The Powerful Hand of God
Exodus 9:1-7
- We’re continuing our study through the book of Exodus.
- In the previous sermon of this series, we looked at the fourth plague God sent on Egypt, the plague of flies.
- In that sermon, we saw that Pharaoh was warned by God about the coming plague, yet he refused to heed the warning.
- We saw that Pharaoh was covered as the plague of flies covered everything and everyone in Egypt and spared the Israelites.
- Lastly, we saw that Pharaoh was defiant against God Almighty.
- Even though God was showing Him who had the true power, Pharaoh was stubborn, and kept hardening his heart against God and His servant Moses.
- Today, we’re going to look at the fifth plague, the plague against the livestock of Egypt, and we’re going to focus on the powerful hand of God.
- That might sound familiar to you because a few weeks ago, when we looked at the plague of lice, we focused on the mighty hand of God.
- We saw that with His Mighty hand, God can do things the way He wants to, God can use even the smallest of things, and God can make the enemy powerless with His hand.
- The reason I titled that message, “The Mighty Hand of God” is because when the magicians couldn’t copy the plague of lice, they told Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God!”
- So, with that plague, those heathen priests acknowledged it was God at work.
- Obviously, Pharaoh didn’t listen to them, because Pharaoh refused to let the people go, so God sent the fourth plague, the plague of flies.
- Now, with the fifth plague, Pharaoh is going to find out directly from God that these plagues truly are the work of the hand of God.
- I remember when Leah was born, I was so surprised by how tiny she was.
- I took her tiny little hand and I placed it in the palm of my hand and was amazed with how big and powerful my hand looked compared with her tiny little hands.
- There’s actually a picture on Facebook of my hand with Leah’s little hand holding onto my pointer finger.
- Her hand was so tiny that it wrapped right around my finger and only covered about half of my finger.
- I thought, “Wow, I’m her father, and my hand is big enough and powerful enough to protect her from harm.”
- That’s how God’s hand is…
- Much bigger and more powerful than anything you and I can imagine…
- And with His powerful hand, He can show the world that He is God.
- So let’s look at 3 things in this passage that show us the powerful hand of God at work.
I.) God’s hand can send pestilence- Vs 1-3
- Years ago, there was a swine flu scare.
- Everybody was worried that there was going to be an outbreak, so the vaccination was readily available.
- At the time, I was still in the National Guard.
- I remember at drill they had us all go over to the Medical Command to receive our flu shots.
- When I got in the office, the soldier administering the vaccine was an Army officer, I believe he was a Captain.
- “Okay”, he said, “Time to get the flu shot. We’re also going to give you the swine flu vaccine while we’re at it.”
- Me being the little rebel I was said, “Sir, I don’t want that shot.”
- Well, here I was, a lowly Sergeant, telling an officer “No.”
- Well, that didn’t go over so well.
- He responded, “Sergeant, you’re getting this vaccine, whether you want to or not!”
- He then went on to explain that if there was an outbreak, National Guard troops needed to be ready to activate to stop it from spreading, and thus, we needed the vaccine.
- Well, I still didn’t want the vaccine, so I said, “Is that an order, sir?”
- And of course, he said yes, so I had to get the shot.
- That officer had the power to give me that shot against my will because he outranked me, he was the medical expert, and my contract with the Army said I had to obey his orders.
- Obviously, God Almighty is much more powerful and has more authority than even the highest ranking military officer, and that’s what we see here as He sends the fifth plague on Egypt.
- Notice in vs 1 that God once again sends Moses with a message for Pharaoh.
- For those from the outside looking in who would criticize God for sending such harsh judgments on Egypt, I would say, “Look, God kept warning Pharaoh, time and time again…If you don’t let My people go, I will send this plague!”
- So even though God’s hand is powerful, it’s also merciful, and He’s longsuffering, not willing that any should perish.
- What’s interesting about God’s message to Pharaoh this time is what He says about the plague…
- He specifically says, “…Behold, the hand of the Lord will be upon your livestock with a very severe pestilence…”
- In the first plague of water turned to blood, Moses and Aaron used the rod…
- In the second plague, God smites Egypt with frogs, once again using Aaron’s rod…
- In the third plague of lice, God doesn’t even warn Pharaoh, but uses the rod again to send the plague…
- In the fourth plague, God tells Pharaoh, “I will send flies…”
- Now, with the fifth plague, God specifically tells Pharaoh, “…the hand of the Lord will be on your livestock…”
- Even though God has been sending each plague, and making that clear, I think God specifically says His hand will do this because of Pharaoh’s stubbornness.
