Denial Aint Just A River In Egypt
Opening Song:
O Praise the Name (chorus)
Call to Worship:
Pastor Brett Eckel
John 2.1-11
Historical Reading:
Pastor Brett Eckel
Apostles’ Creed:
Song:
The Solid Rock
Confession & Pardon:
Pastor Michael Champoux
Song:
Doxology
Song:
His Mercy is More
Sermon:
Dr. Alex Loginow
Exodus 7
Introduction
Several of the houses on our street have a sign in their front yards that read something similar to this: “We believe black lives matter; love is love; no human being is illegal; water is life; science is real; women’s rights are human rights.” This sign and variations of it have become somewhat of a modern secular creed. Earlier in our service Pastor Brett led us as we recited the Apostles’ Creed together as a church. The Apostles’ Creed is the oldest and most venerated of the orthodox creeds and a fine summary of the Christian faith. It summarizes the boundaries of orthodox Christianity. To deny the creed is to deny orthodoxy.
This sign is a snapshot of what modern secular culture values most. It is a summary of what our culture views as non-negotiable. To deny any of these points (and the worldview behind them) is to be outside the bounds. And don’t miss this – our culture is confessional, whether they admit it or not. The sign begins the same way the Apostles’ Creed does – with the words, “We believe.” This sign preaches the dogma of secularism. The culture unequivocally means to catechize children in their worldview. These points they believe in and the worldview behind them are to be believed or else.
The fifth line on this sign in blue font says, “[We believe] water is life.” Regardless of the worldview or politics behind this statement (and whether or not you agree with them), many cultures throughout the history of the world have been tempted to deify water because human beings cannot live without water. Most humans would die in three or four days without water. The longest documented case of a human living without water is 18 days. Because water is so integral to human survival, people have always been tempted to idolize water.
This was certainly true of the ancient Egyptians. Our culture doesn’t idolize water in exactly the same way the Egyptians did but the root of the problem remains. The Creator/creature distinction is no less nullified. And that is the cultural setting behind Exodus 7. Just like our modern culture the ancient Egyptian culture had idolatrous creeds that stood in opposition to the Kingdom of God. While the particulars may change, one truth stands the test of time: the Kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of life. Every other kingdom is a kingdom of death.
God to Pharaoh (vs. 1-7)
Exodus 7 continues the conversation of Moses and YHWH starting at the end of Exodus 5 all the way through Exodus 6. In verse 1 YHWH declares Moses will be like God to Pharaoh and Aaron will be like his prophet. The Hebrew literally reads, “See, I have made you God to Pharaoh.” That means YHWH will work through Moses. When Pharaoh sees Moses, it is as if God himself is standing there.
In this way Moses serves as a type of Christ. Moses was God to Pharaoh – he was a man who stood between God and humanity. Moses is a shadow of one to come who is both truly God and truly man. Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Jesus Christ is both human and divine; the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1.14).
This reality exists, in part, between parents and children, specifically fathers and their children. Of the 10 commandments the first 4 regulate our relationship with God, the last 6, our relationship with our neighbors. The 5th commandment, which is the first of the people-to-people commandments, is “Honor your father and mother.” Even before “You shall not murder” God commands us to honor our father and mother. That is because the parent/child relationship is the training ground for children to learn to honor God.
Parents, and fathers specifically, are like God to children. It is a child’s first taste of authority and love. Like Moses was God to Pharaoh, so parents are God to their children. We are representatives of God to our kids. So we must faithfully image God to our kids.
We must love them and care for them. We must teach them discipline. Most importantly we must raise them up in the gospel. We must teach them of Jesus. May Christ Community Church be a church where children are welcomed, loved, cared for, catechized, and protected!
Moses not only signifies the hypostatic union of Christ but he also typifies the mediating work of Christ. Just as Moses was the bridge between YHWH and Pharaoh or YHWH and Israel so Christ is the true and final mediator between God and man. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14.6). 1st Timothy 2.5 says, “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
Because God is holy and people are sinners we need a righteous mediator to intercede. Jesus lived without sin (Heb 4.15) and then died on the cross bearing the wrath of God for his people. Jesus was buried and on the third day he resurrected from the dead. Now everyone who will repent of their sin and take Christ by faith will experience the forgiveness of their sins and the hope of eternal life. To repent means to acknowledge that God is holy and that you are a sinner who deserves eternal conscious punishment in a place called hell.
