Exodus 8:16-19 - The Third Mighty Sign – From Dust to Gnats
Notes
Transcript
The Word Read
The Word Read
Please remain standing for the reading of the Holy Scripture. Hear the Word of the Lord from Exodus 8:16-19:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats in all the land of Egypt.’ ” And they did so. Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and there were gnats on man and beast. All the dust of the earth became gnats in all the land of Egypt. 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.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
Behold, brothers and sisters, this is the Word of the Lord. Please be seated.
Exordium
Exordium
Dear Church,
I invite you to open Holy Scripture to Exodus 8:16-19 this morning.
There appears to be some cycle in the 10 plagues. There are 3 cycles of 3 lead to the 10th and final plague. Plagues 1, 4, and 7 occur in the morning. Plagues 2, 5, 8 start with the Lord’s instruction to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh.” Plagues 3, 6, and 9 do not give any warning or announcement. This is what we see in these verses. There is no going to Pharaoh, and there is no warning. The plague occurs quickly and swiftly.
Last week, we saw how Yahweh is the true God of fertility, creation, child-birthing, and eternity, not the Egyptian goddess Heqet. In our passage this morning, we find that the magicians know something. When the magicians tell Pharaoh, “this is the finger of God,” we will be pulled into a cosmic war between Egyptian gods, and the magicians coming to understand they are dealing with a supernatural or divine being and they are unable to compete with Him.
The sermon title is , “The Third Mighty Sign - From Dust to Gnats.” There are two sections to this sermon, 1) Exodus 8:16-17 - Gnats Everywhere , and 2) Exodus 8:18-19 - The Finger of God.
Exodus 8:16-17 - Gnats Everywhere
Exodus 8:16-17 - Gnats Everywhere
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats in all the land of Egypt.’ ” And they did so. Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and there were gnats on man and beast. All the dust of the earth became gnats in all the land of Egypt.
As I mentioned earlier, there is no introduction to the third plague. The Lord commands Moses to tell Aaron to stretch out his staff, strike the dust, and it will become gnats. Aaron does as Moses commands him. Now, there’s a little confusion about what “gnats” are specifically. Some, like Matthew Henry, believe this to be lice. Some believe these are mosquitoes. And some fleas. Whatever they are specifically, we can tell they are burdensome to those who live in Egypt.
Do you notice how the gnats were created? They were created from the dust of the earth. We may remember the creation story. The Bible begins with these three sentences:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
What do these verses reveal? There is a lack of order and content. However, the end of Genesis 1:2 states that the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. There is an anticipation that God will bring order and provide content. Over 6 days God speaks order and content into the heavens and the earth. On day six, God creates humanity in His image. Genesis 2:7 captures God creating or forming Adam.
then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Did you notice how God formed Adam? Adam was created from the dust of the ground. An earth without order has order by the seventh day of creation. Remember where the gnats came from? The dust of the earth. Genesis tells the story of creation while the 10 plagues tell the story of de-creation in the land of Egypt.
Why? Why must Yahweh bring disorder and de-creation to Pharaoh, Egypt, and the people? Yahweh desires to take the people of Israel out of their oppression, lead them to Mount Sinai where they will worship Him, then lead them to the Promised Land, but Pharaoh won’t let them go. So the land of Egypt must go through a process of de-creation as Yahweh creates His people for His glory. Remember this is precisely what Yahweh told Moses at the burning bush.
But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go.
The gnats crawl, hop, walk, and scurry on man and beast so that Pharaoh would let the people of Israel go. Yahweh will get the glory over Pharaoh. One day, the freed people of Israel will sing Psalm 29 together. They will adore Yahweh. They will sing of His glory and strength. They will give Him glory due to His name. They will worship Him in the splendor of His holiness. They will sing that His voice thunders over the waters. A voice that is mighty and full of majesty.
Exodus 8:18-19 - The Finger of God
Exodus 8:18-19 - The Finger of God
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.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
The scene shifts from the gnats to the magicians. They attempt to imitate this plague just as they did previously. However, this time they cannot reproduce Yahweh’s strike. The magicians, who are God’s enemies, have limitations. They tell Pharaoh, “this is the finger of God.”
This whole scene with the magicians is full of truths and applications for us. Like the magicians, Satan and all of God’s enemies have limitations. Satan is indeed a powerful spiritual being. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that Satan is the god of this world or this age, but even he is limited in what he can do. Think of the beginning of Job. Satan attacked Job, but only after He received permission from the Lord. Satan, though powerful, is limited.
