Exodus 7:10b-13 Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. (The Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron to go to Pharaoh and to use the staff to show the Egyptians a sign of God's power to convince them to let God's people go. Although the power that miraculously enabled Aaron's staff to turn into a snake came from God, Pharaoh's magicians could perform a somewhat similar feat through their magical tricks. Whether the sorcerers tapped into the powers of the demonic or whether their magic was simply the same device still used today by some snake charmers to "charm" a serpent to stiffen to look like a staff and then to become agile again when thrown to the ground, they thought they had matched Moses' display of power. Like Pharaoh's magicians, we also sometimes try to match God's power through our own means, by "charming" the powers of this world to bring about our desired end, instead of using what the Lord provides us to bring about His purposes.) But Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs. (Here was a feat the sorcerers could not match. To prove this demonstration was no cheap magic trick, the Lord caused the magicians' serpents/staffs to be consumed by Aaron's rod. No longer was there any doubt that this manifestation was far beyond anything that man could conjure up. The salvation of the Lord, His power and deliverance, is not man-made, nor can we duplicate it in our own efforts. Like Pharaoh and his sycophants, we are faced with the choice whether to admit that what is happening before us is of God.) Yet Pharaoh's heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had said. (Again, so often like Pharaoh, we harden our hearts and refuse to listen and submit to the Lord, even when irrefutable evidence presents itself to us that God has spoken, that His Hand has miraculously intervened, that no one but the Sovereign Almighty Himself could have changed seemingly impossible circumstances into the possible, or could perform the miracle in our lives that turns us into people who actually submit to the Lord and walk out His purposes.)
