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Welcome to the Cross References podcast on the Book of Ezekiel. In this study, you learn how every small piece of the Bible tells one big story- and most importantly, how they all connect to the cross and Christ.
Whether you’re a newbie Christian or a veteran Bible reader, my goal is that God’s Word will make more sense to you after every episode.
Host: Luke Taylor
The gods of Egypt
Or: did God love the Egyptians?
Exodus 7-12
30-Minute Theology
Introduction
One time I was studying through the book of Exodus and I had this thought: Did God love the Egyptians?
It’s a question you’ve probably never really thought much about before.
So, in Exodus, this is the story of the Egyptians who enslaved the Israelites and wouldn’t let them go. They were forced to work all day under grueling conditions in the desert, building whatever Pharaoh wanted for his cities. And for centuries, pharaoh after pharaoh wouldn’t let them leave.
So, they’re clearly the bad guys in this story. Then God sends a deliverer named Moses out of the wilderness to come and set these people free, and the rest is history- and a really epic four-hour Charlton Heston movie from 1956. And it’s rated G even though it’s kinda scary for a G-rated movie. But you’ve got the water turning to blood and mass killing from a death angel and later drowning. And according to IMDB, there’s some canoodling between lovers. I’m not sure what that’s referring to. I’m not even sure what canoodling is, but it sure doesn’t sound G-rated to me.
Then again, the Bible is not a G-rated book. Speaking of IMDB, let me look here at how it rates the agro-appropriateness of movies: violence and gore? Yes. Alcohol? Yes. Frightening and intense scenes? Yes. Profanity? That’s debatable but if you read the King James Version, you’re going to find a few words that I sure wasn’t allowed to say growing up. Oh, and sex and nudity? Well, if you read Song of Solomon, there’s definitely some canoodling going on.
The Bible is a book of violence, destruction, depression, fear, wrath- and a God who loves all of humanity on every page. But it’s a little easy to lose sight of that fact as you read about the mass destruction that God visits upon people throughout His Word- including on the Egyptians in Exodus.
And this can cause us to question: even when God judges people, does He still love them?
Let’s go back to my original question: Did God love the Egyptians?
I have a theory about this, and I’d like to share it today on the Cross References podcast.
[theme music]
(Continued)
Welcome to the Cross References podcast, a Bible study where we learn how every small piece of the Bible tells one big story- and how they all connect to the cross and Christ.
My name is Luke Taylor, and today is my birthday. Which has nothing to do with anything, but I just thought you might wanna know. If you forgot to get me a gift, it’s probably too late now, but you can try to remember for next year.
We’re going through the book of Ezekiel right now and we’re smack in the middle of the four chapters on Egypt. We’ve covered 29 and 30, and before we get into 31, I’d like to take a week and just talk about the idolatry that was present in Egypt back in ancient times.
And I’d like to look at this through a lens of the 10 plagues in Exodus 7 through 12. And then toward the end, I’ll come back around to this question of: did God love the Egyptians?
It might seem like an easy question- “God loves everybody”- but it sure might not seem very loving for God to be pouring all this destruction out on them? Is there a loving side to what God is doing?
The Example of Jesus
And I ask this because I look at how Jesus interacted with people in the New Testament. I believe Jesus loved all people. But you notice that He does not treat everybody the same. There are some He was kind and gentle with. Tender. There are some He was surprisingly curt and abrupt with. And then there are some- such as the Pharisees in Matthew 23- that Jesus outright loses it on. And yet I keep returning to this question: did He love each of those people? I believe yes, Jesus loved them, even the Pharisees.
So why did Jesus lose his temper with some people? It is my belief that sometimes, it’s the only way to get through to someone. Same reason I raise my voice with my kid sometimes: if I’m trying to tell my kid not to run out in the road I may have to (I’ll call it:) “escalate my temperament” a little bit to make sure He understands the seriousness of the situation. If he tries to do something that would be really really bad for him- like crossing the street without looking both ways, or sticking a fork in the toaster, or attempting Fortnite dances in public- I will need to be a bit more animated in my approach so that I can convince him to never do that again. Are you tracking with me?
It’s not that I don’t love my son; I would raise my voice on something like that because I love him.
So it’s my belief that Jesus’ harsh rhetoric with the Pharisees was for similar reasons. Jesus was a little more animated in His condemnation of their actions- He yelled at them- because He loved them. Because He was trying to get through to them. And there are some people who just won’t hear you if you say it in a nice, gentle way. Jesus was trying to break through some hard hearts, and to do that, sometimes you need a sledgehammer, not a chisel.
