Remember Lenny LeBlanc’s song, “There is none like you”? Sing it with me: “There is none like
you…no one else can touch my heart like you do. I could search for all eternity long and find, there is
none like you.” We want to sing that song as people who know God, not as people like Pharaoh, who
see it but do not believe it.
The sixth plague followed the pattern of every third plague, with no warning, no announcement.
Pharaoh watched as Moses and Aaron did what God commanded, taking handfuls of soot or dust from
the kiln and throwing them into the air. The people of God knew what those kilns were all about. They
had been using them for years to bake bricks under forced labor. Now God takes some of that brick
dust and uses it to inflict pain on the people who had inflicted pain on Israel. The dust settled on every
person and every animal in Egypt and became boils. Listen, the mosquitoes and the flies were a pain,
but they were just a nuisance compared to these boils. God is turning up the heat and the pain.
This is the same affliction that Satan used to attack Job. Remember? God allowed Satan to test Job’s
faith and Satan first killed Job’s children and took his possessions. Job tore his robe and shaved his
head in mourning but he did not curse God. Instead, he worshiped him saying, “Naked I came from my
mother’s womb and naked shall I return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the
name of the Lord.” Then Satan tells God he needs to intensify his test, saying “Skin for skin…All that a
man has he will give for his life.” God allows Satan to strike Job with boils. From the top of his head to
the soles of his feet, Job was covered with them. It was so bad that his wife said, “Do you still hold fast
to your integrity? Curse God and die.” Job did not listen to her. He trusted God while in such pain that
he took a piece of broken pottery to scrape the pus from the boils as he sat in ashes. He looked so
horrible that his friends did not recognize him from a distance. They were so horrified at Job’s
suffering they could not speak for seven days.
That is the level of pain and punishment we see the 6 th plague. Every Egyptian, including Pharaoh and
his magicians, and every animal was covered from head to toe with painful boils. The magicians could
not even stand before Moses because of them. Their magic did nothing for them because Satan is
unable to protect those who stand with him. In the wilderness years later, Moses warns the people of
God about the curses of disobedience. One of them was this: “The Lord will strike you with the boils of
Egypt, and with tumors and scabs and itch, of which you cannot be healed.” That tells me that the boils
that the Egyptians received in the 6 th plague may have been with them until they died.
Once again, this is just a tiny glimpse of the horror that will come upon all the wicked of the earth, as
recorded in Revelation. “So, the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth, and harmful
and painful sores came upon the people who bore the mark of the beast and worshiped its image.”
I know this for a fact. Pharoah, covered with boils and miserable, did not sing, “no one else can touch
my heart like you do.” But that is indeed what was happening. In this case, the Lord touched his heart
and made it harder. He strengthened Pharaoh’s resolve to disobey God. What a picture of hell on earth
as God gave this man over to the wicked desires of his heart. There is a horrifying phrase in Romans 1
where three times Paul wrote of the wicked, “God gave them up.” God gave them up to the lusts of
their hearts. He gave them up to dishonorable passions. Finally, he gave them up to a debased mind to
do what ought not to be done. At that point the end is fixed and destruction is inevitable, chosen by
the man or woman who lives life on their own terms, pursuing their own desires apart from God.
Oh God, keep my heart turned toward you!

It is time for the fourth plague on Egypt, and we can only assume that the third plague of mosquitoes was removed. We are not certain! The way Moses records the plagues, the third, sixth and ninth are neither warned about nor removed. It is interesting to imagine that if these three plagues were not removed as were the others, then the people of Egypt were covered with mosquitoes and boils, and living in utter darkness when the final plague, the death of their firstborn, occurred.

The fourth plague, much like the third, is a plague of swarming bugs, here referred to as flies. These were not just a nuisance but brought a painful bite or sting. Almost all the Hebrew interpreters consider this to be a collection of nasty flies of various kinds. The Septuagint says they were blood sucking dog flies which have a painful sting. Some believe they were stable flies which, according to the Florida Dept. of Agriculture, “…will readily attack people, usually on the lower part of the legs, causing a searing pain with each probe of its bayonet-like proboscis.” Ouch. You know, it was the little things, in massive numbers, that got under Pharaoh’s skin. These swarms of flies were on every person in Egypt. Not in Goshen, though, as this was the first plague that God made a disc=nction between His people and Pharaoh’s. Their houses were filled with them, their bodies were covered with them, and everywhere they walked they were swarmed by them.  Pharaoh, covered with flies, manages to spit out to Moses that the people can go worship and make sacrifices to their God, but they have to stay in Egypt.

