Who’s in Charge?
Do you ever think that things are out of control in the world? Listening to the news can lead us to think, “Who’s in charge around here?” Who’s in charge of the nations, politics, money, social media, natural disasters, disease, and death? We wonder, “Is there anyone at the wheel?
When we come to the Bible, we learn that the Lord is in charge of the world he made. He created the world and he governs the world. “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” (Ps. 24:1). “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Mt. 10:29).
Because God created the world, he is also the Judge of the world. As Maker, he’s also Owner.
Everything he made is accountable to him. To deny God’s judgment is to deny his rights as Creator. The doctrine of judgment was the first doctrine the serpent denied in the Garden (“You will not surely die.”). Eternal judgment is considered an “elementary doctrine” (Heb. 6:1-2).
As the I AM WHO I AM, he answers to no one. The world he made answers to him. When things are out of line, he has the right to put things back in their place.
“Great Acts of Judgment”
This is the theological foundation that the passage we’ll study this morning is built on (Ex. 7-10). The ten plagues are about the judgment of God. In fact, they’re more often referred to as “signs” or “wonders” (eg. 7:3), indicating that they’re from God and meant to signal his authority.
“Great acts of judgment” summarizes what God is doing in the plagues and the exodus (7:4). The plagues show us that God is the Creator and therefore Judge of the world. “Show” is an important word here. The plagues aren’t just about deliverance, but about communication. They’re meant to reveal the God who sent them (7:5).
The plagues show us one over-arching truth, namely, that God is holy. When I say “holy,” I don’t mean “morally pure,” though God is that. I mean that there’s no one like him. He’s over and above everything and everyone. He’s supreme and sovereign. He has no rivals.
In these chapters, we see this truth everywhere. Instead of looking at each plague individually, I want to show you how God shows us his supremacy in these signs. There are at least eleven places we see his supremacy in these chapters.
The Transformation of Moses
First, in 7:6 we see a transformation in Moses that’s subtle but profound. Last week we saw his misstep in his first encounter with Pharaoh (5:1-3). He adds to and subtracts from the word of the Lord, things go badly, and his own people want God to judge him (v. 21).
Instead of running away, he runs to the Lord (vv. 22-23). And the Lord meets him with grace and promises and renewal, reminding him who he is and promises that his mission will succeed. Something finally shifted in Moses’s heart.
He entered the presence of the Lord with complaints but emerged as a man who knew who he was, who God was, and was willing to do all that the Lord commanded. The lesson had been learned. Moses now moved forward with a quiet confidence, strength, and poise that comes from being in the presence of the Lord. The Lord is supremely able to transform his people.
The First Sign
Second, we see the supremacy of God in the prologue to the plagues (7:8-13). Pharaoh wants Moses and Aaron to prove that they’re from God by working a miracle, not because he’s open to persuasion, but in order to expose them as charlatans. But he gets more than he bargained for.
After Aaron casts his staff down and it becomes a snake, Pharaoh’s magicians do the same, “but Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs” (v. 12). Magical transformations like this were part of the pagan practices of ancient Egypt.
Pharaoh’s magicians are a formidable force to be reckoned with. But their magic tricks are swallowed up by God’s power. This is a trial of strength on the highest level, making Yahweh’s first victory spectacular. He’s supreme over serpents.
The Structure of the Plagues
The third way we see the Lord’s sovereignty in the plagues is the way they’re structured. There’s beautiful, literary artistry in the way Moses has arranged this material. This doesn’t make it any less historical. It simply means that the Lord does things in orderly ways to show us who’s in charge.
There are three groups of three plagues, with the last plague (death of the firstborn) as the capstone. The three trios are:
- Nile to blood, frogs, and gnats
- Flies, livestock, and boils
- Hail, locusts, and darkness
Like an invasion, the plagues gradually escalate and build in intensity. The first group of three plagues affect the water and the ground: the Nile bleeds (7:20), frogs come out of the Nile (8:3), and the dust turns to gnats (8:16).
The second group of plagues affect living flesh: swarms of flies (8:21), death of livestock (9:2-3), and human skin covered in boils (9:8-9).
The third group of plagues affect the skies: destruction through the weather (9:22-24), locusts coming with the east wind (10:12-15), and blacking out the sun (10:21-23).
There’s a structural symmetry in the first nine plagues in order to emphasize that what’s happening is not the result of chance and cannot be explained by natural phenomena. As one writer says, “They are not a fortuitous succession of random, senseless visitations of Nature’s blind fury, but the calculated, purposeful, directed, and controlled workings of the Divine Intelligence.”[1] The design of the plagues reveals the supremacy of the Designer.
“The LORD Said”
The fourth way we see God’s supremacy in the plagues is how each plague begins. Every plague begins with the phrase, “Then Yahweh said to Moses…” (7:14, 8:1, 16, 20, 9:1, 8, 13, 10:1, 21). Even the first sign begins this way (7:8).
