You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?
Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink.
Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages. Welcome to More Than Ink. So have you ever had a fly in your house that won't go away, that is just such a pest? Oh yeah. Dives, bombs your face. And it only takes a single fly, you're trying to take a nap.
Goes up your nose, lands on your eyelids. Yeah, a single fly can just make your day miserable. So imagine if there were millions and millions of them.
Yeah, say swarms today on More Than Ink. Good morning, this is Jim. And this is Dorothy.
And we're glad you're with us. I hope you got over the frog episode last time, the heap of stinking frogs. Well, it's winter time right now, so we're not hearing any frogs. Well, that's true. But I always look forward to them in the spring. That's true.
That's true. Yeah, I remember as a kid, we used to collect frog eggs in the swampy area that was across from our house. There was a little gelatinous around things. And my brother brought them inside one year, put them in some water in an aquarium and they hatched and they turned into tadpoles and they're so cute.
They are cute. But then they all died and they got stinky. So that's what I think of every time I read frogs.
I can relate with those piles of stinking frogs. Well anyway, today we are past plagues one and two and we're into plague, we're going to look at plagues three and four today. Okay, and we're in the book of Exodus. Oh, that's right, we're in Exodus in case you can't track what the heck he's talking about. Yeah, we're in Exodus and God is slowly moving the Israelites out by going through a series of plagues with Pharaoh. And his heart is getting harder and harder and harder.
And so today we do that as well. God is actually using the natural realm, not as a cause, but to demonstrate the fact that he is actually in charge of it. He reigns over it. He's the king of this realm. The little weird Egyptian gods.
Exactly. So this is in many ways, this is a direct affront against the Egyptian beliefs in the god system, which are gods that are oriented toward nature. And so God's going to challenge those at every turn.
So today in chapter eight, we're starting in verse 16 and we're going to continue with this conversation. Remember last time, last time when we left the frog stuff, Pharaoh said that he would release the people. So that they could go and sacrifice. So that he could go sacrifice. He wasn't going to let them go free altogether. That's right, but he seemed to relent in some way and then God changed the frog situation and Pharaoh said, nope, changed my mind. Yeah, because there was an inkling that Pharaoh was willing to acknowledge at least that there was this other god. He said, now, plead to me, plead to him for me and I'll let you go and sacrifice to him.
Yeah, that would sound like progress to me until he changed his mind and then it's not progress. So that's where we come in in verse 16. You want to read for us?
Sure. And we don't know exactly how long after this is and those who accept a naturalistic explanation for the plagues would say, well, all those rotting frogs then produced lots of gnats swarming around in the air. But in any case, this is the next plague. Verse 16 of chapter 8. 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. And there's our third plague. And we need to stop there. No warning this time. Right. No warning to Pharaoh that there's bad stuff coming. Right.
God just says, now go and stretch out the staff and gnats like dust. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I always wondered whether this is a direct response to Pharaoh's change of mind in the previous one. Maybe.
Because there's no warning here. It's like, you're not going to let them go, although you said you would. Well, how about this gnats? Yeah. And you know, and I would propose too, I've never liked the translation of gnats for this. Well, an alternate translation is lice. Lice or, you know, growing up, growing up in the kind of the humid East Coast, chiggers were a big deal for us in Boy Scouts, you know, and they did come out of the ground. I mean, they would be around blades of grass or along the ground.
Yeah, they come up around your ankles. And they come up and they kind of eat your skin. So it's and they leave these big red welts.
I mean, it's a horrible kind of thing. Well, if you've ever walked into a cloud of gnats, you know, it's just like, it's like, like dust. You cannot get away from them and they're drawn to your breath and your face. But gnats are not as big a problem to me as chiggers are. When I look at this, I go, man, this this feels more to me like that because that that is just a pain.
Chiggers and lice and mites and all this kind of stuff. They're horrible. But the imagery is these tiny, tiny invisible things in overwhelming numbers. Yes.
Yeah. And coming up out of the dust of the earth. So they're not actually flying, which the next plague will see they're flying. They're not flying here. He actually points to the ground with a stick, taps the ground and turns the dust of the ground into these invisible things that are come up and do this.
So it sounds more like ground based kind of bugs like that. Isn't it interesting that this is what causes the magicians to say, hey, this is the finger of God because they could they couldn't do it. This is not sleight of hand.
