Exodus 10:1-29

We have a tendency to try to bargain with God in hopes of being able to get what we want without having to do more than we have to of what He wants.  The idea of complete surrender to God is hard for man to grasp and harder still to practice.  We are very good at rationalizing our sin and convincing ourselves that it is okay to continue on in our lives with a half-hearted repentance.  Then we wonder why we do not experience the blessings of God in our lives.  We long for peace, hope, joy and love to permeate our lives yet we pay lip service to the only source of these blessings.  Pharaoh longs for relief from judgment but he is very far from submitting to God in his life.  We must be very careful not to fool ourselves into thinking that we can “make deals” with God.
THE PLAGUE OF LOCUST: The hail had already destroyed a large number of crops, but now the Locust come into the land and eat everything that is green.  They invade the home the fields the forests and every plant that was still alive is consumed.  This will cause a shortage of food in the land for a long time.  Pharaoh’s servants and advisers plead with him to give up and let the children of Israel go.  They point out that Egypt has been destroyed and that their only hope of survival is to submit to what God wants.  Pharaoh finally consents to allowing only the men to go and worship but without the women, children and livestock.  He hopes that they will settle for less, but Moses is not willing to flex on this issue and so Pharaoh refuses to obey.  Satan will always try to tempt us to settle for less than complete obedience to God.  We must never be flexible when it comes to obeying God.  He demands complete obedience from me and I cannot settle for anything less than that.
THE PLAGUE OF DARKNESS: A darkness that prevents us from seeing is one thing, but a darkness that is so heavy that it can be felt and apparently even extinguishes the artificial candle light in the home of the Egyptians is a very deep darkness.  Panic and despair must have set in on the people to the point that many of them must have been bordering on insanity.  Once again Pharaoh consents to let all the people go but not the livestock.  He is making progress but he is still putting conditions upon his obedience.  He seems to be determined to get some sort of “moral” victory out of this so he continues to try to haggle with God.  Moses and God are not interested in a discount obedience so the plague rages on.  Pharaoh refuses to obey and realizes that the next step he would have to take would be submission so he threatens to kill Moses the next time he sees him, in effect refusing to see him ever again.  Pharaoh is putting his life and that of his families in great peril, but he is so blinded by his own pride and ambition that he cannot even see it.  I must never allow myself to be fooled into thinking that God in some way needs me, but recognize that I am the one who is desperately in need of Him.

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