Today's Daily Lesson comes from Exodus chapter 9 verses 27 through 34:
27 Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, “This time I have sinned; the Lord is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong. 28 Plead with the Lord, for there has been enough of God's thunder and hail. I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer.” 29 Moses said to him, “As soon as I have gone out of the city, I will stretch out my hands to the Lord. The thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail, so that you may know that the earth is the Lord's. 30 But as for you and your servants, I know that you do not yet fear the Lord God.” 31 (The flax and the barley were struck down, for the barley was in the ear and the flax was in bud. 32 But the wheat and the emmer were not struck down, for they are late in coming up.) 33 So Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh and stretched out his hands to the Lord, and the thunder and the hail ceased, and the rain no longer poured upon the earth. 34 But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants.
I watch my boys wrestling with one another on the floor. The younger of the two, Bo, is usually the instigator, doing something to pester his older brother Daniel. Before long Daniel has Bo on the ground in a death grip. Bo is squealing like a peg, begging for his life; he's at the verge of real tears. "Stop, please stop!" he begs. I intervene by asking Bo if he's going to keep pestering his brother. He swears he won't. I make Daniel release the death grip and get off his little brother. As Daniel releases and begins to climb off Bo cocks his leg and thrusts it full force into Daniel's back; he obviously hasn't learned his lesson.
Neither has Pharaoh. Here now we're on the 7th Plague, it's raining fire and hail, and we would think Pharaoh is ready to say uncle. And he is, but he doesn't really mean it. Like Bo, he begs and pleads for mercy, but once the immediate pain and desperation are passed, here he is defiant once more. All the crops are destroyed by the storm. Yet, Pharaoh has it in the back of his mind that the wheat and emmer (a type of wheat) were too young to be destroyed. So once the storm is passed there he is, cocking his leg and kicking it at Moses and his people once more.
Humility is what's left when we can't resort to anything else. But Pharaoh still has other options. He still as a little something hidden back for a rainy day. He still thinks he's smart enough to save himself. What he doesn't realize is that he's contending with God. God can save him. The wheat he has stored in his pyramids won't save him. Whatever strength he has left in him won't save him. Only God will save him. But to say, "I give," to God will take real, real humility. Pharaoh will either find it or die fighting it.
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