Exiting Egypt Chapter 9 P5

Exiting Egypt

“The Fifth Plague – Death of Livestock”

Exodus 9:1-7

By Dennis Lee: Chapter 9 P5

Now, finding so many of his own cattle and those of his subjects slain in this plague, Pharaoh sent to see whether the cattle of the Jews were affected. Why would he have done this?

Simple, to check it out! To see if the God of the Hebrews truly was behind this plague, or was this just a general plague that happens from time to time. He may have even thought of the idea of replacing the cattle that they had lost with the cattle of the Hebrews. This was not illegal for him to do, because he was king, they were slaves.

But the idea here is one of checking it out. I believe the world today is doing what Pharaoh was doing back then, checking to see if what we say is really true, and they are doing so by our lives. Are our lives matching what it is that we say we believe?

Further, they are checking out the claims of Christianity. This is something we saw in Lee Strobel’s Case for Christ. He searched out the claims of Christianity. It is such that is driving the seeker sensitive or the seeker friendly movements in today’s churches. People are realizing more than ever and in greater numbers that the world doesn’t have the answers to what’s ailing them, or for that matter, what’s ailing the world. So they are checking out what the church is saying.

But in like manner, many are checking out of the church as well, because the church, instead of giving them the truth of God’s word is giving them more of the religion and traditions.

And this idea of checking it out is something that we all as Christians need to be doing as well. We need to be like the Bereans that the Apostle Paul talks about in Acts 17, and how they were of more noble character, how they were of a more noble mind than those Christians of Thessalonica, because they checked everything that was being told to them by the Scriptures.

This is one of the banes of Christianity today. Some have said that we are a mile wide but only an inch deep. We have accepted as truth what others have said about the Bible or about anything and we don’t take the time to check it out.

And the Internet is fueling this lack of good scholarship on our part. We just accept what we see, or what has been written. Here’s a good rule, the reason why it isn’t found in print form but on the Internet might well be because publishers have turned it down because it lacked credibility or scholarship. Not always, but most of the time, this have proven out to be true.

And lastly, what we see is that once again a distinction has been made between the Israelites and the Egyptians. And so, God makes the same distinction with us, and those who trust in the Lord, who makes the Lord their refuge, that they, like the Israelites back in Egypt need not fear the pestilence that walks by night.

You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday (Psm. 91:5-6 NIT)