Plagues 5 & 6: Livestock & Boils

Morning, church.

Our text this week is from the Book of Exodus, chapter 9, starting in verse 1.

Exodus 9 · chapter mention

Then the Lord said to Moses, Go into Pharaoh and say to him, Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, let my people go that they may serve me.

For if ye refuse to let them go and still hold them, behold, the hand of the Lord will fall with a very severe plague upon your livestock that are in the field, the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds, and the flocks.

But the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, so that nothing of all that belongs to the people of Israel shall die.

And the Lord set a time, saying, Tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land.

And the next day the Lord did this thing.

All the livestock of the Egyptians died, but not one of the livestock of the people of Israel died.

And Pharaoh sent, and behold, not one of the livestock of Israel was dead.

But the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go.

And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Take handfuls of soot from the kiln, and let Moses throw them in the air in the sight of Pharaoh.

It shall become fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and become boils breaking out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt.

So they took soot soot from the kiln and stood before Pharaoh.

And Moses threw it in the air, and it became boils breaking out in sores on man and beast.

And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils came upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians.

But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them as the Lord had spoken to Moses.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks, man.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

And of course, uh happy Father's Day to um all of the fathers in the room.

Congratulations.

That's it, yeah.

Great response, everyone.

You know, when you're not on Twitter, you can say whatever you want and face almost no repercussions.

Patriarchy means father rule.

And in our culture, it is uh almost the same as saying saron, which means evil invisible force that is behind all the wrong in the world.

The Bible is patriarchal explicitly.

It is a book about father rule.

And it shows us the pattern that we have a good father who rules.

And he teaches us fathers to be fathers who rule in the way that he does.

And under that rule there is joy and glory and fruitfulness, and this is the calling of fathers.

When Aslan is talking to another lion, he uses the phrase us lions.

And the lion says, us lions.

Can you believe he said us lions?

Aslan, of course, is the character in the Chronicles of Narnia who is like God in the books.

And that is the way that God that is the way that us fathers ought to respond when God says that he is a father, and that, and then he says that we are fathers.

We'd say, us fathers.

He calls himself a father, and then he he allows us to be called fathers.

And then, of course, what Aslan does is he gives the lion uh the uh most complicated other animals to be in charge of.

That way he's immediately humbled.

Lest he think of himself as God.

We we are not fathers in the way that God is a father, but when we see the good rule of our father, and we seek to model that in our lives for our families, there is a wonder and fruitfulness that comes from that.

So your calling as fathers is irreplaceable.

It is essential.

It is a central aspect of the storyline of the scriptures.

And I just want you to have the sense of the honor that comes with that this morning and the incredible responsibility and the good news that you are fathers, but you you have the best model, and you have the best father, who is your father, our father in heaven.

So that's my father's day bit.

Up with the patriarchy.

Let's pray.

Holy Father.

Jesus says that he is going back to my God and your God, my father and your father.

We call you Father now because you have adopted us as your children by the free grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Lord, what it means to have you as our Father is that you provide for us, you care for us, you're tender with us and patient with us, that you take responsibility for us even for our own sins and our own debts.

You take those upon you as though they are you, as though they are your own.

And in that we have this absolute freedom to come to your presence, Lord.

We praise you for this as our Father.

Lord, we pray that we would see the wonder of your might, the tenderness of your care, and your willingness to sacrifice for us.

Lord, might us fathers model that in our own in our own lives.

But but more than that, Lord, let us receive that from you.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Okay, well, uh, this summer we are continuing through the book of Exodus, and we are having what I like to call our summer of plagues, because it's catchy.

And during the summer of plagues, we are uh making our way through uh all the plagues of all the plagues of Exodus, and this morning we arrive at the fifth and the sixth plagues.

One way to think about the plagues is that they take place in this pattern of three groups of three, with the final tenth plague being the most complete, and the one in which all of the other plagues are, in a sense, pointing to.

This is the fifth and sixth plague this morning, so this is like the second and final of the second cycle of plagues.

The end of each plague cycle has a plague.

So the third and the sixth and the ninth are all plagues in which Pharaoh receives no warning.

