Exodus 7:8-10:29

I want to start with a little bit of biblical trivia this morning.

I'm going to ask you a question.

Which biblical event has inspired numerous movies attracting star-studded casts, including the likes of Val Kilmer, Steve Martin, Sandra Bullock, Martin Short, Christian Bale, Charlton Heston, and director Ridley Scott.

Now, if in your mind you said the plagues of Egypt, you're correct.

Quick round of applause for those who got it.

Hopefully that's not too difficult to get given the text of scripture we're in this morning, but it's an incredibly famous section of the Bible.

And there are some unique dangers in famous sections of the Bible, because if you've been in the church for any length of time, or in the broader culture watching these movies for any length of time, you come to a passage like this with an imagination that's already fairly full and rich.

And it's easy to get on a rabbit trail or a tangent that may not be the main thing the passage is driving at because our imagination is already so full.

So the central question that this whole section, like four chapters, is driving on us is this one question.

Who is your God?

Who's your God?

I'll come back to that over and over.

The question was first posed to Pharaoh, and he would have to answer it, and the magicians would have to answer it, the Egyptian people would have to answer it, Moses and Aaron would have to answer it, the Israelites would have to answer it.

Who is your God?

And it's echoed through the annals of history and now comes to us for us to answer that same exact question.

The first portion of Exodus has been framed in up to this point by this announcement in chapter three, where God says, I am Yahweh.

I am the Lord, there is none like me.

I am above you and among you.

I am terrifying and I am inviting, and I reveal myself in a raging fire that scares you and yet draws you in at the exact same time.

And in response to the Lord's declaration in chapter 5 and verse 2, Pharaoh asks this amazingly profound question to Moses and Aaron.

He says, But who is the Lord?

Who is Yahweh?

That I should obey his voice.

He's pushing us back to the question: who is your God?

If you think about Pharaoh's question, it's actually an incredibly modern question.

He doesn't deny that Yahweh exists.

He just says, that's fine for you to have your God to run along with, but why should I bow my knee to him?

Perhaps you know people in your life that say, I'm not against you being a Christian, but why should I have to bow my knee to your God?

So maybe we're ancient like Pharaoh, or he's modern like us, or maybe the human heart has these same core questions echoing throughout all time.

You know, there's a lot of people in America that believe in a generic God, a big man in the sky.

There's a kind of cultural Christianity that is paving the road to hell while believing in a God but not worshiping Yahweh.

And there are other gods, little G gods in our lives that we we give ourselves in service to, and we wouldn't generally profess them as God or sing songs of praise to them, but functionally they are our gods.

And functionally, we hope they'll deliver us to a functional heaven and save us from a functional hell.

These tend to be kind of summed up in four P words are our possessions, the people in our life, the power or prestige that we have, and the pleasure we pursue.

Possessions, people, power.

Pleasure.

And what's very interesting as we think about these gods that we give ourselves to, throughout the text of scripture, we see God's people are just as susceptible to the gods of the culture as the broader culture itself is.

It's very interesting.

At the end of Joshua, Joshua chapter 24, here's what we read.

Joshua 24 · chapter mention

Joshua gives this command fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and faithfulness.

Answer the question, who is your God?

And then here, listen to how he follows up about the gods of Egypt.

He says this put away the gods that your father served beyond the river in Egypt and serve the Lord.

The people of God are just as susceptible as the culture around us, to the little g gods that are vying for your hearts.

I think it's very easy for us to read a passage like the plagues in Exodus and think of the secular culture around us, of the proverbial pharaohs in our world, and the proverbial Egyptians that you know.

Brothers and sisters, it is so important that you recognize that Satan is dead set on capturing your heart with the gods of this culture.

And in the plagues of Egypt, Yahweh will crush all challengers and show you there is none like him.

He alone is holy.

So this morning, what I want to look at across the first nine plagues, without reading every single verse, is three things.

The purpose of the plagues, the drama of the plagues, and the relevance of the plagues.

The purpose, the drama, the relevance.

We start with the purpose, and the purpose is really simple and it's really straightforward.

