Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: As we dismiss the children for their junior church program, let's take our Bibles this morning and open them to the book of Exodus chapter nine. The title of our message this morning is Victory Over the Darkness. We listed all the people having birthdays this month, didn't we? We forgot one, Karl Krueger, who's right here on the second row. He hits the big seven-o today. He looks pretty good for 21 though.

We continue our verse-by-verse teaching through the book of Exodus. God is redeeming a nation from bondage by a Pharaoh that knew not Joseph. God has worked strategically and raised up the man that he will use, a man named Moses, along with his brother Aaron. These two, after years of training, are now in a position to be used by God, and boy, are they ever. We are now into the sixth plague. The Nile has been turned to blood. We've seen frogs, gnats, flies, and the death of the livestock. Now, cheer up folks, it gets worse. We see boils manifesting themselves on the skin of animals and Egyptians all throughout the land.

So here we are with judgment number six. We have the instructions to Moses and Aaron given by God in verses eight and nine, and then Moses and Aaron obey those instructions, and this judgment comes forth. First of all, notice the instructions in verses eight and nine. We have a symbol, and then we have a meaning. First, the symbol. Look at verse eight of chapter nine. It says, "The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 'Take for yourselves handfuls of soot from the kiln.' Let Moses throw them towards the sky in the sight of Pharaoh." Kiln. What is that anyway? I think it's like an oven. Can I just say oven?

Take for yourselves handfuls of soot from a kiln and let Moses throw them towards the sky in the sight of Pharaoh. Now, this is interesting because what you start to see in the prophets as you go through in the Bible is sometimes they communicate their messages through symbolism, through acting out something. A lot of people say, "Is there room in the body of Christ for art and drama and those kinds of things?" Apparently there is, because many of the prophets didn't just preach, but they sort of pantomimed the things that God was communicating to them.

You start to see a lot of examples of this right around the time of the exile. The prophet Jeremiah was told, for example, in chapter 13, verse one, "Go and buy yourself a linen waistband and put it around your waist, but do not put it in the water." A little bit later, it says, "Take the waistband that you have bought, which is around your waist, arise and go to the Euphrates." Now, that's in Iraq, 350 miles to the east. Hide it in a crevice of the rock. A few verses later, the Lord tells Jeremiah, "Go to the Euphrates and take from there the waistband which I commanded you to hide there." In verse seven, it says, "Then I went to the Euphrates and I took the waistband from the place where I had hidden it, and lo, the waistband was ruined. It was totally worthless."

This all symbolizes something. It says in verse 10 of Jeremiah 13, "The wicked people who refuse to listen to my words, who walk in the stubbornness of their heart, have gone after other gods and bowed down to them. Let them be just like the waistband, which is totally worthless. For as the waistband clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole household of Judah cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people for renown, praise, for glory, but they did not listen." What God was doing in the days of Jeremiah was symbolized by Jeremiah taking this belt and putting it in a crevice of the rock in the Euphrates.

There are many examples of this in the prophets. One of my favorites is Ezekiel getting a haircut. I like that one because I need a haircut myself. He's to take his hair, Ezekiel chapter five, verse two, and after the haircut, one-third he shall burn in the fire at the center of the city. It goes on and says one-third you are to chop with the sword, and one-third you're to scatter to the winds. Then it goes on and it explains what these thirds are representing.

God says in Ezekiel five, verse 12, "One-third you will die by the plague or be consumed by famine among you, one-third by the sword, and one-third I will scatter to the wind." Just as you're to take your hair, Ezekiel, after your haircut, and divide it into thirds and do different things to each third, that is what I'm going to do when I bring discipline and judgment upon the nation of Israel. In this same way, Moses is told to go to this oven and take some soot and in the presence of Pharaoh, throw it into the air.

The nice thing about the Bible is the Bible is a self-interpreting book. You don't have to apply your sanctified imagination as to what the symbol means because typically when a symbol is used in scripture, it will be interpreted for us right there in the context. If it's not interpreted right there in the context, typically it's interpreted somewhere else in the Bible. So, right on par, we see the interpretation of what this is to mean in verse nine: "It will become fine dust over all the land of Egypt and will become boils breaking out with sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt."

