Executing Judgment on Their Gods
Numbers 33:4
In the 10th and final plague brought upon Egypt, the Lord said:
“For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord” (Exo. 12:12).
This we see in the future tense, that He will execute judgment.
Then Moses writes later:
“For the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn, whom the Lord had killed among them. Also on their gods the Lord had executed judgments” (Num. 33:4).
What does it mean for the Lord to have executed judgments on their gods?
It seems as though He was executing jugments on the Egyptians themselves (1 Cor. 8:4).
Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one.
And that’s what He was doing, judging the Egyptians, but through the bringing down of their pagan deities.
As with any polytheistic religion, they believed there was a god for everything: the Nile River, the sun crossing the sky, even Pharaoh himself.
Yet in each of the 10 plagues, an Egyptian god was thwarted, showing it to have no power over the one true God.
The god of the Nile was thwarted when the waters were turned to blood.
The sun god was thwarted when darkness covered the land for three days.
And Pharaoh himself was thwarted when his son, the heir apparent to the throne, future god-king, was killed.
Exodus tells us this was going to happen, and Numbers states that it had happened—and we know it did in Exo. 12:29-30.
And it came to pass at midnight that the Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on the throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of livestock. So Pharaoh rose in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead.
Can the Lord still execute judgments on our “gods” today?
Oh most definitely.
Some people place political leaders and celebrities in the place of a god.
They follow them ravenously and are often obsessed with them—and sometimes it gets to their heads.
Such a thing happened to King Herod Agrippa I in Acts 12:21-23.
So on a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat on his throne and gave an oration to them. And the people kept shouting, “The voice of a god and not of a man!” Then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him, because he did not give glory to God. And he was eaten by worms and died.
Josephus records that his death was agonizing and that it took days.
He was glorified as a god and accepted that glory.
In more modern times, John Lennon claimed the Beatles were more popular than Jesus—he was assassinated at 40.
Joseph Smith Jr, founder of Mormonism, was shot and killed by age 38.
Mohammad was poisoned by a Jewish slave girl and died a few years later in agony in his early 60s.
That’s not to say that everyone who dies young or painfully is an enemy of God—consider Jesus who died at 33 in the most excruciating way possible at the time.
But it does mean that we had better watch out! Not only did He execute judgments on their “gods,” remember that in doing so, He was executing judgment on their worshipers.
And He did not discriminate, from the lowliest prisoner to the highest king.
There are lots of people who follow false paths today, and many of them live to a ripe old age and even die peacefully.
But we should always beware, for judgment does not always come in this world, but it always comes in the next (1 Tim. 5:24).
Some men’s sins are clearly evident, preceding them to judgment, but those of some men follow later.
Let us make sure that the true God is worshiped and honored in the way that pleases Him.
Let us make sure we put nothing before Him.
That can only happen if we first become a Christian and are added to His church.
It can only happen if our hearts are right with God.