The Tenth Plague

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

And that night at midnight, the Lord struck down all the firstborn sons in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sat on his throne, to the firstborn son of the prisoner in the dungeon.  Even the firstborn of their livestock were killed.  Pharaoh and all his officials and all the people of Egypt woke up during the night, and loud wailing was heard throughout the land of Egypt.  There was not a single house where someone had not died.  Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron during the night.  “Get out!” he ordered.  “Leave my people—and take the rest of the Israelites with you!  Go and worship the Lord as you have requested.  Take your flocks and herds, as you said, and be gone. Go, but bless me as you leave.”  All the Egyptians urged the people of Israel to get out of the land as quickly as possible, for they thought, “We will all die!”  Exodus 12:29-33

Over the course of time from Moses’ first meeting with Pharaoh to deliver God’s message to let my people go, the Egyptian monarch moved from dismissive stubbornness to defeated sadness.  He was Pharaoh over the most powerful dynasty in the world, and he conceded defeat to the slaves he owned.  Considering the events of the 10 plagues, who could remain fixed in his own glory?  Pharaoh was pushed into the most uncomfortable tenuous corner.  There was no command he could issue with his own firstborn on the mortician’s table.

Most of the plagues are not uncommon, even in our day.  Pestilences and plagues are something every human faces in every era; we’ve just come through Covid-19, and what other age hasn’t dealt with similar challenges.  Famine caused by pests and weather are common also.  But the first and last of the plagues are the most pointed; the first should have been enough, and the last, too much.

Of the ten plagues (Blood, Frogs, Lice, Flies, Pestilence, Boils, Hail, Locusts, Darkness, Killing of the firstborn), the first plague of blood in the Nile, struck at Egypt’s religious beliefs.  The Nile river was Egypt’s source of food.  Turning it into blood was a horrifying demonstration of how vulnerable they were to having life crumble before them.  Pharaoh thought he was a god, but God was demonstrating how little divinity flowed through Pharaoh’s human veins. 

The next eight plagues were nuisances to Pharaoh, because they only affected Egypt’s people and resources.  But with each step closer to the tenth plague, Pharaoh’s stubbornness brought his people closer to the kind of unspeakable judgment which no Egyptian citizen could even imagine.  And then it happened!

The tenth plague, the death of firstborns in each Egyptian household, was connected to the first plague in the sense that there was blood.  Life is in the blood[1] according to Scripture, and blood in the Nile was a threat to the lives of Egyptian food sources, and the emptiness of their religious superstitions.  But it was a foretaste of the tenth plague, the lifeblood of their heritage.  As attested by the pyramids, the afterlife, and continued heritage of Pharaohic divine rule was as important to those people as their next breath.  In the instant Pharaoh refused God’s 10^th invitation to let His people go, the Egyptian king became the murderer of Egypt’s firstborn population – including his own household!

For You Today 

God’s recorded Word is there to help us understand how to live in His Kingdom, and how to understand His ways:

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.  2 Timothy 3:16

So, do what Pharaoh refused; when God speaks…listen…and obey!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road library. 

Title Images:  Wikimedia.org   Images without citation are in public domain. Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©  

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[1] The life of every creature is in its blood.  Leviticus 17:14

The Last of the Dream

 

                                                                                                              Title and Other images courtesy of Pixabay.com

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.”  Let anyone who hears this say, “Come.” Let anyone who is thirsty come.  Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life.  And I solemnly declare to everyone who hears the words of prophecy written in this book:  If anyone adds anything to what is written here, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book.  And if anyone removes any of the words from this book of prophecy, God will remove that person’s share in the tree of life and in the holy city that are described in this book.  He who is the faithful witness to all these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!”  Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!  May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s holy people.  Revelation 22:12-16

I would like to start by reading a paragraph from one of C.S. Lewis’ series of books called The Chronicles of Narnia, the final title in the series, The Last Battle. 

[If  you haven’t read the books or seen the movies, consider this a spoiler.]

The story thread revolves around the Pevensie children, two brothers and sisters from London who get separated from their parents during the 2^nd World War as the city is bombed by German warplanes.  The parents die, and the story begins with the children, Peter, Lucy, Edmund, and Susan sent to a relative’s estate in the country for safety. It’s at the country home they find a passageway through a magical wardrobe, and enter a fantasy land called Narnia, which is ruled by a lion named Aslan.  They become warriors against the evil forces.  Over the course of many trips to Narnia, evil is conquered, and this next paragraph occurs after the danger is finally past. 

