Exodus 8:22b …I am the LORD in the midst of the earth.
I don’t know what you conceive of when you think of God, but usually we think of someone fairly vague, far off, and long ago. We tend to relegate God to flannel graph from our childhood or some pictures we have seen from Sunday School. Because the Bible is so ancient in our minds we think that God is ancient too. The fact is neither God nor the Bible are old; they are ancient. And, they are not ancient; they are eternal. God is literally ahead of us.
Right in the middle of all the plagues on Egypt, specifically on Pharaoh and his gods, God says in Exodus 8:22, “And I will sever in that day the land of Goshen.” What land was that? We are not talking about a nation, we are talking about a country, the ground upon which certain people were living. Goshen was the place where the children of Israel were living in Egypt. Over time, there arose a Pharaoh who did not know Joseph, and Jacob’s family grew into a nation, the Children of Israel, in Goshen of Egypt.
God continues, “In which my people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there.” God was sending a plague, a swarm, on the Egyptians, but it was not going to swarm the part of Egypt where Israel dwelt. This happened on a couple of occasions. God sent plagues specifically to those who were pagan.
Now we know the Bible says that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. That is true, but the last part of the verse is something that really ought to be remembered. It says, “To the end thou mayest know that I am the LORD in the midst of the earth.” On specific occasions God sent plagues on Egypt, but not on that part of Egypt where the children of Israel lived. God sent plagues on Egyptians, but not on the Israelites who were sojourning with the Egyptians. Why did God make this distinction? It was “to the end that thou mayest know that I am the LORD in the midst of the earth.” In other words, God is not far off or long ago. God is not vague. The God of Heaven is certainly “the LORD in the midst of the earth.” God is God right here, right now with you. That is important for you to remember.
This truth that God is God in the midst of the earth was acknowledged by the Egyptian magicians who knew that this was the work of God. It wasn’t some hocus-pocus. It was literally the finger of God. All it takes to run this universe is the little finger of God Almighty.
This truth was demonstrated by the judgments on the Egyptians gods. It has often been noted that the specific judgments that God sent were direct affronts to specific Egyptian deities.
This truth was also accomplished with the distinction that God made. God said, “I will put a division between my people and thy people: to morrow shall this sign be.” God specifically did this as a sign so people would know that He is the God of the universe.
We tend to not really care about a God of the universe if He is not also God in the midst of the earth. Friend, that was taken to its greatest extent when God sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who is Emmanuel, God with us. God Almighty is the power of Heaven on earth and that is the power that is good for you to trust, follow, and obey wherever you find yourself today.