...take the daily journey from your head to your heart...

The Fifth Plague: Livestock Diseased

“1 Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go to Pharaoh, and say to him, “Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 2 For if you refuse to let them go and still hold them, 3 the hand of the Lord will strike with a deadly pestilence your livestock in the field: the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds, and the flocks. 4 But the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, so that nothing shall die of all that belongs to the Israelites.”’ 5 The Lord set a time, saying, ‘Tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land.’ 6 And on the next day the Lord did so; all the livestock of the Egyptians died, but of the livestock of the Israelites not one died. 7 Pharaoh inquired and found that not one of the livestock of the Israelites was dead. But the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he would not let the people go” Exodus 9:1-7.

Here Moses is sent to Pharaoh, presumably at his court, with both a demand and a warning, “Let my people go, so that they may worship me.”

But the plagues continue to increase in severity as their progression or severity are found in the words of v. 3: “The hand of the LORD will bring a terrible plague.” None of the prior plagues was announced by Moses as the work of “the hand of the LORD.” It is, of course, the case that the Egyptian magicians used a similar expression in their accounts to explain to Pharaoh that the third plague of biting insects was supernatural in origin (“This is the finger of God,” 8:19), but now God himself announced a plague as coming directly from himself, implicitly referring to its severity. God's verbally setting a time for this plague to happen has no parallel elsewhere in Scripture. Verse 6 describes what actually had been warned and predicted previously. God fulfilled His word and the timing He had announced, and the Egyptian livestock died, with Israelite livestock left untouched.

Now that so many Egyptian cattle had died, representing an economic disaster for the Egyptians, Pharaoh decided to find out for himself whether or not the same sort of thing had happened to the Israelites. All over Egypt the bodies of cows, horses, and other animals were rotting in the sun. Nevertheless, Pharaoh's heart was unyielding, and he would not give the Israelites their freedom. God was controlling Pharaoh in a manner leading progressively to Pharaoh's and Egypt's complete humiliation and tragic defeat.

Dear friends, continuing to resist was the most foolish thing Pharaoh could do, just as it is so very foolish for us to resist what God is calling to be and to do in our life. Have we not all departed from the Lord, resisting what He was calling us to do? 

Today, take time in prayer to ask for forgiveness and then return to the Lord. Don’t allow what enters your mind to stay there! Let what God is revealing to you enter into your heart. Remember this, the most important journey in life is the shortest journey — the journey from your head to your heart.

Pray for you and others to make this journey every day!

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.