The plague is simply done to him as this clear act of judgment upon Pharaoh and upon the gods of Egypt, as God is making a mockery of the gods of Egypt, and he is showing that he is the true God, and by him as the true God, he will be delivered.

And through this cycle of plagues, we see this strange dynamic, especially with regards to Pharaoh's heart.

So in Pharaoh's heart, we see this pattern of Pharaoh's heart is described as Pharaoh hardened his heart.

Pharaoh's heart is also described as Pharaoh's heart was hardened, which is perhaps better translated as Pharaoh's heart was hard.

Like this is just the state of Pharaoh's heart.

And then we also see this pattern of and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart.

Now, all of these are used interchangeably.

It's like the text makes no distinction between these.

Pharaoh hardens his own heart and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart after each of the plagues.

And there are instances in which you would think, okay, finally, after the stinging flies, Pharaoh would say, God is the Lord, I submit to him, but he doesn't.

His heart, Pharaoh hardens his heart.

Or after, we'll see this morning, after all of his livestock is killed, he might say, God is the Lord, but he doesn't.

His heart is still hardened towards the Lord.

And then once his own body and the bodies of his people become covered in boils, we might think that he would finally be softened, but he isn't.

His heart is hardened towards the Lord.

So there's this obvious question, which is, well, whose is it?

Who to whom belongs the hardening of Pharaoh's heart?

Is it Pharaoh?

Is Pharaoh the one doing the hardening of his heart?

And so we should just say he's just culpable and responsible?

Or is it the Lord who's doing the hardening of Pharaoh's heart?

Because the text goes back between these interchangeably.

And if the Lord is doing the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, then could we say that he is, that Pharaoh himself is culpable or responsible?

Well, this morning we're going to be pushed into that question as we see the response of Pharaoh's heart.

So let's look at this first plague we'll look at this morning, which is the fifth plague.

Then we'll look, which is the livestock, the plague on the livestock, then we'll look at the sixth plague, which is boils, and then we're going to look at um a couple of other kings who experience plagues.

So Exodus 9, 1.

Then the Lord said to Moses, Go into Pharaoh and say to him, Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, let my people go that they may serve me.

It's the same pattern, and the Lord initiates once again this return to Pharaoh, and he tells Moses to go in and give Pharaoh this warning.

When we see these patterns developing as we're moving through these ten plagues, then our attention is really being drawn to these sort of smaller differences between the plagues.

One of the small differences here is that God, for the first time, is referred to as the God of the Hebrews.

It's the God of the Hebrews, thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews.

That's the way God instructs Moses to describe him to Pharaoh.

And this makes sense, especially after we consider the last plague was the first time that God had made a distinction between the Israelites and the Hebrew people in the plague that had fallen.

The flies covered the Egyptians, and the Israelites were completely unharmed.

God is making clear, these are my people.

I am the God of the Hebrews.

They belong to me.

They're the ones who can uniquely say, This is my God who is delivering us.

And God can say that they are his people.

So the Lord says, Tell Pharaoh, I am God of the Hebrews.

Then in verse three, the warning, behold, the hand of the Lord will fall with a very severe plague upon your livestock that are in the field, the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds, and the flocks.

Consider the severity of this plague and the severity of this warning.

What might be said is that there is a plague that is falling on the industries of food, of milk, of transportation, and of textiles.

Egypt, you will now have none of these.

All of these, all of the storage of wealth in the animals that you have will cease.

And it will vanish by this plague that is coming.

This is something that could easily bring an empire to its knees.

We were, I was talking with a um friend on the way in who works in oil and gas, and he was like, it's pretty wild that this oil and gas stuff.

And I was like, Yeah, uh, it took the world from a billion people to eight billion people and fed them all in a hundred years.

It's pretty wild.

So now imagine America.

You now have none of it.

Okay, well then that means it makes it harder for all of us to get home, unless you walked.

And then it makes it harder to get food from the grocery store.

You don't get to because it the food can't get there.

Then it makes it harder to fertilize that food because we use that for fertilizer.

And I don't know if you guys know about plastics, but they make it possible.

And so it would then be in impossible.

This is that scale of a plague where we suddenly find that all of the infrastructure and the possibility for this these things that uphold the very possibility of the existence of our lives is now impossible.

