July 16, 2026
Thursday, July 16
Not only are the plagues of Exodus 7-11 intended to punish Pharaoh and his people for the evil they had done (as we saw yesterday), they were also designed to show that He is the One True God, the only Savior.
Here is what God told Moses just before the death angel passed over the land, in Exodus 12:12: “On all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord.” The plagues weren’t random punishments. They were a targeted assault on the gods the Egyptians worshipped:
Hapi was the god of the Nile, but he was powerless to make those waters fresh again.
Min was the god of fertility and harvest, but he couldn’t give them food when the livestock died and the vegetation was destroyed.
Ra was the sun-God, considered the creator of the Universe. But God uncreated Ra, by making it dark for three days.
Here’s a detail you may have missed: Though Pharaoh was stubborn, many Egyptians began to get the message. Some of them ran to bring in their crops before the hail hit. Later, they begged Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. They had realized that the Lord is the only God. This was His intention all along. He said repeatedly that He was doing this “so that all Egypt may know that I am the Lord.” He was exposing their gods as false. He was liberating them from their bondage to gods that were not real, that could not save them.
Interestingly, eight of the ten plagues have perfectly natural explanations. The Nile is polluted, so the frogs leave the waters and invade the rest of the land. The frogs die, which leads to swarms of gnats and flies. The general rottenness leads to an epidemic that kills livestock animals, and then another that causes humans to break out in boils. Hailstorms are not supernatural occurrences. Neither are locust invasions. The only plagues that seem supernatural, in fact, are the first one and the last one.
Why does God send plagues that could be explained away as simply nature taking its course? I believe this is how God’s wrath usually works. When we engage in sin, God doesn’t typically hit us with some exotic punishment. He doesn’t strike us with lightning from Heaven or afflict us with leprosy. Instead, He allows us to experience the natural consequences of our bad decisions. He says, “If you’re going to worship something other than me, I’m going to let you see where that god takes you.” We don’t tend to worship rivers, harvests or celestial bodies today. But we still have our idols. And they still bring us to destruction. Here’s how I think it works in our era:
If career success is my ultimate thing, one day I realize that my family has fallen apart. My marriage is shattered and my kids won’t talk to me, because I’ve consistently ignored their needs in pursuit of the brass ring. And I don’t have any friends to lean on, because I’ve stabbed them all in the back to make it to the top.
If my highest goal is to win the approval and applause of other people, then I will experience crippling anxiety, because the burden of trying to keep everyone happy is impossible to bear. I make moral compromises to earn or keep their approval, and pay the devastating price.
If I’m more passionate about my political ideology than I am about the Gospel, I eventually become consumed with anger and hatred of anyone who thinks differently than me. I see family members turn away from Christianity, which breaks my heart, but it’s my own fault. They say, “I don’t want to be a Christian if that’s what Christianity is.”
If pleasure is my true god, I’ll destroy my body and my relationships. I’ll find myself lying in the hospital one day waiting for a quadruple bypass, wishing I had a wife by my side, and thinking to myself, “Why would God do this to me?” And the Holy Spirit will say, “God didn’t make you eat all those bacon cheeseburgers and sour cream enchiladas. God didn’t make you so obsessed with porn that your wife couldn’t take it anymore. You let your appetite for pleasure rule your life, and God gave you what you wanted. This is where the god of pleasure has lead you.”
This is why I said at the start of the week that this story is for believers, too. Plenty of Christians trust Jesus to save their souls, but they don’t really trust Him to make them happy. If you’re one of them, there’s a very real chance that the suffering you are experiencing now is just God allowing you to go through the natural consequences of idolatry. Recognize it now. Repent and say,
“Lord, I want you and you alone to occupy the throne in my life. Put my career, my family, my money, my appetites, my politics in their proper place. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
Senior Pastor
First Baptist Conroe
More from Pastor Jeff at his website: jeffbergerwriting.com
