Hard Hearts (Exodus 6:28-7:24)

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Good morning church, you can go ahead, grab your Bibles, open up to Exodus chapter six, right near the end of the chapter. We’ll start in verse 28 Exodus 6:28, get through all of chapter seven. Then as you’re turning there, this woman named Jacqueline Duffin, who is a medical expert and practitioner, and who has written two separate books talking about the interplay between medicine and religion, and in particular, documenting the miraculous, so documenting just story after story of miracles that she and those around her have seen. But what’s interesting about all that is that she’s an atheist and has written these books documenting the miraculous. She says this, though still an atheist, I believe in miracles, wondrous things that happen, for which we can find no scientific explanation. I don’t know you, I find that curious, like I find this very curious, actually, to acknowledge the super natural on the one hand, and yet on the other hand, at the same time, affirm naturalism, atheism. Why? Why? I think, because it’s not a question of evidence. Faith is not a question of evidence. There’s plenty of evidence. It’s a question of, I believe, control, and who gets to be in control of your life? And we’re reluctant to hand that control over, even to God. Now, scripture has a name for that orientation. Scripture calls it a hard heart. A hard heart, the idea of hardness there being one of stubbornness to see and yet refuse to believe or to change course in the face of new evidence, because we are set in our ways. You know, I do what I want to do, and I’m only going to serve those gods that allow me to remain in control of my own life. That is our focus today. That kind of hardness of heart, and the question I want hanging over all of us as we look at this passage, is, do you have a hard heart? Is there any hardness of heart in you and to examine yourself in light of Pharaoh’s negative example, as we’ll see. So we’re going to look at Pharaoh here in these three scenes. And we get kind of the plan of what’s going to happen. It’ll preview what’s going to happen. And then we get the first plague, the confrontation with Pharaoh begins. This first blow falls on Egypt. Well, look at that first one. I got to give you a word of warning here. Okay, next week we’re going to cover the next eight. We are not going to read every verse of that lengthy, lengthy passage, nor will we comment equally on every part. And that’ll be true for a lot of Exodus, actually, because we’re going through it somewhat quickly in moments at least. So highly encourage you to take advantage of the three different places where we tell you what the passage is going to be. It’s there in the bottom of your bulletin. It says, Make it yours in the bottom inside right, read that passage for next week’s that you’ve read it all. You’ve heard God’s word, even as we focus in on some key parts, it’s also on the bookmark that we provide for you and is in the pulse as well. So just kind of no excuses. Okay, like you got the information. It’s on you at this point. But go ahead, read it, talk about it as a family, as a group, whatever it may be, and then come back ready for the next eight next week. But let’s dive in with the plan. First of all, this is when God lets Moses and Aaron know how this is all going to shake out. Here is Exodus six, beginning in verse 28 now, when the Lord spoke to Moses in Egypt, he said to him, I am the Lord. Tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, everything I tell you. But Moses said to the Lord, since I speak with faltering lips, why would Pharaoh Listen to me? Then the Lord said to Moses, See I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. You are to say everything I command you and your brother, Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt, and with mighty acts of judgment, I will bring out my divisions, my people, the Israelites and the Egyptians, will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it, Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord commanded them. Moses was 80 years old, and Aaron 83 when they spoke to Pharaoh. All right, we are picking the story back up after the genealogy that we had a. Last week. So we’ve talked about this. This was in Exodus 612, and 13. We get that repeated almost verbatim. God says, Hey, you’re going to go say this, and Moses whines yet again and says, I’m a man. I’m, you know, faltering lips. I can’t do this. We’re getting tired of all his complaints. But so that’s the just the repetition of what had happened earlier. And then we resume our story. Verse seven, God addresses that objection once again, and he says something interesting, I’ve made you like God to Pharaoh. And it’s actually even more interesting than it sounds, because the word like is not there in the Hebrew. It reads, literally, I have made you God to Pharaoh, which would sound really, really blasphemous if it weren’t God himself saying it. He’s the only one who is allowed to say that. I think now it’s not that Moses is suddenly divine. He’s elevated into