Do you remember four years ago when we all bought toilet paper together?

You didn't?

There was none.

Oh yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

That was the right answer.

I thought we were gonna learn something much stranger.

But the yes, there was there was none, exactly.

And it remember what that was like.

I remember my in-laws who live in the in Silverthorn, they didn't have as they had a surplus uh in the mountains where they were, and they shipped us down a package of toilet paper, and my wife and I opened it up and we were like, oh we are saved, we are protected.

Look, we can look how thin, how easily we can just be brought to our knees, and what this would mean for the empire of Egypt to just be brought to their knees.

That was just toilet paper, and we don't even know why we were doing it.

There was no, we don't know why we did that.

Turns out that's what we don't know why we we did like basically anything from 2020 to 20, the end of 2022.

This is also a clear mockery of gods of Egypt, as we've seen that there's this pattern of this, is this mockery of gods of Egypt.

This is a mockery against the god, particularly uh, I don't know how you say this, it's p-t-a-h pata or just ta, like pterodactyl ta, but it uh is a a bull, a bull god, which is a god of livestock and fertility among the livestock.

And so God is showing that he is making a mockery of the gods of Egypt who are meant to bring the fertility of the livestock.

And just as he is moving through each of the gods of Egypt and demonstrating that the pantheon of Egypt is absolutely impotent when compared to the power of God.

So all that they had hoped in to provide for them and to make their provision happen, you know, they had Ptah, the god of the livestock.

We have the invisible hand of the marketplace, which we just trust in and we know will absolutely work and will provide all that we need and all of our whims.

But of course, this is nothing compared to the God of the Hebrews.

But God says in this, like as in the fourth plague, but the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, so that nothing of all that belongs to the people of Israel shall die.

And the Lord set a time saying, Tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land.

So there's uh a bit of an interesting dynamic happening in in Hebrew, which you can just see the way the God is that God is describing the way these plagues are operating.

The Hebrew word for plague is the consonants that sound like devar.

But that's also with just a change of uh vowels, those are consonants and vowels, with just a change of vowels, it is the same as the word for plague.

So the word for plague and the word for thing are the same word.

And the way that it's phrased in the in the Hebrew is that there will be a plague upon the people of Egypt, but of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, it says there will of them will die not a thing.

And so there's this sense in which the plague is falling.

It will absolutely draw a distinction between the Egyptians and the Israelites.

And so he's using the same word.

It's like it's like the plague falls on both, but it has these opposite implications.

And this is what we see in the way that God is delivering his people.

God is delivering his people by causing his wrath to fall upon the nation of Egypt, but in his wrath falling upon the nation of Egypt, towards the Egyptians it is a curse, but towards his people, the Israelites, it means their deliverance.

So they are being delivered through the wrath of God.

This is the way God delivers.

He delivers through his wrath.

Because God is a just God.

We'll see how that dynamic unfolds.

And the Lord set a time saying, Tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land.

Now, the tomorrow is, I think it's sort of the Lord is being sarcastic or ironic towards Pharaoh, because in each of the times that Pharaoh has said that he will let the people of Israel go, or he has pleaded for Moses to pray to the Lord that the plague might be brought to an end.

Moses has said, When would you like me to do that?

And Pharaoh has said, tomorrow.

He doesn't say today.

Tomorrow will be the day that I finally let the Israelites go.

And so the Lord says, Tomorrow will be the day that this plague will come.

The difference is, when tomorrow shows up for Pharaoh, Pharaoh is faithless, and he does not follow through on his promise to deliver his people.

When tomorrow shows up for God, he is faithful, and the plague which he promised would come comes exactly as he had proclaimed that it would.

We are seeing the faithlessness and the faithfulness, the faithlessness of Pharaoh darkened against the light of the faithfulness of God.

Pharaoh, at the end of this, when this plague finally falls and all the livestock of Egypt die because of this plague, he sends out some people from Egypt, which is interesting because all that's being asked is that he would send out people from Egypt.

But he sends out some people from Egypt to go to check the land of Goshen, where the Israelites dwell, and he discovers that none of their livestock have been harmed by the plague.

But Pharaoh's heart is still hardened.

Pharaoh's heart is hardened.

