Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: As the children are being dismissed to their junior church program, let's take our Bibles this morning and open them to Exodus chapter 8 and verse 30. Exodus chapter 8, verse 30, continuing our verse-by-verse study through the book of Exodus. The title of our message this morning is The Ultimate Victory. You could translate it this way: God wins. All right, let's close in prayer. The nice thing about God winning is you win, too. You may not think you're a winner or feel like a winner, but as you'll see today, you're a winner.

The book of Exodus is about the redemption of a nation from cruel bondage for 400 years under the hands of beginning with a Pharaoh that knew not God. God heard the cries of His people, the nation of Israel. Their 400-year time of bondage was coming to an end, and so God, as He typically does, raised up an instrument through which He will work. In this case, it's this man named Moses, who reaches the apex of his ministry at the ripe old age of 80. Age 80 to age 120, as we like to say, Katie bar the door. At a time when most people are ready to retire, God says to Moses, it's time to refire.

And God has prepared this man, and now he, along with his brother Aaron, are doing the will of God as they are being used by God to rain down judgments upon this Egyptian power that was persecuting and enslaving His people. We've seen the Nile turned to blood. We've seen frogs and gnats. We're in the midst of flies multiplied all over Egypt. You might be saying to yourself, I can't wait until we're finished with chapter 8, chapter 9 has got to be better. No, chapter 9 is going to be death of livestock, boils, and hail. And then the chapter after that will be locusts. Not exactly seeker-friendly teaching, I guess. But these are the lengths that God went to to redeem His people.

We're there on number four, Exodus 8:20 through 32, the judgment of the flies. God has instructed Moses in terms of what he is to do, and once he does this, God is going to perform this miracle of the multiplication of flies. The prophecy, as it always happens, is fulfilled. Flies multiply all over Egypt, and Pharaoh has a second look on this. Pharaoh says, "Okay, I'll let you go, but you can't leave the borders of Egypt," which is really not being let go when you think about it. It's like telling your kids, "You can go on vacation, but don't leave the backyard."

And of course, Moses can't agree with that because part of being let go from Egypt is to offer sacrifices unto the Lord in the wilderness, and that's a problem because the Egyptians worshipped animals. They were the ultimate animal lovers. I've got two cats at home, I have to admit I've become sort of an animal lover myself. Animal worshipper, not so much, not at all. But animal stewardship I think is a good thing. But these people actually worshipped animals. A lot of cultures are like that. They are starving to death literally when filet mignon roams the streets. And we can't kill that animal because that could be Uncle Fred or Uncle Joe, reincarnated from a prior life. It's interesting how Christianity frees up civilizations from the sort of destruction that they find themselves in.

So Moses says to Pharaoh, "You've got to let us leave Egypt, and we want to leave for three days," which is a minimal request. And Pharaoh says, "Okay, you can do that." And Moses says, "You better not be lying to me." Pharaoh says, "I'm not lying," scouts honor, right? I've got my fingers crossed behind my back. And so he's let go. Pharaoh says, "I just have one condition: just put in a good word for me with the man upstairs, would you, that these flies will stop." And so we kind of finish this chapter about the flies with Moses' response. We see his exit, verse 30, his supplication unto the Lord, verse 30. You watch God answering a prayer there, verse 31. And then you see Pharaoh's response, which will be a sinful response, verse 32.

Notice first of all Moses' exodus from Egypt just for three days. It says in verse 30, "So Moses went out from Pharaoh." You go back to verse 26, and that's when Pharaoh said you can stay here in Egypt to do your sacrifice. You remember the response of Moses then. It says in verse 26, "But Moses said, 'It is not right to do so, for we sacrifice to the Lord our God what is an abomination to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice what is an abomination to the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not stone us?'" So I've got to leave Egypt to fulfill God's will.

And the truth of the matter, folks, is all of us need to leave Egypt when you think about it. We cannot fulfill the will of God while we are ingrained in paganism and a pagan lifestyle. And so God's judgment is always to call us out. 2 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 17 says, "Therefore come out from their midst and be ye separate," says the Lord. "Do not touch what is unclean, and I will welcome you." Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 11 says, "Do not participate," and the word participate there is where we get our word fellowship, koinonia. "Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but even expose them." So I'm not to as a Christian cooperate with sin, I'm to expose it. That's my function and your function as a child of light.

