Exodus 07: Blood In The Water

Blood in the water isn’t just a dramatic image, it’s the opening move in a spiritual war. Exodus 7 drops us into the moment Moses and Aaron stand before Pharaoh with a simple command from Yahweh: let God’s people go. Pharaoh has a throne, an army, and a reputation. Moses has a staff, a calling, and a God who refuses to share glory with Egypt’s idols. 

We dig into why the plagues of Egypt aren’t random acts of chaos. Each sign is a deliberate confrontation of the false gods Egypt trusted for life, safety, and power, starting with the Nile. When the river turns to blood, the episode shows what it means for God to strike at the very thing a culture treats as untouchable. And when Pharaoh’s magicians imitate the miracle, we talk honestly about counterfeit power, hardened hearts, and why “looking spiritual” is not the same as being true. 

The takeaway lands close to home: God has many enemies, but He has no rivals. That doesn’t mean the enemy is harmless, it means we don’t have to live in fear. We close with a prayer for discernment, courage, and a serious approach to sin, trusting that Jesus is stronger than anything pushing back against our freedom. 

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Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Welcome And Daily Bible Rhythm

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey everyone and welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. In this podcast, we will be breaking down the Bible one chapter a day. Whether you are a new believer or have been following Christ for a while, we believe that you will learn something new and fresh every single day. So thank you for joining us and let's get into breaking down the Bible together.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Exodus chapter seven. And today's title is Blood in the Water. Blood in the Water. And we're going to have kind of a couple of meanings with that in just a moment. And I will go ahead and be honest with you. This is some of my favorite Bible passages in the entire Bible, just because of what it means and what God is doing here. So I cannot wait. Get your coffee, get your soda, get whatever it is. Make sure you get your Bibles, get everything because we're going to dive right into God's Word.

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SPEAKER_01 0:57

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Why The Plagues Aren’t Random

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Well, listen, if you've been with us over the past few days, we are walking through the book of Exodus. And this chapter right here is where we really get into the meat of what God is doing to deliver the nation of Israel. We are going through this idea about how God frees his people. Well, this is where the freeing starts to happen. And so we had chapter one, chapter two, we learned about kind of the origin story of how they got into captivity. Then we learned about Moses. And then Moses has an encounter with God in chapter three. Eventually, Moses makes his way back to Egypt, and he is there with his brother Aaron, and they go and they talk to Pharaoh. And they tell Pharaoh, hey, listen, you're going to have to let my people go, my friend. We got to be going and worshiping and all this kind of good stuff. And it is an interesting dynamic because you have the most powerful person in the world in Pharaoh, and you've got a guy who basically is a shepherd. He's nobody. He was raised in the house of Pharaoh, but in in the eyes of the Egyptians, who is this guy talking to Pharaoh? But what they don't realize is that he serves God, Yahweh, and he's about to find out, right? And what is about to happen that is very interesting, and if you've ever watched, you know, the Prince of Egypt, or if you've ever seen the Ten Commandments or anything like that, there is about to be what looks like a standoff with some unconnected or disconnected things. And that is this. Have you ever wondered when God tells Moses, hey, tell Pharaoh if he doesn't do what I say? Because Pharaoh constantly is hardening his heart. He's like, I'm not gonna let these people go. And he's like, if you don't do what I say, then I'm gonna cause, you know, lice to come around. I'm gonna cause frogs and all this stuff. Have you ever thought about how random that is? Of all the things, why frogs? Why lice? Why did it have to get dark? What's up with the hail that comes down? Well, here's here's the thing that is lost to all of us, but hopefully after today it won't be. And you'll see why I think this is so great. Well, in Egyptian culture, they were a polytheistic culture. That means polyming many. They had many different gods that they would worship and they would do many different things. And what I want to show you really real quick is something that I think is absolutely amazing. And that is when we are going to read over the next two or three days, we're going to read about the different things and the different plagues that God does. Every single one of the plagues consistently begins to topple over one of the main gods that they worshipped. And it actually goes to the weakest, which would have been Hapi, which was uh over the Nile River, and was still a strong god. They had many, many more gods than these. But Hapi, which I'm gonna say these all wrong, over the Nile, was considered one of the chief gods. And then the next one was Haket, the next one was Gibb. And every one of these gods were more powerful than the next until you get to what was considered to be the most powerful god in their culture, which was Pharaoh and Osiris. And what God is actually doing is he is picking a fight with the paganistic gods and the god uh polytheistic culture of the Egyptians. And he's doing multiple things. Number one is he is showing them that Yahweh is more powerful than each one of these gods. So you think that Happy is more important than me, or are not more powerful? Okay, I'm gonna control him. I'm gonna control this other one. I'm gonna control it. So he is slowly, but but like systematically destroying every one of their gods in their eyes, and he is showing the nation of Israel that I truly am the greatest. And watch, let me prove it. And so we're gonna watch this, and what we're gonna do is we're just gonna mark these off. If you're watching on YouTube, every time he dispels or destroys one of these gods, we're gonna come back over and we're gonna mark these off as God is continually showing, I'm greater than this one, I'm greater than this one, and he is just showing them who he is. So if you're ready, we're gonna dive into chapter seven and just watch as God's word just comes alive as he shows us that he is more powerful than anything else. You ready? Here