That everyone will know who Yahweh is.

That's why the plagues are given.

The plagues give us a cosmic version of show and tell.

I've told you who I am, now I'll show you who I am, and there will be no doubt about who I am.

And this is incredibly important for you to see in the pages of Scripture.

So look back at me, or with me rather, at Scripture, and let's just blitz off a bunch of passages right here in front of your eyes in this section.

Exodus 7.5.

And as I read these, pay attention to the noun.

Who is seeing who Yahweh is?

7.5.

The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.

7.17.

You shall know that I am the Lord.

Drop down to 8.10.

That you may know that there's no one like the Lord our God.

Drop down to 9.14.

That you may know that there's none like me in all the earth.

Here in 9.16, just a couple verses later, God's speaking to Pharaoh and says, For this purpose I have raised you up, Pharaoh, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.

A global scope.

Drop down to chapter 10, verses 1 and 2.

God is speaking to Moses and Aaron and says, Go in to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart in the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians, and what signs I have done among them, that you may know that I am the Lord.

You see, the purpose of the plagues is missional.

It's that everyone would know who God is, that you would know, that your kids would know, that the Egyptians would know, that all the world would know.

Or in the words of the prophet Habakkuk in chapter 2 and verse 14, the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will fill the earth like the waters covers the sea in its entirety.

And I think sometimes the modern listener reads a passage like this, and they read the plagues, and the depth of destruction, the scope of destruction, and says, boy, isn't that a little harsh?

Like, is your God like a cranky grandpa who says, kids these days aren't like they were in my day, and then comes down really hard and unexpectedly, like, why has God got to be so harsh here?

And that question is an understandable question.

And yet it shows a misunderstanding of the holy, utter uniqueness of God, how he alone is worthy of worship, and the horrific nature of turning away from him in what the Bible calls sin, to put anything else above God.

This past week, we observed the 25th anniversary of 9-11.

I vividly remember that day.

And I wonder if that memory might help us to understand this section of scripture.

As a ninth grader, I remember turning on Fox News months after the fact, and every single night I wanted to see what Geraldo Rivera was gonna say on Fox News from the Torabora region about where bin Laden was.

Nobody in America was saying, I'll know President Bush.

Maybe it's a little bit of an overreaction.

Do we really need to go into their land and take them out here?

Why?

Because of the horror of what had been done, the consequence was entirely appropriate.

He said, No, we must not let that stand.

You will not defile this country and defame our name in that way.

Brothers and sisters, that is not 1% of the horror that is turning away from the God of all the universe.

So let us not be lulled to sleep in our modern mind saying, why is God so intense in his judgment?

When we ask that, we must be reminded that we have misunderstood his holiness and the horrific nature of our own sin.

The plagues are there to crush all challengers and to remind us that Yahweh is the only one worthy of worship.

And to give your life to anyone or anything else like the plagues will start with deceit, lead to destruction, and end in death.

It's a path that always is followed.

And the first plague, the Nile, is a model for what's happening in the rest.

The Nile is the source of life.

And so, in judging it, God is challenging the Egyptians and the Israelites to say, Who is your source of life?

Who is your sustainer of life?

Where are you looking?

Look with me at Exodus 7 and verse 17.

Thus says the Lord, by this you shall know that I am the Lord.

Behold, with the staff that is in my hand, I'll strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall turn into blood.

The fish in the Nile shall die, and the Nile will stink, and the Egyptians will grow weary of drinking water from the Nile.

Begging the question, where is true life found?

And what's amazing to me in this, and I saw this, I think, in a unique way this week, is the response of the Egyptians.

Look at the end of verse 24.

They say, all the Egyptians dug along the Nile for water to drink, for they couldn't drink the water of the Nile.

So their response is this well, I guess that source of life failed, so let's go find another one.

And they get their little shovel out and they're digging along the side of the Nile.

Now, remember, the Nile River is an enormous body of water flowing.

Like, some of you have been to Niagara Falls.

The amount of water flowing through Niagara Falls every single second is very similar to the amount of water flowing through the Nile River every single second.

