“8 Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. 9 It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on men and animals throughout the land.”
10 So they took soot from a furnace and stood before Pharaoh. Moses tossed it into the air, and festering boils broke out on men and animals. 11 The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils that were on them and on all the Egyptians. 12 But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said to Moses.
13 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Get up early in the morning, confront Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me, 14 or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. 15 For
by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. 16 But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. 17 You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go. 18 Therefore, at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt, from the day it was founded till now.
19 Give an order now to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every man and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die.’”
20 Those officials of Pharaoh who feared the word of the Lord hurried to bring their slaves and their livestock inside. 21 But those who ignored the word of the Lord left their slaves and livestock in the field.
22 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that hail will fall all over Egypt— on men and animals and on everything growing in the fields of Egypt.” 23 When Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, the Lord sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground. So the Lord rained hail on the land of Egypt; 24 hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. 25 Throughout Egypt hail struck everything in the fields—both men and animals; it beat down everything growing in the fields and stripped every tree. 26 The only place it did not hail was the land of Goshen, where the Israelites were.
27 Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron. “This time I have sinned,” he said to them. “The Lord is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong. 28 Pray to the Lord, for we have had enough thunder and hail. I will let you go; you don’t have to stay any longer.”
29 Moses replied, “When I have gone out of the city, I will spread out my hands in prayer to the Lord. The thunder will stop and there will be no more hail, so you may know that the earth is the Lord’s. 30 But I know that you and your officials still do not fear the Lord God.” 31 (The flax and barley were destroyed, since the barley had headed and the flax was in bloom. 32 The wheat and spelt, however, were not destroyed, because they ripen later.)
33 Then Moses left Pharaoh and went out of the city. He spread out his hands toward the LORD; the thunder and hail stopped, and the rain no longer poured down on the land. 34 When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had stopped, he sinned again: he and his officials hardened their hearts. 35 So Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not let the Israelites go, just as the Lord had said through Moses. ”
Begin stubborn is not a good trait. Being persistent is. Being pigheaded is bad. Being tenacious is good. How does that work? They are all the same impulse. How can the same trait be good and bad?
If you’ve raised a strong-willed child, you know. It depends on aim. If your child is aiming at completing her math assignment, you want her to be tenacious. If he is aiming at getting his way over plans this weekend after you’ve told him, “no,” twice, that tenaciousness is stubbornness.
The Pharaoh of the Exodus has this impulse to the n-th degree. It likely helped him with many of his responsibilities—reworking the tax code, ensuring the population had enough food, negotiating treaties and all that goes with being a king. Now, though, his aim has changed. His aim is his own ego and his persistence is pigheadedness.
Life is largely about learning to agree with God’s aims—to work with the grain of what the Lord wants rather than against Him. That’s how Paul’s pigheadedness became persistence; he became open to what God was doing as seen in Jesus. That’s how Ruth’s stick-to-it-iveness came to be faithfulness; she was falling in step with the God of faith. Pharaoh will not go with God’s grain. It will prove his undoing. Go with God’s grain. That’s the claim of this sermon: Go with God’s grain.
We will study this in two plagues in two points. First: the boils. Second: the hailstorm. First, in verses 8-12, the boils. Second, in verses 13-35, the hailstorm.
We see how God and Pharoah are at cross-purposes in our first point: the boils. By the time this sixth plague comes around, Pharaoh has no chance to avoid it. That’s how the final plague in each cycle of three works. There is no chance to stop it because the first two have been ignored. Pharaoh remained pigheaded during the flies and the plague on the livestock and so, ready or not, here come the boils.
Moses and Aaron found Pharaoh, gave him no chance to talk, and threw soot from furnaces in the air. This sign of the soot from the furnaces was important. Pharaoh had forced the Hebrews slaves to bake bricks in those furnaces. The Lord is giving an eye for an eye for His people’s slavery. ‘“Vengeance is mine,” declares the Lord.’
The Lord does take vengeance. He commands us not to do so not because He coddles humanity, but because He’s so much better at vengeance than we are. He’s able to revisit sins upon people perfectly. You and I can’t take vengeance without sinning ourselves. You know that from experience and so I. We just make matters worse when we bite back. We are ham-fisted about it. The Lord is infinitely skilled. If you’ve been sinned against, leave it to Him. Judgment is not yours to mete out. He will handle it. This plague reminds you of that fact.
The Lord dealt with the world in the form of Egypt through festering boils; verse 8, “Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on men and animals throughout the land.” This same word for boils was used to describe Hezekiah’s illness and he seemed as good as dead. This word was used to describe Job’s boils which he tried to scrape off with shards of broken pottery. How desperate would you need to be to scrape your skin off your body? That’s how bad this was.
