Exodus 11 — Thoughts

Do Plagues and Patience Go Together?

Do plagues and patience go together? In Exodus they do.

It’s easy to see the calamity God brings against Egypt as evidence of His wrath. He doesn’t send one plague. He doesn’t sent three. He sends 10. And the last one is the worst.

But this repetition doesn’t point to God’s wrath — it points to His mercy.

In Romans 6:23, Paul tells us that “the wages of sin is death.” Yet God hasn’t sent death to Egypt. Instead, He has sent annoyances, loss, and sickness.

Nine times, God holds back death, curbing His just wrath to give Pharaoh a merciful opportunity to do the right thing. And it’s not until Pharaoh has rejected this opportunity nine times that God finally lets His wrath show.

Pharaoh’s situation highlights our human condition. The moment we sin, we earn the wages for our sin — we earn death. But God doesn’t give us that death right away. Instead, He allows each of us to go on living, giving us an ongoing opportunity to seek Him instead. As Peter writes, “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

Left to ourselves, that opportunity will one day run out, and we will have to face the just wages for our sins. But that’s why God came to earth, lived the perfect life we couldn’t live, and died the death for sin in our places.

Pharaoh was given multiple opportunities to repent and rejected them all. God gives you an opportunity to repent with every breath you take. Will you squander that opportunity, or will you make the most of it, while you still can, by putting your faith in Jesus?

(Originally written April 21, 2022)