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The audio is a lecture that Carl Trueman delivered. This is what a church historian ought to be doing for us: evaluating, appreciating, and criticizing. You will learn about Whitefield, you will learn about the scholarship on Whitefield, and you will learn something about Whitefield's strengths and weaknesses.
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As the plagues advance, they get more catastrophic. When we reach the ninth plague however, the darkness, nothing really happens. There is just the unexpected darkness lasting three days.
What was that plague about? What exactly was that darkness? One way to go about trying to understand the darkness and its purposes would be to attempt a scientific explanation. Was it an eclipse? Was it a cloud? Was it dust? Was it a kind of mass blindness that afflicted everybody? The problem with all those hypotheses is that they can only remain speculative in the absence of any data. You can't experiment, there are no samples, all you have is a report of the occasion to try to mine for details, but there are no details really to be found. If you are looking for a scientific explanation, you have to go about it scientifically. The problem is that there is no way that you can. It was dark in Egypt and there was light in Israel. It is most like the cloud, the pillar of fire that lit the camp of Israel and kept the Egyptians at bay, once more in the dark, a few weeks or so later. So there is another similar phenomenon, but the problem is that that phenomenon is also hard to explain. The point is they are both deliberately hard to explain, since they are patently supernatural phenomena. You can't put them in a test tube, and it is probable that scientific apparatuses, had they been available, would have been incapable of registering those thing they are designed to register, since no scientific apparatus is designed to register anomalies of supernatural origin. Perhaps the photometers we would like to have mounted would have measured bright, sunny days to the astonishment of all. Maybe the video cameras would have registered nothing but darkness and the photometers only some weird, unusual ultraviolet radiation. Perhaps something altogether more unexpected. The point of something registering on ancient measuring devices as "the finger of God" is that it is supernatural. That is the whole point! It is not that their way of going about it was not scientific, though it was. It was accurate for all that it was primitive. Our question should be what is the point of this supernatural darkness God had for Egypt? It is the darkness of the stubborn and unbelieving heart that God put them in. It was an awful place to be, and it was a place with no measurable time. While it lasted, it was seemingly endless, and the more awful because nothing at all happened in that ominous eternity. It is the place where those who want nothing of God at all obtain all their heart's desire: and that is why it is utterly devoid of the least light: an absolute, palpable darkness of unending waiting for nothing to happen, like Waiting for Godot, only far less interesting and far more horrible. Because if you don't want God, then you positively want nothing of God. That desire, made consistent, is absolute nothing. God creates, God brings into existence, he says let there be light, he gives being, understanding, wisdom, knowledge, and therefore interestingness. God can take it all away, because it all depends on him, and those who do not want that which depends on and exists solely to manifest the being and glory of God--which is everything created--want nothing, want darkness, and have exactly that in the place of their deepest desiring, in their heart. Which is what God gave a taste of to Egypt as he dealt with them, right before he brought the horrible last plague. God did it as a warning of doom, of how bad resisting him could be. He told them something that C. S. Lewis also expressed something like this: Those who will not say to God, 'Thy will be done,' will hear him say to them, 'Very well, then let thy will be done.' And that is eternal condemnation, hell, torment, and eternal outer darkness. There is a calculated escalation to be seen in the plagues. One can see patterns of two and patterns of three.
