The people were weakened from an infestation
of lice and a pandemic of staph infections.
Egypt was on the brink of ruin and Pharaoh’s heart was hard AND heavy. He was stubbornly angry at Moses, but at that
moment he was also heavy-hearted.
Pharaoh was worried and, therefore, potentially open to a way out of
Egypt’s descent toward rock-bottom.
Some Egyptian insiders had begun to heed God’s warnings, saving a few
herds of livestock, and the Lord had timed the 7th plague to strike
between growing seasons, so that the wheat and the spelt were not struck, for
they are late crops (Exodus 9:32). Egypt
had some food, but if Pharaoh provoked God just one more time, they would have
nothing left.
if you refuse to let My people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring
locusts into your territory. And they shall cover the face of the
earth, so that no one will be able to see the earth; and they shall eat the residue of what is left, which remains to
you from the hail, and they shall eat every tree which grows up for you out of
the field (Exodus 10:
4-5).
The nation was hurtling toward rock-bottom. God tried (again) to save them from the impact.
Some skydiving rigs are outfitted with altitude warning systems that
blare a shrill, deliberately irrigating signal, warning, begging the skydiver
to pull the cord before they hit the ground.
You can ignore those. It isn’t a
good idea, but you can. Even when we
have a proven record of disobedience, the Lord sends warnings for us to pray,
to repent before our dive terminates. Pharaoh’s
signal came from within his own circle.
Then Pharaoh’s servants said to him, “How long shall this man be a snare
to us?
Let the men go, that they
may serve the Lord their God. Do you not yet know that Egypt is destroyed?” (Exodus 10:7)
But when someone believes they can fly, it’s hard to convince them to
use a parachute.
Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron back and nitpicked in negotiations over
which Hebrew slaves could go on their requested religious furlough. (Again, remember that Moses’ and Aaron’s
official request wasn’t for emancipation.
They’d just asked Pharaoh’s leaves to go 3 days distance into the
wilderness to worship.)
Moses said, “We will go
with our young and our old; with our sons and our daughters, with our flocks
and our herds we will go, for we must hold a feast to the Lord” (Exodus 10:9).
Pharaoh angrily countered that he would only allow the adult males to
take the time off. He went so far as to
threaten the Hebrews if they tried to all do as their God had commanded.
Then he said to them,
“The Lord had better be with you when I let you and your little ones go!
Beware, for evil is ahead of you (Exodus 10:10).
God is serious about the way He wants to be served, and when you try
to force someone to modify the way God wants them to serve so that it accommodates
your interests, you aren’t opposing the person. You’re opposing God.
When God calls a woman to preach and you tell her she isn’t allowed to
speak with authority in your sanctuary. When
God doesn’t call someone to preach but you convince them to pursue ordained
ministry because it’s a good job or because it’s what you expect of them. When God calls someone to be an evangelist,
or a missionary, or some other non-pastoral anointing, but the church coerces
and bullies them into becoming a pastor because pastoring fits most easily into
your institutional structure.
When you try to force people to modify their service to God in ways God
has not asked their service to be modified, you are stepping on God’s
authority. And there are consequences to
crossing that line. Heavy as a rock, bottom
consequences.
The consequence for Egypt was a plague of locusts (verses 12-15). They ate all of the surviving vegetation, the
crops, the seedlings, the trees. There
are historical records of locust swarms in 19th century America with
reports of locusts consuming even fence posts, clothing, and saddles. Everything in Egypt that had survived the
previous plagues was gone.
Rock. Bottom.
At rock-bottom, some people change their perspective. They repent and begin to climb upward.
Then Pharaoh called for
Moses and Aaron in haste, and said, “I have sinned against the Lord your God
and against you. Now therefore, please forgive my sin only
this once, and entreat the Lord your God, that He may take away from me this
death only.”
So Moses went out from Pharaoh and entreated the Lord. And the
Lord turned a very strong west wind, which took the locusts away and blew them
into the Red Sea. There remained not one locust in all the territory of Egypt
(Exodus 10:16-19).
It seemed like things were looking up, like Pharaoh was looking to grant
the Hebrews’ request and lead his people off the rock-bottom. But then, the
Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the children of Israel go (Exodus
10:20)
In Exodus 10:20, the Hebrew word for hardened is chazaq, not kabad.
Chazaq in this tense means to
be made more rigid, to go through a process that reinforces your stubbornness. Pharaoh
got rock-bottom bad, and then he got worse.
Some people hit rock-bottom and start digging.
After the locust, Egypt’s agricultural wealth was all gone. Maybe Pharaoh figured it couldn’t get any
worse. He was wrong. It got worse.
It can always get worse.
Whether you’re at rock-bottom, on the way to rock-bottom, or standing
at the tippy-top of everything: pay attention to what God is telling you. Heed the warning God is sending you. Be strong, but don’t be stubborn. Be focused, but don’t be hard-hearted. You
are never so high nor so low that you can’t go lower if you refuse the Word of
God.
--Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME
Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the popular blog: A Word
to the Wise at
www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves
Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves
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