Thru the Bible

Steve Schwetz: The argument between Moses and Pharaoh is heating up. And in Exodus chapter 7, we've got a front row seat. Welcome to Through the Bible. I'm Steve Schwetz, here with our President Greg Harris, welcoming you aboard the Bible bus. So why don't you find your seat and get comfortable? And while you do, Greg and I are eager to do one of our favorite things and that's to share a few stories from you, our listening family.

Greg Harris: That's right. We are going to reach into the metaphorical USA mailbag. Some of it's digital, so we can't actually reach in and get them. But uh, but we have some exciting responses from our listening family that we want to share with you.

Steve Schwetz: Yeah, this is uh Janet who tells us how she's a phrase that Dr. McGee used and you've brought forward for us, Greg, flinging the seed alongside us. She writes, "Dr. McGee's resources are the backbone of much of my teaching. As I work with incarcerated youth, I offer them a Bible bus pass for when they go home. I also spend the first moments in the morning listening to Dr. McGee's broadcast. I'm looking forward to going straight through the Bible with him. I use his set of books for helping to plan my lessons for the kids each week and it is my pleasure to help put some gas in the tank. God bless you and keep you strong in his service. I'm praying for you."

Greg Harris: Wow, that is great to hear. I love how our listeners aren't just passive, but they take the teaching, they take the seed, and then they fling it in their own sphere of influence. I love that. Now, Jonathan tells us that Through the Bible is a family affair and here's what he wrote.

Greg Harris: "I just finished my first five-year trip on the Bible bus." Congratulations, Jonathan. Way to go.

Greg Harris: He continues, "My late mother-in-law tried to encourage my wife and I to listen years ago. We thought we were too busy dealing with our young family at that time, but now we individually listen every day. We are supporters of the ministry and have obtained Bible bus passes to hand out to family, friends, and strangers. We pray for you and the ministry of flinging the seed around the world. We wish we had jumped on the Bible bus all those years ago, but we have seats together now and are loving the scenic trip. May God continue to bless this ministry."

Steve Schwetz: That's great. And those of you that notice, both Jonathan and Janet reference these Bible bus passes. And we, these, we'll give 'em to you for free if you just call us 1-800-65 Bible. It's a 10 pack. They're the size of a business card so they fit in your wallet. Guys, if you don't like carrying stuff around, it's just a couple business cards. It's an easy giveaway and you can just share Through the Bible. All you got to do is say, hey, can I share something with you that has meant a lot to me?

Steve Schwetz: And who's going to say no to that?

Greg Harris: I wouldn't.

Steve Schwetz: I know you wouldn't. And you're a tough customer. So, he would take that and then he would scan it and if Greg was not saved, he would listen to Through the Bible and God in his providence would most likely save Greg. So if there's a Greg in your life, you can hand him a Bible bus pass. I'd encourage you to do that. Honestly, I mean, we're making light of it but it is a great opportunity to share the ministry of Through the Bible. We don't do any paid advertising and we're relying on you to spread the word.

Greg Harris: Yeah, I love that.

Greg Harris: And we have time to hear from Nancy who's a long-time listener and shares this. "What can I say about 48 years of the good Dr. McGee pouring God's love, joy, peace, and comfort into my broken heart and spirit. The mental, physical, and spiritual abuse was relentless, and still, I cling to Jesus through his word of love with the gentle ministry of my beloved Pastor McGee. Maranatha, Jesus."

Steve Schwetz: Such an encouragement. Greg, let me pray for us as we begin our study. Heavenly Father, we are thankful for the relationship that we have through Jesus Christ to you, our Heavenly Father. I pray that you would bless the program as it goes out now and that you would bless us, Lord, open our eyes that we might behold wonderful things from your word as we study it together with Dr. McGee in Jesus' name. Amen.