And the Egyptians say, well, that source failed us, so I bet I can get my little trowel out and dig a little like bit in the backyard here and find a source of life that'll hold me up.

It is utterly absurd.

And yet, in our own lives, can we not see ourselves with our own little trowels digging around in our own little backyards, looking for pitly little springs of water to be a source of life that will sustain us?

God's issuing an epic throwdown right here.

So instead of turning to a different source of life, the better question for Pharaoh and the Egyptians would have been well, who rules over this source of life?

And yet the text tells us that Pharaoh didn't even take it to heart.

He didn't give it a second thought.

He walked inside and turned on his favorite TV show.

And in a unique way, this first plague, the one of striking the Nile, it functions like a spiritual EKG for the entire human race.

You see, whether ancient Egypt or modern Indianapolis, we find ourselves serving functional gods that promise to be the source of life.

They promise to deliver us to a functional heaven and to deliver us from a functional hell.

Of course, you can see that easily, perhaps, in false religions that claim the name of religion, but there's other ways we see this as well.

Like this week in American culture is one of the holiest weeks that we possess.

It's the start of the NFL season.

You laugh, but I'm serious.

Right?

We have a functional heaven of getting to the Super Bowl.

We have functional gods of these players.

We have all kinds of ways we worship them.

We have functional temples that we call stadiums.

You bring your tithes and offerings and call it season tickets.

You have special offerings on the side through DraftKings and FanDuel.

And there's a functional hell if you don't win enough games.

Everybody says, judgment, heads are gonna roll.

Get rid of that coach and that general manager.

Okay, that's fine.

You see how this applies all over the place.

So I'll come back to what I said earlier.

Every single culture, every single time, period, has some version of the good life.

And it tends to circle around those four Ps that I said: your possessions, the people in your life, whether it's family or a community that you want to build, the power or prestige that you have, and the pleasure you pursue.

And some constellation of those four P's is animating my life, saying, This will deliver me to a functional heaven and from a functional hell.

Do you know this morning, if I turn away from Yahweh, what's the functional God that I'm seeking?

And what's the functional heaven I'm hoping for?

And what's the functional hell I hope to avoid?

What's really wild about this passage that I I think only learned this week is that the Nile God in Egyptian culture was named Happy.

Not H-A-P-P-Y, but H A P I.

There's a little bit of a word play here.

Because in our day-to-day, we live our entire lives in search of a life source, not a Nile God named Happy, but a feeling named Happy.

And we'll give ourselves to it.

And if I can get personal on what this looks like even in my own life, like my wife Emily, is an incredible wife, an incredible mother.

You know what she's really horrible at?

Being the God of happy.

Not because of any deficiency in her as a human being, as an image bearer and a follower of Christ, but because she can't handle that weight.

She's not created for it.

Boy, is it easy to turn spouses into that, whether the one you have or the one you wish you had.

And my kids, incredible source of joy in my life, incredible gift from God.

You know what they're really terrible at being?

The God of happy.

Again, not because they're bad kids, but because they're not created to be that.

And when we take good things and make them ultimate things, the Bible calls that idolatry.

And God issues a throw down in the plagues and says, No, you must know there is none like Yahweh.

He's the only source of life, comfort, security, meaning, joy.

I hope you're beginning to see.

In the plagues, the purpose is not merely to get the people out of Egypt.

Because God could just like levitate them out.

What he's aiming to do is crush the false gods.

And in his kindness, as he crushes the false gods, he begins to reveal that some of us have bet our entire life on the wrong horse.

And in his mercy, he reveals it now so you can still make a change.

That's the purpose of the plagues, to show you who Yahweh is, and there is none like him.

Now let's move to the second point, the drama of the plagues.

The drama of the plagues.

Throughout them, God is systematically destroying all sources of life, security, and comfort.

And yet there is in the midst of it this masterful literary crescendo that is building.

The first nine plagues come in three sets of three.

And then the final plague, the death of the firstborn, that we'll look at next week.

And there's a lot of nuance and detail, even digging into the Hebrew, that we're not really going to hit today.

