No One Like Him (Exodus 8:1-10:29)

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Good morning, go ahead and grab your Bibles and turn to Exodus chapter nine, which actually page 50. I know your notes say 49 but we’re going to be settling in chapter nine here, so you can go to page 50 for that as you turn there. A couple of days ago, I was listening to a family ministry podcast that I follow, and the guest they had on this week was actually Chris Tomlin. If you’ve been in the church in the last 25 years, you’ve sung a Chris Tomlin song, whether you know it or not. And so the whole idea of the podcast was really kind of talk about his testimony, he’s adopted. It was about family and all that. But at some point there was a question asked of his experience at leading worship at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service a couple weeks ago, because he was asked to lead a couple of songs there. And this is significant because it was very different than every other funeral he’s played at. It was very different from every other concert he’s been to. And the reason is, is because of the people who were in attendance while he was leading worship. And I found it especially interesting to hear him talk about this in light of the fact that we are in Exodus, because it was when he realized that he was singing before dozens of Congress members, cabinet members, the Vice President, the President, and many others who were in attendance, something hit him. And I’m going to quote him here. He says, What a privilege to stand there. And I start leading holy forever, which is one of his newer songs. And then I start singing these words, all thrones and dominions, all powers and positions, your name stands above them all. And he says, I’ve never had that much clarity in my life. I am looking in the front rows and most of the powers and positions in this nation are standing right there in front of me as I declare, there’s a name above them all. And when he said that, my mind meant immediately to Moses and Aaron standing before Pharaoh in chapter five, when they go to him and for the very first time, they enter His presence and say, This is what the Lord the God of Israel says, Let my people go so that they may hold a festival to me in the wilderness, to which we already heard this morning, Pharaoh responds, who is the Lord that I should obey Him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go. It’s that question, Who is the Lord that I should obey him that we see over and over again being answered in Exodus 10 times. Moses and Aaron will stand before Pharaoh 10 times before the one who sits on the throne, the one who is basking in his dominion, using his power and being amazed at his position. And they will say, there’s a name above you, there’s a name above all of us, and he’s going to show you who he is. And it got me thinking, when did you first have that kind of clarity in your life that you are not ultimately in control? And how humbling was that experience for you? Like the question we must keep asking ourselves this morning is okay when we’ve come to that realization we’re not ultimately in control, how quickly do we run back to thinking we are in control, and we need to be humbled again and again and realize that we aren’t. But there is another who is, and so Brandon last week started us off, taking us through the first plague. And so naturally, we’re going to spend the next nine weeks going one by one through the plagues. That is false. Actually, we’re going to do eight of them today, and that is the task that I have been given. So we have three chapters, eight, nine and 10, walking through plagues. Two through nine. It’s 96 verses. So we are not reading all of it together. Hopefully, you took Brandon’s encouragement last week to read it on your own, because we need to do a 30,000 foot view of the plagues narrative, and to do that, you have a chart on the back of your sermon notes. If you grabbed a bulletin this morning, it will also be on the screen for you, but you can go ahead and cue the scene from Prince of Egypt real quick. Just kidding, some of you got really excited. If this was youth ministry, we’d definitely show it the whole plague scene, though, honestly, though, in that movie, in the prince of Egypt, there is a three minute and nine second scene where they go through all the plagues, three minutes and nine seconds put to a song. And so why I bring that up is because a lot of us kind of think this way. When we come to the prince of Egypt or other movies or stories where we hear about these plagues, we kind of think they happen in 10 days, like it’s this short period of time. But in reality, we aren’t really sure how long the plague narrative lasts. We get a few timestamps here or there. So between the plague of blood, the first one and the plague plague of frogs, the second one, there is seven days. The plague of darkness lasts for three days. And then we get some other clues throughout with some kind of harvest that are mentioned in the plagues to kind of figure out, okay, when did this actually happen in the year? We have other sources that we can look at to kind of get a sense of this. But the best estimates range from 50 days to five months on how long the plague narrative actually lasted. And so we’re going to take this 30,000 foot view now looking at this chart, chapter seven through 10, nine of the plagues. And so we need to do a little teaching here before we get to the preaching, because it’s important. So I’m going to point some things out here the first again, if you’re looking down on your sheet, just kind of follow along, or you can look up here. The first thing is that we have these three triads