Editorial note: This is a transcript of an audio talk given at a Sunday Bible study class on 21 April. It has been lightly edited by Claude AI: misspellings have been corrected, punctuation and paragraph breaks added for readability, and scripture quotations highlighted. Banter, cross-talk, and informal interjections between participants have been retained but marked as such. The talk itself is not divided into sections by the editor — the flow is the speaker’s own.
Exodus — Sunday Class, 21 April
The Talk
Does God have to operate on our timetable, according to our expectations? Well, of course, to ask the question is to answer it — that is foolishness, naturally. So are we willing to take that template of timescale and apply it to our own lives?
It is like investing, is it not? You can be a day trader, you can be somebody who does what is called high-frequency trading, whereby many trades are done per second. Or you can take the value-investor approach — the likes of Charlie Munger and his business partner, the famous one — who say: let us look at the fundamentals of a business and simply extend the period we are looking at. They are the ones who make it big, but they make it big over time. It is like get-rich-quick schemes, which never work out, as opposed to building wealth more slowly and appropriately.
So are we willing simply to take that template and apply it to our own times and say, “Okay, God, I am submitting myself to your timetable”? If we take 480 years and apply it to our own time, that takes us even further back than the great defeat of Christendom in 1660, with the restoration of Charles II. It takes us back into the Puritan period — the ascendancy, the growing work of God. It takes us back to the aftermath of the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, where we see great missionary thrusts in the world — Catholic and Protestant — and the Christianisation of the world. We just take our eyes away from ourselves — and that is another issue, the self-focus, my nation, me, my personal circumstances — we cast the net wider and we realise that God’s timetable is very often not our timetable.
So let us consider: what had gone on before, apart from one more plague, to prepare the hearts of the nation? To prepare a leader? To frankly bring the Egyptians to what we might call an awareness of who they were? They said, “Okay, we are fed up compromising. We are Egyptians. We are idol-worshippers.” Pharaoh would say to himself, “If I want something done, I am just going to do it according to my will.” So let us kill them all. And then we have a further hardening, until you get to Amenhotep II — in my understanding the hardest of them all, so hard that God smashed him like a piece of pottery.
We might also say that no matter how entrenched an evil regime might be, it can and will be overturned — but overturned when? Overturned in God’s due time. You can line up whatever conspiracy you care to choose, but none of them would have been as evil as Egypt — as focused on the occult, the demonic, as multi-generational as that.
So again, if we take the template and look at what Egypt was and the timescale involved, we can say with confidence that God is well able — well able — to deal with entrenched evils. There was never a shadow of doubt when Abraham was given the promise by God that they would be in captivity for 480 years and then be released and given the land. There is never any doubt as to whether God would do that. But there is plenty of opportunity to look at the situation and say, “Well, according to my feelings at the time, according to my impression of the situation, my own judgement, I do not see how this could ever work out.” And what is that called? Let us give it the name it deserves: that is unbelief.
I wear contact lenses, my wife wears contact lenses, and she is wearing glasses now — and of course that is what a worldview is. It colours your view of the world. She has got blue-tinted glasses, not because she is a hippie, but because it helps her to get her work done.
Anyway, how do we get confidence in God’s word? Well, we can dig our heels in and say, “I am a whatever-millennialist.” That is the joke, you know — “It is all going to pan out.” But no matter what your eschatological position is, you have to say: wait a minute, I must see the world as God has me to see it in his word, and say okay — God says the nations are his.
“Ask of me and I will give you the nations as your inheritance.”
Christ asked for it. The nations will be given as an inheritance. The nations will be discipled. This has to be our outlook. And the difference that makes in your life — getting that into your heart, which is a process — where does that come from? Naturally, we are unbelieving. Where does faith come from? We all know the scripture:
“Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of God.” (Romans 10:17)
So we simply take those portions of scripture, regardless of what our denomination says, regardless of what the family position has historically been, and say: I love you, Lord, and I am going to follow you. I am going to honour my parents, I am going to honour my heritage in terms of church, but I am going to grasp the promises you have given me, I am going to meditate on them and feed my heart on them — and naturally, in that way, faith will grow.
The difference between believing — or even coming to believe — that the present nations will be brought into the orbit of Christ’s kingdom is night and day compared to an expectation that the world is going to end tomorrow or next year or next decade. Very, very different.