When Babylon falls in the last days, this announcement will be given: Revelation 18, verse 4, "I heard another voice from heaven saying, 'Come out of her, My people, so that you will not participate,'" same word for fellowship as in the prior text, Ephesians 5:11, "'so that you will not participate in her sins and receive her plagues.'" God is always saying, "Come out, be separate." And the problem many times is we don't do that, and we wonder why our lives and our ministries are not having the impact that they could have.

You remember the story of Lot. Lot, Genesis 13, pitched his tent toward Sodom. And then a little bit later, Genesis 19, he's sitting in the city gates of Sodom. He had arisen to a place of importance within the city of Sodom, and he's the one that offered, and it's just hard for me to believe someone doing this, but it's in your Bible and my Bible, he offered his own daughters to a sodomite crowd as some sort of way to appease their sexual appetites. And Lot, who actually was a believer, what do you do with a guy like that? He's a backslidden believer. It got time for him to get serious when the angel said, "Get out of here, I'm going to destroy this place." And Lot went to warn his relatives. And by the time he started warning his relatives about what was true, "You've got to leave Sodom because God is going to destroy it," his relatives thought he was jesting. He had lost his credibility. Genesis 19, verse 14, says, "Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law who were to marry his daughters and said, 'Up, get out of this place, for the Lord will destroy the city.' But he appeared to his sons-in-law to be jesting." There he goes again, joking around. How do you take a guy seriously that speaks truth when he doesn't have a lifestyle that backs up his rhetoric?

And this is why the Bible is always saying come out and be separate. It's not so much change of locality because you can't physically leave the world until the Rapture happens. We're going to be talking about the Rapture this Saturday. Wouldn't that be neat if the Rapture occurred right in the middle of the conference? I can't guarantee that, by the way, but that would be a neat thing. So Lord, I'm going to put my order in if that's okay. But until that time comes or until death, we are in this world. The Bible teaches that we are in the world but not of the world. Jesus in John 17, verse 15, as He was praying for us in the upper room, says, "I do not ask You," speaking to the Father, "to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one." In the world, but not of the world.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 5, verses 9 through 11 says, "I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people. I did not at all mean the immoral people of this world or with the covetous or the swindlers or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world. But I actually wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person or covetous or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or a swindler, not even to eat with such a one," Paul says. 1 Corinthians 5, verses 9 through 11.

I don't have a lot of control over interacting with people that have a different value system than I have in this world. I couldn't go to the bank, I couldn't watch the news on TV, there's just a number of things I couldn't do. But here's what I can control: I can control whether or not I'm going to enter into some sort of partnership, some sort of camaraderie, or some sort of intimacy with the unsaved or even people that name the name of Christ that are moving in more of a worldly direction. That I have control over.

And many times we're deceived into thinking that I've got to push myself into some kind of relationship with a worldly person because I'm going to fix them. It's kind of like standing on a chair and you're trying to pull someone up on a chair. If you're standing on a chair trying to pull someone up and they're trying to pull you down, we know who's going to win. The person trying to pull you off the chair is going to be more effective and successful in their endeavor because they have the law of gravity on their side, you don't. And this becomes the danger of a Christian sort of, like Lot, becoming just like the world system around us. You go into situations Lot probably went into Sodom and Gomorrah thinking he's going to change Sodom and Gomorrah, and it was Sodom and Gomorrah that changed him. And even when Lot is removed from Sodom and Gomorrah, it's one thing to take the man out of Sodom and Gomorrah, it was a completely different matter to take Sodom and Gomorrah out of Lot as he got involved with an incestuous relationship with his two daughters, if you can imagine such a thing, in a drunken state after Sodom and Gomorrah had been obliterated by God with fire and brimstone. This is the danger of the compromised life.

I remember when I was teaching locally, we had a moral spill or a failing of somebody that was fairly high up in the organization at the time. And I remember one of the board members talking to us as faculty, using this as an example. He said, "You cannot negotiate with sin. You can't barter with sin, you can't contain sin. The best thing you can do is to remove yourself from sin because sin is a far more powerful element than most of us are willing to acknowledge." If sin was not the power that it is, then why would Jesus have to go to such great lengths through His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension to redeem us? I mean, if He's going to go to those kind of lengths to redeem us, then there must be something very captivating about sin, pernicious about sin. Sin must be far more powerful than I can imagine.

