A Darkness That Could Be Felt: The Ninth Plague on Egypt - Saved for the Glory of God | Studies in the book of Exodus

I'm sure there are some of you here who, like me, were afraid of

the dark.

As a child, everything went black.

No light.

As soon as the lights would go out at night, you'd hold on to your

duvet or you'd cuddle your teddy bear as tightly as you could

to.

To help you fall asleep.

And of course, it always felt like it was hours and hours and hours,

when realistically was probably only a minute or two.

To be afraid of the dark is to be afraid of what might happen in

the absence of light.

And even though the room is so familiar to you during the hours

of light, that room doesn't change.

It's our perception that changes because our minds run away

from us about what might happen.

The boogeyman under the bed or in the wardrobe, the creak of the

hallway outside.

All of a sudden, these noises that are normal during the day are

escalated because we cannot see the truth around us because there

is no light.

And to combat the fear of the dark, my parents put a small light

into my room so that any fear would be driven out in the presence

of this lamp until I fell asleep.

Because light really did change things.

And even last year, some of us experienced not a fear of the dark,

but the inconvenience of it.

Because in the late winter of last year, there was at least two

occasions when this area lost power due to the storms.

But we possibly only had to wait a couple of seconds until we

had light again, because we either grabbed for our mobile phones

and put on the torch that's there, or we went and found a torch

from a cupboard or a drawer, another source of light that would

pierce that darkness that suddenly became such an inconvenience

to.

And it is still amazing that in the darkness, the smallest source

of light can bring such relief.

It can bring such comfort.

But it can also bring an ability even to see what is the next

step ahead.

Well, we know that there's 10 plagues to fall in Egypt.

Egypt doesn't know that.

However, the way this account of the ninth plague is shaping up,

we're beginning to see a greater understanding of who God

is.

But from our perspective, we see a greater sense of his work at

play.

Just how Pharaoh finishes this passage.

So the ninth plague comes as another plague of punishment on Egypt.

And we see the Egyptians losing their light because the plague

of darkness falls in the land so that they cannot see, meaning

that life comes to a complete stop.

They simply cannot go about freely as they would ordinarily do.

And with the ninth plague comes the end of the third set of

these plagues, we've already seen that plagues three and six come

without any warning to Pharaoh.

God simply tells Moses what to do.

He doesn't tell him to go to Pharaoh and warn him.

He tells him this is what's going to happen.

Because in his goodness, God has warned the king of Egypt about

what is to happen in the other plagues.

And.

And he's given him an opportunity to stop these plagues

falling on the land if he will only but let the children of God

go into the desert or the wilderness to worship God.

And what has Pharaoh done?

Time and time again, he has refused.

And so with the plagues of gnats and the plagues of boils, no

warning is given.

And so no opportunity is presented to Pharaoh to obey the

command of the Lord.

Now this ninth plague comes, and we see the exact same thing,

because this is what God tells Moses to do in verse 21.

Then the Lord said to Moses, stretch out your hand towards the

sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt.

And this last little phrase is important for us.

Darkness that can be felt.

Now, you might think that the last five words here are a bit odd.

How can you feel darkness?

Surely darkness is something to observe with our eyes rather than

something that is felt.

I quoted the song Simon and Garfunkel penned in the 1970s, hello,

darkness, my old friend, a number of weeks ago whenever we were

looking in Revelation.

And in that song, you have a sense of that feeling of darkness.

Even the opening line, hello, darkness, my old friend, I've come

to talk with you again.

And it's a song.

It's a very sad song.

It wouldn't even go as far as saying it was melancholic.

But it is a sadness of humanity that actually, more times,

often than not, we do feel good darkness in a way that we simply

cannot express.

Even scripture will tell us of the dark night of the soul, where

the darkness is an expression of isolation, of distance, and much

like a child feeling fear in the absence of light.

So there was a fear to this darkness that was coming on Egypt,

as we know, perhaps that fear still today as adults, because this

darkness was to represent something.

It was to represent the judgment of God.

Throughout the Bible, darkness is often associated with his judgment.

And in this case, it is a judgment particularly pointed because

the Egyptian sun was worshipped as a manifestation of

various deities or false gods.

They worship the sun by calling the sun Atum or Re or Amun

or Amun, Re.

And quite literally, in God obliterating the sun's.

Light, this judgment obliterates any deities that it represents.

And once again, God is here challenging the worship of false

gods that the Egyptians chose to worship, whereas Pharaoh demonstrates

ignoring the one true God.

And so, as we read on, we see in verse 22 that the description

of the darkness is total.

It was so thick that the Egyptians couldn't see one another,

as we might say, they couldn't see their hand in front of their

face.

And look at what verse 23 says.

No one could see anyone else.

