The Story of Moses : Exodus 7
Pastor Jefferson M. Williams
Chenoa Baptist Church
05-04–2025
So far
So far, we have witnessed Moses’s miraculous rescue from the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter. He was raised in the Egyptian palace and was considered to be in line to be the next Pharaoh.
But Moses never forgot who he was and when he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew worker, he killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand.
He truly thought that was the beginning of the revolution and that he would lead the Israelites out of slavery. But the Hebrews turned on him, his adopted grandpa offered a bounty for his head, and he ran away to the land of Midian.
He married, had children, and tended his father-in-law’s sheep for him. He thought he had missed his chance to be a leader but God thought differently.
God appeared to him in a burning bush and commissioned him to go back to Egypt and take on the most powerful person in the world and tell him, “Let my people go!”
Moses spends the whole conversation making excuses about why he is not the right person for the job. God ignores his excuses and promises that His power and presence would go with him.
Finally, Moses obeys and, with his brother Aaron as spokesman, he goes to the elders of Israel and tells them of his burning bush experience.
The elders believed him and they all went to Pharaoh to demand the release of the Hebrew people. That day goes from bad to worse. Pharaoh declares that the slaves are lazy and then makes their work a thousand times harder by denying them the straw they use in making bricks.
The Hebrew elders attack Moses and Aaron, accusing them of making the Israelites a stench in the nostrils of Pharaoh.
Moses prays but his questions for God are really accusations. He accused God of making things worse, of forcing him to do this mission that he wasn’t cut out for, and for not knowing what He was doing.
Instead of striking him dead with a lightning bolt, God makes six promises to Moses and to the Israelites:
Pharaoh will let you go
I am still God
I will keep My promises
I will free you and redeem you
I will be your God and you will be My people
I will bring you out of Egypt and into the Promised Land
Now, it’s time for the main event. The showdown between Yahweh, the Sovereign God of the Universe and Pharaoh, who thought he was a god.
If you want a sneak peak of what this might look like, watch this:
[Avengers: End Game - “Puny God” clip]
Pharaoh doesn’t say, “I’m a god you dull creature”. But he does taunt Moses and Aaron when they demand the release of the Israelite people:
"Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the wilderness.’” Pharaoh said, “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.” (Exodus 5:1-2)
Pharaoh is about to find out who the Lord is and the wheels are set in motion for the Israelites to leave Egypt for good.
Please turn with me to Exodus 7.
Prayer.
Obedience
Then the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country.
Moses was to be God’s representative and Aaron was Moses’s mouthpiece. They are to faithfully speak all the words of God to Pharaoh.
Let me pause here to remind us that we have the same mission. We are God representatives here on earth and we are to be faithful to share God’s Word with the people around us.
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-20)
This week, I was told about a situation in which a CBC person made a conscious decision to be Jesus to someone hurting and in need. She didn’t solve the problem but she brought the hope of the Gospel to her friend.
It’s been said:
"Be careful how you live. You may be the only Bible some person ever reads.”
Hard Heart
But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.”
So did God harden Pharaoh’s heart or did Pharaoh harden his own heart?
The answer to that question is yes.
Pharaoh’s heart was already hard. Remember, the people considered him a god and he did as well. We will see, time and time again, God giving Pharaoh a chance to change his heart.
But Pharaoh resists. Then God merely allows his hardness to take its course, which leads to his defeat and death.
Listen, God still does that today. Time and time again, you hear the Gospel. And time and time again, you reject it, you harden your heart. If you say, “Leave me alone, God!” He will honor your request.
The writer of Hebrews, quoting David in Psalm 95, wrote:
“God again set a certain day, calling it “Today.” This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” (Hebrews 4:7)
Stop running away from Him and run toward Him. Today is your day!
God tells Moses and Aaron that it is time for the main event. These “mighty acts of judgements” will be ten plagues that God will bring upon Pharaoh and Egypt. The word “plague” means “a blow or wound inflicted on another.”
And what is the purpose of the plagues? We will look at several in a minute but God says here the plagues are designed to let Egypt know that He is the real God and the only One worthy of worship.
The Egyptians were given the opportunity to follow the real God and , as we will see, some did.
If you’re not Dead…
Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord commanded them. Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three when they spoke to Pharaoh.
The time of Moses’s excuses and hesitating are over. They obeyed God, no questions asked.
Moses was 80 and Aaron 83 when they set off the second time to confront Pharaoh.
