Darkness and Death

I remember studying the plagues way back in my childhood Sunday School class; not exactly your typical Sunday School stuff, but Ms. Joan and my other Sunday School teachers (Mike and Kathy, Willie, Gloria) believed in teaching the whole counsel of Scripture (every part of the Bible). So we studied the plagues.

Over the years that I’ve been a Christian, I’ve read through the plagues several times (yearly read through the Bible). We went through them during my time at Bible College—OT Survey and several references in other classes. I know the plagues.

But even at that, even though I came to the plagues quite familiar, I have learned a lot.

I’ve learned that the plagues are the Lord Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, the One True God asserting His power and authority over all things.

I’ve learned that through the plagues He is systematically tearing-down the entire Egyptian belief system.

I saw, for the first time, that in bringing these plagues the Lord is exposing the sham religion of the Egyptians—all of their so-called “gods” are nothing but invented conceptions, man-made idols, false deities they bow before.

These—the plagues—are more than stories of frogs and locusts; these are stories about the Lord and His miraculous work.

In and through these stories, we see our Creator, our Sustainer, our Savior and Lord.

I have known all about the plagues for many years. Now, I can say I love the plagues—they lead me to worship the Lord more deeply than I had.

This, of course, is the purpose of the plagues. This is the Lord’s stated reason for the plagues—that Pharaoh and the Egyptians and the Israelites would see the power of the Lord and worship Him.

The Lord says to Pharaoh, over and again: “Let my people go so that they may worship me.”

The Lord is at work here, for His glory and worship. And He’s working for the good of His people.

All of this, of course, comes at quite a price for the Egyptians. Pharaoh and his people suffer a great deal—frogs, gnats, flies, hail, locusts, festering boils, on and on. It’s been rough few months to say the least.

The plagues seem to get worse and worse, more and more severe as they go. The last two plagues—darkness and death—are just that: worse than the plagues that precede them.

>If you have your Bible (and I hope you do), please turn with me to Exodus 10. If you are able and willing, would you please stand with me for the reading of God’s Holy Word. Exodus 10, beginning with verse 21:

Exodus 10:21–11:10 NIV

21 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness spreads over Egypt—darkness that can be felt.” 22 So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days. 23 No one could see anyone else or move about for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived. 24 Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and said, “Go, worship the Lord. Even your women and children may go with you; only leave your flocks and herds behind.” 25 But Moses said, “You must allow us to have sacrifices and burnt offerings to present to the Lord our God. 26 Our livestock too must go with us; not a hoof is to be left behind. We have to use some of them in worshiping the Lord our God, and until we get there we will not know what we are to use to worship the Lord.” 27 But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he was not willing to let them go. 28 Pharaoh said to Moses, “Get out of my sight! Make sure you do not appear before me again! The day you see my face you will die.” 29 “Just as you say,” Moses replied. “I will never appear before you again.” 1 Now the Lord had said to Moses, “I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here, and when he does, he will drive you out completely. 2 Tell the people that men and women alike are to ask their neighbors for articles of silver and gold.” 3 (The Lord made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and Moses himself was highly regarded in Egypt by Pharaoh’s officials and by the people.) 4 So Moses said, “This is what the Lord says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. 5 Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. 6 There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. 7 But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any person or animal.’ Then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. 8 All these officials of yours will come to me, bowing down before me and saying, ‘Go, you and all the people who follow you!’ After that I will leave.” Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh. 9 The Lord had said to Moses, “Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you—so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt.” 10 Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his country.

May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!

_______________________

Darkness

After the plague of locust, the Lord instructs Moses to stretch out his hand over Egypt. And now, without warning, darkness comes over the whole land. In an instant, it is pitch black in Egypt.

Darkness. Instant, complete darkness. Mind you, it’s not nighttime; it’s utter darkness. Neither the sun nor the moon shine. No stars in the sky.

It’s darkness that can be felt, darkness that requires one to feel around (probably a better translation of the phrase). Total darkness.

I’m often too lazy or too sure of myself to turn on a light when walking through our house or the church. On a handful of occasions, I’ve nearly killed myself walking through the church at night, and that’s even with a little bit of light creeping in from the street lights or from other parts of the church.