The last plague hit the pocketbook. This one hit their health. In times of trouble, people say to one another, “well, at least you have your health.” Not anymore for the Egyptians an they didn’t know if it would be relieved. They, unlike us, didn’t know the rest of the story.
You see this in the form of the magicians. We haven’t encountered the Egyptian magicians since the gnats. Now, in verse 11, we see that, “that the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils that were on them and on all the Egyptians.” This same word for “stand” is used to describe Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh. The message is that Moses and Aaron are still standing. The magicians aren’t. The magicians are done. Moses and Aaron have plenty of fight left in them not because of themselves but because of the Lord.
Pharaoh saw these magicians of his in anguish and his heart was still hard; “the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron.” The man could have made life better for these men who had probably worked with him for years, but he didn’t. He still wouldn’t let Israel go. It takes a particular sort of pigheadedness to see suffering, be able to alleviate it, and do nothing about it because it doesn’t suit you. That’s not the sort of trait I want.
David’s heart was different. Just like Pharaoh, his sin had brought a plague upon his people. When David saw it, he cried out to God, “I have sinned; I, the shepherd, have done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let your hand fall on me and my family.” Can you imagine Pharaoh praying that? That’s the difference between David, a man after God’s own heart, and Pharaoh, a man with a hard heart.
That’s the difference between those two kings. David saw others suffering not for their own sins but for his and asked that he be struck and the people healed. King Jesus saw us suffering not because of his sin but because of ours and still asked that he be struck and we might be healed. David was a better king than Pharaoh. Jesus is a better king than David.
That’s the boils. Now we turn our attention to our second point: the hailstorm. This is a longer point because it has so many more verses. It has so many more verses not because it’s more important than the boils but because Moses tells each plague differently. My hope is that you’ve been seeing how much there is to this Exodus story. If Moses merely made it up, he is genius beyond understanding—the way he weaves stunning insights about the human condition, right and wrong, justice, oppression, selfishness, and mercy. It’s so much like life. Moses has either created the most focused story imaginable, or he’s just recounting what the Lord actually did and why. The later seems like the more sensible option.
This hailstorm is the first plague of a new cycle. That means the severity is stepped up yet again. That’s what we see in verse 13, ‘Get up early in the morning, confront Pharaoh and say to him, “This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me, or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people.”’
The implication of saying “this time I will send the full force of my plagues,” is that to this point the plagues have been lenient. Boils were lenient. Livestock and livelihood dying was lenient. If the Egyptians were crying out then, the Lord could rightly have said, “compared with what’s to come, this is mercy.” That’s a reminder to repent—it can always get worse. Don’t wind up in hell before you learn that lesson.
Worse was coming. By calling it this “the full force” the Lord wasn’t saying that this was all He could do. God can do much more than hail, locusts, and darkness. We should shudder at the possibilities. This is just a way of saying that the severity was going to be stepped up significantly unless Pharaoh let the people go.
You can see that the Lord could do much more in verse 15, “For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth.” The Lord wanted Pharaoh to know that the only reason he was still alive was that the Lord allowed it. That’s actually always the case. We all live by the continual mercy of the Lord.
The Lord wanted Pharaoh to know that he was still alive for His reasons. He wanted Pharaoh to think long and hard about that; verse 15-16, “I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”
Pharaoh was stubbornly refusing to give in to the Lord, and the Lord wanted Pharoah to see that he was simply part of His plan. The Lord’s plan with the plagues was, as Walt Kaiser put it, that, “His power and name might be heralded throughout the earth by means of Pharaoh’s stupidity.” Anyone less pigheaded than Pharaoh would have given in by now, and then we wouldn’t have the Passover, then we wouldn’t have the Red Sea, then we wouldn’t have all these patterns of salvation to understand what happened through Jesus, and we wouldn’t have this great picture of God’s power that has put steel in the spines of God’s people for generations.
Before these plagues, Pharaoh dismiss the Lord. “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go.” Pharaoh thought the god of slaves was powerless but this God was using Pharaoh the whole time. It was the Lord who put Pharaoh on this most powerful throne of the day in order to break him publicly so that even we today might see who is truly in charge. “Pharaoh is, unfortunately for him, involved in something far bigger than he understands or has planned for,” as one author put it. That is how life works. God is big. We are small. Be the right sort of small—humble sort of small.
You see this smallness in the phrase “raised you up”—“I have raised you up for this very purpose.” This is the same word we saw for “stand.” The Egyptian magicians could not stand before Moses and Aaron. Moses and Aaron were still standing before Pharaoh. The Lord kept Pharaoh standing. The Lord kept Pharaoh on his feet for more rounds until He wanted to knock him down.
