Speaker 1: Hey, what up?
Speaker 1: It's Mark Carter on, the Pastor of Fierce Church.
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.
Speaker 1: I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the message.
Speaker 1: We're going to go back deep into the Bible and I want to start with a story.
Speaker 1: When I was about 12, I was with my friends two friends at the movie theater.
Speaker 1: I don't even remember what we were watching, but as we were watching it was about to start there were two other guys in the theater.
Speaker 1: They're a little bit older than us, we could tell they were behind us and I don't remember who started it.
Speaker 1: I don't remember who said what first, but essentially we kind of threw down and said how about this?
Speaker 1: After the movie we're going to go outside and fight.
Speaker 1: We wanted to watch the movie first.
Speaker 1: So let's get through the movie.
Speaker 1: And guys, I had just gotten off several wins, Like I'd gotten in several fights.
Speaker 1: I was the.
Speaker 1: If you look, if there was a Wikipedia and you looked up me on Wikipedia at that point, you would have found my picture under the word punk.
Speaker 1: That's what I was, man, I was a punk.
Speaker 1: And so I challenged these two.
Speaker 1: I'm like I got two buddies with me.
Speaker 1: These guys are toast man, even though they're a little older, it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: And so we wait.
Speaker 1: You know, we watch the movie, go out into the parking lot and guys, I was ready and I was like my boys are ready.
Speaker 1: And we went in and the dude just gets me in a headlock and my boys do nothing.
Speaker 1: They do nothing.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, guys, what is going on here?
Speaker 1: I'm like looking at, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: And here's the problem.
Speaker 1: I had too much confidence in my guys.
Speaker 1: I thought we were on the same plan.
Speaker 1: I thought that we were going to do the same thing, and they did not have the power that I thought they were going to bring to the table.
Speaker 1: Well, isn't it good to know that God actually has more power to bring to the table than we could ever need or hope.
Speaker 1: If we have our faith in the wrong thing, it's going to let us down, like my boys did.
Speaker 1: If we ever faith in the right thing and we understand God the right way, my friends, he's never going to let us down.
Speaker 1: He's going to be way more than we ever thought.
Speaker 1: And so we're going to learn today how the Israelites are beginning to understand this God who has revealed himself to them.
Speaker 1: Remember, they don't really know a ton about this God of the Hebrews who sent Moses to Pharaoh and said, hey, let my people go.
Speaker 1: They know that this was the God of their ancestors, but they don't know it.
Speaker 1: They don't have all the revelation that we have.
Speaker 1: And so they're learning a lot, as God commands Pharaoh to let them out of slavery, and God begins to bring all these plagues to show that he's really got the muscle.
Speaker 1: He's really got you know, he can talk, to talk and walk the walk.
Speaker 1: And so these, these folks, we're going to look at the, the three plagues from their perspective today and we're going to learn what they're learning so we can understand their God and our God better.
Speaker 1: And we're going to learn about worship.
Speaker 1: See that we're learned with it.
Speaker 1: We're going to see it in just a second.
Speaker 1: They were being called out of slavery to come worship God.
Speaker 1: That was what they're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: They were to serve him and worship him, and they need to worship him according to who he actually is, not who they might think he's not.
Speaker 1: He's not just a God of the now, he's not a God of somewhere in the desert, he is very God, of very God.
Speaker 1: He is God almighty.
Speaker 1: And they're going to learn this as they watch these plagues.
Speaker 1: And you know, we learn as we keep going, as we keep walking, which is there's always more to learn.
Speaker 1: And you know, thankfully we don't have to watch a bunch of plagues.
Speaker 1: We can behold the image of Christ in the scriptures.
Speaker 1: And that's where we learn more and more.
Speaker 1: And we keep walking and keep walking.
Speaker 1: And someone said well, carter, I've already read the Bible.
Speaker 1: Precious, if you've already read the Bible the right way, with the Holy Spirit, you'd keep reading it.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's not a one and done thing, because it sucks you in to relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: We're always learning more.
