Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Now is the time to fear the word of the Lord. We'll explain next on Light on the Hill.

Guest (Male): We're so glad you've joined us today for Light on the Hill, a ministry of Calvary Chapel Signal Hill with our pastor and teacher James Kaddis. We're in a study of Exodus and currently examining the plagues of Egypt. If you've ever been in a hailstorm, you'll know how it can so easily damage your property. Imagine hail so big that if it hit you, you would die. That was the reality for the Pharaoh and the Egyptians who did not fear the word of the Lord. Pastor James says, the time is now for fear, there is no alternative.

James Kaddis: All right, Exodus chapter 9. Now, as we have been going through this section, it has been a lot of fun in that we've learned so many things about God, about his character, especially as we learn to understand his judgment and his righteous judgment. And one of the things that I want to remind you of is a set of words that we oftentimes use and the context in which those words are used and why they are actually important to understand the differences between, and they relate to the hardness of heart.

Now, when we talk about Pharaoh hardening his heart, of course, what that means is that the Pharaoh chose to rebel against God, to not listen to his voice, to not heed his word, to not fear God, and he basically spit in the face of God. Basically said, I have no care or regard for God or the God of Jehovah or the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I have no regard for Jehovah. I don't even know that name. I won't acknowledge that name. And as a result of that decision, of course, he has put his nation in a terrible spot as the plagues have come forth and so many of the terrible things that have happened happened, it was a result of his hardness of heart, his rebellion against God.

Then we also hear another term regarding hardness of heart and that is the fact that God hardened the Pharaoh's heart. Now, when we talk about the word hardened as it relates to Pharaoh, that just simply means Pharaoh made a decision to wave his fist at God. When we talk about hardened in relationship to God hardening Pharaoh's heart, what that means is that he made strong or made firm the position that the Pharaoh chose to take. So, one phrase means to wave your fist at God. The other phrase means to make something permanent like a potter would make something permanent after baking what they formed out of clay.

And so, the idea here is that the position of the Pharaoh has been hardened by God because the Pharaoh chose to do something where he waved his fist at God, did not regard God, and the consequences of that were severe. Now, there's a word I need you to think about. It's a very important word and that is consequence. That's something I want you to think about because we're going to get into that conversation in just a second. Consequence is a very important word here, and the context of it is even more critical.

So, we're going to get into that in just a second, but let's jump right in where we left off, verse 13. It says, this is chapter 9, verse 13, and the Lord said unto Moses, rise up early in the morning and stand before Pharaoh and say unto him, thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, let my people go that they may serve me, for I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart and upon thy servants and upon thy people that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth.

For now, I will stretch out my hand that I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence and thou shalt be cut off from the earth. In other words, God says, I'm going to show you who I am, and I'm going to show you who I am by giving you a pestilence that is going to kill you and your people. It's going to destroy you. It's going to take many of your people off the face of the earth. It's going to destroy living beings and this pestilence is not going to be good because you, Pharaoh, have chosen to disobey me.

You have chosen to harden your heart against me. But then look at this verse, and I want to read this verse because this is one that is oftentimes misquoted by people who think they know more than God, by people that think they understand God's ways and by people who think they're more intellectual or smarter than the God that created them. Let me read verse 16. Look what it says here. It says, and in very deed for this cause I have raised thee up for to show in thee what? My power and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.

Wow, that's heavy. So, God just told the Pharaoh that the whole reason why I put you in office is so that in essence, I can judge you and discipline you so that all the people of the world will know who I am. Now, a lot of people will look at that and they will come to insane conclusions about this verse. It's really funny because what they'll do is they'll take even what the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 9 concerning this verse, and they will use this as some argument that the sovereignty of God extends to him choosing in some weird twisted way to destroy people's lives and then their, I guess for lack of a better term, their ability to try to explain it is diminished in that they're not God, nor do they know who God is.

And the funny thing that God is saying here is he is saying, the purpose of you being raised up is to show people how great I am. Now, here's the thing I want you to understand. God did not wake up in the morning and say, Pharaoh is an evil man, or I'm going to make him an evil man, and I'm going to raise him up so that he can go to hell and I can destroy everybody and make a name for myself. That's not exactly what's going on here. What's going on here is that God says, I have sovereignly chosen to allow you to be in the position that you're in so that people will very clearly understand and discern who I am.