the Pantheon, or something like that. It’s that he is going to embody God’s presence and authority to Pharaoh. I think the translation is accurate. Honestly, you will be like God to Pharaoh. God Himself will be speaking to Pharaoh through Moses, which, of course, should make us think about ourselves a little bit as well, because we’re in a very similar situation, aren’t we? And what does Paul tell us when he mentions that we’ve been given the ministry of reconciliation, he says, We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We are like God to the world in desperate need of the gospel. But this is all very interesting, because keep in mind that Pharaoh considered himself a god, and kind of made it law that everybody else had to consider him God too. So here God is beating Pharaoh at his own game. It’s like God is saying, Do you see the Big Shot king over there with a huge crown on his head, and everyone bowing down to him. That’s not God. Did you see this lowly Shepherd? Well, he’s going to be like God to you. Moses is going to be this human instrument of the Divine Will. And of course, when we hear all of this, it’s preparing us for the new and true Moses Jesus, who actually is God. Yes, he is the human embodiment of the Divine Will, but he is also divine. Now, all Moses and Aaron have to do is speak God’s words. That’s verse two. You are to speak. That’s it. All you gotta do, say what I told you to say. That’s your job, and God’s going to do the rest. You catch that shift from you to I, beginning in verse three, and it’s a long list of what God says he’s going to do. I’m going to harden, I’m going to multiply, I’m going to lay my hand, I’m going to bring you all out so that everyone will know that I am the Lord. It’s very free, and Moses doesn’t need to get Pharaoh’s attention. God will do that. And Moses doesn’t need to bring Israel out. God is going to do that. Moses doesn’t even need to come up with what to say. He just needs to say the things that God tells him to say. What? Again, a good reminder for us, because what are we called to do? Just to say the things that God told us to stay in Second Corinthians five again, right? God’s making his appeal through us. We’ve been given this ministry and this message of reconciliation. All you need to do is say that, and God will do the rest. Interestingly, though, God acknowledges that Moses will be unsuccessful, you’re going to say what I told you to say, and Pharaoh will not listen. I think that’s part of the good reminder for us also. Here’s the way Martin Luther put it. He says, We are bidden to preach, but we are not bidden to justify people and make them pious. This thought should comfort all Christians. Only the Word of God is entrusted to Moses, not the responsibility of making Pharaoh soft or hard by preaching. That is freeing, isn’t it? Should comfort us as Christians. All we have to do is speak the message of grace, and the rest is in God’s hands. We don’t have to convince anyone. We certainly aren’t going to convert anyone. That’s all on God, but we feel here again, the tension between divine sovereignty on the one hand and human responsibility on the other hand, because God says, again, I’m going to harden Pharaoh’s heart, and then later we’ll read that Pharaoh hardens his heart. So who is responsible for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart? And the answer is yes, both of them. Of course, we get an illustration of what this looks like, this tension, even if we were to look ahead to one of the later plagues, the plague of a hail how does the hail storm fall on. Egypt. Well, here’s how moist air rises, and as it goes up, it gets colder. So it freezes, and you get these little globules of ice, and then the water vapor around that little bit of ice gets cold because there’s ice there. And so it also hardens and attaches to it freezes around it, until eventually that bit of ice becomes heavy enough that the force of gravity is stronger than the force of the upward air current and hail falls. I’m really hoping somebody doesn’t know hail better than what I just said, Because if that’s wrong, that’s all I got. Okay, just cut and paste kind of thing. So that’s one way to describe what happened when the hail falls on Egypt? Here’s the other way to describe it. It’s in Exodus nine, verse 18, which we’ll see next week. God says, I will send the worst hail store that Egypt has ever seen. And both of those are 100% true at one in the same time, and the same is true here. God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, and also Pharaoh hardens his heart through a series of choices, until those choices become a fixed habit, and then the series of habits become a fixed character, so that he becomes maximally set in his ways, and no repentance is possible for him any longer. That is a warning for us. The time to repent, to stop making those choices, is now that we put sin to death today, because we don’t know when that point of no return is that moment when repentance is no longer possible because our heart has become irrevocably hardened. Maybe there’s some in this room who struggle