Do You Have A Frog Problem?
Exodus 8:1-15
- We’re continuing our study through the book of Exodus.
- As we go through this study, we’re asking the question, “What can I learn from this passage about honoring God?”
- Last week, we asked the question, “Who do you rely upon?”
- We looked at the first plague, when God turned the water of the Nile River into blood, which killed all the fish.
- We saw that the Egyptians relied on the Nile River for their religion, for provision of their food and water, and for their livelihood.
- Through this, God showed them that their gods were fake and had no power.
- This amazing miracle should have been enough to convince Pharaoh he was fighting a losing battle, but Pharaoh was stubborn and chose to harden his heart and not let God’s people go.
- So we find ourselves this week with God sending a second plague, the plague of frogs.
- When I was a kid, I used to go to the Baptist Camp in Farmington.
- I looked forward to it all year, and always had a great time.
- When you first pull up to the camp, you see a small pond that’s right next to the Conference building.
- My friend Stephen Lincoln and I would always run over to that pond, and the first thing he’d do was try to catch a frog.
- That pond was full of frogs, and as soon as you stepped foot out of your vehicle, you could hear them croaking.
- Stephen was really good at catching the frogs, but I didn’t care about them too much.
- Yet he’d always brings his cupped hands right up to me and say, “Here you go, Bobby”, and try to get me to hold the frog.
- I didn’t really care for frogs, so I’d say no, and if I remember correctly, it’d usually end up with him chasing me.
- Some people love frogs, others hate them.
- Well the Egyptians liked frogs, but God was about to send a plague that was going to change all their opinions about frogs.
- They were about to have a frog problem.
- So, let’s look at three things we see in this passage this morning.
I.) The Frogs Multiplied- Vs 1-3a
- Once again, God sends Moses before Pharaoh to demand the release of His people.
- Pharaoh’s already shown himself to be stubborn once, yet instead of striking him dead, or sending the most horrible plague next, God instead sends a second plague, a plague of frogs.
- When I think of a frog, sure, I think they’re slimy and gross, but I don’t think of them as some scary creature to be feared…
- So to Pharaoh, when Moses told him what the next plague would be, he probably wasn’t all that scared…
- “Frogs? Who cares? I can handle frogs!”
- Yet God was about to overwhelm him and his people with a whole bunch of frogs.
- What’s interesting about this plague is that the Egyptians believed that frogs had divine power.
- They were sacred and were not to be killed.
- They worshipped the goddess Heqet, and they believed she looked like a woman with a frog’s head.
- They believed that her nostrils blew forth the breath of life and that she helped women in childbirth.
- To show their devotion to her, they wore amulets in the shape of a frog.
- So, once again, I think God has a sense of humor.
- If the Egyptians wanted to worship frogs and a woman with a frog’s head, then He was going to give them what they wanted…a whole lot of frogs!
- Or, as God puts it in vs 2, “an abundant supply” of frogs.
- So, what was so horrible about a plague of frogs?
- We’ll look a little more at some of the problems in the next point, but one of the problems was that with all these frogs being multiplied, there was going to be a loud, non-stop croaking.
- Now, I don’t know about you, but when I wake up in the middle of the night and hear a frog croaking in the house, it’s really annoying.
- It’s almost like the croaking gets louder and louder, and it’s really hard to find the spot where the croaking is coming from.
- Ribbit, ribbit…
- When there’s more than one frog croaking, that’s even worse, because it’s almost like they’re talking to each other.
- Then, when you get a whole bunch together, forget about getting any form of sleep.
- The Egyptians had to deal with the croaking of thousands upon thousands, possibly even hundreds of thousands, of frogs croaking…
- That sound would be enough to drive any of us crazy.
- So the Egyptians had a big frog problem, and it was multiplied by God’s power.
- What about you and me?
- Do we have a “Frog problem” that just multiplies and seems to have no end?
- The answer is yes, and that problem is sin.
- Let’s first address this in the life of a Christian.
- When Christ died on the cross, He took our sins upon Himself.
- We belong to Him, our sins are gone, and He has made us whiter than snow.
- Yet even as Christians, we still have a sinful nature which won’t go away until we get to heaven.
- Turn with me to Romans 7:15-25…
- As you can see, the Apostle Paul describes the fight with sin that every believer has…
- I don’t want to sin, yet I sin. I want to do what’s right, yet I keep doing what’s wrong…
- Every single one of us here today know exactly what Paul is talking about there.
- We sin, and we sin, and we sin, and we sin…
- We keep sinning, one sin right after the other, after the other…
- It’s like sin keeps multiplying, over and over and over again, and there seems to be no end!