Speaker 1: If you feel like you've learned it all, oh baby, you're missing the best part you are making, missing the cake and ice, cookie dough, ice cream, man.
Speaker 1: You're missing all the great stuff.
Speaker 1: So let's dive back in and keep on learning.
Speaker 1: Now, worship it's important to know what worship is.
Speaker 1: Worship is a steaming something higher than we are.
Speaker 1: It's regarding it as better, more perfect, more beautiful, more desirable, something that we long for, and God wants that to be us.
Speaker 1: See, god's story with us is really a story of worship.
Speaker 1: We were made to be in relationship with Him, loving Him, adoring Him, worshiping Him and receiving His perfect good love.
Speaker 1: That's how mankind was supposed to be and that's what God invites us back into now that he can get close to us again because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: But the story was always.
Speaker 1: It was a story of let's be in relationship, let's enjoy intimacy, and God would say to everybody today and back then I call you into worship because I want you to enjoy me, I want you to relax and be excited about all the awesome that I am Now.
Speaker 1: The problem is we worship a ton of the wrong stuff.
Speaker 1: We were made to worship, so we just end up worshiping, no matter what.
Speaker 1: If we can't see God, we can't don't know where to find Him, then we just start worshiping anything.
Speaker 1: You know this.
Speaker 1: We serve stuff and wealth and money and things.
Speaker 1: And if you ever doubt that, do me a favor, go ahead and Google Black Friday mayhem.
Speaker 1: If you go, google that, you will see what people will do to one another just to get the latest flat screen TV or game counsel.
Speaker 1: You see people running over other humans because they're worshiping this stuff so hard.
Speaker 1: So we know this intuitively.
Speaker 1: People also worship the human body.
Speaker 1: We worship it.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful, like it's.
Speaker 1: The human body is good.
Speaker 1: God made it good, but we'll worship it.
Speaker 1: We go way beyond.
Speaker 1: We're trying to preserve everything that we possibly can.
Speaker 1: So we spend tons of money on makeup and tucking and exercise machines that we forget about in the corner.
Speaker 1: We spend all this money.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with those things, but we want, we long for.
Speaker 1: We exalt this idea of this perfect human form that we either want for ourselves or we desire from others, and it's really just a form of worship.
Speaker 1: There's also just wanting to obey our feelings.
Speaker 1: We exalt our feelings.
Speaker 1: We say my feelings are the most important thing.
Speaker 1: This might be a relatively new thing on the world stage, but we worship our feelings.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 1: Once upon a time, people had wisdom to understand that your feelings are kind of fickle and they go back and forth.
Speaker 1: But now we say, hey, man, whatever your feelings tell you, that's what you should do.
Speaker 1: You should obey it.
Speaker 1: You should get down on your knees and say yes, yes, sir, yes, ma'am, feelings, I'll do whatever you say, because you're my feelings and dear heart.
Speaker 1: Your feelings might be right and they might be good, they might be bad, but they ain't no God.
Speaker 1: God is God, and so when we worship the wrong things, we end up empty and we rob ourselves.
Speaker 1: We forfeit intimacy with Jesus Christ, we forfeit eternal perspective.
Speaker 1: We forfeit the peace that God wants to have with us because he wants us to enjoy himself in the experience of worship.
Speaker 1: That's what he wants.
Speaker 1: That's what he's teaching these Israelites.
Speaker 1: They're kind of like the good guys, so to speak, in the story.
Speaker 1: Them and Moses, and really God, pharaoh and the Egyptians are seen as the bad characters in the story.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the plague of flies.
Speaker 1: We're back here, exodus 820.
Speaker 1: Then the Lord said to Moses Moses, we've done this before.
Speaker 1: Get up early in the morning and confront Pharaoh as he goes to the river and say to him this is what the Lord says let my people go so that they may worship me.
Speaker 1: If you do not let my people go, I will send swarms of flies on you and your officials and people into your houses.
Speaker 1: The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies.
Speaker 1: Even the ground will be covered them.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine the ground black, covered with flies.
Speaker 1: But on that day I will deal differently with the land of Goshen, where my people live.
