At God's command Moses goes to Pharaoh with the demand that Pharaoh should let his people go. Pharaoh, again, as we would expect, denies the request. He does not want to release his slave population. He knows that if they leave the Egyptians will be without a valuable labor force. He may also fear their rebellion spreading to other segments of the population. Notice how God has prepared Moses for this. He has warned Moses that he should not expect a positive response but instead that God will deliver his people from Egypt through supernatural signs and by bringing trouble on Egypt.
This is exactly what God does in this world. He overturns our judgment, our wisdom, our plans through his supernatural signs. He works counter to our expectations. We plan out how our lives should go. We take steps, wise steps, well reasoned steps toward furthering our lives, our careers, raising our children, any number of other things. We think we are well reasoned. Yet our Lord overturns reason again and again. He shows himself to be the supernatural Lord who works in ways we would not expect.
Two of the ways God works in counterintuitive ways are pictured in this reading. First, a serpent is something which would be dangerous. Yet the serpent God creates not only does no harm to its master, Aaron, but it also overcomes many other serpents. The serpent God creates provokes the magicians of Egypt to do something quite dangerous, in creating dangerous serpents of their own. God takes what would normally be an accursed animal and shows his glory through it. Second, he shows through turning the water of Egypt to blood temporarily that he is the master of life and death. He is able to bring terrible destruction on the people of Egypt, just as he brings good on them, good which they never even noticed because it was so plentiful and seemed so permanent.
We realize that we take God's provision for granted. We often act as though this world is all there is. We act as though we will never have a shortage of common materials, all of which are ultimately provided by our Lord. We act as though God does not matter. Yet in this time of Lent we are brought face to face with the fact that the Lord is real, that he is acting in the world, and that his ultimate goal is to redeem us from the death we cannot avoid by dying that death on our behalf. We see that this world is on the brink of eternity. It is not our permanent resting place. Our Lord has gone before us in resurrection to eternal life. He likewise calls us to join with him by faith. We need not fear the serpents or the water which we cannot drink. He gives us life forever.
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