And so we need to follow the admonitions and exhortations and commands of the Bible to not let sin reign in our mortal bodies that we obey its lusts. God has given us permission to and the power and the resources. Romans 6 teaches all about it, to say no to sin and to replace sinful behaviors and lifestyles with things that God would want us to replace those things with. God doesn't just say no, He says better. I've got a better use of your mind than that. I've got a better use of your time in mind than that. I've got a better use of your mouth, your tongue, which is so easily prone given over to gossip, than that. I want to use your mouth and I want to use your tongue as a tool of edification.

And so Moses here leaves Egypt, and we need to do the same thing. And when we become just like Egypt, we lose our authority to speak to Egypt. When Lot became just like the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, he lost his authority to speak, he lost his pulpit, he lost his platform, he lost his credibility. I mean, we speak best to the fallen world and culture around us when our value system is different. We march to the beat of an entirely different drum.

So Moses' agenda is to leave Egypt. And Ed Hindson writes this in his commentary: I've given you this quote before, so I won't give you the whole thing again, but the last sentence says, "For Moses, putting distance between the Egyptians and the Hebrews for their sacrifice was a non-negotiable point." And I say we need to start developing some non-negotiables as Christians. What a great way to think about the new year. I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to go there, I'm not going to have that, I'm not going to laugh at that anymore. I'm not going to go on the computer and watch that anymore. I mean, whatever the issue is. I'm not going to spend the resources of the Lord on that. I'm going to yield to the lordship of Jesus Christ in terms of my development and in terms of my growth. And watch the Lord start to honor those commitments, giving us the power to say no and starting to use our lives in ways that we couldn't imagine before.

So Moses leaves Egypt and he does as he promised, he makes a supplication for Pharaoh. You see it in the second part of verse 30. And he says, "And Moses went out from Pharaoh and made supplication to the Lord." Because the interesting thing about Pharaoh is Pharaoh won't submit to God, as we're going to see here, but he knows where these plagues are coming from. They're coming from God. And unbelievers are a lot like that. They have no interest in submitting to God, but it is interesting that when they get into trouble, something happens to them beyond their circumstances, you're the first person they call. Because they know that you have a relationship to God that they don't have. It's an instinctive, intuitive knowledge, even though they don't have any real interest until the Lord deals with them in submitting to Him. And so this is how Pharaoh is treating Moses. Moses, I'm going to let you go for three days, go, leave the borders of Egypt, do your sacrifice. But can you pray for me in my circumstances because these flies have been multiplied all over Egypt and I need them to stop. You'll notice that Moses honors the request. The request was given at the end of verse 28 where Pharaoh said to Moses, "I will let you go that you may sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness. Only you shall not go very far. Make supplication for me." Second part of verse 30, "And Moses made supplication to the Lord."

Notice that word supplication. Reading the Hebrew translation from the New American Standard Bible, which is an English translation, it translates it as supplication. You know, there's a very special kind of prayer called the prayer of supplication. You recognize in the word supplication the word supply. And when you pray a prayer of supplication, you're asking the Lord to supply a need, either in your life or in Moses' case, in the life of somebody else, Pharaoh. And Paul the Apostle calls certain prayers prayers of supplication. In Philippians chapter 4 and verse 6, and this is a verse that helps me sleep at night. There are many nights that I go to bed and I cannot sleep because my mind is filled with one anxious thought after another, and I think to myself, "How in the world am I ever going to get to sleep? My mind is so active." I can't tell you how many times this verse has put me to sleep. One thing that puts me to sleep sometimes is I listen to my own sermons, that puts me to sleep pretty quick. But Philippians 4, verse 6, I tell you, it puts me out like a light. And here's what it says. It's just a verse you can memorize. It says, "Be anxious for nothing." Wow. You mean not even finances, not even health, not even the future, not even our children and grandchildren? I mean, what it says is be anxious for absolutely nothing.

Anxiety is basically uncertainty that we experience, and because you're uncertain about a result, your emotions have been sort of stirred up. You know, for a long time as a Christian, I did not understand that anxiety is one of the greatest sins a Christian can commit against God. And yet when you study the issue of anxiety through the Bible, you'll see that it's a sin. And it's because you're violating a biblical command when we're anxious and worried. And why is it a sin? Because I know this much, that when I'm anxious, I'm not trusting God. And when I'm trusting God, I'm not anxious. And the Bible says without faith it's impossible to please Him. I know categorically that I'm not walking in faith when my mind is filled with anxiety.

