“Pharaoh’s officials asked him, ‘How long must this man be a snare to us? Let the men go, so that they may worship the Lord their God. Don’t you realize yet that Egypt is devastated?’ So Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh. ‘Go, worship the Lord your God,’ Pharaoh said. ‘But exactly who will be going?’ Moses replied, ‘We will go with our young and with our old; we will go with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds because we must hold the Lord’s festival.’ He said to them, ‘The Lord would have to be with you if I would ever let you and your families go! No, go – just able-bodied men – worship the Lord, since that’s what you want.’ And they were driven from Pharaoh’s presence.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

As a dad of three boys, one of the things I most enjoyed when my boys were little was wrestling around with them. As they’e gotten older (and bigger), it’s not quite as much fun as it used to be as they are big enough to gang up on me…and occasionally beat me. Especially the oldest who just nearly looks me in the eye now. Still, as I’ve gotten older, my stamina isn’t quite what it used to be. When I’m ready to be done, I’ll stop holding back so much to the point they know they’ve lost. I’ll ask if they’re done. And while they’re mostly done, they want to get one last shot in. So, while they’ve yielded almost completely, they’re not quite ready to give up entirely. As a result, I’ll keep piling on. Pharaoh wanted the plagues to stop. But he wasn’t willing yet to yield completely. Let’s talk about Pharaoh’s folly and our willingness to do what God says.

As we talked about yesterday briefly, the threat of this eighth plague was psychologically the worst of the bunch so far. Unlike the others Moses had announced, the very threat of this one prompted a reaction none of the others yet had. The people had endured much over the previous several weeks or months. A week’s worth of a bloody river that killed all the sea food in it. Frogs up to their eyeballs. Flies and gnats everywhere. And most recently painful boils and an apocalyptic hail storm that not only killed lots of people and animals, but devastated two of their major crops. If this locust plague came in as promised, things were going to be bad. Really bad. The level of starvation was going to be immense.

And so, when Moses announced what was coming, Pharaoh’s officials finally got the backbone to challenge him a bit on his stubbornness. How long are you going to let this go on, Boss? There’s not much left their God can take from us, and what’s left to take is going to hurt us far more than the things He’s taken so far. Listen, Pharaoh, is keeping this source of slave labor really worth destroying the whole country? I mean, sure, we can use the slave labor to rebuild, but is going to be anything left to rebuild with? “Don’t you realize yet that Egypt is devastated?”

Faced with the prospect of a political rebellion, Pharaoh for the first time seriously entertained at least the notion of finally complying with Moses’ long-running request to let the people go. He had gotten close during the hail storm, but ultimately reneged on his promise to comply once the hail stopped falling. Here, though, in hopes of being able to avoid a swarm of locusts completely devastating his nation’s food supply, he finally brings Moses back in to discuss the terms of his compliance.

“Alright, you can go do this whole worship thing you’ve been begging for for so long.” That is, “Alright, I’m ready to play ball.” But the thing is, Pharaoh still didn’t really want to do this. He knew he was being forced to the bargaining table for political reasons. He was ready to face down more plagues. He didn’t really care about the people of Egypt. Why would a god be concerned for the people who worship him? What a silly notion. But a potential political rebellion was something that got his attention. So, he begrudgingly came to the bargaining table with Moses. What is it going to take to get you to call off your God so we can put this whole thing behind us? You want to go out and have a festival to worship? Go have your silly little festival. Just tell your God to leave Egypt alone from now on.

Because Pharaoh was feeling very coerced in having to come to this bargaining table in the first place, though, he was planning to come to it on his own terms. His pride wasn’t broken at all. This was merely a momentary inconvenience on his way to showing himself to be the greater, shrewder god. So, after telling Moses they could go and worship, he asks a question for clarification. You can go do this worship thing, but who exactly do you plan on taking out into the wilderness for this thing? Moses’ answer is not what he wanted to hear. “Everybody,” Moses said. “When we go, we’re taking everybody and everything.”

There’s a famous episode from Reagan’s presidency when he was at a meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland for a summit with Mikhail Gorbachev. The two parties were getting nowhere in their negotiations over a variety of military and human rights issues. Finally, at the last minute, Reagan walked out of the negotiations and came back to Washington. The U.S. press that generally hated Reagan and everything he stood for (and were more than a little sympathetic for the Soviets) was absolutely apoplectic. But, his firm and clear stance on what he would and would not accept helped to push the Soviet’s back to the negotiation table with a willingness to agree to terms that were much more acceptable to the United States than they had been before.

When Moses told Pharaoh he planned to leave with everyone, Pharaoh essentially did what Reagan did. He said, “No way; no how,” walked away from the table, and kicked Moses and Aaron out. The thing is, though, Pharaoh still didn’t understand the nature of the situation he was in. While he had perhaps been convinced this God of the Hebrews was more than a pipsqueak local god, he had not begun to think they were anything less than equals at best. At worst, this was a particularly powerful upstart local god who needed to be dealt with a little more directly than most. He thought he could tell them to take a hike and they would be willing to come back to the bargaining table with a bit more humility and willingness to accept his much less ambitious terms for their wilderness festival than they wanted. He was going to give some; they were going to have to give some too. By asking for the whole package right out of the gate, they were making a grave error. Now they really were going to have to operate on his terms. Yet this wasn’t the nature of the situation at all. He couldn’t grasp that he wasn’t in charge here. God was. And His terms were going to be accepted and that was that.

Thus, when Pharaoh said, “The Lord would have to be with you if I would ever let you and your families go! Look out – you’re heading for trouble,” Moses left, and the locusts came. Pharaoh thought they were trying to play an all-or-nothing game that he was going to make sure they lost. He didn’t understand that it was going to be all that God had demanded, period. Pharaoh really didn’t have a say in the matter.

As much humor as there is in this tragic tale, though, the great irony is that we far too often try to engage with God the same way Pharaoh was doing here. We think we can force Him to operate on our terms. We delude ourselves into thinking that if we throw Him a bone of some sort, we can keep this thing over here that we don’t want to let go of. More simply, we think we can bargain with Him…or better yet, to get Him to bargain with us.

The truth, though, is that all such efforts will go about as well for us as they did for Pharaoh. God is sovereign. Period. His will is what is going to happen. Period. If we are going to follow Him, we have to follow Him and no one else. Jesus was as clear as could be that if we are not willing to turn our back on everything else in our lives, we aren’t worthy of following Him. God’s righteousness is perfect. Sin cannot exist in His presence. If we want to have some sin that we leave alone in our lives, we can’t be with Him. When we are ready to leave it behind, there is abundant forgiveness and grace in Christ, but we have to leave it entirely behind. If we aren’t willing to leave it totally behind, then we aren’t leaving it behind at all. And then we can’t be with Him. If God has called you to do something, He wants you to do that thing, not a twisted or corrupted or halfway version of it. If you try to go with the halfway house route, it won’t work.

So, the question we need to wrestle with is whether or not we want to try the path Pharaoh took, or to take the path of faithfulness and obedience? We can’t have it both ways. It’s either all of God or none of Him. And if we take the path of none of Him, that’s not going to be a very fun path and far more quickly than we might imagine. Take the route of faithfulness.