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Now the Lord had said to Moses, “I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here, and when he does, he will drive you out completely. 2 Tell the people that men and women alike are to ask their neighbours for articles of silver and gold.” 3 (The Lord made the Egyptians favourably disposed toward the people, and Moses himself was highly regarded in Egypt by Pharaoh’s officials and by the people.)

As you seek to keep in step with the Spirit, He may tell you to do things which seem counter-intuitive (see verse2). But if God tells you to do it, He will arrange everything else to fit around your obedience (3). I think of Hudson Taylor’s statement that, ‘God’s work, done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.

As mentioned recently, Jilly and I are listening to an audio version of Brother Andrew’s book ‘God’s Smuggler.’ It contains some staggering stories of miraculous provision for Andrew and his family and ministry. But anyone who knows the story of the Bible will recognise that this is the God we serve. Again and again He has met the needs of His people in astounding ways.

“The cautious faith that never saws off a limb on which it is sitting, never learns that unattached limbs may find strange unaccountable ways of not falling.” Dallas Willard

But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he was not willing to let them go. 28 Pharaoh said to Moses, “Get out of my sight! Make sure you do not appear before me again! The day you see my face you will die.”

29 “Just as you say,” Moses replied. “I will never appear before you again.”

‘No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused.’ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

On occasions, the worst thing that could happen to a person would be for them to get what they wanted; to receive that for which they asked.

“And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul” (Ps.106:15 KJV).

As we will see, Moses (and Aaron) were not be involved in the final plague. They would not be intervening (at God’s behest) to stop this one. Pharaoh, and the Egyptians, were going to have to deal directly with God Himself. Pharaoh was going to get what he desired. But when it came to it, would it really be what he wanted?

Today’s reading reminded me of C.S.Lewis’ words, to the effect that in the final analysis there are only two types of people. There are those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done’, and those to whom God says, ‘Thy will be done!’

Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and said, “Go, worship the Lord. Even your women and children may go with you; only leave your flocks and herds behind.”

25 But Moses said, “You must allow us to have sacrifices and burnt offerings to present to the Lord our God. 26 Our livestock too must go with us; not a hoof is to be left behind. We have to use some of them in worshiping the Lord our God, and until we get there we will not know what we are to use to worship the Lord.”

Three things:

1. As we have seen before, let us beware of reducing God’s demands (diluting His Word), whether for ourselves or for others (24);
2. The worship God requires of His people, has sacrifice at its heart. There is a “must” and a “have to” about it. These Old Testament sacrifices, as we know, were preparatory. They foreshadowed the ‘wondrous’ Cross where Jesus would offer Himself as the one final, perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world. Today there are theological ‘Pharaoh’s’ at the bottom of the church’s garden, who would do away with any idea of a blood sacrifice. They see it as barbarous, and embarrassing. They believe it belongs to a more primitive era when people didn’t know any better. But in the Bible story, from Genesis to Revelation, the Cross stands tall: there is no other way to God other than through the poured out blood and broken body of Jesus;
3. It is often the case that only when we “get there” do we see what the next step is (26). Only when we follow the light we have received will we have further light for the next move. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105ESV). David Pawson said this is a reference the the shepherd’s lantern, which only gave you enough light to see the next step. Then when you took it, you had light for the next one, and so on. At the moment, Jilly and I are listening to God’s Smuggler’, by Brother Andrew. What a great story it is!Just the other day I noted that a member of an intercessory group told Andrew he needed to learn to drive. ‘But’, Andrew objected, ‘I can’t drive.’ However, this praying man persisted in exhorting him to take lessons. He said, ‘It is often only after we have taken a step of obedience that we see why it was necessary.’ (Andrew was soon to be given a car for his missionary work in Eastern Europe!)

PRAYER: Help me Lord, to so walk with you that I hear your voice and obey your promptings

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness spreads over Egypt—darkness that can be felt.” 22 So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days. 23 No one could see anyone else or move about for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived.

Psalm 112:4 says: “Even in darkness light dawns for the upright…”

When I went to college at the age of eighteen, I experienced a darkness I could almost touch. I had never known anything like it prior to leaving home for Capel, and I’m not sure I have experienced  it’s like since. There were no street lights on the part of the Rusper Road where I was billeted. We were deep in the Surrey countryside, and a solo night-time walk from the campus was quite scary. I know I was far from alone in feeling this.

Be that as it may, I’m sure the darkness which fell on Egypt was even heavier (23a). But note that God makes a distinction between His own people and those who are not (23b). We ‘have’ God’s light in the “places” where we live, but we are not to keep it there. We must not hoard it but share it. If we will simply be who we are – who God has made us to be – we will shine.

“We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining – they just shine.” D.L.Moody

Moses then left Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord. 19 And the Lord changed the wind to a very strong west wind, which caught up the locusts and carried them into the Red Sea. Not a locust was left anywhere in Egypt.

Prayer changes things!

This is the testimony of Scripture; it is the witness of church history; and it is confirmed in our own experience. When we pray to God, in the will of God, He is able to ‘change the wind.’ We may not see in advance how the Lord is going to change things, but He can and He does.

Prayer changes things? But what about you? What about me? What about Pharaoh? Pharaoh saw things change through prayer – again and again. But he remained unchanged.

As I write this on Sunday 12^th December, we are aware of rising concern about the ‘Omnicron’ variant of ‘Covid 19’, now circulating in the community. How transmissible will it prove to be? Will it cause only a mild illness, or something more serious? It seems these questions will have to await an answer. Meanwhile, we pray on.