Speaker 1: The Israelites were separated from the Egyptians.
Speaker 1: The Egyptians didn't want to be around the Israelites, so they had their own separation in Goshen.
Speaker 1: No swarms of flies will be there, so that you will know that I, the Lord, am in this land.
Speaker 1: So, pharaoh, you think this land is yours, but this land is mine.
Speaker 1: I decide what happens here.
Speaker 1: I'm the creator, god.
Speaker 1: I gave you good animals, I gave you good creation, but I can mess with that pattern a little bit to make you have a very headachey day.
Speaker 1: And the Lord did this.
Speaker 1: Dense swarms of flies poured into Pharaoh's palace and into the houses of his officials throughout Egypt.
Speaker 1: The land was ruined, was ruined by the flies.
Speaker 1: Early this summer I went on a little rafting trip with my dad, my daughter and my son.
Speaker 1: You see us there, john and I just went over a little waterfall and we're taking a pic.
Speaker 1: If you've ever been on one of these little rafting rides, you've been in some place where you're kind of wet apart of the day.
Speaker 1: What can really mess with it is when you get even one little biting fly.
Speaker 1: Have you seen this?
Speaker 1: You've been on the beach and they just start to go at your shins and it's just like one or two and you swat them and then you know maybe you get them, but then three more come.
Speaker 1: I had one on that rafting trip and it was just like it was landing on me and you know I smack it and it goes away and it comes back and it's like fly.
Speaker 1: You're out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1: Why are you out here?
Speaker 1: It's beginning to drive me insane.
Speaker 1: And it's one.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine?
Speaker 1: There's flies all over your bed.
Speaker 1: As you're trying to like get in, get in, you wake up into like a cloud of flies as you're trying to make any food.
Speaker 1: There's flies everywhere.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine?
Speaker 1: It's not just that it's weird and ugly, it's insanity producing.
Speaker 1: How could you possibly even think in such a place?
Speaker 1: And so the pattern continues.
Speaker 1: Pharaoh essentially says no, I'll tell you what, moses, I'll try to make a deal.
Speaker 1: I'll try to cut a deal with God.
Speaker 1: I'll try to negotiate.
Speaker 1: How about this?
Speaker 1: How about just a few of you go, or just the men go, or just everybody, but the children go?
Speaker 1: Or how far are you gonna?
Speaker 1: The pattern is he keeps making excuses.
Speaker 1: He keeps trying to negotiate with God and God's like no, no, I really don't negotiate, pharaoh.
Speaker 1: And this is one of the things that the Israelites are learning as they're watching as God interacts with the Egyptians.
Speaker 1: They're learning, oh, and they're gonna remember this for centuries to come oh, god's not a God that you really negotiate with.
Speaker 1: He answers your prayer, he's good to you, he's gracious, but you don't like give him half obedience and say is this good?
Speaker 1: No, you give him all obedience because he doesn't negotiate about it.
Speaker 1: He says I'm God.
Speaker 1: When I tell you what to do, I'm not gonna change it.
Speaker 1: Moving on to the plague of livestock Okay, so verse two, if you were, moses, comes again.
Speaker 1: Hey, pharaoh, if you refuse to let them go and continue to hold them back, the hand of the Lord will bring a terrible plague on your livestock in the field, on your houses Sorry, your horses, thank you, donkeys and camels and on your cattle, sheep and goats.
Speaker 1: But the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and that of Egypt so that no animal belonging to the Israelites will die.
Speaker 1: The Lord said a time and said tomorrow the Lord will do this in that land.
Speaker 1: And the next day the Lord did it.
Speaker 1: There's not even like a.
Speaker 1: So, pharaoh, will you turn around?
Speaker 1: He's just like Pharaoh, it's coming Like no warning.
Speaker 1: Again, here it comes, verse six again all the livestock of the Egyptians died, but not one of the animals belonging to the Israelites died.
Speaker 1: So God's not giving Pharaoh much of a choice here.
Speaker 1: He's saying Pharaoh, your indecision is the choice.
Speaker 1: Okay, now here it comes again and the text says all.