So, in the same way, dust is to be disseminated by God throughout the land of Egypt. As this dust settles on people and animals, painful sores or boils will break out on their skin. Now, this is interesting when you study this issue of skin and skin problems. This kind of thing happens frequently in the Bible. It's as early as the book of Job. Job chapter two, verses seven through 10 says, "Then when Satan arose from the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. He took a potsherd to scrape himself while he was sitting in the ashes."

If that weren't bad enough, his wife said to him, "Do you hold fast to integrity? Curse God and die." Nothing like that family support in the midst of difficulty. But God told Satan with Job, do what you want, and there was an attack on his skin. This is bodily. In Second Kings chapter five, verse one, we read about a Syrian man named Naaman. Second Kings five, verse one, says the man was a valiant warrior, but he was a leper. He was told how to be healed of his leprosy. It was so easy that it insulted him.

Kind of like the gospel is today to people. The gospel is so simple that it insults the religious minds of people. It can't be that easy. You want to get rid of your leprosy? Here's what you're to do: you're to dip yourself seven times in the Jordan. Naaman walked away from that angry. Naaman is confronted by his own protege. They say to Naaman, "You know what? If the prophet of God had told you to do some great thing, then you would have been happy with it. But he told you to do something so simple that it offended you."

That, by the way, is one of the main reasons why people don't go to heaven. They hear the gospel and it's so clear and it's so easy what God asks us to do that it's almost insulting. Consequently, Christ, rather than becoming their redeemer, becomes something they stumble over. But Naaman finally had a moment of realization and did what he was told. Second Kings five, verse 14: "So he went and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God." It says his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.

One of the horrible diseases that you read about in scripture is this disease of leprosy. It's mentioned frequently in the Bible. Luke 17, verse 12 says as Jesus entered a village, ten leprous men stood at a distance and met him. Verse 14 says, "When he saw them, he said to them, 'Go show yourselves to the priests,' and as they were going, they were cleansed of their leprosy." It's quite a study you can do looking at all of these skin problems taking place in scripture. We read about this terrible disease of leprosy. We look at that and we say, "How horrible," but the truth of the matter is all of us have a disease.

It may not be something as physical as leprosy, but it's a disease nonetheless, and it's lethal. That disease is called original sin, and it's killing every single one of us. If we are not the rapture generation, every single person within the sound of my voice, me included, will die. We're dying constantly from this horrific disease that has been inflicted on humanity called original sin. Just as there's cures for skin problems in the Bible, there's a cure for the disease of original sin, and it's simply to trust or believe in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Once we trust in that transaction, our skin, so to speak, is restored like that of a child's flesh. God looks upon us as if we're holy and pure, just like he looks on his own son, Jesus Christ. Many people will go to their graves fighting against this solution. It's a tragic thing that something offends people. Paul calls this an offense when it's the only solution to the problem that we have, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. There's also a parallel in the book of Revelation. You might remember from the first bowl judgment in Revelation chapter 16 and verse two.

It says this, "So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth, and it became a loathsome and malignant sore on people who had the mark of the beast or worshipped his name." Verse 11 says, "They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and they did not repent of their deeds." This issue of judgment manifesting itself in the form of skin and boils is not going to go away. There is a judgment yet future where this same type of thing is going to be inflicted upon the inhabitants of the earth.

One of the things I've tried to point out as we've gone through the book of Exodus is the parallels to the book of Revelation. Sores is found in the sixth plague in Exodus and the first bowl judgment in Revelation. Rivers to blood, first plague judgment, Exodus, third bowl judgment, the book of Revelation. Darkness, ninth plague, book of Exodus, fifth bowl judgment, Revelation. Frogs, second plague, Exodus, sixth bowl judgment, Revelation. Hail, seventh plague, seventh bowl judgment, the book of Revelation. Why these parallels? Because in the book of Exodus, God is taking his nation out of the bondage that it had been in for 400 years.