But, what if God were to ‘carry’ it away, as He did with the locusts? Would the nation be any different? Would the church be any more vital? Would I?

Prayer changes things, but will I let it change me?

And the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over Egypt so that locusts swarm over the land and devour everything growing in the fields, everything left by the hail.”

13 So Moses stretched out his staff over Egypt, and the Lord made an east wind blow across the land all that day and all that night. By morning the wind had brought the locusts; 14 they invaded all Egypt and settled down in every area of the country in great numbers. Never before had there been such a plague of locusts, nor will there ever be again. 15 They covered all the ground until it was black. They devoured all that was left after the hail—everything growing in the fields and the fruit on the trees. Nothing green remained on tree or plant in all the land of Egypt.

16 Pharaoh quickly summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “I have sinned against the Lord your God and against you. 17 Now forgive my sin once more and pray to the Lord your God to take this deadly plague away from me.”

18 Moses then left Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord. 19 And the Lord changed the wind to a very strong west wind, which caught up the locusts and carried them into the Red Sea.Not a locust was left anywhere in Egypt. 20 But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go.

Repentance must be more than words. What Pharaoh said sounded good. It was orthodox alright. But his heart wasn’t changed. As we have seen before, repentance is more than correct words; it’s a change of mind, a change of life, a change of direction.

The mercy of God is  great. If we are not fooled by Pharaoh, the Lord certainly wasn’t. Yet at the slightest flicker of movement in the right direction, the He moved in mercy towards him

God is to be feared. Pharaoh was very slow to learn this lesson.

Proverbs 9:10a says: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…”

‘One begins to get smart when he or she fears being crosswise of God – fears not doing what he wants and not being as he requires. Fear is the anticipation of harm. God is not mean, but he is dangerous, just as are some of the great forces he has placed in reality. Electricity and nuclear power, for example, are not mean, but they are dangerous. In a certain sense, if we don’t “worry” about God, we simply aren’t being smart. And that is the point of the verse.’ “Revolution of Character’, p.45.

Then Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh. “Go, worship the Lord your God,” he said. “But tell me who will be going.”

9 Moses answered, “We will go with our young and our old, with our sons and our daughters, and with our flocks and herds, because we are to celebrate a festival to the Lord.”

10 Pharaoh said, “The Lord be with you—if I let you go, along with your women and children! Clearly you are bent on evil.11 No! Have only the men go and worship the Lord, since that’s what you have been asking for.” Then Moses and Aaron were driven out of Pharaoh’s presence.

It strikes me that there is something of Pharaoh in many of us. We know what God wants, but we try to strike a bargain; we want to negotiate easier terms. We’ll agree to what God asks, but with our own conditions attached. We’ll water things down. In short, we will attempt to compromise. We want to salve our consciences and say we have done what God asked. But have we?

If Jesus is not Lord of all, He is not Lord at all, and He calls for our unconditional surrender.

Are we prepared to go all the way with God?

G. Campbell Morgan said: “There are hours when the Church must say NO to those who should ask communion with her, in the doing of her work, upon the basis of compromise.”

This verse is very much on my mind at the moment:

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” 2 Timothy 4:3.

Let’s determine not to be among their ranks. May we be those who hold on to the unadulterated truth.

PRAYER: Lord, keep your church true to truth.

So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, “This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 4 If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. 5 They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields. 6 They will fill your houses and those of all your officials and all the Egyptians—something neither your parents nor your ancestors have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now.’” Then Moses turned and left Pharaoh.

7 Pharaoh’s officials said to him, “How long will this man be a snare to us? Let the people go, so that they may worship the Lord their God. Do you not yet realize that Egypt is ruined?”

Pharaoh’s officials remind me of the unjust judge in Jesus’ parable (Luke 18:1-8) who gave in to the persistent widow because she kept ‘bothering’ him. They were thoroughly fed up with Moses (7a). But it seems they were more willing to face reality than Pharaoh was. Spiritual blindness is a sad, but interesting phenomenon. We might well ask, ‘How could he not see the truth?’

‘Denial of reality accounts for our perpetual blindness to the obvious. Human affairs at every level are affected by it. Denial alone explains why “the rulers of this age” do the things they do – up to the crucifixion of “the Lord of glory” himself (1 Corinthians 2:8, NRSV). Denial of reality is inseparable from our fallen human heart, and its great power comes from not being recognised for what it is. The fact is, in a world apart from God, the power of denial is essential if life is to proceed. The human heart cannot – psychologically cannot – sustain itself for any length of time in the face of reality. We can’t ponder our own death, we can’t examine the conflicted nature of our motives and actions, we can’t face our fears about other people – nor can we live with our own past or face our future – without profound denial.’‘Revolution of character’, pp.47, 48.

As Mark Twain quipped: ‘Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.’

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these signs of mine among them 2 that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the Lord.”

This remains an abiding lesson of the Exodus – both for the church and the world.

It is such an epic story that it has been turned into a block-busting film (and more than once).

But in particular, God wants His own people to know that He is the Lord – the great, eternal God.

He wants us to know about Him…

…to know what He did, what He is doing, and what He can do.

Even more, He wants us to know Him. This is not a call to theoretical information but to a personal, intimate relationship (The same word used of Adam ‘knowing’ Eve is also used of God’s people knowing Him – and I believe Eve was more than a ‘concept’ to her husband!)

In a world where there are so many uncertainties, God wants us to be sure of Him.

PRAYER: Lord, help me to hear and respond your call to be still and know that you are God.