Speaker 1: And we've gotta know that that's hyperbolic.
Speaker 1: Okay, often in the Bible people use hyperbole just like we use it today, that we see more livestock is still there in the very next plague.
Speaker 1: But biblical writers, just like writers today, used hyperbole.
Speaker 1: Jesus used hyperbole all the time.
Speaker 1: So when I say I have told you one million times to shut that refrigerator door, you know that I haven't actually told a child one million times to close door.
Speaker 1: You just know that's hyperbole.
Speaker 1: He's just saying it's a lot, and that's what the biblical writer is saying here.
Speaker 1: So don't let it throw you, because God wrote a book.
Speaker 1: God wrote this book and he used men to do it.
Speaker 1: He inspired them to write it down.
Speaker 1: And some people say well, cardi, that's just a book written by men.
Speaker 1: Yo, it totally is.
Speaker 1: It's a book written by men and God.
Speaker 1: It's the God man book.
Speaker 1: That's what it is.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 1: See, if you believe in Jesus Christ, you already know this to be true.
Speaker 1: Jesus is the God man.
Speaker 1: He is a hundred percent man and he's a hundred percent God.
Speaker 1: He needed to be God in order to be able to do the crucifixion, to get through it.
Speaker 1: He needed to be God for his blood to count for all the people of the earth of all time.
Speaker 1: But he needed to be a man in order to be a right substitution for actual people.
Speaker 1: He's a hundred percent God, a hundred percent man.
Speaker 1: The Bible is a hundred percent written by men, oh yeah, and a hundred percent written by God.
Speaker 1: That's where it is.
Speaker 1: So, in case you're wondering, this is the most unique book on the face of the earth.
Speaker 1: There's no other book that is the God man book.
Speaker 1: There's only men book other than this.
Speaker 1: Thank you, I'll take an amen there.
Speaker 1: And if you don't know yet, dude, that's okay, I didn't always know.
Speaker 1: Here's what you do.
Speaker 1: Read it.
Speaker 1: Read it with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1: I remember the morning I woke up.
Speaker 1: I just woke up and the Spirit of God, one of the first times ever, felt God actually talking to me.
Speaker 1: He just whispered to me the whole Bible's true, just believe it.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, but when he said it, there was like a release of faith into my spirit, like I'd been wrestling with that idea and there's just a release of like, oh well, if you say so, I mean you would know You've been here the whole time, I haven't.
Speaker 1: Okay, that sounds good.
Speaker 1: So that was a total tangent.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the sermon that we're in.
Speaker 1: God kills all this livestock through this plague.
Speaker 1: God, the one who created all these animals to be gentle and good, he tells Pharaoh I can uncreate them too.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine what this did to the economy of Egypt?
Speaker 1: Now remember, scholars tell us that all the plagues took about a year.
Speaker 1: Altogether.
Speaker 1: They've already had the Nile turn to blood.
Speaker 1: All the fish died.
Speaker 1: So there's a big component.
Speaker 1: A lot of their food is gone, a lot of their ability to make money is gone, and now all the livestock are dying.
Speaker 1: Let's just think about this.
Speaker 1: This is crippling.
Speaker 1: Livestock help cultivate the land.
Speaker 1: Livestock make cheese and milk.
Speaker 1: Livestock is a way for people to travel.
Speaker 1: Livestock is really just money.
Speaker 1: So back in that day you didn't have money.
Speaker 1: You had livestock, flocks and herds.
Speaker 1: And when you had a lot of flocks and herds you were considered rich.
Speaker 1: And if you were a nation that had lots of flocks and herds, you were man.
Speaker 1: That's a stable nation.
Speaker 1: That's what people would think, because they can lose a lot and they're still fine.
Speaker 1: Just like if we have a lot of money, we can lose a lot and we're still fine.
Speaker 1: But if you get down to one or two sheep left, people are like, oh no, you're three steps away from real danger.
Speaker 1: Man and all these livestock are now dead.
Speaker 1: Do you see what God is doing?
Speaker 1: He's crippling this nation because of the stubbornness of this dude that dares defy him.
