Struck Down and Brought Out

Good morning again, everybody. Thank you, worship team, for leading us. Pastor Jason is away this week, and so we are going to pause our Second Kings series.

We'll take that up next week. Instead, today, I want to draw your attention to another Old Testament story, the story of Israel's exodus from Egypt.

Go ahead and turn your Bibles to the book of Exodus. We're going to be in chapter 12 today, chapter 12 of Exodus. And while you turn there, I want you to think back to this week that we just finished. It was lovely, wasn't it?

Like Courtney said. The sun was out. Temperatures were up. Flowers were pushing up from the ground. That's so neat to see. People were kind of pushing out of their houses, going outside.

And now that we've gotten this taste of spring, we're ready to be done with winter. But winter isn't quite done with us. We saw that today. We still have days like today, lows in the 20s, I think. Maybe some snow later this afternoon.

But we want—sorry, I know. I have no control. Whether I say it or not, it's going to happen. But we want spring. I mean, we've already sprung forward. Isn't that in the name?

We sprung forward. It's time for spring. We wish we could just move on. We want to move on. Well, in Exodus 12, the Israelites, they were ready to move on.

But it was to move on from something that was much more serious than winter. They had been stuck in the land of Egypt for 430 years. It's a long time.

They suffered slavery and hardship and oppression. They longed to leave, to be free. They called out to God for their deliverance, and God heard their cry.

He sent Moses and his brother Aaron to Egypt to prepare God's people to leave and to warn Pharaoh that he should let God's people go voluntarily.

Well, Pharaoh refused, and so God used Moses and Aaron to work great signs and wonders, revealing God's power to Pharaoh. And he warned Pharaoh that he must be obeyed.

But time and time again, Pharaoh continued to refuse. Well, in our passage this morning, Exodus 12, verses 29 through 42, we're going to read verses 29 through 42, we see that God's warnings are over.

Exodus 12:29–42

God finally brings judgment against Pharaoh, and God's people are finally freed to move on. With that, let's dive into Exodus chapter 12. We'll pick up in verse 29, and we'll go to verse 42.

Exodus 12 · chapter mention

Follow along as I read. At midnight, the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne, to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock.

And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead.

Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel, and go serve the Lord as you have said.

Take your flocks and your herds as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also. The Egyptians were urgent with the people to send them out of the land in haste, for they said, We shall all be dead.

So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls being bound up in their cloaks on their backs. The people of Israel had also done as Moses told them, for they asked the Egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and clothing.

And the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. Thus they plundered the Egyptians.

And the people of Israel journeyed from Ramses to Succoth, about 6,000 men on foot besides women and children. A mixed multitude also went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds.

And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough that they had brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, because they were thrust out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves.

The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt.

It was a night of watching by the Lord to bring them out of the land of Egypt. So this same night is a night of watching, kept to the Lord by all the people of Israel throughout the generations.

Would you pray with me once again? Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are true, that you have revealed your truth to us in your word. So we pray that you would bring your truth to bear on our hearts this morning.

May your living and active word plow deep furrows in our hearts. May it take root and bear fruit and lead us to ever-deepening faith in Jesus.

It's in Jesus that we pray. Amen.

Well, our passage opened with an act of judgment. And that judgment might have seemed abrupt to us, just picking up from verse 29, but this had been coming for 12 chapters now.

Over and over, God had been calling Pharaoh to let his people go and worship him in the wilderness. And each time that Pharaoh refused to listen, God sent a great wonder, a plague, to judge Pharaoh and the Egyptians for failing to listen, to obey.

And that happened nine times. Finally, in chapter 11, God had enough of this game because he must be obeyed. And so he promised a tenth plague, a plague so great that it would melt Pharaoh's hard-hearted resolve.

That's what we see in Exodus 11. Through Moses, the Lord said to Pharaoh, About midnight, I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die.

And after that, I will go out. God told Pharaoh that this was going to happen. But even with these somber words ringing in his ears, Pharaoh still refused to obey God.

It seemed that Pharaoh viewed this warning from God as some kind of empty or exaggerated threat. But God doesn't make empty threats. A warning from God, if ignored, is as good as a promise.

And in verse 29, we see God make good on his promise.

It says,

They were struck down by God. Did you notice that? It says, The Lord struck down. Yahweh struck down. God brought this judgment on Egypt. He struck down its firstborn.

