“Thus says the Lord, ‘In this you shall know that I am the Lord: Indeed, I will strike the waters of the Nile with the rod that is in my hand, and they shall be turned to blood.’”

— Exodus 7:17

In the Book of Exodus, we see the great confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh. This is the Old Testament counterpart to that confrontation between Christ and Pilate, the representative of the pagan Roman Empire, with Pharaoh being the representative of the pagan empire of Egypt.

Here is a classic confrontation between good and evil, Christ and Satan. It is the high point in the Old Testament. It is that point to which the Jews looked for centuries afterward remembering the great acts of God.

Now these ten plagues are not simply punishments upon Pharaoh and the people of Egypt, but they are a concerted effort on the part of Jehovah to destroy the idolatry of the Egyptian people and to bring to naught their many gods. And so, in the plagues, we have a systematic, cumulative crescendo of attacks on the gods of Egypt before the watching Egyptians.

Take, for example, the first plague, the attack that God made was upon the River Nile, which was a great god to the Egyptians because it was the source of all their livelihoods. Egypt of course is a huge desert with the Nile River running down it, giving about a 50 mile wide swath of greenery and life. Without the Nile, that nation would dry up and blow away. And so first of all, God attacked that, the great god of the Nile.

God alone is to be worshiped and not any false idols.

God above all gods, give us the strength of heart to worship only You. We ask that You cast down any idol in our lives and that our worship might be true and right…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE CAN AVOID IDOLATRY
AND DESTROY ANY IDOLS IN OUR LIVES.