What could he possibly be shown to be convinced?

What type of pain might he possibly endure where he would finally relent, even for the sake of his own people, that he might finally relent?

The next plague.

Exodus 9, 8 through 9.

This is the final plague of the second cycle, which means that it is not a plague that has a warning as though tomorrow this will happen.

Another implication of it happening tomorrow is that the Lord is providing an opportunity for Pharaoh to relent, so that he might avoid the plague coming on his people.

But this final of the second cycle has no opportunity to relent.

Verses eight and nine.

And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Take handfuls of soot from the kiln, and let Moses throw them in the air in the sight of Pharaoh.

It shall become fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and become boils breaking out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt.

Okay, so Moses is just instructed to go in before Pharaoh with a kiln, and he would take handfuls of soot out of the kiln, and he would throw them in the air in the sight of Pharaoh.

And then that handful of soot would multiply into dust that goes over the whole land of Egypt.

And then when you come in contact with that dust, your skin would break out in boils.

So it's a horrifying image.

But there's more there's more to it than just sort of like the cinematic terror of the handful becoming a plague on the land.

The kiln was used to create bricks.

This is what you would use to bake the bricks.

And remember what the Hebrews Were plagued with by Pharaoh.

They were meant to make bricks without straw.

And so this is, in a sense, a remembrance.

There's a poetic justice in this of by the very thing, Pharaoh, by which you sought to plague the Israelites, you are being plagued.

And it's interesting that he doesn't take bricks.

And it's not like reach into the kiln and take out a brick and throw it in the air and it'll split apart or something.

I mean, God can do whatever he wants, so he's must be particular with his images, why he's choosing these things.

I think the brick is the sign of structure for Egypt.

It is the sign of Egyptian power.

Because by the technology of the brick, which we see in Scripture, the technology of the brick is the technology of the Tower of Babel, by which humanity is able to create our own world structure, and in that world structure, seek to overcome the structures which God has given to us.

That is sort of the pattern of the brick for these great empires.

But it is not the brick that he takes out, it is sort of the anti-brick, which is the dust.

You know, a brick is just a gathering of dust that is baked together so that it all holds together.

And you know, what this is, is this is the brick that has returned to dust.

It cannot hold.

And we also must hear in this, in the use of dust, this call to Genesis 3, in which in the curse upon Adam, it is described to Adam, remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

What is a human rather than the dust that is gathered together towards so that it might be a structure that holds together, that is given this breath of life that is oriented towards the Lord God.

But when we lose that orientation towards the Lord God, then we re-disintegrate.

Hear the word disintegrate.

We become meaningless parts that are not able to cohere.

We are the dust, meaninglessness.

Listen to this other word, incoherent.

Do you hear it in our language?

This return to dust, it does not hold together.

The center cannot hold, the widening gyre or whatever.

It's been a long time since I read Yates.

Something like that.

And then this dust, the symbol of a disintegrating kingdom and of death itself, will spread to the people of Egypt, and it will cause their own bodies to disintegrate into boils.

Do you see that it's the same pattern?

The brick, which is the structure of your kingdom, will disintegrate.

Your body, what is the king's body?

It is his people.

They will disintegrate.

And then on your body itself, you will disintegrate.

Remember, you are dust.

And to dust you shall return.

The dust will spread over the land of Egypt like the angel of death will later spread over the land of Egypt.

These are not very different symbols.

This play unfolds precisely as the Lord describes that it will.

The dust spreads over the land of Egypt.

The magicians are mentioned for the last time, and they are unable to stand before Moses.

Never again do we hear of the magicians.

But they are so covered in boils that they are unable to stand before Moses.

Just as Moses and Aaron are told by the Lord to go stand before Pharaoh, which can also be understood as taking their stand before Pharaoh, the magicians are, because their own bodies are so disintegrated, they are unable to stand before Pharaoh.

Pharaoh sees this, and his heart is hardened.

Pharaoh's own body, the body of his people, the image of his power in the magicians are all falling apart.

Why is Pharaoh's heart still hardened before the Lord?

What does it mean for him to still stand in a place of resistance to the Lord?

We think that when we're resisting something, that it's costing the one that we're resisting.