I want to have a soft heart so that God only needs to use playdoh tools when He has to work on me. Because if I get arrogant and prideful, God has to bring the hammer down sometimes just to get through to me. And even if He does, that is an act of love. And I look at how Jesus addressed the Pharisees- even though He got angry sometimes- as an act of love.
The gods of Egypt
Well now let’s return to the question of Egypt. When God was unleashing His various plagues on the Egyptians, could that be seen as an act of love as well? Does God truly love all of humanity, or just the good guys and the victims in the stories? Does God love the bad guys, too? Could His destructive actions against the Egyptians be seen as an act of love? Well, there’s a side to the story that you may have never known before. We’ll pick it up as Moses meets Pharaoh.
Exodus 5:1-3
Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’”
But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.”
Then [Moses and Aaron] said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three days' journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.”
Moses wanted two things, to make sacrifices and have feasts in God’s honor.
1st PLAGUE
Stretch your hand over the Nile…and it turned to blood
Egyptian god of the Nile was Hapi
Pharaoh’s magicians duplicated the trick; so Pharaoh didn’t budge
2nd PLAGUE
Frogs come up and cover the land
God of fertility was Heqt, a frog
Magicians duplicated this miracle, too; but this time Pharaoh said if you send the frogs away, you can leave tomorrow
The next day frogs died right where they were; Pharaoh changed his mind
3rd PLAGUE
Lice came into the land from dust
The magicians could not duplicate this trick (my belief: it’s because that would create life)
Pharaoh wouldn’t back down
This was against the Egyptian’s earth god, Get
These plagues were going after the Egyptian’s gods. God is tearing down their idols and gods.
FOURTH PLAGUE
God sent flies to cover the land
The Egyptians had god with the head of a fly. Khepri.
These flies were so annoying, Pharaoh said go make a sacrifice and come back
Moses did, but then as soon as the flies were gone, Pharaoh changed his mind
We do that, too, we cry out to God all the time when we’re in trouble. Sometimes it’s the only time He hears from us!
Do you have “friends” like that? You don’t want to have friends where the only time you hear from them is when they want something from you.
Don’t have a 911 god
FIFTH PLAGUE
The Egyptian’s livestock were killed
This came up against the bull god Apis and the cow god Hather
Pharaoh saw that the Israelite’s cows were fine, and he didn’t do anything.
SIXTH PLAGUE
Boils- on the Egyptians
This was against the medicine god, Ihmotep.
Pharaoh called his magicians and they couldn’t even stand because the boils were so painful
Pharaoh, once again, didn’t do anything.
This is the point where Moses came to Pharaoh and says, this is what the Lord wants to tell you. I could have killed you with one plague if I wanted to. But I didn’t. I’m giving you a chance to turn to me. To surrender. That’s what we all have to do when we come to God as well.
God is reaching out to the Egyptians by dismantling their idols. This is not a process that’s fun. There may be times in your life where God has revealed to you one of your idols. It hurts, but it’s for our own good. He does this so we will turn to Him, to rely on just Him.
God is loving the Egyptians right here by exposing their own idols to them, and exposing them to the true God.
If God hated them, if God didn’t love them, God could have just killed them all with a visit from the death angel. He could have sent the death angel Day One and spared everyone a lot of trauma and grief. God is showing love to the Egyptians. It hurts them, but it’s for their own good, if they would repent.
So Moses points all this out to Pharoah, that God could have just killed him if he wanted to. Moses says submit to the true Lord, and let His people go.
There’s another movie I liked as a kid called The Prince of Egypt. This was an animated movie that went through the story of Moses. And it does it in about half the time of the Charlton Heston film. I guess because they cut out all the canoodling.
They did, however, have a number of musical sequences. I watched this movie so much as a kid that I just about memorized all the songs. They even had this song about the idols of Egypt…
[play some of it]
And as I go through this list with you today, I recognize some of these names.
SEVENTH PLAGUE
So Moses said, here’s your warning; stay inside, or get crushed by hail. Some Egyptians listened, some didn’t.
So hail and fire mixed with blood rained down on Egypt, this was the seventh plague.
It was against Horus, the sky god.
This time Pharaoh says, “OK, I screwed up. You can go.” But as soon as the hail was gone, he changed his mind.
EIGHTH PLAGUE
This time god went after the god of crops, Ermutet, and the god of harvest, Thermuth
Just like in that song I played a few moments ago, they just had so many gods all through Egypt. A god for every little thing under the sun- and the sun itself!
As I was saying in the previous episode, they couldn’t conceive of a singular God who made it all, they could only imagine all these little gods who only played a small part. So the real God is chipping away at all these gods one at a time.