So what do you do when you have all of these anxious thoughts? Philippians 4, verse 6 says be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. You know, so many times I can't sleep because I'm anxious about something, and the Holy Spirit says, "Hey dummy, Philippians 4, verse 6." And I'll just sit there in the quietness of my own thoughts and I'll rehearse the verse in my mind and I'll do what it tells me to do. I don't do this perfectly and I don't do it all the time, I'm ashamed. But when I do it, it's 100% effective, 100% of the time. I just take whatever concern is bothering me and I just turn that over to the Lord. And you wouldn't believe what that'll do for your sleep pattern.

And so that's the kind of prayer that we're to pray, a supplication, asking God to supply a need. Paul says this in Philippians 4, verse 19, which is just a few verses later, "And my God will supply some of your needs." Oh, doesn't say that. "My God will supply all your needs according to what? According to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus." God has a pretty big spiritual bank account, physical bank account. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. I mean, He's completely capable of meeting some minor need in my life. And so I give that to the Lord, and we learn that He wants to supply all of our needs. Doesn't say our greeds, I wish it said that. But it says our needs, we can trust God with our needs. And we just sort of turn those over to the Lord. And now you're trusting the Lord. You're walking by faith. And as you walk by faith, you'll watch the level of worry and fear and anxiety start to disappear. Maybe not perfectly, but it certainly doesn't have the foothold it used to have when we do this consistently.

We're told in the Lord's Prayer to present our needs to the Lord. You know, there's a prayer in the Bible called the Lord's Prayer, which really is not the Lord's Prayer, because the Lord never prayed this prayer. One of the lines in the prayer is forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. I mean, that wouldn't apply to Jesus, right? He's perfect. If you're looking for the Lord's Prayer, you don't find it in Matthew 6, you find it in John 17, where Jesus is praying to the Father on our behalf. That's really the Lord's Prayer, the high priestly prayer. This prayer in Matthew 6 called the Lord's Prayer is really the Disciples' Prayer. And really it's an amazing prayer. It's a prayer about the coming of the kingdom. There's three different ways the kingdom is described. And the key line in it is verse 10, were to pray "Thy kingdom come." Boy, I can't wait for the kingdom to come because this world's in a mess. But we'll talk in a minute about the ultimate victory.

And then as you keep reading it, it talks about praying for the needs that we have until the kingdom materializes, the thousand-year kingdom. And one of the things that we're to pray for is in Matthew 6, verse 11, where it says, "Give us this day our daily bread." I mean, once the kingdom comes, you won't have to pray that prayer because agricultural prosperity will break out all over planet Earth. But in the meantime, there's famines, there's shortages, there's higher gas prices, there's interest rates, there's inflation, there's layoffs, there's recessions, depressions. And so in that circumstance, as we're waiting for the kingdom to come when all economic needs will be met, we're not in the kingdom now. And so one of the things that we're to pray is this prayer of supplication, "Lord, I need my needs met." And that's completely acceptable and legitimate to pray that. Jesus actually tells us to pray that in what I like to call the Disciples' Prayer.

So Moses leaves Egypt, he prays this prayer of supplication on behalf of Pharaoh, and guess what? Verse 31, God answers. You know, sometimes we pray and we really don't think God will answer. I remember as a new Christian, the first time God answered one of my prayer requests. I mean, the answer was so fast and it was so specific and it happened so quickly, I almost didn't believe it was happening because I had approached God with this kind of mindset, "Gosh, it's just me down here, you know, I'm a little worm." We get into worm theology. "You know, I know that You're not concerned about me," not understanding that we are a kingdom of priests, that God has made us into a kingdom of priests. A priest is someone that has access to God. That's who you are as a Christian. But a lot of times we don't operate through correct theology, and we have this kind of worm theology. And then we pray something not thinking that God is going to do anything about it, and then all of a sudden it gets answered and we sure feel stupid. "Lord, why did I ever doubt? You tell me to pray the prayers of supplication, I shouldn't be shocked if You answer those prayers according to Your will and Your timing."

