All right, this lesson is entitled, War with Egypt the Plagues, because that's exactly what the plagues are. This is War with Egypt, this is God, fighting Pharaoh, fighting the false gods of Egypt, it's a really fun lesson. So what we want to do is go to chapter five, that's where we left off from last time. At the end of chapter four, if you remember here, Moses and Aaron speak to all the elders and they show them the signs and the people believe, and they bow their heads and they worshiped, okay?
So that is a very good note, right? People think, okay, this is great, we're gonna be delivered here from slavery. And now what we're going to see at the beginning of chapter five is Moses goes into Pharaoh's presence for the very first time. So at Roman numeral one in your notes here, let's just read the first three verses and we'll just expound from there.
So chapter five verse one says afterward, Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let my people go that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness. The Pharaoh said, who is the Lord, that I should heed his voice and let Israel go. I do not know the Lord and moreover, I will not let Israel go. Then they said, the God of the Hebrews has met with us, let us go, we beg a three days journey into the wilderness and sacrifice the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence and with the sword.
All right, so already right off the bat, something is wrong because if you go back to chapter three, 18 God told Moses that he and Aaron and all the elders of Israel together, right, these chieftains of the various tribes, are to go as like one little body, one little representative body of all of Israel and go into Pharaoh and speak to them together. But then it says in chapter five verse one, that didn't happen, it was just Moses and Aaron. There's a really kind of interesting Jewish tradition, interpretation that says, you know, in the beginning, like they're all feeling pretty good, right? And so they're all marching off, you know, together as a little body, a little representation here of Israel, they're going towards Pharaoh's palace and they begin to fear and doubt and lose faith.
And so one by one, they kind of fall off the tail, right, to the extent where Moses and Aaron get to the palace and look behind them and everyone's gone, like where the heck did everybody go? So I think that's really interesting here that the elders, they lose faith, they fail to stick with Moses. I think that's going to come back to bite them here in the end. If maybe perhaps if the elders had stuck with Moses and Aaron, Pharaoh wouldn't be so hard-hearted.
And well, in fact, I told Moses that would be the case, but maybe they'd have a better chance. And maybe they wouldn't be struck with the plagues themselves, the first three plagues were going to share with you down the line here. So in any case, it starts off kind of on the wrong foot, so to speak. And then of course, they say, you know, let my people go to worship me again.
It's not totally emancipation. Plan A from the very beginning was this three day journey, right to go into the wilderness, sacrifice to the Lord and celebrate this feast here, because there's this, as we talked about last lesson, there's this need to get Egypt out of Israel. Can Egypt out of Israel was the first issue at hand. Getting Israel out of Egypt is quite another thing.
It's spiritual freedom that comes first. So they need to purge themselves of this pagan idolatry here. And that's the plan A. So let's just go into the wilderness.
And Pharaoh scornfully says, I don't know who's Yahweh. I don't know Yahweh. All right? I don't know him and I'm not letting your people go.
Now there's a couple of things about this. Number one, it is an echo of how his predecessor years before didn't know Joseph. If you go back to chapter one, remember, it says there's a new Pharaoh in town, right? He didn't know Joseph.
He didn't have this covenant-sol relationship, this knowledge with Joseph or with Joseph's people. Now here, there's something similar happening. This Pharaoh says, I don't know Yahweh. I don't have a covenant-sol relationship with Yahweh.
He's not saying Yahweh at this point. Oh yeah, the God of Israel. I don't know him. I don't worship him.
Who is he? Pharaoh doesn't know him. He thinks he's superior to Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, because if he has enslaved, the Pharaoh hasn't enslaved Israel, then how strong a God must as Yahweh be to allow his people to be enslaved? He must not be strong at all.
And that's why the people are enslaved to Pharaoh. And that means that Pharaoh is greater than not just the people, but also their God. You see the hubris here. So it's scorned, it's pride, it's hubris.
It's, I don't know him. I'm not gonna do anything that he tells me to do, right? Okay, so this is going to be really, really important. It sets the tone for this whole lecture here and the whole purpose of the plagues.
Pharaoh says, I don't know Yahweh. I don't know YAHweh. YAHweh. So one of the purposes of the plagues, one of the goals of the plagues here is that he will know Yahweh by the end of it, okay?
Not just Pharaoh, but Egypt and Israel and all the nations are going to YAH-Dah that there is just one true God in heaven. And that Israel is as people, and that he's defending his people against his enemies. By the end of this, everybody is gonna know YAH-Dah that there is a God. So this is kind of in response to Pharaoh's scorn here.
The other aspect of this, and I'm gonna unpack this later on in the lecture, is that these plagues are really a, I like to call it a SmackDown. It's a divine SmackDown of all the false Egyptian pagan gods here. Only God is, only God is Yahweh. He is who he is.
All the others are not. They're nothing. They're creatures. You know, they're stone and wood and animals.
There's nothing here, right? So there's this contrast. God versus all the other pagan Egyptian gods and he's gonna smack him down and prove they're absolutely nothing, okay? So we're gonna see that thing play out as well.
And by the way, before we move on, there's 10 plagues because 10 is the number of completion. That means significantly that this is gonna be a total complete perfect victory over Egypt and her false gods. They're gonna be totally completely defeated. All right, they're gonna, and that's true.
In fact, we're gonna see later on even Pharaoh's servants say, don't you understand that Egypt is ruined, right? They're done for, okay? So 10 symbolizes that. All righty, so then Moses respond to this scorn.
You don't know YAH-Dah-Dah-Dah, well please let us go. Cause if you don't, God is gonna visit us. He says, he fall upon us with pestilence and with the sword in verse three. And that's really interesting because God never threatened his own people.
