Joy Comes in the Morning
When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, Moses asked God to send someone else. Even though God wanted Moses to do this job, He still sent Aaron to Moses to help him along the way. The first few encounters before Pharaoh, Aaron takes the lead. Up through the plague of the gnats we see God telling Moses to tell Aaron what He wants done. But on the plague of the flies, God starts to make a distinction for the Israelites and has Moses deliver the message to Pharaoh.
Before this plague, the Israelites have suffered right along with the Egyptians with the plagues. But at the plague of the flies, God deals differently with the Israelites and sent no swarms of flies to the land of Goshen where the Israelites lived.
The thing about the way God brought about the plagues is it allowed for faith to build. Things start bleak with the “weaknesses” of God or perhaps with the strength of Pharaoh. God allowed it to appear for a time that Pharaoh and his magicians were just as powerful as God. But at the plague of the gnats even the magicians are declaring, “This is the finger of God.” Now God is making a distinction between Israel and Egypt by not allowing the plagues to affect Israel. This relief would have been palpable. For the Israelites going from suffering along with the plagues to only seeing them demonstrated, that would have been a very big deal.
For those willing to learn the lessons, God is providing a way for the Israelites’ broken spirits to be restored. God is doing things that only He is capable of doing at the plague of the gnats, which would have been encouraging, but then to remove the distress from the Israelites would have added an extra layer.
It helps to notice these things, because we may go through our own seasons. Times where the goodness of God is hard to see at first, but when we start to collect these moments, over time we start to see something larger develop. The more we notice the presence of God in our lives, the more confidence we are going to have in His plan for our lives.
I love that God starts to bring Moses more to the forefront at this plague of the flies. Moses starts out tentative, gains courage before the Israelite leaders, loses courage in front of Pharaoh the first time, runs to the Lord, gains strength, and then endures. By the plague of the flies, God is starting to draw him out more. At the plague of the gnats, there is a new kind of victory with the Egyptian magicians recognizing God’s hand in these things. And then the very next plague God is telling Moses to go before Pharaoh, and He is giving the Israelites a win. In essence redeeming an initial part of Moses’ story as well.
Those hard seasons, the ones that seem like they will never get better. God will redeem those moments for us. He may allow us to go through a season of false defeat. It may even stretch on so long it feels like an actual defeat, but hold on. The Lord will come through for His people. And He will come through for you too.