Today, we hear many people trying to distance or separate God from his wrathful judgment. But I want to encourage you not to be fooled by any such nonsense.

Because this is not in the Bible. We cannot separate the mercy of God from the judgment of God. They are both aspects of his perfect character.

The Bible does not hide the wrath of God. It is not embarrassed by the judgment of God. In fact, in our passage, it's actually highlighted. Old Testament scholars tell us that the Hebrew structure in this passage draws extra attention to God bringing the judgment.

Usually in Hebrew, a subject will follow a verb. Okay? But here, the subject, God, precedes the verb struck down. This is a Hebrew device that puts extra emphasis on what is going down.

Extra emphasis on the fact that God did the striking. That means God wants us to see that he himself, in his holiness and justice, struck down all the firstborn of the land of Egypt.

But why the firstborn? God explained this to us, explained this to Pharaoh in Exodus 4. Exodus 4, 22 and 23. Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn.

And I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me. If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son. The people of Israel were like God's firstborn son.

God's firstborn. Pharaoh enslaved God's firstborn. He oppressed God's firstborn. In Exodus 1, he even ordered the murder of the sons of God's firstborn.

So by striking down the firstborn, God brought Pharaoh's methods, Pharaoh's devices, back down upon his own head. At the end of verse 29, we see that no Egyptian, no Egyptian firstborn was spared from this act of judgment, from this plague.

Every firstborn, from the firstborn of Pharaoh to the firstborn of prisoners, even the firstborn among the livestock, young, old, rich, poor, powerful, weak, animal, human, no Egyptian was spared.

In verse 30, we see that no Egyptian was sleeping either. In this terrible scene, we see that every Egyptian rose up in the middle of the night because death had come to every household in Egypt.

As more and more bodies were discovered, more and more people woke up, more and more people bellowed out in anger, in anguish, in fear. A great cry went up in Egypt is what we read.

And this is intended to make us think back to the beginning of Exodus, to the people of God crying out under the oppression of Egypt. Now, the Egyptians were the ones doing the crying out.

Here again, we see the devices of Egypt, the method of Egypt being brought down on Egypt's own heads. As the cries of the Egyptians rang out in Pharaoh's ears, as his own son lay dead in his bed, Pharaoh finally had enough.

It says that he summoned Moses and Aaron by night. That means that same night, right away. It's unclear if he brought Moses and Aaron to the palace, or if he just sent them a messenger with his summons.

But either way, Pharaoh's message to them was very clear. Up, he said, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel. Go and serve the Lord as you have said.

Take your flocks and your herds as you have said, and be gone. Pharaoh was finally waving the white flag. But even in surrender, Pharaoh still wanted to pretend that he was actually in charge.

Did you notice that, the way that he spoke to Moses and Aaron? It was this string of commands. You know, he says, up, go out, you and your people, go, take your animals, be gone, this series of commands.

I'm still in charge. But no one was fooled. Pharaoh's commands were exactly in line with the demands that God had made upon him. In fact, Pharaoh was actually giving up even more than he was asked.

You know, God asked for this quick trip for his people to go and worship him and then come back to Egypt. But Pharaoh offered the people to leave permanently.

You know, he said, be gone. And that meant stay gone. But before they left, this was interesting. Pharaoh had this one final kind of awkward demand, command.

At the end of verse 32, he says, bless me also. I thought that was strange. Scholar Desmond Alexander, he nicely summarized what I think all of us are thinking as we read Pharaoh's command to bless him also.

He wrote, given his harsh exploitation of the Israelites, this petition is exceptionally presumptuous and self-centered. In spite of all that has happened, Pharaoh seeks some kind of reward for the concessions that he has just granted to the Israelites.

Even at this stage, Pharaoh seems reluctant to concede defeat. Some people just never learn. Still, God's judgment did get far enough into Pharaoh's dense skull to prompt him to order the release of the Israelites.

God was bringing out his people from Egypt. And in verse 33, we see that the Egyptians are ready to let them go. They were eager to see them go, in fact.

It says the Egyptians were urgent with the people to send them out in haste. Now, this is supposed to catch our attention, that word urgent, urgent with the people.

The word translated urgent here is the same word that was used in chapter 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, over and over. This word urgent was used to describe Pharaoh's heart.