But the two biggest things that you should be able to see pretty easily is the power and the timing of the plagues and how they crescendo through these three sets of three.

So the first set of three, well, thinking about the power here, you have the magicians vying and battling, saying, we're at the same level of power.

Anything you can do, I can do better, right?

I can do anything better than you.

Until they can't.

Yep, that fails.

And then in the second set of three, there's an introduction of a distinction between Israel and Egypt.

I mean, I might imagine how insane this would be that in this half of the room it's sunny in 75.

And as soon as you get to the first row of this aisle, it is gale force winds, thunder, lightning, volleyball-sized hail coming down, duck for your lives.

And right there on the first row, you guys are just sitting on the beach listening to country music like it's the best day of your life.

And you're looking over, like, what in the world is going on?

God said, I don't just have the power to do stuff you can't do.

I place a dividing line wherever I please.

And when you get to the third set of three, you find Pharaoh's magicians and his mighty men saying, Please, Pharaoh, stop.

Don't you see the whole land is destroyed?

Why does this guy have to be a snare to us?

Escalating power, masterful drama unfolding.

But it's not just the power on display, it's also the timing.

You see, in the first set, especially the second overall plug, the plug of the frogs, Pharaoh is given the choice.

Like, hey, boss man, you like these frogs everywhere?

They're jumping out of your, you know, home, they're jumping out of your car, they're jumping out of your cabinets, they're jumping out of your oven, you go to the bathroom, you whiff the lead, you got frogs jumping out at you.

Like, when do you want these bad boys out of here?

He gets the choice.

He's like, how about tomorrow?

What a crazy throwdown.

Like, what guy in their right mind would be like, how about 30 minutes ago?

He waits a whole day.

What's wrong with this sick guy?

He doesn't think God can do it.

He says, okay.

You can hang on to him for another day if you want.

And tomorrow they're gone.

The second set of three plagues, the fourth one, when you come to the flies, Moses gets the pick.

He gets to pick the timing.

God is calling his shot.

And by the time you get to the third one, God says, now I'll just take care of this for you.

I'll tell you when this is gonna happen.

This is plague number seven, you see that.

So the power in the timing is presenting this crescendo.

It's like the timpani drums are just drum rolling, it's getting louder, louder, louder.

It built to the whole drum line, the whole marching band, and it's deafening.

Judgment.

None is like Yahweh.

And yet, in the midst of it, there's this remarkable act of mercy.

It's been said the whole history of the Bible is God's salvation through judgment.

And you see this in chapter 9 and verse 18.

I want to help, I want to look back at this together, because there's a shocking display of mercy here.

And I'm so glad we sang his mercy is more this morning, because it's drawing out in the midst of judgment.

God is being incredibly merciful.

Chapter 9, verse 18, God speaking, says, Behold, about this time tomorrow, I'll cause By the way, isn't that awesome?

He doesn't just say tomorrow.

This time tomorrow.

Like 2 30 in the afternoon, tomorrow.

Like precision in an incredible way.

Okay, keep reading.

Sorry, I just love that part.

I'll cause very heavy hail to fall, such as never been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now.

Therefore, send, get your livestock, and all you have in the field, and to save shelter for every man and beast that is in the field and is not brought home will die when the hail falls on them.

Here's the merciful part.

Catch this.

Then whoever Feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh, hurried his slaves and his livestock into his houses.

But whoever did not pay attention to the word of the Lord left his slaves and his livestock in the field.

In wrath we find mercy.

In judgment, the opportunity for salvation.

For any who will respond in faith to the word of the Lord, say, You are who you say you are.

You do what you say you'll do.

You always come through.

You are faithful.

I believe.

And you'll be saved.

That's the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Right here.

Seed form, Exodus 9.

Any who is here today who says, Yeah, I'm more like the Egyptians.

I don't belong with the church people.

I don't belong with the Christian people.

I haven't made that confession yet.

And God is saying, right here, any who respond to the word of the Lord will be saved, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, who died on the cross to pay for your sins, rose from the dead three days later to conquer death, hell, sin, and Satan, that you can have eternal hope of heaven and forgiven sins.