They were just getting started!
My Uncle Johnnie died a couple of weeks ago. He was the last living sibling on my mother’s side. At the age of 80+, he wrote his life story and published it last year. It’s 562 pages long.
It is an absolute treasure trove of information that I didn’t know about him or that part of my extended family.
I know it is a priceless gift to my cousins Steven and Stephanie.
The best thing about the book is his retelling of how he and Aunt Peggy became born again Christians. He quotes Scripture and gives glory to God for any success he may have experienced.
You don’t have to write a 500 page book. My dad wrote little snippets about his time on the farm and his pet pig Curly. It’s in my safe and will be passed down to my children.
Remember D.L. Moody’s breakdown of Moses’s life:
“Moses spent forty years thinking he was somebody; forty years learning he was nobody; and forty years discovering what God can do with a nobody.”
Remember, if you’re not dead, you’re not done!
Miracle Time
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Perform a miracle,’ then say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh,’ and it will become a snake.”
God tells them in advance that Pharaoh will demand a sign, basically their credentials, the reason he should pay any attention to them at all.
Back in Exodus 4, in the burning bush encounter, God told him that there would be three signs. The first would be his staff turning into a snake.
So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake.
Why did it have to be snakes?
Remember, that the staff wasn’t magical. It was the Lord doing the miracle.
Why a snake? This was a sign with a symbolic meaning. The snake was the symbol of Egyptian power.
Moses had yielded a scepter with a snake on it as the heir to the Pharaoh’s throne. Pharaoh’s crown had an enraged female cobra on it as did the bracelet on his arm.
This is the first strike in the war. But Pharaoh wasn’t impressed.
Fake Miracle Time
“Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs.”
Egyptians believed magic was the thread sthat held everything together.
Pharaoh called his magicians who threw down their staffs and they also became snakes.
There are several explanations for how they did this. Even today, snake charmers are able to pick up Cobras by the back of the neck, bend their heads backwards, and the snake becomes rigid and paralyzed. Once they put it on the ground, the snake recovers and slithers away.
Maybe this is how they did it. Or it could be demonic power that allowed them to change a rod into a snake.
Jesus warned of false prophets doing fake miracles by the power of satan.
We actually know the names of two of these magicians. Paul wrote to Timothy about false teachers:
“Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth.” (2 Tim 3:8)
So there were a bunch of snakes writhing around on the ground in front of them. But, to their amazement, Aaron’s snake ate the other snakes!!
That should have gotten Pharaoh’s attention. Nope!
Yet Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had said.
Just as the snake swallowed the other snakes, God was giving Pharaoh a sneak peek into how his hard heart would lead him to be swallowed up by the Red Sea.
Egyptian Religion
The Egyptians were a polytheistic religion, meaning they worship many gods. There were about 3,000 gods in their pantheon, with 80 major gods and goddesses.
They were also pantheistic, meaning they attributed divinity to the land, the sky, the sea.
In this showdown between Yahweh and Pharaoh, God will take on the Egyptian gods one by one and show that they are absolutely powerless before Him.
The Plagues
Why did God use plagues to make his point?
To reveal His omnipotence and Pharaoh’s helplessness
To demonstrate His protective power in shielding His people from the effects of the plagues.
To punish the Egyptians of their cruel treatment of His people
To show judgment against the false gods of the Egyptians.
To show other nations what happens when you mistreat His people
To test the Israelites and to get them ready to leave Egypt.
To strengthen the faith of Moses and Aaron
The first three plagues (blood, frogs, gnats) harassed the people; the second three caused them pain, and the last three terrified them. The last plague destroyed any resistance and caused mourning and wailing from the palace to the peasants.
Plague One - Blood
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is unyielding; he refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he goes out to the river. Confront him on the bank of the Nile, and take in your hand the staff that was changed into a snake.
As we saw with his daughter, Pharaoh also worshipped the gods of the Nile every morning. 80 years after she rescued Moses from the Nile, Moses confronts the Pharaoh.
The Nile was the life blood, pun intended, of Egypt. Without the Nile, there would be no Egypt. The country of Egypt is not habitable without the summer flooding of the Nile, creating incredibly fertile land. From the Nile, Egyptians got their drinking water, food (fish), and a place to bathe. It was a waterway for transportation and provided irrigation for farming.
Pharaoh would have sung praises to Hapi, the supreme god of the Nile,. Hopi represented fertility.