We might say further that the Lord knows in advance the correct prescription to apply to change our circumstances. A large part of that is outward action in the world — such as what he brought against Egypt: distress, plague, famine, with all the ensuing economic hardship and psychological distress. They had been plunged into darkness, and the very first plague was, for them, a victory of Typhon — the evil god, the god of darkness — over Osiris, the good god, the god of the Nile from which everything came. They were in psychological shock from the very beginning, and it would only have gotten worse.
So God knows the prescription. Let us look around and think about the turmoil affecting the world today. This does not mean Satan is on the march — it means the Lord is on the warpath, as it were. He does not change. He is using these outward circumstances to effect change.
A period of turmoil like Egypt’s is followed by a time of change, just as surely as when pressure builds up in the tectonic plates — eventually, there is an earthquake, a giving way, a tsunami, and that itself produces dramatic change in its wake. Certain structures are swept away and shaken to the ground, to extend the analogy.
So he says in this passage: “I will bring one more plague upon Egypt.” He will bring. Who is “I”? It is the Triune God.
The key to a proper view of history is what? The key is personalism — and number one, the person of God. Everything that happens in history happens because God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — brings it about. We must therefore reject, on a matter of religious principle, every other form of reading history. If we teach anything else, the kind of history taught in universities, in schools, and even in Bible studies where there is so much unbelief, we have to throw that in the bin and say: for the sake of loyalty to my Lord, I reject that.
But even on a personal level, if you begin to see — at the national level, the regional level, the family level, the personal level — “this is the hand of God, this is the hand of God, this is the hand of God,” then you can walk with confidence.
Furthermore: what is he bringing? He is bringing a plague, a plague of death. So it is God who brings not just the good things. Many Christians work under this syllogism: a good God brings good things, a bad God brings bad things. And that is a lie. God alone is the master of history. He is not just the master of good history. It is not a Manichaean idea — a good God fighting with a bad God. No, no, no. It is one God. What he is doing here is mashing down the gods and making a public spectacle of them. There is no equivalent to Jehovah; there is no struggle going on.
“Is it not I who have caused evil in the city?” (Amos 3:6)
God brings what are terrible things. He has brought plague after plague through the intermediary ministry of Moses and Aaron, using the rod of God representationally. But here he comes down personally to effect change himself. And yet, even with this great distress — “evil” not in a moral sense, but simply a great affliction — he lets his people go.
When God strikes — and “plague” means striking, like hitting something with a rod — it is a precision blow to effect the change, the good change, that God wants to bring about. It is like a martial artist, or a boxer who strikes at the liver: that one targeted blow is worth twenty to another part of the body. He can end the fight in a single strike, with no collateral damage. He does not miss.
So we should look, by faith, at each blow being struck in the Western world — wherever it may be — and say: what is happening here? This has to be God, the person of God, dealing personally, making a precision blow to a nation to effect his will for that nation. And that will is good.
When we see trouble in the world, we say: this is God at work. Who is like the Lord? Praise his name. Let us recalibrate our view of the world based on what has been revealed to us of God’s working. Because what we are seeing here is what he has done elsewhere in history to other cultures — and here we have it revealed.
“He will let you go hence.” So why would Pharaoh let the children of Israel go, when that was the very thing he absolutely did not want to do? Why would any state allow any freedom for godliness? The modern power state is the recalcitrant enemy of the cause of God. Behind any beneficent actions of a power state — or of any tyrant — why would a family tyrant, an ecclesiastical tyrant, allow any freedom at any point? It does not serve their interests.
So again, by faith, we say: behind the beneficent actions of the power state, we should see the hand of God. He will bring you out. I will work circumstances. I, personally — God, your covenant Lord — work things out in such a way that a liberation is effected by the very person who is enslaving you. This is the power of God.
As we look at whatever tyrants we face — in family, in church, in the nation, in local politics — we can say: if God effected this liberation through the hand of Pharaoh, against his own wishes and judgement, then he can jolly well do the same for me with my enemy.
“When a man’s ways please the LORD, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” (Proverbs 16:7)
The Lord’s liberation is directed not to the Egyptians or to Pharaoh’s people, but to the covenant people of God. They were God’s people not because they were godly to a man and woman — we discover very quickly that they were not — but because he put his name on them. God treats those people. We are not always worthy of it, but for the sake of his name God operates in history, and we as Christians bear the name of God, so he treats us differently.