That is a type of a massive campaign that God will do in the tribulation period yet future where he will take not just a nation out of bondage, but the entire world out of this satanic bondage that it has been in since the fall of man in Genesis three, where Satan has become the illegitimate, unlawful usurper over planet earth. All of these verses show you that Satan is the ruler of this world. He's the prince of this world, the god of this world, the prince and power of the air. He's the reason we have to put on the full armor of God.

He roams about like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. The whole world lies within his power. Consequently, Paul tells us that the whole of creation is in a state of travail. It's in a state of groaning because we today in this world are just as much in slavery as was the nation of Israel under a Pharaoh that knew not Joseph. But I've got good news. Help is on the way. Victory is guaranteed. Just as God took Israel out of bondage, God is going to take this entire planet out of the illegitimate bondage that it has been in since the fall of man.

To the point where as these judgments manifest themselves in the book of Revelation, we will read these words at the sounding of the seventh trumpet: "The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever." I hope as you look at the circumstances in your life today, which sometimes can be very negative and sometimes very unfavorable from the human side, you understand that as a Christian, you're on the winning side of history. Jesus stepped out of eternity into time and paid the price for this ultimate victory that's coming.

Revelation five and verse five says, "One of the elders said to me, 'Stop weeping, behold the lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its seals.'" Jesus has overcome. Look at the Greek word for overcome, nikao, where we get the word Nike, the shoe company. I guess you put the shoes on and you're a victor. You can jump as high as Michael Jordan. Of course, he has his own brand, so maybe you can't quite jump as high as him. But that's where this whole concept of Nike, victory, nikao comes from. The truth of the matter is we're not waiting to see who's going to win this. Jesus has already won.

If you know Jesus personally, you're on the winning side. You may not feel like a winner or look like a winner, but biblically speaking, positionally speaking, you are a winner. You are an overcomer. Not because there's something great in yourself, but you're connected to the one who wins. He already overcame, which makes me an overcomer. I'm going to be there along with him participating in this final victory. Jesus said in John 16, verse 33 to his disciples in the upper room, "These things I have spoken to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation. Amen to that. But take courage, because I have overcome the world."

Jesus already overcame, so the victory is guaranteed. It's like going out onto the field and knowing you're going to win before you play a single second of the game. That's the status of the believer. First John five, verses four and five, says, "Whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is the one that overcomes the world but he who believes in the son of God?" You mean my whole status is changed from loser to winner if I just believe? It can't be that easy. Naaman thought it couldn't be that easy.

All you have to do is place your trust in what Jesus did for you. You're trusting in him rather than yourself for the greatest problem that we have, which is our sin. The moment that happens, my whole identity changes to becoming an overcomer. I overcome because he overcame. Yeah, but what about Satan? He's a pretty rough character. Yeah, he is. But not from the vantage point of God. First John four, verse four, says, "You are from God, little children, and have overcome. Because greater is he who is in you than he that is in the world."

Hey, you don't have to go through the Christian life as a depressed saint with a perpetual victim mentality. You walk through the Christian life with flaming optimism because of the one that you're connected to. He overcame, the victory is guaranteed, and that's our position as Christians. It's not something that you can earn or gain. It's something that's positionally given to you at the point of faith alone in Christ alone. Paul writes in Romans eight, verse 37, "In all these things we—look at this. We don't just conquer, we overwhelmingly conquer."

There, nikao is preceded by the prefix huper, which means super. My translation: super-duper. You are a super-duper overcomer already. This is why you can walk through life overcoming this trial and that trial. Because greater is he that's in you than he that is in the world. Although Satan can cause a lot of damage on the way, he can't derail your destiny. I think that's something to celebrate. He overcame, and we're going to overcome. He brought the nation of Israel out of Egyptian bondage, and he's going to bring the whole world out of this satanic bondage.