If you take the plagues in groups of two, you will notice that the first have to do with the Nile. God strikes the river of the land of the Nile, starting with its most obvious feature and that on which it most depends. He turns the water to blood and all the fish die, and then he brings frogs from the river. Horrible as these plagues are, they are only annoyances compared to what follows. The next two plagues have to do with insects: the lice and flies. First the water, now the multiplied airborne insects, what is next? Epidemics, that’s what. The fifth plague is the disease of the cattle, the sixth is boils, on man and beast. Both have this in common, they are medical epidemics. What is next? The stupendous hail and the locusts. God is targeting their crops in these. First the water went bad, then insects, next disease was rampant, and now their food supply is drastically depleted. What can be next? The last two are the awful, sinister darkness during which nothing happens, and then the angel of death’s visitation at midnight, that most targeted of all the plagues. These are sinister, constituting a kind of psychological warfare. God begins gently enough, but with real warning, and escalates through each pair. The other way to look at the plagues is in triads. Triads are the natural grouping that the pattern in which each plague is announced suggests. Moses is told to meet Pharaoh early in the morning by the river, or early in the morning, implying by the river, in the first, fourth and seventh plagues. The second, fifth, and eight plague are done by going into Pharaoh, presumably in his court. The third, sixth, and most dreadfully the ninth plague come unannounced. The pattern suggests God wants us to group them that way. What do we get if we do? At the opening of each triad there is an escalation. You can see at the end of the third triad that the magicians warn about the finger of god. The fourth plague is when God first uses his finger to trace a line between Israel and Egypt (with flies, no less). The first triad are annoyances, but the second triad will go beyond it: that is when the epidemics spread. The last triad is introduced with the most narrated plague, and the most spectacular: the hail and fire. It is a warning of worse to come. I think one of the points of it all is that the tenth plague is going to be correspondingly awful, like having another triad all in one. Another point is that God is doing two things simultaneously: giving Pharaoh a warning that starts relatively easily, though ominously, and gets sterner and sterner; while at the same time he is hardening his heat, by providing the scraps of excuse the perverse heart of Pharaoh searches in order to refuse the reality he is facing. There is something very terrible in knowing that the third plague comes unannounced when suddenly the unexpected darkness comes on Egypt. God’s terrible plagues accomplish at least 5 things: (1) they relax Egypt’s grip long enough for Israel to go; (2) had God just smitten Egypt wholesale outright, Israel would never have attempted their emigration, since they could have just occupied Egypt—so they also create in Israel an expectation of departure; (3) the plundering of the Egyptians is possible when Egypt envisions further escalations if Israel doesn’t leave; (4) Moses acquires some stature as a leader, growing in his own confidence and in the people’s confidence in him; (5) Egypt has been reduced, and once its military power is destroyed also, it will be in no position to flex its muscle at neighboring states. God went to war. When finally the irresistible army of Egypt was drowned, the people saw it. They realized the whole thing had been structured and were overawed at the scale on which God works. And the whole thing is a pattern of a greater deliverance which is coming and in which God’s enemies will be overcome with utter, apocalyptic finality. Exodus 5:2 And Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, nor will I let Israel go.”
Before the Lord revealed to Moses the name YHWH, nobody had it. No wonder Pharaoh didn’t know the name. Pharaoh knew plenty of names: there was no lack of them in the Egyptian pantheon. And that was part of his wisdom, that he knew the names, what they stood for, what they did, how they kept the universe running, how they preserved the balance of life in Egypt. Pharaoh was at the center of all the networked festivals by which his land and his people prospered and were dominant. Pharaoh even had magicians who did real magic. One way Pharaoh would know the Lord would be the Lord’s dealing with the craft of Egypt’s magicians. First their rods are confiscated. We might think, when they turn their own rods into snakes, Why did God allow that to happen? Doesn’t it make his own sign counterproductive? Why didn’t he stop them from turning their rods into snakes? It was because God wanted to take their rods away. God is putting a reputation on Aaron’s rod (Matthew Henry’s phrase), and he is confiscating the symbols of Egypt. Then the magicians are able to turn water to blood. Not very helpful at that point; it would have been far better if they could have diminished the amount of blood and countered God’s power, but they could not. They could tack on a sympathetic achievement that only made the whole situation a little bit worse than the calamity it already was. So it shows their limitations, but not altogether. Next the magicians manage to multiply frogs! This is not helpful either, the problem being an the overabundance of frogs. It would have been interesting if they had been able to annihilate many of them easily. Instead, whether because it did not occur to them to do otherwise or because they were unable to annihilate them, they bring forth a few more, adding to the mess. It is a picture of the craft and power of Egypt limping along behind the great deeds of the Lord and preening itself ridiculously on its puny and pathetic imitations. At last God put a stop to it. They were able to get frogs from the Nile, but when it came to making gnats, the magicians had to admit their inability. You would think frogs would be harder! But God drew the line with the gnats, and they saw that the line was draws by the finger of God, and suddenly were unable to remain as scornful of YHWH as formerly. The last we see of the magicians is when there is an epidemic that disfigures the Egyptians. In this plague, the magicians are unable to even make and appearance, let alone try to create more boils on Pharaoh and his court. They have been outclassed: their rods confiscated, their damage limited, their moment allowed for the sake of hardening Pharaoh’s heart in increments, their power broken and themselves defeated and dishonored. Pharaoh will never know the Lord savingly, will never see him in a believing way. But he will know that the Lord can humiliate the craft and sorcery of Egypt’s wisest practitioners: they are no match for the Lord. The power and craft of the greatest nation on the planet was no match for the Lord. God was on the way to save his people. Moses, Moses! The Lord says.
