People who are astute learn from the pain and change, but prideful and foolish people hardened their hearts with each pain. It is hard to deal with pride and foolishness, and Pharaoh was such a man. He never learned his lesson. With each plague, his heart became even harder. Five plagues had come and gone, but his pride and foolishness did not shift a bit. None of the first five signs moved him. The Nile that turned into blood, the frogs, the gnats, the flies and then came to the severe pestilence on all of Egypt’s livestock, none of these changed his heart. He is the personification of a fool as implied by Proverbs 27:22. It says “Though you pound a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with crushed grain, yet his foolishness will not depart from him.” Perhaps it was because none of the plagues touched his physical body so far. Physical affliction often wakes a person and helps him come to his senses fairly quickly. So, God sent the sixth plague, one that brought boils upon the body.
In Exodus 9:8-9 God told Moses and Aaron, “Take for yourselves handfuls of soot from a kiln and let Moses throw it toward the sky in the sight of Pharaoh. It will become fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and will become boils breaking out with sores on man and beast through all the land of Egypt.” That was what they did exactly. Immediately the soot taken from the furnace and thrown into the air, turned into fine dust all over Egypt and inflicted both men and beasts with boils. Pharaoh was not excluded of course. This had to be God at work because once again we are told, in verse 11, that boils only afflicted all the Egyptians. It truly pays to be God’s people because He protects His own.
Like all the plagues so far, the gods or goddesses they worshipped would be humiliated. This one did the same to all the gods and goddesses that deal with healing and medicine. The Egyptians worship Amon Re, a creator-god whom they believed could get rid of ailments. One of them, named Thoth, was believed to have the art to heal. What about Imhotep, whom the Egyptians believed to be the god of medicine. With this outbreak of plague of boils, these and other related gods that brought health and healing were hit. God once again proved His sovereignty and no power could stand against Him. None of the gods they worshiped could get rid of the boils. Pharaoh’s heart was hardened yet again. How foolish!
Thinking about ailment and healing, we must remember that our God is the ultimate healer. There is none like Him. Aware of it or not, with all the modern medicine and all the medical gadgets invented today, medicine can only do so much for a disease. They can uncover a person’s condition, remove any growth, but they can never heal instantly. Modern medicine only helps to make the condition more conducive for God’s healing process to take over. It is God who had put the healing mechanism in the anatomy and physiology of our body system. At best all physicians, medical science and drugs can do is to help make a sick body conducive for God’s healing to kick in. For health, strength, and vitality we must turn to put divine principles into practice. We trust the God who reigns in our life to bring health and healing when we are struck with a physical ailment. Let’s not surrender our faith in God to medical science to a point that we fail to trust God and His ability to heal any and every disease.
Pharaoh allowed his boils to harden his heart and reject God. That’s a wrong response. It could have driven him closer to God. And this is what we must do. Every sickness signal to us that it’s time to draw near to God. We are instructed by James that we should call for the elders and the prayer of a righteous man avails much, even in time of sickness.
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