“Aslan turned to them and  said:  “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”  Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan.  And you have sent us back into our own world so often.”  “No fear of that,” said Aslan.  “Have you not guessed?”  Their hearts leaped, and a wild hope rose within them.

“There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly.  “Your father  and mother and all of you are – as you used to call it in the Shadowlands – dead.  The term is over:  the holidays have begun.  The dream is ended: this is the morning.”  And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.  And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.  But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page:  now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read:  which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.[1]

Some interpretation of the parallels might help round-out this quick analogy from the mind of C.S. Lewis.  Aslan is a lion, so named for the Lion of Judah, Jesus.  The Pevensie children’s picture can be located by each of us in the mirror.  And the wardrobe can be compared to that casket in the grave…an entry into the world which we’ve never seen, and in which there are mysterious futures.

Anyone I’ve ever asked is aware (at least) of the dream of imagining that you’re in a dream.  And the life you’re living is merely that – that when you wake up everything will be different, and better…that the dream will finally be over? 

C.S. Lewis used this dream desire for a better world as reasonable assumption that the dream is consistent with how we are hard-wired, created to know, because of the imprint of the Father’s image on our souls, that this dream, apart from the Father, will eventually end because it is far from that for which God designed us:

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”[2]

According to everything we’ve studied in Revelation over the past year, this is true; and that other world is coming. 

One indication of this is not just the bad stuff that is happening, wars, climate woes, anger, famine, earthquakes, persecution…Jesus predicted all this.[3]  Some of the really exciting stuff is just now happening. 

There is a movement among Jews in Israel to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.  They are now working on cutting the stones in anticipation of reconstructing God’s house on its original site.[4]  

This is one of those issues that is controversial, but part of prophecy concerning the second coming of Christ.  We are in the waiting room of the Second Advent!

The good news about the new world coming is incredibly good – that we are invited to that good new world.  And what Jesus offers is free. 

In the Holy Bible’s final words, Jesus offers the invitation, “Come” in three different ways:

·       The Spirit and bride (Holy Spirit, and the church)

·       Everyone who truly hears this invitation is to repeat it, so others know.

·       Everyone who thirsts (desires) this new world is to freely drink of life.

The invitation is without regard to many things we currently think important:

·       It’s for you no matter what you've done (good or bad),

·       It’s for you no matter what you've gotten (wealth/poverty),

·       It’s for you no matter who you’ve known, or knows you (famous or obscure). 

The only qualification is that you come to him as a penitent sinner, knowing that you need a Savior, and that Jesus is the only Savior.  You come to Him, trusting in nothing but Him. 

And, whether you come or not, it is all on you…no one else can be blamed.

Jesus paid for our salvation on the cross:

God saved you by his grace when you believed.  And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.  Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.  Ephesians 2:8-9

Beloved, it is an awful thought to know that he not only died for us; He died because of us.  Every sin I ever did, caused Jesus to be nailed to the cross. 

I am the reason He had to die. 

And you are too!

If He didn't do this for us, none of us could never be acceptable to God – ever!  And He offers forgiveness as freely as He has given you air to breathe your whole life.

This same Lord Jesus who came in history to live a perfect life, die on the cross in our place, be buried in a borrowed tomb, and raised on the third day, now reveals to us from the right hand of the Father, a warning, and a promise. 

The promise is of joy and life eternal for the believer who will accept Christ and give himself to God;  the warning is of swift judgment and a living death if we reject Him. 

You will never need to know any more about the gospel than you have heard this day to receive Him and know the joy of eternal salvation, both here and forever.  Jesus says, "Come."  Will you?  If you’ve ever wondered when the dream will end…or if it will ever end…now you know.  It ends, and real life begins, when you trust the Lion of Judah who died for you.

The final prayer to end the Book of the Unveiling of Jesus Christ is the prayer of the church, to be uttered only by those who have trusted Christ.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.  Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen!  

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[1] C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle, published 1956

[2] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: MacMillan, 1960), 120.

[3] Matthew 24:3-14

[4] JEWS BEGIN BUILDING THIRD TEMPLE ON ISRAEL INDEPENDENCE DAY