So verse 31 is sort of a description of that. It says the Lord did as Moses asked. Moses didn't demand. He didn't come to God acting like he's entitled to have his prayer request answered. He didn't command God. This is the whole error of the positive confession movement, name it and claim it. I like to call it blab it and grab it. It's this idea that you can actually make God your cosmic bellhop through verbal laws because you're a little god, is what they say. And they teach this round the clock on so-called Christian television. I don't know how it is now since I don't watch Christian television anymore, I already have enough grey hairs on my head. But back in the day, they would teach this doctrine of positive confession, health and wealth, that you are somehow the child of a king, so God is your slave. That's not how you pray. And they would teach that if you say it the right way and access these verbal laws, then God was mandated to answer you. And if God didn't answer you, then you don't have enough faith, is what they would say. So if you're in a wheelchair because of a physical disability, like Joni Eareckson Tada, if you know her story, and you pray the right way, you're supposed to be healed. And she never got healed. And a lot of people have come to her saying, "Well, you don't have enough prayer, you don't have enough faith." Do you realize how destructive that is to a person when you tell someone that already has an obvious physical limitation that they're there because of their own unbelief? That's like double jeopardy. I mean, they're not only in the wheelchair, they're being condemned for putting themselves in the wheelchair. See, ideas have consequences. We don't command God. We don't tell God what to do. We ask in faith, trusting Him with the results.

So Moses asked God, he petitioned God. And it says there in verse 31, "The Lord did as Moses asked and removed the swarms of flies from his servants and from his people." And look how comprehensive this answer is: "And not one remained." God has not always answered every single one of my prayer requests in my life, but let me tell you, when the answer comes, it is comprehensive and oftentimes the answer is bigger than something I even prayed for in the first place. It's like God dealing with Solomon, and God said to Solomon, "What do you want?" He said that to Solomon in a vision. I mean, think if God said that to you in a vision, "What do you want? I'll do it." And Solomon said, "I just want wisdom in terms of how to govern Your people." And God answered and said, "Because you didn't ask for other things like riches, victory in war, a long life, the death of your enemies, I'm going to give you that stuff anyway." So he got the wisdom and he got a bunch of other stuff he never even requested. God is able to do above and beyond, the book of Ephesians says, even that which we can think of, hope for, request. I think you'll find that in Ephesians 3, I think it's around verse 21.

So Moses offers this prayer request and God answers, and the answer is very comprehensive because of all of the flies that had multiplied all over Egypt that obviously bothered Pharaoh, because he says, "Do something, can you, for me on this. Put in a word." God answers in such a massive, comprehensive manner. Do you believe God answers prayer? Do you believe prayer is powerful? Let me tell you something, the thing that the devil would love for to bring forth in your life is to get you busy with anything and everything other than prayer. Because Satan knows that when we actually pray, that's where the power comes from, because you're moving the hand of God according to His will. James chapter 5, verses 16 through 18 says, "The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much." And it gives an example, next verse: "Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. Then he prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit." You mean this guy Elijah simply through prayer could alter weather, he could alter meteorology? Well, he must have been some kind of superhuman to do that. Well, what does the verse say? It says Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. I mean, he was just the typical guy that put his pants on one leg at a time, his shoes on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us. I mean, there was nothing cosmic or supernatural about this man, he just had a relationship with the Lord and he took advantage of it. And he prayed for things, and many times the answers were just above and beyond what you would think God would do for a mere mortal man because God honors prayer.

Jesus of course in Luke 18 told a parable of a judge, we've talked about this before, a judge that didn't fear God and didn't fear man. A great guy, right? He doesn't fear God or man, and he's a judge. And this widow just kept petitioning him over and over again, and he finally yielded to her petition, this unjust judge, because the lady was wearing him out and he wanted her to go away. "Okay, I'll give you what you want, just leave me alone." And Jesus says this in this parable, he says, "If that is how an unjust judge responds to consistent petition, what do you think your heavenly Father is going to do who has a perfect nature and is not in it for Himself as this unjust judge apparently was? How much more," it's kind of the argument from the lesser to the greater, "how much more do you think God is going to answer your prayer requests and honor consistency in prayer?" I know in my life one of the great sins is just giving up on praying for things, giving up on people, giving up on salvations of people, saying such and such or so-and-so will never trust the Lord, and we just quit praying. And the Lord is saying, "Why are you giving up so quick? Don't you know don't you know who you're dealing with here? You're dealing with God."

And this is how Jesus prefaces this whole parable that he told in Luke 18, there in verse 1. King James version reads as follows: "He spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always," notice that, "ought always to pray and not to faint." We can get so tired and weary in this world. And Jesus says, "Don't don't faint, don't quit, don't give up, don't tune out and drop out," as the '60s saying went, right? Hopefully none of you have too much familiarity with that saying, but don't quit, but pray. Don't be despondent, but pray. Don't give into fatigue, but pray.

