Latest / Relish: a Christian podcast / When Darkness Fell: The Plagues That Shook Egypt

Transcript

When Darkness Fell: The Plagues That Shook Egypt · Relish: a Christian podcast

• 0:02
  Relish pleasing or zestful flavor a quantity
• 0:05
  just sufficient to flavor to be pleased or
• 0:08
  gratified by enjoy we are hoping that what
• 0:11
  we bring to your table today might add some spice
• 0:14
  to your life welcome to another
• 0:17
  episode of relish i am roan miller and this is don
• 0:20
  patterson as always don how are you doing pretty good
• 0:22
  pretty good yeah i'm good enjoying the weather it's good
• 0:25
  stuff yep got fueled up for the morning i did
• 0:28
  i have you saw how much coffee i drank for
• 0:31
  breakfast yeah it was really good all right
• 0:35
  so i'm back here with some more q a style yeah and and i don't know what the
• 0:41
  q is before the a and and so i'm coming cold to the question let's see how good
• 0:47
  they come out today yeah we have 40 plus years of experience that gets to answer
• 0:52
  these questions without about knowing what's coming.
• 0:55
  And sometimes you would think he had time to prepare for him.
• 0:58
  And sometimes you think, my goodness.
• 1:02
  There's those times too. Yeah. Not so much the latter one.
• 1:07
  All right. We just hope it somehow answers some of the questions in your life.
• 1:11
  And maybe it might be entertaining sometimes. Yeah. And we can wrestle with
• 1:17
  this walk with Christ together.
• 1:20
  Maybe help you understand God a little better, draw you a little closer to him. I hope so.
• 1:24
  But we're going to start with some questions about the Egyptians and some of the plagues.
• 1:31
  Ooh. So just study that a little bit. Yeah. Good. Yeah.
• 1:34
  It's a fun story, but so during the plagues of Egypt, one of them was darkness
• 1:41
  over the Egyptians and the Israelites still had light, I believe.
• 1:48
  Oh. and that could well be you didn't know if that just one moment plague of darkness yeah,
• 1:56
  all over all egypt so i guess it would cover them as
• 1:58
  well okay for three days but it was
• 2:01
  not just a little darkness this was the kind of darkness that leaves everybody
• 2:04
  out i mean it was a leverage piece we can't quite imagine we've seen lunar eclipses
• 2:15
  and it makes us uneasy to have darkness in the middle of the day,
• 2:19
  but this was total darkness.
• 2:21
  I mean, according to scripture, this was total darkness. Verse 22, total darkness.
• 2:28
  Not just a little bit, it was total darkness. It definitely would be enough to make people uneasy.
• 2:35
  No one could see anyone else and leave his place for three days.
• 2:42
  Oh, yet all Israelites had light in the places where they lived.
• 2:48
  Yeah, there we go. I thought it was in there somewhere. Yes, and you're correct.
• 2:52
  What's interesting then, okay, total darkness, does that mean even no flame?
• 2:59
  Maybe. And then, you know. No cooking. And so the Israelites were all right.
• 3:04
  They could light a fire and make things happen, but for some reason or another,
• 3:08
  there's something different.
• 3:11
  It's total darkness, and I can't imagine they could just shut off the sun to
• 3:15
  all of Egypt except for little Goshen.
• 3:19
  And that could be. But that's what Scripture says. So what do we say?
• 3:24
  Well, that's what Scripture says.
• 3:26
  Somehow the Israelites had light, or if they didn't have light,
• 3:30
  they at least had the ability to make light.
• 3:33
  Yeah. And so they weren't in near the darkness that the Egyptians were under
• 3:38
  because no one could see anyone else or leave his place for three days.
• 3:44
  That's basically what's said of 23 for what the Egyptians were experiencing. So can you imagine?
• 3:50
  For some reason, I can't even light a fire. I can't even get anything to happen. Yeah.
• 3:55
  Because, I mean, that was normal. They could have done that in that era, but it could.
• 4:02
  And the Israelites could, that's cool. Yeah. So Israelites sort of like took three snow days.
• 4:11
  We're going to stay home, light the home fires and be there.
• 4:15
  Whereas the Egyptians didn't have that option.