here in the color three triads, these triplets that the plagues are broken into. And so each triplet has some unique features to it. The first thing is here we actually, in this first triplet, see that the magicians are able to replicate some of the plagues we saw this last week of the plague of blood. They do it with a snake that sign. They do it with the frogs as well. But when we get here in the second triplet, they are no longer in able to replicate the signs. They can’t do it any longer. In fact, in the plague of boils, they can’t even stand before Moses because they’re infected with these boils. So that’s the first in the second triplet, we see something interesting here. There’s a distinction between you can see distinguishing here between Israel and Egypt. Israel is no longer impacted by the plagues, only Egypt is and that starts in the second triplet. Then when we come to the third triplet. What we see here, which is interesting, is confession. We see Pharaoh start to confess some things before Moses and Aaron. And we see some escalation too, between these kind of minor annoyances to utter devastation of the land. So that’s kind of the first thing we see in these triplets here, the second each triad follows a pattern. So one, four and seven start off with Moses, or God, telling Moses to confront Pharaoh on his way, most of the time, as he’s going to the water. And so that starts kind of this pattern that we have here, the second plague in each triplet, each triad. Get the frog two, five and eight. We see that Moses is told to confront Pharaoh, to go to Pharaoh, most likely meaning he’s approaching him in his court. So he has an audience with Pharaoh, and then the third plague in each triad here in three, sorry, three. I’m going to do math now. Six and nine, what we see is there is no warning to Pharaoh that a plague is coming. God just tells Moses and Aaron to do something, and they do it. And the play is there. And so there’s this pattern within these triads. The third thing we see then is that while these there’s these different themes throughout the plagues narrative, there’s two that show up in every one. We get the plague itself, the sign we get a mention of Pharaoh’s heart in every single one. That’s significant, as we looked at last week, and we’ll continue with today. Also, there are two plagues, the plague of flies and the plague of hail, that encompass most of, if not all of the themes that we see in the entire plague narrative, which again, is significant for us today, because we’re going to look at the seventh plague. And then something else to mention from the outset is something that Brandon alluded to last week, and that these plagues are a demonstration of the power of God over the false gods of Egypt. James Boyce tells us this. He says there were about 80 major deities in Egypt, all clustered about three great natural forces of Egyptian life, the Nile River, the land and the sky. The first two plagues were against the gods of the Nile. The next four plagues were against the gods the land gods, and the final four plagues were against the gods of the sky. And you can do a deep dive into like looking at all these different gods and who God is defeating in each one. But for our purposes, it’s enough to know he’s taking control of the Nile, the land and the sky in these plagues. One worth mentioning, though, is of this last one here, the ninth one, I should say, of darkness, because God blots out the light the sun for three days in Egypt. And who is the most powerful God in Egypt, Ra and he is the god of what the sun. So the sun god has the real, true God blot out his light. That is very significant, because Pharaoh was supposedly a son of Ra. He was a God, a son of the most powerful God, Ra. So there’s the 30,000 foot view. You can kind of have that chart, look through it. I got to geek out a lot over that chart this week. A lot of fun. But you can kind of take that we’re now going to narrow. And zoom in on chapter nine. Okay, on chapter nine, which is the longest of the plague narratives. And as I already mentioned, as we looked at the chart, it has all these different themes that we see across the whole narrative in one section. And so it’s going to kind of be representative for us of all the plagues. So we’re going to buckle in here and read the entire passage here, chapter nine, verses 13 through 35 and then we’re going to kind of go through and see some different themes that come out we might go along today. So just letting you know, there’s a lot here that we have already covered and that we need to cover as we go through this. But let’s read chapter nine, starting in verse 13, then the Lord said to Moses, get up early in the morning, confront Pharaoh and say to him, this is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says, Let my people go so that they may worship Me, or this time, I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people. So you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. For by now, I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the Earth, but I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth you still set yourself against my people. Will not let them go. Therefore, at this time tomorrow, I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt from the day it was founded till now. Give an order to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every person and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die. Those officials of Pharaoh who feared the word of the Lord hurried to bring their slaves and the livestock inside, but those who ignored the word of the Lord left their slaves and livestock in the field. Then the Lord said to