Wed.’s Devo - The First Seven Plagues

Read: Ex. 7:14-9:35
Yesterday, Moses had shown Pharaoh his staff that turned into a serpent who ate the other staffs-turned-into-serpents. This hadn’t impressed Pharaoh enough to convince him to let Moses take the people to sacrifice. So, God told him to meet Pharaoh at the Nile when he went to get his morning drink and turn it to blood. Not only that water turned to blood but all the water in the land that came from the Nile turned to blood. Pharaoh went about his business and they had to get water by digging wells. This is always the first act of God - to change from water to blood. Jesus first miracle was to turn water to wine. God always brings the dead to life and life is in the blood.
Then came the frogs, gnats, flies, the plague on the livestock, boils and hail. Their magicians could imitate the first two but when the gnats came they admitted it was the finger of God that did this.
On the fourth plague, the flies, God made a distinction between the Egyptians and the Israelites and the flies didn’t come into the Israelites homes. Jesus was sent in the fourth millennium to make a distinction between his people and Satan’s. Pharaoh tried to control their worship. Pharaoh told Moses they could sacrifice to their god but it needed to be in Egypt. Moses explained that their animal rights laws would cause them to be stoned if they sacrificed there. They had the same problem we do today. They thought it was okay to sacrifice their children, but not animals.
Pharaoh was still hardened when he saw that the Israelites didn’t lose a single animal in the plague. In the sixth plague, the boils, the magicians were rendered inoperable. The seventh plague was one of total destruction. All of the plagues correspond to what God created in creation. Notice that it destroyed all the harvest of that time but not the harvest to come. God always leaves a remnant.
All these plagues were against the gods of Egypt. I don’t have room to explain what these gods were but there is plenty of information about them on the web. God wanted Pharaoh to know that he was the only God.
Lord, we realize this is also a picture of the end time judgment. We pray that the harvest will all come in before that time and that you would use us to bring it in.