Lent 3
Ex.
8:16-24
3/3/13
When I was growing up in Indiana,
one of the places I really enjoyed visiting was Conner Prairie. Conner Prairie is located in Fishers, IN,
just northwest of Indianapolis. It is a
reconstruction of a settlement as it would have looked in Indiana in 1836.
As you walk in to the settlement
area, there is a sign that says, “You are entering 1836.” All the buildings fit that time period. There
are residents in the settlement who are all dressed in period clothing and all
are carrying out activities that were part of everyday life in that year. They are all “in character.” They always ask visitors about who the
president is right now. And when the
person says “Barak Obama” the Conner Prairie resident will say that, no, it is
Andrew Jackson.
Everything in Conner Prairie is set
in 1836. And every time I visited, one
thing always grossed me out – it made me glad that I lived in the modern
era. There was a house where a woman
would always be baking and cooking. It
was fascinating to see her using her wood burning oven in order to make things,
and it did smell good.
However… surrounding the baked bread
or soup that she had made were flies. And not just a few flies – there were a
lot of flies, swarming all around. They
crawled all over the food. As the woman talked she would periodically wave her
hand over the food and make them take off.
But they would just swarm right back. They flew around the food. They flew around the people. It was just nasty.
Every time I hear our Old Testament
lesson, those experiences at Conner Prairie always come to mind. We hear in our text this morning the third
and fourth plagues that God sent upon Egypt as he worked to prompt Pharaoh to
allow the Israelites to leave. Ultimately this is a contest between the true
God and false gods. As we see God working to free his people, we are reminded
that God has freed us in Christ. And at
the same time the challenge of false gods continues for us each day.
When the book of Genesis ends Joseph
is second in charge over all of Egypt.
His father Jacob and all of his extended family have come down to Egypt
and have been settled in one part of Egypt, Goshen. This was somewhere in the time period of
about 1800 years before Christ. It was the
time of the Middle kingdom in Egypt and things were good.
However, if you fast forward about
one hundred and fifty years things have changed. Around 1650 B.C. a rather mysterious group
called the Hyksos – sometimes also called “the Sea People” – came into Egypt
from the north. The Middle kingdom had
already come to an end and Egypt was in a period of weakness. The Hyksos took
advantage of this and they ended up ruling Egypt for about one hundred years.
And then, around 1540 BC the
Egyptians finally drove out the Hyksos and Egypt re-emerged as a strong
power. It emerged as a strong power –
but as a power that had just had a century long bad experience with a foreign
people in their midst. They looked
around and realized that there was another foreign people in their midst – the
Israelites. By around 1400 B.C.the Israelites
had been in Egypt for four hundred years. And God had blessed them. We hear at the beginning of Exodus, “But the
people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew
exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.”
This background helps us to
understand what we find in Exodus chapter one.
There we read: “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know
Joseph. And he said to his people, ‘Behold, the people of Israel are too many
and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they
multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us
and escape from the land.’” You know
what happened. The Egyptians enslaved
the Israelites and used them as forced labor.
The end of Exodus chapter two says,
“During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel
groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue
from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered
his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of
Israel—and God knew.”
God knew. And the time had arrived
for God to act. He called Moses as his
servant through an encounter at Mt. Sinai in which a bush was burning but as
not consumed by the fire. God announced
to Moses, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and
have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and
I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring
them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and
honey.”
God gave Moses powerful signs such
as the ability to turn his staff into a snake and then back into a staff. And
he sent Moses to Pharaoh with a message. He told Moses, “Then you shall say to
Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you,
“Let my son go that he may serve me.” If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will
kill your firstborn son.’”
Moses and his brother Aaron went
before Pharaoh. The Egyptian leader
challenged them to prove themselves with a miracle. Aaron threw down the staff
and it became a snake. So Pharaoh
summoned his sorcerers – his magicians – and they did the same thing. And
Pharaoh hardened his heart when he saw it.
God then turned the water of the
Nile into blood through Moses and Aaron.
But the magicians of Egypt came and did this as well. And Pharaoh remained hardened in his heart. Next God had Moses and Aaron bring frogs upon
the land of Egypt. But the magicians of
Egypt came and did this as well. And
when God relented with the frogs, Pharaoh hardened his heart.
Then in our text, God used Moses and
Aaron to send gnats upon the land. Once
again the magicians of Egypt stepped forward to duplicate the feat. But we hear in our text, “The magicians tried
by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they could not. So there were gnats
on man and beast. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, ‘This is the finger of
God.’” Despite their statement,
Pharaoh's heart was hardened and he would not listen to them. And then God used
Moses and Aaron to send flies upon the land of Egypt – except for Goshen were
the Israelites lived. The magicians had
already been defeated – this time they didn’t try to reproduce the
miracle. And when it was done, Pharaoh
again hardened his heart.
Our text today describes the contest
between the true God and the false gods of Egypt. That’s what the ten plagues are all
about. It’s important to understand that
in the ancient world in general, the gods, the leaders and nations went hand in
hand. Wars between leaders and their nations were really contests between the
gods of those leaders and nations. If
you won, your gods were stronger. If you lost … well maybe you needed get in
line with the gods of the other side.
Egypt and their gods hold Israel in
bondage. Moses and Aaron are dealing
with Pharaoh who is himself considered to be a god. Yahweh, the true God, the God of Israel calls
Israel his son and tells Pharaoh the false god to let Israel go. Pharaoh refuses. What is more even after his
magicians can’t duplicate the miracle and announce to him “This is the finger
of God,” he continues to become more hardened in his opposition to God.
And so finally God defeats
Pharaoh. He kills the firstborn son in
all of Egypt – including Pharaoh’s – in the Passover. Pharaoh sends Israel away, until later he
reconsiders and pursues Israel into the Red Sea where God drowns hard hearted
Pharaoh and all of his host. Yahweh
shows that he is the true God as he redeems Israel – as he frees them from
slavery.
Our text reminds us this morning
that God has redeemed us. He has freed
us from slavery – slavery to sin, death and the devil. He did it by sending his Son into the
world. Jesus Christ came to bring the
reign of God – the power of God that was turning back those evils as he freed
people and creation.
In our Gospel lesson Jesus has been
doing just that. He has cast out a
demon. And when challenged about this – when he has been accused of being in
league with the devil, our Lord says: “But if it is by the finger of God that I
cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” The most powerful
action of this reign occurred when Jesus died on the cross and rose from the
dead in order to forgive our sins.
Now, we have been freed. But the struggle is not done. Lent is a time when we emphasize this fact.
The devil is still that roaring lion prowling around, seeking someone to devour. He still uses false gods as he seeks to
re-enslave us. These are not the false
gods of Egypt like Ra and Pharaoh.
Instead they are the gods that are a perfect fit for our own time. They
are the gods of intelligence, choice, and pleasure; the gods of wealth,
entertainment and career; the gods of popularity, acceptance and prestige. In various forms these are the things that
guide our decisions. These are the
things we value most. And in the quest
for these things there is always the temptation to harden our heart. There is the temptation step by step to embrace
and conform ourselves to these things as we reject God and his claim upon us as
his redeemed people.
The season of Lent calls us to
examine our own lives and honestly assess where and how these forces are at
work. It calls us to repent – to confess where we have embraced the false gods
of our world and culture. But it does
this in the confidence that in the death and resurrection of Christ the kingdom
of God has arrived. It does this in the knowledge that through
water and the Word of Holy Baptism we have been forgiven; we have been set
free. It does this in the expectation
that the kingdom will come in all of its glory on the Last Day – and that the
false gods will be destroyed forever.
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