Now, what's interesting is each of these plagues is designed to mock one of the Egyptian deities. We've made a point of this as we've moved through these plagues. The boils is there to mock Sekhmet and Serapis. Ed Hindson explains, "Specific Egyptian deities challenged by this plague, the plague of boils, were a veritable pantheon. In other words, many gods in Egypt were exposed for being the frauds that they are through this plague. The Egyptians worshipped Typhon, the god of boil protection. I guess that god took a nap. They worshipped Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess of disease protection. They worshipped Serapis and Isis, the god and goddess of healing. They worshipped Imhotep, the medicine god, and Sunu, the pestilence god." Every single god that they worshipped let them down here.

This becomes the agenda of God concerning the issue of idols. God is interested in ridding from our lives all the competition. What is an idol? It's anything that you worship in place of God. It could be a piece of metal, but it generally is a condition of the heart. Anything that you look to for security, anything you look to for meaning above and beyond God can be an idol. If that's going on in your life, then things are about to get shaken up because God is going to shake the house until the priorities are right.

You worship health rather than God, or medicine rather than God? Believe me, God has real creative ways of dealing with that one. Are you looking to some kind of expense account or retirement account for safety and security? God is real good at turning a 401(k) into a 201(k). Let's just put it that way. Are you looking to some kind of relationship to validate meaning in your life? We know what can happen with relationships. They can deteriorate. God will just keep working. I happen to know this from personal experience. He will keep working until we look to him and him alone.

Isaiah 42 and verse eight, it says, "I am the Lord. That is my name. I will not give my glory to another nor my praise to graven images." I'm not going to give it to Isis or Sunu or the retirement account or health or the way you look or some kind of talent that you have. I want you to recognize that those things are not bad in and of themselves, but I want you to look to me. Isn't this kind of the story of the Bible? God perpetually dealing with the subject of ridding us from idolatry. He's going to take the nation of Israel to Mount Sinai, Exodus 20, and give them the Ten Commandments.

Most people don't know the Ten Commandments. They don't have them memorized. Could you do that this week? Could you take the Ten Commandments and commit them to memory? Exodus 20, verse three, the first one says, "You shall have no other gods before me." The second one says in Exodus 20, verses four and five, "You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above the earth or on the earth or beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children on the third and the fourth generation to those who hate me."

Sounds like God is interested in this subject. John the Apostle in First John five, verse 21, closes his little epistle by saying, "My little children, keep yourselves free from idols." Christians can struggle with this. Jesus in Matthew six, verse 24, said, "No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth." Translation: God is a lousy roommate. God is not interested in being a roommate with some other god. He wants to take over the house. He has the right to do it because he's God, our creator, and our redeemer.

Money isn't the problem, it's love of money. First Timothy six, verse 10, says, "The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil." It's love of it. You can have very little of it and still love it, and you can have a lot of it and be a disciple of Christ. It's not a condition of what you have, it's a condition of the heart. Do you have possessions or do possessions have you? That's the issue. Longing for it has caused some to wander away from the faith and pierce themselves with many griefs. Just look at Judas, who sold out for 30 pieces of silver. You don't think throughout the ages of time he's regretting that decision every single day of his life? Gold is the most valuable metal, silver is under gold. He didn't even sell out Jesus for gold; he sold him out for silver.

First Timothy six, verse 17, says, "Instruct those who are rich in the present world not to be conceited." It's not that you're rich that's the problem; it's if you become arrogant. Do not fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches. You can have riches one day, and the next day they're gone. Focus on God who supplies all things to enjoy. There's nothing wrong with enjoying life as long as it's not done outside of parameters that God has given. Praise the Lord if you have an abundance; just don't look to that as some kind of idol. God is your supplier. Your job is not your supplier.

God is your provider. If you lose job A, God can get you job B. God's real creative at this. We look to him as the one that provides, not a boss, not a company, not a stock. We get confused on this very easily where our hearts drift away from God. Isaiah 29, verse 13, the prophet Isaiah says of the people of God in his generation, "This people draw near with their words and honor me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from me. And their reverence for me consists of tradition learned by rote." People show up, they do the religious thing, but their heart is somewhere else. May the Lord help us to understand that he's interested in our heart and a relationship with us.

