Note: This article is an AI-generated adaptation of a spoken transcript and may not fully capture the nuances of the original presentation.
So what happens when God’s judgment literally falls from the sky, but people still refuse to bow down to him? Well, that’s the question that our text today deals with. So let’s have a look at Exodus chapter 9, verse 22 through to 35.
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand toward heaven, so that there may be hail in all the land of Egypt, on man and beast and every plant of the field in the land of Egypt.’ Then Moses stretched out his staff toward heaven, and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire ran down to the earth. And the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt. There was hail and fire flashing continually in the midst of the hail, very heavy hail, such as had never been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation. The hail struck down everything that was in the field throughout all the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And the hail struck down every plant of the field and shattered every tree of the field. Only in the land of Goshen, where the people of Israel were, was there no hail.
Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, ‘This time I have sinned; the Lord is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong. Plead with the Lord, for there has been enough of God’s thunder and hail. I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer.’ Moses said to him, ‘As soon as I have gone out of the city, I will stretch out my hands to the Lord. The thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail, so that you may know that the earth is the Lord’s. But as for you and your servants, I know that you do not yet fear the Lord God.’ (The flax and the barley were struck down, for the barley was in the ear and the flax was in bud. But the wheat and the emmer were not struck down, for they are late in coming up.)
So Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh and stretched out his hands to the Lord, and the thunder and the hail ceased, and the rain no longer poured upon the earth. But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants. So the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people of Israel go, just as the Lord had spoken through Moses.”
Now this is one of these dramatic scenes in Exodus. There’s thunder and fire from the sky and hail. Heaven itself seems to wage war against Egypt. God here shows unmistakably that the earth is his, that he has the power over all the elements, not Pharaoh and certainly not the gods of Egypt. Each element—fire, water, air and land—is under his control. That’s how they would have understood that.
And yet even within the storm, God still shows his mercy. Goshen is spared. And the hail stops at Moses’ prayer. So we also see that the various different types of food were not completely, totally destroyed. Again, a sign of God’s mercy, even here in justice and judgment. Of course, Israel itself is spared. They are the ones that are living in Goshen. So even though God’s judgments are mingled with his grace, we see here that he is still set apart Israel as his special people.
I find Pharaoh’s confession in this passage really quite revealing. Here, faced with God’s judgment, he admits his sin. He admits that God is right in what he has done and that his people are in the wrong. This is a kind of repentance that’s not really a repentance. It sort of surrenders to the power of God without actually having a heart that changes.
And I wonder sometimes whether we could be the same as Pharaoh in this case, where we hate the consequences of our sin, but we don’t hate our sin itself. Maybe that’s true of you today, and this is a call again to turn to true repentance, to turn from your sin, and not just be sad because of the consequences of your sin, but actually to hate your sin itself, and to return to Christ. You see, we shouldn’t just fear the consequences. We should fear the Lord.
So naturally what happens in the case of Pharaoh is as soon as relief comes, as soon as the hail, the fire and the rain and the thunder stopped falling down on his people, he returns back again to the hardness of heart. The plague of the hail shows and exposes the difference between a kind of temporary regret because of sin and true repentance in the heart. And that’s still a distinction that matters pretty deeply today.
You see, true repentance isn’t found in a crisis-driven apology to God. It’s really coming in humble submission to God and to really seek the heart change that only the Spirit can give. To be sorry not just for what we’ve done, but for who we are. It’s a pretty massive difference in our heart disposition.
Now, that has direct implications for how we live our lives because you see we should rightly fear the Lord. But fear of the Lord is not—you know, to fear God is to fear his character, his awesomeness, to stand in awe before God. But to be afraid of God is to be afraid of his judgment. You know, “I don’t want to go to hell so I will obey”—that’s not real faith. The apostle James describes this as, you know, even the demons have that kind of faith. They know of God’s power and they shudder because of it. That’s not who we are to be.
You see, our faith is a response to what God has already done for us on the cross through Jesus Christ. It results in our worship. It results in a changed life before Him as a result of us coming to find free forgiveness for what we’ve done. So we respond to the mercies God has given us in Christ, and it doesn’t change over time. It’s not as soon as the consequences of our sin are taken away, you know, the hail and the rain stop, that we turn back to our own ways. No, it’s a new way of life that we ought to live. And so that’s what true repentance looks like.
Now the reality is we can’t do this in our own power. And that’s why we need the Holy Spirit to work within us, to change our hearts from inside. And so let’s pray about that now.
Lord, You are the Lord of heaven and earth. You command, yes, even the storms and the wind, the rain and the hail. It is right for us to tremble before you. But Lord, we don’t want to be people with empty fear who shudder only at your power. We want to embrace you as our Father, as adopted children who have been made right with you through the work of Jesus on the cross. So we pray that you, through your Spirit, will stir within us a heart of true repentance, that we may love you and serve you out of what you have already done for us, not in fear of what you might do to us. We pray this in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.