with porn, and you just don’t know at what moment it is that you will come to love pornography more than you hate the thought of falling into hell, and you will continue in it and perish eternally. Or you don’t know when the careless words you know just your personality plus kind of your parents fault and all that stuff, when those careless words become who you are, gossip or lying or cruelty or just speaking in haste and you cannot change any longer. Or when C S Lewis talks about this one, when that grumbling mood, you know you’re just kind of an angry person, and over 20 or 40 or 60 or 80 years, you get more and more cantankerous, and you think that’s not that big a deal, but after 10 million years, maybe you’re nothing but the grumble. Lewis says, that’s what we’re talking about. That’s why this is serious, because at a certain point we become enslaved wholly to our sins. It’s like every time we choose to sin, it’s like we’re we’re wrapping that cord around us another loop. Every time we choose not to sin, we choose to obey God. It’s like we unwrap it once. Not talking about salvation, here I am talking about sanctification, all that kind of stuff. But you know that point where eventually you just get so tangled up, there’s no untangling. I got four daughters. I know what this looks like, right? There comes a point where the brush just goes, nope, that’s not coming out. This rubber band is in there. It is fixed and good, and we’re going to cut that out, because that’s the only way this is coming out. And that is basically what the Lord says to us as well, that’s why God calls these. Did you notice that mighty acts of judgment? These are mighty acts of judgment. God is not just showing off his power to Pharaoh here. There’s a moral context for the plagues. This is a just punishment for sin, and in the end, then that means that the overarching purpose of the plagues all will know that God is who He says He is. That was Pharaoh’s question, right? We saw this last week. We’ve talked about it when Moses comes to Pharaoh and says, The Lord says, Let my people go. And Pharaoh says, Who God’s answering the question. Now this is who. So we will all know God is who He says He is. We will either know His mercy in salvation or his wrath in judgment, but we will all know him today, today, as Caitlin read for us earlier today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart. Listen and obey, like Moses and Aaron in verse six, they just did, just as the Lord commanded them, which, by the way, is really nice to see, after all the hemming and hawing we’ve gotten for the last few chapters here that finally Moses is like, Okay, I’m just gonna do it now and also do it despite their age. Like, we just gotta talk about this for a moment. Moses is 80 Aaron is 83 Can I talk to you senior saints for a moment as a young whippersnapper, and some of you are like, young, really? I’m like, yeah. Yes, okay, compared to the senior saints, at least, I do not see anything in scripture that talks about retiring from ministry. There’s nothing here that says, You know what, you’ve served in kids city long enough you put in your time, you’re done now. God says, Moses, I got a job for you. It’s gonna be 40 years in the desert, even though you’ve been collecting Social Security for a decade and a half already. All right, we still get to serve the ministry fair outside, by the way. So after the service, senior saints will see you out there too, is my point. All right, this takes us then to the preview, because Moses and Aaron obey. They’re ready to talk to Pharaoh. Here is the preview, verses eight to 13. Let me read it for us. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, when Pharaoh says to you, perform a miracle, then say to Aaron, take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh and it will become a snake. So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts. Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake, but Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. Yet Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had said. So this short scene is just a preview of coming attractions. The way it actually functions is a little bit like an overture before a musical. The point of the overture is that while you’re sitting there waiting for the musical to start, you hear the musical themes that are going to be repeated over and over again. So you kind of get them in your head like, Okay, I know what I’m listening for. That’s it exactly. Because we get some themes here, like Pharaoh here, he even asks for a sign, but his whole attitude has always been prove it, and so then God proves it, and Pharaoh doesn’t believe it. The Magicians show up and we’ll replicate the miracle and come back next week see how well that goes for them. We see over and over again that God’s power is greater than Egypt’s power and the power of Egyptian gods. And then Pharaoh’s heart hardens. God hardens it. Pharaoh hardens it. It just hardens. And all this happens. As the Lord said, everything is happening because God is sovereign over it. Those are some of the themes we’re going to hear