“Let My People Go!”

“This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Let My people go.’” — Exodus 5:1

Moses and his brother Aaron went to the palace and stood in front of the king of Egypt. Moses was eighty years old by now.

“This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says,” they told him. “‘Let My people go, so that they may worship Me in the wilderness.’”

Pharaoh just laughed at them. “Who is the Lord, that I should obey Him?” he said. “I don’t know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go!”

And Pharaoh made things even worse. “Those lazy Israelites!” he said. “Stop giving them straw to make bricks. Let them go and find their own straw. But they must still make just as many bricks as before.”

Now the Israelites had to run all over Egypt looking for straw, and they still had to make all those bricks. When they couldn’t, the slave drivers beat them. The Israelites were angry with Moses. “You’ve only made things worse!” they said.

Moses went to God. “Why have you brought trouble on these people?” he asked. “You haven’t rescued them at all!”

“Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh,” God said. “I am the Lord. I will bring you out from under the heavy work of the Egyptians. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.”

So God sent plagues on Egypt. A plague is a terrible trouble that comes on a whole country. There were ten of them.

First God turned the water of the River Nile into blood. The fish died and the river stank, and nobody could drink from it.

Then came frogs. Frogs everywhere! Frogs in the houses and in the bedrooms and on the beds, frogs in the ovens and in the bread bowls.

Then came gnats, tiny biting insects, all over the people and the animals. Then swarms of flies. Then a sickness that killed the Egyptians’ cows and horses and camels. Then painful sores on the people’s skin. Then a huge hailstorm, with lightning, that smashed the crops in the fields. Then locusts, grasshoppers that ate every green thing that was left. Then darkness, a thick darkness over all Egypt for three days, so dark that people couldn’t see each other.

But here is something amazing. Where the Israelites lived, in a part of Egypt called Goshen, there were no flies, and no hail, and the animals didn’t die. And in the darkness, all the Israelites had light in their homes.

Each time a plague came, Pharaoh would say, “Pray to your God to take it away, and I will let your people go.” But each time, as soon as the trouble stopped, Pharaoh changed his mind. He made his heart hard and stubborn, and he would not let the people go.

The plagues showed that the Lord is the one true God. The Egyptians worshipped the river and the sun and many other gods. But the Lord was stronger than all of them. He ruled the river, and the animals, and the weather, and even the sun.

There was one more plague still to come. And it would be the worst of all.

Read it in your Bible: Exodus 5; 7–10

Dear God, you are stronger than anyone or anything. Please keep my heart soft, so that I always listen to you and never become stubborn like Pharaoh. Amen.