Moses and Aaron are to cast this soot before Pharaoh and tell him what's going to happen. Then, like God said would happen, it happens. Moses and Aaron do exactly what God told them to do. By the way, it took Moses 40 years to get to this point because he liked to do things his own way. When he was 40 years old, he saw an Egyptian abusing a Hebrew, and he understood his calling as the leader of Israel, and he went and killed the Egyptian. Talk about a guy that took matters into his own hands. He fled out of fear into Midian where he got what I call his B.D. degree, backside of the desert degree, where he was reduced to nothing but tending the sheep of his father-in-law for 40 years.

Finally, God reveals himself to Moses in the burning bush and reveals to Moses his calling. Moses has been so reduced to nothing through this process that he starts making excuses. "God, you got the wrong man. I'm not qualified to do this at all." That's a different guy than we read about 40 years earlier where he was so self-willed that he actually committed murder thinking he was doing God a service. If you find yourself today in a place of isolation, some kind of role where it's less than your abilities, you should take courage and heart in that because God is emptying you of yourself.

The biggest problem with Moses was Moses. God emptied Moses of Moses. He got to a point where he realized he couldn't do anything unless the Lord helped him. Then the Lord says, "Now it's time to be used." He does exactly what God says over and over again. God uses this man in the final 40 years of his life, not just to bring these plagues upon Egypt, but to lead the nation of Israel in the liberation from Egypt, to give the law to these people, and to write the first five books of the Bible. That level of fruitfulness just goes off the charts in the last third of Moses' life because he went through the middle third where he was reduced to nothing.

This is why Moses is doing exactly what he's doing at age 80, something he wouldn't have done at age 40. I'm certainly not the man I should be all the time, but I thank God I'm not the man I used to be. I thank God that the man I am in 2016 is not exactly the same guy in 2015. I hope that is always the case in my life and your life as we're continuing to grow into full stature in Christ Jesus. What a privilege it is to be used by God to fulfill his eternal purposes on the earth. Wouldn't trade it for anything. But we have to learn to do things the Lord's way and not our own way.

You see this prophecy fulfilled in verse 10: "So they took the soot from the kiln and stood before Pharaoh, and Moses threw it towards the sky, and it became boils breaking out with sores on man and beast." Every prophecy that God utters happens. What happened in verses eight and nine is fulfilled in verse 10. You can take that right to the bank. That becomes a pattern or a blueprint for interpreting prophecies yet to come. If the prophecies of the past have been fulfilled so literally and exactly, then the prophecies yet to come are going to be fulfilled that way as well.

Look at the severity of this judgment. It even comes upon the magicians. Remember the magicians? The ones that in the first two plagues were not able to reverse the plagues that God used Moses to bring into effect, but they were able to imitate them. You reach a point when you get to the gnats where it's dirt to gnats. Non-living to living is what God does with the gnats. I think that's number three. The gnats. Different than the frogs, which was multiplication of living to living. Different than the Nile to blood where they imitated that as well.

That's non-living to non-living. Frogs, living to living. Then God ups the game and says, "Now we're going to go from non-living to living." That's when Pharaoh's magicians say, "We can't do this. We can't imitate this. This is the hand of God that's doing these things. This is the finger of God." While they were able to do imitations up to a point, they couldn't do it with number three. Now number six is so bad that it affects them as well. The very people that could imitate what God had done in the first two plagues are now exhibits of what people with boils and skin issues look like.

Don't misunderstand me, folks, the devil has a lot of power. If he didn't have a lot of power, he couldn't, through these magicians, have replicated what Moses and Aaron did. This is a chart I've showed you many times here. It shows you every miracle in the Bible that happens that God doesn't cause. Does God do miracles? Absolutely. Does the devil do miracles? Absolutely. There are lots of examples of it in scripture. But even though this power exists in Satan, he's no match for God.