Amen?

Amen.

That's the message to hear, receive, and believe.

The trauma of the plagues has been building.

Showing the power of the God in the plagues, the precision of the timing, the precision of the placement to leave, no doubt at all.

Which is what God says in chapter 9, verse 15.

He says, by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth.

Like, I could have done this real easy.

But the point isn't just to get Israel out, it's to authoritatively declare and be persuasive that there is none like Yahweh.

And if his name is to be not only seen, but proclaimed in your own life and your kids and your grandkids and in your nation and to the ends of the earth, then I'm gonna go to the full extent of the plagues, so you will have no doubt left about it at all.

The plagues systematically crush the physical and economic foundations of it of Egypt, but it goes beyond that to crush their religious foundations and crush their false gods.

So let me run through these quickly, the first nine.

We've already talked about the first one, and see how these foundations are crushed.

The second plague, the frogs, the Egyptian god of fruitfulness, had a frog head on it.

It says these frogs were everywhere.

And when they die, they stack them up in giant heaps.

The only thing I could think about living in central Indiana is when you get a giant snow and they stack it up in the Kroger parking lot, and that stuff is there for like weeks to months afterwards.

God's saying, let me give you an object lesson.

I'm gonna take what you think of as fruitfulness, and I'm gonna stack it up in giant heaps in your Kroger parking lot, and I'm gonna let the stench permeate your whole country so that every time you're tempted to think there is fruitfulness outside of Yahweh, you'll be reminded that idea reeks.

What a powerful lesson.

He goes down to the third plague, the gnats that attack not the fruitfulness, but the comfort.

I don't really know what it's like to have gnats everywhere, but I discovered this past summer what it's like to try and grill outside with about 200 hoverflies on me at one time.

What should have been a perfect summer night, grill going, burgers cooking, smells amazing.

I'm sitting there getting these daggum hoverflies off me.

Comfort destroyed on what should be a perfect situation.

And I have like 20 on me.

We don't have the ability to fathom the way God says.

You want to look for any comfort outside of me?

Good luck with that, buddy.

Let me send you some gnats.

They go to the fourth plague, the flies that utterly destroyed the land.

Look at 724.

There came great swarms of flies into the house of Pharaoh and into his servants' houses.

Through all the land of Egypt, the land was ruined by the swarms of flies.

The land is ruined by the flies.

And then he goes number five into the livestock, starting to attack the economic threshold of the country.

And on number five, Pharaoh has heard report that Israel is set apart, but he sends his own recon team.

He's like, yeah, I don't know about that.

Can we just do a little fact-check action there?

Yep, sure enough.

Those Israelite cattle are doing great.

Not the Egyptian cattle.

And yet Pharaoh hardens his heart and says, actually, it was not a fact-level issue for me.

I don't want to believe.

I want to be the commander of my own faith, the master of my own soul.

And God's saying, you don't have that option.

You are past your pay grade, buddy.

He comes to the sixth plague, the boils that fall so heavily on people.

Like maybe you've had real boils.

Maybe you've had shingles or MRSA infections.

Or maybe you haven't, and you've just had a really big zit on the side of your nose that hurts like the devil to try and squeeze that thing.

But you imagine these suckers all over your body from toe to head, such that you can't get out of bed.

Try the wonders of your medicine and your magic here.

See how that goes for you.

And then seven, eight, and nine come along with the hail.

Enormous, crushing everything.

The locusts coming and eating everything.

Comprehensive destruction of their wealth.

The stock market has crashed.

Crypto is now having no value at all.

All the oil has dried up.

Every highway across America has been destroyed.

The utilities are all infected.

There's nowhere to go.

There's nowhere to turn.

You have nothing and no capacity to rebuild.

And as if that wasn't enough, let's at least retreat to our own home and eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before we die.

Plague number nine: the darkness falls so thick that the darkness is felt.

They are despairing of life itself, saying, turning away from Yahweh, it would have been better to not be born than to have to live through this hell.

You see, the plagues overthrew the physical foundations of Egypt, but their religious and moral ones as well.