People will clearly understand and discern what I'm all about. Now, this is really important to talk about because I want everybody to know that when God says these things, mankind becomes disturbed by these statements. Mankind attempts to explain these statements. God says things like Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. God says things like I have created evil. God makes statements like this all throughout the Scripture and so many people seek to, within their limited capacity, their limited intellectual capacity, seek to explain God, not recognizing the fact that there's only one God and they're not him.

As a matter of fact, I think it's really important to say this, an overwhelming majority of the time when God makes statements like this, he's not making statements like this to stump us, he's not making statements like this to confuse us, he's not making statements like this to get us in a place where we're thinking, oh man, how does this work? He makes these statements almost in a way where he's saying, mind your own business. I'm God and I'm going to do what I do because I'm just, I'm righteous, and it's my prerogative.

I created you, I know what I'm doing, and you're in no place to question me. And I think that there is an immense amount of wisdom in understanding God's statements like that. Because when God says that he's doing this, the only statement that we should be taking it for, the only thing that we should be recognizing here is that God is clearly stating that he's sovereign. In other words, what he is telling the Pharaoh and what he is telling Moses is that nobody in this situation, not a single person has any control over the circumstance.

I am the one that controlled these things. You choose to harden your heart. I knew that you would harden your heart. You choose to behave the way that you're behaving. No problem. I raised you up for that purpose. I put you on this earth so that you could rebel against me and so that I can make a point of the very thing that I need to make a point over. And for anybody that would look at God and say that's unjust or that it's unfair, it's really simple. You have no ability to be able to say it's unjust or unfair because you are limited in your scope of knowledge.

You're limited in your understanding, you're limited in your discernment, you're limited in your awareness. I think about this a lot when I think about my own children. I create rules for my children that some people might call unreasonable. I create rules for my children that some people might be bothered with. But here's the thing I want everybody to know, I don't give a rip what you think. I don't I don't care what you think because your thoughts concerning that matter is a reflection of the fact that you are ignorant because you yourself don't understand how significant of a role you have as a parent to raise up your children.

I've learned this very quickly. It's not a good idea to give parents a bunch of advice on how to raise up their children because every child is different, right? Here's here's the thing, if your children are alive, okay? And uh, they survived their childhood, you've probably done a good job as a parent, okay? I'm not being really, I'm not trying to be that crazy, but the one thing I am telling you is this, if you are limited in your scope of awareness as in to why you make the rules that you make, then you are in no position to be able to comment on the validity of those rules.

I had one of my children ask me the other day, why do you make me ask for permission before I unbuckle my seatbelt? And my statement to my child is, I don't have to tell you why. Your only job is to do it. One day when you get older, you'll understand the reason. Today, you don't understand the reason. And folks, let me make myself clear. A lot of people might look at that rule and say that I'm unreasonable in creating that rule. Except for the fact that a lot of people are not police chaplains that stood over the body of a dead two-year-old who chose to unbuckle their seatbelt nice and early and get out of their car, not anticipating the fact that there was oncoming traffic that took their lives.

So when we make decisions, we create these rules because we have a certain level of foreseeability that other people might not understand or know. When I tell my little girl, before everybody's playing with Fourth of July fireworks, to put on a pair of sweats instead of her big puffy dress, she's never going to understand why I'm telling her to do that. But unless she's been in my position when she's seen people being burned because they're wearing the wrong clothing, then she'll change and she will, at the time, not completely understand but will later on she will thank the wisdom of her father.

See, this is the type of thing that happens when we talk about God's decision-making and what God says and what God does. It's very easy to look at God and to say, God is unjust because he does this. Or if God was a righteous judge, then why would he do this? Here's my statement to you, none of your business. My statement is, as as harsh as it sounds, shut your mouth and thank the God of the universe that he is in your life, helping you by telling you what to do and understand that his sovereign will and his sovereign capacity and his sovereign understanding and awareness is something that is you will never be able to match it.