This is something other. So it makes me think the magicians up to this point, we're thinking that's not that I can do that. So they don't really have much respect for what's going on because they can replicate. Right. But now they say, well, we can't do this. So there's suddenly their respect for what's going on here is suddenly heightened. And then and then they it is really an admission of failure to go to Pharaoh, who's your boss, and say, we can't do this. This is the finger of God.
What do you mean you can't do this? You know, they hadn't been able to reverse any of the stuff right till this point. So, you know, how helpless or helpful were they? Yeah. All they were doing last time is making more frogs. That's what we don't need more frogs here. All they were doing was undercutting the miraculous nature of what was happening.
They weren't able to reverse it or really combat it. Right. And now in a funny turn of events, they're the ones that are testifying to who God is. This is this is a God. This is a finger of God.
This is definitely God. So so this is these are quite annoying. In fact, that's why I always like thinking of these as chiggers. These are chiggers.
It's like this is this is a bad deal. Well, chiggers bite. They bite. Yeah. And they they leave terrible itching and these big red bumps. I mean, they're just they're just annoying. I mean, it's just really bad.
Well, it doesn't say that. But you do kind of have the impression that these were these were irritating little beasts, whatever they were. Yeah. Which is why I think gnats is kind of a weak translation of probably what this is, because that gnats don't visibly come up out of the ground either.
They just, you know, they swarm around, swarm around. Yeah. So the point here is that Pharaoh's heart was hardened. Yeah.
And he wouldn't listen even to his paid magicians. Exactly. Exactly. The people had already said that. The people who he should have great respect for, because they are also the conduit into the God system for all these people. They're the guy they're like the priest's guys who have the connection to the gods. And so here they are pointing to an other God.
So when they say, you know, this is someone else. Yeah. I think another thing, too, which is interesting, is that the priesthood class, which is these guys are in, we're always in Egypt, very hygienic, super, super hygienic. And so very cleanliness is a very big deal in Egypt. And so so when you have the dust of the ground, which is not hygienic, but symbolically, when the dust of the ground, which is dirty and on your sandals, actually goes up and afflicts your body. And clings to you.
Yeah. It's like this unhygienic, this uncleanness crawls up your legs and makes you unclean. So for the magicians and for the priests, it's kind of like you do everything you can to wash and keep clean. But now what happens when the dirt itself crawls up on you? That's a terrifying thought.
And that's the imagery right here. And they can't stay clean. And not only that, but it's not just on people.
It's on the animals as well. So some people speculate that even in this particular case, the fact that these came up on the animals made the animals too unclean to sacrifice and some even to eat. So you always look at Jesus washed people's feet because the dirt on the ground would get on their feet and all that kind of stuff. And slaves would do that. Servants would do that. No, he didn't just wash people's feet. He washed his disciples' feet.
So let's be clear here. That's exactly right. But what I'm saying is that that dirt represents that kind of unhygienic, uncleanness of the world. And hereby him tapping the dirt and the dirt kind of symbolically crawling up on them and causing affliction.
He's saying, I don't care how much you try and make yourself clean, you're not clean. In fact, the dirt itself is going to crawl up on you. That's kind of the imagery right here. That makes me shiver. I know, I know. That's why that imagery is lost if you just call it gnats.
Because gnats are something I just swing away with my hand. But Pharaoh's heart was obstinate. He would not go forth.
It was tough and rigid and unmoved. So let's go to part two, fourth plague today. Okay, verse 20. Then the Lord said to Moses, rise up early in the morning and present yourself to Pharaoh as he goes out to the water.
Oh, we've heard that before. And say to him, thus says the Lord, let my people go that they may serve me. Or else if you will not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies on you and your servants and your people and into your houses. And the houses of the Egyptians shall be filled with swarms of flies and also on the ground on which they stand. But on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen where my people dwell so that no swarms of flies shall be there that you may know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth. Thus I will put a division between my people and your people.
Tomorrow this sign will happen. And the Lord did so. There came great swarms of flies into the house of Pharaoh and into his servants' houses throughout all the land of Egypt.
The land was ruined by the swarms of flies. Wow. Good. You thought mats were bad. Yeah. Yeah.
This is bad. And just to be a little bit clear here, I was curious about this. Am I hung up on pests or what? Just keep going. Let's see.