• 4:18
  Might be one of those passages where you can't quite fully understand, can't grasp as humans.
• 4:25
  Because, I mean, you all know how light works. If there's a light,
• 4:29
  then you can see it from a ways away.
• 4:32
  And so it had been complete darkness for the Egyptians, but Israelites had light somehow just.
• 4:39
  And it doesn't say blindness, but could have been something like that.
• 4:45
  Yeah. I mean, the command that the Lord said to Moses is stretch out your hand
• 4:49
  toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt and darkness that can be felt.
• 4:56
  Yeah. Yeah. What does that mean? What does darkness mean? Ooh,
• 4:59
  the hand is on, you know, the hand of the Lord is on him.
• 5:02
  I think there was some oppressive nature to it.
• 5:06
  Okay. And possibly it was the fear, like there is, I mean, many times there's
• 5:13
  fear that surrounds a solar eclipse.
• 5:17
  And the fear that surrounds a solar eclipse would have been intensified by the
• 5:22
  kind of darkness this was.
• 5:24
  Oh, man, this is a God that could put darkness in the middle of the day? Yeah. Yeah.
• 5:30
  I think maybe we want to stand up and take notice. Yeah.
• 5:34
  And that's basically what the plagues were doing.
• 5:37
  It was God's demonstration of his power over any of the forces of nature in
• 5:43
  order to get Pharaoh's attention.
• 5:45
  And it probably got the attention of the guy on the street faster than it got Pharaoh's attention.
• 5:52
  Because Pharaoh, his heart was hardened.
• 5:56
  So it, yeah. Darkness can be really scary when you don't expect it.
• 6:02
  Yeah. In this position of power that Pharaoh has, God just showing him he has no power.
• 6:09
  Right. Compared to God, he has no power. Yeah.
• 6:12
  So you kind of mentioned it with
• 6:15
  all areas of nature, but was there any significance to the ten plagues?
• 6:23
  Yes. Yes. And the plagues basically line out in such a way that they don't leave anything untouched.
• 6:32
  Okay. Water.
• 6:36
  I mean, we look at the plague of blood, the water turned to blood.
• 6:40
  That was sort of icky. I mean, really?
• 6:42
  Yeah. Can you imagine that? Yeah.
• 6:45
  And blood has this way of smelling after a while.
• 6:50
  So when you start to think about all the ponds, all the reservoirs turned to blood.
• 6:55
  There was blood everywhere, even in the wooden buckets and stone jars.
• 7:01
  So while it turned to blood, it was actually a plague of thirst.
• 7:05
  Okay. They couldn't find water. It touched everywhere water was,
• 7:11
  which means it wasn't just hitting the Nile and then everybody took out of the Nile and it happened.
• 7:17
  It happened even in jars that were sitting on the shelf and buckets that had
• 7:22
  been drawn beforehand. Okay. All of that was turned.
• 7:25
  So it was a really comprehensive thirst.
• 7:30
  The frogs, boy, they were everywhere, even in the kneading troughs.
• 7:34
  And you i frogs i
• 7:38
  mean really yeah and gnats
• 7:41
  these are aggravations and when
• 7:45
  an aggravation gets to the point that it takes
• 7:47
  over these i mean all thirst nobody got away from the gnats nobody got away
• 7:54
  from the frog fries livestock boils hail locusts this is aggravating stuff well
• 8:03
  even in And the frogs, they all just drop dead at the end.
• 8:06
  So now you have a land just full of dead frogs.
• 8:10
  Full of dead frogs. Yeah. Icky, icky.
• 8:13
  So what does it show? Yeah.
• 8:17
  God was trying to make himself known. And I think he got the job done to everybody but Pharaoh. Yeah.
• 8:25
  And it came from so many different angles. Different kinds of,
• 8:29
  well, thirst, and then different kinds of frogs. and.
• 8:34
  Have you ever been like the locusts? I mean, very few people probably living
• 8:41
  today remember the locust infestation of the 30s.
• 8:48
  Yeah, you weren't around then. Not quite. I missed it by a couple of years. Yeah, me too.
• 8:52
  And to hear the old farmers talk about what happened when those locusts came
• 8:57
  in from Colorado and across Nebraska and Kansas, I think they came to Iowa and
• 9:03
  they just ate everything in sight.