- Pharaoh still thinks he’s in control because he’s still sitting on the throne, and he still has the Israelites as his slaves…
- So, he thinks he still has them in his hands, and he has what God wants, and as long as he keeps them in his hands, he wins…
- God is saying, “No Pharaoh, they are my people, and with my hand, I’m going to prove it to you, again!”
- So, God sends this plague upon the livestock.
- If you have a KJV, you’ll see the word used for pestilence is “murrain.”
- What on earth is that?
- Adam Clarke gives a very detailed description of this disease.
- “Murrain is a very contagious disease among cattle, the symptoms of which are a hanging down of the head, abundance of gum in the eyes, rattling in the throat, difficulty of breathing, palpitation of the heart, staggering, a hot breath, and a shining tongue; which symptoms prove that a general inflammation has taken place.”
- Okay, so this is a very gross and severe disease, and it spread to all the livestock of Egypt that were out in the fields.
- Livestock was extremely valuable to the Egyptians, and God almost completely wiped them out…
- The fascinating thing about this is that once again, God is not only judging the people of Egypt, but He’s judging their false gods, and proving them as worthless and powerless.
- All of these animals would have been considered sacred.
- The animal that was probably the most sacred of all them was the bull which represented the god Apis or Ra.
- They also had a bull god named Mnevis.
- The cow represented Hathor, the goddess of love, beauty, and joy.
- When the Egyptians drew pictures of her, she was the form of a woman with the head of a cow.
- Khnum was a ram-god.
- So economically and spiritually, this plague was extremely distressing to the Egyptians.
- God was showing them His powerful hand at work.
- So, what does this mean for us as Christians?
- In Scripture, we see God use disease as a part of His work several times, so I’ll give you several examples.
- In Numbers 12, Moses’ brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, oppose Moses, and in judgment, God sends the disease of leprosy upon Miriam.
- She and Aaron repent, so 7 days later, she is healed.
- In 2 Chronicles 26, the King of Judah, Uzziah, becomes filled with pride, and attempts to offer incense to the Lord in the Temple.
- When the priests tried to stop him, he started yelling at them in anger, and as he was raging, God sent the disease of leprosy upon him to stop him.
- In his case, he lived with leprosy until the day of his death.
- You say, “Well that’s the Old Testament, what about the New Testament?”
- In the book of Acts, God struck Herod with a disease that caused his stomach to be in excruciating pain for 5 days, and he was eaten by worms.
- God sent this disease because the people called Herod a god, and he accepted their worship instead of correcting them.
- Also, in the book of Acts, the sorcerer Bar-Jesus opposed Paul’s preaching, so the Lord instantly stuck him blind with some kind of eye disease that Scripture says lasted for a season.
- In the book of 1 Corinthians, we read about Christians partaking of the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner…
- They were not taking it seriously, they were being greedy, and many were gluttonous as they ate all the food and didn’t save any for others…
- So the Apostle Paul tells us that for this reason, many of the believers were weak and sickly, and some had even died…it was judgment sent by God.
- So, does God use disease to judge Christians?
- In some cases, yes, and in some cases, no.
- You and I can’t be the judge of that, because then we’d start saying, “Oh, so and so must have committed a pretty bad sin, because they’ve got the shingles, or they’ve got cancer, or they’ve got heart diseases…
- No, the point is that the mighty hand of God can use disease as a judgment if He so chooses, and He can also heal disease if He so chooses, but you and I don’t control His hand.
- Obviously, when someone is sick, we pray for healing, and the book of James tells us we can even anoint them and pray over them.
- But once again, it’s God’s choice whether to heal or not, and if He doesn’t heal them, that doesn’t make them a bad Christian or mean they didn’t have enough faith…
- No, God is in control, no matter what, and if a disease leads to death for a Christian, it’s hard for us to understand and cope, but it also means they’re in Heaven with Jesus and no longer sick.
II.) God’s hand can separate groups- Vs 4-6
- When I was in Middle School, I decided to try out for the Basketball team.
- The school I went to was in Colorado, so it had a lot more students than here in our area.
- So, they had 4 or 5 different teams you could be chosen for, depending on how good or bad you were at basketball.
- Well, I wasn’t very good at basketball!
- I remember how nervous I was when I tried out, and the coaches were there with clipboards, taking notes on all of us.
- They were there to separate the best players from the worst players, so that everyone was playing on a team with other kids just as good or bad as them, so it would be fair.
- Thankfully, everyone made a team, but of course, I was on the junior team, the team with the less talented players.
- One of the thoughts that ran through my head at the time was, “Wow, the coaches sure do have a lot of power. They get to choose who makes which team. Separating the good players from the not-so-good players!”