And that's what Moses did, he's not even praying for himself, he's praying for God's opponent here as the story of the book of Exodus is unfolding. And God comes through. 1 John chapter 5, verse 14 says, "This is the confidence which we have before Him, that if we ask anything," that's a big category, "according to His will, He hears us." You mean if my prayer is aligned with God's will, it'll be answered? That's what the Bible teaches. The problem with us is sometimes we ask amiss, we ask for things outside of His will. James chapter 4 and verse 3 says, "You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures." The things that I ask for that are outside of His will, God has no obligation to answer, and thank God for that. I mean, the worst thing that could ever happen to a person is for you to get a bunch of stuff that God knows is going to destroy you. And God loves you too much to see that happen to you, and so He will withhold answers. And they're not so much no's, it's more of the idea of better, there's something better for you. Isn't there a country-western song about "Thank God for unanswered prayers"? And I'll be singing that for you at this time. No, there's actually some a lot of truth to that. And I can give you a lot of examples from my life where I just prayed and prayed and prayed for something and no answer, and you look back 10, 15, 20 years later and you say, "Thank God that didn't happen, because I could not have handled that, I couldn't have navigated that. I was praying for something that was way beyond my character development at the time, and thank You, Lord, for not answering that prayer." It's like when your five-year-old wants the keys to the Ferrari. I mean, we kind of know how that story will probably end up, assuming you own a Ferrari. And if you don't own a Ferrari, don't think you can command God to give you a Ferrari.

But it says there in 1 John 5, verse 14, "If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us." Now that raises an interesting question: how do you know what His will is? To my mind, there's only one way to know. It's in Romans 12, verse 2. It says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind," that only happens through God's word, by the way, "so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." Well, if God answers prayers according to His will, how do I know His will? You need your mind transformed. How do you get your mind transformed when the world is seeking to squeeze us into its mold? The word of God changes your mind. The more you study the word of God, the more you're going to understand the will of God. It's all revealed in His word. The more you put yourself in positions, like we would like to think at this church where the word of God is consistently taught, the better you'll understand the mind of God and the will of God and therefore you'll have a better understanding of how to pray.

By the way, the Bible is filled with examples where people's prayers were launched because of their understanding of God's word. Prayer and the Word, they go together. That's what the early church said, "It's not right for us to leave the word and prayer," Acts 6, "to wait on tables," the apostles said. Word and prayer, prayer and the Word, they go together. It's a relationship. God talks to you through His word, you talk to God through prayer. It's not a one-way conversation where you pray and pray and pray but never listen, or you listen and listen and listen and study and study and study but never pray. If it's not two-way, that's not much of a conversation, it really is no conversation, and it's not much of a relationship. It's like being around someone and they want to monopolize all the talking, or they're so passive and quiet that they let you do all the talking. That's not a conversation. A conversation is two-way. You're talking to God through prayer, He's talking to you through His word.

I mean, what is Christianity at the end of the day? It's a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That's why Matthew 7 says, "Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you." See that? I never had a relationship with you, is what He's saying. Our relationship to the Lord is bride to groom, groom to bride. That's relational. Relationship is conversation. If someone comes to me for marital counseling, first question I'm going to ask is, what's your level of communication like between the two of you? Do you communicate with each other like a married couple or are the two of you just roommates? Because communication is the lifeblood of any relationship.

Daniel chapter 9, verses 2 through 4 exemplifies this. Daniel 9, by the way, is one of the three greatest prayers in the post-exilic era, and they're easy to remember where they are in the Bible. They all are located in a chapter 9: Nehemiah 9, Ezra 9, Daniel 9. Those are the three greatest prayers in the era when the nation was out of the captivity and back in the land, when the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Zechariah, Haggai, that whole era of history was unfolding as they were seeking to rebuild the temple that Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed earlier. And there are three great prayers of that time period and they're all in a chapter 9 of the Bible. If you were to go home today and you were to read those three chapters, you would know so much about prayer. Ezra 9, Nehemiah 9, Daniel 9. Here's Daniel 9. "In the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of years which was revealed as the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely 70 years. So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek him by prayer," look at this, "and supplications," didn't we just get finished talking about that? "with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed, 'Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God who keeps His commandments and loving-kindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments,'" and you can just keep on reading that chapter and you'll see the power and the purpose and the appropriateness of prayer. And why did Daniel even start to pray? Because he was in the Word. He was studying Jeremiah, who was kind of interesting, a near contemporary of Daniel, although Jeremiah lived a little earlier. And he was studying two verses in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 25, verse 11, and chapter 29, verse 10. And those verses told Daniel that the captivity is going to last 70 years. And Daniel could look at a clock or a calendar in his case, and he knew what time it was, the 70-year captivity was ending, so he started to pray. And the reason he started to pray is because he understood the Word.