Speaker 1: Verse seven Pharaoh investigated.
Speaker 1: He sent officials and found that not even one of the animals of the Israelites had died.
Speaker 1: Yet his heart was unyielding and he would not let the people go.
Speaker 1: Let's do one more of the plague of boils.
Speaker 1: We'll just skip to verse eight.
Speaker 1: Moses confronts him again.
Speaker 1: He's it's a no go.
Speaker 1: Then the Lord said to Moses Sinarene, take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses tossed into the air in the presence of Pharaoh.
Speaker 1: It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt and festering boils will break out on the people and animals throughout the land.
Speaker 1: So they took soot from the furnace and stood before Pharaoh.
Speaker 1: Moses tossed it into the air and festering boils broke out on people and animals.
Speaker 1: Yikes, I really think this was one of the first moments that many Egyptians, they got a lot more nervous.
Speaker 1: Okay, because, okay, so this God of the Israelites, supposedly, I guess, yeah, he can mess with the river and he can mess with you know livestock and he can mess with flies and pests.
Speaker 1: But now I'm realizing he can touch me.
Speaker 1: I'm in danger.
Speaker 1: He can touch my body, he can give me boils just out of nothing, out of soot in the air.
Speaker 1: Now the panic is a little bit beginning to set in the people not Pharaoh yet, but in the people.
Speaker 1: Now, this is really important that he took soot from a furnace.
Speaker 1: What are these furnaces?
Speaker 1: These furnaces are where the Israelites would bring their straw to have them cooked.
Speaker 1: Remember, at the beginning of the story, that's what was happening, and then Pharaoh took away their straw.
Speaker 1: They had to go find their own straw and bring it back to these kilns, these furnaces, where they would bake these bricks.
Speaker 1: These furnaces are a sign.
Speaker 1: They're a remembrance to every Israelite who sees them.
Speaker 1: You're in slavery, you're in agony, you do backbreaking labor.
Speaker 1: It's got to be a hard thing to even see every day.
Speaker 1: When I was, just when we were very young, we just had my first daughter, kenzie, and I I worked at a place called Sherlock.
Speaker 1: It was a truck tarp system place.
Speaker 1: Okay, so trucks come in and they put tarps on the top for trucks that need to be filled with grain.
Speaker 1: And you got a picture there, just so you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: See that tarp that's on the top there.
Speaker 1: People would bring those in and I was on the team that would repair them and sew them up.
Speaker 1: Well, they'd come in full of, like you know, all kinds of cornmeal and road dust and all kinds of just nasty stuff.
Speaker 1: We lay them out on the floor.
Speaker 1: You know we're cutting with these big industrial scissors and sewing them and cause I'm breathing in these nasty fumes and, honestly, people you know they didn't care, like they didn't care, that this was maybe doing some damage to the employees and it was painful and it stuck with me for a long time.
Speaker 1: But you know what, every time I see a truck like that on the road, it's not that I get PTSD or something like that.
Speaker 1: But I just kind of get the heebie-jeebies.
Speaker 1: I'm like ugh, that was a bad time.
Speaker 1: I don't like that time.
Speaker 1: That was bad.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine what the Israelites think about every time they see one of those ovens?
Speaker 1: This is a reminder you're in slavery forever.
Speaker 1: What does God do?
Speaker 1: God takes the very thing that the Egyptians were using to torture the Israelites and he says Egyptians, I'm going to use that thing against you to demonstrate you're going to reap what you sow Evil with this God.
Speaker 1: Evil has a way of boomeranging.
Speaker 1: Maybe other gods?
Speaker 1: You get away with evil, not with Yahweh, not with the God of the Hebrews.
Speaker 1: Evil boomerangs.
Speaker 1: You sow evil into my people and it's going to whip back right at you and turn your furnaces into boils.
Speaker 1: That's pretty doggone awesome.
Speaker 1: You can say amen anytime just for that one.
Speaker 1: I mean that was pretty good right there.
Speaker 1: Verse 11,.
Speaker 1: The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils that were on them, and all the Egyptians.
