Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh

Story: Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh

Passage: Exodus 7:1-13

Characters:  Moses, Aaron, God, Pharaoh

Summary:  God told Moses that He had made him like God to Pharaoh.  Moses would speak what God told him to speak and Aaron would say it to Pharaoh.  God warned that Pharaoh would harden his heart even though God would use signs and wonders.  Egypt would know that God is God when He leads His people out of Egypt.  Moses and Aaron obeyed.  Pharaoh demanded a sign so Aaron cast down his staff and it became a snake.  Pharaoh’s magicians were able to imitate the sign but Aaron’s staff ate their staffs.  But Pharaoh would not listen.  

Notes:  I have a few thoughts on this passage.  First of all, this passage gives us a little bit of insight into the dynamic of God speaking to us through prophets.  If Pharaoh represents humanity, then Moses was representing God.  Moses spoke and Aaron repeated Moses’ words to Pharaoh.  Thus, even though Aaron did the work, the credit goes to Moses.  In the same way, the prophets’ messages were not from themselves, but from God.  I find it interesting that Pharaoh did not deny them because he had hardened his heart, but rather because God had hardened his heart.  Pharaoh had the choice to listen to Moses, but God had hardened his heart so he did not.  I believe God left Pharaoh with the choice to listen, but He altered Pharaohs heart enough that he had no desire to listen.  Thus God was in total control even though He technically gave Pharaoh the choice.  Sometimes I think we don’t have free will, but rather we simply have will.  God can and apparently does manipulate that will, but it is technically still our will.  At first glance this is terribly unjust.  The poor Pharaoh has no choice but to deny Moses and eventually pays for it with his life.  How is that just?  But we need to remember that A. he did have a choice to listen even if he didn’t have the will to listen and B. Pharaoh deserved death just like all of us.  The injustice here is not that Pharaoh died when we had no choice but to oppose the Israelites, but rather that the Israelites lived even though they continually stopped following God.  That is the injustice.  Verses 6 and 10 show growth in Moses and Aaron.  In both those verses we read that Moses and Aaron did “just as the Lord had commanded them”.  They were done arguing.  Whatever God told them a couple of chapters ago transformed them.  They knew Pharaoh would ignore them but now they were prepared.  They had regained their focus on God and not on their circumstances.  I don’t know how Pharaoh’s magicians turned their staffs into snakes.  I don’t know if it was an illusion or if they actually turned them into living snakes.  I have to think it was an illusion because life coming from something dead should only be done by God.  If it was an illusion, they must have been confused when Aaron’s staff ate theirs but was no bigger when it became a staff again!  This would be enough to convince me that I should pay attention, but God had hardened Pharaoh’s heart enough that he does not even seem to consider listening to them.

Questions:  What did the magicians think when their staffs were eaten?  At what point did Moses and Aaron regain their focus?

Lessons:  God does not use prophets in the same way that he used to, but in the New Testament we see that one of the gifts of the Spirit is prophecy.  The Spirit acts like a prophet for us now.  He is the go between for us and God.  We also should learn from Moses and Aaron’s obedience.  This is obviously quite a change from their former ways.  We need to be as obedient as Moses.  When he heard his mission would fail he stayed with it because his success was not based in results, but in obedience to God.