• 9:05
  Right down. I mean, I heard them talk about eating the bark off of hedge posts.
• 9:11
  I mean, really? That's heavy duty stuff. And they just annihilated the crops.
• 9:16
  Yeah. What crops were there because the drought was in that same period of time.
• 9:20
  So not only did you have drought, but you already had these locusts that ate
• 9:25
  everything, grasshoppers that ate everything in sight.
• 9:29
  And if the house wasn't painted, they'd eat into the wood of the glidings. Wow.
• 9:37
  All the trees, all the leaves off of all the trees, they ate.
• 9:41
  Not only the corn and the crops in the field. Gardens are ripped clean, stripped clean.
• 9:50
  And so there is in American history,
• 9:53
  not so far removed from our lifetime, same
• 9:56
  an infestation like the locusts so you
• 10:00
  get a little taste yeah but then when
• 10:02
  you add it the other it was like the locusts
• 10:05
  were the last straw yeah close to last straw yeah
• 10:09
  eight so you
• 10:12
  your question was was there a theme to it yeah it
• 10:16
  was how how do you live with these
• 10:19
  aggravations i mean the first one was really bad because how do you live without
• 10:22
  water folks don't get along well without water and then from there on it was
• 10:27
  just aggravation after aggravation and the smell and yeah yeah let me let me
• 10:35
  let you know i'm god without killing you.
• 10:38
  It sort of seems what god's doing yeah yeah
• 10:41
  with the locusts like i didn't my lifetime
• 10:45
  all i've done is hurt them like i don't
• 10:48
  yeah yeah not familiar with them eating
• 10:51
  leaves off trees and stripping fields are rare but
• 10:54
  yeah yeah yeah it was mighty well i heard it from my grandparents and the yeah
• 11:03
  my grandpa patterson didn't didn't talk about it so much as my grandpa arthur
• 11:08
  did because it was mostly western kansas that was hit with them huh and yeah.
• 11:15
  Yeah. So, yeah, I think they were basically to point out that God's supreme and don't mess with me.
• 11:23
  I mean, don't mess with God. He's got it.
• 11:26
  I wonder what a plague would look like today. Hmm.
• 11:31
  Cross, like church community or- Well, I'm just saying, wouldn't that be fun?
• 11:35
  If he left the Israelites out of the flags, like several of them looked like-
• 11:40
  So would it be hit the United States and leave us out of it or- Yeah.
• 11:43
  Yeah, everybody but the Christians would be losing their crops or everybody
• 11:48
  but the Christians would be, oh, man, that would really set things up, wouldn't it? Yeah.
• 11:55
  Yeah. Yeah, especially if God's people were spared.
• 12:00
  That would definitely set a case up like we have in Egypt with the Israelites,
• 12:06
  where the people were really glad for them to go, get out of here.
• 12:13
  Well, your God's going to be doing this stuff to us. You get out of here. Yeah.
• 12:17
  And basically that followed them a lot into the future.
• 12:21
  You go into the 40 years after that and nobody wanted anything to do with these Israelites.
• 12:26
  You stayed away from us. Word had gotten around.
• 12:29
  Word had gotten around. Yeah, it really did. Yeah.
• 12:32
  And I think it was the Amorites that really didn't want them there at all.
• 12:36
  Yeah. Right. Yeah.
• 12:39
  To have that stigma as a people, there's positive, but there's also some negative in that. Yeah.
• 12:47
  We got another question here about, like, why did God harden Pharaoh's heart
• 12:54
  after some of the plagues?
• 12:56
  If I remember right, you answered this question when you came to Hillcrest,
• 13:01
  when you filmed at Hillcrest with Alex originally. Cool. I think. Can you answer it?
• 13:07
  Can you? I don't think so. So part of it was so that it could be proven without
• 13:13
  a shadow of a doubt who God is.
• 13:15
  And so if Pharaoh, Pharaoh had the freedom to let him go anytime,
• 13:20
  he really did. He could have done that any old time.
• 13:24
  But by hardening his heart, the final answer had to come from Pharaoh.
• 13:30
  And I think God wanted to make a case beyond any other, at least to every other
• 13:35
  Egyptian, that he is who he says he is.
