Conquering the Gods

Conquering the Gods

Exodus 12:31-42

October 20, 2019 • Mount Pleasant UMC

  We arrived shortly after the revolution. In 2012, Rachel and I got the opportunity to trace some of the paths of the Exodus by traveling to Egypt and learning about Moses, the Pharaohs and the Israelites, and we arrived in Cairo on June 24, 2012. Now, I don’t blame you if that date doesn’t jump out at you. You might remember that in early 2011, a wave of democratic protests that had been sweeping through the Arab world arrived in Egypt. The media called it the “Arab Spring” but it lasted through many seasons. In Cairo, people protested in Tahrir Square for eighteen days in January and February 2011, demanding the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, a dictator that had ruled the country for thirty years. I’m vastly oversimplifying a complicated situation here, but the short version is that Mubarak did resign and the country was allowed to engage in democratic elections. On June 24, 2012, the day we arrived in Cairo, the winner was announced so as we tried to make our way through the city to our hotel, people were out in the streets, some celebrating and some still protesting the election of Mohamed Morsi. It was exciting and a little frightening, to be honest, and we learned pretty quickly that lane lines on the streets matter very little when people are out in masses. Getting across the city was an adventure! However, the revolution did not end with Morsi’s election. Within a year, he also was forced out of office and the turmoil continued in Egypt.

Well, we say, that’s just the Middle East, there’s always some sort of ruckus there. And that’s true. But, you know, we are revolutionary people ourselves. Our nation’s history began with what we call the American Revolution, when we took up arms against England and declared ourselves to be a sovereign nation. And we’ve been protesting ever since! Then there are events in other places around the world like Tiananmen Square, which I realize some of you are not old enough to remember, and there’s even what’s happening in Hong Kong right now, as a small community squares off against a large nation—it’s sort of a David and Goliath story happening there. We are revolutionary people, and in a lot of ways, we understand revolutions. So sometimes we throw the story of the Israelites escaping from slavery in Egypt into that revolution box. Even talking about “escaping from slavery” sounds dangerous and dramatic and exciting. And while the story is exciting, it wasn’t a revolution like we think of it. In fact, the Hebrews leave slavery behind without a single shot fired, without a single protest in the streets, with hardly any voices raised. That’s because the real battle happening in the Exodus story is not between nations, and not even between leaders. The real battle is taking place between gods.

This morning, we’re continuing our journey through the life of the reluctant prophet, Moses. I hope you’re reading along in the Scriptures because his life was so vast and interesting that there’s no way we can cover every detail on Sunday mornings, but this morning we come to one of the seminal events in his life. This is one of those events that, even if you know nothing else about Moses, you know this part of his story. This is the Exodus, the event for which this whole book of the Bible is named and the event that forever shaped the life of the Jewish faith. Last week, Pastor Rick talked about how God called Moses at the burning bush. God called Moses to this moment. God had said to Moses, “I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt” (3:10). And after all of Moses’ excuses had been dealt with, he answered God’s call and went back to Egypt, the place he had fled forty years before. There, he asked Pharoah to let the Israelites go. Now, it’s not too much of a surprise that Pharaoh said, “No.” I mean, seriously, if you’ve got a whole lot of people working for you for no pay and doing the work no one else wants to do, are you just going to let them walk off the job because your step-brother asked (even if he asked nicely)? Of course not. And it’s at that point where God has to get involved. Moses continues to be the spokesperson, but for most of this part of the story, it’s God who is doing the work.

So, let’s talk about those plagues, shall we? The story goes like this: Moses asks Pharaoh to let the Hebrews leave Egypt for a worship festival, maybe something like a Jewish Woodstock. Pharaoh says, “I don’t know this God, so no.” Moses says, “Pretty please?” and Pharaoh says again, “No.” Then Pharoah orders the Egyptian overseers to stop giving straw to the Hebrews when they make bricks—which, of course, causes the Hebrews to blame Moses that their work is so hard. So Moses goes back to Pharoah again and ask, but he still refuses. In fact, there’s a troubling statement that goes with the refusal this time: “Pharaoh’s heart became hard” (7:13). Twenty times we’re told that happens, and in ten of those times we’re told that God made Pharoah’s heart hard. That’s troubling, or at least it should be, especially in light of the punishments that are coming from God. Does Pharaoh have free will here? Or is God hardening his heart and causing him to do the very thing that God will soon punish him for? What does it mean that Pharaoh’s heart is hard?