- Then, just like the croaking of those frogs became louder and louder and louder, the voice of temptation and sin keeps getting louder and louder and louder…
- “Stop fighting. Give in to this sin. You know you want to! Just do it!”
- Yet when Paul says, “Who will deliver me?”, he gives an immediate response…
- “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
- As Christians, we’re not supposed to be living in defeat.
- We’re supposed to be living in the victory of Christ.
- In 1 John 2:2, we’re told, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
- So when the temptation to sin keeps multiplying and the voice of the tempter gets louder, you and I can remember that we have victory through Christ who has already overcome sin and death.
- And we can turn to the Holy Spirit and His Word to silence the voice of the enemy.
- Let’s now address this “frog problem” in the life of an unbeliever.
- Isaiah 59:12-13 says, “For our transgressions are multiplied before You, And our sins testify against us; For our transgressions are with us, And we know our iniquities: Transgressing and denying the LORD, And turning away from our God, Speaking oppression and revolt, Conceiving in and uttering from the heart lying words.”
- Isaiah was referring to Israel in this passage, but his words describe the problem of sin in any lost person’s life.
- One sin turns into another sin, then another…
- For the person who is not a Christian, every sin is available.
- It doesn’t matter whether the sin is big or small, a person without Christ does not consider it to be sin.
- So as their sin multiplies, it pulls them further away from Christ, and the voice of the tempter gets louder and louder.
- In John 8:34, Jesus tells us, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.”
- That’s the sad truth, and just like the Egyptians were overwhelmed by all the frogs, sooner or later, the unbeliever will be overwhelmed by their sins…
- Either they’ll repent and turn to Christ, or they’ll ignore the Holy Spirit and let the “croaking of the frogs” drown Him out, which of course leads to judgment.
II.) The Frogs Covered Everything- Vs 3b-7
- Years ago, I was driving along a backroad in Machias.
- I remember it was a warm spring evening, and it was raining.
- Well as I’m driving along, I noticed there were these weird bumpy objects all over the road.
- As I kept driving, I’d notice they were slowly moving, hopping across the road.
- I couldn’t figure out what they were at first, but my friend that was in the vehicle with me yelled, “Stop the car!”
- Well, I stopped the vehicle thinking there was a problem.
- My friend proceeded to tell me that I was running over frogs and I needed to stop.
- Well, there wasn’t really anything I could do about it, because these frogs were everywhere, all over the road, and they weren’t getting out of the way.
- Whether I kept driving forward or turned around and went back the other way, I wasn’t going to be able to avoid these frogs.
- “What am I supposed to do?” I asked.
- My friend responded by telling me to drive slowly and try to drive around these frogs.
- If I had done that, it would have taken all night to get back home.
- So I said, “No way” and proceeded to keep driving the speed limit and not worry about the frogs.
- Well my friend got really angry at me and called me a murderer who didn’t care about animals.
- But come on, the reality of the situation was that these frogs were everywhere, and they were so tiny that any attempt to avoid trying to hit them could end up with my vehicle in the ditch.
- Do I feel bad about running over frogs?
- Sure, but I wasn’t going to lose sleep over it.
- I wasn’t purposely trying to run over every frog in the road that I could see…of course not!
- Anyways, those frogs covering the road were such a nuisance, and there was just no way to get around them.
- That’s probably similar to what it was like for the Egyptians here, only those frogs were not just on the road, they were everywhere, and covered everything!
- It’s amazing when you think about it, because God didn’t have to use an army of His angels to judge the Egyptians.
- Instead, He’s judging them with a small, harmless creature, a frog.
- They may have been harmless, but when you put a bunch of them together, and they cover everything, they become more than just a nuisance.
- Vs 3 tells us that they were in the houses, and in the bedrooms, and on the people’s beds, and in the servant’s houses, and they were crawling on the people, and they were in their ovens and in their kneading troughs.
- Think about how horrible that must have been!
- Frogs are slimy, and cold to the touch…
- Closing the doors of their homes couldn’t stop the creatures from getting in…
- Trying to seal the bedroom couldn’t stop them from getting in…
- Their beds were no protection, and they probably couldn’t even lie down since the frogs were already covering their beds.
- They couldn’t bake food because frogs were in their ovens, and they couldn’t eat food because the frogs didn’t give them any space, and if they attempted to eat something, there would be no way to keep it from touching the frogs.
- The Egyptians prided themselves on their cleanliness, so to have filthy frogs everywhere would have been a terror to them.