As a footnote: he treats his own people even more severely than he treated Egypt, because he left the bones of an entire generation bleached in the desert. He never did anything like that to Egypt. He broke them as a nation; he dethroned Pharaoh, and his son was put in his place by his servants. But yes — God shows favouritism to his people. He is not a democrat. He is not an egalitarian, not a bit of it.
Now, thinking deeper about Pharaoh letting the people go: the ruler of Egypt — evil though he is, heavily into the occult, an idolater, perhaps the most implacable enemy of God and God’s people that ever there was — it is he who will let you go. Whether it is a Stalin or a Hitler or a Mao or a Pol Pot or any other Marxist through history, the name does not matter. Pharaoh is the enemy of God par excellence.
It also shows how God himself works, respecting hierarchies, respecting established authority. He never once said to Moses: ignore Pharaoh, just march the people out, I will put an angelic covering on you and you can forget about him. No. He respects the position of Pharaoh — he put him there, after all, and the people were following him very much to the last. And yes, it is different when God gave the children of Israel the land of Canaan — it was theirs by right because God gave it to them; the Canaanites were squatters on God’s territory, and God had given them hundreds of years to repent — but in Egypt, God works through established hierarchies.
Therefore we should reject any idea of revolution — just overturn. It is not to say we must follow every jot and tittle and put our head on the chopping block, but we should be very reticent to be rebels. We need to look carefully into the doctrine of the lesser magistrate and see what God’s pattern for effecting political change is. We should address civil rulers for matters of civil government, regardless of how evil they might be. Scripture will give us exceptions, but let that be our starting point.
“He shall surely thrust you out hence altogether.” That is a great word — altogether. We use it here in Northern Ireland. “He is a right fellow altogether.” When the Lord works, he works supremely. It is a tour de force. He is not just going to let you go — he is going to throw you out. If that is not a supreme demonstration of mastery, I do not know what is.
People talk about 3D chess, 4D chess. But the true practitioner of whatever-dimensional chess is the Lord, who takes this Pharaoh who is determined not to let the people go and sacrifice in the desert, and ends up having him turf them out in all haste. The Lord takes this multi-generational representative of a multi-generational dynasty of supremely powerful occultists — a world leader — and has him do his will wholly in opposition to his own published intent. Pharaoh’s plan was to lock these people up forever and work them as his creatures forever. Did that plan work out? He had a 50-year plan; his father had been in power for 54 years. He had a plan and worked the plan. Where is he now? He is sitting in a crate in a museum in Cairo, eyes closed.
Pharaoh thrust them out, however, without any basic change of mind. He was not converted. He did not repent. He was not persuaded of the rightness of Moses’ position. And that is sometimes what we expect — that the only way we can get through to people is to persuade them. Persuasion is a great tool, but it is not the only way God can operate. How did he effect this liberation? It was through the application of power — God’s power demonstrated. It was blow after blow after blow. Moses was not delivering the punches; Moses was God’s servant saying: you are going to be struck. God is going to hit you in this way, at this time, time after time after time.
So do we think of God’s power in a given situation? Or do we have an idea of Jesus as my special friend who comes to me whenever I feel sad? Now, Jesus is that to those in need. He would not snuff out a guttering candle. He would not break a bruised reed. Yes, that is absolutely who he is — but that is one aspect of his character. If you know anybody, do they only ever have one side to their character? And if a church or a teacher only gives you one side of God’s character, it is not a full picture. After all, there are many ways to lie, and the best way is by telling a partial truth — tell just part of the truth and you can do a great deal of lying that way.
You can effectively lie about God’s character by not telling the whole truth. Here we have the Lord Jesus coming down personally, together with the angel of death, just as he came down previously, working a great destruction. So let us worship God and give the whole counsel of God and say: Lord, you are terrible and beautiful; you are full of majesty and power and tenderness. We cannot leave him at the cradle stage. We cannot think of him as he is presented in children’s storybooks — always smiling, well-groomed, arms always open, waiting on us like a bellboy. He is not that. That is not the thrust of who he is.