So the smartest thing to do is to say, yes, master, move on and understand that developing his mind comes from a heart of obedience and it will never come from a heart of rebellion. So when God says that he raised the Pharaoh up for such a thing, what you should say is to God be the glory. Because the reality of it is, there are variables you will never be able to see that contributed to the very decision that God made when God did what he did. There are variables that you will never be able to see, that I will never be able to see that will discern the whys of what God does when God does what he does.

The bottom line is, we need to be people who listen to his voice. We need to be people who understand and discern the very things that he's telling us, and we need to walk according to his heart and mind and understand the fact that walking in obedience to him provides the greatest rewards we could possibly achieve in life, understanding and knowing that God's scope of knowledge is far beyond our scope of knowledge. That God's awareness of circumstances are far greater. That God was the one that created us, that God was the one that spoke us into existence and God is the one that sovereignly understands every variable that exists in the world around us.

I think that's really, really important to understand, it's really important to know. When man tries to explain the things that God has done, that's when you get men coming to the conclusion that we came from monkeys. That's when you get men beginning to create these rules for these ideas of our origins, when in reality God says, I did this. This is my declaration and you don't have to worry about the details. I said it, you ought to believe it. I think there's some real wisdom in that.

So, he's raising him up for that. But look at what God says in verse 17. As yet, exalt thou thyself against my people that thou will not let them go? Okay, I got something for you. See, I raised you up so that I could use you as an example to my people. Yet you choose to think that I raised you up so that or you raised yourself up so that you could disobey me? I raised you up to be an example. You think you raised yourself up because you're better than me? Let me show you a thing or two.

By the way, let me just tell you this, no one ever wants to face God in that condition, please, okay? Don't ever rebel against God to the point where he tells you, oh, you think you raised yourself up to get you to the point that you're at? No, I raised you up to bring you to the point that you're at and let me show you what I raised you up to receive. You don't want to be on the receiving end of that statement from the Lord, believe me. Okay? Look what goes on. This is heavy.

Behold tomorrow, about this time, I will cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such as hath not been in Egypt since the foundation thereof, even until now. Send therefore now, and gather thy cattle and all that hath in the field, for upon every man and beast which shall be found in the field and shall be brought home, uh, the hail shall come down upon them and they shall die. He that feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into the houses, and he that regardeth not the word of the Lord, left his servants and his cattle.

Now, this is really heavy, because again, understand the command that was being given, right? The command or the statement that was being given was, I'm going to allow this big hail to come down. By the way, just so that you know, it's very likely prior to this time that the Egyptians didn't even know what hail was. It's very likely prior to this time that nothing like that ever happened. Keep in mind, so many of the things that we find in the study of ancient Egypt, so many of the artifacts that we're discovering are in such perfect shape because of the climate that exists in Egypt.

It's very dry, there's not a lot of moisture. So when we're finding all of these things that are intact, it should be no shock to anybody because the kind of moisture that you would expect to find in most places are not indigenous to the area of Egypt, which is why you're finding stuff buried in sand, and you're literally finding it almost completely and perfectly preserved. There's a reason for that. So they probably didn't even know what hail was. By the way, anybody ever been in a super bad hailstorm? Anybody?

Okay, so you know what it's like. You you you understand it. Look, I remember when I was a kid being in a hailstorm here in California. It may have been the worst that they had in probably 20 years or something like that. I don't know if you remember this. I think it was in the 80s where basically the hail came down and it was the size of marbles. You remember that? And and we had not seen anything like it. And so many cars got ruined. Uh, matter of fact, ironically, the cars that actually got spared were the convertibles where they just left the tops down, uh, which was interesting.

But if you remember that whole situation, there was a lot of property damage. A lot of property damage from marble sized hail that was coming down for an hour. It was it was something like that. But I have friends in Texas who recently have had hail coming down. This is no joke. The size of a tennis ball, in some cases, a softball. And they've had their roofs repaired three or four times now, roofs completely destroyed as a result of a uh uh a hailstorm.

So if you think about it, folks, it's very real. Look in the book of Revelation, hail is going to come down at the weight of 90 pounds. 90 pound pieces of hail coming down. Can you imagine? That's just that's just absolutely terrible. It's it's a terrible thing. And so God said, I'm going to send it down. And the people that feared the Lord prepared for what was coming. For the people that did not fear the Lord, they didn't. By the way, can you imagine what it would have been like to bring in your animals if you're a uh a cattle runner or something inside your actual house to protect your your livelihood?

