“How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, that they may serve me.” Exodus 10:3 ESV
When I was the youth pastor at First Baptist in Bonham, we had one of those summers where the crickets got really bad. If you live in Texas, you know exactly what I’m talking about. A whole mess of them crawled up underneath the elevator in one of our buildings and died there, and that thing stank. We talked about getting a technician out to clean it, but it was going to cost a bunch of money. So we didn’t. And it stank. It stank bad, for a long time.
That’s about as close to Exodus 10 as I ever want to get.
Laura Ingalls Wilder got a lot closer. Philip Ryken opens his chapter on this passage in his Exodus commentary with her story, and I haven’t been able to shake it. In On the Banks of Plum Creek, drawn from her own childhood in Minnesota, she describes a strange dark cloud coming down over the prairie. Then the grasshoppers started falling. They hit the roof so hard it sounded like hail. There was nowhere to step without one squishing under her feet. But the worst part was the sound of them eating. Millions of them, chewing on everything at once. When they finally moved on, there was nothing green left. Just bare, brown ground.
Now take that and spread it over an entire nation. “They covered the face of the whole land, so that the land was darkened, and they ate all the plants in the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left. Not a green thing remained” (Exodus 10:15 ESV).
But here’s the thing. As awful as the locusts were, they aren’t the most striking part of this chapter. The most striking part is Pharaoh. Because even with his country falling apart around him, Pharaoh still thinks he can cut a deal with God.
By the time we get to chapter 10, Egypt has had blood in the water, frogs in the beds, gnats, flies, dead livestock, boils, and fire mixed with hail falling out of the sky. Even Pharaoh’s own servants have had enough. “Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?” (10:7 ESV). God had asked Pharaoh, “How long?” Now his own people are asking him the same thing.
So Pharaoh negotiates.
His first offer: the men can go worship, but the women and children stay here. That way he knows they’ll come back. Moses says no, and the locusts come. Pharaoh sends for Moses in a hurry and says all the right words. “I have sinned against the Lord your God, and against you. Now therefore, forgive my sin, please, only this once.” (10:16-17 ESV). It sounds like repentance. God sends a strong west wind, the locusts are swept into the Red Sea, and Pharaoh goes right back to his rebellion.
Then comes the darkness. Not nighttime dark, where the moon and the stars give you just enough to make out the person across the room. The Hebrew stacks two words for darkness right on top of each other. Scripture calls it “a darkness to be felt” (10:21 ESV). For three days nobody could see anybody, and nobody got up from where they were. Think about a nation already stressed out of its mind, wondering how they’re going to feed their families, now sitting in pitch black with no idea if the lights are ever coming back on. How horrifying. And yet “all the people of Israel had light where they lived” (10:23 ESV).
So Pharaoh makes his second offer. Fine, everybody can go. Just leave the flocks and herds behind.
I love Moses’ answer. “Not a hoof shall be left behind” (10:26 ESV). Moses isn’t haggling, because Moses doesn’t have the authority to haggle. God already said what He wanted.
Pharaoh’s last move isn’t an offer at all. It’s a threat. “Get away from me; take care never to see my face again, for on the day you see my face you shall die” (10:28 ESV). And Moses says, “As you say! I will not see your face again” (10:29 ESV). If this was 2026, Moses would have said, “Sounds good, bro.”
Here’s the deal. When you negotiate with somebody, you have to bring something to the table. So what exactly does anybody bring to the table with God?
“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:24-25 ESV).
He gave you the very breath you’d use to make your offer. You’ve got nothing to bargain with. I’ve got nothing to bargain with. NOTHING. God isn’t sitting across the table from us. He owns the table.
It’s easy to read Exodus 10 and think, “Man, Pharaoh’s dumb.” And he was. But I spend a lot of time in Scripture looking at myself and going, “Man, I’m dumb.” God is awesome. I’m not. Pharaoh isn’t some special breed of foolish. He’s doing exactly what the human heart does apart from the grace of God. He saw the power of God with his own eyes and still shook his fist at heaven.
So the real question isn’t whether Pharaoh was negotiating. The question is what I’m negotiating.
Lord, I’ll share the gospel, as long as it doesn’t cost me anything and I don’t come off looking like the weirdo. I’ll forgive that person, once they earn it. I’ll follow You anywhere, as long as anywhere is where I was already headed.
Those are just Pharaoh’s offers in different clothes. The men can go, but the kids stay. Everybody can go, but leave the livestock. Some obedience, on my terms.
There’s no such thing as partial obedience. It’s either obedience or it’s not.
So who is Lord of your life? Is it you, or is it Christ? Does He get to decide, or are you still trying to? What strings have you tied to the things God has already told you to do?
And here’s the sad part. We think our negotiating will make things better for us. It never does. Every time Pharaoh held something back, things got worse. Our negotiations don’t protect our joy. They rob us of it. God doesn’t ask for our obedience to take our joy away. He asks for it to give us joy.
The saddest line in the whole chapter is Pharaoh’s last one. Every time Moses walked into that palace, he carried an offer of mercy. Humble yourself. Let My people go. And this can all stop. Pharaoh slammed the door on the messenger, and what came next was worse than anything Egypt had seen yet.
When I was in college, I went on a mission trip to South Padre Island to talk with other college students about Jesus. I can’t tell you how many of them said the same thing. “I’m living the college life right now. I want to party and have fun. I’ll do the Jesus thing later, when I’m married and have kids.”
That’s not how this works. None of us know if we’ll make it home today. Sometimes the gospel is presented to somebody, and that’s the only time they’ll ever hear it. “Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2 ESV).
The wrath of God is real. Hell is a real place. But God is not all wrath and no love. He is a God of mercy, a God of grace, a God of kindness. In His great love He sent His own Son to live the perfect, sinless life we could never live and to die on a cross, paying the punishment we deserved. And He rose again. All we have to do is turn from our sin and put our trust in Him. Turn from sin. Turn to Him. Follow Him as Lord. If you’ve never done that, don’t put it off for later. And if you want to talk about what that looks like, reach out. I’d love to talk with you.
There’s one more thing in this chapter I don’t want you to miss. Before the locusts ever showed up, God told Moses why He was doing all this: “that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them, that you may know that I am the Lord” (10:2 ESV).
These plagues were meant to become family stories. The kind you never forget, like Laura Ingalls Wilder still writing about those grasshoppers decades later. Israel was supposed to tell them over and over so the next generation would know who God is and run to Him when trouble came. And yet before long they’d be bowing down to a golden calf.
You have a story too. Maybe you’re thinking, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Pastor. I can’t point to anything big God has done in my life.” Was there not a time when you were dead in your sins? Did somebody not open God’s Word and share the gospel with you? Did the Holy Spirit not open your eyes to see that you were a sinner in need of a Savior? You went from death to life. That’s pretty huge.
Tell your children. Tell your grandchildren. Thanksgiving is only a few weeks away, it’s literally a holiday about giving thanks. Thanks to who? “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17 ESV). So when your family sits down this year, tell them. Tell them where everything on that table came from. Tell them how you came to know Jesus. Give God the glory out loud, in front of them, every chance you get.
“How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?” (Exodus 10:3 ESV)
Pharaoh answered that question with a slammed door. Let’s answer it differently.
Quit negotiating. Just obey. Then go tell somebody what He’s done.