“The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “When Pharaoh tells you, ‘Perform a miracle,’ tell Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh. It will become a serpent.’” So Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord had commanded. Aaron threw down his staff before Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a serpent. But then Pharaoh called the wise men and sorcerers — the magicians of Egypt, and they also did the same thing by their occult practices. Each one threw down his staff, and it became a serpent. But Aaron’s staff swallowed their staffs. However, Pharaoh’s heart was hard, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had said.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

How do you convince someone that God is real? How do you convince them that He is worth their lives and obedience? That’s a tough question to answer and one that depends on both the person and the circumstances. Sometimes, though, the only way to get through to someone is by putting on a bit of a show. How big a show again depends, but sometimes God puts on a pretty big one. When God sent Moses to confront Pharaoh, He knew it was going to take a really big show in order to convince him. Let’s look here at how that show begins and why God was always the ringmaster.

Unbelief is not something that comes naturally to us. If you have been through the journey of parenthood, you have probably seen this. Kids are fairly naturally predisposed to believe in a higher power of some sort, and with only the slightest bit of encouragement, that belief gets pointed in the direction of God. Unless they have parents who start training them away from that early on in their growth and development, they will start to express interest and ask big questions for many years before they start to forget about it to do the allure of other things. Eventually, though, unless that’s natural seed of faith in God all of us are preprogrammed with is nurtured, it will grow dormant, and we will start to lean over into the direction of unbelief.

At this point, we don’t cease to believe in nothing, though. Instead, our need to believe takes over and we become willing to believe in anything. You see, while that seed of faith grows dormant as far as God goes, it doesn’t die out. It begins to seek out nourishment in other places. Anything which looks like it might furnish a bit of meaning and purpose for life becomes a target of our need to believe and our willingness to accept as true things which might otherwise seem absurd on their faith take on a sheen on reasonableness and even truth.

What about that belief in God we might have once been open to embracing? What happened to it? Well, unbelief may not come naturally, but with a bit of work and intentionality, we can grow into rather well. In fact, with enough diligent efforts over enough years, we can become so comfortable in that unbelief that we begin to lose the will and eventually even the ability to believe. Certainly no one ever moves himself completely out of the reach of God’s grace, but we can get to the point that it takes an awfully big show to get our attention.

This is where we find Pharaoh here as Moses and Aaron make their first contact with him to secure the release of the people of Israel from his enslaving grip. He is thoroughly committed to the idea that he is the embodiment of the chief of the gods on earth and that there is no god higher or stronger than he is. Have you ever reached the point in some belief where you were so committed to it that no amount of counter evidence was going to convince you it wasn’t true? Pharaoh was there when it came to his belief that he was a god and this supposed God of the Hebrews was a mere subordinate to his power and might at best.

And God knew this. That’s why He had been telling Moses from the start that Pharaoh was not going to respond well to his request for the people to go and worship. It was going to take a show. A really big show. It was going to take a demonstration of God’s power that was absolutely undeniable no matter how hard he wanted to deny it to finally make the point, and even then—as we will eventually see, Lord willing—it was only going to open up a brief window in his resolve.

Because of this, God could have started with this kind of an overwhelming display of His true power and might. He could have shown up in His glory, and everyone would have immediately dropped to their knees in humble submission to His will. But that’s not how He operates. Ever. He is a gentle God who is absolutely committed to honoring the ability He gave us to make meaningful and consequential choices. As a result, He starts small, using the least amount of power possible before moving on to bigger displays.

In this case, He told Moses and Aaron to do the staff-to-snake trick they used to convince the Israelites that God had really sent them. The thing about small miracles like this, though, is that they can be copied and imitated. A clever magician can indeed do all sorts of things; things like turning staffs into snakes. And so Pharaoh’s magicians did just that. These magicians didn’t have any real power of their own. But they were pretty clever. It took a lot of cleverness to prop up a system ultimately rooted in a lie. And they were good at it. Really good. So, when Aaron threw down his staff and it became a snake, they were able to fairly quickly replicate the trick.

And when they did, I’m sure they looked smug as could be. These two pretenders thought they were putting on a show to legitimize their silly claims about coming from the God of the enslaved Hebrew people, but they weren’t doing anything new or different or even hard. Nice try, chumps. Now, go back to your work at making bricks.

But then the room went silent. The snake from Aaron’s staff slithered over to where the magicians’ snakes were and proceeded to attack, kill, and eat them. Right there in front of everyone. The message was clear: you might be able to put on a good show too, but mine is better. Mine is stronger. Mine will defeat yours. Everyone in the room understood the symbolism of what had just happened. The magicians looked at each other nervously, wondering which of them were going to be made to pay for this failure.

For his part, Pharaoh looked on with just a twinge of uncomfortableness. This whole display didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t anything more than a minor crack in his facade of power. Yet somewhere inside he rightly understood that minor cracks get bigger over time. Perhaps there was something more here than he wanted to admit. But as quickly as this moment came, he brushed it aside and leaned back into his well-developed unbelief. That was his comfortable default position, and magic snakes weren’t about to move him from it.

So, what does any of this mean for us? Not very much, honestly. But it does give us a bit of a glimpse of God’s character. He doesn’t come in with guns blazing. When He is trying to get our attention, He’ll start with small and subtle. He’ll give us the equivalent of a divine wave like people around here do to each other when they pass on the road. It’s barely a finger lifted, but it signifies much more. It says, “I’m here I see you. I hope you can see me.” The question is: will we notice, or will we ignore it in favor of our comfortable unbelief? God can make a bigger noise—and He will yet with Pharaoh—but He always starts small. It’s better to listen early. Let’s make sure we do.