Hey, Bible readers. I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. Yesterday, we saw the first seven plagues God brought on the Egyptians because Pharaoh wouldn't listen to Moses and set the Israeli slaves free. Today, we dropped in on the rest of the plagues. The first few sentences we read today said, I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among that you may know that I am the Lord. This whole paragraph was a weighty paragraph. It almost sounds like part of God's plan was to harden Pharaoh's heart against his plan. And the reason was that this process would help Israel really know and trust him as God. He uses the wicked as a tool to advance his plan and bless the children he's adopted into his family. We can't cut sentences like this out of the Bible. We have to wrestle with them and see what they mean and how they fit into the context of everything else in scripture. I'm not going to tie it up with a pretty bow and make it look simple. It's hard, it's mysterious, and it's okay to not have answers about it yet or maybe ever.

In yesterday's reading, we encountered several places where God hardened Pharaoh's heart, a few where it just says his heart was hardened, and a few that attribute the hardening to Pharaoh himself. But interestingly, Pharaoh's hardening of his own heart is almost always followed with the statement, as the Lord had said. It can feel threatening to recognize that God is bigger than your own heart, that he can shape it for his own purposes. If that's you and you're feeling that way right now, I would encourage you to not let fear drive that thought. The enemy of your soul wants you to view God's power through a lens that pushes you away from him instead of drawing you in. So instead, try to stop and acknowledge how comforting it is that we serve a God who is that powerful. For instance, think about the people that you know and love who are the furthest from God, people you've prayed for and cried for, people who have told you that they never want to hear you say another word about God again. God can soften their hearts and turn them on their heels, just like he did with the apostle Paul, who, by the way, wasn't just not seeking God.

He was actively at war against God and his people, much like Pharaoh. For God to be sovereign over sins and hearts means no one is beyond his reach, and it's never too late for anyone. And that is the greatest comfort I can imagine. Moving on, today we see the frustration mounting with Pharaoh's servants, and Pharaoh starts to weaken his resolve. But instead of obeying, he asks for a compromise. God doesn't really go for that. So the locus and the darkness come, but still no repentance. Then God sends what he knows will be the final plague. Moses has all the Israelites ask the Egyptians for their valuables, and they hand them over. He also tells every Israeli house to sacrifice a lamb and sprinkle its blood on the left sides, right sides, and tops of their doorways, marking their homes and their families by the blood of a sacrifice. Interestingly, if you were to use a hyssip branch like they did to wipe blood in those three spots, the placement on the left and the right, and then the dripping from the top down to the ground would leave the shape of a cross. God also tells them to eat their dinner, but finish it quickly.

Don't even make bread that rises, and stay fully dressed with your carkeys in hand, basically. By the way, the description he gives of their attire is a little a little bit reminiscent of the armor of God, described much later in Ephesians 6:10-18. Then he tells them about an annual dinner party he's planned for them to celebrate what he's about to do that night. I love that God is already telling them how to commemorate his deliverance before he fulfills build it. Jewish people around the world still celebrate this event today. The Hebrew calendar is built around it. You'll see this one day event referenced in scripture as Passover, and this is important to what we'll be learning in scripture, so make a mental note of it. It's called Passover because that's what the Lord did when he saw the blood on their doorways. He passed over that house and didn't kill the first born. So all the first born of Israel are spared, but not Egypt. By the way, in the references to the destroying angel in this passage, his identity is blurred, but most signs point to this being a Theophany, possibly a Christophany. After the angel who is maybe God the Son passes through, the Egyptians drive the Israelites out just like God promised, with the fistfuls of jewelry and fine clothing that they willingly handed over, just like God promised.

The Israelites plundered the Egyptians. In the middle of the night, 600,000 men and an estimated total of 2 to 3 million people left Egypt on foot. Some other non-Israelites went with them. We find out later that even some Egyptians went, too. And God tells the Israelites to treat them like family as long as they're circumcised. Also, you may be a little concerned about the 430 30 years that it says they spent in Egypt. God was 30 years late. I thought it was only supposed to be 400 years. There are two possible ways this could shake out. First, God could have just been giving a round number generality, not a down to the minute timeline. Or second, those first 30 years may have included the good times when Joseph had first moved his family there and all was still right with the old Pharaoh before they started enslaved them. So if you are worried that God got it wrong or broke his promise, hopefully that will help you breathe easy. What was your God shot today? What did you see about his character or his motives or his heart? I've been paying attention to this theme he keeps touching on.

Think back to day 31. We read two things in Exodus 4 that foreshadowed this final plague and helped us see a little bit of what's happening here with God's motives. Remember how God was angry and sought to kill someone, maybe Gershom, Moses' first born son, because Moses had disobeyed God by not circumcising Gershom, which means he wasn't set apart as one of God's people? And remember how God said that if Egypt didn't relent and let his first born son, Israel, go free to be set apart, that he would kill their first born son? That was all a bit of foreshadowing for today. This even has echoes of Abraham and his first born son, Isaac. And then today, just like with circumcision, God tells Israel to set themselves apart with a specific marking, to mark the entryway of their homes with blood in the shape of a cross, no less. That makes today's reading feel like foreshadowing for something yet to come in scripture. God has been hinting all along at what he's initiating here. He's so protective of his people and his plan for their freedom and restoration, he goes to great lengths to secure it.

And this is certainly not in the greatest length God goes to. God knows the pain the Egyptians felt, because to secure your freedom and mine, he sacrificed his first born son so that the massive debt our sins accrued could be paid in full. We He could never pay it, even with his help. We don't need him to help us. We need his utter and complete rescue. And through the plan he initiated to sacrifice his son, he also initiated a relationship with us and saved us from ourselves. We needed an initiator, God the Father, and we needed a mediator, God the Son. And we need someone to sustain and fulfill his work in us, God the spirit. The plan that God has initiated, sustained, and fulfilled is the only we can be united with him. And thank God, because he's where the joy is.

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My friends at Hope Nation have another fun song battle for all the Christian music lovers out there. We're throwing it back to the 2010s with favorites like Oceans by Hillsong and God's Not Dead by the Newsboys. Click the link in the show notes to watch and guess along to find out how well you know these hits.