In this passage we see the 2nd plague on Egypt, a plague of frogs. Moses went to Pharaoh and repeated God’s command to let Israel go. Moses warned Pharaoh that if he refused, the Lord would send a plague of frogs on all of Egypt. Pharaoh, being Pharaoh, persists in his stubbornness, and Egypt suffered the plague according to God’s word.
The frogs became ubiquitous in Egypt. They multiplied to such an extent there was no where you could avoid them. They were in beds, mixing bowls, and even on the persons of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. It was so bad Pharaoh asked Moses to pray for relief from the frogs. Moses cried out to the Lord, and the frogs died where they were. The Egyptians had a massive clean-up task and piled the frogs in great heaps, while the hot African sun made an unbearable stench throughout Egypt.
The first thing we should learn and keep continually in the front of our minds is that God is sovereign over man. If we could but go beyond affirming this simple fact to the sobering reality it teaches us, we would be transformed. One of the purposes of the plagues is that Pharaoh and Egypt may know that the Lord is God.
Egypt is not an independent power that is exempt from accountability to the Lord God simply because they do not acknowledge him. There is a judge over heaven and earth. One judge. Pharaoh is challenging the Lord’s power and justice. Pharaoh will come to know the Lord by way of judgment that is as inevitable as death.
The better way to knowthe Lord is to come to know him through his grace and mercy. The Lord Jesus came into the world to return sinners to a right, loving knowledge of God. Through Christ the guilt of sin is removed in a way that brings honor to God’s justice. The power and deceitfulness of sin is broken in a knowledge of Christ. Through him alone we have righteousness before God. Christ says that eternal life is to know God, and we can only know God in a way of love through him.
God is sovereign over man. Man is accountable to God. There is no darkness in God, He is pure light. He is all powerful. He uses a weak creature such as a frog to dismantle the perceived power of great Egypt, so that we will see how foolish sin makes us. Pharaoh’s chariots and treasures were of no use when God delivered a plague of frogs. The application is easy to make, “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.”
There is also a message in the heaps of dead frogs that stink to high heaven in Egypt. The Hebrew repeats the word “heaps” three times to make the emphasis on how massive the piles of frogs were and how much they stank. The stinking carcasses of frogs reflect the sinfulness of all Egypt.
It isn’t just the general sinfulness of Egypt that is targeted there, though. The Egyptians’ god of fertility was the image of a frog. The images they made of this god were a woman with a frog’s head and a squatting frog. Egypt worshipped the frog as the power behind their own multiplication; but also like the other pagan nations, used their fertility god to justify all manner of sexual immorality.
The Lord calls any sexual immorality an abomination, meaning it is a sin that is especially repugnant to his holy nature. In our own culture pornography and other sexual immorality seems to be more and more pervasive. It is a powerful danger to us. The good news is that this is not a sin that is unforgiveable. Christ makes those who come to him completely clean in God’s sight.
Remembering God’s sovereignty with respect to this sin is vital for us. We must turn from it for its stench reaches heaven. Men will not escape the accountability God will demand of it, just as Egypt did not.
If you are a Christian and fall into this sin, you must revisit what God says of it and humble yourself before the Lord in such a way you desire not only the guilt but the power of the desire to be put to death. The Lord will do it, but you must aim for the root and leave no place for sin.