Pharaoh's heart was being hardened against God. You know that word urgent against God. That word could also be translated, it was made strong.

Pharaoh's heart had been made strong against God, made strong to keep God's people in Egypt. But now, the Egyptians' hearts were made strong to get the people out of Egypt.

We see here again, God is turning the methods of his enemies back on themselves. They were once made strong, now they are made strong for his purpose.

Now, we might think the Egyptians' newly found urgency to see the Israelites freed, maybe that sprang up from some kind of newfound faith in God.

Well, it didn't. It came from a sense of self-preservation. That's what we read. They were worried that keeping God's people around would result in more death and more judgment.

So they wanted them gone and gone in haste. In verse 34, we see the people of God, they didn't waste any time. They were told to leave in haste, and so they left in haste.

Though they typically would bake fresh bread every morning, they left even before the dough had time to rise. They wrapped up their dough, their kneading bowls, anything else they could grab.

They wrapped them up quickly, they threw them into packs, and they carried them off on their shoulders. You know, I thought it was like they're like a dad trying to get out of the door for a family vacation.

You know, like, we have to go right now! If you haven't packed it already, you're not going to need it, I guarantee you. Plus, they have Walmart wherever they're going.

This is the dad getting ready to leave for vacation. This is what the Israelites were doing as they were getting ready. But in verse 35, we see that the Israelites, they weren't thinking of stopping at Walmart on the way because God told them that they would get everything they needed from the Egyptians.

In Exodus 3 and Exodus 11, Moses told the people that when they were freed, they were supposed to get everything that they needed from the Egyptians.

They were supposed to ask their Egyptian neighbors for jewelry and clothing. And I thought that was interesting. You know, why jewelry? Why clothing?

Well, these things were really valuable. They were valuable things. Plus, God's people could carry them really easily on their journey. That made me think back to the book, Great Expectations.

You know, the main character, his name's Pip. One of his friends, he's named Wimmick. And he is always advising Pip to get his hands on what he calls portable property.

Get yourself some portable property, my lad. And that was small, valuable things that could be kept on his person, could be easily converted to cash when they needed it.

And so it's kind of like that in this passage. You know, God's people were supposed to get their own portable property. And they were supposed to get it from the Egyptians.

But they weren't supposed to steal it. They weren't supposed to take it by force. They were just supposed to ask the Egyptians to voluntarily hand over the portable property.

On verse 35, we see that the people obeyed Moses. They asked their Egyptian neighbors for their own fine jewelry and clothing. And God had been preparing the hearts of the Egyptians for such a request.

And he had given Israel favor in the sight of the Egyptians. So that's what we read in our passage. And so these Egyptians, they didn't put up a fight at all.

They just merely let Israel have all that they asked. Here we see yet another example of the enemies of God falling prey to their own devices.

You know, the Egyptians demanded slave labor from the Israelites to build up their wealth and their power. But now, as the Israelites are going, they just freely give of their wealth.

Give back to the Israelites what they had stored up for themselves. And because of this, the people of God plundered. That's what the text says.

They plundered. They took. They took as an act of kind of conquering. They plundered their one-time masters. So the people of God, they have this plunder, this new plunder in their pockets.

They have their essentials on their backs. And they set out from Egypt. The text tells us that they traveled from the city of Ramses to the city of Sukkoth.

I have a map behind me. It shows the kind of best guesses of where those cities were. We don't know for sure. But they think Ramses was kind of at the west end of the map, the start of that red line.

And Sukkoth, you can see, is kind of southeast from there. So they traveled from Ramses to Sukkoth. And at the end of verse 37, we get this kind of update on the number of people who were making this trip.

The ESV says that there were 600,000 men besides women and children. That would mean that the entire group of Israelites leaving Egypt, including the women and children, that could have been as large as 2 million people.

I mean, that's a big group. Now, most scholars, including evangelical scholars who have a commitment to the truth of God's word, they say that this figure was unlikely.

You know, 600,000 men, 2 million people. And they point out that the word translated thousands, you know, 600,000s. This could also be translated as units, you know, like military units.

So what Moses is writing about is 600 units of men. So it could be 600,000 men. It could be 600 units of men. We can't really be sure. But either way, the point seems to be that the Israelites had grown.

They had grown to a healthy number, a full number. In verse 38, we see that they're not alone. They're joined by this mixed multitude. This mixed multitude was coming with them.