Speaker 1: But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said to Moses A few weeks back.
Speaker 1: We talked about some things that were very encouraging about who God is.
Speaker 1: God said I am your comforter, I am your warner, or the person who warns you, gives you a heads up, and I'm your defender.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to focus a little bit more on God's power.
Speaker 1: We're going to look at some of the the sterner but just as maybe even more appreciated components of his personality.
Speaker 1: Four reasons to worship God.
Speaker 1: Why should we worship God?
Speaker 1: God would say.
Speaker 1: Number one your stuff is mine.
Speaker 1: Your stuff is mine.
Speaker 1: See, the land and the livestock.
Speaker 1: They weren't pharaohs, they were gods, and that was the message Pharaoh.
Speaker 1: This land and this livestock, this is all mine.
Speaker 1: I made this.
Speaker 1: I allow you to use it.
Speaker 1: It's not the other way around.
Speaker 1: Now the world has a lot of confidence in stuff, in wealth, in acquiring more.
Speaker 1: That's what everybody loves.
Speaker 1: But God wants to remind us hey, to worship me appropriately, to worship me rightly, you've got to understand that I am the God who really owns everything at all that you have.
Speaker 1: Now here's some ways that you might discern that maybe you're prioritizing stuff a little bit too much.
Speaker 1: If you're more really concerned throughout your day-to-day life about things than you are about people, you might be worshiping stuff.
Speaker 1: If you can't help but kind of compare what you have with what somebody else has.
Speaker 1: You might be worshiping stuff If you have a really hard time of letting go and being generous.
Speaker 1: You might be worshiping stuff.
Speaker 1: If you're afraid always that you're going to lose something, you might be worshiping stuff.
Speaker 1: But if you will worship God with your stuff and just put it back in his hands, oh baby, that's the safest place it could ever be.
Speaker 1: Here's what do we do.
Speaker 1: We review that all the stuff is God's.
Speaker 1: All the stuff in my life is God's.
Speaker 1: One of these I've been practicing lately.
Speaker 1: I'll come out of the garage and I'll get into my car and just to practice this principle, I'll say God, thank you for letting me use your card today.
Speaker 1: Or even when I'm putting on clothes, god, thank you for this, for letting me use your shirt this is your shirt, not my shirt.
Speaker 1: Thank you for letting me use it as we just review the things in our lives.
Speaker 1: God, thank you for my house, thank you for my cubicle, thank you for the stuff I got at Goodwill, because it is actually yours.
Speaker 1: It's your stuff at Goodwill, it's your cubicle, it's your house.
Speaker 1: Everything I have is God's.
Speaker 1: God made everything.
Speaker 1: He owns everything.
Speaker 1: It's all for him.
Speaker 1: And when we do that, when we just put it back in his hand.
Speaker 1: It's safe, because we just, we just don't want God to ever think I wonder if they need a test on stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to start taking it away so they can learn to just need me.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Jesus, as he always does, is going to be so awesome.
Speaker 1: Jesus solves our problem.
Speaker 1: Let's learn.
Speaker 1: Jesus gave all of his stuff away to come to earth.
Speaker 1: So what?
Speaker 1: So you could have all of his stuff?
Speaker 1: That's what he did.
Speaker 1: He gave all of his stuff so we could have all of his stuff.
Speaker 1: So we can go to heaven and be with him and we get all of his stuff too.
Speaker 1: We're inheritors of the riches of heaven Because Jesus gave it away.
Speaker 1: Jesus had to do that and he had to embrace death and murder as the only innocent one.
Speaker 1: Here's what I think about it.
Speaker 1: The only true son is treated like the enemy, so the enemies can be treated like the sons.
Speaker 1: Jesus everything was taken from Jesus at the end, even his clothes.
Speaker 1: He was crucified naked.
Speaker 1: If you didn't know, they put clothes on him in the pictures, but it was actually naked.
Speaker 1: Everything was taken from him so that everything could be given to you and me.
Speaker 1: Jesus is the one embracing now listen, you'll understand this better Jesus is the one embracing the judgments that you and I deserve.