Steve Schwetz: Now open to Exodus 7 as we go through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now today friends, we come to this seventh chapter of the book of Exodus. And actually, the battle has not been joined between the gods of Egypt and the Lord God of Israel, but we're coming to it now. You see everything had been preparation. God was preparing the children of Israel. He was preparing Moses and Aaron, and he has been preparing actually old Pharaoh for the engagement now that's going to take place.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And this man Moses is to go in and join the battle. He'll throw the gauntlet down here, only the thing he'll throw down will be the rod that's in his hand. Now will you notice, I'll read verse one again of chapter seven of Exodus. "And the Lord said unto Moses, 'See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.'" That is, Aaron will do the speaking, but you are to be there to tell him what to say.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now, that has always raised the question of whether Moses was tongue-tied or whether he stuttered or whether he had some impediment of speech. I personally do not think so. My feeling is that Moses' impediment was actually psychological, was actually a fear that he had in his own heart. And he needed bolstering up.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: 40 years in the wilderness, you see, had brought him to the place that he was not adequate to deliver the children of Israel. And God wanted to make it very clear that it was God delivering them and not Moses. And that's one of the reasons that it's so difficult for God to move today even in the church or in the lives and hearts of many of us because in the church today, the church is taking credit or some organization and then there's some individual Christian that's taking credit.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And when we are always getting in the way to take the credit, then the hand of God, the mighty, bared arm of God is not revealed. The human element has to be put out of the way, has to be put to the side. God cannot use the flesh. Paul said, "I know that within me, that is, within my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." Now, friends, if you don't believe that, then you believe God. He said that.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And it's mighty hard for some of us to think that there's not a little good in us because we've been counting on it. We've been relying on it in time of an emergency. But God doesn't want it, God won't use it, God cannot use it. God has set the flesh aside. And so now Aaron will speak for Moses.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now listen verse two, "Thou shalt speak all that I command thee: and Aaron thy brother shall speak unto Pharaoh, that he send the children of Israel out of the land. And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt." And maybe at this time I ought to take a moment because it will come up later and say a word about what does it mean to harden the Pharaoh's heart. Did God harden Pharaoh's heart? Yes, he did. But only in the way that he means it here.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: God didn't take Pharaoh's heart or let me put it like this. Pharaoh was not a tender-hearted, sweet fellow who just wanted to turn to God and desired to turn to God and was so happy to have Moses come down into Egypt to deliver the children of Israel because Pharaoh wanted to do something for them and then God hardened his heart and it was mean of God to harden the heart of this wonderful, lovely Pharaoh.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Well, if that's the way you read it, friends, then you're not reading this right. Harden here actually means, it's a very figurative word, I'm told, it means like a rope that is twisted. It means God twisted the heart of Pharaoh. And why did he twist it? Well, he was going to squeeze out what was in it. The rebellion was in there, but he was covering it up all the time.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: You know, that is one of the things today that I guess makes a politician. A politician is really not to say what he thinks, he's to defer, he's to find out how the people think, and he won't come out and say it. Yet in his heart he feels one way but he won't speak out on that. And there are great many people like that today. They compromise and won't come out on it.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Actually, that's the position Pharaoh wanted to take. Pharaoh did not want to let the children of Israel go. Yet he wanted to appear as a very benevolent ruler and wanted to be known as one who was very generous. Yet in this particular matter he was hard, but God's going to make him come out with that. In other words, it's as if God's bringing him into court and making him. You know there are certain men that have to be taken into court and made to do what they've agreed to do.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And a man here in Los Angeles, who's a contractor, he told me that he had to take a certain man into court and make him do the thing that he agreed that he would do. He wouldn't do it, but he took him into court. Now, that's exactly it. He hardened the man's heart. In other words, he made this man's heart firm to reveal what was really in it by his actions. Pharaoh had to face up to it and that's what God is doing here to Pharaoh. That's what it means to harden Pharaoh's heart.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And therefore God sends Moses and Aaron in and Pharaoh now is going to have to put it on the line. God's hailing him into court. God is saying, "You're going to reveal the thing that is actually in your heart. You can't say one thing and do something else." God's going to force his hand in this particular matter.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now that is the way that it's to be understood and not the idea that dear old Pharaoh, he was a generous-hearted old fellow. He's like old King Cole, who called for his, well I can't even repeat that any longer. And he called for his fiddlers three. Just a jolly old King Cole. The fact of the matter is, Pharaoh is this kind of a man and God's going to make him reveal it. And by the way, that's exactly what God's going to do with every individual.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Someday when you come into his presence, you'll be seen as you really are. There'll be no more camouflage, nothing phony. You'll be just as you are. We shall know even as we're known then. And that is something that's rather frightening, is it not for some of us. But this is a very important matter here for us to nail down at the very beginning. And I've taken time to do that here concerning this matter.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, "that I may lay mine hand upon Egypt, and bring mine armies and my people and the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by great judgments." That's verse four of the seventh of Exodus. Now verse five, "And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them." In other words, Pharaoh will stand revealed and then God will be revealed. And the Egyptians will know and the children of Israel will have it confirmed and Moses and Aaron will be justified.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Verse six, "And Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded them, so did they. And Moses was fourscore years old, and Aaron fourscore and three years old, when they spake unto Pharaoh." You see, Aaron's three years older than Moses. Now verse eight, "And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron saying, 'When Pharaoh shall speak unto you, saying, Show a miracle for you: then thou shalt say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and cast it before Pharaoh, and it shall become a serpent.'"