And they're left saying, I have nowhere to run, I have nowhere to hide, and if I build my life on anything but Yahweh, the plagues tell me, destruction is certain and it leads to death.

Listen, hear, heed the warning, and turn back.

And you would think at this point, Pharaoh would start to get the picture.

Darkness felt.

And we look at chapter 10 and verse 24, and we find an amazing interaction.

Pharaoh called Moses and said, Go, serve the Lord.

And it seems like a glimmer of hope.

You and your little ones may also go.

Even better.

Only let your flocks and herds remain behind.

Moses said, You must also let us have sacrifices and burnt offerings that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.

Our livestock also must go with us.

Not a hoof shall be left behind, for we must take of them to serve the Lord our God.

And we do not know with what we must serve the Lord until we arrive there.

But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let them go.

Then Pharaoh said to him, Get away from me.

Take care never to see my face again.

For on the day you see my face, you shall die.

And Moses said, As you say, I will not see your face again.

The crescendo reaches the climax, and Pharaoh's hard heart, his refusal to believe in Yahweh, is confirmed.

We said this a couple weeks ago.

God is not hardening Pharaoh's heart in the sense that Pharaoh wants to believe in God, refuses, and just keeps bending him the other way.

It's like, no, Pharaoh is dead set on not serving God.

His heart is harder than Indiana clay, and God allows the heat of his son to bake down and harden it and solidify it in its anti-God posture.

And yet we remember that as the sovereign ruler of the universe, God is free to show mercy on whomever he will, or harden whomever he will, according to his own sovereign will, not according to my will, my choices, my desires.

Left to our own devices, no one is seeking God.

And it's only when we reduce him as sovereign creator overall that we begin to doubt whether he has the sovereignty and the right to intervene in the affairs of man like that.

His aim here is to amplify his own glory in the drama and in the escalation and in the crescendo to see there's no one worthy of worship except Yahweh alone.

This is the drama of the plagues unfolding in front of us, which brings us third and finally to the relevance of the plagues.

On a first reading, it doesn't seem like the most life-applicable kind of passage.

And yet I gotta be honest, as I was thinking about it this week, we we talk about Indianapolis as the crossroads of America, and I wonder if the plagues in a similar way are not the crossroads of application in our lives.

I think there's far more richness for how this impacts our lives than maybe is initially meeting the eye.

The deafening roar of the plagues is revealing Yahweh's love of obedience and hatred of disobedience.

We find Pharaoh over and over negotiating with God.

Don't go too far away, don't take the kids, don't take the animals with you.

You can have a little, but you can't have all of it.

Do you negotiate with God?

You can have this part of my life, you can have Sunday, you can have part of my family, you can have part of my finances, you can have part of this area.

Does he have all of it?

If you're not a Christian, you might be reading this kind of a passage and wondering, why does God meddle in my life?

Why would he send someone to hell?

Why does he care who I sleep with?

Friend, he is the sovereign ruler over all.

And like Pharaoh and like the Egyptians, you are guaranteed judgment unless you respond in faith to him.

His ways are true, his rules are right, his judgments are just, and his rejection always leads to destruction and then to death.

How also the plagues relevant to us.

It's very interesting that Moses, through the plagues, discovers the nature of true freedom.

He discovers that to be free is to be liberated to serve God with everything.

We just read a second ago where Moses, where Pharaoh says, you can go for a little while.

You can take your kids, just don't take the animals with you.

And many of us in the room would say, I don't know, Moses, that's not a bad offer.

Maybe you can sneak a couple goats out as you go.

Like, take what you got here.

And Moses says, I am not free until I am free to serve God with everything I have.

That's what true freedom is.

And until I live in that, I'm like a fish out of water.

So, Christian, don't ask of the Lord, how far do I have to go?

How much is enough to give?

God, why would I have to deny these feelings that feel so right?

Because when we start to ask these negotiating kinds of questions of God, do I have to give everything?

We must remember that Pharaoh is a slow motion case study on the disastrous effects of sin.

There's an insanity to him.

It's like you're watching a movie in slow motion of a car that's about to crash, and you want to reach out and stop it, but you can.