- Just like the coaches could decide which players went to which team, God Almighty, with His powerful hand, can separate groups of people in any way He wants…
- Here in Exodus 9, we see Him separating the Egyptians from His people the Israelites in order to send the plague on the Egyptians and spare His people.
- He even tells Pharaoh in vs 4, “I’m going to make a difference between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt. Nothing will die that belongs to my people.”
- Remember, with the plague of flies, God told Pharaoh, “I will set my people in Goshen apart. None of the flies will be there”, and that’s exactly how it happened.
- Now, once again, He’s telling Pharaoh “My people’s livestock won’t be affected by this plague.”
- You see, Pharaoh was so stubborn, that even though God protected His people from the previous plague, just as He said He would, Pharaoh still wouldn’t acknowledge that the Israelites were God’s people, not his.
- So, God says, “Okay Pharaoh, I’m going to do it again. Watch as this very contagious disease kills all of your livestock but doesn’t spread to the livestock of my people.”
- It’s amazing because the same God who sent the pestilence is the same God who kept His people’s livestock healthy and safe from the plague.
- The Egyptians might have said something like, “Well this god has power over the cattle, and this god has power over the horses, and this god has power over the camels, and this god has power over health and disease…”
- So they’d look at a plague like this, and think, “How could none of our gods stop this from happening? Couldn’t at least one step in and protect at least some of the livestock?”
- But the Israelites could say, “Our One True God has the power over all His creation. Everything from the livestock, to the disease. He has the power to spread disease among those livestock, and protect these livestock, even if they’re standing right next to each other!”
- So not only was God separating the Egyptians from the Israelites here for the purpose of judgment, but He also was separating the livestock from both sides to completely shatter the Egyptian’s view of these animals being sacred.
- Bible Commentator R. Alan Cole cites an ancient record of a battle the Egyptians lost because their enemies put a herd of cattle in front of their advancing troops.
- It worked because the Egyptian soldiers would not shoot at the opposing army for fear of accidentally killing what they considered to be the sacred cattle.
- As you can see, their views of these animals were rather ridiculous.
- God showed the Egyptians that what they held to be sacred, their livestock, in reality were only animals, and they were animals He created.
- He had the power to create them, and He had the power to kill them.
- Once again, we see God’s hand of mercy, though, when He tells Pharaoh, “Tomorrow, I will do this.”
- Pharaoh had a whole day to think about it, but still, his heart was so hardened, that it didn’t matter if God gave him a day, a week, or a month…he had his mind made up that he wasn’t letting God’s people go, and we’ll see that pattern continue as we keep going through five more plagues.
- So what does this this idea of God’s powerful hand separating groups have to do with us as Christians?
- Well, in this passage, we’ve got 2 groups, the Egyptians and the Israelites.
- The Egyptians worshipped false gods and the Israelites worshipped the One True God.
- The livestock of the Egyptians died while the livestock of the Israelites survived and was protected from the pestilence.
- In our world today, there are 2 groups of people; those who are not followers of Christ and those who are followers of Christ.
- Those who are not His followers worship themselves, or false idols, or a different Jesus than described in the Bible, or any number of things…there are thousands of cults in this world, all pointing people away from Jesus Christ.
- Those who are followers of Christ worship Him alone, our Lord and Savior, our Master, our King…
- One day, whether we’re a follower of Christ or not, we are going to stand before Him.
- I don’t have a lot of time to give you a detailed lesson on end times things this morning, so I’m going to summarize these judgments as best I can.
- For Christians, we’re going to stand before Him at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
- That’s described in 2 Corinthians 5 and says Christians will be rewarded for the work we’ve done for the Lord, and we will lose rewards for works we did for the selfish reasons, or half-heartedly or that we chose not to do.
- We’re not judged for our sin, we’re judged for the work we’ve done for the Lord.
- Unbelievers, however, will stand before God at the Great White Throne Judgment.
- This judgment is described in Revelation 20, and the unbelievers who stand before God at this judgment will be judged for their rejection of Christ.
- We’re told that anyone not found written in the Lamb’s Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.
- So, someday, the powerful Hand of God will separate His followers from those who are not His followers.
- Christians have a relationship with Him and will enjoy eternity with Him, where there will be no more sorrow or death.
- Unbelievers, however, will face judgment for all of eternity because they chose not to receive Christ’s gift of salvation.
- It will be too late for them, and the saved and the unsaved will be separated for all of eternity.
- So, knowing that, you and I as Christians need to be sharing Christ with all who will listen.
- We don’t want anyone to be part of the group of unbelievers who will be separated from God and His followers for all of eternity.
