A Year with God

Selection Taken From:
A Year with God by R.P. Nettelhorst

Make this the year you let God's Word "dwell in you richly"---and marvel at the results! Each entry in this 365-day devotional features Scripture verses in which God speaks, accompanied by insights and applications to enhance your understanding. Learn what God says about hope and fear; perseverance and quitting; companionship and isolation; and more! 384 pages, softcover from Nelson, Copyright 2010.

The Plague

The LORD sent Moses with this message for the king of Egypt:
The LORD God of the Hebrews commands you to let his people go, so they can worship him. If you keep refusing, he will bring a terrible disease on your horses and donkeys, your camels and cattle, and your sheep and goats. But the LORD will protect the animals that belong to the people of Israel, and none of thens will die. Tomorrow is the day the LORD has set to do this.
It happened the next day—all of the animals belonging to the Egyptians died, but the Israelites did not lose even one. When the king found out, he was still too stubborn to let the people go.
The LORD said to Moses and Aaron:
Take a few handfuls of ashes from a stove and have Moses throw them into the air. Be sure the king is watching. The ashes will blow across the land of Egypt, causing sores to break out on people and animals.
So they took a few handfuls of ashes and went to the king. Moses threw them into the air, and sores immediately broke out on the Egyptians and their animals. The magicians were suffering so much from the sores, that they could not even come to Moses. Everything happened just as the Loan had told Moses—he made the king too stubborn to listen to Moses and Aaron. - Exodus 9:1-12 CEV

Pain will get your attention if nothing else will. Egypt's plagues finally turned from mere annoyance to physical pain and financial devastation. With the fifth plague, Pharaoh's property was being lost. He didn't want to let the Jewish people go, because they were part of his wealth.

But then he started losing animals and people. The lost people cut into his nonslave labor pool as well as his army. The nation of Egypt depended on the sea and the desert to protect the kingdom. But with no soldiers able to fight, Egypt was vulnerable to possible attack. The danger posed by the slaves' God was suddenly becoming serious; the slaves were becoming a threat to his wealth.

Even so, he wasn't willing to give in to the slaves' God. He was Pharaoh, and Egypt was the most powerful nation on earth. Eventually, the gods of Egypt would rise up against Moses. Eventually, the world would make sense again and the slaves would know their place and stay there.

Pharaoh didn't yet understand that his sense of power was an illusion and that the slaves' God was the only real God. False gods may look good and work for a while, but they always and ultimately come up painfully short. The more you have invested in them, the more painful is the lesson.