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now, what happens here is that they're using Aaron's rod in this particular connection. And the thing Pharaoh will ask for is, "Where are your credentials? You've come here before me to make this very excessive demand upon me, what are your credentials?" And God says, "Now this will be your credential," that rod Moses had, you remember. Now we find here in verse 10, "And Moses and Aaron went in unto Pharaoh and they did so as the Lord had commanded, and Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and before his servants, and it became a serpent."

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now the word serpent here, there's been some question about that because there's not very much in Egypt on the snake as there is on other animals. And the word here actually is the word crocodile, for there were many of them in the Nile River and in many of the ponds in that day. I was told that there were quite a few that were still in that land. I didn't see any when I was there, but I was told they were there.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Well, that's what you have here, you have a crocodile. The rod is changed to a crocodile. And you'll find out all the way through this, we're dealing with a whole realm of zoology, that is, the gods of the Egyptians were animal or bird or something like that. And as Paul put it, they changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like the corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And they symbolized, of course, everything. And they took an abstract idea and put it into concrete or into an image. And they had deities which represented every phase and function of life. They didn't miss a thing. And they had changed monotheism into polytheism. And as Sir Wallace Budge has put it like this, they believed in the existence of one great God. Self-produced, self-existence, Almighty, and eternal. But what happened was, they held that this being was too great and mighty to concern himself with the affairs and destinies of human beings.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And that he'd permitted the management of this world to fall into the hands of hordes of gods and demons and good and bad spirits. That's what they believed. And that's the thing that Paul, you remember found when he went to Athens. There was that monument to the unknown God. Man doesn't actually know the living and true God, worshiping all of these different things. And we find out now that here is this that is against already one of the gods of Egypt.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: The Hebrew word here is tannen and is nowhere else in the Bible translated serpent, but right here in this particular section. It's rendered dragon over in Isaiah and Ezekiel. And it actually is satanic in its meaning. And that's the reason I suppose our translators translated it by the word serpent here. Well, regardless of that, and I'm not concerned about going into the meaning of Hebrew words here, other than just to make this statement that the thing that the Egyptians worshiped was the crocodile among others. They didn't miss an animal, of course.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And this animal occupied a very large place in the worship and the religion of Egypt. The god Sebek, S E B E K, was said to be incarnated in crocodiles. And Apep, A P E P, was the perpetual arch enemy of all the solar gods, appeared in the form of a crocodile. Now they had, for instance, a magical ritual that they went through in the temple of Ammon-Ra at Thebes.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And it was a ritual that attempted to destroy Apep. You see, he was a terrible monster that lived in the nethermost parts of heaven, and he endeavored every day to prevent the rising of the sun god Ra, and to stir up lightning and thunder and tempests and storms and hurricanes and rain, and to obscure the light of the sun by filling the sky with clouds and mists and fog and blackness. And this was actually a worship in Egypt, and was a very prominent worship. And the very first thing God now delivers a blow at this.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Here this rod now is changed into a crocodile. And what happened though and this is the amazing thing that happens when Moses and Aaron did this. Verse 11, "Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers. Now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments." Now they duplicated this miracle. I don't know how they did it, don't ask me that. But Paul says over in 2 Timothy 3:8 and we've referred to this before. "Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth. Men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith."