Moses, Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that hail will fall all over Egypt, on people and animals and on everything growing in the fields of Egypt. When Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, the Lord sent thunder and hail and lightning flashed down to the ground. So the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt. Hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. Throughout Egypt, hail struck everything in the fields, both people and animals. It beat down everything growing in the fields and stripped every tree. The only place it did not hail was the land of Goshen, where the Israelites were then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron, this time I have sinned. He said to them, The Lord is in the right, and I, my people are in the wrong. Pray to the Lord, for we have had enough thunder and hail. I will let you go. You don’t have to stay any longer. Moses replied, When I have gone out of the city, I will spread out my hands in prayer to the Lord. The thunder will stop and there will be no more hail. So you may know that the earth is the Lord’s but I know that you and your officials still do not fear the Lord God. The flax and barley were destroyed since the barley had headed and the flax was in bloom. The wheat and spelt, however, were not destroyed, because they ripened later. Then Moses left Pharaoh and went out of the city. He spread out his hands toward the Lord the thunder and hail stopped, and the rain no longer poured down on the land. When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had stopped, he sinned again. He and his officials hardened their hearts. So Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not let the Israelites go, just as the Lord had said through Moses. So what do we see in this passage? First, we see the God behind the plague. We see the God behind the plague, the repeated command starts us off, Let my people go so that they may worship Me. The Lord’s command remains the same throughout all the plagues. He does not change what he says. This is the command from Chapter Five on, but Pharaoh, as we’ve already seen in this series, is a hard hearted, cruel dictator, a slave master of the Israelites, who is bent on using them for his own purposes. And yet, what he doesn’t realize that when he messes with God’s people, he’s messing with God. When he messes with God’s people, he’s persecuting the Lord. This what God says through Moses here in verse 17, you still set yourself against my people and will not let them go. Sounds a lot like when Jesus shows up to Saul on the way to Damascus, when Jesus shows up and says, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? And Paul asked him, Who are you? And he says, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. You see, he set himself up against God’s people, Jesus’ people. And so when they when he persecuted them, he was persecuting Jesus. When the pharaoh of Egypt is persecuting the Israelites, he is persecuting God. Yahweh. You set yourself up against God’s people. You are doing it against the Lord. So Pharaoh is not dealing with this kind of aloof, disinterested, deaf or mute God like his gods that we’ve already seen in other plagues, that he’s following. He’s dealing. The omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God who loves his people and fights for them, even against a superpower leader when he sets himself up against God’s people. And so God makes it very clear to Pharaoh that he hasn’t seen anything yet. What they’ve already experienced is nothing compared to what could happen, what is coming because God has restrained himself in these first plagues, that’s what he says. But this full hard heartedness of Pharaoh will result in a full force of God’s power against him in ways he could never imagine. And as we read these passages, we read other scriptures, the most important question we need to ask every single time. First and foremost is, what does this teach me about God? So when we read this, what does this teach us about God? It teaches us that He is the sovereign and omnipotent god, sovereign and all powerful. This means he has complete control and authority over creation, over time, over world history, over who the leader is, over weather and over human life. God could have, in one moment, ended it all verse 15, he says, I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the Earth. But he didn’t. This is what he could do. But now he says, This omnipotent guy will bring the worst hailstorm in the history of Egypt. Like, how does he know that? Because he’s the eternal and sovereign God who’s always been he knows exactly what has hit Egypt before. He’s not just predicting that this is going to happen. The weather app in Egypt that day said, 100% hail 100% this is not a slight chance. It’s not. It might happen at this time. He says that this hour tomorrow, the worst hail storm will happen, because God said it, whatever model they’re working with with the weather here, we know they make mistakes. God doesn’t. I will send it. It will happen. And the weather listens to him. In Mark chapter four, Jesus is in a boat sleeping, and there’s a storm, and the disciples come to him say, Don’t you care that we’re going to drown. And Jesus gets up, he looks at the weather. He says, quiet, be still. And it listens to which the disciples say, Who is this? That even the wind and the waves obey him? There is only one voice that weather listens to, and that is the God of the Bible. Pharaoh does recognize, though, in verse 27 that this storm is from God. Look at verse 27 he says, The Lord is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong. Pray to the Lord, for we have had enough thunder and