Slowly Crushing the Serpent's Head

Exodus 7-9 So the face off begins and Pharaoh will become more stubborn and calloused in the process. No one will be able to say God negotiated them out of Egypt, it will be nothing short of a power encounter between the Serpent and the Lord and their representatives Pharaoh and Moses.

Make no mistake, Satan will never give up those he has in his clutches, he will not be negotiated with nor coaxed, nor incentivized. Nothing short of a raw power encounter from the living God will defeat him!

And so it begins.

It's worth noting that Pharaoh's magicians cannot counter Moses' signs, they can only mimic them. Satan can do nothing original, nor can he restore anything. He can only mimic, deceive and destroy.

The first round of three plagues come up from the ground, they are minor attacks on the convenience and comfort of the Egyptians (e.g. they would have to dig for water at the side of the Nile) but no essential damage done.

The Nile turns to blood, symbolic of all the Israelite boys who have been murdered by being thrown in there. Moreover, the Nile was the economic powerhouse of the Egyptian empire. In killing it, God was symbolically condemning the empire to destruction.

This is followed by frogs and gnats. Note that the magicians cannot mimic the gnats, they can reorder creation, but they cannot change something that is essentially one thing (dust) into another (gnats). This is the finger of God aka the Holy Spirit. Compare Matt 12:28 with Luke 11:20

The second set of three plagues start to do lasting damage on people, land and livelihoods.

The final set of three plagues come down from Heaven and are the severest of the three sets. People die if they don't take shelter from the hail. And it amazes me that even after all that Pharaoh and his officials have seen, many of them still don't take heed.

The mystery of the sinful heart is that it only wants respite from judgment, it doesn't care about humbling itself before God, even less, embracing him. God is neither unfair nor negligent, no contrite heart is ever found in Hell.

Let the weight of that last paragraph sit on you for a while, then rejoice that the grace of God has found you.