To have faith in Christ consists of three components: knowledge, ascent, and trust. The first is knowledge – you must have the knowledge of who Jesus is and what Jesus did. Second you must ascent to the validity of these truth claims. Finally you must place your trust in Christ alone. You must trust in his sinless life, substitutionary death, and saving resurrection. If you will do so, you will be saved. Even now the gospel beckons you to repent and believe. If you have not done so, trust Christ today and today will be the day of salvation!
That is one possible response to the gospel and there is only one other possible response, which we see in verse 3. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart. Four times in Exodus 7 it says that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. There is no neutral response to the gospel – the gospel either softens your heart or it hardens your heart. The same sun that melts the snow hardens the clay. Pharaoh’s heart was hardened toward God’s Word.
Chapter 3 of the Westminster Confession of Faith is on the Eternal Decrees of God. Paragraph 3 reads, “In order to manifest his glory God has ordered that some men and angels should be predestined to everlasting life and that others should be foreordained to everlasting death.” Paragraph 7 goes on to read, “According to the hidden purpose of his own will, by which he offers or withholds mercy at his pleasure, and for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, it pleased God not to call the rest of mankind and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin to the praise of his glorious justice.” Scripture is clear that God is sovereign over those who believe and those who don’t. In the song “In Christ Alone” we sing the line, “From life’s first cry til final breath, Jesus commands my destiny.” That applies to those who believe and those who don’t.
At the same time Pharaoh, and all who reject Christ, are responsible for their decision to reject the gospel. Divine sovereignty and human responsibility are both taught in the Bible. There is a mystery and a tension that Scripture presents and also does not care to answer, namely that God has foreordained all who would believe and also all who would reject the gospel. Also every human is responsible to repent and believe. YHWH hardened Pharaoh’s heart. At the same time Pharaoh rejected YHWH out of his own volition.
Staff to Serpent (vs. 8-13)
Then YHWH tells Moses what will happen when he and Aaron stand before Pharaoh again. Aaron will throw his staff down and it will turn into a serpent. The wise men and sorcerers of Egypt will do the same but then Aaron’s staff will swallow up their staffs. Scholars debate whether the Egyptian sorcerers used illusions to work their miracles – for example, there are some historical records of people stunning snakes to look like a staff and then when the snakes wake up it seems as if the staff was turned to a serpent. Or if the sorcerers enlisted demonic help to do supernatural work. Either way the text does not specify. The point is that YHWH is more powerful than Egypt’s sorcerers. His staff swallows all of theirs. This miracle revealed the power of YHWH over the Pharaoh and his sorcerers but it is also cluing us in on Pharaoh’s identity.
Whenever we see a serpent, or dragon, or the like in Scripture we should be reminded of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Here Moses is identifying Pharaoh with the seed of the serpent from Genesis 3.15. Pharaoh is not a neutral bystander. He stands in line with the evil reptilian king of old. He is like the Pharisees of whom Jesus said, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8.44).
This is you if you do not trust Christ. There are only two groups of people in the history of humanity: (1) the seed of the woman (those who trust in Christ) and (2) the seed of the serpent (those who don’t trust in Christ). We are all born in sin as children of wrath (Eph 2.3) but when we trust in Jesus God transfers us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of his beloved son (Col 1.13). Do not allow your heart to be hardened. The gospel calls you once again: trust in Christ.
Water to Blood (vs. 14-24)
Now we come to the main event of Exodus 7: YHWH through Moses and Aaron turns the Nile River to blood. This first plague is God’s judgment of Egypt’s idolatry. Every year in ancient Egypt the Nile River would flood depositing rich fertile soil on the river banks, which would allow the otherwise desert climate to produce crops. The ancient Egyptians would ascribe this annual occurrence to Hapi – the god of the Nile or the god of fertility. According to ancient drawings of Hapi the Egyptians believed the god to have a large belly and engorged breasts signaling pregnancy. To the Egyptians the Nile was life itself; it represented the god of fertility – the god of life. Another way to say that is the Egyptians believed that water is life.