- Matthew Poole says, “This plague was worse than the former because it was more constant and more general; for the former was only in the waters, and did only molest them when they went to drink or use the water; but this infected all liquors, and all places at all times, and annoyed all their senses with their filthy substance, and shape, and noise, and stink, and mingled themselves with their meats, and sauces and drinks, and crawling into their beds, made them restless…”
- You’d think that this would have caught Pharaoh’s attention right away, but look at what he does next…
- Vs 7 says, “The magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt.”
- Think about how ridiculous that is…
- Frogs are everywhere, and instead of first going to Moses, Pharaoh asks his magicians to do the trick as well…
- So instead of helping stop the frogs, they send even more frogs through their demonic enchantments.
- You’d think that Pharaoh would have asked them instead to try to make the frogs disappear…
- They wouldn’t have been able to do it, but any person with common sense and a rational mind would at least try!
- That just shows you how stubborn Pharaoh was, and just how hard his heart was.
- So what about you and me?
- Do we have a “frog problem” that seems to cover everything?
- The answer is yes, and we’ll expand upon the same ‘sin’ problem we looked at in the first point.
- First, in the life of a believer.
- There are certain “habitual” sins that we struggle with.
- For some, it’s anger…
- For others, it’s lust…
- For others, it’s lying…
- For others, it’s…fill in the blank…anything…
- Habitual sins are those sins that we as Christians have a hard time overcoming because we’ve made those certain sins a habit in our lives.
- That’s the kind of sin the Apostle Paul speaks about in Romans 7, which we looked at earlier…
- I keep doing what I don’t want to do!
- Let’s just use anger as an example.
- If anger is a habitual sin in my life, odds are pretty good I can’t go one day without blowing up at somebody about something.
- It might be in the car, while driving, when someone cuts me off…
- I clench the wheel, I glare and grit my teeth…maybe beep the horn.
- Or it might be when something doesn’t go the way I wanted, so I sulk about it all day, and the anger ruins my day…
- How about when I find out people are spreading gossip and lies about me or my family…
- I go over in my head all the different ways I can get revenge…
- Angry people are not fun to be around!
- A lot of times, it’s like you’re walking on eggshells!
- This doesn’t necessarily mean the Christian struggling with the habitual sin of anger is as bad as others who have the same problem.
- They might be able to blow up without swearing, or punch a wall instead of the person’s face…
- Or how about lust?
- The Christian who struggles with this as a habitual sin might not ever act out on their lust, like others with the same problem…
- Yet they allow their lust to control their thoughts about the women or men around them…
- For the Christian, even though they might not be committing these sins as bad as some other people do, the fact is that the sin is still there…
- And oftentimes, these habitual sins become “a frog of a problem” and they end up covering everything in that person’s life.
- Their job, where it affects their co-workers and customers…
- Their home life, where it affects their family members…
- Their spiritual life, where it affects themselves, and they start to grow distant from the Lord…
- So is there hope for the Christian struggling with habitual sin?
- Absolutely!
- James 4:7-8 says, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”
- Habitual sins are still sin, so the struggle with them is very real…
- Yet God tells us to submit to Him, and draw near to Him…
- When we do, He will give us victory in those areas, as we go through the process of sanctification, growing closer to Him…
- Sometimes, it’s slower than other times, but He will give us victory, and the nearer we draw to Him, the easier it becomes to defeat those habitual sins.
- Romans 6:17-18 says, “Thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”
- But what do we do about these habitual sins covering everything?
- 1 Peter 4:8 says, “…above all things have fervent love for one another, for “love will cover a multitude of sins.”
- To cover sin means to forgive it, and forgiveness is associated with love.
- The greatest example of this for the Christian is of course the Lord Jesus Christ.
- Romans 5:8 says, “…God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
- 1 John 4:10 says, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
- Christ’s love has forgiven all our sin, even habitual sins.
- So when we’re feeling overwhelmed by those sins, we can look to Him, and remember that His love has done more than cover our sin…His love has completely done away with our sins!
- Now let’s look at this “frog problem” that seems to cover everything in the life of an unsaved person.
- Ephesians 2:1 says that those without Christ are “…dead in their trespasses and sins…”
- Romans 8:7 says, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.”
- Galatians 5:1 calls sin a “yoke of slavery.”
- So the person without Christ has a huge problem, because their sin covers everything in their lives, but they don’t have deliverance and forgiveness of sin like the believer does.
- 2 Timothy 3 gives a list of some of their sins…
- They are “…lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…”
- That’s a lot of sins, but it’s only a small list compared with the large number of sins people commit on this earth…
- I think it’s very easy to picture those sins of the ungodly being like these frogs, everywhere and on everything, affecting every part of the unbeliever’s life.