hail. He knows, because he got the warning that this is the God who has sent this storm. So he’s acknowledging that it’s coming from him. It’s not from his gods. The two gods of weather and the sky were nut and set. That’s who he would be following, thinking would be doing this, except that Moses said this is what’s going to happen. And so he knows exactly who’s doing it. He’s not offering sacrifices to his God. He’s going to Moses said, you said this was going to happen. So can you go to your God and make it stop? And over and over again. He does this. He says, Please make this stop. And Moses goes out and prays and and the Lord stops it. Pharaoh asked for it to end. It’s repeated over and over again in these plagues. And we read Psalm 77 I want to read it again. Listen to this is the psalmist is recounting what has happened in Egypt before he says, Your ways God are holy. What God is as great as our God. You are the God who performs miracles. You display your power among the peoples with your mighty arm. You redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph and so the first thing we see in this passage that there is the God behind the plague. The second thing we see is the purpose of the plague. The purpose of the plague. So first we see what the kind of the first purpose is in verse 14. It’s repeated throughout Exodus, multiple times throughout the plagues narrative. God is doing this in verse 14, it says, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. That’s why the title of the sermon is no one like him. And that truth now in the seventh plague of hail should start, should be sinking into Pharaoh and the magicians and the other leaders and the people. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to be converted, but at least they should start listening to what Moses and Aaron say, like you just got to connect some dots, and it’s pretty easy to see he says something, and it happens. And so maybe we could save our life if we just listen to Moses, and some of them are starting to learn this more and more through the plagues. Yes, during the plague of gnats, what we see there is very interesting. The Magicians cannot perform this sign. It’s the first one that they cannot perform. They say, We cannot do this. And they say this to Pharaoh in chapter eight, verse 19, this is the finger of God. We cannot explain this, other than the God that Moses keeps saying is going to do this. He’s the one doing it because we can’t do it anymore. Some of Pharaoh’s officials, it says in chapter nine, verse 20, it says, feared the word of the Lord, and they hurried to bring their slaves and livestock inside. When they heard the warning from Moses, they said, This is going to happen. Okay, I’m going to go get my slaves. When we get my livestock, I’m going to put them inside and put them inside, and I’m gonna take care of them. I’m gonna protect them. Of course, others ignore the word of the Lord, but you can see now people are starting to take God’s word more seriously. They are learning there is, in fact, no one like this God. And then there’s a second purpose that God gives. He’s going to show Pharaoh his power, which he’s already done in the first section. We saw his sovereignty. But again here he says in verse 16, I have raised you up. So why is Pharaoh in power? Because God put him in power so that I can show you my power, and also for our last purpose. The third thing he also says in verse 16, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. This is so important for us to understand what is being said here before Pharaoh, because we can get so consumed with our little bubble, with our own little life, like I asked Jesus into my heart, and I’m just going to kind of stay right here when God is trying to do something so much bigger than that. Like, yes, he has changed you. He has saved you. But he is not thinking of just this little moment. He is thinking about eternity, and he is thinking about worldwide people knowing who he is. His power is on display, not just for the Israelites to have their faith encouraged, not just to demonstrate His power over Egypt’s gods or the control he has over Pharaoh. He is not content to be a regional God to say, I’m showing up here in this place at this time, he is about His name and His glory being proclaimed throughout the entire Earth. People need to know who he is. Everyone needs to know now we know how the story ends here, that God is going to deliver his people. They are going to leave Egypt. And there are a lot of hiccups along the way, and decades later, they will start to push into the promised land, and they come to a place called Jericho, and two spies are sent into Jericho, and they end up in the house of Rahab. And Rahab starts to talk to them, and this is what she says in Joshua two who is the Lord that we should obey him. No, that’s not. What she says. She says, I know that the Lord has given you this land, and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. We have heard, we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea when you came out of Egypt. And she finished by saying, For the Lord, your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below. God’s name has been proclaimed. People know what has happened in Egypt. His glory is going out, and Rahab is saved, because God’s name was proclaimed in all the earth and is still being proclaimed by us today. And so as we look at the plagues narrative, you can ask the question, and I think it’s a valid question, ask, How could God bring so much damage, like, how could he do this to this people? But I think that’s the wrong question. Eventually we have to turn it in a different way and say, How could he give them