So it says if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. The will of God is revealed in the word of God. And look at Pharaoh's response. I mean, the flies stopped. Do you think Pharaoh would repent in sackcloth and ashes? No, sir. Look at how he hardens himself. Exodus chapter 8, verse 32, "But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also." Do you see the word God there? Don't say yes because it's not there. God is not hardening Pharaoh's heart. Pharaoh is hardening his own heart. God predicted that Pharaoh would harden his own heart. God is not going to harden Pharaoh's heart until we get to the boils, Exodus 9, verse 12, "And the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not listen, just as the Lord had spoken to Moses." What is going on with this guy Pharaoh? He is on dangerous ground because he's hardening his own heart against God. And God allows people to do that to a point where God finally says, "That's enough, I'll give you over to what you want, I'll cement the decision you've already made."

I say to the Lord, I don't ever want to be in that circumstance. I don't ever want to go so far in my sin and rebellion that God finally just gives me over to what I want. It's like the days of Noah where it is said God says, Genesis 6, verse 3, "My Spirit will not strive with man forever, for he is mortal and his days will be 120 years." Those are some frightening words: "My Spirit will not strive with man forever." And I say to the Lord, "Lord, keep striving, keep working on me, even when I stumble, fall, blow it, keep me in this place where I'm pliable, where I don't get so entrenched in something that I just push God out. I don't want to be like that."

Ed Hindson writes not until the sixth plague does God participate in the confirmation of Pharaoh's own volitional choices. Charles Ryrie writes seven times Pharaoh hardened his own heart before God first hardened it, even though the prediction that God would do so preceded it all. God predicted that Pharaoh would harden his heart, Pharaoh does it repeatedly, and then you get to Exodus 9, verse 12, some of the most frightening words in the Bible to be frank with you, where God is now put in the text and He hardens Pharaoh's heart. Proverbs 29 and verse 1 says, "A man who hardens his neck after much reproof will suddenly be broken beyond remedy." Just like the unsaved today, they, Romans 1, verses 18 through 20, suppress a true knowledge of God in unrighteousness. And God, it says three times as you move from Romans 1, verse 18 through the end of the chapter, God gave them over. I think a lot about this relative to our own country and the moral insanity that we are descending into with any number of things we could talk about. And I sometimes wonder have we gone so far in our rebellion and disobedience that God has just given us over to what we want to do. That's a terrible place to be. May God help us not to fall into that trap.

You know, the thing about free will that's scary, and I'm an advocate of free will as you know, is whatever decision you start to make, God will honor it because He's the one that gave you the free will to begin with. I mean, for Him to just override free-will choices against God would be for God to not respect how He's manufactured us. You know, this this free will, this capacity for choice, this is a big deal. That makes us different than anything that God has ever made, maybe other than the angels. I mean, nothing else that God has made enjoys volition. And thank God I can walk across the sand with bare feet and I feel pain in my feet because there's glass underneath the sand. And thank God for the pain, because if the pain wasn't there, I wouldn't know glass was under the sand, I would destroy my body. That's how the convicting ministry of the Spirit works. God will harass, He will bother you. But you get to a point where God says, "Okay, go ahead, I'm not going to bother you anymore. My Spirit will not strive with man forever." This is where Pharaoh is moving. And look at this, the guy completely double-crosses Moses. "And he did not let the people go," even though he said he would, right?

Pharaoh has done this before, I believe it was with the frogs. Exodus 8:8, Pharaoh saw that there was relief and he hardened his heart and did not listen to them, when he had originally said, "Entreat the Lord that He would remove the frogs from me and from my people, and I will let the people go." That's what he says in verse 8, then in verse 15 he goes back on his word. Pharaoh of course is a type of the devil, and that's how Satan is. He's an absolute liar, and yet he comes as an angel of light. Jesus said of Satan in John 8, verse 44, "He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies." And I'm here to tell you, folks, that this world is under his authority right now. As much as all of these theologians and ministries and pastors are proclaiming this optimistic eschatology, TBN, who I didn't think could get any worse, is now running a special, very well-done. My wife turned it on, I watched about five minutes of it and I said we got to shut this off. This was so deceptive, alluring, the best special effects, the best theologians, and the whole premise of it is, forget the end times, we're bringing in the kingdom now, is what they're saying. I can't even remember the name of it, it's something like "God is with us" or something. I said, you know, because usually I like to watch stuff just for opposition research, I couldn't even watch this. It was one lie after another, and it sounded so slick and it sounded so good. The Antichrist is not future, the Antichrist is Nero, and on and on this went, and it just ignores completely what the Bible teaches.