Moses Aaron And The Serpent Sign

SPEAKER_01 5:27

we go. Exodus chapter seven, verse one says this. Then the Lord said to Moses, Pay close attention to this. I will make you seem like a god to Pharaoh and your brother. Aaron will be your prophet. Tell Aaron everything I command you, and Aaron must command Pharaoh to let the people of Israel leave his country. But I will make Pharaoh's heart stubborn, so I can multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. Even then Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you. So I will bring down my fist on Egypt, and I will rescue my forces, my people, the Israelites, from the land of Egypt with great acts of judgment. When I raise my powerful hand and bring out the Israelites, the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord. So Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded them. Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron was eighty-three when they made their demands to Pharaoh. Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Pharaoh will demand, show me a miracle. Then, when he does, does this, say to Aaron, Take your staff and throw it down in front of Pharaoh, and it will become a serpent. Pause. That's just like what he did to show him back in Exodus 3 that this was how he was going to prove that he was with him. All right, so verse 10. So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did as the Lord had commanded them. Aaron threw down his staff before Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a serpent. When Pharaoh called on his own wise men and sorcerers, these Egyptian magicians did the same thing with their magic. They threw down their staves, which also became serpents. But then Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs. So in other words, they could do this little trick, but God's was real, and he actually destroyed theirs. But Pharaoh's heart, however, remained hard. He still refused to listen, just as the Lord had predicted. Then the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh's heart is stubborn, and he still refuses to let the people

The Nile Turns To Blood

SPEAKER_01 7:33

go. So go to Pharaoh in the morning as he goes down to the river. Stand on the bank of the Nile and meet him there. Be sure to take along the staff that turned into a snake. Then announce to him, The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to tell you, let my people go, so they can worship me in the wilderness. Until now you have refused to listen to him. So this is what the Lord says, I will show you that I am the Lord. Look, I will strike the water of the Nile with a staff in my hand, and the river will turn to blood. The fish in it will die, and the river will stink. The Egyptians will not be able to drink any water from the Nile. Then the Lord said to Moses, Tell Aaron, take your staff and raise your hand over the waters of Egypt, all of its rivers, canals, ponds, all the reservoirs. Turn all the water to blood. Everywhere in Egypt where the water turned to blood, the even the water stored in wooden bowls and stone pots. So Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord commanded them. As Pharaoh and all of his officers watched, Aaron raised his staff, and he struck the water of the Nile, and suddenly the whole river turned to blood. The fish in the river died, and the water became so foul that the Egyptians couldn't drink it. There was blood everywhere throughout all the land of Egypt. But again the magicians of the Egypt used their magic and they too could turn the water into blood. So Pharaoh's heart remained hard. He refused to listen to Moses and Aaron just as the Lord had predicted. Pharaoh returned to his palace and put the whole thing out of his mind. Then all the Egyptians dug along the river banks to find drinking water, for they couldn't drink the water from the Nile. Seven days passed from the time the Lord struck the Nile. So first thing he shows them the happy, which is over the Nile, which was considered the provider of life. So they're saying, okay, cool, we can we can also do things, but that's one and there's more to come. So

God Has No Rivals

SPEAKER_01 9:47

what can we get out of this? I think it is absolutely absolutely vital for us to realize that God has many enemies, but he has no rivals. There are many people and many folks have come throughout time and have said they are greater than God, and God continues to show that's simply not true. God is greater than any one of our enemies. But that doesn't mean that our enemies have no power. I think it's important to think about the fact that the the Egyptian magicians were able to do a counterfeit miracle, not a genuine miracle like God, but they could do a counterfeit miracle to appear to be strong in order to let evil continue. And I think it's important for us to realize that we have a spiritual enemy named the devil and he does have power. Now, he isn't he does not have more power than God does, but he does have some power. Therefore, we should never play with the enemy. We should never play with evil, we should never take it lightly. We should just realize that he is not more powerful than God. So here's my question for you. First of all, when is the last time you have realized that everything in our lives is more spiritual than we can imagine? Now that doesn't mean that there's a demon behind every bush and we should be afraid of everything, but it does mean that we should be aware of the spiritual warfare around us. But then also, do you find yourself taking the spiritual things for granted? Almost like saying it like this, just kind of playing with the devil. Just flirting with sin, going, Oh, it's not that big a deal. It's not whatever. Well, think about it. Because of the the apparent power of this false God, it hardened Pharaoh's heart. And you know what can happen to us a lot of times if we see something that looks good and it looks like God, even though we know it's not, it can cause us to harden our heart against a true relationship with God. So therefore, that's why we stay in God's Word every day, like we're doing today, is so that we can see the difference between what is true and what is false. I love how it was showing it was saying that, you know, while the the uh magicians were able to turn their staves into serpents, Aaron's serpent was greater than. And I think that's what we always should remember is that yes, the enemy can cause a ruckus, he can cause trouble, but he is nothing compared to our God. Therefore, the other thing I would say is when the enemy comes in, like a flood, God can raise up a standard against him. That the enemy may come roaring like a lion, but we serve the lion of Judah. And at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow. Every tongue must declare that Jesus Christ is the Lord. So I'd want to make sure we end with saying, Yes, the enemy has some power, but he pales in comparison to the great King and the Great Lord. That should give us comfort in everything we go through today.

Prayer And Tomorrow’s Teaser

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Let's pray together right now. God, thank you so much for today. Thank you, God, that you're with us and you're for us. Lord, I pray that if any of us are flirting with sin, if we're dabbling in things that we shouldn't, if we are if we are not taking sin seriously, I pray, Lord, that you will shake us. Open our eyes to see that Lord, there is more spiritual warfare going on around us than we can imagine. However, we are not in a battle that you have not already won. We just have to take the ground. So I pray, Holy Spirit, that you'll open our eyes to see that you, Jesus, are more powerful than we can imagine. And we won't live in fear, we won't live wondering, but rather we will take our place as children of God and declare freedom over our lives in Jesus' name. Amen. And amen. Well, God's Word says in Exodus 6, verse 6, God said, I will free you from your oppression and I will rescue you from slavery. These are some of my favorite chapters, and I can't wait to get to tomorrow when God will continue to declare victory over more of these gods of Egypt. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for Exodus chapter 8.