So it was force — outward force applied — combined with the hardening of Pharaoh’s godless nature. Force on the one hand, and on the other, a grace from God that allowed Pharaoh to become the sinner he always wanted to be. God did not give him a hardness of heart he did not already have; he gave him a special dispensation that further hardened his heart in line with his own nature. God never does violence to our essential nature. When we are converted, our nature is changed. We want the things God wants, and as we are sanctified, the nature of the second Adam in us strengthens while the nature of the first Adam weakens.
So it was force applied to the outward world — blow after blow to the nation, economically, psychologically, in terms of Pharaoh’s own authority being undermined — and then an inward hardening of his position as a godless man.
Now, let us use this as a template. God’s character does not change. Therefore, what about our day? Is there a blow by blow, month on month, quarter on quarter, year on year, on the British state — on its authority, its ability to govern, its ability to do the very basic things such as provide electricity? Look at the roads. Look at the integrity of the British state, its ability to control the fabric of the nation. Look at the schools, the institutions, the kind of graduates they are producing. Look at what the health service is doing. It is collapsing on every side. There is a progressive blow after blow, and we are wondering why things are as they are. If you are a little bit older, you will say: things used to be more stable, we used to feel more prosperous. For those older than me, you could just buy a house and your wife could stay at home; a mortgage was no problem, job for life, all that kind of thing. And we are sinking lower and lower on the world stage, and our counsel at the level of international relations is unbearably foolish.
On the one hand, we see exactly what we saw in Egypt — not so severe, but tremendous and awe-inspiring in how low we are sinking. On the other hand, do we find repentance and moderation in our civil leaders? Or do we find a hardening of their position — not willing to back down on any of their godless plans? Do they show any signs of repentance, or do they show an intense hardening of their position in ungodly directions as regards sexuality and other areas? Of course they do. Macron has been there so long, every inch the authoritarian. There is an ossification and hardening of positions all around the Western world.
Therefore, should we conclude that we are to be delivered into a hellscape of never-ending tyranny? Or should we rather say: this is what God accomplished in Egypt — he used it to bring about a liberation — therefore I shall expect a liberation. Are we willing to be open to the fact that God does not change, and his ways do not change, and he owns the nations, having won them by what we have just celebrated in Christendom — the victory of Jesus on the cross? That victory is not just over personal sins; it is the inheriting of the whole world. Is he weaker now than he was then? To say it is blasphemy. To think it is blasphemy.
Now, we have just celebrated the resurrection of Christ — Hallelujah, he is risen. But there are multiple kinds of resurrection implicit in this narrative at this point.
“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:25)
That is the dynamic in the kingdom. If you hold on to life and want to live it on your own terms, you will lose it. But if you are willing to give it up, it will be given back to you.
We see this with Abraham: he gives up his son and receives him back by faith, knowing that God can bring him back in resurrection. That is made very clear in scripture.
In this story, we have Pharaoh. What does Pharaoh do? He tries with all his might to hold on to what he sees as his own life — the vigorous Israelites contributing so much to his wealth by their labour. His great fear is that they will unite with a foreign power and unseat him. So he holds on to his position by controlling and lording it over the children of Israel. And what was the result? Predictably, in terms of the principle that if you try to save your life on your own terms you will lose it — there was a total loss for him. He lost control of Egypt. He was overthrown and his son was put in his place.
The Lord said, implicitly: “I will take away your firstborn, your son, if you will not give up my firstborn.” He is offered life — the life of his firstborn son if he will do this one thing. But he refused. Supernaturally empowered to act in terms of his own nature, he was destroyed.
In scripture we find other examples of this principle at work positively. When the Hebrew children — Daniel and his companions — were confronted with the issue of diet, they were willing to die to the issue. They said: this is a matter of life and death. We will obey the Lord. We will operate through the proper channels. We will make an appeal and say, knowing we are risking our lives to do this, that we are going to give this up.
They ended up graduating, as it were, at the top of their class — they did better than the rest. But then Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah faced a much more public and costly sacrifice when confronted with the fiery furnace. They said: it is death for us to bow down. We do not want to hold on to our earthly lives here by worshipping the statue. We are going to give our lives up.
“If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” (Daniel 3:17–18)
They were given the tremendous honour of having Christ present with them in that furnace and emerged totally unscathed. They were, of course, promoted to the highest rank. This is the principle at work. We are asked by faith, as a matter of course, to offer up our lives — but not just to offer them up blindly. We do so knowing that God is a God who rewards, knowing that the principle of resurrection is at work, and that God is able — having lost our lives — to save our lives.