But it wasn't just that, nor could they leave his place for three

days.

Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived.

Once again, we're seeing this contrast between the people who reject

God and the people who worship him.

So verse 23 tells us that for the Egyptians, it's hardship, it's

physical, it's making it virtually impossible to move around,

but undoubtedly emotionally terrifying as well, because the darkness

continues unabated for three whole days, leaving people unsure

whether it was day or night, and in little doubt that divine judgment

was at work.

There's still people today living in the Arctic Circle who know

what this feeling is like, because they can go with 20 hours

of darkness during the winter months.

Complete darkness, with only respite coming at midday.

For the Egyptians, there was no respite.

There's only difficulty, and there was only hardship.

But as we've seen God work before in these plagues, the Israelites

experienced none of this.

Their God, to whom they worship, continues to shine his light

on their place of dwelling.

They can go about freely, they can do whatever they want in this

light.

They can work, they can get on with their daily routines.

They can live as normal, but the Egyptians cannot.

And it isn't long before Pharaoh notices this, as you would

expect, maybe an hour or two, thinking it'll pass.

But he calls Moses now to the palace, and we once again see Pharaoh

relent in verse 24.

Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and said, go worship the Lord.

Even your women and children may go with you, only leave your

flocks and herds behind.

And now, finally, it looks to us, with the ninth plague, that Pharaoh

has learned his lesson.

He's letting everyone go, just as Moses has asked where previously

it was only the men that Pharaoh was willing to let go, now

he was letting the women and children go too.

So this looks like game done.

Pharaoh's finally submitting to God.

But this is not the victory that it appears to be, because notice

that Pharaoh is still putting restrictions on what can happen.

And so, having been struck by the Lord nine different times.

Pharaoh is in no position to haggle or to barter.

So what's his problem?

His problem is that his pride blinds him to his true situation.

And he tells Moses that he and the people can go and worship the

Lord, but they must leave their animals behind.

And so here we have a hostage taking maneuver.

Pharaoh knows the people will not ultimately leave without their

animals, which are so central to their economic well being.

Now of course, Moses, as you would expect, stands up to this and

he retorts to Pharaoh that the people and the animals must go because

the animals will be used in the sacrifices to God.

Now the purpose of the request is to worship God.

And for the people of Israel, that's not just about singing, as

we might consider it today as part of our worship.

The whole point of worshipping God was to bring their sacrifices

to him.

An aroma that was pleasing, a physical sign of the attitude of

heart.

So Moses challenges Pharaoh that he himself must provide the

people with sacrifices.

Then if they're not allowed to bring their animals so that they

can worship God, because he insists that all their animals must

go with them so that they can make proper sacrifices when they

worship the Lord.

And look at what he goes on to say in verse 26.

Not only does it say our livestock must go with us as well,

but not a hoof is to be left behind.

We have to use some of them in worshiping the Lord our God.

And until we get there, we will not know what we are to use

to worship the Lord.

Now this is a very strong retort from Moses.

He's not making it up.

He's not trying to get his way by maybe banding the truth.

It was God who was going to direct them by how they should worship

him.

They did not know.

And so they would have to bring with them for every eventuality

of what God would ask.

Now Moses knows that they won't be asked to kill every last

animal of Israel.

But it makes good sense to understand that Moses is again following

an approach to negotiation in which the full goal is not stated

explicitly, but it's implied that namely the nation and all their

belongings are leaving the land for good.

And we've known this from Exodus 5.

As the Lord heard the cries of his people, so the negotiations have

begun.

But Pharaoh is the problem, because he responds in a way of anger.

His angry response makes clear that he gets the message.

And while the earlier plagues revealed to us that Pharaoh hardened

his heart and that his heart continued in a hardened state, he

the later plagues now have emphasized the Lord's involvement

in hardening Pharaoh's heart.

And so this is a function, force or reminder force of a sobering

punishment corresponding to the crime.

Because if one hardens his heart against the Lord, he may bring

his justice to bear by making that heart even harder still and

then judging the person for his hardness.

So you might be sitting comfortably here this morning, knowing

that it's a nice sunny day, enjoying the heat and warmth of the

building, but your heart may be just as hard as it's ever been.

And this is the warning of hardness of hearts.

They will only get harder if we continue in the ways in which

we live.

And how will we be punished?

Well, we will be punished based on the hardness of our hearts

and the desires that it led to.

So if you think that this is an unfair or not a logical approach,

it's very logical and it's very fair.

If we continue to resent God for who he is, if we continue to

ignore his call of salvation on our lives, then indeed our hardened

hearts will be harder and harder and we will be judged because

of their actions.

So for a third time, that's what God does here, and it's right

before us.

In scripture, Pharaoh again refuses to let the people go.