We are living on hostile territory. All of these verses, take the time to look them up, teach you that Satan is the god of this age. He's the prince of this world, the god of this world, the prince and power of the air. He's the one who walks about like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour, and the whole world lies in his lap, 1 John 5, verse 19. The dragon, Revelation 12, verse 9, deceives the whole world. If Satan can deceive a third of the angels who stood in the presence of God into rebelling with him against God, what could he do to you? What could he do to me in my fallen state? Now I'm starting to understand the significance of our spiritual warfare and spiritual armor. I can't fight this level of deception through my own power.

And the truth of the matter is, Satan is running planet Earth. The whole creation groans, we're told, Romans 8, verse 22. Even our bodies are groaning, Romans 8, verse 23. The world is in his grasp and he doesn't want to give it up any more than Pharaoh wanted to let the Israelites go. Said you can go, but lied about it. That's why Pharaoh is a type of the devil and Egypt in bondage is a type of this world in bondage. Sounds kind of depressing, but the thing about it is ultimate victory is coming. It's not going to be executed through the church taking dominion, that's insanity. It's going to be executed through the seals and the trumpets and the golden bowls of wrath, just like Egypt being taken out of bondage was executed by the ten plagues. And this is a parallel that John is drawing for us in the book of Revelation. That's why so many of the events in the book of Revelation sound like judgments in the book of Egypt. Sores, that's plague six, first bowl judgment Revelation. Rivers to blood, that's the first plague, Exodus, that's the third bowl judgment Revelation. Darkness, ninth plague, we haven't studied that yet, correlates with the fifth bowl judgment Revelation. Frogs, which we have studied, second plague, Exodus, sixth bowl judgment Revelation. Hail, which is coming, seventh plague, Exodus, seventh bowl judgment Revelation. Why are all these parallels here? Because in the book of Revelation, God is doing the ultimate exodus. He's taking the whole world out of satanic bondage, just as He in microcosm form took His own nation out of Pharaoh's bondage in the book of Exodus.

And God will succeed. God will succeed when it looks like success is not possible. And the complete and total arrogance of this TBN special saying it's the church's responsibility to pull this off, I just say to myself, I don't know what Bible you guys are reading, if you read it at all. But boy, they sure sounded good teaching a bunch of error. Ultimate victory is coming, Revelation 11, verse 15, "Then the seventh angel sounded, and there were loud voices in heaven saying, 'The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever.'" This is why you're a winner, because you are connected to the one who's going to pull this off.

Jesus said this to His disciples in John 16, verse 33, "These things I have spoken to you that you may have peace. We need peace, don't we? In the world you will have tribulation." Boy, that's true. "But take courage, I have overcome the world." I've done it all. Doesn't look like you're going to get victory, but you're going to get it. It's coming in spades. The only real question is are we on the right side of God. And there's only one way to get on the right side of God and that's to trust in His provision, and that's the Gospel, good news. Jesus through His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension 2,000 years ago accomplished something that I could never accomplish in my own strength, and neither could you. Complete and total victory, which lays the foundation for the ultimate victory that's to come. And you can get on the right side of this by fulfilling a simple condition, which is to trust in what God did for you 2,000 years ago. Trust, a synonym would be rely, depend upon, it's all different words for faith. For without faith it is impossible to please Him. We would encourage anyone within the sound of my voice that wants to be a winner to get on the right side of God who's the ultimate winner by trusting in Jesus.

It's something you can do right now in the quietness of your own mind and heart. It's not something that you raise a hand to do, walk an aisle to do, give money to do, emote to do, vow to try harder to do, it's just a matter of privacy between you and the Lord where He puts you under conviction and He says, "You need this." And you respond to it by trusting in what Jesus did. I hope many people within the sound of my voice will be placing their personal trust in Jesus. Can't think of a better way to launch the New Year than to be a newborn child of God. If it's something you need more explanation on, I'm available after the service. Shall we pray?

Father, we're grateful for Your truth, grateful for Your word, grateful for the not false optimism but true optimism You give us. Help us to walk these truths out in these last days. We'll be careful to give You all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus' name. And God's people said, amen.