So he says: “Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow of his neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver and jewels of gold.” We also find in Exodus 3:21–22 that there were changes of clothes as well. “Borrow” here simply means to ask for.
What is the pattern? Before a permanent departure from a land of captivity and tyranny, led by a crafty, wily, dangerous man — the people were to be recompensed with precious metals and other things. I am saying it that way deliberately, in order to point to what has already happened in scripture. Think of Abraham: after Pharaoh had the audacity to steal his wife — he would have slit Abraham’s throat in an instant had he known she was his wife, just taken her into his harem — what happened? God sent Abraham out enriched by Pharaoh’s hand.
And yet the insanity and arrogance of many Bible commentators is to condemn Abraham for this. They are on the side of Pharaoh, not on the side of the patriarch. What about Isaac? He does the same thing, and all the commentators say: oh, he never learned the lesson of his father. But Abimelech would also have had him killed and taken his wife and snuffed out the Messiah — and God’s verdict was very different. He sent them away enriched by the hand of their enemy.
The same thing happens in the case of Jacob and Rachel as they fled another wily clan tyrant — Laban. Again, it fits the mould very tightly. So what have we learned about God? God is a God of justice and recompense. Did he ever once condemn Abraham or Isaac for this? No. He said: you have been done an injustice. Your wife has been held hostage unjustly. The man would have killed you. Well, I am going to see that you get justice.
And we discover that Isaac, as soon as he left Abimelech, sowed seed and reaped a hundredfold harvest — during a time of famine:
“Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold, because the LORD blessed him.” (Genesis 26:12)
The Lord is saying: bless you further, faithful child. Should we not think of these people differently? Should we not at least be on the side of the people whom God chooses to associate his name with?
“I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
Do you think he is holding his nose when he says that?
Shouldn’t we then let our judgement of them be in line with God’s judgement of them? God is a God of justice and recompense. This was a material, earthly thing. The Egyptians freely gave, understanding that this would finally get the Israelites out of their land and stop the massacre — they were paying to have them gone — but it did indeed disinherit them. Once you give away your gold, you have that much less gold.
Wealth matters to God. He did not send them away with good wishes and warm feelings. He created this world and set the rules in it, and in this world, if you want to accomplish something, you need capitalisation. Good wishes will not cut it.
And here is a further thing to consider in our time of financial instability: in the depths of an absolutely earth-shattering depression, plague, catastrophe — a crack-up boom, as von Mises called it — gold was still as good as gold and silver was sterling. There was no depreciation. So if you want to know what real wealth is, start with gold and silver.
This was a free transfer. This is how God works — he motivates people freely. In the conquest of Canaan, God operated differently: the Israelites were to take wells which they did not dig, and vineyards which they did not plant, belonging to them by right of conquest and by God’s ruling. But in this case, it was a free transfer.
“Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants and in the sight of the people.”
Moses was greatly feared. Nobody said “Moses who?” Nobody was flip about Moses. Can you imagine the man who delivered all these catastrophic blows against the great world power? You would not dare whisper against him under your breath. This is a powerful man, shown to be powerful in public.
They did not love him. They certainly did not love his God. But they feared him. They thought: this is a great man. I am not going to mess with that fellow.
Notice the passage mentions Pharaoh’s servants — the bureaucracy, the experts, the people who made his government work. But who is not mentioned? Pharaoh. There is a rift between all those at the bottom and middle of the pyramid and the very person at the top — the one who relies on all of them for his position. Pharaoh, who is the central god of Egypt, the pinnacle of the system — he is effectively done at this point, and it only gets worse for him.
So the whole of Egypt — both the governing class and the people — was united in their admiration and fear of Moses. In the hearts of the people, Moses occupies the position of Pharaoh. God, having had Moses humble himself, exalts Moses to the position of Pharaoh. He became not just the Prince of Israel but the prince of Egypt in their esteem, having chosen affliction over position, as Hebrews tells us:
“By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated along with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.” (Hebrews 11:24–26)
He died to the wealth of Egypt. He died to the pleasures of Egypt. He had respect to the recompense of the reward. Was Moses rewarded during his life? He never had an easy life — but was there ever a man more respected and feared than he would have been?
