Exodus 7 — Sketch

Miracles and Imitations

Big Idea:

• God sends Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh again — but tells them not to expect Pharaoh to listen.

• Aaron throws his staff down before Pharaoh, and it becomes a snake.

• Pharaoh’s magicians throw their staffs down, too, and they also become snakes.

• Aaron’s snake swallows the magicians’ snakes, but Pharaoh still doesn’t yield.

• Pharaoh is on the Nile the next morning. Moses calls to him from the shore.

• Aaron strikes the Nile with his staff, and the water turns to blood. All the fish die, and the stink of it fills Egypt.

• The Egyptian magicians reproduce this as well, and Pharaoh still does not yield.

Jesus in This Chapter:

• Here is the start of the 10 plagues God will bring on Egypt. Each one is a symbolic affront to a god or goddess in the Egyptian pantheon. The message: God is the only God. He’s an exclusive God. That’s why there’s only one way to Him — Jesus.

• Aaron’s snake swallowing the other snakes isn’t counted as one of the 10 plagues, but it carries the same message. The cobra was a symbol of Pharaoh’s sovereignty, but Aaron’s snake swallowed Pharaoh’s snakes anyway. Sin claims sovereignty over our hearts and death claim sovereignty over our lives, but Christ’s blood swallows up both.

• The Nile becoming blood was an affront to Hapy, the God of the Nile floods. The Nile was a source of national identity to the Egyptians, and it was what they looked to for life in the desert. But God filled it with death, showing that turning to Hapy or to anything other than Him will lead only to death. True living water is found only in Jesus.

(Originally drawn September 14, 2010)