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: You see, they could duplicate it, and I think imitate it by the way, but whatever it was, why they made a pretty good show of it and because of that they resisted the living and true God. But God's not through with them, of course. Now, verse 12, "For they cast down every man his rod, and they became crocodiles: but Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods." Now that's the interesting thing. Now they have worshiped the crocodile.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: But this rod in the hands of Aaron swallows up the other. "And he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he hearkened not unto them; as the Lord had said." Instead of this impressing Pharaoh, it didn't. It just hardened him. He was set in his way and he just persisted in it. Now, verse 14, "And the Lord said unto Moses, 'Pharaoh's heart is hardened, he refuseth to let the people go. Get thee unto Pharaoh in the morning. Lo, he goeth out unto the water, and thou shalt stand by the river's brink against he come; and the rod which was turned to a serpent, or to a crocodile, shalt thou take in thine hand. And thou shalt say unto him, The Lord God of the Hebrews hath sent me unto thee, saying, Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness: and, behold, hitherto thou wouldest not hear. Thus saith the Lord, In this thou shalt know that I am the Lord: behold, I will smite with the rod that is in mine hand upon the waters which are in the river, and they shall be turned to blood. And the fish that's in the river shall die, and the river shall stink, and the Egyptians shall loathe to drink of the water of the river.'"

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: "And the Lord spake unto Moses, 'Say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and stretch out thine hand upon the waters of Egypt, upon their streams, upon their rivers, upon their ponds, and upon all their pools of water, that there may be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood, and in vessels of stone.'" Now, this is what they did. "Moses and Aaron did so, as the Lord commanded; he lifted up his rod and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh, in the sight of his servants, and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood."

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: This is a blow again at the worship in Egypt, as we have indicated before, that this is called the first plague by the way. The first miracle was the rod, of course. But here you have the Nile now turned to blood. And this river was sacred to Osiris. But that doesn't exhaust it all. Actually, the god of the Nile was Hapi, H A P I. And the Egyptians depicted him in the form of a man with the breasts of a woman. Which indicated that the god's powers of fertility and nourishment were there, you see.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And there was a hymn that they sang in the temple of that day to Hapi and it went something like this: "Thou waterest the fields which Ra created. Thou art the bringer of food, the creator of all things. Thou fillest the storehouses. Thou hast care for the poor and needy." You see that the river was the lifeblood of the nation. But it had to be water to be lifeblood. Now it's blood and it becomes death to them. And this is definitely, you see, judgment.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now, here's the amazing thing, friends. Verse 22, "And the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments: and Pharaoh's heart was hardened, neither did he hearken unto them; as the Lord had said. And Pharaoh turned and went into his house, neither did he set his heart to this also. And all the Egyptians digged round about the river for water to drink; for they could not drink of the water of the river. And seven days were full filled after that the Lord had smitten the rivers."

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: This plague lasted for seven days and yet Pharaoh's not convinced because his own magicians were able to duplicate this. Don't ask me how they did it, I don't know. It's satanic if you please. And I'm of the opinion we're beginning to see the manifestation of Satan again in our midst. We'll have occasion to talk about that later. But now as we come to chapter eight, why we see again the next plague that's going to come upon the land of Egypt. And that's going to be the frogs.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: "And the Lord spake unto Moses, 'Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me. And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I'll smite all thy borders with frogs. And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, and they'll go up and come into thine house, into thy bedchamber, upon thy bed, and into thy house of thy servants, upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneadingtroughs.'"

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Getting in the kitchen even, "and the frogs shall come up both on thee, and upon thy people, and upon all thy servants. And the Lord spake unto Moses, 'Say unto Aaron, Stretch forth thine hand with thy rod over the streams, over the rivers, over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up upon the land of Egypt.'" Now, next time we're going to see this tremendous plague of frogs and that there's more than meets the eye here. That these people also worshiped a frog goddess. It was the oldest, the mother goddess was a frog, by the way, that the Egyptians worshiped. We'll see that next time.

Steve Schwetz: The battle is on. Will Pharaoh ever give in? Well, join us next time and find out. And in the meantime, you can listen again for free with our app or at ttb.org or give us a call at 1-800-65 Bible because we'd love to hear from you. I'm Steve Schwetz and I'll meet you back here next time as we continue our journey through the Bible.