That if we stand in someone's way, then they can't get there.

My three-year-old daughter is into this thing where she stands in hallways and she goes, Can't get by, what's the password?

And then my seven-year-old son is into this thing where he pushes her over.

And then she cries, and then Megan and I are like, Who do we punish?

So we punish everyone.

And the No, it's it's not that simple.

We get locked in tense negotiations.

Trying to get to the bottom of what happened.

Anyway.

She thinks that her resistance is costing something for that's what her resistance is doing.

Pharaoh's resistance is playing directly into the hand of God.

The more that he resists the Lord, the more the Lord's power is demonstrated over him.

So what does it mean for our hearts to resist the Lord?

But in all of our resistance of the Lord, the Lord's glory is only more completely demonstrated.

In Romans 9, verses 17 through 18, Paul writes, and he says, For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

Romans 9:17–18

For this very reason, Pharaoh, I have raised you up.

Pharaoh's saying, Raised me up, I've resisted you.

I fought you tooth and nail.

You thought you could break me by these plagues, but you never did.

And the Lord says, You have played perfectly into my hand.

That was my raising you up, so that my power might be demonstrated.

Verse 18, so then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

Our hearts stand absolutely in the hand of God.

Our hearts are no different from the rest of creation.

They are not a part of creation that are cordoned off from the absolute sovereignty of the Lord.

But they rest completely in his hand.

One way of saying it, resistance is futile.

But do you see the futility?

You think you're resisting God?

You stand in opposition to his word, you see some critique of the way that he has laid out the world, or you see some difference.

He shouldn't have structured it this way.

He should have placed things in some some other way that is that is he shouldn't have he shouldn't have called himself father.

Doesn't he see the dangerous implications of that down the road?

What are you you're going to resist?

Him?

And you think that in resisting him, he will be foiled by you?

You think that there is some place in which, in the greatest resistance that you could conjure against him, that you will not have plainly revealed at the end where he says, Yeah, this is exactly my intention.

This is precisely what I intended.

And you, in your absolute resistance against me, are only serving to more perfectly, more completely demonstrate the absoluteness of my power and my glory.

Do you know who we're talking about when we talk about God?

Do you think we're talking about someone who is just slightly stronger than us, who has who has better ideas?

We are talking about the one who spoke all things into existence, who upholds them now by the word of his power.

The one in whom we live and move and have our being.

The one who right now is surrounded by the heavenly council, who calls out, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

The whole earth is full of his glory.

We are talking about the one who cannot be opposed, who has absolute authority, absolute control, who is worthy of all honor, all praise.

True God.

We are talking about the true God.

We are not talking about one of the gods of Egypt.

We are not talking about the local deity of the Jews.

We are talking about the one who is over all things.

That means you.

Do you see the terror and the wonder before this God?

Do you see what you stand on before him?

You stand on nothing before him.

Do you see what he owes you?

The scripture says, who has given a gift to me or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?

For from him, from the Lord, he's the origin of all things.

Through him, that means he is the one who allows all things to take place.

He is the upholder of all existence.

And to him are all things.

So from and to, that means when God gets when God writes a letter, and on the front of the letter, he writes from, it says God.

And then at the at the the you know, to, you know where I'm going with this, it says God also.

And then he opens the letter, the through, and he delivers it to himself, and he says, This is exactly what I was hoping I'd get.

This is perfectly it, this is everything that I like.

Megan asked me what I wanted for Father's Day.

And I said, I can we get lunch?

And she's like, You want lunch for Father's Day?

Lunch is my favorite meal of all the meals, and so we're getting lunch.

But God has always experiences that.

Like we he's uh everything is from him, and through him and to him are all things.

I just want your head to explode when you're considering who we are talking about when we talk about God.

From him and through him and to him are all things.

Pharaoh's hardness of heart is from the Lord and is playing precisely into the story of the Lord's glory that he is telling.

And so Pharaoh sits with a hard heart covered in boils as his kingdom disintegrates.

And there's one more thing that I want us to see in this when hopefully we've been able to stoke a bit of mind-breaking wonder at who the Lord is in his absoluteness.

And I want to bring our attention to another king who experienced a series of plagues directly from the hand of the Lord.