• 13:39
  And so then he hardened Pharaoh's heart to see them through all these trials
• 13:44
  and tribulations so that at the end, when it was time to let him go, he would.
• 13:51
  Now, his heart was still re-hardened, I guess.
• 13:55
  And God used that to eliminate the threat of the Egyptians against the Israelites
• 14:01
  by ending up in the middle of the sea when it fell back in again at the crossing.
• 14:08
  Hardening Pharaoh's heart served God's purpose to help his people be free and to,
• 14:16
  to get them free of the Egyptians overall. Is that close to the answer I gave then? I think so.
• 14:24
  I wasn't 100% sure what you said then. I mean, it's been like three years.
• 14:28
  Maybe we have to go back to the recording. It's been three years,
• 14:29
  but yeah, we can go back and look.
• 14:32
  But it served a purpose. God's hardening Pharaoh's heart served a purpose to
• 14:36
  show his power to the Egyptians. Yeah.
• 14:41
  That kind of gives us a totally different perspective on the story because I
• 14:47
  mean, I always just pictured Pharaoh as the bad leader that just kept the Israelites in,
• 14:54
  but I mean, yeah, you could, you could say he didn't have an option really if
• 15:00
  God was having that much of an impact on it.
• 15:04
  And instead of it being a bad story, we're trying to get the Israelites out.
• 15:09
  It's more of like what you said, just showing God is God.
• 15:14
  God's total power. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes that has to happen.
• 15:19
  We can be hardheaded in our own right. And I'm pretty sure Pharaoh was hardheaded in his own right.
• 15:26
  But I think for God to prove his power, that all had to happen.
• 15:31
  Yeah. He had to harden Pharaoh's heart.
• 15:34
  Even when his own advisors were saying, let these people go.
• 15:38
  Yeah. And at that point in time, it was that just let us go long enough to worship God.
• 15:44
  I mean, part of Moses' plea was just let us go long enough to worship.
• 15:49
  By the time we get to the plague of the firstborn.
• 15:55
  Where the Passover came in. Then he's, after that, he say, get out of here.
• 16:00
  Just take your people and get out of here. Don't come back. We're not looking for you anymore. Yeah.
• 16:05
  And then, of course, he changes his mind on that too.
• 16:08
  Yeah. It's a very interesting passage and really illustrates God's earnest desire
• 16:16
  to give deliverance to the Israelites.
• 16:19
  Not just a little bit of deliverance. Not just, okay, we're going to move from
• 16:24
  being in Egypt out and we're going to make our own country.
• 16:28
  It was full deliverance.
• 16:30
  There weren't going to be any more ties.
• 16:34
  And by the time Jesus comes on the scene, actually Egypt is seen as a place where they could go.
• 16:43
  Because Joseph and Mary take Jesus into Egypt to get away from Herod.
• 16:48
  But so the whole attitude had changed, you know, it was a place of,
• 16:53
  yeah, kind of backwards. Exactly.
• 16:56
  Yeah. And God had to do that way back then to make it that way by the time Jesus came.
• 17:04
  So the death of the firstborn, does that include every firstborn? It did.
• 17:10
  Okay. Because in our minds, we kind of just think firstborn is in like within
• 17:14
  each household rather than actual family.
• 17:19
  And so if a parent is a firstborn as well, then. Correct. Okay.
• 17:25
  Right down the line and notice that in verse five, it goes, and the firstborn
• 17:29
  of cattle as well. Mm-hmm.
• 17:31
  And there will be loud wailing throughout Egypt. So if you think of every firstborn
• 17:36
  of every family, from the grandpas to the daddies to the sons.
• 17:43
  The cattle. Wow. There would not be a single household that would not be affected.
• 17:54
  Not a single household. And so that's what makes it so important that the Israelites
• 18:00
  prepare themselves for this Passover,
• 18:04
  because the Passover would be that time that they actually make the sacrifice,
• 18:13
  Put the blood on the lentil of the household doors, and then the Spirit of God
• 18:20
  would pass over that house.
• 18:22
  And the Spirit of Death, how do they call it? Yeah.
• 18:27
  Sometimes said in different ways, but yeah, it was devastating.