God sent locusts to cover the earth
This time Pharaoh said Moses could take the men and go, but he had to leave the women and children.
So Moses had a choice: DEAL or NO DEAL.
God doesn’t want you to make compromises.
NINTH PLAGUE
God sent three days of darkness.
It was so thick, you could feel it, apparently. You couldn’t even light a candle, it got swallowed up. There was no moonlight. Only the little town that the Israelites lived in had light.
This was against the most famous and basically the chief of the Egyptian gods, Ra, the sun god
(Who you kept hearing in that musical sequence)
So this time Pharaoh says Moses can leave, you can have your wife and kids, but just leave us your livestock.
DEAL or NO DEAL
Think about it, this is a way better deal than last time. What would you do?
(I probably would have taken it, but I’m not as strong as Moses)
10th PLAGUE
Exodus 11:1, 4-5
And the Lord said to Moses, “I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. Afterward he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will surely drive you out of here altogether…Then Moses said, “Thus says the Lord: ‘About midnight I will go out into the midst of Egypt; and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the female servant who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the animals.
Who is going to die? The firstborn. Who is going to kill? God.
This plague is striking at the god of self. The Pharaohs thought of themselves as their gods, and if Pharaoh didn’t apply the lamb’s blood, he was losing his bloodline. And thus, his legacy.
And that’s exactly what happened.
So I bring all this up in the midst of a section we’re studying through in Ezekiel in which the Pharaoh of Ezekiel’s day thinks of himself as a god. And the nation as a whole continued to have issues where the Egyptians worshipped various pagan deities.
And I’ll return in a moment with a few closing thoughts on this, but perhaps this background will give some greater context to what we’re going to study in these current chapters of Ezekiel. Chapter 31 is all about that Pharaoh who thought of himself as a god.
So Egypt continued to have these issues for long after Moses’ day, obviously, but God tried to set them straight all the way back in the book of Exodus. He went after their gods back then. I have a few thoughts on that before we wrap up for today.
[music]
Housekeeping/Mailbag
Next time on this podcast: Exodus 31
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Weird stuff
Email: crossreferencespodcast@gmail.com
Joe in NC: Crocs gots pointy snouts.
Closing Thoughts
So God could have killed Pharaoh and all the Egyptians in one day, yet He freed the Israelites through a lengthier process of sending 10 wonders or plagues.
I would make three points to demonstrate that God actually did the 10 plagues to free the slaves not just because God loved the Israelites, but also because God loved the Egyptians.
God’s love does not always look gentle and tender. Sometimes God has to rip the bandaid off. These gods that the Egyptians worshipped were fakes. There was a true God who was supreme over all those things.
God was exposing the idols of the Egyptians to them. It was not fun, but God was doing whatever it took to get their attention.
God’s 10 plagues against the Egyptians were an act of love.
God loved the Egyptians.
As I said at the beginning, today is my birthday. Today, I turn 34. For the past year, I’ve been 33- the same age that Jesus was, approximately, when He died on the cross. And I’ve reflected on that a lot this past year: that I am the same age Jesus was when He gave it all. I have been walking this earth with as much experience as He had at the time that He laid down his life for all mankind. And there is a parallel to Jesus in the account of the 10 plagues.
At the end of the story, it ends with God instituting the Passover. It meant that a lamb would have to be sacrificed and its blood put on the doors. Here are a few verses from
Exodus 12 (verses 5, 7, 13-14)
Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats… And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it… Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. ‘So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance.
God is establishing the sacrifice and the feast. And why does God do this? Isn’t all this killing an innocent baby sheep just kinda random, and mean? I mean, sheep are cute. Why kill one so pointlessly? The reason was to point to Jesus.
Because about 1,600 years after the Israelites were set free from the Egyptians, another baby was born, and he was a miracle baby just like Moses. When John the Baptist first saw him, he said, “Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” And Jesus Christ lived the life that you and I should have lived, and He died the death that you and I should have died.
Here is how Isaiah described Jesus when He went to the cross:
He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
Isaiah also says:
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
This is how the story of the 10 plagues ends: It started with Moses asking Pharaoh to let the slaves free to have a feast; it ends with a feast called passover, and then the slaves are set free, but only after a night of death.
Jesus opened not his mouth. He didn’t even so much as complain about it.
I open up my mouth when it takes too long at the DMV. Jesus opened not His mouth. Despite the unfairness and the horror of what happened to Him, He opened not His mouth.
I might be the same age as Jesus, but I will never be who Jesus was.
He was the perfect man and the perfect lamb: the perfect sacrifice for our sins.
Thanks for listening to the Cross References Podcast. This has been Luke Taylor, and I hope the Bible makes more sense to you after this episode.