Well, when you look at the Hebrew, which is what's kind of fun if you have a way to research the Hebrew behind these things, which by the way, if you have a computer aided Bible study thing will help you really well. The word here is not flies, just swarms. It's just the word swarms. So what's up for a little speculation about swarms of what?
Swarming insects. Yeah. And you get a little bit of insight from some other passages. When you go to Psalm 78, 45, it actually talks about this event right here. And it says that in this event they were eaten, they were devoured.
Right. So these were biting flies. Biting flies.
Well, for us, in the summertime if you go out camping, you say – Mosquitoes. Mosquitoes were bad. They ate us to death. They ate us up.
They ate us alive. And so I checked out, are there mosquitoes in Egypt? Oh, buddy, big time. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, big time. So this could as well be swarms of mosquitoes, which heightens for our experience. You know, flies are just something that are buggy in the house. They don't bite. Well, there are biting flies.
There are. But most people experience mosquitoes. And here, if that's the case then, wow, this would be horrible.
This would just be horrible. Swarms of them. Well, do you remember, just even last year we were going to go out to Antelope Island in May and we discovered not to go because it's that time that the biting flies hatched on the salt flats out there. And they said, don't come out here unless you're wearing a bee suit because they're so bad. The biting flies are so bad. Yeah.
They would disable you. Yeah. And there they do have swarms of them. Right. So this is a bad deal. This is a very real picture. Yeah.
This is a bad, bad deal. But it's interesting that it says now get up early in the morning and go out and meet Pharaoh as he goes out to the water. He was doing that before the Nile turned to blood. So it must have been Pharaoh's habit to go out to the water in the morning.
Now what he did, why he did that we don't know. Yeah. Maybe Egyptologists know that. I don't know that. Yeah. There's speculation it was a worship devotion. But God says, you know, get up and meet him in the morning. Don't go into his house.
You meet him where he's going. Yeah. But the core of the miracle here is not the fact that there's sudden swarms. Right. There was always flies. But that the swarms didn't show up in Goshen where God's people were. Isn't that something. So it'd be like going out camping where it's got a lot of mosquitoes.
Right. And your campsite has a ton of mosquitoes and the people next door have none. And you say, well, what are you doing right? And they say, well, God protects us. So God says, I'll set apart the land of Goshen where my people are living.
There won't be any swarms of flies there that you may know. And thus I will put a division between my people and your people. And you will know that I am Yahweh or I am that I am in the midst of the earth. Right.
Right, right, right. And, you know, there already was an ethnic division between the Egyptians and the people who had come down from Canaan to Jews. But in this particular case, God's saying, but you don't understand, it's much more than that.
These are my people. That makes them different. That's the division we're talking about. And so as a result of that, this plague is not going to visit them. It sort of hints at what's going to happen on the last plague, too, because there is a way in which the plague itself will not visit them. But God says, I'm going to do that here. And you're going to know that these are not your people. These are my people.
They're my people. That's the division. And it's God who makes the division.
Thoreau's not getting it. Exactly. And I'm going to demonstrate that they're my people. And tomorrow this sign shall happen. And so that's exactly what he does.
This is interesting. This is the first time we find that there's no staff. There's no – Right, right, right. Not that it doesn't say Moses did anything. He just went to Pharaoh and said, here's what's going to happen. This is what's going to happen. Yeah. This is what's going to happen.
And it does. And these swarms are in the house of Pharaoh. But remember now, they don't have screens on their windows.
So we're talking about restless nights and all that kind of stuff. It happened to Pharaoh and it happened to his servants' houses all throughout the land. And I like what it says here in the end of 24. The land was ruined. I was fascinated by that word, ruined by the swarms of flies.
Do you know that's exactly the same word that is used about Sodom and Gomorrah? It means utter destruction. Utter destruction. It was ruined. The land was useless, basically. Wow. I mean, the land was useless because of this.
And this is before the locusts. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So this is a bad deal. This is really bad. It is ruined.
As much as Sodom and Gomorrah was ruined, these swarms have ruined Egypt, ruined Egypt. Yeah. Go ahead.
No, go ahead. Well, this is the first time also that the text says, and the Lord did so. Yeah, the Lord did so.
Right. Prior to this we had, and Moses did it, and Aaron did it, and the Lord smote the river. But this is a pretty bold statement in verse 24, and the Lord did so. The Lord did so.
It's startling. He's clearly the front actor. God's in charge. He's the one in charge, yeah.