The word translated “hard” here also can mean “heavy” in Hebrew, and there is a connection between what happens and Pharoah’s own beliefs about the afterlife. When we were in Egypt, I was struck by how much of their ancient culture centered around the world of the dead. The pyramids, the burial plots for kings, the monuments and many of the ancient cities were laid out to help people anticipate the life after this one. There are detailed instructions about how to get out of this life and get a good place in the next, and for the pharoahs, this meant, if they had been a good pharoah, they would transition into a god. When a Pharoah died, he would be taken to Osiris, god of the underworld and judge of the dead, and he would stand before a scale. The scale was said to have an ostrich feather on one side and the pharoah’s heart on the other side. This was called, obviously enough, the “weighing of the heart,” and it was meant to show if the pharaoh was just or unjust. If the feather outweighed the heart, the pharaoh transitioned to godhood. If not, his heart would be devoured by a beast called Ammit. A pharoah’s heart who became hard, uncaring about his people, would become heavy and thus his fate after this life was not good. So Pharoah’s reactions here, according to Exodus, are making him heavy-hearted; this Pharoah is unjust and unlikely to survive the afterlife (cf. Hamilton, Moses, pgs. 89-90). So back to the main question: did God do that to him? Well, sort of. Pharoah’s hard-heartedness is a response to God’s actions in the plagues, so in the Hebrew mindset and language, you could say that God, by carrying out the plagues, caused Pharoah’s heart to become hard. But Exodus is not saying that God directly hardened Pharoah’s heart. Rather, the Pharoah is freely responding to the God of the Hebrews. He is hardening his heart as a response to what God has done (cf. Hard Sayings of the Bible, pgs. 142-143).

So in this back and forth between Moses and Pharoah, there are ten plagues unleashed on the Egyptian people. Isn’t it always the case—leaders make decisions and the people pay for them? First there is the plague of blood; the Nile River turns to blood. The Nile is literally the life of the country; its water is what allows anything to grow in the country. It’s the main source of fresh water in the country. Exodus says, “The river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water” (7:21). But so as to prove that this wasn’t so bad, the Egyptian magicians did the same thing. So Moses moves on to the next plague: frogs. Frogs come up out of the Nile (probably because of the blood) and they are everywhere. Imagine opening your cupboard and a frog jumps out. We had something like that happen at our house a couple of years ago. I’m showing this with her permission, by the way. Take a look.

VIDEO: Rachel’s Frog

Not exactly a plague. One frog. We’re not sure how he got in there, but his long journey earned him a trip to the back yard. So frogs, everywhere. And the magicians do the same thing. Now, honestly, at this point I’d be telling the magicians: “More frogs? Really? You’re not helping!” So the plagues move on to gnats. Exodus says, “All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became gnats.” That’s a lot of gnats! But then, “when the magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, they could not” (8:17-18). They have reached the limits of their power, but God, our God, is only getting started.

Next come flies; “The land was ruined by flies” (8:24). Then, a plague on the livestock, where all the livestock of the Egyptians died but none of the livestock belonging to the Israelites did (9:6). This is the first time when a distinction is made between the two peoples. This is followed by boils on people and animals (9:9) and then hail all over the land, which destroyed crops like flax and barley (9:31). Exodus says, “It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation” (9:24). That could be a bit of an exaggeration, but it was certainly devastating to the economy everywhere except where the Israelites lived. Again, a distinction between the two. What wasn’t destroyed by the hail, though, is destroyed by the locusts who come next. At this point, when Moses say the locusts are coming, even Pharoah’s officials urge him to let the people go, but he won’t lose his work force. So the locusts strip the land bare. “Never before had there been such a plague of locusts, nor will there ever be again” (10:14). Still Pharoah refuses, so the next plague is that of darkness. For three days it’s so dark in Egypt that no one moves around (but, again, this plague did not affect the Israelites, so presumably they just got three days off of work) (10:23). Darkness is pretty bad, but the worst is still yet to come.

Before we get to that last plague, though, we need to stop for a moment and think about what’s really happening here. It makes for a scary story, of sorts, though we often know the tale so well we miss the terror in these plagues. Think about these plagues coming one after another over a series of weeks or months. But even more than that: think about having everything you’ve ever believed turned against you. That’s what’s happening here. While on the surface, it seems like a battle between Pharoah and Moses, this is really about our God conquering the Egyptian gods. At the time of the Exodus, Egypt was at the peak of its power in the ancient world, and it seemed that the whole group of gods they believed in had really blessed them. They had wealth and power and slaves; they were “something.” Yet by the end of this story, they are driving the slaves out of their land. Remember, there is no slave revolt that happens here. There is no uprising. There is no revolution. The Hebrews walk out of Egypt, right through the proverbial “front door,” with the blessing (and the gold) of the Egyptians. And it happens because God decisively defeats their gods (cf. Vander Laan, God Heard Their Cry: Discovery Guide, pg. 103; Enns, NIV Application Commentary: Exodus, pg. 250).

