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About Jesus Steve Sweetman This Chapter 6:28 to 7 ch. 6:28-7:5 ch. 7:6-13 ch. 7:14-24 Aaron
To Speak For Moses (ch. 6:28 to 7:5) In
verses 28 to 30 we see the command of God again to Moses to go to
Pharaoh and tell him to free the Jews.
Again, in verse 30, Moses tells God that he has faltering lips
and doesn't do a good job at speaking.
This is the third time Moses mentions this to God, as if God
doesn't know. Well, God
knows all things. God didn't
choose Moses because he was a good speaker or a bad speaker.
To God that was not relevant. In
the NIV, chapter 7 flows on from chapter 6, and is part of the same
section that begins with chapter 6, verse 28. In
verses 1 and 2 God tells Moses that he will be like God to Pharaoh, and
that Aaron will be like his prophet.
Moses would tell Aaron all that he hears from God.
Aaron would receive what Moses says as if Moses was God Himself.
Then Aaron would repeat it to Pharaoh as if he were the prophet
of God. This would get
around Moses' speech problem that some suggest was stuttering.
After
saying all of that, in verses 3 to 5 God then tells Moses that He will
harden Pharaoh's heart so Pharaoh won't listen to Aaron.
There is one reason why God does this.
Because Pharaoh refuses God's will, God will judge him and his
nation for their disobedience. He
will judge If
you struggle over the idea that God would step into humanity and make
someone's heart hard, God certainly has a specific reason when He does
things like that, and in this case it was to show Himself to the world
to be who He really is. It
was also meant to bring judgment on a ungodly nation.
The judging of The
same will happen at the end of this age, when the anti-christ rules the
world and God brings judgment on him and all the nations of the world.
We
will note that Moses'
Staff Becomes A Snake (ch. 7:6 - 13) In
verses 6 and 7 we note that both Moses and Aaron obeyed the Lord and
went to Pharaoh. This
obedience was truly a test of faith and trust in God.
They're going to the king who they know will refuse their
request. How many of us
would do the same? We
learn in verse 7 that Aaron was eighty three years old at the time,
while Moses was eighty years old. Moses
spent roughly the first forty years of his life in Egypt
and the second forty in Midian.
Once again liberal scholars see these two forty year periods as
either symbolic. They also
see the whole story as a story with a moral meaning, not a historical
event. The moral of the
story is more important than the event, because the event isn't real. Conservative
scholars see this as a historical event, but some see the forty years,
and other such time periods in the Old Testament as more symbolic and
not literal. Since numbers
have a meaning, the meaning is more important than the accuracy of the
actual time period. I
believe the number of years here and elsewhere are literal.
I believe we should take the Bible as literally as possible. If
God is God, then He can design anything around His numbering system. In
verses 8 and 9 God tells Moses to perform the first set of miracles
before Pharaoh upon his request to see a miracle to prove that the God
of Israel is actually with the two men. Verses
10 to 13 recount the event before Pharaoh and his officials.
Aaron threw his staff down before the men and it became a snake.
Then Pharaoh called in all of his magicians, wise men, sorcerers,
and everyone he could think of that could duplicate this miracle,
and someone did actually duplicate it.
The problem for Pharaoh is that Aarons staff ate up the staffs of
all the men who attempted to duplicate the procedure.
This
tells us something very clearly. This
whole event between Pharaoh and Aaron and Moses is more than human.
The whole story sounds like a fairy tale, and that's why many
liberal scholars say that it is just a story.
But there is something else going on here.
This is not a battle of men but of spirits.
This is a spiritual battle between God and the devil.
The devil is trying hard to destroy God's people because he knows
that the Saviour of the world would be born from Israel.
Satan throughout the
Old Testament attempted to destroy The
end result to this section is that Pharaoh hardened his heart towards The
Plague Of Blood (ch. 7:14 - 24) In
verse 14 God tells Moses that "Pharaoh's heart is unrelenting"
and that he will not let Israel
go. This confirms what I've
just said above. God did not
reach down and harden Pharaoh's heart against his will.
God did not interfere into the free will of man.
The miracles that God did through Aaron and Moses provided the
opportunity for Pharaoh to hardened his own heart, and that was by his
own choice. In
verses 15 to 19 God tells Moses what to do the next morning.
Aaron and Moses should go to the Beyond
the Nile turning into blood, Aaron would wave his staff and all water in
The
rest of this chapter simply states the history.
Aaron and Moses did as God commanded and Pharaoh hardened his
heart even harder as God said would happen.
You
might wonder now how Moses and Aaron felt.
After seeing the power of God, they might well be getting
excited, even though they were still in slavery.
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