III.) God’s hand can prove His Truth- Vs 7
- In high school, I played on the tennis team.
- One day, we had a match in Calais with a team from up North.
- My friends thought one of the girls on the other team was cute, and so I said, “You know what, I bet I can get her phone number.”
- My friends laughed at me because they didn’t think I was brave enough to do it, or handsome enough to actually get her number, so finally they said, “Okay, prove it!”
- So, I got up and I walked over to the girl before she got on the bus.
- I told her my friends didn’t think I was brave enough to get her phone number, but I wanted to prove them wrong.
- She laughed, and she wrote down a phone number for me.
- Back I went to my friends and showed them the number.
- They couldn’t believe it, but they congratulated me.
- The funny thing is that when I tried calling the number later, I couldn’t get ahold of her.
- I can’t remember if the number was disconnected or if she gave me the wrong number, but I for sure didn’t actually have her phone number.
- So, I think she got the last laugh.
- The reason I tell that story is because when we don’t think someone can do something they say they can, one of the first thoughts that comes to mind is “Okay, prove it!”
- That’s what Pharaoh does here...
- He didn’t want to believe that God had the power to protect Israel’s livestock, so he said, “Prove it”, by sending someone to check on Israel’s livestock.
- This verse has to make you and I smile.
- This is the fifth plague that God has sent on Egypt, and yet Pharaoh sends someone to check on whether or not God actually did what He said He was going to do.
- Once again, we see his stubbornness.
- He didn’t believe God that this plague was coming, and when he saw that it did happen, he didn’t want to believe that Israel’s livestock were protected.
- I guess maybe he thought God didn’t have the power to kill his livestock and keep Israel’s livestock alive at the same time…
- Perhaps he thought he could turn around and say, “You might have killed my livestock, but you were powerless to protect your own.”
- I don’t know what was going through his head…
- All I know is that this person came back and told Pharaoh, “Yes, it happened just like God said it would. Not one of their livestock is dead, but all of ours are!”
- Pharaoh learned, once again, that if God says it’s going to happen, it will happen just as He says.
- The powerful hand of God proved to Pharaoh that He alone had the power, and Pharaoh’s resistance was futile.
- What about us as Christians?
- Do we sometimes doubt God, and want proof that what He says is true?
- I think we all would say yes, there are times when we do.
- But as I was thinking about this, my thoughts went back to the Apostle Thomas.
- He’s better known as Doubting Thomas because he was always doubting the Lord and questioning Him.
- But the one story about him that most people know is when Jesus appeared to the other 10 disciples when he wasn’t there.
- When Thomas came later, the other disciples were all excited and shared the good news with him.
- Yet he said, “I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it unless Jesus comes here and proves it to me. I need to touch the scars in His hands and the wound on His side.”
- Good old Thomas didn’t believe, yet then, Jesus appeared, and held out His powerful hands for Thomas to see and touch.
- Jesus proved to Thomas that He truly was risen from the dead, and He truly was the Messiah.
- You and I today won’t see Jesus face to face while on this earth.
- He’s at the right hand of the Father until the day He returns for us, so we won’t see Him until we’re raptured, or we’re in Heaven with Him.
- Yet the powerful hand of God can still prove to us that He is our Savior and Lord and He is real and His Word is True.
- He proved it when He sent the Holy Spirit to us the day we believed on Him…
- He proves it constantly over and over again as He brings us through trials as He intercedes before the Father for us…
- He proves it to us as He does amazing miracles in our lives, providing in ways we’d never think possible, or healing us of sickness, or any number of miracles He can do.
- And when we pray to Him, He proves it to us by listening to our prayers and answering according to His will.
- We believe, and as Jesus told Doubting Thomas, “Blessed are those who do not see me and yet believe.”
- Beloved, the powerful hand of God is much more powerful than you or I can ever imagine.
- And it will never grow weary, it will never get smaller, it will never push us away.
- If you’re a follower of Christ, the powerful hand of God is on your side, and that’s a good thing.
- If you’re here today or watching on tv and you don’t have a relationship with Jesus Christ, then sadly, the powerful hand of God is something you should fear.
- His hand will someday send you to the lake of fire for eternity.
- But it doesn’t have to be that way.
- The powerful hands of Jesus Christ were nailed to the cross, and He hung on that cross for the sin of the world, mine and yours.
- Believe on Him today, give your life to Him, and He will welcome you into His family with open arms.
- Don’t delay.
- Do so today, and you will know, without a shadow of a doubt, that when you die, you will be with Him for all of eternity.
- Let’s take a moment to think on God’s Word from this morning.