The Egyptians had hundreds of gods, some more important and well-known than others, but every plague is directly confronting one or more of the gods they had trusted for everything. Every single plague is a challenge to the power Egypt believed they had. When the water turned to blood, it showed the powerlessness of Hapi, the god of the Nile, the one who (it was believed) brought the annual floods that brought life to the land. But Hapi had no power. Hecket was a frog-headed goddess who controlled childbirth and, more generally, fertility. When frogs appeared, it was a sign of spring and Hecket’s renewal of creation. But God through Moses, not Hecket, made these frogs appear. Hecket had no power. Geb was the god of the dust (they literally had a god for everything), but when God brough gnats out of the dust, it was proof that Geb had no power.

And you can go through all of the plagues this way. When the flies swarm into homes, it was proof that Nepthys, protector of the household, had no power. When the livestock die, we see that Hathor, a goddess who was depicted as a woman with cow horns, has no power. When the boils break out on peoples’ skin, it’s proof that Thoth, god of medicine and good health, has no power. The destructive power of the hail also destroys the reputation of Seth, god of the storms; he has no power. The destruction of the remaining crops by the locusts casts doubt on the power of Min, god of the crops. And then there’s the plague of darkness, which directly confronts the power of Pharoah. Pharoah was known as the son of a god, but not just any god. Pharoah was considered the son of Amun Re, the sun god. He was in charge of the change of seasons, and he was the creator, the greatest of all the gods. Pharoah was said to be a direct descendent of Amun Re, controlling the light of the sun. And then the world goes dark. And it stays dark. For three days. What kind of power does Pharoah have? What kind of power does Amun Re have? Our God has one by one conquered the gods (Vander Laan 126-127; Hamilton 87).

But there’s still one plague left. Because as awful as all of those were, Pharoah still believes he has some power and he still refuses to let the Hebrews go. So the worst plague of all comes, and it is still remembered every time our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate Passover. It was a Passover meal Jesus was celebrating when he instituted what we know as holy communion. Passover remembers the night when the Angel of Death passed over the Israelites and struck the Egyptians. The final plague, the death of the firstborn, is aimed squarely at Osiris, god of resurrection and life, giver of eternal life. The death of the firstborn shows Egypt that Osiris has no power, that life and death are solely in the hands of Almighty God. Make no mistake; it is a horrendous plague. The firstborn child in every Egyptian family, including Pharaoh’s family, is found dead, and this is the plague that finally breaks Pharoah. He doesn’t even wait until morning before he tells Moses to leave. Take the people and go. “And also,” he says, “bless me” (12:32). While some hear in that last statement a continuing spirit of defiance, I hear the words of a completely broken man. Everything he has been taught, everything he has ever believed, everything he has ever held dear is now destroyed. It’s gone. He has nothing left. “Bless me” is the first indication of humility we hear from this Pharoah. It won’t last long, as we’ll see next week, but it’s something. When your gods have been destroyed, what’s left?

And we all have small-g gods. We don’t like to admit it, but we do. We come here to worship and connect with the one true God, but we have other gods we worship during the week. In Egypt, they were huge statues, visible for all; our gods are much smaller, more hidden, more subtle, and maybe we don’t call them gods. But we worship them, whether we want to admit it or not. Whatever takes first place in our life, that is our god. Or, I should say, those are our gods. You can tell a culture’s gods by what we build monuments to. Even the way buildings are built can tell us a lot, so, for instance, hotel lobbies are built to be spacious, welcoming and comforting, to make you feel at ease; so are upscale stores and shopping malls. They are temples to the gods of Consumerism and Luxury. We build giant skyscrapers and smaller temples to the gods of Business and Economics. Think about it: when the terrorists of 9/11 wanted to harm us and psychologically damage us as a culture, where did they aim? The temples we build to Economic and Military Power (cf. deSilva, Sacramental Life, pgs. 151-152). What we watch or consume also tells us an awful lot about the gods we worship. We worship the beautiful people, the successful people, the wealthy people, the sexy people. Advertisers and movie producers both know and live by the old saying, “Sex Sells.” So we use it to sell everything from toothpaste to cars to the latest blockbuster film. More than ever, we worship sexuality; it has become the center of our national conversation. But instead of having conversations that help us understand one another, that allow for disagreement, that help us find ways to move forward, we engage in shouting matches, we name-call each other, and we accuse one another of hateful motives. This god has taken first place in our culture, and we worship at the altar of sex, just like they did in ancient times. We may be more sophisticated than those ancient people in Egypt, but we honor the same gods.