Ezekiel 28 and verse 13, of Satan when he fell, it says, "On the day you were created, they were prepared." Verse 15: "You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you." Satan is a created being. As a created being, he's not God. He may have a lot of beauty; he comes as an angel of light. He may have a lot of power, but he's no match for God because he's a created being. As a created being, he is not omniscient; he doesn't know everything. He's not omnipresent like God is, everywhere at once. He's not omnipotent, all-powerful.

So, we don't get our theology from the movie Rocky, where you've got Rocky and Apollo in the ring. I'm going back to Rocky One. Now it's Rocky 800 with their great-grandchildren duking it out. But you remember the first one? You really don't know who's going to win until the end. Slight edge for Apollo because he is the heavyweight champ, but that Italian stallion was a tough guy. So who's going to win? You don't know until the end. A lot of people look at Christianity that way. God and Satan, who's going to win? We don't know. Well, you do know.

The moment God said of Satan, "You're created," is the moment that we know who's going to win. The creator is going to win. Genesis chapter one and verse one, we know who's going to win. It says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Atheism is not going to win because it says God created. Pantheism is not going to win because that verse says God is transcendent over creation. Polytheism is not going to win because there a singular God created. Materialism is not going to win because God created matter.

Humanism, which they teach round the clock in the public school system—the worship of man—is not going to win because God did his greatest work, his greatest miracle before man was even on the scene. Naturalism, that everything came about accidentally, is not going to win because it says God created. Dualism, which is Rocky and Apollo, is not going to win because there, the two have rivals. God has no rival. The only reason the devil is around is God in his infinite wisdom is using Satan for his own power. Satan is a defeated foe and he is on the way out. It's just the sentence hasn't been executed yet.

It's like a legal trial. You have a guilt phase and a sentencing phase. In the guilt phase, the person accused of a crime becomes convicted of a crime. In the sentencing phase, the decision is made as to what the punishment is going to be. Is it going to be life imprisonment or the death penalty? That's where we are today. We're standing in between two phases of a trial. The conviction stage has already run its course. Satan has been evicted from heaven. We're told in Eden that his head will be crushed. Whatever experiment he was running in the pre-flood world was unsuccessful to stop the birth of Christ, because Christ has been born 2,000 years ago and accomplished his mission on the cross.

The conviction stage has run its course. Now we're just waiting for the sentence. That's going to happen at the midpoint of the tribulation where Satan will lose permanent access to God's throne. It'll happen at the beginning of the millennial kingdom when Satan will be bound for 1,000 years. Then finally, we'll get to the end of the millennial kingdom and Satan will be thrown into the lake of fire and it's over. He's done. I can't wait for that. I live with great hope and expectation that it will happen because the conviction has already run its course. The sentence is coming; we just don't know when. But we're certainly given a lot of hints in scripture as to how this is going to manifest itself.

So, this judgment was so severe—this is why I called this sermon Victory Over the Darkness—that even the magicians, who could imitate the judgments of God up to a point without being able to reverse them, are now afflicted with this skin problem. God's a winner, and we're winners too because we're with him. Amen? We end here with verse 12 where it happens now for the first time where the Lord hardens Pharaoh's heart.

Notice verse 12, it says, "And the Lord—" You should underline the word Lord because we haven't seen the Lord inserted in any passage like this thus far in the book of Exodus. This is plague number six. For the first five plagues, the Lord didn't harden Pharaoh's heart; Pharaoh hardened his own heart. For the very first time, God says, "All right, I'll help you. You want a hard heart towards me? I'll put it in cement. I'll give you what you want," which is frightening. The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart and he did not listen to them.

This is the advantage of moving through the Bible chronologically. You see the order here. Ed Hindson says, "For the initial five plagues, the text registers Pharaoh as the agent of hardening. Not until the sixth plague, the boils, does God participate in the confirmation of Pharaoh's own volitional choices." The interesting thing about God is he respects free will. If a person over and over again makes a decision against God, God finally steps in and says, "I'll give you what you want. I'll help you with the next round." That's where Pharaoh was.