Messengers came and said to him, The Sabaeans have destroyed all of your oxen.

And they also killed all of the servants that were with your oxen.

And I alone only am the one who escaped to tell the tale.

Which is also the last line in Moby Dick, which is pretty cool.

Always makes me think of that.

Another messenger comes and says, All of your donkeys have been destroyed.

I alone am the only one left who live to tell.

A fire came down from heaven and it destroyed your sheep and your camels, says another messenger.

And I am the one only who am left who live to tell the tale.

And then all his sons and daughters, who got along great, were all celebrating together, as was their tradition, and a windstorm came in the building which they were celebrating in, collapsed upon all of them, so that all his sons and daughters died, and one messenger escaped and came and said, I am the only one left who lived to tell you about it.

And so Job finds himself experiencing a series of plagues directly from the hand of the Lord, so far worse than the plagues that Pharaoh has experienced.

He sees his kingdom destroyed.

He sees the future of his kingdom destroyed as his children are destroyed.

Even before here, Pharaoh's children have been destroyed.

But he does not turn on the Lord, and his heart, by all of these things, by all of these terrible experiences from the Lord, his heart is not hardened.

And so Satan comes to God and says, Of course he isn't.

You haven't attacked his own body yet.

See, you can take away all these things from a man, but once you attack his own body and he experiences the pain in his own person, then he will turn on you, and then he will curse the Lord.

And so in Job 2, verses 7 through ten, it says, So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, and he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes, another king covered in boils, sitting in ashes.

Job 2:7

Then his wife said to him, Do you still hold fast your integrity?

Curse God and die.

But he said to her, You speak as one of the foolish women would speak, women would speak.

Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?

In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

There is a king who is not like Pharaoh.

Job's plagues are worse than Pharaoh's.

He loses the whole of his kingdom.

They are worse than Pharaoh's because there is no sense in which we can describe the plagues upon Job as just retribution.

Job did not deserve those plagues.

And so Job might have said, I don't deserve this.

I am showing no resistance to the Lord.

And he might have said to them, Why am I experiencing this terrible pain and suffering?

But Job's heart is not hardened.

He says, Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil?

And all this Job did not sin with his lips.

We think that if God is the God who is in control of Pharaoh's heart, and if he hardens Pharaoh's heart, and that causes all of this evil to unfold in the world, then that God in his absoluteness is not a God worth trusting.

And our hearts become hard toward the Lord.

Job has precisely the opposite conclusion.

Because he understands the absoluteness of the Lord's control over all things, then even in the midst of a series of plagues directly from the hand of God in more absolute terms than I've ever heard of anyone experiencing.

Because he trusts in the absoluteness of the Lord over all of these things in all of his circumstances, his heart does not harden toward the Lord.

How can that be?

In the chapter on providence in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which if you would like to know more about, stick around for an hour after church today and join our study.

It's the first Sunday of it.

The providence of the Lord is described like this.

He says in in section five of chapter five, the most wise, righteous, and gracious God, you're gonna have to listen closely, because this is 17th century English.

Are we ready?

Okay.

That's why I saved it for the end of the sermon.

The most wise, righteous, and gracious God doth oftentimes leave for a season his own children to manifold temptations and the corruption of their own hearts, to chastise them for their former sins, or to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts, that they may be humbled, and to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support unto himself, and to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin and for sundry other just and holy ends.

The Lord may cause plagues to fall on you, his children, and in so doing you might confidently know that these are not taking place outside of his control, but these are taking place for his good purposes, that your heart might be humbled before him, that you might grow in a dependence upon him that makes you able to endure anything, that you might grow in joy for the good things that he has given to you, that you might grow in fear of your sin and ability to conquer it, as you see the terror of what your sin will bring into your life.

And so the Lord brings his children through seasons like this.

The wrong conclusion of the plagues is if I am on the Lord's side, I experience no plagues.

That is not the conclusion.

Not when we consider the whole corpus of scripture.

The conclusion of the plagues is that even in the midst of the plagues, when you trust in the Lord, your heart will not be hardened.

And that the final and most ultimate plagues you will be brought through safely.

