Exodus 7

Moses continued to express concern regarding his ability to speak. God had already solved that problem, but now He explained it again to Moses. Moses would be like God to Pharaoh. He would speak to Aaron, and Aaron would be his prophet to the king of Egypt. God had turned Moses' weakness into an advantage. Moses would display an unusual greatness by communicating to Pharaoh as God spoke through men. The Lord's message through Moses and Aaron: Pharaoh needed to let the people of Israel go.

But now, instead of this being an easy process, God was letting Moses in on some of the complexity of His great and mysterious operations among the sons of men. God would harden Pharaoh's heart. So much so, that all the great signs and wonders that the Lord performed in his sight would not be enough to induce Pharaoh to let the people go. Pharaoh would not listen to Moses. This would give the Lord an opportunity to display the wonders of His judgment.

This is what Moses and Aaron did. These two men in their eighties spoke to Pharaoh using the prophetic system that God had given them in order to convey the Word that God had for this oppressive leader. This is how they would display their authority as God's ambassadors.

Moses and Aaron would be a God-and-prophet display before Pharaoh. Moses would tell Aaron not only what to say, but also what signs to perform. He would say to Aaron, “Take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh, that it may become a serpent.” Moses would give the command, and Aaron would perform the sign.

Pharaoh did not give in to God based on this miraculous sign. He got the Egyptian magicians to do the same thing! But then Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs. Pharaoh would still not be moved. His heart was hardened. He would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said.

Thus begin the series of plagues that the God of Israel, the great I-AM, brought upon Pharaoh's land. Moses was instructed to go out to the bank of the Nile River the next morning, and to confront Pharaoh by word and by a great sign of judgment. Moses was to instruct Aaron to strike the water, and the water of the Nile would turn into blood. Moses and Aaron did what the Lord told them to do, and in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, God used his ambassadors to perform this dreadful miracle.

There is a river in heaven. It brings life wherever it flows. A river of blood is not that river. A river of blood is a carrier of death. The fish in the Nile died. There was a stench that rose up to the nostrils of the Egyptians from this divine judgment sign.

What was the chief concern of Pharaoh's team at this moment? They were determined to win this power encounter with the servants of God. What did they do? They used their magic arts to bring about the same miracle of death. They preserved their pride by replicating a heavenly attack against their own river. Since the Egyptian magicians could replicate the sign, Pharaoh would remain in the hardness of his heart. Why should he listen to Israel's God?

Of course the Egyptians needed water, but they found a way to get what they needed by digging along the Nile. When the Lord's enemies have what they think they need, they can still insist on clinging to their foolish pride. Why did Pharaoh have to fight against God? Why do men refuse to humble themselves before the great I-AM? Would we want to dare the Lord to show far greater acts of judgment against us?

But Pharaoh's heart remained hardened. He would not listen to the Lord's representatives.

This was not a surprise. God had said to Moses that Pharaoh would not listen. But now Moses and Aaron were experiencing the hardness of the proud human heart before their eyes.

Pharaoh simply turned and went into his house. He chose not to be moved by what he had seen. He did not plead for help or relief, at least not yet. He displayed his superiority by ignoring the messengers of God and their signs. They were irrelevant. Seven days went by and there was no progress at all.

A river of blood should get our attention. Poets speak of the death and destruction that men bring upon one another in war using images like this. But what would it be like to see a real river of blood right before our eyes? Would we pay attention?

God's solution to the sin of mankind must be something more than a spectacular miracle. It must be more than a sign that pagans can reproduce. It was not the requested miracle of Jesus coming down from the cross that would have caused the enemies of Jesus to see Him as the Son of God.

What eventually cut people to the heart was the realization that the man who was willing to shed His blood for them was the great I-AM who had become man for this purpose. From His wounds a river of blood has touched even us, but it is a river of blood that has brought life. Jesus died not to perform a magic trick. He did not come to display some spectacle for our eyes. He became man to perform a humble and pure act of dying love in obedience to the Father.

When this message is received by the power of the Holy Spirit, it can break the proudest heart. God is able to make the greatest power pitifully weak. He is also able to make lowly weakness extremely powerful.