Yeah. Well, let's push on and see what, maybe this will change Pharaoh's mind, huh? Why don't you read?
Yeah, maybe this will change his mind. Verse 25, so then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, that's my sound effect. Nice. Go sacrifice to your God within the land. No. Go sacrifice. I've got a good compromise for you.
Right. That's what he's proposing. But stay in the land. You can sacrifice, but stay here.
What did he say? You stay here. So stay within the land. 26, but Moses said, wouldn't be right to do so, for the offerings we shall sacrifice to the Lord our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. I mean, if we sacrifice offerings abominable to the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not stone us? We must go three days journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord our God as he tells us. Right. As he tells us.
Not like what you're proposing is a compromise. We need to leave here and go three days out. So interestingly enough, instead of Pharaoh saying, okay, you can do it, he just says, well, you can kind of do it, but don't just stay here. Well, and then he says, okay, you can go sacrifice your God in the wilderness, but you don't go very far away. Don't go very far.
Because three days out is out of sight. Right. That's out. Yeah. Yeah.
And in the desert, you can travel if you're working on it about 15 miles a day. So you're, you're a pretty good ways out. Yeah. When you do that.
So yeah, so he does, he doesn't 20. He just reiterates his compromise. So first is no, I'll let you go to sacrifice the Lord, your God. I'm a big guy in the wilderness. Only you must not go very far.
So first is you got to stay here and do it. And, and, and Moses makes a good argument. No. And his best argument is that's not the way God wants us to do it. So I'm not going to do it your way. I'm going to do it God's way.
And then Pharaoh inches back a little bit. So, okay, you can still hear your sacrifice and you can leave here, but don't go very far. Stay where I can see. Yeah. Stay.
So it's really a diminishing control. Yeah. For me and plead for. So still, I'm sorry for myself. This is miserable. Exactly.
Because look what I'm doing for you. So now that I'm doing this, now you can plead for me and say, well, God, he's being a little compliant because he's sort of coming around. So plead for me in the end of verse 28, because I'll tell you if this is swarms of mosquitoes, we are desperately miserable, desperately miserable.
Yeah. So then Moses responds to him in 29 response and Moses said, behold, I'm going out from you and I will plead with the Lord that the swarms of flies may depart from Pharaoh and from his servants and from his people tomorrow. Only let not Pharaoh cheat again by not letting the people go to sacrifice the Lord. So don't change your mind.
I'll plead to the Lord, but don't change your mind. Moses is getting bolder. He is.
He really, really is. Can you imagine wagging your finger at Pharaoh who's in charge of the world pretty much called him on his backtracking. Yeah. So don't do this again. I'm warning you, don't do this.
Don't cheat again. So in verse 30, so Moses went out from Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord. And the Lord did as Moses asked.
Look at that. That's the same thing you pointed out last time. Again, responding to Moses' prayer. The Lord did as Moses asked and removed the swarms from Pharaoh, from his servants and from his people and not one remained. Not one. Swarms are uncountable.
I mean, they're just huge. Not one remained. And Pharaoh's response, 32, Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also and did not let the people go. Did not let the people go. He said you can go a little ways and he wouldn't even let them go a little ways. He would not let them go.
Which makes you think, was he actually lying before knowing that he wasn't going to let them go or was it the minute he gets some relief, he says, oh, I'm thinking better of that. I'm going to let them go now because the bugs are gone. Well, because in the previous plagues when they were taken away, they were taken away, they didn't recur. So it's kind of like he's thinking if I can just do whatever I can do for them to take them away, they'll stay away.
I'll say whatever I have to say in order for this to relent. And I have to imagine to some degree when you do that, you're thinking, well, maybe another plague is going to come, but how can it be worse than this? So if we have this taken away from us, it can't get worse than this. So I'll just change my mind and I'll get both of these good worlds, I'll have my plague get taken away, this discomfort from this plague, and I'll also be able to keep the people because, I mean, what else can happen?
What else can happen? That could be his thinking as well, we speculate. We really don't know. But I think we should talk for a minute about this hardened heart. We're back to that hard heart, aren't we? Now we've collected up a little list of characteristics of this hardened heart, refusing to listen no matter what your experience tells you or what the evidence is.
He refused to listen and refused to obey a God you can't see and stay intent on his own way. Yep. Even if it takes reneging on your deals and lying and all that kind of misrepresenting what's going to really happen. And days of misery. Yeah.