Like, what are you doing, man?

Can we get some real talk here?

Here's how one of my mentors used to say it, and I think it makes sense.

He says this sin makes you stupid.

It makes you blind.

Others see it, and you don't.

You seem justified in what you're going.

And the story of Pharaoh and the plagues is meant to serve like a car alarm going off inside a parking garage.

Where it echoes so loudly, you can never get the sound out of your ears except to say, sin looks good, serving other gods looks good.

And it's not hear the warning, heed the warning.

Like you want an immediate action step.

Hebrews 3, 13 is here for you this morning.

Exhort one another as long as it's called the day, so that you are not hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

That's what God says to do with it.

It's like some of you are still not even in a community group yet.

You're not in a Sunday school class.

Or remember maybe you are, but you don't get together with brothers and sisters through the week, exhorting them from the scriptures, lest they be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Take this to heart.

Don't block your ears.

We've said this over and over, and I'm gonna say it again.

Sin starts with deceit.

Pharaoh was deceived over how the plagues were done, thought his magicians could do it, and then it leads to destruction, and it ends in death.

This is why Ephesians 4 says don't let Satan get a foothold.

Because I heard a pastor in Florida say it this way, and he's right.

You let him get a foothold, and the foothold leads to a stronghold, and the stronghold leads to a chokehold, and you die.

So don't let him have a foothold.

Put it out, put it to death, nip it in the bud, exhort one another as long as it's called the day, so you're not heartened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Let's get even a little bit more personal here.

When you're tempted to harbor the secret sins of anger or bitterness or lust, remember the plagues.

When you're tempted to the sins of gossip and gluttony and greed, remember the plagues.

When you're tempted to draw back from boldly speaking the gospel to your neighbor, remember the plagues.

When you're tempted to edit the Bible's teaching on sexuality or gender or the sanctity of life or how we're to care for refugees and sojourners, remember the plagues.

There is none like Yahweh.

He will not be trifled with.

That the knowledge of the glory of the Lord would fill the earth as the waters fill the sea.

And his command and his commission and his mission for us is very clear to get going making disciples.

People who learn the words and ways of Jesus.

They gather in local churches and they multiply out to go tell others and to go start and strengthen other churches.

Remember the purpose of the plagues, that all the earth will know the glory of Yahweh.

And some of you are gonna go to Greencastle.

You're gonna be part of that work there.

Praise God.

And some of you need to be real honest right now and realize there's somebody on your cul de sac that that knows the glory of Yahweh, and they need to be invited simply to encounter Yahweh on the pages of Scripture, and God sent you there to reach them.

Take the plagues to heart.

Remember the purpose of them, and let's get going together.

And when you get going, and when you get tired, and when it feels too hard, when somebody doesn't want to listen, you wonder if it's worth it.

Remember this, guys.

There is a major difference between the first audience and us.

And here's the major difference.

We have been given infinitely more reasons to worship because they saw the judgment and the salvation offered in the plagues.

And we've seen judgment and salvation through Jesus Christ on the cross, his resurrection from the dead that triumphs and triumphs over any of these Old Testament images.

It lets you go forward in confidence, saying, I don't have to fear the wrath of God despite my failures, because I've claimed his name by faith, his blood on my account.

I don't have a fear of judgment.

His arms are wide open.

This is what it means to delight in the gospel.

What God has done for me.

To go forward knowing Satan's purposes, the gods of America and the gods of Egypt cannot succeed.

The gates of hell will not prevail.

Satan's mission will not be victorious.

There is no God like Yahweh.

And so as we go to communion this morning to the Lord's Supper, what a time to remember the glory of Yahweh.

To return to Him as the crusher of all the gods.

To repent of where you've turned away, to remember His splendor.

To recommit to giving everything you have to follow Him.

God in heaven, we need your help.

We're desperate for your help.

That we would hear the warnings of Scripture, we would respond in faith, we would not plug our ears.

But we would take action.

Not for our own name, not for the name of Parkside Bible Church, but for the fame and the glory of your great name.

Would you move us by your grace to take those steps today?

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.