“The Lord answered Moses, ‘See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother will be your prophet. You must say whatever I command you; then Aaron your brother must declare it to Pharaoh so that he will let the Israelites go from his land. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart and multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. Pharaoh will not listen to you, but I Will put my hand into Egypt and bring the military divisions of my people the Israelites out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the Israelites from among them.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There are some folks who just like to fly by the seat of their pants. Most, though, are much more comfortable having some sort of a plan. And, the bigger the task, the more detailed the plan should be. In the case of Moses and the Israelites, they were getting ready to undertake the biggest task they could imagine. They were going to take on the most powerful man in the world and eliminate his source of slave labor. And, their initial attempt to get started had not gone well. Fortunately, God had a plan. He lays that plan out here one more time in step-by-step detail. Let’s talk through what we see here.

There are three parts to God’s plan. Let’s talk about each of them in turn. The first part is that Moses and Aaron are to say only what God tells them to say. God is going to be the one in charge of the whole operation. They are not to run out on their own. He is going to give them the words that will result in Pharaoh’s letting the people go. He is actually very explicit on this point with them. The phrase, “whatever I command you,” is the object of the verbal phrase, “you must say.” The thing they are going to say is whatever he gives them to say. Again: God is in charge.

But it’s not going to look like that from the perspective of Pharaoh. God Can’t communicate with us in a way we aren’t capable of hearing. I’ve been reading The Magician’s Nephew from C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia series with our youngest. There’s an interesting scene near the end when the magician, Uncle Andrew, can’t understand anything the newly created and awakened talking animals are saying to him even though they are all speaking the same language. Lewis’s explanation of his inability is that he has so convinced himself animals can’t talk that he has lost the ability to understand them.

Some people work very hard to convince themselves that God isn’t who He says He is and that He can’t do the things He says He can do. If you work at this long and hard enough, you’ll succeed…and you’ll cut yourself off from being able to meaningfully interact with Him directly. Pharaoh has so convinced himself that he is a greater god than whoever it is the Israelites worship, and that their God isn’t worthy of his attention, that God’s speaking to him directly wouldn’t work. Unless Moses comes to him on his own terms – that is, unless Moses presents himself to Pharaoh as a god of similar station – Pharaoh isn’t going to listen. So, Moses is going to be made like God to Pharaoh, with Aaron as his prophet (the one who speaks for God), in order for him to listen.

That’s part one of the plan. Make Moses like God to Pharaoh so that he’ll listen and let the people go. Part two is that he won’t actually listen at all. God tells Moses that He is going to harden Pharaoh’s heart. We’re going to come back in a few weeks, Lord willing, to wrestle with this idea all by itself. For now, what I want us to see is that God had a plan He was putting into action. There are actually several things going on here.

For starters, remember what I just said about Pharaoh’s ability to hear from God. He had hardened his own heart and God had allowed it just like He allows anyone to do that because He honors the ability He has given us to making meaningful and consequential choices even if our exercise of that ability leads us to make very poor ones that hurt the people around us. Second, Egypt was a nation steeped in sin and ripe for judgment. God had told Abraham way back in Genesis 15 that after his descendants sojourned as slaves for a time in Egypt that He was going to bring judgment to the Egyptians for oppressing them. He had actually told Abraham then that when He brought His people back out of Egypt that they would “go out with many possessions,” which was a way of indicating they would plunder their oppressors. God here tells Moses that He is going to “bring the military divisions of my people the Israelites out of the land of Egypt.” In other words, they were going to come out as conquerors which implied this plundering. As it turns out, the plundering would be voluntary on the Egyptians’ part, but it was going to happen. Third, and perhaps most importantly of all, He was going to use this occasion to reveal Himself to the world in a way the world needed to see and experience. Pharaoh’s hardened opposition would give Him that opportunity.

That third part leads us to the third part of God’s plan. In the end, when all was said and done, the Egyptians were going to know “that I am the Lord.” The world on the whole didn’t know who God was. The Israelites did in part, but that was about it. Yes, He had likely revealed Himself to different peoples in other parts of the world in different ways. He was by no means ever limited to the history of Israel in terms of showing us who He really is, but we don’t know anything about any work He did beyond Israel. In this part of the world, no one know who He was. It was time to begin fixing that in a powerful way. He would start this process by revealing Himself in a powerful to the people of the most powerful nation in the region (and possibly the world). They considered themselves invincible because of the power they perceived their gods to have. He was going to reveal Himself as far superior to and sovereign over those gods. Indeed, as we will see in the coming weeks, Lord willing, each of the plagues revealed God as more powerful than a different aspect of Egyptian life which would have each been presided over by a different god. The gods of Egypt (including Pharaoh) were nothing before this God.

If that’s the plan God lays out here, what does it actually mean for us? Well, I have mentioned a couple of times that a big part of what the Exodus story does for us is to create some rhythms to which the rest of the story of the Scriptures will move. This summary of God’s plan fits squarely into this pattern. The plan God lays out here runs along the basic contours of the plan God has for each of us when He acts in our lives. It is the same basic plan God has been operating by with humanity as a whole. He speaks to us in a way we can’t deny. We resist His words and His plans, but He moves anyway to keep us broadly in line with them. And in the end, He will reveal Himself powerfully and in a way we won’t be able to deny. God wants to be known. He wants you to know Him. He will do everything He possibly can to make that happen. You can resist Him, but in the very end, you will know Him as the Lord one way or the other. Prayerfully that will be a moment of joyful celebration and tragic realization. Which one it is depends on you.