You’ve experienced darkness that requires one to feel around, haven’t you? You walk around with your hands outstretched, seeking to find a wall or a doorframe, a couch or table in order to get your bearings. The visually-impaired use a cane to tap around in front of them, seeking-out the various obstacles in their way.

Imagine living in complete and total darkness—darkness that can be felt—for three whole days. Imagine all the stubbed toes...

You can only imagine this, because I’m quite certain none of us have experienced it or anything like it.

We can light our homes with night lights fairly cheaply; there are streetlights, lights in the night sky, the neighbor’s annoying motion sensor light (we are that annoying neighbor, I’m afraid), not to mention the ambient light from our electronic devices.

I would wager that there’s never a time we’re in complete darkness.

It’s funny to me that during this time of year, I hear one comment more than any other:

“I hate that it gets dark so early!”

I can’t count the number of times I hear people say this.

It’s my favorite time of year (I prefer the dark), but I know it really, honestly messes with some people. People are afflicted with seasonal affective disorder—the shorter days and longer nights cause depression and anxiety.

And still, the darkness that bothers them is not complete darkness.

If we experienced three days of total, complete, unrelenting darkness, we’d freak out; we’d panic, to be sure. We’d all be committed to the asylum, but wouldn’t be able to find our way.

Without modern technology (i.e. the flashlight I have with me all the time), we wouldn’t leave our homes. No streetlights, no moon or stars to light the path, no headlights on our cars. We’d fear even the thought of going anywhere.

So it was: No one could see anyone else or move about for three days (v. 23a).

Complete, total, utter darkness aside, there is something worse going on for the Egyptians.

Of all the many “gods” and false deities the Egyptians worship, the sun god was supreme. The Egyptians worshipped the sun. Amon-Re was the supreme deity, the #1 god. Amon-Re probably would have an “Egypt’s Best god” coffee mug sitting on his desk—that is if he were real.

Every morning, the rising of the sun in the east reaffirmed the life-giving power of their god, Amon-Re.

Like every other Egyptian, Pharaoh was a sun worshipper. And even more, the pharaoh was the son of Re—the personal embodiment of the solar deity.

Given the supremacy and importance of the sun god, it was only a matter of time before the Lord Yahweh would launch a direct attack on Amon-Re. He’s already shown His superiority over the gods of the Nile and various other gods.

God saves the biggest deity for last.

But Amon-Re was not difficult to defeat. All God had to do was to shut out the light. And this, for the One who spoke light into existence is as easy as flipping a switch. Easier, even.

Imagine how dreadful this was for the Egyptians—no light at all; the sun and moon refuse to shine for three days. Every morning when you look to the East (if you could even tell which direction was East), you’d wait in vain for the sunrise.

When your god is the sun, and the sun gets blotted out, you are left with only emptiness and dread.

P.G. Ryken: “Darkness may not seem like much of a plague, especially compared to the death of men and cattle, but its spiritual significance would not have been lost on the Egyptians. God was adding insult to all their other injuries. As they groped around their homes, paralyzed by the darkness, they must have been stunned by the failure of Amon-Re and his son Pharaoh. The sun gods could not save them; even the light of day was controlled by the God of Moses.”

One doesn’t have to wonder what Pharaoh must be thinking. Over and over, the Lord has humiliated Pharaoh, showing Pharaoh to be a mere mortal, nothing more than a pawn in Lord’s hand.

Three days of darkness, and Pharaoh’s ready to wheel and deal with Moses.

Exodus 10:24 NIV

24 Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and said, “Go, worship the Lord. Even your women and children may go with you; only leave your flocks and herds behind.”

What started days ago as an offer for just the men to go and worship the Lord has now extended to all of the Israelites—men, women, children.

But not the livestock.

Pharaoh, I think, realizes he has lost, so he’s attempting to find some small victory in the midst of all this.

The Lord will not negotiate, and Moses knows this. I love what Moses says: “Not a hoof is to be left behind.”

I really wanted to entitle this sermon: “Not a hoof!” but there’s more going on here than just that.