From our own experience, we know there are times when the oppression from the enemy is great. There are times when the temptations they bring are overwhelming. The lusts of sin are put in front of our face, and we partake - we sin. We know what happens next. That fruit, that work of the flesh looked so beautiful. It looked like a luscious fruit, but upon biting into the fruit, it turned out to be nothing more than poison. The enemy then brings words of condemnation. “How could you speak to your spouse like that? How could you lose your temper on your children in that manner? Did you say those words about a fellow brother or sister in Christ? Why did you let your eyes linger on that man or woman and let those thoughts enter your mind?”
You might be thinking, where is the encouragement? Where is the enemy’s limitation that you spoke of earlier? The magicians could not stop Yahweh’s redemptive purpose in the Exodus. The people of Israel were to be freed from Pharaoh. They could do nothing to stop Yahweh. Likewise, Satan and his demons cannot stop the redemptive plan and purpose for those who belong to Christ. No matter your day or week, if you truly belong to Christ, the enemy can do nothing to take you from the Lord. John 10:28-29:
I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
So a first limitation of the enemy is they cannot take you away from God. Our salvation is eternally secure if we have covenant with God.
A second limitation of the enemy is that they cannot keep us from the throne of God while we live here on earth. This is an incredible limitation. When we sin, the Spirit of God begins to 1) convict us of our treason against a holy God, and 2) encourages and provokes us to run to the throne of God, through Jesus the Mediator, to find pardon for sin. The Spirit implores us to find grace and mercy at the throne of God instead of hiding like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
The Father loves to see His repentant children run to Him. He loves to pardon His children when they come before Him humbly seeking forgiveness. We have a plethora of promises in Scripture of God willing to forgive His children of sin when they humbly seek Him.
Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper,
but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.
“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Promises of pardon fill the pages of Scripture. Satan and his minions cannot stop us from coming to the great throne of God, finding pardon, and communing with Him. God has put significant limitations on the enemy for our good and His glory.
The magicians have limitations, and they fight against Yahweh. They tell Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” This is significant wording and brings us into Egyptian mythology. As we all know, the Egyptians worshipped many gods and goddesses. There were a pair of gods, brothers Osiris and Seth. Osiris was the first king or pharaoh of Egypt. Seth was jealous of his brother and sought to kill him by drowning him in a river. The attempt was unsuccessful. Seth then captured Osiris and cut him into 14 pieces. Seth wanted the throne for himself. However, there was a small problem - Osiris’s son, Horus. A battle raged for decades between these two gods. Horus, the protector god, who fought against injustice, vs. Seth, the god of chaos and violence. During their battle, Seth constantly threatens to damage Horus’s eyes. Eventually this threat became a reality. The finger of a god damaged Horus’s eye.
I don’t think the magicians were attributing the gnats or any of the plagues to their own gods. I believe the magicians were beginning to understand the power of Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews. They realized they could not produce the same results they saw. At this moment they said, “This is the finger of God.”
The wording “the finger of God” appears in 3 other places in Scripture.
And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.
And the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words that the Lord had spoken with you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.
But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
“The finger of God” reveals, 1) The creative power of God, or put another way - His bigness, 2) His redemptive power, 3) His glory in working in the affairs of humanity. As I reflected upon “the finger of God,” I think, in someways, we’ve forgotten the great power of our Lord, and maybe we need to be reminded.
The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord, over many waters.
The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice;
let the many coastlands be glad!
Clouds and thick darkness are all around him;
righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
Fire goes before him
and burns up his adversaries all around.
His lightnings light up the world;
the earth sees and trembles.
The mountains melt like wax before the Lord,
before the Lord of all the earth.
For many decades, perhaps even more than a century, churches have moved from a “God-centered” perspective to a “man-centered” one. God is no longer big in sermons, Bible studies, and Sunday school classes. Instead, man dominates sermons and lessons. The glory of God is no longer pursued. Instead, there is a desire to entertain the masses. In doing so, we’ve forgotten that Sunday worship is not about us. It’s not about how we feel. It’s not about our personal preferences. Worship is coming into the very presence of God as a local body for one primary purpose - to glorify and magnify Him!