• 18:35
  Mine just says I, it doesn't even say Spirit, if anything. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
• 18:42
  I think it. The death of the firstborn foreshadows what God is going to go through in the future?
• 18:49
  Oh. I don't know. Just wondering. You mean Jesus? Yeah.
• 18:56
  Well, in the way that the blood, his shed blood, passes over our death.
• 19:05
  Because we really don't die.
• 19:07
  If we are in Christ and the blood of Christ is shed over us,
• 19:12
  we don't die the same as others do.
• 19:15
  Yeah, our body croaks, but the us that's really us beyond our physical body doesn't die.
• 19:24
  And it won't. It's given life. It's passed over.
• 19:28
  Death will happen to the carcass, but death won't happen to us.
• 19:32
  Yeah. And so in that sense, yes, it's a Passover.
• 19:38
  And a little hard for us to get our minds around these days, that kind of Passover.
• 19:44
  I think we really live an insulated life compared to what we see happening in that Exodus passage.
• 19:53
  Interesting point. The Israelites may not have all put blood on their doors. Okay.
• 20:02
  And so even Israelite homes that did not put blood on their doors would have been affected by this.
• 20:09
  It's sort of like later on when they're being bitten by snakes and dying from the venom,
• 20:16
  they make this, Lord tells Moses to make this brass snake, put it on a pole,
• 20:22
  and everybody who looks at it will be saved.
• 20:25
  But not everybody, even in the passage, not everybody looked at the snake. Let's get real, folks.
• 20:30
  Not everybody. If there's a, if there's an answer to the problem we're going
• 20:34
  through, wouldn't you take it, you know, if there's a cure for what ails us, wouldn't we do it?
• 20:42
  Yeah. Well, okay. Well, there's a cure for what ails us, and that's Jesus Christ.
• 20:48
  Yeah. And he will take care of our sin. I think that the brass serpent that
• 20:53
  you talked about is kind of interesting because it's very close to an idol.
• 21:02
  And that's why it was destroyed.
• 21:06
  Yeah. Okay. That's why later it was destroyed. Okay. Because people were worshiping
• 21:10
  that grass snake. Saved them.
• 21:13
  Because it saved them. And then, so it was destroyed.
• 21:18
  So by the time of Jesus, it wasn't there anymore. But in John chapter three,
• 21:22
  he uses that illustration as an illustration of him going to the cross.
• 21:28
  Okay. Remember that? John three. It rings a bell, but not.
• 21:33
  But it slips back to, man, I'm not as fast on my pages.
• 21:41
  Maybe I need to get that new Bible out.
• 21:43
  I've got a brand new Bible just like this, and I just am hesitant to go to it.
• 21:49
  So verse 14 of chapter 3, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert,
• 21:54
  so the Son of Man must be lifted up that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
• 22:00
  And that goes back to that Numbers 21, 8 and 9 passage that snake being lifted up in the desert,
• 22:09
  so yeah, even Jesus would bring them that attention and part of the story is and people didn't look.
• 22:21
  Okay well, be that way, be that way yeah, alright, well thank you yeah,
• 22:26
  thank you guys for joining us Thank you, Don, for a wonderful insight.
• 22:32
  Oh, I didn't turn my phone off there.
• 22:36
  Okay, we'll take care of that. Yeah. Remember to subscribe, share it,
• 22:43
  follow it. Follow it. Yeah.
• 22:46
  We don't want to be begging for that. Well, we're not looking for money other
• 22:51
  than to support the equipment and stuff that we use. But that would help.
• 22:56
  And it will it's more likely to pop up for other people,
• 23:01
  to watch as well especially the sharing of it gets it out there for other people
• 23:05
  because you might not think it's that great that maybe you'll share it with
• 23:10
  somebody who actually might be better for,
• 23:13
  we'll try to make it greater there we go,
• 23:16
  well thank you guys for joining us we will see you next time Lord willing,
• 23:20
  thank you for joining us for this podcast feel free to become part of this ministry
• 23:24
  by sharing it with others Our goal is to help each other grow deeper in our
• 23:27
  understanding of who God is and his calling to us in our daily lives.
• 23:31
  Thank you again for joining us and may God bless your day.