again and again. So Pharaoh asked for a miracle. Make sure you’re clear on this. Pharaoh asks for a miracle so that he can persist in unbelief, much like the Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign, because they’re saying prove it, and then I’m going to find the proof unconvincing, so that I don’t have to believe and then it’s your fault, not mine. That’s what’s happening here. Seeking a sign is no proof of an open mind. It could be quite the opposite, and that’s important for some of you in this room who are going, if only God would prove himself. It is not necessarily a sign of an open mind. Could be quite the opposite, especially because he has proven himself, reminded the famous story of Bertrand Russell, a TV interviewer. He was a noted atheist in the 60s, and a TV interviewer asked him, you know, what are you going to do if, after you die, you stand face to face with God? And he says, Why didn’t you believe in me? By the way, Bertrand Russell’s dead. This happened, and Bertrand Russell said, I will say to him, not enough evidence. Not enough evidence. By the way, that is not what Bertrand Russell said to God. I am confident he did not open his mouth in the presence of God Almighty. But here’s the thing, Russell was wrong. There is more than enough evidence. There are signs all around. Creation itself is a sign. The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Psalm 19, verse one, the resurrection is the big, flashing neon sign like we keep talking about, and even the miracles of the sort that Jacqueline Duffin recorded in her works. It is not a question of evidence. It is a question of the heart, and that is Pharaoh’s problem. It is interesting that God has Moses have Aaron throw the staff down. We kind of picture Moses doing all this stuff, right? But it’s not. It’s actually Aaron who strikes the Nile River. Why is that, exactly? And it’s because Pharaoh has magicians. So anytime the magicians are present, it’s Aaron who is actually doing this stuff or speaking. And this is so that Moses and Pharaoh can can come at one another as equals. It’s like, you know, President Iceland visits President United States, and they both bring their chief of staff, the bag man, so they can look behind him and be like, what’s the I need to let me know. So that’s what’s happening here. That’s why Aaron is the one doing all this. So he throws his staff down, and it turns into a snap. Snake. Word there, by the way, is not the normal word for snake. It’s actually the word for Dragon, is how it’s translated into the Greek and stuff. So this is the big snake, which we’ll see in a moment. There is so much going on here. The snake is, as I’ve said already, a symbol of Egypt, like Pharaoh’s crown has got the female Cobra in it. And in fact, the coronation ceremony for a pharaoh really centers on a snake. At a certain point the ceremony, the Pharaoh would say, Oh, great one, oh fiery snake, let there be terror of me, like terror of thee. Let there be fear of me like the fear of thee, inviting Satan into his heart at that time. We need that background to understand what Moses and Aaron and God is doing here. This is a direct attack on Pharaoh’s majesty. This is not just a cool sign. So we got our president of Iceland came to see the President of the United States there in the Oval Office, if at a certain point, the president of Iceland looks over at her chief of staff, and the Chief of Staff pulls out of the bag a bald eagle and wrings its neck and throws it dead on the resolute desk. That’s not a comment on animal rights activism, because the bald eagle is the US. That’s, you know, borderline declaration of war or something like that. That’s what Moses and Aaron have just done. Now, it’s true that Pharaoh’s magicians are able to replicate the miracle snake charmers exist. It’s a real thing. I learned a lot about this this past couple of weeks. Apparently you can pinch a cobra in the back of its neck. Did you know snakes have necks? I thought the whole thing was a neck, but apparently it’s got a neck. You pinch a nerve in the back of its neck, and it goes rigid, and you can actually use it like a cane. And then if you throw it down, it like jolts the snake, and it starts moving like a snake again. Maybe that’s what’s happening here. Maybe they really are using the dark arts, but it is the reminder that miracles don’t necessarily prove anything. Paul talks about this Second Thessalonians two because he says there is an enemy who is a snake, by the way, and that that lawless one, the enemy Satan, will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie. Signs and wonders exactly what we’re the words we use to describe the plagues, like Satan can do them also in God’s providence, I might add. And so it’s important for us to keep in mind. I think this is important for us to keep in mind, because there’s always that temptation to be drawn to displays of power. It says the prosperity gospel. In a nutshell, you get these pastors who usually call themselves prophets or apostles, who do some sort of miracle, and it’s like, Well, look, then I must be authenticated by God