Gnats

We all know someone who has an answer for everything. Every challenge gets explained away, and every conviction gets talked around.

This is a passage about what happens when the excuses finally run out, and whether that’s enough to change a heart that has already decided not to change.
“Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the ground,’ and throughout the land of Egypt the dust will become gnats.” ¹⁷ They did this, and when Aaron stretched out his hand with the staff and struck the dust of the ground, gnats came on people and animals. All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became gnats. ¹⁸ But when the magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, they could not. Since the gnats were on people and animals everywhere, ¹⁹ the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not listen, just as the Lord had said.” (Exodus 8 v 16-19)

Water to blood? His magicians did it too. Frogs everywhere? They matched that as well. Then came the gnats. This time the magicians couldn’t do it.

“This is the finger of God,” they told him (v.19). The magicians, Pharaoh’s own court, the men whose job was to explain away every sign as something ordinary, ran out of tricks and told the truth instead.

But it changed nothing.

The fact that a man can hear the truth from the very people he trusts to lie skilfully on his behalf and still not change is a truth that helps us today to understand how trapped people really are.

The gnats prove God can do what no one else can counterfeit. But it’s not more information that is needed but hearts that are submitted. That’s the danger for every one of us. We can hear the truth, and still walk away unchanged. The gnats didn’t fail to convince Pharaoh. Pharaoh refused to be convinced. The evidence was never the problem; it was the power of the will. The battle of who owns the heart.