Bible Text: Exodus 7:1-12 | Preacher: Pastor Dorry Newcomer | Series: Exodus | I have to tell you:  I’m not a super big fan of any Bible story involving snakes.  I respect their place in the wild, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s where they should stay.  You don’t ever have to worry about me suggesting we try snake handling as a way to prove our faith in God!  But some people apparently find snakes fascinating.  In Moses’ day, there were Egyptian wise men who were snake handlers.  They would pick the snakes up by their heads, press on a nerve at the top of the snake’s spine, and the snake would become paralyzed and stiff as a board.  It was a common sight to see them using snakes as walking sticks.

I am glad that is not the case today!  I would be very uncomfortable, sharing the sidewalk with a temporarily paralyzed snake turned walking stick!  But maybe I would have felt differently about snakes if I had lived 3,000 years ago.  In Egyptian culture, the snake was a symbol of life, and life is good!  Being able to control snakes was symbolic of being able to control life.  The wise men were “large and in charge” with their snake walking sticks.  Not as large and in charge as Pharaoh, though.  He wore a stylish snake headdress and carried a snake scepter.  Pharaoh thought he had the ultimate power over life and death, and he expected people to treat him with due respect.  When Moses and Aaron come to see Pharaoh with the staff that turned into a snake, they weren’t just challenging the sorcerers to see who could do better tricks.  They were directly taunting Pharaoh.  They were picking a fight over who really has the power over life and death.

So that means, this is a story about which one of them is God!  At first Pharaoh seems to think this is simply a labor negotiation, and of course he’s not going to let his free labor supply just walk away.  But these next several chapters in Exodus–the confrontations between Moses and Pharaoh, the plagues, all of it is going to build to a giant climax when the sea parts and the Hebrew slaves walk out of Egypt with all the gold they can carry.  Everybody’s going to see just who really is God, just who has the power over life and death.

Pharaoh believed that he was God, and all of his people believed it, too.   When Moses and Aaron come to see him, they all probably laughed.  Two regular men, thinking they can tell Pharoah what to do?  Ha!  But God said to Moses, I got this.  I am in control of this situation.  I will show everyone who is really in charge.  I am going to harden Pharaoh’s heart.

 

I have always wondered about God hardening Pharaoh’s heart.  It’s hard to reconcile a loving and compassionate God with a God who would on purpose block someone from recognizing him.  Why wouldn’t God just want Pharaoh to immediately come to the understanding that he is not God?  Why wouldn’t God just want to convince Pharaoh right away to let the Israelite slaves go free?  Why let it escalate until all the firstborn Egyptian sons have to be killed?  The writer of Exodus tells us a whole bunch of times the God is the one who hardens Pharaoh’s heart, so it must be important.  God hardens Pharaoh’s heart.  Why?

I think the answer lies in the idea of sovereignty.  To be sovereign means you have power over yourself.  No one else controls you.  Pharaoh thought he was sovereign.  He thought he held all the power, not just over the land of Egypt, but over all creation!  That’s a lot of power!  He thought he was really sovereign.  We have heard enough about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to know that that notion doesn’t sit well with Yahweh.  God is concerned about the welfare of God’s people, sure.  But God has also has something to prove.  He wants to make it very clear to both the Egyptians and to the Hebrews that he is God.  Remember, the Hebrews have been slaves for 400 years.  The stories of God working among Abraham, Isaac and Jacob may be all but forgotten.  Egyptian ideas have surely infiltrated their thinking.  God knows he needs to make a dramatic display, both to convince Pharaoh, and to convince the Israelites, that he is indeed God.

So God hardens Pharaoh’s heart in order to show everyone that it is Yahweh, not Pharaoh, who is really in control.  Now the heart was an especially significant body part in Egyptian society.  They thought the heart was the spiritual center of the person.  It was the core of their physical and spiritual being, and the Egyptians believed that Pharaoh’s heart was especially important. His heart was thought to be the guiding force for Egypt.  If Pharaoh’s heart was set on something, that’s what would happen in Egypt.  If his heart was set on something, that’s how history would play out.

So when God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, what he is really doing is setting up a scenario that will prove which one of them is really God.  God hardens Pharaoh’s heart—in other words, he makes Pharaoh’s heart set on keeping the Hebrews as slaves.  According to Egyptian belief, how should this story end?  With the Hebrews crossing the Red Sea into freedom?  No!  According to Egyptian belief, whatever Pharaoh set his heart on is what would happen.  God sets his heart on not letting the Israelites go free.  When they gain their freedom, not only is it a victory for the Hebrew slaves, it’s a victory for Yahweh.  Sooner or later, God says, I’ll prove that I am greater than you!

