Exiting Egypt Chapter 7 P2

Exiting Egypt

“God’s Purposes Behind the Plagues”

Exodus 6:28 – 7:13

By Dennis Lee: Chapter 7 P2

2. To Let The World Know That the Lord is God

God used the plaques to teach the world this one thing, that the Lord (Jehovah, Yahweh) is the God of redemption, salvation and deliverance.

That you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the Lord (Ex. 10:2 NIV)

3. To Demonstrate His Power

God is omnipotent, that is, God is all powerful, and through these plagues He proves and demonstrates just how powerful He is, not only over all of Egypt’s false gods, but over creation itself, for He is the Creator. To me, what points this out more than anything else is what the magicians said after only three plagues,

This is the finger of God (Ex. 8:19)

They recognize that the plagues we not even the fullness of God’s power, but just one of his fingers.

4. To Free Israel

But Pharaoh will not heed you, so that I may lay My hand on Egypt and bring My armies and My people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments (Ex. 7:4 NKJV)

Again this goes back to His declared name, the Lord, and that as the Lord Israel would experience His deliverance.

5. To Distinguish Israel from Egypt

God used these plagues to show the great distinction between Israel and Egypt, or shall we say the great difference between those who follow God and those who don’t. What we will see is that starting with the fourth plague, God actually put a hedge of protection around the land of Goshen, which is the land in which Israel lived.

But on that day I will deal differently with the land of Goshen, where my people live; no swarms of flies will be there, so that you will know that I, the Lord, am in this land. I will make a distinction between my people and your people (Ex. 8:22-23a NIV)

6. To Judge Egypt

God used the plagues to judge the Egyptians for their sins, for worshipping false gods, and for enslaving and brutalizing His people.

Listen to what Mazie Dunnam stated concerning the judgment of God

“There can be no covering up or diminishing the reality of divine judgment. The fact is set forth on page after page of Bible history. God judged Adam and Eve, expelling them from the garden and pronouncing curses on their future earthly life. God judged the corrupt world of Noah’s day, sending a flood to destroy humankind. God judged Sodom and Gomorrah, engulfing them in a volcanic catastrophe (Ge. 19:24). And God judged Pharaoh and the Egyptians just as He had foretold He would (Ge. 15:14), unleashing against them the terrors of the ten plagues.

“There are “Big Judgments” about which we all know. Apart from these, the pages of the Bible are literally filled with judgment. Those who don’t study the Bible seriously, nonchalantly suggest that when you leave the Old Testament and come to the New, the theme of divine judgment fades almost to nothing. That isn’t so. Even a cursory reading of the New Testament reveals God’s action as judge. In fact, the entire New Testament is overshadowed by the certainty of a coming day of universal judgment, which was set forth by Jesus Himself. It’s not easy to forget that picture, the powerful imagery of it – the sheep separated from the goats, the righteous on the right hand of God and the unrighteous on the left, the righteous invited into the presence of the Lord, the unrighteous condemned to eternal punishment where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12).

“There is no way to cover up or diminish the reality of divine judgment.”