Pharaoh would have given glory to Osris, the god for whom the Nile was his very bloodstream and to Isis, the goddess of the Nile. He would have offered thanks to Khnum, the guardian of the Nile.
During this worship time, Pharaoh would have looked over and thought, “Really, you again?”
Moses replied, “Yep, get used to this.”
Then say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to say to you: Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness. But until now you have not listened. This is what the Lord says: By this you will know that I am the Lord: With the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood. The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink; the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water.’”
Again, the purpose was that Pharaoh would know that Yahweh is the one, true God.
Miracle Time
The Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt—over the streams and canals, over the ponds and all the reservoirs—and they will turn to blood.’ Blood will be everywhere in Egypt, even in vessels of wood and stone.” Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood. The fish in the Nile died, and the river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water. Blood was everywhere in Egypt.
Now, you might say, “Jeff, I’ve seen the red tide in Florida. That’s what happened here.”
There is a Hebrew word for blood and a Hebrew word for red. Here, Moses uses the word for blood.
This miracle happened suddenly, not over a period of time. And at the end of seven days, it turned back into water.
It really was blood and the Egyptians hated blood! That’s why the Israelites couldn’t do their sacrifices in the land because they involved blood.
And now, the very source of life in Egypt was blood. The Nile was blood, the streams and ponds were blood, even full water jars turned to blood.
Their food source was gone - all the fish died. Their drinking water was gone. Their ability to bathe was gone. The river, once a source of life and beauty, now smelled absolutely terrible.
This would have disrupted life in Egypt as they knew it. Everything would have come to a standstill.
Much like it did past week when the entire power grid of Spain and Portugal went down completely.
If I was Pharaoh, I would have told Moses that I was sorry and please take your people and go.
But the Egyptian magicians did the same things by their secret arts, and Pharaoh’s heart became hard; he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said. Instead, he turned and went into his palace, and did not take even this to heart.
It seemed that the magicians just made more blood! They could have really shown their power by turning the blood back into water but satan can only copy, he can’t create.
Pharaoh shrugged, made thinking this was amusing and just turned and walked back to his throne.
And all the Egyptians dug along the Nile to get drinking water, because they could not drink the water of the river.
Now, just like the Israelites were frantically searching for straw, the Egyptian people were in a panic, digging into the dirt near the river to get fresh water. I can imagine them asking, “Where is Hapi? Or Isis? Or Osris? Or Khnum? Why can’t they fight this silly Hebrew god? Where did they go? Why aren’t they helping us? Without water we will die. Without food we will die. We have no hope without the Nile.”
Communion:
What are you putting your hope in? In our culture, we don’t worship rivers but we are as spiritually parched as those frantic Egyptians.
We put our hope in popularity, power, or prestige. We cling to our money, our possessions, our reputation, or our titles.
But when all that is taken away, where do we find our hope?
In John 4, Jesus meets a woman at a well.
Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
First of all, she’s a woman and the rabbis didn’t talk to women. But Jesus did.
Second, she’s a Samaritan and Jewish people didn’t talk to Samaritans. But Jesus did.
Third, she was at the well at noon, alone, in the heat of the day. Most people drew water from the well in the cool of the morning. This woman was some kind of outcast. Rabbis didn’t talk to outcasts. But Jesus did.
The woman recognized that He was breaking the rules:
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
Jesus then peaks her curiosity by offering her something she couldn’t get from the well:
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
Obviously, she doesn’t understand:
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
I can imagine Jesus smiling and leaning in:
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
This sounds too good to be true but she wants it:
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus knows that she still doesn’t understand. So he gets to the root of what she places her hopes in:
He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
“I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
He is not shaming her but merely laying her heart bare and it makes her uncomfortable. She wants to argue about theology. ?
The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
Remember, Jesus had to go through Samaria because he had an appointment with a woman whose soul was dry and needed living water. She had been to the well of relationships and she thought that would give her security, safety, hope. But she had been let down time after time.
She was undone by His love and offer of living water, water that would not only satisfy her thirst but also her soul. And it changed her.
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
In her excitement, she literally starts a revival!
Again, let me ask, what are you putting your hope in? What, if taken away from you, would destroy you?
This woman might have been singing psalm 25 as she skipped down the road:
“No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame…” (Psalm 25:3)
Ending Song: All My Boast is in Jesus
Mercy Fund: I Surrender All