Yeah. And so his hardness really is advancing right here, so much so that he's just in a bold fixed way saying, I'll promise this, but I'll do something else. That hardness is starting to come out in terms of a lack of integrity about his word. He wants what he wants, and he's going to get it by manipulating Moses.
For Moses to manipulate God is how he's thinking. Well, and we can begin to think now that you can, and see it demonstrated in Pharaoh, that you can, the word of the Lord can come to you and go in your ear without penetrating your heart. Right. Right. And so the question for us then is, when we hear God's voice, do we hear God's voice with our heart? Are we teachable? Does it penetrate?
Does it sink in? And that's at the heart of Jesus' line that he used many times, which is if you have ears to hear. Right. Got ears? Then hear. Listen up. You listen to this.
Just let it go in one ear and out the other. Right. If you've got ears, you need to listen. Right.
Because it's possible for you to hear, but not really listen. And that's clearly what's going on with Pharaoh right here. Well, especially this time, and this is one of the times when it says, but Pharaoh hardened his heart.
Yes. Not his heart was hardened, or the Lord hardened his heart, but Pharaoh hardened his heart. And that kind of underscores, we are responsible for the condition of our heart. We can direct our heart and set our heart in a particular direction.
Yeah. And I think it's interesting to note that this was a hardening of his heart that resulted, I mean, he was allowing them to do the small baby step out of the country, right? Not let them go entirely. Well, he didn't even let them do that.
No, I know. He just gave lip service to it. But he was saying, that's what I'll do. And there's something about the hardening of hearts that happens when you feel like you're actually giving in some and you're being kind of magnanimous on the small things, not the big things. Mm-hmm. And then you renege on that, that makes your heart even harder than if you just let go all together and said, you can do this.
So that's a really incremental hardening. That's just a bad deal. You think you can get away with this? So I'll make small promises and renege on small promises, they're just small promises. So what's the big deal? Yeah.
And it ends up hardening your heart. Yeah. It's sad. It's sad.
Well, we're coming down to the end of our time on this. So what else do you want to say about this particular plague? Once again, God is deliberately knocking off one or maybe more than one of the gods, so-called gods of Egypt, right? They had a goddess who was the goddess of the marshes and who controlled all the flies and the bug life and the flying insects that were there. And they actually would wear a protective amulet of flies to ward off diseases.
That's right. Because they recognized flies carried disease. And also, I learned in some of my reading that it was not uncommon for a pharaoh to give awards of like a golden fly to soldiers in honor of their persistence.
I've heard this, yeah. Because you can't – Isn't that interesting? Yeah, it's a sign of persistence and flies do indeed have that characteristic. Because they just won't go away. So flies actually figure quite prominently, I guess, in the mythology of Egypt. Yeah, because they're persistent.
So again, God is demonstrating. In the fall for us, we many times get flies in our house and they don't bite, but they can be really persistent. Oh, they're so irritating. A single persistent fly in the room can make your life miserable because they dive bomb your face and stuff like that.
I mean, they're very persistent. So imagine this as swarms. No matter where you go, you cannot get away from the swarms. Swarms of persistent pests. It's horrible.
It's just horrible. Yeah, so we've completed the fourth plague and we will push on to the fifth plague next time. And in this process, we document the downfall of Pharaoh and the increasing hardening of his heart, which he is self-inflicting on himself as well as God giving him a great opportunity to go there. And he's inflicting that on him and he's just not going to relent.
He will eventually, but we're not even halfway through the plagues yet. But don't overlook this huge statement right in the middle here where he says, I will set apart my people that you may know that I am the Lord. So this idea of God's people being set apart for his own deliverance in the midst of something that's going to fall on everybody else.
Well, yeah, and that set apartness was always central to even the first discussions. Go to Pharaoh and tell him, let my people, they are not your people, they are my people go. And that's going to be the contention all the way through here where Pharaoh wants to maintain what's going on in Egypt and he wants them to be his people. He'll eventually say, well, I guess they're your people, God, and God proves it to them.
And when he says, I'll put a division between my people and your people, that word in other places is translated as a ransom or a redemption. So that might prove to be important as these plague stories unfold. Keep an eye out for that. So we're glad you're with us and join us next time as we take a look and we jump into the fifth plague. And I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we're glad you're with us here on More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org.