Moses is out in the wilderness, far from human habitation. Living by himself with the foraging flocks. Sleeping under those vast, starry skies which no doubt obtained in those times. Eating stale bread. Did he hunt? Was he armed against predators besides his staff? Did he wander so far into the wilderness because he wanted to be alone? Because he was trained to look out for himself? Because he just got tired of the pointless tedium of Midianite life? How many days in the wilderness at a time did Moses go? He finds a bush burning endlessly, and climbs up to see a bit more, and then to his astonishment he is addressed by name. A.W. Tozer used to preach about having a personal encounter with the Living God, and that is what Moses is having. He is having an encounter with one who knows his name already. This is not the first time God has repeated someone’s name, nor is it the last. Abraham, Abraham! The messenger of the Lord called at the last moment. It was nearly a cry of alarm. A shout of warning to make sure Abraham’s attention was obtained and his action arrested. Samuel, Samuel! was called at another moment. The Lord there wanted Samuel’s attention, and the occasion was also a warning. He had a warning for Eli’s house, news that would shock and amaze. The call also comes with authority. How is Samuel instructed to respond? The reply Samuel learns indicates a receptive and submissive disposition. In Abraham’s case, the original commandment is abrogated. It would require equal or superior authority to do that. And so I conclude that at the burning bush there was a monitory purpose. Beware of the sanctified ground! Do not approach it casually! Beware of God! Recognize that your everyday approach is inappropriate. And prepare for further instructions. So Moses took off his sandals, having walked into the third and climactic phase of his life. There are two further instances of something similar in Scripture. Saul, Saul! That was another arresting moment, interrupting a course of life and followed by instructions. No doubt intended to evoke a parallel to the commissioning of Moses: the commissioning of an extraordinary apostle. The last instance is not one in which the Lord himself utters the double vocative but is actually the one addressed: Lord, Lord! Insincerely, it turns out. Not all who say to me Lord, Lord! It is no ordinary thing to have a personal encounter with God. Blessed are those whose name God knows and calls. For a while, Moses was a shepherd. He worked for his father-in-law, the way his ancestor Jacob had worked for his (though Moses had a far better father-in-law than Jacob did). Jacob never really worked another job: we know he cooked; he was incredibly strong, so presumably he did physically demanding things; but the main thing always was that he was good with flocks and herds, very successful at it, diligent, hardworking if not always shrewd. He lived in exile all his life, at home a wanderer or away from it in settled country, or in Egyptian exile, till he found rest at last in a grave with his ancestors.
Moses, however, was trained in the court of Egypt. The Egyptians, we know, looked down on those who kept herds and flocks: "for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians,” as Joseph explained to his family in Genesis 46:34. When Moses identified with his oppressed people, the Hebrews, and as a result of his rash actions had to flee, he ended up a shepherd like his ancestors had been. The first part of his life, his first forty years were lived in what were probably the best circumstances anybody could have in that ancient time of the world, materially. But he must also have lived with an inner conflict of identity: the training his mother no doubt gave him never to forget his true origins; the patently Hebrew name; a protegee of Pharaoh's daughter, among the elite of the world's elite; his outer appearance as Egyptian as a Sphinx, and as enigmatically so, since inwardly and from his earliest memories he knew that he belonged to the people Egypt exploited and oppressed. It must have been a relief, along with disappointment, to find himself away from the growing inner struggle. It burst forth in that murder which marked the end of his Egyptian identity and caused his flight. Then came the forty years during which he kept the flocks of Jethro his father-in-law, having left everything behind. He must have given up on his people, to some extent: we know from the enigmatic story in chapter four that Moses even neglected to circumcise his children. What wildernesses must those forty years have been for one trained in all the wisdom of Egypt? "I am a sojourner in a foreign land," he remarks on the occasion of celebrating his firstborn. Was it an ironic remark? When had he ever lived in his own country? An exile from his family, an exile from his circumstances, an exile from all the world when God finds him in chapter three. And when would he ever, until he came to that country John Bunyan has called Immanuel's Land, find a home? Forty years into his new job Moses leads the animals into uninhabited land in search of forage. He lives in Midian, east of Egypt, but he is heading west. And it is only then, that momentous first verse of chapter three tells us, that he came at last to Horeb, the mountain of God. When Moses and Aaron first go before Pharaoh they are faced with his scorn, and the scorn of the all the wisdom of Egypt. “Who is the Lord?”