In section six, as for those wicked and ungodly men, whom God, as a righteous judge for former sins, doth blind and harden, from them he not only withholdeth his grace.

Whereby they might have been enlightened in their understandings and wrought upon in their hearts, but sometimes also withdraweth the gifts which they had, and exposeth them to such objects as their corruption makes occasion of sin, and withal gives them over to their own lusts, the temptations of the world, and the power of Satan, whereby it comes to pass that they harden themselves, even under those means which God useth for the softening of others.

Devar was the Hebrew word.

For the Egyptians, for Pharaoh, it meant plague.

For the Israelites, it meant they would lose not a thing.

But it can be the same.

There is another king who is humiliated at the loss of his kingdom.

And this other king sits under the wrath of God in the most absolute terms, more than Job, more than Pharaoh, even to the point of losing his own life.

This other king, unlike Job, who is relatively innocent, is absolutely innocent.

And this king suffers the wrath of God in his absolute innocence.

Unlike the god Hopi of the river, who is made a mockery of when the Nile turns to blood, unlike the God Ta of the bull, who is made a mockery of when the livestock dies, unlike the beetle god who is made a mockery of with the multiplication, unlike the goddess who is made a mockery of with the multiplication of the frogs.

This is not a god who is over a small corner of existence, like the flies or the bulls or the frogs.

This is the absolute God who is over all things, the one who holds in his hand the very heart of Pharaoh, the absolute God, and he is made a mockery of to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Now, why is he mocked as those gods are mocked?

And in that circumstance does he ever curse his father?

No.

You see, Jesus is our Exodus.

And the plagues fall on him.

And the plague that fell on him, when we trust in him, will never fall on us.

It will never fall on us.

And so all of the plagues that we move through in this life, we can have an absolute certainty that we will be brought through, that he will hold us, that his salvation for us, his exodus, which he accomplished for us on the cross, will be perfectly effective and is completely worth trusting in.

Why?

Because do you know the absoluteness of God?

Do you know how completely in control of all things he is?

Resistance is futile.

Trust in the Lord.

Look at Jesus suffering the plagues, not cursing his father.

What incredible righteousness.

And that righteousness he gives freely to you.

Are there any questions today?

We'll finish there.

Is there any meaning to the change in Moses starting to carry out the plagues himself instead of relying on Aaron?

It does great observation, by the way.

And it does seem as though there's this proximity that's taking place where the plagues are getting more and more face to face with fewer and fewer mediators.

So that we can see Moses' hand is directed in this case to demonstrate to Pharaoh the power that's coming.

And Moses, in that sense, is being brought face to face with Pharaoh.

And the mediators that were on Pharaoh's side, which were the magicians, are also removed.

So that they are there, there seems to be this like closer and closer, the proximity is getting closer and closer.

You know, it like have you guys ever seen an action movie?

In action movies, there are these things called a henchmen.

And when you're the hero of the story, you have to kill the henchman.

And when you do, it can be exciting, and there's usually one particularly bad henchman.

But when you get to the climax of the movie, you've got to face the final boss head on.

And there's that narrative structure that's happening in the Exodus story so that it will be finally plain, God is the Lord over all of this.

And uh it'll be it'll be shown there in very cool ways.

So with that, let us turn towards our time of communion.

In 1 Corinthians 11, 23, Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

What does it mean when we say that by this we proclaim the Lord's death?

He took the bread and he said, This is my body which is broken for you.

And he took the cup, he said, This is the blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for you.

By this we proclaim the Lord's death.

Is there any other faith that has at the center of our story the humiliation of our God?

But he laid down his life on our behalf so that he might take it up again.

And in taking it up again, he said that not even death can hold him.

And this is our hope that his sacrifice is effective for our salvation.

That if you trust in the Lord, you will be saved.

How can you know that?

Because there's none more absolute.

He is faithful to deliver what he promises.

He holds all things.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless this time of communion and that you would work in our hearts to trust that the absoluteness of your sovereignty over all things might become this source of absoluteness of trust in our hearts for the work of your salvation, and that those things which we face now in our lives, Lord, that we would not be hardened by them, but that they would be effective to soften us in greater dependence upon you, so that our joy in you might be more and more complete.

We lift this up in Jesus' name, Amen.