Speaker 1: Are we hearing this?
Speaker 1: Because, baby, in this story we're not the Israelites, we're Pharaoh and the Egyptians.
Speaker 1: That's who we are.
Speaker 1: And Jesus is coming in and saying I'm going to embrace the plagues, I'm going to embrace the judgments so my people can be safe, away from the judgment of God, I'm going to let it fall on me on the cross.
Speaker 1: Somebody say dog gone, jesus is awesome.
Speaker 1: So why should we worship God?
Speaker 1: Well, god would say because your stuff is mine and your body is mine.
Speaker 1: So festering boils break out on all these people when we recognize that even our bodies, however good they work, however good your body works, every part of it, every cell, belongs to God.
Speaker 1: That means, when I come into worship, maybe here at Ferris or anywhere else, or in the kitchen or in the bathroom, wherever I am and I'm worshiping God, I say God, thank you for all the stuff of yours that you're allowing me to use and thank you for this body you're allowing me to live in.
Speaker 1: Thank you for every last cell.
Speaker 1: God, only you are so wise and so brilliant that you could make a body that works like this.
Speaker 1: Even when half of it doesn't work, the other half still works.
Speaker 1: God, you heal my body as it goes.
Speaker 1: Wow, humans can't invent something like that.
Speaker 1: God, you alone are God and you alone are awesome.
Speaker 1: I'm going to praise you that all my appendages still work, if they do, and if they don't, you're going to praise them that you'll get new appendages someday.
Speaker 1: John Flavill wrote about this.
Speaker 1: We're not going to go to any quotes or anything, but John Flavill.
Speaker 1: He's a Puritan pastor and writer, really cool, good guy, but he wrote to his people that would be reading his material.
Speaker 1: You know that you've used your body parts, your members he calls them.
Speaker 1: You've used your members to sin against God, and God still protects and preserves your body.
Speaker 1: You've used your body parts for treachery against heaven and God loves you so much he still protects your body because he's that gracious, he's that awesome, he's that dope.
Speaker 1: Somebody say God is that dope, and if he's that dope, then we should be careful what we put our bodies around and put in our bodies.
Speaker 1: We should be careful about things like lusting after food or lusting after flesh, or getting high or just overeating or under eating or whatever we would do that would hurt the body.
Speaker 1: This is God's temple.
Speaker 1: It was made to worship God.
Speaker 1: God's letting me it's not even mine.
Speaker 1: God's letting me borrow it.
Speaker 1: I should use it to bless his name.
Speaker 1: 1 Corinthians 6, 18 says flee from sexual immorality.
Speaker 1: All other sins that a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually sins against their own body.
Speaker 1: Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God?
Speaker 1: Here it is.
Speaker 1: You are not your own.
Speaker 1: You're bought with a price.
Speaker 1: Therefore, honor God with your bodies.
Speaker 1: So eat right and exercise and do everything you can to weaken lust by avoiding things that stir it up in you.
Speaker 1: And even when you're sick and I can tell you this as a guy who was sick for four and a half years there's power, even when you're sick, in praising God, not that you're sick, but that he's with you while you're sick.
Speaker 1: There's power in it, baby.
Speaker 1: There's power.
Speaker 1: God deserves to be praised.
Speaker 1: God should be worshiped because my stuff is his and my body is his.
Speaker 1: And here you go my heart is his.
Speaker 1: I mean, the heart is mine, the heart is mine.
Speaker 1: But God hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said to Moses.
Speaker 1: We talked a couple of weeks ago about circumcision of the heart, but now we're going to talk about hardening of the heart.
Speaker 1: And this is a tough one, guys, for real.
Speaker 1: We're going to stop off on the track here and we're going to have a theological conversation.
Speaker 1: How does this work?
Speaker 1: How does God harden Pharaoh's heart and how does he maintain his innocence?
Speaker 1: How does that supposed to go?
Speaker 1: And a lot of folks, you know they, come up with one of several theories about how this works.
Speaker 1: They say well, really, god didn't harden Pharaoh's heart, he just foresaw that Pharaoh would harden his heart.