He is going to find out. We know how the story goes for Pharaoh, but at this point Moses and Aaron still are not clear about that. They don’t understand how implacable Pharaoh is, how much he can endure, and what it will take. They actually try to get him to relent by suggesting that that he is more merciful than God. The God of the Hebrews has met with us, they say, and if you don’t let us go . . . uh, he’s going to punish us or smite us or something. That is a strange thing to say. It is a strange thing to say because God never said any such thing. He told Moses he had seen the oppression of his people and remembered his covenant. As a result, he was going to visit them and rescue them. Moses was instructed to tell Pharaoh to let God’s people go, not instructed to tell the people that if they didn’t leave they would be punished. It is a strange reversal. It is also strange because of the only possible reason Moses has for doing this: he’s trying to soften the imperative, to massage the message, to appeal to Pharaoh’s goodness. But can there be mercy with Pharaoh? There is, of course, no mercy with Pharaoh. Pharaoh grows suspicious and as a result makes things worse for the people of Israel. They find themselves in a bind that is worse than before. The new policy is unreasonable and for Israel, hopeless. So the elders of Israel go and try to appeal to the king. They are helpless, they think they have no one else to turn to. Maybe there was some oversight, maybe some underling exceeded his authority. Egypt’s economy no doubt changed: its markets were flooded with straw. All the supply of straw going to the brick industry was diverted elsewhere and no doubt the price of straw collapsed. Perhaps the elders of Israel wondered if Pharaoh understood what was going on in his country. Perhaps if Pharaoh knew what was really happening he would not be so harsh. Could there be mercy with Pharaoh? Instead of turning to the Lord, they turned to Pharaoh. And there was, of course, no mercy with Pharaoh. He berated them and remained implacable. And the end was that everybody was bitter and discouraged, including Moses. Why, he asks the Lord, are you bringing trouble on this people? What am I even doing here? The Lord had his purposes. He was preparing to abase Pharaoh for one, and no one will question his procedure when all is done. He was also showing his people that they have no help or hope apart from God who alone hears their cries and alone can rescue them. They will learn soon enough that there is no mercy with Pharaoh, because they will soon enough know there is only mercy with the Lord. Here’s an enigmatic story! After the Lord has patiently heard Moses’ objections and overcome them, after Moses agrees to do what he is still reluctant to do, after he gets permission from his Father-in-law and readily obtains it, and after he leaves Moab to return to Egypt the Lord comes to him at night and tries to kill him.
How? What must it have been like to be attacked unexpectedly at the encampment? Not much information is given. The question ‘how’ goes unanswered because it is not our business. The question instead is, Why. Why did the Lord meet Moses and then try to kill him? Why here, why now? The answer has to do with the past and the future. The Lord’s meeting with Moses takes place between the past and the future, in the present, where all his encounters with temporal beings occur. What is in the past? In the distant past, a covenant. A covenant sealed by circumcision. A covenant of dedication to God, of hoping in him exclusively, of waiting and trusting in his promises, of offering him a whole entire life. In the near past, are the words of God spoken in Moab before Moses set out. Do all the wonders, God says in 4:21; Pharaoh is not going to listen to you; then you are going to tell him something about Israel whom I mean to deliver: tell him that it is my firstborn. And because you will not let my firstborn go and serve me, I will kill your own firstborn. That is in the past, and one other thing. In the present Zipporah realizes what God is after and abruptly circumcises her son, bitterly exclaiming that Moses is a husband of blood. She knew! She knew what God was after. And the question is how she would have known. How did Zipporah find out in the confusion of that desperate moment that was what God wanted? Because in the past she must have objected to Moses’ Hebrew rather than Egyptian identity. And we must assume that she did not want the reproach of God’s enslaved people. She was disgusted at it and by it. And Moses must have listened to his wife, the way Adam did, the way Abraham did, forgetting the past, the covenant, God’s righteous demands. But the future needs to factor into understanding this enigmatic episode as well. The future is what God plans to do: to rescue his consecrated people, those who have a covenant relationship with him, the circumcised children of Israel. And the Lord’s purposes for his people involve the punishment of Pharaoh. The climactic plague is the one that sets up the Passover, that festival of identity which Christians still maintain in the Lord’s Supper. And it is the one in which God purposed to kill Pharaoh’s firstborn, his best, and the best and first of all the land, to show him the enormity of what he is doing by enslaving God’s own firstborn and keeping him from service to God. And so Moses’ own firstborn must identify with God’s covenant and God’s people, must be circumcised, must be consecrated with blood to the Lord. “You are a husband of blood!” Zipporah exclaims, because she knows God’s requirements, though she does not understand their saving, precious meaning. Moses could not be about God’s business without acknowledging the rituals God intended as vehicles toward that precious, all-important meaning: the great and ultimate meaning which is found in Christ, in his blood, in his consecration, in our union to him by faith, and in the circumcision of our hearts which sets them apart for his service. Exodus 6:5 And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant.