Men are sometimes asked: would you rather be loved or feared? Perhaps the right response for a man is to say: respected. Moses was certainly that. And he had many other rewards: he was the prince of Israel, leader through the desert, organiser of the liberation, giver of the law, and in many ways the type of Christ — being, perhaps uniquely in scripture, prophet, priest, and king. A spectacular exaltation, though not an easy one.
In contrast, Pharaoh exalted himself clearly above God and was humbled and humbled and humbled.
“Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Matthew 23:12)
And we can bring this into our own age. We see in our own country a tremendous contempt for the current Prime Minister. But what if there were men — a class of men — who showed ability in governance, competency in governance, tremendous courage in the face of whatever the world threw at them? And would not these men, effectively the governing class — like Pharaoh’s servants in the end — bow before such men and say: look, go where you want, do what you want to do?
This is what happened with the legalisation of Christianity in Rome. There was effectively a practical governing class which had become the church, particularly the church courts. Constantine gave Christian judges the toga praetexta — the toga of the governing class — and they were effectively promoted to high office overnight.
So let us prepare ourselves through our maturity and our walk with the Lord for governance, for service — as Moses himself was prepared, by simply being responsible people, by being faithful people. Who else will rule justly if not God’s people? The liberation would not have happened if Moses had been a happy-go-lucky character who was always laughing and joking.
It is easy to let the phrase roll off our tongues: he who humbles himself will be exalted. But I think there is a bit of a sting here. We view exaltation as, by itself, a bad thing. Here were Pharaoh’s servants literally bowing before Moses. This is a tremendous exaltation. To be feared and respected by an entire hostile nation — especially one as proud as the Egyptians, who usually had such contempt for the Israelites, whom they would not even eat with — and here they are bowing before them.
We are a little uncomfortable talking about exaltation, rather like talking about money and the accumulation of wealth. But exaltation is not to be sought as an end in itself. Here is the thing: if you consistently humble yourself, how — given the promise of God — can you avoid exaltation? It is a guaranteed thing. God cannot lie.
“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (Matthew 23:12)
So are we willing to set that before us as part of the promise? Who was exalted? Mordecai. He was exalted because he was responsible in civil government, which involves the assumption of responsibility. For a man to be irresponsible is to be less than a man — really less than a child. It is an evasion of manhood.
And with exaltation, it implies an office and bearing burdens. Are we willing to be exalted? What was the price of exaltation in Moses’s case? A relinquishing of all the pleasure, all the wealth, all the position of Egypt — a thunderous collapse in status for forty-plus years in the backside of the desert, with the most menial of menial jobs, having been raised in the court of Egypt. What a downfall. But he never complained. It says he was content to dwell with those he dwelt with.
And what is the nature of humility and humiliation in the Bible? With Moses, it was not going out into the desert to become a monk. What did he do? He worked a job. He bore responsibility in exchange for financial reward. He worked a humble job. That is humility.
With Jacob: he was the effective heir, though his father was going to recklessly give the blessing to the wicked son. He lost it all. He had a shirt on his back, no idea whether he could return because of his murderous brother. And yet he was willing to assume the responsibility of being a worker who worked independently without any supervision for years and years under difficult conditions — worked ethically, restored the livestock, a tried and tested man. And he took the responsibility of having a wife. You have to die to your stupid, selfish self. You cannot be the same man single and then take that same man into your marriage. You have to die to that.
So we are being challenged left and right by this passage and by the parallels we find in scripture. Blow after blow. Are we willing to take the inducements that God gives us and accept them?
Now let us consider the plague itself — it will not take too much longer.
This plague was of a different nature from the other nine. The other nine occurred as a cycle of three threes: Moses and Aaron would appear to Pharaoh when he was at the Nile the first time, elsewhere before Pharaoh the second time, and the third time the plague would come with no warning. And they were mediated plagues — brought through Moses and Aaron and their staffs as the rod of God representationally.
But with this plague, God comes down personally. When did God come down in history to judge a political entity previously? Well, with the Tower of Babel — there was a political entity, the administrative centre of Babylon, challenging God from the top down — and he came down, examined it, and brought confusion. He put an end to that. And Sodom and Gomorrah: extreme wickedness in a political entity, and he came down and judged it in a tremendous judgement. We can still see the effects today in the burn layer and the tremendous destruction.
