The Lord God used world power Egypt to refine the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For centuries, the Hebrew people served the Egyptians in forced labor. Finally, God called his people home—to the promised land of Israel.
Understandably, Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, wasn’t interested in letting them go. God warned Pharaoh that a terrible plague would wreak havoc in Egypt if he didn’t cooperate. Pharaoh didn’t budge. God told Moses to raise his staff over the Nile River. It turned to blood. As did the water in the streams, canals, reservoirs and even the clay pots in homes. “Blood was everywhere in Egypt” (Exodus 7:21).
God described this and nine more miraculous plagues in Egypt as “signs and wonders” (Exodus 7:3). A sign points to something, and a wonder is something that makes you say, “Wow!” So the plagues that God unleashed pointed to something that would make the Israelites say, “Wow!” And here’s what it was, in God’s own words to them, “Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord” (Exodus 6:7,8).
God’s people of faith would see his work and know that he was the Lord God. Their God. Their Savior, Redeemer, Promiser and Protector. God’s signs and wonders work faith. They work resolve. They work peace, joy, land love. These are more than personality traits; they are God’s work in believers!
When Jesus turned water into wine or performed any of his other miracles, it wasn’t for entertainment value. He wanted to change people. He wanted sinners to repent, skeptics to reconsider, and slackers to recommit. He wanted believers to believe more and followers to follow better. And it worked, according to the Bible’s assessment of his first miracle, that “he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him” (John 2:11).
If you’re waiting for a miracle today like the ones Moses or Jesus performed while on earth, however, you’re missing out on even greater miracles of God’s work taking place every day—not around you but in you. Jesus says that “a wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign” (Matthew 12:39) to appear from the sky or in a dream or through a mysterious voice to help us heal or decide whether to become a nurse or determine if we take the job.
If you want to stand on the wrong side of God’s power then tell him you’re not ready for anything until he shows you a miraculous sign. That’s not to say God can’t or won’t perform miracles today as dramatically as he has in the past. It’s to focus our attention where God specifically states a miracle will happen. In us.
The Bible says that God is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20). Stop looking in the sky or waiting for an angel to tap you on the shoulder. The power of God that created the Nile River and the oceans of the earth is at work within us, who ask God for help and imagine how he might stir our souls.
The Nile River was a deity in Egypt. To this god the Egyptians had fed Israelite babies after Pharaoh ordered their execution for population and political control, throwing them to the crocodiles whose jaws snapped shut and spilled the blood of little babies. Now in a miraculous plague this river bows down to God—changed to blood so that the life-giving water of this Egyptian god becomes death to the Egyptians and life for the Israelites.
The Passover lamb’s blood in the tenth plague (Exodus 12) was death for the lamb but life for the Israelites. Even God’s own blood—in the suffering, death, and crucifixion of Jesus –becomes death to sin and guilt, and life to you.
So live. You are not forced to serve any sinful power or temptation. Live by God’s power at work within you.
PRAYER: God of power and miracles, I’m in awe of your mighty works. A miracle for me to see right now would be spectacular! Open my eyes, however, to see the miraculous works of your salvation already at work in me. And to be just as amazed! Amen.
LISTEN TO THIS SONG: Listen to the song Power in the Blood by Cody Carnes.