This mixed multitude, this was a group of non-Hebrews that voluntarily decided to join the Israelites and adopt their faith and customs. Old Testament scholar Douglas Stewart writes,

These people, this mixed multitude, these are people who had observed the miraculous work of Yahweh, Israel's God, and had become convinced that conversion to him and life among his people would represent their best hope for the future.

So they joined the Israelites on their way out, a mixed multitude. The group we see also had very much livestock. You know, it's a big, healthy group.

And this is, again, interesting because Pharaoh sought to snuff out to shrink God's people. But as he did that, their numbers only increased.

Their possessions only grew, even taking some of the possessions from the Egyptians. Well, at Succoth we read that this great multitude, they stopped, they made camp.

For dinner, they baked, excuse me, they baked the unleavened bread that they hastily wrapped up on the morning of their departure. And we're going to learn more about the importance of this detail later on in the future as we look at Exodus some other time.

But for now, in verses 40 to 42, we get this kind of ending summary, a very brief summary of God's people, of God's people's time in Egypt. It says that they had spent 430 years in Egypt.

430 years from the time probably that Abraham first visited Egypt in Genesis to the day that the host of the Lord was finally freed. 430 long years.

And now they were finally freed. That time in Egypt was over. That day of freedom had come. But that great day of freedom, it was only made possible by that terrible night of judgment.

So the writer ends on talking about this that night. It was a terrible night of judgment. But during that night, just like during the previous 430 nights before it, 430 years of nights before it, during that night, God was watching over his people.

It was a night of watching by the Lord. He was watching, waiting to rescue them, watching, waiting to bring them out. And so because of that, because God watched over his people on that night, every year Israel was supposed to remember that night, keeping it as a night of watching themselves,

a night of remembering what God had done for his people, remembering that God struck down Egypt and that he brought out his people. Well, as we pause, as we consider this passage this morning,

Egypt being struck down, Israel being brought out, how might God want to bring his word to bear on our heart, on your heart this morning? How might God want to use this passage, this true story, to help point you to Jesus?

How might he want to give you examples to live by, things to do, things to avoid? How might he want to do that for you today? Well, in hopes of answering these questions, I want to leave you with three summarizing points, three summarizing points from our passage.

I'll try not to move my slides too quickly because I've been told I go too fast. So we'll start with point number one, summarizing point number one, the unresponsive will experience God's judgment.

The unresponsive will experience God's judgment. Moses warned Pharaoh the judgment would come. He called Pharaoh to let God's people go before it was too late, but Pharaoh refused to listen.

He was seemingly indifferent or skeptical that judgment would actually come. He remained unresponsive to God's commands. But then, at midnight, Pharaoh and the rest of the Egyptians, they found out.

They came face to face with the judgment of God. God has warned us of a greater and final act of judgment that is still yet to come, that this act of judgment in Egypt points forward too.

And the Bible tells us about this day of judgment. This is the day of the Lord, the last day, when the Lord Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead.

The righteous on that day will be glorified. They'll be restored. They'll be fully reconciled to God. The wicked, however, will be cast out with Satan and his angels into a state of eternal conscious punishment.

Much worse than what the Egyptians faced in our passage. And in that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, a much deeper anguish than the cries of the Egyptians that we read about today.

Because each one of us has sinned, we've chosen our pride and pleasure instead of God's purposes. We have chosen to join in with the wicked.

And because of that, we deserve to bear God's judgment for all eternity. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, provided a way for us to escape this judgment, to escape our deserved fate.

And it's through Jesus. Jesus, who took on flesh and lived without sin, completely righteous himself, and then offered himself up on the cross to die for our sins, becoming sin who knew no sin.

On the cross, Jesus bore God's wrath for our sin, God's judgment for our sin upon himself. So now, anyone who would turn from sin and believe in the Lord Jesus, turning to God through faith in him, can escape God's judgment.

Through faith in Jesus, we are made new creations. We're brought out from among the wicked, and we're accounted among the righteous. By grace, you can be saved.

But you have to respond. You have to respond to God's saving work in Christ. You have to receive it through faith in order to be delivered from the wrath that is to come.

Maybe today, you haven't become a Christian. You know, just because you're in church, that doesn't mean you put your faith in Jesus. Maybe today you haven't become a Christian.