But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart.

That's why he was not willing to let them go.

There's now a sense of finality.

That's why the ninth plague, although unbeknownst to the Egyptians

that there is a sense of finality for us here, because Pharaoh

warns Moses never to return to see his face again on pain of death.

And Moses responds that Pharaoh will never see his face again

in verse 29, leaving us to conclude that things are about to

come to a head.

And we know that.

And Moses will indeed be leading the people out of Egypt forever,

never to see Pharaoh again.

And in these final remarks to Moses, Pharaoh has become an unwitting

prophet of his own defeat.

He's actually foretold what's about to happen.

Pharaoh and the Egyptian lived in their darkness for three days

as a punishment for their rejection of God and their worship

of things that they made as gods.

They did not repent, and they were unwilling, in fact, to do so.

Even in the physical darkness, they refused to acknowledge the light

that only the God of Israel could bring.

They could see it, but they rejected it.

How did that work?

We simply do not know.

Why was it dark on the Egyptians and not on the children

of Israel?

We do not know.

But it will have been noticed and seen and The Egyptians continue

to reject the light and its source.

But there would be another dark day for the land as the tenth

and final plague falls on them.

The darkness of that day would be the death of all the firstborn

in Egypt whose houses did not have the blood of the lamb sprinkled

on their doorposts as inconvenient.

And life stopping, the plague of darkness was, it would be nothing

compared to the felt darkness, the pain of the darkness of death.

And ultimately, that's what they're being taught, to remain in

the darkness of sin and to remain in the darkness of false worship

of the gods we make will ultimately lead to eternal death.

So the Egyptians will face two dark days, but there was still another

dark day to come.

That dark day would be 1500 years later from when Moses was in

Egypt.

The darkness of this day would strike when the sun should have been

at its height.

And rather than the darkness escaping Israel, it would fall on

her capital, Jerusalem.

And as the Son of God was hoisted up on the middle cross, Mark

tells us in chapter 15 and verses 33 and 34, at the sixth hour,

darkness came over the world or the whole land until the ninth

hour.

And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, eloi,

eloi lama sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why have you

forsaken me?

The darkest of days.

The darkness on Good Friday was telling us that God could not

look on his Son because the punishment for the sin of humanity

was placed on him.

A punishment that each human being, then and now, deserves.

And all because of the sin we sort easily allow ourselves to fall

into.

But yet Christ took the punishment upon himself so that we

can be free from the punishment we so rightly deserve.

That Friday looked like it was a dark day as the Savior hung on

the cross.

It was a dark day for three hours as the Son of God died and

gave up his spirit.

But in reality, it was a glorious day.

And that's why it's called Good Friday.

It is the day when we can know freedom from the dark hold of sin.

Because our sin is like the darkness that came on Egypt.

Our sin is felt.

Darkness.

You, like me, know the weight of that sin.

That weight takes its form in regret, in sorrow, in anger, in the

unforgiveness of others, in hatred.

This weight is more than we can bear.

And if we continue to think that we can bear it, then we will

be lost in darkness forever.

The only way to escape the coming darkness that our sin deserves

is to trust in the Savior, to trust in Jesus, who is described

as the light of the world.

Because when Jesus was born, it was true that the people dwelling

in darkness have seen a great light.

And for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death on them,

a light has dawned.

As Matthew 4:16 tells us, quoting Isaiah chapter 9 and verse

Matthew 4:16 Isaiah 9 · chapter mention

2.

You see, there still remains a light.

It is not a light that goes on for a few hours at night to keep

us comfortable.

It is the light that eternally shines so that we can know there

is a way out of the darkness.

It is a light that both calls us and keeps us.

It calls us to leave the shadowlands, to turn our back on

the sin, whoever you are, whether it be the sins of a lifetime

or whether it be the sins that we've committed in these days, even

though we know fully the love of Christ, it means we turn our backs

on the things that this world wants to tell us to do.

It means we undertake correct ways of dealing with people and speaking

to them and speaking about them.

It means we organize our businesses in such a way as God honoring

businesses where there's no sense of an easy buck or an easy

way of doing it that would infringe the laws of the land.

We do and live in the light as people of the light, because that

light calls us to salvation and it calls us to live by that standard

that only Scripture tells us by how we are to live.

You see, in order to bring us into that light that calls, that

light that saves and keeps, Jesus had to enter our darkness.

As Mark has told us already.

When Jesus was crucified, there was darkness over the whole

land.

And that darkness was spiritually significant because it

showed that Jesus had taken upon himself the guilt of all of

our sin, and therefore that it was he that was under the dark curse

of God that actually was reserved for us, his enemies.

But then Jesus went into the grave, and he remained there in the

deepest darkness for three days.