- 2 Peter 3 tells us that the ungodly are headed for the day of judgment and destruction.
- It’s a sad reality, but it’s reality nonetheless…
- Those without Christ will perish because they have not put their hope and trust in Him.
III.) The Frogs Died- Vs 8-15
- At this point, Pharaoh realized he had met his match.
- The frogs were too much for him and his people, and he needed to do something about it.
- His only option was to reach out to Moses and ask him to end the plague.
- I can almost picture Pharaoh begging here, and as he’s begging, frogs are crawling up his legs and are on his head and his face…
- In the midst of this plague, Pharaoh was powerless, and God was showing him that fact.
- It’s really interesting because the people of Egypt considered the frog to be sacred.
- So as the frogs are multiplying, and are covering everything, the Egyptians make no attempt to kill them, since they were a sacred animal.
- You’d think that at this point, they would have realized that the frogs had no power…
- You’d think they would have rejected all worship of them, and instead given the glory to God Almighty, who was the One that sent all those frogs.
- But they’re blind, and that’s why there’s still another 8 plagues to go after this!
- You see, just like the frogs were lingering, so was their idolatry, even though God was destroying their gods one by one.
- Notice that when Moses asks Pharaoh when he’d like for the plague of frogs to stop, instead of asking for immediate relief, he asked for the plague to end the next day.
- This makes no sense because all the people of Egypt were suffering from this plague, including Pharaoh!
- You’d think he’d want to be rid of them as soon as possible.
- Yet he asks for the next day, so the frogs linger…
- Why would he do that?
- I believe it’s because Pharaoh was trying to control God.
- He must have figured, “Okay God, I’m going to tell you when to stop this plague.”
- In his stubbornness, he probably believed he could survive another night with this plague, and in doing so, he could shake his fist at God and say, “Is that all you’ve got, God?”
- Or he might have been testing God, to see if He really was able to stop the plague on the next day or not.
- Perhaps he thought one of his gods would step in during the night, before God, and take care of it…
- That way he could turn around and give credit to his gods.
- But God controlled the timeline, not Pharaoh, so it happened, just like Pharaoh requested, but only by the power of God…
- Pharaoh and his gods had no power to make it stop.
- The next day, God stopped the plague by killing all the frogs that were on the land.
- We’re not told how many frogs there were, but there were so many that all they could do was throw them in piles on top of each other.
- Why dispose of them that way?
- Well, I’m sure it was overwhelming to look at the huge number of dead frogs everywhere and figure out a sanitary way to dispose of them.
- By throwing them in heaps, maybe they were just trying to clear out their homes, businesses, and streets so that they could get back to normal life…
- I guess they figured they could worry about dealing with the carcasses later?
- Of course, the result was a horrible, nauseating stench that filled the land!
- I’m sure it had already been bad enough when the fish died, but now the stench of rotting frogs was in the air…and I’m sure the desert sun made them rot fast!
- I think the stench in the air was a way for God to show them how horrible their sins had been…
- Taking God’s people into slavery for over 200 years, and treating them horribly, was a huge sin Egypt had committed.
- On top of that, they were guilty of idolatry, from worshipping all those false gods.
- The sins of Egypt were just like that heap of rotting frogs…disgusting, filthy, nauseating, and stinky!
- That’s what all sin is like…disgusting, filthy, nauseating, and stinky to God Almighty.
- As Christians, we turned to God Almighty, and He cleaned up that mess, making us into a new creation, forgiven and clean in His eyes.
- Why would we want to return to those sins, and be controlled by such huge heaps of garbage?
- Why would we want a “frog problem?”
- Instead, we need to be controlled by the Holy Spirit, living our lives for Him.
- We are no longer slaves to sin…we belong to Christ!
- Sadly, those who refuse to turn to Christ are still full of these piles of disgusting, filthy, nauseating, stinky sins, spiritually speaking.
- Everyone from the smallest sinner to the worst sinner are in need of Christ and His Cleansing Power.
- When we turn to Him, we receive His cleansing…
- He doesn’t just throw our sins in a pile and leave them there…no, He has forgiven us, and we are washed clean!
- So the message we can bring to unbelievers is a message of hope.
- You no longer have to be dead in your sins, wasting away, filled with the stench of unrighteousness.
- You can be part of God’s family, because Jesus died for you, and He loves you.
- Don’t let this “frog problem” be a permanent problem in your life.
- Turn to Christ today, and experience His cleansing power!
- Let’s pray.