And just to give Pharaoh a little taste of what’s to come, in our scripture lesson today, we saw how Aaron’s staff turned snake devours all the other snakes.  Can you imagine that?  I would have been a hot mess, seeing all those sorcerers turn their staffs into snakes.  Gross!  I don’t know which is worse, a room full of snakes, or a room full of self-important people!  But I would have LOVED seeing the look on the Egyptian magician’s faces as they watched Aaron pick up his snake and then walk out the door using it as a staff—while they were left empty handed.  Just a little sign of things to come, baby!

At the end of that day, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened.  But Moses and Aaron?  Their hearts were softened.  Their hearts were encouraged.  They had seen the power of God, and now they had some hope.

 

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are a lot of things in life that don’t make sense.  A few years ago, Phil and I went to Houston, Texas on vacation.  On our last day, we had a couple of hours to kill before needing to get to the airport, so we decided to go visit the nearby National Museum of Funeral History.  Their motto is, “Any day above ground is a good one!”

It’s not everyone’s idea of a relaxing tourist attraction, but I did learn some things there, including the fact that before ambulances were common like they are today, funeral directors had a side business, using their hearses as ambulances!  That doesn’t seem to make much sense to us, but if you think about the history of it, it actually does make sense.  Before the Civil War, hospitals couldn’t do much for you, so either the doctor made a house call, or you just healed the best you could with home remedies.  Post-Civil War, medical science advanced, and there became more and more reason to try to get to a hospital because they might be able to save you!  But how to get there if you were very ill and couldn’t sit up?  Funeral directors started using their hearses since they were already equipped to transport people who were lying down.  It wasn’t until the late 1950’s and early 1960’s that the practice died out.

Hmmm…an ambulance that is also a hearse.  Doesn’t it seem like a conflict of interest?  The funeral director would directly benefit from you NOT surviving the trip to the hospital!  I can picture the debate in the hearse driver’s mind:  rush you to the hospital where you can be cured–or dilly dally in the hopes that you don’t make it and need a funeral?  I’m very glad we don’t have the system now!  But for a time, people just had to trust that, if you let them put you in that hearse, they are going to do their best for you.  The hearse doubling as an ambulance does not seem like an ideal set up.  But it was the way things were for a time.  It as a stop-gap until something better came along.

That is how I feel about our scripture lesson today. It does seem like a conflict of interest, that God would intentionally harden Pharaoh’s heart.  Why wouldn’t God just immediately make Pharaoh compliant?  Couldn’t God see how the Hebrew people were suffering even worse since Moses and Aaron showed back up in Egypt?  But this is the way it had to be a for a time.  It was stop-gap until something better came along.

 

We live in a stop-gap world.  Faith is the ability to trust that, there is more going on than the eye can see.  While Moses and Aaron were putting on this snake show in Pharaoh’s court, the Hebrew people were suffering.  They had no idea their salvation lay just around the corner.  Things had gone from bad to worse for them, and we can imagine how discouraged they were.  I am sure they were wondering, “Where is this God of Abraham we heard about?”  We see the Egyptian wise men of our time, men and women of importance, carrying their snakes around as walking sticks as they had the power over life and death.  We look around our world and see arrogance and heartlessness and evil.  We long for a tool that can make it the world right.  And we wonder, where is God.

That is why I love the stories of Exodus.  They remind us that even when life is bad, we can have faith that God is at work for good.  They remind us that the power over life and death is God’s sovereign domain.  The power over hope and despair, is not dictated by a snake, or by the heart of Pharaoh, or by any bad thing that might happen to us.  The power over life and death is dictated by the heart of God!  The loving God who sent his son and his Spirit, who dwells within all of us.  We can have victory over death and despair through the new life Christ offers us.  We can have the victory if we are willing to trust that the hearse is also an ambulance.  If we are willing to live with some tension, with some things that don’t exactly make sense, with some things that seem less than ideal to us, but are the best we have for now.  One day Christ is going to come again, and there will be no more deadly viruses, no more gun violence, no more racism, no more hurricanes, no more depravity, no more hopelessness.  But until then, things are a mix.

I did a little internet search this week, and I did not find for sale any snakes that turn into walking sticks.  But all week I received reminders that God is with us.  God is not asleep, or uncaring, or impotent.  God is at work for good.  Somewhere in the deepest part of ourselves we know that to be true.  Will we use that truth as our walking stick?  God will lead us, one step at a time, if we will only follow.  Amen.