“Not a hoof!” is absolutely right. The Lord who brings complete and total darkness upon the Egyptians will have the complete and total freedom of His people and all their possessions, livestock included.

Pharaoh, then, essentially makes a death threat against Moses:

Exodus 10:28 NIV

28 Pharaoh said to Moses, “Get out of my sight! Make sure you do not appear before me again! The day you see my face you will die.”

This threefold threat makes the justice of the next plague that much more real (keep that in mind: justice).

What’s more, this threat is Pharaoh speaking better than he knows: Moses is about to get out of his sight for good. He will not appear before Pharaoh again. Moses and all the Israelites are about to exit Egypt forever.

Before Moses leaves Pharaoh’s sight, he has one more message from the Lord.

Exodus 11:4–6 NIV

4 So Moses said, “This is what the Lord says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. 5 Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. 6 There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again.

Death

This is really just the announcement of the plague. The death of the firstborn doesn’t take place until the middle of Chapter 12 (vv. 28-30).

But the announcement of death—the death of the firstborn sons of Egypt—is absolutely devastating. It’s hard for us to fathom, to think about, to read this.

The death of the firstborn shows God’s almighty power very clearly. He is the Lord of life and death.

On the sixth day of creation, God breathed life into the man He had made in His image.

But the tenth plague brought death to the living. This was caused by Divine intervention; that is, the God of the Universe, the One True God, will step-in and take-out every single firstborn in Egypt.

The Bible is specific about this:

God Himself said, “I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt…about midnight I will go throughout Egypt.”

This is the Lord’s doing, the Lord’s work. This is the Lord’s hand smiting Egypt.

Anyone who knows anything about Egypt knows that the Egyptians were obsessed with death and the afterlife.

According to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, the Egyptians invested a larger portion of their wealth in the afterlife than any other culture in the history of the world.

The Great Pyramids and the famous tombs in the Valley of the Kings stand as testimonies to their preoccupation with death and dying. To this day, there are mummies from ancient Egypt in museums all over the world.

By bringing death and controlling death as He would, the Lord Yahweh is showing Himself to be supreme. The Egyptian gods of death are nothing; they don’t do a thing.

Moses announcing to Pharaoh that all the firstborn sons—including Pharaoh’s own son, the crown prince, the next deity in Egypt, even he is going to die, makes it clear that the God of Israel is a jealous God.

The God who says, “I will not yield my glory to another” here claims the life of Pharaoh’s son to prove that He is the One and Only God who alone deserves worship and praise.

God is powerful, He is jealous, and He is just.

Perhaps this plague, more than the others, begs the question: “Is it right for God to do this? To kill the sons of Egypt?”

It’s certainly severe. And no one was unaffected—from top to the bottom, from Pharaoh down to the female slave—they would all suffer loss and grief.

This is the justice of God, judging Pharaoh and the Egyptians for the attempted extermination of the Israelites, the people of God.

Even deeper than their treatment of the Israelites, the Egyptians, like us, deserve to die because they are sinners by nature—every last one of them.

And death has always been the wages of sin.

They were born in sin, born with a sin nature. And they (like us) committed many sins besides—worshipping idols, oppressing slaves, and so forth.

God would have been justified in putting them all to death. But He doesn’t.

The Lord even gives them ample warning, ample time to turn to Him. Nine plagues, spanning several months, should have convinced them.

But Pharaoh’s heart is hard. Pharaoh and Pharaoh’s officials are unyielding.

Death is on its way. Death follows darkness, the last of the ten plagues the Lord visits on Egypt.

Hear now, the Good News: The Lord’s people will not suffer this darkness, this death. Theirs is:

Light and Life

If you aren’t already familiar with this part of Exodus, I’m sure you picked up on the two areas of distinction in these two plagues.

While Egypt was stumbling and fumbling around in the dark, stubbing toes and running into each other, Israel was hunky-dory (that’s the Hebrew word for it).

Exodus 10:23 NIV

23 No one could see anyone else or move about for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived.

All the Israelites had light where they lived.

Nothing changed for them; they had day and night there in the land of Goshen. They enjoyed the sunrise and watched the sunset. They sat outside and looked up at the heavens, counting the stars as they remembered God’s promise to Abraham. They went to sleep with the moonlight streaming into their homes.