And maybe you're indifferent to God's warning of coming judgment. Maybe you don't believe that God will actually judge anyone. Maybe you believe God's judgment will just be experienced in this life.

You know, simply living in less than ideal circumstances on this earth. Or maybe you think you'll have time to deal with that judgment stuff later on.

I want you to hear this warning from the Apostle Peter, 2 Peter 3. But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

Judgment is coming. God told us it is, and he is not a man that he should lie. Let Pharaoh be a warning to you today. Midnight will come. The day of the Lord is at hand.

Would you turn from your sin and turn to the Lord Jesus in faith? Would you respond today to God's offer of mercy in Christ before it's too late?

Let today be the day of your salvation.

A second emphasis that I want to bring out from this passage, point number two, the enemies of God fall by their own devices. The enemies of God fall by their own devices.

That means their plans backfire. They fall prey to their plans. Did you notice in our passage how this proved true time and time again for Pharaoh and the Egyptians?

You know, Pharaoh once sought to hold on to God's firstborn, and then he lost the firstborn from his own land. Pharaoh once ordered the murder of Israel's sons.

Then his own son was struck down. Pharaoh made the Israelites cry out in oppression. Then the Egyptians cried out in judgment. Pharaoh was determined not to let God's people go.

Then his people were determined to make them leave and leave in haste. The Egyptians used God's people to build up wealth, and then they volunteered their wealth back to God's people.

Egypt made all these plans. They contrived all these schemes, utilized all these clever methods, but their devices failed. They backfired. Egypt fell into their own traps.

The enemies of God will fall by their own devices. This is a truth that's taught time and time again throughout the Bible. It especially comes up in Psalms and in Proverbs.

I have a few Psalms. I have a Psalm and a Proverb for you. First is Psalm 7. Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies.

He makes a pit, digging it out, and he falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his skull his violence descends.

Or how about Proverbs 26? Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and a stone will come back on him who starts it rolling. The enemies of God will fall by their own devices.

God wants us to remember that. God wants you to remember that. Because that's not some abstract kind of thing. That's a very practical truth.

It can provide us very practical help in times of need. I mean, it can help us when we've been wronged. Let's say you find yourself being wrongfully treated because you're a Christian.

If you're wronged like this, you might be tempted to get revenge. You might start looking for an opportunity to get even. After all, you don't want people or companies to get away with that kind of mistreatment of Christians.

Well, this truth reminds us that they won't get away with it anyway. The enemies of God and the enemies of the people of God will fall by their own devices.

With that in mind, we can resist the temptation to get revenge. We don't have to even solve the problem. The enemies of God will take care of that themselves.

Knowing that, we can just move on. Knowing that the offenders will fall by their own wrongdoing. It can help us, the truth that God's enemies will fall by their own ways.

That can help us when we have been wrong. But this truth can also help us in times of uncertainty. You know, sometimes conflicts in this world are confusing.

You aren't really sure who's telling the truth. Who's lying. You aren't sure who is actually an ally or who is an enemy. You aren't sure what's actually happening below the surface of things.

What's hidden. And that can leave you uncertain about what to do. But with the truth that God's enemies will fall by their own devices in mind, we can rest even in our uncertainty.

We don't have to have everything figured out. Instead, we can simply turn to God and pray. We can pray that the enemies of God would fall into their own traps.

We can pray that whatever mischief is at work would fall back on their own heads. Pray that God's enemies would be exposed as enemies. God's enemies will fall.

They will fail. Sometimes all we need to do is wait for that to happen. Our third summarizing point, our final summarizing point today, the people of God can plunder blessing from their suffering.

The people of God can plunder blessing from their suffering. The Israelites spent 430 years in Egypt. Egypt. They labored. They hurt. They lost.

Egypt was a place of suffering. But as God delivered them, God allowed them to plunder Egypt. They were able to take precious jewelry and fine clothing from the Egyptians.

Their source of suffering became a source of blessing for them. And in this providential act, God was revealing a pattern. You know, how he works in the lives of his people, not just then, but over and over, even into now.

And while we live in this sin-cursed world, God allows us to experience suffering. And this suffering is real. It's painful. It's heartbreaking.

But in our suffering, God provides us opportunities to grow, to pull blessings from our sufferings, to plunder our sufferings. We can take things from our sufferings.

