Exodus 10.
AS we have noticed already, God had now hardened Pharaoh’s heart, but not until the king had hardened his heart a number of times after God had shown His power in warning signs and grew more severe as they followed one another. And again Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh, carrying a new message from God: “Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, ‘How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before Me? Let My people go, that they may serve Me.’” If Pharaoh would not listen, God said the locusts would come tomorrow. And, O, what swarms of these flying things, coming like great armies, eating everything that was green—leaves, grass, grain and even fruit, and entering the homes of the people in such numbers that, as the sixth verse says, they would fill the houses. “Very grievous” these locusts were. Before them, there were no such locusts, nor after them either, we learn from the fourteenth verse. They covered the face of the ground. Nothing could stop them, and when they moved, there was nothing left but the bare branches of the trees.
But first Pharaoh had tried to make a bargain with Moses and Aaron, and that was, they that were men might go to serve the Lord; and the little ones, with, no doubt, their mothers, should stay behind. How crafty Satan is! He thinks if he can keep the little ones, he will have the grown folks too, because they would be sure to come back to their children. But God will not make any such agreement as that, and Moses answered (verse 9), “We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go.”
No Christian. parent could be happy with his children unsaved; nor can they be contented to have them, if saved, going on with the unsaved, enjoying a “good time” with those who have Satan for their master. Christian parents, let us never cease praying that our children may be “All for Christ.”
Of course Pharaoh would not let the people go. He never meant to, and only did when God forced him to do so by the last and most solemn thing which He did. The locusts came, then Pharaoh pretended to be sorry and asked for forgiveness and that the locusts should be taken away. God then made a mighty, strong west wind to take them all away into the Red Sea.
Then came the ninth plague—darkness and not just such as we have when night comes on, but “thick darkness,” “darkness which may be felt,” so that the Egyptians could not see one another, and did not dare to move for three days. In that land of blazing sunshine, the extraordinary darkness must have frightened those superstitious worshipers of false gods.
“But all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.” From the very beginning God had taken special care of them, and almost none of the plagues had hurt them at all.
Pharaoh had one more thing to offer. You will remember that first he was willing that if the people trust serve God, it should be in the land of Egypt (chapter 8, verse 25); then only the men should go (chapter 10, verse 11); now he said (verse 24), that they should leave their flocks and their herds behind. To this Moses said, “There shall not a hoof be left behind.” Everything must be for the Lord, nothing for Satan. So must it be with us; all our hearts, our wills, our all, must be devoted to Jesus, who gave all that He had (Matthew 13:4444Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. (Matthew 13:44)) that He might be our Saviour.
Pharaoh, angry now, told Moses to go, and not to come back, and Moses said to him, “Thou hast spoken well, I will see thy face no more.” The end of God’s dealings with Pharaoh was near.
ML 01/01/1922