so many chances? How could he give them so many chance? I mean, how many chances do you give others when they wrong you time and time again, he gives them another chance. And that’s where we see our next theme here, the grace in the plague, the grace in the plague. Now this is a judgment passage. I’m not trying to say it isn’t. It is a judgment passage that is clear throughout, but that doesn’t mean the thread of grace is not clearly on display throughout the narrative, because it is we already saw. God could have wiped them off the face of the earth. But he doesn’t do that. Instead, he says, I’m going to give you 10 chances. And in God’s grace, He keeps showing them who he is, giving them every opportunity to turn to Him. And it appears that some are one other thing we have to understand is that in Acts two, when, when the Holy Spirit comes. Pentecost. There are people from Egypt there. God is doing something, and he’ll do it a long time from them, but it’s starting to get his name is proclaimed. They are starting to get it. Some people are taking what they’re hearing. It’s getting in their heart, and they’re starting to make different choices, starting to follow this God verse 19. This is another place we see God’s grace. Right after telling him the worst hail storm in history is coming, give an order now to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because hail will fall on every person and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die. What is God doing here? I am going to send the worst hailstorm ever, but no person or animal has to die like That’s grace and mercy. I’m going to do this, but get get everybody out. Let me just devastate the land. Take the life and protect them. Some heed the warning. Others don’t. Reminds me of Second Peter 39 where it says The Lord is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. How could he give them so many chances? How come God gave you so many chances? How come he’s given me so many chances? Because the Lord is patient with us, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. I’m sending the storm. Just get them inside. The fact that judgment is coming is coming is still true for all of us. For all of us. Right? The warning is right here, like God’s warning to Pharaoh, it’s right here in this book, he is coming, and he is coming in judgment. So how can you be saved from it? Will you be found taking refuge in Jesus Christ? Will you be found taking refuge in his salvation? Or will you be left out in the field, exposed to the elements? Pharaoh got the warning. We have the warning. Pharaoh got the solution. We have the solution, and it’s in Jesus Christ. So you can find a shelter. You don’t have to die. That’s what Jesus Christ has done for us. The Grace doesn’t stop there, though there’s grace for the people of Israel, because if you know anything about the people of Israel, their history is checkered. We’re going to see that even more so in the coming weeks, as we see how forgetful, selfish and whiny they really are, which, by the way, is us. They don’t deserve anything from God, and yet here he is protecting them in verse 26 the only place it did not hail was the land of Goshen, where the Israelites were the judgment of God should be falling on us, and yet it doesn’t, because we’re covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, He covered the Israelites so they would not experience The hail, not because of how great they are, because of how good he is, how great he is, because the promises that He gave them. He wants to show them I am still your God. I am fulfilling my promises to you. I told you I will take you out and I’m going to protect you here to show you that I will actually do this, as we saw last week, the end of this plague, Pharaoh’s mo take the plague away, and the plague is removed, and Pharaoh goes back on his word, and his heart is hardened. Now, in that movie, Prince of Egypt, the song that is sung during the plague scene, there is a line that has always stuck with me since the first time I saw it. This is what Pharaoh sings. Don’t sing back, please. Then let my heart be hardened and never mind how high the cost may grow. This will still be so I will never let your people go. For many of us, that’s the anthem of our life. I will be my own god, and I will not surrender to you. I’m going to do what I want to do, and I don’t care who gets in the way. I don’t care what happens. I’m not submitting to another. So Pharaoh’s response to this plague, the response that he’s had throughout, it’s a pattern that he sets up. But we’re going to look at his response now in the seventh plague, and we’re going to ask the question, why is his heart hard? Okay, so we’re going to look at the response to the plague, but we need to ask, Why is his heart hard? It doesn’t just happen. There’s something that’s happening here every single time. And I need to say this section is a warning to us. This section is a warning to us who say, I believe in Jesus. We need to be listened very carefully to what happens here, because there are two ways that Pharaoh responds throughout these plagues, and both of them are wrong. Both of them are temptations for us. The first is half hearted obedience, one of the ways he responds to Moses and the people, he says, over and over again, okay, okay, like take this away and I will let you go. But that’s not all he says. He puts limits on them. He says, Okay, I’ll let you go, but you can, you have to worship here in Egypt. You can’t go into the wilderness. You have to worship here. Okay, okay, I’ll let you go, but, but the women and the children, they have to stay here, just the men can go. And then later on, he says, okay, okay, the men, the