But on the third day, he was raised again in a body dazzling with

the light of God's glory.

And now everyone who comes to Christ comes into the light of his

salvation.

As Second Corinthians 4, 6 tells us, Let light shine out of

darkness.

For God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, made his light

shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the

glory of God in the face of Jesus.

This is who our Savior is.

He is the light that each of us needs so that we can live fully

for Him.

But we must also know that, that if there is a rejection of this

light.

If there is a rejection of God's way of salvation for us, then

there will eventually be a rejection by God of us.

You see, as beautiful and as dazzling as that light is, to not

enter into it out of the shadowlands means that there is a

consequence.

And the rejection of God will ultimately lead to his rejection

us.

Charles Spurgeon tells the story of a minister who gently but

firmly challenges a young woman who kept postponing her coming

to Christ for salvation.

You know the type of person, I'll do it when I'm older, I'll do

it next year.

I'll do it when the time is right or when the season is right.

And each time, the minister suggests a future date for her commitment

to Christ.

And each time she recoils because she suddenly realizes how

uncertain and how dangerous it is to delay, since life is not guaranteed.

As the proposed times are brought closer and closer, 10 years,

then nine years, and then one year, she finally understands the

urgency of the moment and decides that she must come to Christ

immediately, that very night, rather than risk remaining without

a savior any longer and entering into eternal darkness.

It's a striking story that goes across three or four pages,

so I couldn't read it for you, but she comes up with all of the

excuses.

But then she realizes, well, if I say 10 years, I may not be alive

in 10 years, so I'll go for nine.

Then she realizes, well, I may not be alive in nine years.

And then Spurgeon, or the minister that Spurgeon's talking

about suggests a year.

She suddenly realizes, I may not be alive in a year, which means

eternal darkness.

You see, we have a light, and that light shines bright.

It has shone for me that I can know the forgiveness of my sins.

And it shines for you so that you too will be called into that

glorious, dazzling light and know forgiveness of your sins, of

sins past and sins present, present, all of which need to be

dealt with and can only be dealt with by Jesus Christ.

You see, trusting in Christ means we live in the light.

So do not delay.

Do not delay.

God is calling each of us to leave the heart of darkness and give

our hearts to him so that we will walk in the light of Christ.

And that's a call for each and every one of us, not only to come

to Christ for the first time, but believer, you already know Christ

will live for him.

You'll know that I often try to make jokes, and nine times out

of ten, they don't work.

Well.

Whenever I was speaking on Thursday evening, As I was preparing,

it struck me that you do like to make jokes about ministers.

I was meeting with a group of elders yesterday, and I heard a joke

about a minister yesterday as well.

So as ministers, we just smile and laugh and you know the old one,

you only work one day a week.

Yeah, I know that one.

Well, it suddenly struck me in my preparation, it turns out that

actually we may only be one day a week.

People believer, are you actually living for Christ in His

light, day and daily, or are you only reserving it for one day

a week, for a Sunday, when you can be seen, when there's witnesses,

but actually out of these doors, down the streets and into

your homes, you forget about him or you think little of him because

you get so consumed and so busy with everything else.

And in that busyness, you reject him and you enter into those

shadows only to feel that one day a week you can come back into

the light.

We are called to come to Christ because this is what Jesus

himself says.

He spoke to the people and said, I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the

light of life.

This is who we're to be, people of the light, who don't live

in it one day a week, but who live in a day and daily so that we

will be who God intends us to be, desires us to be, and whom we

claim our Savior to be as we live in his ways.

Perhaps before this morning, we didn't think much about the plague

of darkness that fell on the land of Egypt.

We maybe thought it was a little bit of a wee inconvenience

for them, but actually it was so much more significant for them

and significant for us.

Walking in the light of Christ means that we are truly saved for

the glory of God, just like he would see of his people.

It is for his glory and it is for our eternal good that each and

every one of us turn to the light and live by it, so that we

will know the comfort, the goodness, and the confidence that

we began this service with no condemnation, Now I dread Jesus,

and all in him is mine, and it can only be ours by coming out of

the darkness and the shadowlands, coming into his glorious

light.

Let's pray.

Our Father God, we thank you that you are the God who has given

us a way, a way for each of us to live in the light, not simply

one day a week, but Father, to live every day that you give us.

So may we be faithful, may we be true to the calling that you give

us.

That Lord indeed we will live in the glory of all that you have.

And for those whose hearts are heavy and burdened with sin, show

them there is a way of taking that step into the light, be it releasing

that burden for the first time or that constant burden that we may

feel of sin.

Lord, help us to live in your ways, that we indeed will know your

faithfulness and your good.

To hear our prayers and help us to respond, we ask in Jesus name,

amen.