All the Israelites had light where they lived.

And when Egypt experiences the death of every firstborn, the Israelites are better than good:

Exodus 11:7 NIV

7 But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any person or animal.’ Then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.

Among the Israelites, not a dog will bark at any person or animal.

Literally, this verse says not a dog will stick out its tongue at any man or animal.

This is a way of saying that the Israelites and their livestock would simply see no harm whatsoever from the tenth plague—not even a dog wagging its tongue or barking.

The Lord has made a distinction between the Egyptians and the Israelites.

The Lord makes a definitive distinction between those who are His and those who are not.

For those who do not belong to Him, there is only darkness and death.

For those who are His, theirs is light and life.

Light and Life

The Lord has turned the tables on Pharaoh and the Egyptians.

The Lord makes the Egyptians favorably disposed to the Israelites; they give them all sorts of stuff at will. The Israelites ask for silver and gold and the Egyptians give it to them freely.

What’s more, the Egyptians came to thinking highly of Moses—He was highly regarded by Pharaoh’s officials.

Tables turned.

The Israelites had been the ones wailing/crying-out in their slavery and oppression.

Now the Egyptians are the ones wailing in the wake of death that sweeps across their country.

Tables turned.

Those who had worshipped Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt are now bowing before Moses in submission to him and His Lord.

Tables turned.

The work of the Lord is miraculous, complete, unmistakable.

All this is just as the Lord had said. Verses 1-3 and 9-10 are sort of flashing back, summing up, recapping what the Lord had said to Moses.

Everything had happened just as the Lord had said. Isn’t that interesting?

>The Lord brings darkness and death to the enemies of His people. And for those who belong to Him, He brings light and life.

The darkness that fell over Egypt was very real. But it also has deep spiritual significance.

In the Bible, darkness signifies error, ignorance, sin, rebellion, and death—everything that is opposed to God.

Proverbs 4:19 NIV

19 But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble.

John 3:19 NIV

19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.

Ephesians 4:18 NIV

18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.

1 John 1:6 NIV

6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.

We, friends, live in a dark, dark world.

You’d have to be living under a rock, living in complete darkness to miss the truth that our world is deeply dark.

The deeper truth is that, apart from the work of the Lord in our lives, we are stuck there: stuck in darkness.

On our own we are fumbling around, destined for destruction and death.

We need someone to step into our darkness and bring light; someone who will crush death to death and bring life.

I was so excited when I realized the plagues were going to line up with the Christmas season.

What do the plagues have to do with Christmas, you ask?

They have everything to do with Christmas.

“Yet in the dark streets shineth, the everlasting light.”—that’s Jesus, the answer to our darkness.

“Light and life to all He brings, ris’n with healing in His wings; mild He lays His glory by, born that man no more may die.”

You see what Jesus does for us? What He brings?

Jesus is Light and Life!

In a world where there is only darkness and death, Jesus comes.

Matthew 4:16 NIV

16 the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”

Matthew, quoting Isaiah, announces the start of Jesus’ ministry—a light has dawned!

John 8:12 NIV

12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

The only way to escape the coming darkness is to trust in Jesus Christ, the Light of the World.

If the Lord tarries, we will all of us die; but death for the Christian is merely a passage to new life.

Those who belong to Him won’t have to suffer darkness and death. Darkness and death are not the final word, not for Jesus’ people.

In Christ, there is no darkness at all. He has crushed death to death; He has defeated death once and for all.

In Christ, there is only Light and Life.

Apart from Jesus: darkness and death.

In Jesus, with Jesus: light and life.

What do we do with this Good News?

We don’t do what we’ve always done. We don’t harden our hearts and continue to worship our idols. We confess our fellowship with darkness. We own up to our sin and failure. We believe on our own we are destined for certain death.

We admit our need—our need for Jesus, for His light to waken us, for His life to invade ours.

I don’t know where you are this morning. Now, I know you’re here, sitting in this room. But spiritually, I have no idea where you’re at with Jesus.

Let these plagues make this much clear: apart from the Lord, there is only darkness, only death.