The scriptures tell us this. It tells us that we can plunder character from our sufferings. We can pull character from suffering. That's what it says in Romans 5, 3.

We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance. And endurance produces character. And character produces hope. God often uses suffering in this way.

He uses it to deepen us. He uses it to stretch our souls when we're in these seasons of hardship. We can take, we can plunder character from our suffering.

But we can also plunder perspective from our suffering. We can take perspective. That's what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4. He says, So we do not lose heart.

Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light, momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

You know, suffering can change our gaze. It can help us look from things that are seen to things that are unseen. Suffering can remind us that we are not just living for this fleeting, deteriorating life, but we are living for something more, something greater, something lasting.

We can plunder perspective from our suffering. But the Bible tells us we can also plunder dependence from our suffering. That's what, again, Paul says in 2 Corinthians, this time chapter 12.

He said, But he said, But God said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, Paul says, I will boast all the more gladly of all my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am made strong.

Suffering can remind us how weak we are, how much we need God, how little we can do without God. Suffering can cause us to depend upon God in unique ways.

We can plunder dependence from our suffering. We can also plunder ministry from our suffering. Ministry. And by that I mean that God can use our sufferings to equip us to uniquely minister to others.

That's what Joseph said in his story in Exodus, sorry, in Genesis rather. Joseph said this in Genesis. As he's talking to his brothers who sold him into slavery, he said, As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.

To bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. Joseph's suffering led him into a position of authority. And that allowed him to ensure that people around him had food during the famine.

He used that position to minister to others, to give them food in the famine. Because of his suffering, he was able to minister to the starving.

Some of you have already experienced this kind of plunder from suffering in your own lives. You know, because of what you have suffered, you're able now to strategically minister to others in the midst of their sufferings.

You now better know what to say. You know what not to say. You can anticipate what might be needed next. What step is next for a person? That's plunder that you're taking, that God is allowing you to take from your own suffering.

A ministry for the good of others. That's plunder that you can use to bless others. Plunder from your suffering. The people of God can plunder blessing from suffering.

Now, I say can intentionally. That's because I want to emphasize that there's nothing magical about suffering. As if, because we suffer, we are ensured some benefit.

That's not necessarily the case. I mean, Pharaoh's a good example of that in our passage. The key to plundering suffering, the key to benefiting blessing from suffering, suffering is God.

That's what Paul teaches us in Romans 8. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose.

In suffering, we need to place our trust in God. Asking him to give us eyes to see what blessing he may be providing in our hardship. Today, you might be here or you might be live streaming and you are in the midst

of suffering. It might be an acute situation. It might be something that's being drawn out or will continue to be drawn out.

In the midst of your suffering, even as you rightly ask God for deliverance, I want to encourage you to also ask God how he might be using your trial for your good.

Ask God to supernaturally give you eyes to see what he might want, what he might want you to plunder from your suffering. What blessings he might want you to draw out from your hardship.

Maybe it's deeper Christian character. Maybe it's a deeper dependence upon God. Maybe it's a heavenly perspective. Maybe it's a new ministry opportunity.

Christians can plunder blessing from suffering for God works all things for our good. The worship team is going to come now. They're going to lead us in a time of worship as we end our service today.

But as they come, I want to invite you to, would you stand with me and let's pray together once again. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this passage for the miraculous way you brought judgment on Egypt, the miraculous way you delivered your people.

Help us to see that these acts of judgment and mercy point forward to Jesus, how he bore the judgment that all of us deserved so that we could be delivered from our sin through faith in him.

As we do that, Father, we pray that you would give us responsive hearts. Help us to see our sin for all its ugliness, all its foolishness, as a rebellion against you, our creator.

And as we do see that, Father, help us to turn from that sin and to turn to Jesus for the mercy that only his death can provide. I pray especially for any here who are not Christians, Father, I ask you to draw them to yourself.

let today be the day of their salvation. And Father, I pray that you would minister to those in seasons of suffering. There are many in our congregation, Father, you know them.

I pray that you would help them to look to you in their suffering. Be a comfort and a refuge and a very present help in their time of need. And Father, as you promise you will, I pray that you would use our seasons of suffering for our good.

Give us character, and dependence, and perspective. Help us to see how you might be using our suffering to prepare us for the work of ministry, a new work, Father.

Help us to trust in you wherever you lead us. Be glorified in us as we sing. It's in Jesus that we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.