Today we also worship the almighty god of happiness, and that’s just about as flaky a god as you can find. Happiness comes and goes, and so when this or that no longer makes us happy, we move on. We trade friends and jobs like we change laundry detergent brands. If you are to believe social media, there are two types of people these days. The first group is living the most amazing life ever lived. Every picture and video posted online is just fabulous and there is nothing that ever goes wrong in their lives. I actually once had one of those people tell me, “I’ve never had anything bad happen to me.” Now, I could have named three bad things that had happened to them that week, but they so worshipped the god of happiness that they wouldn’t have admitted to them. You just ignore the bad and only see (or at least only post) the good. The other type of person today is the one to whom nothing good ever happens. They constantly complain online. Their life is miserable. Life never goes right. And that person is worshipping at the altar of happiness as much as the first person; the elusive pursuit of constant happiness is still their goal, even if they believe they will never achieve it. And the problem with both of those lives is this: neither is reality. No life is absolutely perfect and trouble-free and no life is so bad that nothing good ever happens. Here’s the truth, folks: the sun came up this morning. That’s good! There is air to breathe; that’s good! I could keep going, but I don’t have enough time to mention every blessing that you have been given just this morning. The problem with the god of happiness, and with all these other idols, false gods, is that they are lifeless. None of these things can bring life; none of them last. And when we direct our lives toward things that are lifeless, we end up like those things: “lifeless shells of beings, remade in the image of [our] gods rather than” remade into the image of the living and life-giving God, the one who rescued the Hebrews (deSilva 153).

Jesus didn’t talk a lot about false gods and idols, but he does name one rather prominently: money, or as it is sometimes translated, “mammon.” Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters…You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24; deSilva 153). It’s an easy idol to worship; it so easily becomes the center of our life. And there are always people who have more than we do, which causes us to want more. How much money does it take to have a happy life (there’s that other god again)? Just a little bit more. We become like what we worship, and if that’s money, then what does someone who worships at that altar become like? We become focused on gaining more, often at a higher cost than we would have ever imagined. We say things like, “I’m working all of this so you can have nice things.” We make plans for gaining more, and we neglect other aspects of our life. Or, maybe the clearest evidence of the control of this god in our lives is a lack of contentedness. The Apostle Paul described a life centered on Christ first and foremost in this way: “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and i know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:11-13). That’s a good word for today, a word we can all ask God to help us live into better.

God conquered the gods in Egypt and he wants to do the same thing in your life. He can and will conquer the gods that want to take his place in your life today. God—the God of the Hebrews, the one true God—worked through Moses and his brother Aaron to defeat the gods, to show them to be powerless, and to bring the Hebrews into freedom. He brought them out of Egypt. The next step, and one we’ll start talking about next week, is getting Egypt out of them, but before he could do that he had to conquer the gods they had seen every day of their lives. He proved to the Hebrews that those gods were powerless, and he wants to show you that the gods you’re surrounded with are just as powerless as Osiris, Hecket or Hapi. What are the gods that you worship? Money? Sex? Power? Popularity? Happiness? Some form of addiction? Hurts, habits and hang-ups—those are gods as well. Maybe these gods have followed you for years and you’ve tried to conquer them on your own but you just can’t. Sometimes, it’s important to have a brother or sister in Christ to come alongside you, to walk with you, maybe even to hold you accountable to not turning back toward that altar. This morning, I invite you to pray, and especially if there are significant gods in your life that need conquering, you might consider coming and kneeling here in the front. No, there is no magic on these steps, but there is spiritual significance in making a move. Sometimes the move to the front, the kneeling down, those physical moves help solidify our spiritual moves. Moses could have talked about leaving Egypt all day long, but until they moved, it wasn’t going to happen. So, come forward if that will be helpful. Starting this morning, we also have prayer team members who are going to be available on the side steps, today and every week, to pray with you if you would like someone to do that. There’s no magic in that, either, but it can make a difference to have someone beside you, even if they don’t say anything, even if they are just there practicing the ministry of presence. So what are the gods that need conquered in your life today? Let’s allow the God of the universe do his work. He is the one who set the Israelites free then and he can set you free now. Let’s pray.