The Egyptians deified the water itself. They worshipped the Nile River. They would pray to this idol for crops. They would pray to the river in hopes of conceiving a child. They believed this water was life. And God is revealing that their idol is actually death.
Exodus 7 begins the plagues that YHWH unleashes on Egypt through Moses and Aaron. As we move through these plagues it’s important to note at the outset that the Egyptian plagues are not arbitrary displays of God’s power. No – YHWH is judging the nation of Egypt for their idolatry and subjugation of the Hebrew people. The plagues are judgment on the gods or idols that the Egyptians worshipped.
The New English Translation (NET) of Scripture has many helpful grammatical and theological footnotes. One of the footnotes on this pericope states “The theological emphasis for the exposition of the entire series of plagues may be: The sovereign Lord is fully able to deliver his people from the oppression of the world so that they may worship and serve him alone.” The plagues are God’s judgment of Egypt for their idolatry and oppression. When Israel leaves Egypt they will go to Mt. Sinai where YHWH will give them his Law, summarized in the 10 Commandments. Jesus later will tell us that the Law is summarized in the two-fold command: Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22.36-40). The Egyptians have not loved God and neighbor.
And even after this first plague Pharaoh’s heart is still hardened. The plague doesn’t cause him to fall down and worship YHWH. It causes him to hate YHWH even more. You know what they say? Denial aint just a river in Egypt.
Egypt’s idolatry and oppression lead to death. The water-to-blood plague reveals that Egypt is a kingdom of death both metaphorically and tangibly. Metaphorically the plague reveals that their kingdom is a kingdom of death by transforming God’s good life-giving gift of water to blood. The Egyptians worshipped the water itself and YHWH is showing them that the water is mere creation and he can do what he wants with it. Idolatry leads to death. To worship the creature rather than the creator is deadly. Tangibly the plague reveals that their kingdom is a kingdom of death because when the water is turned to blood it yields death. All of the fish die and if the people do not have water they will die too.
But God’s kingdom is a kingdom of life. Jesus Christ reveals this to us in his first public miracle at the wedding of Cana. Pastor Zack read from John 2 in our call to worship. The wedding at Cana is in a sense a reversal of the first Egyptian plague. Christ takes the water and turns it into wine.
This was the first sign Christ gave of his coming kingdom and he did it at a wedding. Christ is revealing to us that his kingdom is like a wedding celebration. Ephesians 5 tells us that the gospel is most ultimately about the marriage of Christ to his people – the church. So his kingdom is like a wedding reception where everyone is joyfully celebrating this marriage. The kingdom of Christ is like serving the best wine even after the guests are so drunk they wouldn’t even notice the cheap wine.
In judgment YHWH turned the water of the Nile into blood. In grace Christ turned the water into wine. Egypt was a kingdom of death. The Kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of life. Through his death and resurrection Christ is bringing life to all who believe.
And on the night that Jesus was betrayed he took the wine and he said, “this is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for you.” The wine represents Christ’s blood. So there’s a sense in which in the sacrament Christ is giving us his blood. Not in transubstantiation as the Roman Catholic Church teaches but in a representative way. His blood was shed for us.
YHWH turned the Nile to blood in judgment of Egypt’s idolatry and it led to death. Christ turned the water to wine and later gives us the wine to remember his death until he comes. And so even as we prepare to come to the Eucharist this morning we are reminded of the nature of Christ’s Kingdom. Christ is the true and final seed of the woman. All of the promises of God find their yes in him (2 Cor 1.20). Life is found in his name alone. Everything else leads to death.
Conclusion
Water is life. The way that the Egyptians defined that sentence or the way that the modern secular culture defines that sentence falls short, but there is a sense in which it is true. You see, in John 4 Jesus met a Samaritan woman at a well and asked her to give him some water. The woman is shocked that a Jewish man is speaking to her and questions him. Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4.13-14).
Later in John 7 Jesus was teaching in the temple and he declared, “
If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified (John 7.37-39).
The living water that Christ gives is the Holy Spirit who regenerates dead hearts and seals us for the day of redemption. Trust in Christ and you will receive the living water and your soul will never thirst again. In that sense we do believe water is life. In fact, we confessed it earlier together when we confessed from the Apostles’ Creed – we believe in the Holy Spirit.