Here the question is, how can God remember? Does God forget? Did God not think of his covenant for 400 years? That is not possible. Does he have too many things to do? I used to think that when I was a kid. That God had a bunch of things to do, obviously, and so there were things he didn’t concentrate on. Of course, nothing was ever neglected, but many things were deliberately put aside while other projects were undertaken. I used to think, in other words, that God had a series of really accurate internal alarm clocks. But that is untrained and ill-conceived theology. Many of God’s attributes are violated by that notion of God’s being and activity. So that is not the way to understand it. When it says that God remembers, it does not mean that God forgot. It is impossible for God to forget the slightest thing—that we know! Theology guiding us, then, we have to say that Moses is talking to us in language of accommodation. We have to understand that language the way Calvin understands the expression El Shaddai—not as literal but metaphorical. He is saying things that do not mean quite as we might naturally take it, because he is talking about something that goes beyond our experience. It has to do with God’s eternity. God is not limited by time like we are. God’s eternity certainly means that he is everlasting, but it also means that he has no past and no future. We are limited to a slice of time called present, with the past irrecoverably gone and the future constantly out of reach. God is not so limited; his eternity is an eternal, unlimited present. God does not remember because he has no past from which to fetch his memories. When God, then, tells us he remembered, it is something to do with us. It means that it looks to us like he remembered. It is language of accommodation. It is speaking of God’s eternal purpose to save his people. It is speaking of God’s eternal activity of deliverance – in its totality—manifested partially and progressively in time. In other words, it means it didn’t look to us like God was doing anything before, and now it looks to us like he is – we are aware of his saving activity from our limited perspective. That is what it means that God remembers. There is a lot of theology in that. And it is there because God expects us to interpret, to think, to meditate, to study and understand these things: this is how God reveals himself, not just in obvious statements, but in more difficult expressions that require reflection and the coordination of what we know to evaluate our interpretive possibilities. What do we learn?
By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible says the author of Hebrews. You look at the story in Exodus 2 and are tempted to wonder where he’s getting it from.
Because we must never use Scripture to contradict Scripture, we have to look deeper and understand what exactly is going on here. Moses doesn’t come off looking very good in Exodus. He goes out when he’s 40. He sees a Hebrew being beaten by and Egyptian, he checks that nobody is looking and kills the Egyptian. When he finds out that the deed is known, he runs away. And yet we are told that ‘by faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king.’ We have to understand that in Exodus Moses is not glorifying his faith. But his faith is nevertheless apparent to us upon further consideration. The author of Hebrews believed it is important to notice it. He identified with God’s people, after all. He did not lord it over them as an Egyptian could. We know form the comments of his father-in-law’s daughters that he looked like an Egyptian to most people. But in avenging his Hebrew brother he identified with God’s people, for all that his approach to it was wrong. This is the great lawgiver. This is the person who received written on stone the commandment: thou shalt not murder. A murderer. Because by the works of the law shall no man be justified, not even Moses the lawgiver. From the very start he did not keep the law, but was justified by faith, seeing God who is invisible. He was vindicated by an alien righteousness imputed to him, not by his own efforts. And being justified by faith, he was sanctified. He started out fearing Pharaoh, but that is not held against him. That was washed away, pardoned, forgiven, another righteousness imputed so that the grace and benefits of union with Christ would amend his life as well. He learned not to fear Pharaoh, a lot more gradually than the author of Hebrews might seem to suggest, but the truth is the author of Hebrews’ operating reality. |
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