So what does the presence of God mean? Is he our gentle Jesus, meek and mild? Is he Jesus, good and strong? Well, yes, Jesus is kind — but he is kind to his people. He was even kind to the Egyptians, because he gave them a progressive blow after blow after blow. He gave them warning in the sixth plague. And he gave them the option in this plague of putting the blood of the lamb on their doorposts — though it was an abomination for the Egyptians to kill such an animal and to do that with its blood. Still, he gave them the option.
And there was a mixed multitude that came out with them in their exodus. So again, and again, and again, he showed himself merciful. But he is also a very strict God.
He is the God who killed every single firstborn male of the Egyptians and their livestock as well. Because God is not to be trifled with. As a man once said: God is no buttercup. The firstborn represents the whole race — it is a synecdoche, representing the whole with a part. We remember that God owns the firstborn just as he owns the tithe. That is his portion.
So, plenty to consider there.
[The speaker pauses for questions.]
Post-Talk Discussion
[The following is informal cross-talk and feedback between the speaker and a participant after the talk concluded. It has been retained for reference.]
Participant: Well, first of all — well done. You just tied it all together just so.
Speaker: Thank you.
Participant: Even better than last night. There were a lot of things you brought out that were just so rich. I was super pleased with how you brought it all together, and there were things I was listening for, and you did, yes.
So, last night and today, you brought out Rachel with a silver ephod — but I could not find that. It is a household god, but an ephod is a little different. An ephod is what the priests wore. This was not an ephod — it was a household god. She stole her father’s household gods, but I could not find an ephod, unless I am missing something.
Speaker: [Checking reference.] Images. Yeah. Okay. Well, I got that wrong.
Participant: That would be easy enough to fix — just search for “ephod” and correct it. I looked it up last night and meant to tell you. But it is “images” or “gods.” That is Genesis 31:19, and in verse 32 they say “gods.”
Speaker: Okay. Images, gods. Yeah, good, good.
Participant: Next — where you mentioned “I have caused evil in the streets,” or words to that effect. The first passage that came to my mind was the Isaiah passage.
“I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7)
But the reference I found for you is actually:
“When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?” (Amos 3:6)
So if this is the verse you were pointing to — it is Amos 3:6. Just go back and give that reference and state what it says.
Speaker: Amos 3:6. Okay, there you go.
Participant: And then — why did you not finish the Proverbs verse? It says: “When a man’s ways please the LORD, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” Why did you not finish it?
Speaker: I thought it would be more…
Participant: Just finish it. Give the full quote and then give the reference.
Speaker: What is the reference?
Participant: I do not know it off the top of my head, but it is Proverbs 16:7. Just go back and quote it in full.
Speaker: All right. Thank you.
Scripture Index
The following scriptures were quoted, referenced, or alluded to during the talk:
| Reference | Context |
|---|---|
| Genesis 26:12 | Isaac’s hundredfold harvest during famine |
| Genesis 31:19, 32 | Rachel stealing Laban’s household gods (not an ephod) |
| Exodus 3:21–22 | The people to ask neighbours for silver, gold, and clothing |
| Exodus 11 | The tenth plague announced — God coming down personally |
| Deuteronomy 6:10–11 | Wells not dug, vineyards not planted (alluded to re: Canaan) |
| Psalm 2:8 | ”Ask of me and I will give you the nations as your inheritance” |
| Proverbs 16:7 | ”When a man’s ways please the LORD, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him” |
| Isaiah 45:7 | ”I form light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster” (noted as related passage) |
| Amos 3:6 | ”When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?” |
| Matthew 16:25 | Whoever wants to save his life will lose it |
| Matthew 23:12 | Whoever humbles himself will be exalted |
| Romans 10:17 | Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of God |
| Hebrews 11:24–26 | Moses refusing to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter |
| Daniel 3:17–18 | Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah before the fiery furnace |
| Genesis 12 / 20 | Abraham in Egypt / before Abimelech — enriched by his enemy |
| Genesis 26 | Isaac before Abimelech |
| Genesis 29–31 | Jacob’s years under Laban |
| Esther 10:3 | Mordecai’s exaltation in civil government (alluded to) |