It seems here that Moses and Aaron are adding to God's command and even accusing him of violence. There's a bit of an echo here with Eve. Remember in Genesis when she's talking with the serpent, she even says, you know, we're not even allowed to touch it lest we die. And God never said that.
So Eve is kind of adding on to God's command. And so here is Moses adding on to God's command, accusing of violence. Why would he do that? There are various interpretations.
Maybe he's trying to appeal to Pharaoh's compassion. You know, like, hey, you don't want bad things to happen to us. Well, I don't think that that's probably the case because Pharaoh doesn't give two hoops about Israel. Maybe he's appealing to his greed, right?
Hey, you wanna say slaves. Well, if you don't let us go worship, then, you know, God is gonna smite us and you don't have any slaves anymore to work on your projects. And maybe that's a possibility I don't know. But whatever he does, maybe trying to help God, there's a theme here.
The theme is don't add on to God's commands. When God gives you a command, just do it, right? Don't feel like you need to change God's word because it's ironic that even though God didn't threaten his own people with pestilence to the sword, which ironic is that the first three plagues did strike Israel as well as Egypt. Maybe those first three plagues wouldn't have hit Israel as well if Moses hadn't said anything.
We'll talk more about that as we get closer to the place themselves. But it's a fascinating thought here. So Moses does add to God's command and it doesn't work. Whatever he's thinking it doesn't work because in response, Pharaoh just makes them a vod, serve harder, heavier service, heavier work here.
And he says in Shoulders, continue on chapter five, verse four, but the king of Egypt said, Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their abodath or work? Get to your burdens. And Pharaoh said, behold, the people of the land are now many and you make them rest from all their burdens. And then it goes on to say that same day.
He said, all right, the quote of the bricks is the same, but now y'all gotta go find your own straw, right? This is harder service. There's a parallel going on here because his heavy heart, his hardened heart leads him to cause heavier burdens on the people. I've pointed this out.
I think that's worth interesting because he has, his hardened heart is literally a heavy heart. And his heavy heart leads to imposing heavier burdens on the Israelites and not turning, having a soft heart and lessening the burdens, right? Having a lighter heart and lightning their burdens. He has a heavy heart and makes their burdens even harder.
And so he says, you know, why do you ask for rest, right? Get back to your work. You want to make them rest from their burdens. That is a very important echo of the Sabbath rest back in Genesis.
Because the Sabbath day is meant for putting aside to worship God. This is going to become very explicit as we get to the law of Moses, but Moses will interpret the Sabbath day as this day where you worship God, you avad God, and serve him and love him and adore him and think him and all of his beautiful things here. So Pharaoh doesn't want them to have this Sabbath rest. Pharaoh wants them to just serve him, right?
That's what's going on. So the Israelites, that's what this theme that I've mentioned a couple times already in previous lessons, you've got this contrast. Who you gonna avad? Are you gonna avad and serve and worship Pharaoh?
Because they were worshiping Pharaoh, by the way. They were worshiping the false gods. Pharaoh was considered divine. So are you gonna serve and worship and work for Pharaoh or are you gonna serve and worship and work?
In fact, literally means work for God. You know, so who's it gonna be? You gotta serve somebody. You have to serve somebody.
Is it gonna be Pharaoh or is it gonna be God? That's the tension here. So he doesn't want them to rest to worship God. He wants them to continue to work for himself for Pharaoh.
All right, so there's some practical elements to this as well, not just the spiritual under theme here, undertone. He also wants to ensure that there's gonna be no uprising. So he's smelling potential uprising in the air. And that's what he didn't want.
If you go back to chapter one, the previous Pharaoh didn't want the Hebrews to rise up with enemies. So here's a practical thing. If they think that they can go take a break for a few days and go worship God. Well, they have time on their hands.
If they have time on their hands, then they could perhaps get organized and rise up against him. So make them work harder now, and force them to work more and discourage them and make them dishearten so that way they cannot rise up. That's one aspect. The other aspect is what about Moses and Aaron themselves.
Because some people have asked, well gosh, that's kind of bold just to walk up to Pharaoh and say, let my people go. Wouldn't Pharaoh just be like, who the heck do you think you are? Execute both of them, right? Moses and Aaron off of their heads.
We're not gonna listen to you anymore. So the fact that he doesn't execute them, I think is more of a political move, because he wants to discredit Moses and Aaron in front of the people. How the people turn against them. He doesn't wanna make them martyrs.
If he makes Moses and Aaron martyrs, perhaps that uprising will occur. So discredit them in the eyes of the people, and that would be more to his purposes. And in fact, that's exactly what happens, because when you go down to chapter five verse 20, it says that the foreman here met Moses and Aaron who were waiting for them. And as they came forth from Pharaoh, they said to them, the Lord looked upon you and judged, because you have made us offensive in the sight of Pharaoh and a servants and put a sword in their hand to kill us.
There's a really interesting echo here, by the way, because they're accusing Moses of putting a sword in Pharaoh's hand. But remember, Moses accused God of bringing a sword upon the people. And now that's kind of happening yet through Pharaoh, right? So it's fascinating echo right there.
Okay, so they do blame Moses for their increased burdens. Pharaoh's plan did work. Now Moses and Aaron are rejected by the people. Now they're working twice as hard, disheartened and down-trodden and oppressed.
Maybe this uprising is not gonna happen, he's certainly not gonna let them go, all right? So very crafty, just like that first Pharaoh was in chapter one, this guy is also very, very crafty here.