I wonder how many people on this planet are so recalcitrant against God and so determined to engage in wickedness? They look so far gone. How many opportunities had they been given? Now God has finally given them divine abandonment. He's let them have their own way and expedited the process of rebellion. This is something in the Bible that happens. Charles Ryrie writes Pharaoh hardened his own heart before God first hardened it, though the prediction that God would do it preceded it all.

You have the prediction of God hardening Pharaoh's heart in Exodus 4, verse 21, but Pharaoh hardened his own heart before God repeatedly. Finally, in Exodus 9, verse 12, it's not until the sixth plague did God harden Pharaoh's heart. Genesis 6, verse three, God says just before the flood, "My spirit will not strive with man forever." Even though God strove with man for 120 years. That's a long time. We're getting ready to celebrate our 250th birthday as a country. That's half of the United States chronologically. God put up with people and let them do what they want through their own volition, striving with them, convicting them, trying to get them to change their ways.

Finally, after 120 years, an age of grace, God says, "That's enough. I'll give you what you want." It's a dangerous thing to presume on the grace of God. We celebrated the grace of God this morning at the Lord's table. Nothing to be happier and more joyful about than the grace of God. But we think that because we're so accustomed to grace, it just continues on indefinitely. It doesn't. I'm talking here about the fate of the unsaved. You eventually eclipse the patience of God himself. That's where Pharaoh was. Chance after chance. Rejection after rejection. Finally, God says, "Pharaoh, I'll make it easy on you. This time around, I'll harden your heart." It's scary.

Romans one, verses 18 through 20 says, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth." It's not that they don't have truth; they suppress it. They hold down the obvious. "Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them since the creation of the world. His invisible attributes, his eternal power, his divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what he has made, so that men are without excuse."

You watch these things on TV of planes that crash and they've got an audio recording of the pilot and what he's saying at the last minute. A lot of them are cursing God. You would think that at the end of someone's life like that, it would have the opposite effect. Apparently it doesn't because the hardening process is a frightening thing. It's almost like the mind is given over to an incapacity to humble itself before God. Proverbs 29 and verse one says, "A man who hardens his neck after much reproof will suddenly be broken beyond remedy." Lord, I don't ever want to get like that.

Make me humble, usable, pliable, and sensitive to things that you might find in my life that are displeasing. I don't want to be one of these types that just hardens my heart against God to the point where God doesn't intervene anymore. It's like your basketball coach, and he's screaming at you. You get to the point where you wonder, "Why's he always yelling at me?" Then you have a one-on-one meeting with him, and he says, "You should worry when I stop yelling at you. Because if I stop yelling at you, I've given up on you. The fact that I'm yelling at you and correcting you means I see potential in you."

That's what the conviction of God is like. It's in your life because God loves you and wants the best for you. The most frightening thing in the world is when the conviction disappears. Then you get to the very end, verse 12: "Just as the Lord God had spoken." God said it, it's going to happen. Jesus, in John 13, verse 19, says, "From now on I am telling you before it comes to pass, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am he." Everything that God says will happen happens.

We have boils, God's instructions to Moses and Aaron, and then Moses and Aaron in obedience. But there's more coming beginning in verse 13. We'll read about that next time. I would encourage you to read verses 13 through 25 for next week. Shall we pray? Lord, we're grateful for your word and your truth, and for what you've done for us and for your provision. I do ask, Lord, today that we would not just be hearers of your word who delude themselves, but we would be doers of your word.

I ask, Lord, if there's anyone within the sound of my voice that does not know you personally, I pray that today they would not gamble on their eternity, but they would receive what you have for them by way of salvation. I pray that men and women within the sound of my voice would be placing their personal faith in the provision of your son and the promises that he gives. Help us, Lord, not to presume on the future. Help us not to think that tomorrow is going to be just like today, because your spirit will not always strive with man.

Today is the day of salvation, and we should seek the Lord while he may be found. If anyone is here today and they are unclear about the plan of salvation, I pray that they would seek me out afterwards so they can have clarity on this issue, which is really the most important issue in a human being's life. We'll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus' name. God's people said, Amen.