women, the children, they can go, but you have to leave your animals here. Is that true obedience? No, it’s half hearted obedience. Because what is Pharaoh trying to do here? I want to keep a little bit of control. So God, I will do what you say, but I’ll do it according to my own plans. What I think I should do to follow your word that is not obedience. Pharaoh doesn’t get to tell God what he can and can’t do. God will tell Pharaoh that. But it makes sense, because Pharaoh’s whole life growing up with these Egyptian gods is, how long can I hold this god off? Like, if I, if I just stick it out a little bit longer, he’s eventually going to give in right like, if I go to this God and give him the right sacrifice and do the right things, eventually he’s going to give good things to me. So why would he not treat the God of Israel the same way? Maybe if I could just appease him a little bit. Like, yeah, I feel really bad. I’m sorry. I’ll let your people go. I’ll let them go. I’ll let these people go for this amount of time. But that is not true obedience. That is religion. It’s not a relationship with Jesus where he wants our whole heart, not part of it, not bargaining for different things or obeying on our terms. We come to him in True obedience and say, Lord, I am here because of your grace. You tell me what you want me to do, and I will do it, because I know I serve a king with good intentions who does what is best for me, and that’s where obedience comes from. So that’s the first thing. His heart is hard because he thinks he’s obeying or he’s going to obey, even though he’s not truly obeying the word of the Lord. The second wrong way he responds is half hearted repentance. Okay, there really cannot be true obedience without true repentance. So what do we see Pharaoh doing in verse 27 he says this, this time I have sinned, the Lord is in the right, and I, my people are in the wrong. Pray to the Lord, for we have had enough thunder and hail. You think, like, I mean, isn’t that just like, we’re done. We don’t want this anymore. Yeah, it’s devastating everything. I will let you go. You don’t have to stay any longer. This is the first time Pharaoh has actually taken responsibility for anything up to now. He just brings Moses and he says, Can you please stop the plague? It’s not the last time that he’s going to say something like this in chapter 10, verse 16, he says, I have sinned. Forgive my sin. But before we think that Pharaoh is softening here, that his heart is getting softer, we must see that his response is to the consequences. His response, the depth of his repentance, is based on how bad the consequences get. So when things get really bad, he’s going to feel going to feel really, really sorry for it. But then what happens in verse 34 as soon as the plague is taken away, he sinned again. He and his officials hardened their hearts. Has anybody been around a kid where you’ve corrected them and then walked out of the room and you see their eyes just like waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, go right back to the name just got in trouble for. I mean, that’s exactly what Pharaoh’s doing here. Like, just, okay, okay, all right, yeah, okay, I feel bad. I’m sorry. Get out of the room. Now I’m back to doing what I want to do. That’s what Pharaoh is doing. As soon as the plague ends, he sins again, and it keeps getting his heart keeps getting hard. Getting harder. After the plague of darkness, it hardens more. And it says this in verse 28 he says this to Moses, get out of my sight. Make sure you do not appear before me again the day you see my face. You will die. His heart is not softening. It is getting to the place where now he has reached that breaking point, not of soft heart, but of a hard heart, and I will kill you if you show your face again. This is not true repentance. So let’s contrast this with another people in the city of Nineveh, the Assyrian capital in the story of Jonah, like Jonah doesn’t start off too well, if you know the story doesn’t go where he’s supposed to go. Eventually he does, through some crazy means, of course, but he ends up in Nineveh, and he stands before the people and he says this. This is his message. This is all we get. 40 more days in Nineveh will be overthrown. That’s what he says. And the. People respond immediately, like this. It says the Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed in all of them from the greatest of the least put on sackcloth we read in the next verses. This includes their king, and he tells everyone to call on call urgently on God. And it says when God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he did not destroy them. They got one statement, words from Jonah, the judgment is coming, and they repent. Pharaoh gets 10 plagues and signs, and he keeps playing around. He won’t budge. Every statement he makes sounds like, okay, maybe there’s some repentance there, but it is not. It is false repentance. Pharaoh only cares about the circumstances that he’s experiencing. He wants them to change. He cares about the consequences only. Please remove them so I can keep going and keep living my life. Maybe we can have some good days in between every plague. Just take this one away, and we’re going to keep doing our own thing. He does not feel guilty for his sin before the Lord. He is living out of what we would call worldly sorrow. This is what Paul talks about in Second Corinthians, 710, he says, godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. Is that not this whole story, godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation, a life that is saved. Worldly sorrow brings death. So what does this mean? What is godly sorrow? It means confessing, naming