Not good enough. Moses tells Pharaoh they cannot possibly sacrifice to God in Egypt. “We must (worship) the Lord our God as He tells us.” This is the heart of our faith. We serve God according to the Word, not according to the world. The way of liberty and life and freedom cannot be bought or bartered for and can be found only in Jesus. We must worship Jesus as He tells us.

 Pharaoh then says they can go into the wilderness but adds, “you must not go very far away.” That’s like saying, “Hey, church, you can worship Jesus, but let’s not take this thing too far. I mean, what you guys are doing in your church building or in your own homes is ok. But that’s enough. Keep your so-called “Gospel” away from the rest of us. That’s all well and good for you, but do not bother others with it.” Sound familiar? It is the world we live in, the nation we live in, the city we live in! But we are no more constrained by the world in how we live out our faith as followers of God than Moses and Aaron were. Or Daniel was when he was told to not take his interest in prayer thing too far. Or Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were when they were told their faith in God had to bow to the king. We must worship Jesus as He tells us. And by God’s grace, we can do that without fear. It may not be without consequence. Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den, even though he was chosen by God. The three Hebrew boys were thrown into the fiery furnace. The disciples were martyred for their faith, almost to a man, though they were chosen by God, as we are. But we can trust God’s providence in the event of any punishment or penalty we receive for living out our faith as followers of Christ.

We worship as He tells us.

When Aaron struck the dust with his staff, the people of Egypt were covered with gnats. There are a couple of firsts in this, the third plague. This is the first one for which there is no warning. That happens for each set of three. There’s no warning given for the 3rd, 6th, or 9th plagues. This serves perhaps to draw attention to the last and deadliest plague. This is also the first plague that has to do with earth or land. The first two plagues, Nile and frogs, are related to water. The next 4 plagues have to do with land. The last 4 plagues have to do with the sky. As we talked about last week, the Egyptian ‘gods’ were related to either earth, or sky, or sea. This is also the first plague that the magicians cannot replicate. You have to believe Pharaoh was glad they could not use their magic to produce more bugs. 

Again, the Great I Am is striking a blow against a false god by showing that He is sovereign over all of life, right down to the very dust that we walk on. One belief popular in ancient Egypt was that Heqet, the frog queen (confronted in the second plague), had a husband named Khnum, who had the power to create new humans from the dust of the ground. He could shape them into people out of dust or clay but only Heqet, the goddess of fertility, could breathe life into them. 

When Aaron struck the ground, Moses wrote that “All the dust of the earth became gnats.” The last time that phrase was used, “the dust of the earth” was God’s promise to Abraham: “I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth.” In other words, Abraham would have more offspring than he could count. And Egypt was covered with more gnats than it could ever imagine. Most scholars believe these were not gnats, which are a nuisance, but they were mosquitoes, which are blood-sucking terrorists. Ligon Duncan tells the story of Alonzo Ramiriz working with a team of missionaries in the Amazon basin right off the river. When he got there, he saw the team going out to the river to bathe. Everyone went except for anyone who had cut himself shaving, because of the piranhas. The rest would risk the piranhas…because of the mosquitoes. Alonzo said that the sound of the mosquitoes around them around the clock was like a gigantic aircraft landing, and the sound of the swarms of mosquitoes would literally drive some people mad. The only relief from the mosquitoes was underwater, but the second they emerged, they were covered by them again. That gives you some taste of what happened in Egypt. They swarmed on every human being and every animal in the land. What was God doing in these plagues?

John Currid at Reformed Theological Seminary wrote that God was “de-creating Egypt.” God demonstrated His power and brought such chaos that He who created water and gathered it into seas on the second day of creation and made the waters swarm with fish on the fifth day of creation turned the Nile into blood in the first plague. He who made vegetation grow on the third day of creation obliterated almost all the crops and the fields of Egypt in the 7th and 8th plagues. He who made two great lights in the heavens for the earth on the fourth day of creation turned those lights out with the 9th plague. He who made man in his own image and gave him dominion over the earth on the 6th day of creation afflicted the men and women of Egypt with boils in the 6th plague. And then He took their firstborn in the tenth plague. The de-creation of Egypt reveals who God is to the people and results in the release of their captives. Remember, God told Moses, “The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.”

Maybe the magicians, even as lost as they could be, were the first to see the truth. They said, “This is the finger of God.” They may have added, And if this is God’s finger, we don’t want to see His fist. The magicians did not know God. But they had eyes to see His power. 

The Psalmist wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” On that day, so did the mosquitoes.