God takes initiative in every plague. Every stage of the encounter between Moses and Pharaoh is divinely controlled. God is in charge of and responsible for the devastations that come upon Egypt.
The Magicians
The fifth way we see God’s power in these chapters is in the magicians. They had success initially in using the dark arts to copycat Moses and Aaron (7:11, 22, 8:7), but they were ultimately forced to admit that Yahweh was stronger than their gods (8:19). They were on the ropes after just two rounds and then knocked down (literally) after six rounds (9:11).
Aaron is the counterpart to the Pharaoh’s magicians. He’s Moses’ assistant who performs miracles on his behalf (7:10, 19, 8:5-6, 16-17). But when the magicians can no longer hang with Yahweh, they fall away from the story, as does Aaron. After the third plague, the battle narrows to Moses versus Pharaoh because Moses’s prophet was stronger than Pharaoh’s prophets.
The Staff
The sixth way we see God’s supremacy is in the staff of Moses and Aaron (7:9-10, 15, 19-20, 8:5, 16, 9:23, 10:13).[2] In ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh carried a staff that signified his power and authority and that supposedly had god-like or magical powers. Moses and Aaron also had a staff, but theirs was a simple shepherd’s staff.
Back at the burning bush, God told Moses to take his staff with him to Egypt (4:17) because he wanted to use this everyday object to show Pharaoh who had real power. Moses engaged Pharaoh with a simple shepherd’s staff, not an elaborate staff of Egyptian royalty. This would’ve been insulting to the Egyptians, but that was the point.
God used a physical object that stood for glory and power in Egypt to conquer Egypt. He turns their royal regalia on its head and uses it to show them their weakness and his strength, to show them who the real King of the world is.
In using Moses and Aaron’s staff, God was showing Pharaoh that real power in the world was not in the right staff but in the right God. Moses was victorious, not because he had the right staff, but because he had the right God.
The Battle of the Gods
The seventh way God reveals his power is in the “battle of the gods.” This is a key theme in the plague narrative, but isn’t stated explicitly until 12:12, when the Lord says, “On all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord.”
The ability to remove a plague is another way the Lord distinguishes himself from false gods, so that Egypt “may know that there is no one like the Lord our God” (8:10), that there’s “none like him in all the earth” (9:14). Only the Creator can manipulate creation when and where he likes.
The battle in the exodus wasn’t between Aaron and the Egyptian magicians, Moses and Pharaoh, or Israel and Egypt. The battle was between the God of the Hebrews and the gods of Egypt. The battle was clearly a mismatch, as battles against the Lord always are. The question was, “Who is the real God?”
We see this in how the nine plagues are bookended with direct assaults on major Egyptian deities. The Nile and the sun were a fundamental part of Egyptian life and were personified as deities in Egyptian religion.
The plagues are God’s war against polytheism, his dramatic assertion that he and he alone is God. This war begins here but finds it’s clearest articulation in the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me” (20:3).
In the plagues, God is singling out and exposing the fake gods of Egypt and revealing himself as the one, true, living, and supreme God.
Power Over Nature
The eighth way we see God’s supremacy is in his power over nature. In the plagues, it seems like “all creation is becoming unhinged,” and we wonder who’s in charge.[3]
Some want to explain the plagues away by saying that they’re the result of natural causes. But that doesn’t account for things like blood also being found in the “vessels of wood and in vessels of stone” (7:19), the exact timing and extent of the plagues, or their reversal (8:9-10).
God’s judgment looks like a de-creation of Egypt, reversing God’s acts in creation. Rather than progressing for the sake of life, they progress toward death. “The world of Egypt comes undone, moving from cosmos to chaos.”[4] As Creator, Yahweh has the power to create and de-create.
The Hardening of Pharaoh’s Heart
The ninth way we see God’s supremacy is in the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. Several times in the narrative it says, “Pharaoh’s heart was/is/remained hardened” (7:13, 14, 22, 8:19, 9:7, 35) or “Pharaoh hardened his heart” (8:15, 9:34). As the plagues advance, the language shifts to “the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh” (9:12, 10:1, 20, 27, 11:10, 14:4, 8, 17).
The narrative makes it clear that the Lord controls Pharaoh’s heart. Before any of the plagues begin, the Lord has already said twice that he’s going to harden Pharaoh’s heart (4:21, 7:3). From the beginning, we learn that all that follows is Yahweh’s work. Pharaoh’s heart remained hard, “as the Lord had said” (7:13, 22, 8:19) and he “hardened his heart…as the Lord had said” (8:15). These are the results of God’s initial intent to harden Pharaoh’s heart. John Piper summarizes this well: “For the ancient writer these three events (self-hardening, being hardened, and God’s hardening) are not three, but one.”[5]
What does it mean that his heart is “hard”? It means that God doesn’t allow him to see the obvious, the thing even his servants see (10:7). God makes his heart “heavy,” unresponsive, insensible, and inflexible. The truth of his smallness and God’s greatness is right in front of him and he refuses to see it.