Our magnifying, exalting, extoling, and glorifying Him should not be limited to Sunday mornings. We should constantly be proclaiming the greatness of our God. Grandparents, when you are with your grandchildren, do you tell them about the greatness of the living God? When you sit with them over a meal, do you tell them that the Lord is eternal? He is everlasting to everlasting (1 Chronicles 16:36). When they sit in your lap looking for a hug, do you tell them of God’s great love? Nothing can separate true children of God from Him in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:39).
Parents, when we see our children running headlong into wicked and rebellious sin, do we issue warning along with the great mercy of God? We plead with them to stop sinning, warning them that their path will lead to God’s painful, but loving discipline. In doing this, we also remind them that God is faithful and just to forgive their sins if they confess them to Him (1 John 1:9).
Have we reminded our neighbors and friends of the greatness of God? Have we told them Psalm 34:8:
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
Maybe we’ve forgotten the power of our great and living God. Now, perhaps you are thinking, “Well if I saw what the magicians saw I’d believe more. If I saw God pouring out plagues on His enemies, then yes, I would boldly declare what the magicians declared, ‘Pharaoh, this is the finger of God!’ Yet, I’ve not seen anything like this so isn’t it unfair for me to keep proclaiming the bigness and greatness of God when I’ve not seen anything that big?”
If you have your Bible, please turn to Romans 1:15. Paul, the author of Romans, wrote the church in Rome. The big theme of Romans is the righteousness of God. God judges unrighteous and true righteousness is found in, and only in, the saving work of Jesus Christ. In the introduction, which spans Romans 1:1-17, Paul writes these words:
So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
I love that Paul was eager to preach the Gospel to the church in Rome. We read the pages of Acts and clearly see his desire to proclaim the Gospel to unbelievers, but he also loved preaching the Gospel to the family of God.
Did you hear and see why Paul is not ashamed of the gospel? It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. If you have repented of sin, been claimed by Christ in salvation, then you have experienced the power of God. This power, the power of God in the Gospel, saves you from the dominion of sin. You have escaped the grasp of the enemy. You are now in a right relationship with God. We don’t get to claim, “I’ve never seen the power of God like the magicians did.” We have miraculously experienced the power of God inwardly. Our hearts were transformed from hearts of stone and have become hearts of flesh. This is why believers never tire of hearing the Gospel. We never tire of hearing the glorious story of the Old Rugged Cross. We preach the Gospel to ourselves every day because we are reminded of the power of God in our own lives. The elders are studying the book of James together. This week we studied James 3:1-18. As we looked at the wickedness of the tongue one elder said something along the lines of, “this is a reminder of how wicked and sinful we are, and how much we all need God.” How that sentence was said moved me. My eyes began to leak a little bit. In a moment, I was reminded of how much I still need the saving graces of Christ each and every day.
We have experienced something far greater than the magicians saw in this third plague. They came to the end of themselves and said, “This is the finger of God bringing these plagues.” We’ve come to the end of ourselves and said, “We need the finger of God to save us from the power of sin. We need to be redeemed!”
Conclusion
Conclusion
In our passage we see three categories of people, 1) Moses and Aaron who are in covenant relationship with the Lord, 2) The magicians who understand there is a great divine behind these plagues, and 3) Pharaoh who continues to have a hard heart. Are you Moses and Aaron who are in covenant relationship with Christ? You know you’ve repented and been bought by the blood of Christ Jesus. You long to see Him face to face. You long for the day when He comes again and you shall be made like Him (1 John 3:3).
Or maybe you sit here this morning and your heart is like that of the magicians. You know there is a powerful Creator. You’ve looked up into the heavens and can see the glory of God, but you’ve not yet repented of sin. You are not yet in covenant relationship with God through Christ. Would you call out to Him this morning? Would you repent of sin and plead with Jesus to save you from your sin that separates you from God?
Maybe you are Pharaoh. Your heart is opposed to God and all His workings. You have family and friends who declare to you the excellencies of the Gospel, but like Pharaoh you walk away without listening. The Day of Judgment is soon approaching. Don’t let your heart remain hardened. Look into the Word of God and see Him. See His power, majesty, and holiness. Know that you need Christ to stand before Him.
As we close this morning, let us remember the greatness of our God. He is the God who brought gnats from the dust. He is the God who has sovereign rule and reign over the entire universe. Let us never tire to meditate on His majesty, glory, and power, seeking to tell others of His wondrous love that can be theirs in Christ Jesus.