because I did a miracle. And this would suggest otherwise. Jesus would suggest otherwise as well. In Matthew seven, verse 22 look, if your temptation is toward the prosperity gospel, there’s a good chance you’re not here in this church, not where we struggle. But that’s not the only sign that we can read wrongly. Maybe it’s not the prosperity gospel. Maybe it’s the pragmatic gospel. What is the sign of pragmatism? Well, it’s a big budget and increasing numbers, and you start to go, well, that that must mean the hand of the Lord is on this congregation, maybe, but then again, maybe not. And so we need to be weary always. So all that’s going on, but the most important part of the story, of course, is that Aaron’s snake, the dragon snake, devours the other snakes like there’s no contest. Aaron takes on Egypt’s gods and wins. God takes on Egypt’s gods and wins. And this is how God always takes on other gods, a full frontal assault. In fact, even the fact that it’s a snake taking on snake gods is really important full frontal assault, and it is grace. It is grace. It is love when God declares war on your false gods to show you how powerless they are. It is grace when you who worship power are brought to a place of weakness. It is grace when you who worship pleasure find no enjoyment in your sin. It is grace when you who worship money find yourself at the brink of bankruptcy. And it’s grace because it exposes the powerlessness of other gods in what do you trust? Really? See on what do you lean when life gets hard? Is it strong enough or not? The problem with false gods is it’s like putting all your weight on a broken femur. It will collapse when you need that weight. It’s like building a skyscraper on a swamp. We need a firm foundation. We need the one who conquered our enemies, like sin and death, and, yes, Satan as well, because you can’t miss that symbolism here, either can you. Who is our enemy? He’s a snake, right? And what’s the original promise in Scripture that one of Eve’s descendants is going to stomp on the head of the enemy, that snake Jesus has defeated and will defeat Satan in the end, just a few verses before, Paul talks about those counterfeit miracles that the lawless one will create, he says of the lawless one, the snake, the Lord Jesus, will overthrow him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by the splendor of His coming. That’s a god you could put some weight on. Don’t forget the overarching purpose, right, that we might know the Lord. And that’s why judgment here is an act of mercy, because it opens eyes so that Pharaoh the Egyptians so that we can see who God is. It also answers the why question many of us today in this culture are uncomfortable with the idea of judgment like plagues. Really, you’re coming at me with plague like what a petty, unforgiving sadist you worship you Christians, but every protest against judgment minimizes the heinousness of sin. God is sovereign. He is the only God, which means that sin amounts to cosmic treason. And that’s why God takes it seriously. That’s why we must take it seriously. But he gives us so many opportunities to turn and to trust and to receive forgiveness. That’s what the plagues are. He doesn’t start with the 10th. He starts with the first to say, now, now would be a good time. Was that enough? Did you see it? Pay attention. And so let’s dive in then to this first plague, verses 14 to 24 Then the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh’s heart is unyielding. He refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he goes out to the river, confront him on the bank of the Nile and take in your hand the staff that was changed into a snake. Then say to Him, the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to say to you, Let my people go so that they may worship Me in the wilderness. But until now, you have not listened. This is what the Lord says. By this you will know that I am the Lord with the staff that is in my hand, I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood. The fish in the Nile will die and the river will stink. The Egyptians will not be able to drink its water. The Lord said to Moses, tell Aaron, take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over the streams and canals, over the ponds and all the reservoirs, and they will turn to blood. Blood will be everywhere in Egypt, even vessels of wood and stone. Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials, and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood. The fish in the Nile died, and the river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water. Blood was everywhere in Egypt, but the Egyptian magicians did the same things by their secret arts, and Pharaoh’s heart became hard. He would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said, Instead, he turned and went into his palace and did not even take this to heart. And all the Egyptians dug along the Nile to get drinking water because they could not drink the water of the river. Pharaoh’s heart is unyielding. The literal word there is heavy, which is interesting, because the Hebrew word for heavy is the Hebrew word for glory. So it’s the same word of glory, but it because to be glorious is to be weighty with substance. But here heavy, heavy is right. Unyielding is right. Why? Because heavy means unyielding. Force equals mass times acceleration. If you increase mass, we got to increase force to move it. The problem with Pharaoh’s heart, it’s a little bit like a kindergartner pushing against a bank vault door. It’s too heavy, and so there’s no movement here. That’s what God is saying. So he strikes Egypt with a series of blows. That’s the word that the Scripture uses to describe what happens here. It’s not plague, it’s blows. He’s striking Egypt. Just kind of going like, Was that enough? Did you wake up now, like, tenderizing meat? Is it going to be soft? Is it going to yield? Because the terms are non negotiable, and we’ll see this next week. It never changes. Why? Because it’s God. This is not a real estate transaction. And two equal parties negotiating. This is more like my negotiating with Callum when it comes to his bedtime, every new demand he makes, it’s like, no, it still goes down this way. We’re not having a discussion about this. That’s how God is with petulant Pharaoh. So the terms are non negotiable here in this story, it’s Let My People Go so they may worship Me. The terms are still non negotiable today. Here today, the terms are repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And those are always the terms. So Moses, Aaron, take the staff, issue the demand, remind pharaoh of the purpose, and then Aaron strikes the Nile River, and with it the cluster of Egyptian gods who live there. Now the Nile River is the lifeblood of Egypt. It is the whole country, and certainly the whole country’s economy in liquid form. So to take out the Nile River would be like taking out the power grid here. It’s everything. No industry happens. There’s no internet. We can’t even stream our shows anymore, like it’s shut down at this point. Everything stops. It is a direct assault on Egypt’s security and prosperity, which we treasure above just about everything else, don’t we? So this is serious. Again, we’re asking the question in what do you really trust? And if the answer is not God, then God will www on it for your sake. This is not the only time that God’s brought the world to a standstill. I think of some of the times he’s done it more recently, like imagine being there in 1929 when your trust is in the market, in prosperity, in wealth that is a weak God many people learned on Black Friday, or what about us with covid or the Spanish flu or the plague itself? Years centuries before, that is your trust in medicine. Is your trust in your health? Because all it takes is one virus, one diagnosis to show you that you have absolutely no control over your health whatsoever. That is a weak God. Or what about World War One, or World War Two, or any of the umpteen gazillion wars we’ve had since then. Do you trust in politics? You trust in diplomacy? Do you trust in your leaders? That’s a weak God. And yet, I mean the market, politics, health. This is what most people are trusting in. Even still today, I find it so interesting that all the fish die. And of course, they do. Fish are meant to breathe water, not blood, but the Nile brought Egypt life, and all of a sudden, now it’s bringing death, and that’s exactly the point. Sin always brings death. It is the inevitable consequence of turning from him who is life. This has been the inevitable consequence since Eden, as soon as Adam and Eve go. I know you gave us one command. We’re just gonna break that one command though we eat. A bite of fruit, which is something that sustains life, ordinarily, what happens? You will surely die. So this all feels really serious, like, I don’t know about you, if you’re standing on the bank of the aisle, you’d think maybe your eyes would open, right? We’d like to think we’re probably fooling ourselves. But we’d like to think, What does Pharaoh do, though, Pharaoh just looks at his magicians, and when he looks at his magicians, what he’s saying is, is there a way for me to escape the inescapable conclusion in front of my eyes? And again, that is the perspective some of you may be bringing to all of the evidence God has given you of his existence and his demands on your life. Is there a way for me to escape the inescapable conclusion that is proof of a hard heart right there? But sure enough, the Egyptian magicians imitate God’s miracle. Sin and Satan are always imitative. By the way. They’re never creative. They’re always just taking what God has done and twisting it, never making anything new themselves. Because, by the way, if you were an Egyptian magician, what would be helpful in this situation? More blood. No. Like if you were going head to head with God and you wanted to show you got equal power, how about turn it back into water and the fish are twice as big as they used to be, then you’d be like, okay, all right, but that’s not what happens here. It’s more. Our blood, they don’t reverse the plague, which just reminds us that even Satan’s Counterfeit miracles serve God’s purposes, all he can do