Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

From the Old Testament of the Day: Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” [Exodus 8.19a]

From the Holy Gospel: But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. [Luke 11.20]

Today’s weekly oasis for faith in the midst of the season of Lent is Oculi, the first word of the Introit for the Day, “Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord,” as we heard and spoke it in the Introit and again in the Tract of the Day. It is a much more a goal than an achievement for us in our faltering and fallen existence. But whenever it  is true that ours are indeed  toward the God, then we have again found the key for help.

The things that we pray for are always a call for help, even if it is the simple, and rare, occasion when we need help finding appropriate words to thank God for answered prayer or even more so, thanking God for His interference in our daily life with mercy, with grace, or with a miracle. So, out of need or ought to gratitude, prayer always expresses our need to God by focusing the eyes of faith only upon Him.

And what we see when our eyes are ever on the Lord is His merciful activity  to us, for us, and with us. In the two texts for this sermon this activity is call “the finger of God.” Let us see how this finger of God acts upon us and for us.

I.

The Old Testament of the Day presents to us the battle between God and the Pharaoh in Egypt. As they head into the third round of their battle, God has Moses speak to his brother Aaron, saying, “Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats in all the land of Egypt.” The volley of round three had been fired, as “there were gnats on man and beast. All the dust of the earth became gnats in all the land of Egypt.” As in the two previous round, Pharaoh counters God's thrust by ordering his magicians to produce the same thing. But, as the Scriptures record it, this time is different: The magicians try by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they cannot!

In the two previous rounds, these magicians pulled magicians' tricks. When God causes Moses' staff to turn the water of the Nile, the magicians pull a magic act of turning red some water of their own. And in the second plague, when God sends a plague of frogs to climb out of the Nile and infest every thing, the magicians again, by slight of hand, bring up more frogs from their bags and buckets.

But, this time there was no way to catch a bunch of gnats in order to magically have them appear. Gnats are not cooperative. The magicians fail, and so they have to report to the Pharaoh the sad news, saying, “This is the finger of God.”

Now, what are they saying? First of all, when they speak to the Pharaoh, they do not use the name of God, “Yahweh.” They use the more general reference to the existence of a god, which translated to Hebrew is “Elohim”: gods, in general.

But you know that these lousy, biting gnats that get into everything, from your clothes to your nose, all do not come from not just “Elohim,” the gods, but they come from “Yahweh,” the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of your life from conception to your entrance into life eternal.

But Pharaoh is at a loss to understand it. And, so his heart is hardened. And he dismisses the hapless magicians, and he will listen to no one, just as God had said. And so, the Pharaoh and all Egypt experience the work of God, the finger of God!

II.

In the Holy Gospel for this day, the question of the  finger of God arises again. This time it is not a matter of God, through Aaron's rod, creating millions of creeping, stinging, tiny gnats. This time it is Jesus Himself who is at work, and it is a demon that Jesus is casting out from a suffering  sinner. Some of His antagonists, found in the crowd who are watching, challenge our Lord by claiming that He does this miracle because He gets His power from the devil, nicknamed in the New Testament as “Beelzebul.” Others, to test Him, propose that Jesus do another miracle upon their command.

Jesus rejects their charges and their proposals. “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”   Once again we run into this  phrase, “the finger of God.” In the Old Testament, pagan magicians credited what they cannot duplicate to the realm of the  gods, saying, “this is the finger of God.”  They were wrong about the source – it was not pagan gods who produced a miracle, but rather it was God the Father. It is His finger that causes this miracle of the gnats.

Now, in the New Testament, the term returns, and this time it is used to refer to the third person of the Blessed Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit. It is by the working of the Holy Spirit that God the Son, our blessed Lord Jesus, defeats the demons.  Here is a lesson for you concerning these references:  In Scriptural  terms,  the phrase “hand of God” is a reference to God the Son, and the phrase “finger of God” is a reference to the God the Holy Ghost.

Furthermore, as Jesus continues, if you are not actively working with Jesus, you are actually working against Him. And if you are not drawing people into the kingdom of God, you are actually driving people away from God's kingdom. There is no neutrality when it comes to the things of God!

III.

Thanks be to God that the “finger of God,” the Blessed Holy Spirit, works for you and for the Kingdom of Christ! Of ourselves, we are on the wrong side of this neutrality. Our sins drive others away from God's kingdom, and our working with Jesus is seriously lacking, day by day. This is true, not because we can find a sin here or there to confess. This is true because we are sinners. It is humbling but helpful to repeat the catechism truth that it is not the case the we are sinners because we sin; rather, the opposite is the truth: we sin because we are sinners. That is our condition, and only the finger of God can rescue. And rescue He – the Holy Spirit – does. Using the means of God's grace, the Word and Sacraments, the Holy Spirit becomes the finger of God for us, whereby we are caught from our failings and set upon the rock of ages through which we find daily forgiveness and eternal life. Thanks be our theme now and ever, for the blessing of the finger of God!