The Lord was in charge of Pharoah’s heart; go back to the boils in verse 12, “the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron.” Again this shows that the Lord is big and Pharaoh is small. The Lord’s will reigns. Our wills are consequential but they are not determinative. That’s Paul’s read on this story remembering that the Lord told Pharaoh, ‘“I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power 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.’
Pharaoh was on an ego trip and even that shows the Lord’s power. This doesn’t mean that Pharaoh was a puppet. He made his choices. He played this the way he felt it. That’s the balance of verse 34, “[Pharaoh] and his officials hardened their hearts,” and verse 35, “So Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not let the Israelites go, just as the Lord had said through Moses.” On the last day, Pharaoh, will not be able, with integrity, to say, “God, you kept me from letting Your people go.” On the last day, no one will be able with any integrity to say, “God, you made me sin.” God will just say, “you made your own choices,” and we do. When God wants to judge you, He gives you over to yourself. The best you can hope for in this life is to be saved from yourself. The best you can hope for is the sort of heart He gives—regeneration—rather than our natively hard hearts. That’s Jesus—“you must be born again.”
This compatibilism of wills is seen in the signs; that’s the beginning of this hailstorm; verse 23, “When Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, the Lord sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground.” What brought the plague—Moses stretching out his staff or the Lord’s power? Yes. Who hardens Pharaoh’s heart—him or the Lord? Yes. It is a fully human, fully divine world, and Jesus is the perfection of that. He shows how it is supposed to go and it’s God plan that this fully human, fully divine one will save us.
You continue to see this interplay with the Lord giving Pharaoh the option of bringing in his cattle and workers before the plague started to keep them safe. There’s nothing stifling about God’s will. He really does offer what’s best and we really do need to respond. Pharaoh didn’t and the unimaginable hailstorm began. If you don’t think such an experience would be terrifying, you aren’t imagining properly. Back in 2010, a hailstorm with at least one 8” diameter stone fell in South Dakota. That’s the size of a soccer ball. Imagine soccer balls, softballs, and baseballs of ice screaming down from the sky. The hailstorm in Egypt was historic; verse 24, “ It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation.” That would kill anything it encountered.
Pharaoh was terrified. He called for Moses and Aaron to stop to it. His words, though, were revealing. “This time I have sinned,” as verse 27 puts it. That’s funny. “This time you’ve sinned? What about last plague? What about the first plague? What about drowning our babies?” Pharaoh tried to show his sincerity this time by attaching no strings. “I will let you go; you don’t have to stay any longer.”
Moses response is worthy of a scene in an action movie. He says, “When I have gone out of the city, I will spread out my hands in prayer to the Lord.” There’s a hailstorm going on which could decimate anyone and Moses seemed to have no fear of walking out into it because he knew that the Lord controlled where each hailstone fell. He’s pray for Pharaoh out there. That’s quite different from the man who was afraid of Egypt and Pharaoh. The Lord is working with His servants. He still does.
On his way out, Moses told Pharaoh seemingly as an aside, “I know that you and your officials still do not fear the Lord God.” This is all about the fear of the Lord. Moses has it. Pharoah doesn’t. This is the first use of “the fear of the Lord” in all of Scripture. Here’s a definition from an exceedingly thoughtful scholar; to fear the Lord is to “stand always in awe of Him, appreciate His supremacy and greatness, fear the consequences of disobeying His will, and not treat lightly any aspect of their covenant relationship with Him, lest the consequences be severe or even fatal.” That sounds like what we are starting to see in Moses and what I hope you are seeing more of in yourself. That doesn’t sound anything like Pharaoh.
Pharaoh doesn’t fear the Lord. He fears the hail. You see that by the fact that he hardens his heart again once the hailstorm is over. The talk about the crops in verses 31-32 might help explain that. The farmers went out and saw that while the flax and barely were totaled, the wheat and spelt were going to be okay based on how they grow. Egypt would still have some food. Rather than interpreting that as the Lord’s mercy, Pharaoh took that as a sign that things weren’t as bad as he thought, and so he hardened his heart. He still thinks he sees a path to victory.
We can see that in him because it’s him not us. We can see that he’s pigheaded not persistent, stubborn not tenacious. We can see that his aim is his ego and that he’s living against the grain of God. We can see that because he’s him and we’re us, but what about us? This isn’t written merely so that you would know this Pharaoh had a hard heart. It’s written so that you might fear the Lord rather than be stubborn in your ways. You don’t show you understand today’s passage by knowing that plagues six and seven are boils and hail. You show you understand this story by stopping your naturally stubborn ways—and we’ve all got them—and going along God’s grain. You’ve seen the alternative. Don’t go there. Go with God. Amen.