is more of what God is already doing. He is just a tool in God’s hands. And you want to know where you see that it’s when Satan thought, I can win. I will put the Son of God to death. I killed God, and in the process, defeated himself. Oh and oh, by the way, Jesus was just fine afterwards. But it’s enough. It’s enough to see this happen. He hardens his heart. He returns home, has himself a glass of wine instead of water. No big deal, and he doesn’t take the lessons to heart, even while his people are out digging wells for water. Not even a good ruler. Now here’s the thing, if Pharaoh had known how hard his heart was he would have been terrified. Even within his Egyptian religion, it’s a scales religion, which is what most of us work with. Even still today, how many times have you talked to somebody who said, Well, I’ve done more good than bad over the course of my life. The point is, even by that standard, we’re not making it. I don’t think those scales actually balance the way we think they do. And the Egyptians knew this, because in the Book of the Dead, there’s a famous story of a man named ani who stands in front of Anubis who’s going to weigh his heart against the feather of righteousness like literal scales. There’s another god amendment, who’s right there, by the way, waiting to devour the heart of the Damned. So you know, it’s got a certain poignancy this moment, but picture yourself in that scene like imagine, this is how the world actually works. I’ve done more good than bad. Okay, you’re gonna stand before God now and make that argument, and if you’re wrong, you get damned. How would you feel? How confident Would you feel that you’ve really done more good than bad. If somebody is weighing every thought you’ve ever had, every desire you’ve ever felt, every word you’ve carelessly spoken and every action you performed, you would be cowering in fear, So would I? So was Ani, by the way, he’s freaking out, he’s screaming, he’s sobbing, he’s pleading for mercy, not justice. That is the crushing burden of works righteousness right there of trying to earn your own salvation. Could you ever be sure? And friends, I have the very best news for you. You can absolutely be sure, not because of what you’ve done, but because of what someone else did for you. What does God promise us through his prophet Ezekiel, I will give you a new heart, right? I will take and will remove from you your heart of stone, hard, heavy, unyielding. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. You have a heart of stone when you come to this world, which means you are not going to make it, but Jesus stood in your place, and his is a weighty heart, a glorious heart. And so what happens if you trust in Him? He takes that heart of stone and stands on the scale with it and is damned in your place, suffers your punishment, so you can be rewarded in his place, right? This is so much better than Egypt. In Egypt, you got the feather of righteousness, right? Egypt saying, here’s the standard, now, live up to it. And in Christianity, Jesus says, I’m the standard, and you can have it. Take mine, I’ll give it to you. Today is the day. This is our big idea. It’s so simple in light of what we talked about, right? Today is the day. Now is the time to soften your heart to the one true God, don’t wait. Look. Blood is an ominous first sign, isn’t it? It’s gonna prepare us for the last and for the death that we deserve. It is this. Wake up call. I keep saying that Exodus is the paradigmatic salvation event. This is what salvation looks like in the Old Testament. It is, at the same time the paradigmatic judgment event in the Old Testament. This is what judgment looks like. And they always go together, because God can’t rescue Israel without striking Egypt. God can’t save sinners without destroying sin. They’re two sides the same coin. I use this analogy a lot. It’s a little bit like if terrorists are holding you hostage when SEAL Team Six shows up, that’s really good news for you, and really bad news for the terrorists. That’s what judgment is in our salvation, but that’s also why God sends so many signs beforehand. It’s all of these opportunities to turn and again. We have them too. We can read about them here. We have new ones today. God is not slow in keeping his promises. Paul tells us in Romans, he is patient, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance and a knowledge of the truth. Exactly So now is the time to soften your heart to the one true God. Take these signs to heart and turn and be saved. Let’s pray you. God, Father, we pray that You would open our eyes, soften our hearts, wake us up from our spiritual slumber, stupor, help us to see so clearly who you are, what you’ve done, who we are, what we’ve done, what we deserve, and the grace and mercy and salvation that you have offered us and today, even now, Lord, as We hear your voice speaking to us through Your Word, we pray that we would not harden our hearts as we have done before, but that we would be made soft by your spirit before you eager to trust in you, to turn from our sin, to LISTEN and OBEY, for your name’s sake, amen.