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Exodus 9:4-6   “But the LORD will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and that of Egypt, so that no animal belonging to the Israelites will die.”  The LORD set a time and said, “Tomorrow the LORD will do this in the land.”  And the next day the LORD did it: All the livestock of the Egyptians died, but not one animal belonging to the Israelites died.

The plagues sent upon Egypt were God’s way of demonstrating to their Pharaoh that he, the LORD, the God of his Chosen People, Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was the sovereign LORD over all creation, and that it was the height of arrogance for Pharaoh to fail to acknowledge this.

The Apostle Paul makes a point of this truth: “It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.  For Scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’  Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (Romans 9:16-18).

As this same God’s Church, his chosen People, continues to be attacked and to suffer opposition, persecution and rejection throughout the world today, it is comforting to remind ourselves about all this.  There is no shortage of ‘Pharaoh’ figures at large throughout the world, voicing their opposition to the God of creation, the Author of the Bible, and the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, and shaking their fists in his face.  Our culture is actively indoctrinating us with the concepts of ‘Mother Nature’ carrying out her ‘evolutionary’ processes and working out her indiscriminate ‘plans’ through weather events, natural disasters, etc.  Our culture is doing all it can to prevent us from proclaiming and teaching a worldview that puts God and his revealed truth in his Word at the centre of everything.

Sadly, poor Pharaoh and his people had to learn the reality of our holy God’s existence and omnipotence the hard way. Knowing who our God is, and what his universal Plan of Redemption is, let us continue to stand firm on, and proclaim, his truth in the midst of our culture’s active opposition, and let us rejoice in seeing him fulfil all his sovereign purposes as we experience his power to judge and to save, “[not being] ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile” (Romans 1:16), Pharaoh’s imitators notwithstanding!

– Bruce Christian