Why would the Lord harden Pharaoh’s heart? Why are there ten plagues instead of an immediate liberation? The Lord tells us why in 10:1-2. Yahweh hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he could display his power through the plagues, so that Israel could pass the story down, so that they might know him as he is, Yahweh.
Yahweh wants to show Egypt, Israel, and the world that he and he alone is God. He says in 9:15 that he could’ve stopped them, but he didn’t because he wanted the whole world to see his power and know his name (9:16).
The moral dilemma is: “How can God hold Pharaoh accountable when he’s responsible for his hard heart?” Why is he held accountable for things that God purposed to do?
Because he’s a moral agent and the Bible never removes responsibility for sins from the moral agents who commit them. God “himself tempts no one” (Js. 1:13). Pharaoh did exactly what he wanted to do. God made sure his sinful desires didn’t change in order to fulfill his purposes.
We understandably want answers to how this works, but the Bible doesn’t give them to us. As Piper says in his book Providence, “How God governs the human heart in its acts of sinning, we are not told. That he does, we are told over and over…This is why stories of God’s providence abound in Scripture, but explanations of the mystery of how it works do not. Our faith needs the certainty of the fact, not the fathoming of the mystery.”[6]
As Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.” Yahweh is in charge of Pharaoh and every other king’s heart, and your heart.
The Oppression of Israel
The tenth way we see God’s power is by seeing the plagues as the Lord’s response to the oppression of his people. The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart because Pharaoh oppressed his people. The judgment of the plagues were public judgments. God publicly humiliates Pharaoh and Egypt for using and abusing the Israelites.
The Lord will not tolerate oppression, especially of the weak and vulnerable. “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (1 Pet. 5:5). The Supreme One won’t let anyone elevate themselves over his people because he’s the only Lord.
The Protection of Israel
The eleventh and final way we see God’s power is in his protection and preservation of Israel during the plagues. Starting with the fourth plague, Goshen – the part of Egypt where the Israelites were, was “set apart” and didn’t experience the plagues (8:22-23, 9:4, 26, 10:23, 11:7).
Going all the way back to Noah, Abraham, Israel, and now through the church, those who trust in God are distinct from those who don’t. There’s a sharp line between those who belong to God and those who don’t.
The last thing we heard from them was when their leaders cursed Moses and Aaron (5:20-21). They’re angry and not trusting the Lord. They don’t deserve the Lord’s protection.
But the Lord sets them apart from the Egyptians anyways. They’re the objects of his care, “vessels of mercy.” The Lord’s protection of Israel is because of his free mercy. As God, he is free to harden and free to save (Ex. 33:19).
God’s Love in Goshen
Do you understand that the Lord is the supreme ruler of the world? He’s sovereign over car accidents, thunderstorms, professors, employers, markets, CEO’s, and every aspect of your life? Your family, marriage, kids, sexuality, gender, money, politics, media intake, thoughts, words, and behaviors?
The kings of the earth and false gods are helpless to save. Pharaoh couldn’t protect his people or his land. He implicitly acknowledges this by turning to Moses rather than his magicians for relief from the plagues. Some Egyptians did heed the word of the Lord (9:20-21).
The Judge Was Judged
Why does God preserve Israel from the plagues? They’re spared so you can be spared. No Israel means no Messiah. No Messiah means no salvation for anyone. Do you see God’s love for you in Goshen?
The same God who “stretched out his hands against Egypt” also stretched out his hands against his own Son. When Jesus stretched out his hands on the cross, the Father poured out his judgment on the Son. Why? For our sins, not his. At the cross, God delivered judgment and was judged. The Judge was judged.
When we realize that he did this for us, we want to give him whatever he asks for. We want to give him control of our lives because he gave up his life for us.
The cross is the ultimate sign of the supremacy of God, the supremacy of his justice and supremacy of his love. Do you see his love for you on the cross?
[1]Nahum M. Sarna, Exploring Exodus: The Origins of Biblical Israel, 2nd ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1996), 78.
[2]See John D. Currid, Against the Gods: The Polemical Theology of the Old Testament (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), ch. 9.
[3]Stephen G. Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible, New Studies in Biblical Theology, ed. D. A. Carson (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press: 2003), 99.
[4]L. Michael Morales, Exodus Old and New: A Biblical Theology of Redemption, Essential Studies in Biblical Theology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020), 44-5.
[5]John Piper, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1993), 168.
[6]John Piper, Providence (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 446.