Like that must have been a nasty experience. Imagine bringing a bull into your house and the bull just pooping and peeing and I mean I just I can't even imagine what that honestly, only I would think about stuff like that. But it's gross. Like I but these people believed in God so much that they did something like that, knowing full well that the consequences of the impending judgment were going to be far greater. And by the way, did you notice that even the Egyptians that feared the word of the Lord, actually were spared?

Kind of interesting how that works. I think it's it's pretty heavy. So look at this, verse 22. And the Lord said unto Moses, stretch forth thine hand toward heaven and there may be hail in all the land of Egypt upon man and upon beast and upon every herb of the field throughout the land of Egypt. And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven, and the Lord sent thunder and hail and fire ran along upon the ground, and the Lord reigned hail upon the land of Egypt. So there was hail and fire mingled with hail, very grievous, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.

By the way, the fire with hail thing is something that could have been the result of a couple of things. It could have been, some people actually um have come to the conclusion that it was during this time period in ancient history that um the earth was uh basically directly in the path of a comet and the tail of that comet was producing all of these types of uh uh hail type conditions or things were coming down and all that kind of stuff. And and, you know, who knows? There may be some possibility in that.

The reality of it is, God did it supernaturally. Now, some people say, well, how can there be conditions where it's so cold that you're actually seeing ice coming down, yet there's fire at the same time? Folks, it happens, okay? Just understand that with the way that these electrical fields work, that uh develop themselves within these cloud formations, it's very, very common to see things like that. Not in this area, we don't see things like that in this area, but that does happen. And if you don't believe me, you should just wait for a stormy season and get in an airplane and ride in an airplane above that stormy season and look at how it looks like, it's ominous.

I have videotape from the last time I flew into Texas where you could see these storm cells from above where they are and you could see what looks like fire. And it is. And I didn't know that at the time. And what's under, I just couldn't even imagine what it's like under that area. It's like, it's just brutal. But that's just how it works. And God, in all of his power and his might, decided to put that into play and it is something that is uh is wild. Just absolutely wild.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Pastor James Kaddis on Light on the Hill and part of our new study in the book of Exodus. Pastor James will be back with more. There are a few ways you can listen to today's message again or hear what you may have missed in the series. We post all our programs to lightonthehillradio.com as well as onepost.com. You'll also find Light on the Hill on most of the major podcast platforms like Apple, Spotify, and Google. We even have an app that makes listening to messages easy to do on any mobile device. Just search for Calvary Chapel Signal Hill in the App Store or Google Play.

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James Kaddis: As we finish up Exodus chapter 9, we see Pharaoh is mourning the consequence rather than the evil that he did. Let's make sure we don't repeat that grave error. So, he stretched forth his hand, there was hail and fire, verse 25, and the hail smoked throughout all the land of Egypt and it was all that was in the field, both man and beast, and the hail smoked every herb of the field and break every tree of the field. Can you imagine hail coming down that destroys every tree in its path?

That has to be a terrible storm. That has to be crazy. Verse 26, only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail. And Pharaoh sent and called for Moses and Aaron and said unto them, I have sinned this time, the Lord is righteous, and I and my people are wicked. Entreat the Lord for it is enough that there be no more mighty thunderings and hail, and I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer. And Moses said unto him, as soon as I am gone out of the city, I will spread abroad my hands unto the Lord, and the thunder shall cease, neither shall there be any more hail, that thou mayest know that the earth is the Lord's.

But as for thee and thy servants, I know that you will not yet fear the Lord God. That's got that's a pretty heavy statement. I know that you will not yet fear the Lord. Now, let's go back to the term consequence for just a second. Because the first time that the Pharaoh is using any type of words that would even remotely appear to be filled with repentance or remorse is the verse that we had just read. The problem is, the Pharaoh is mourning the consequence, he's not mourning the evil that he did.

Remember that picture that I told you that some people have of me as a father with some of the rules that I make with our children?