our sin, turning from our sin, turning away from going our own way, turning back to God, because it’s there. When we turn, we find salvation when we turn from our own way. We find Jesus. Later. For Paul, in the his letter to the Thessalonians, he says this, they tell how you turn to God from idols, to serve the living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath. This is what could have happened for Pharaoh and the Egyptians if they had turned from serving and living for their worthless idols to turn and serve the living, true God in true repentance and obedience. But worldly sorrow brings death. We will see that in the coming weeks. So here’s the big idea this morning. Brandon started us off last week by talking about softening our heart as we look at that first plague. So this is really kind of part two. Not only do we need to come to that moment we repent for the very first time, say, Lord, I am a sinner and I’m in need of your grace, but then how do we keep our heart soft before the Lord? So here it is, keep your heart soft before the one true God through genuine repentance and obedience. If you want to keep your heart soft, you need to be genuinely repentant and obedient to God. Now this is going to take some soul searching for us this week, some some time alone with God, asking him to show where you are obeying on your terms and where you are living in false repentance. And I mean some deep soul searching, because we know kind of the obvious things that we’re dealing with, the obvious sins, the obvious place we’re not repenting. But what about those, all those other places where we need him to show up and say, no, no, no, you’re obeying on your own terms. You’re not actually following my word. Or, yeah, you seem to be repenting, but you’re not actually doing anything to see that change. So what does true repentance look like? Just a few thoughts here before we close. It means confessing sin like naming it and saying, This is what I am confessing and this is what I am turning from, without holding on, without looking back, it also means you have a plan in place to kill the sin in your life. Because if you just say, like, I don’t like the circumstance, this feels really bad as soon as that kind of consequence is taken away, or things start to look better in your life. If you don’t have a plan, if you don’t have a plan, you’re going to end up right back in the same spot. So true repentance is saying, I need to I need a plan to go forward. I need a plan in place that I’m going to follow to make sure I kill this sin in my life. What does true repentance look like, confessing our sin to others and getting them involved, to say, I can’t do this on my own because we weren’t meant to do it on our own. So we repent before God. Vertical repentance is needed for salvation and reconciliation with God, but we also need that horizontal repentance to restore some relationships in our lives. Can I tell you I’ve seen people in this church who are living this out true repentance, saying I am so sick and tired of the sin, I am giving my life back to Jesus, and now I have a plan in place to make sure that that stays over there. It is not I feel really bad about these consequences. Help me get a few good weeks in, and I’ll be right back here at the same place. That is not true repentance. What does true obedience look like? It’s wanting to do what God, Word, God’s word, tells us to do right away. Not, Hey, God, I’ll do this when I’m ready. Here’s a couple of my conditions. Here’s a couple changes or tweaks I can make to what you’re saying. No, it’s saying, Lord, I know what you have done for me. You have saved me. Nothing in my life deserved that, but you did it anyways. Your love comes with no conditions. He loves us in spite of ourselves. He loves us while we are still sinners, while we were his enemy. He loved us. And so we say, because of your love, I want to follow you because I believe you have my best interest in mind. I believe you know what is best. And so I want to obey your word. And so when we see His Word, when we see what it says, we say, Lord, I want to do this today, right now. Help me to do that, and if true, repentance and obedience mark our lives and our hearts will stay soft. And can I tell you, if you repent, you’re actually going to want to repent more, and you’ll start to see there’s more to repent of, but that keeps your heart soft. As Luther said, like the whole Christian life is of repentance. I need to keep coming before the Lord and repenting of my sin. And then when we see the obedience in our life, when we see what God does with it, we’re going to want to obey more. So we’re going to repent and obey, and we’re going to see that more and more in our life, as we see our hearts soften before the Lord, let’s pray. We’re the Lord, we come before you, knowing that we do not deserve to even approach you. We come before you, humbled because we know you are in control, that you are the one who has saved us, and now you have called us to live lives worthy of that gospel, to live lives worthy of the calling we have received from you and so Lord, I pray as we go from here, our motivation for obedience is your love, is your grace and Your mercy In our life, we want our lives to look different because you change us through Your Word. So I pray today, Lord, that we repent of our sin, that you show us where we are living in false repentance, where we are living in this half hearted obedience, and make us NEW. Give us the courage to name our sin. Give us the courage to walk according to your word. Each and every day, we want soft hearts before you Lord, we love you and we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.