Speaker 1: As we look at the text, pharaoh does harden his heart a lot before this moment, like Pharaoh himself, is hardening his heart.
Speaker 1: The problem is in Exodus, chapter four.
Speaker 1: God told Moses, before Pharaoh even knew anything about the whole deal I'm going to harden Pharaoh's heart in order to show him forth my glory, in order to bring these plagues on the land.
Speaker 1: So everyone will understand how powerful I am Now.
Speaker 1: If that's the case, let's just own for just a second.
Speaker 1: Okay, the human heart is a complex thing that we should not presume to entirely understand.
Speaker 1: The human heart, at least in the Bible, is a complex thing that we should not presume to understand.
Speaker 1: Here's why, jeremiah 17, nine many of you know this verse the heart is deceitful, above all things, and desperately sick.
Speaker 1: Who can understand it?
Speaker 1: Jeremiah is asking this question.
Speaker 1: He's like I don't think anybody gets this except for God.
Speaker 1: The other day I was sitting with my dog on the stairs with my laptop open and I tried for an hour and a half to explain the internet to that dog and he just did not get it.
Speaker 1: Can you believe this?
Speaker 1: He is dumb.
Speaker 1: No, he's not dumb, he's a dog.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter how long you could do it for 40 years he's not going to understand the internet.
Speaker 1: He's not going to understand how that works.
Speaker 1: And, in the same way, humans, we have to humble ourselves and just understand.
Speaker 1: If God is really a higher being than we are, there's going to be some stuff you just don't understand.
Speaker 1: I don't understand how it works.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean God's lying.
Speaker 1: To me, it's arrogant to think that we could figure out everything about how God works.
Speaker 1: If we're the creature that he made, that's double dumb.
Speaker 1: So another option is that God only hardened his heart after Pharaoh initially did his heart.
Speaker 1: And then a final option I think this is the most makes the most sense.
Speaker 1: The Bible demonstrates God working at the same time that humans are working on planet earth, and sometimes it's both of them.
Speaker 1: The Bible demonstrates sometimes a human takes action and God takes action, and they're the same action.
Speaker 1: And I don't know entirely how that works.
Speaker 1: But here's what I wrote out God hardens people's hearts in such a way that preserves their moral freedom, while also leveraging their natural sinful habits for his good purposes.
Speaker 1: Let me say that again God hardens people's hearts in such a way that preserves their moral freedom.
Speaker 1: Don't change it.
Speaker 1: Don't say God doesn't harden hearts and you're going to see why in a second but he does so in a way that they still get to choose.
Speaker 1: Pharaoh still got to choose all these times.
Speaker 1: They still get to choose.
Speaker 1: You and I still get to choose.
Speaker 1: We really do choose, and yet God impacts our heart while also leveraging their natural sinful habits for his good purposes.
Speaker 1: Now here's a weird illustration, and I'm going to believe by faith.
Speaker 1: It's going to be helpful.
Speaker 1: Let's pretend it's fictitious.
Speaker 1: Let's pretend that there's a little village in their nearer river and they're running out of food.
Speaker 1: Now in the river there's a lot of fish.
Speaker 1: They just don't know how to catch them the right way.
Speaker 1: They've tried every bait that they know how to use and they can't catch these fish.
Speaker 1: Plenty of fish to feed the whole village, but they can't seem to do it with this special kind of fish that is there.
Speaker 1: Here's how it comes this Fish PhD that understands everything about that particular fish.
Speaker 1: He's not just a normal human PhD, he's like, he's a moral.
Speaker 1: So he's been a PhD for 200 years.
Speaker 1: He knows everything there is to know about everything these types of fish will ever do.
Speaker 1: He knows exactly what kind of bait to use.
Speaker 1: He knows exactly where they'll be.
Speaker 1: He knows exactly where that needs to be placed in the river, right next to the stick, so that this fish will grab this and get hooked.
Speaker 1: He knows everything about that fish because he's so smart.
Speaker 1: Now, when he goes and he places that bait near where the fish, he knows the fish is going to take it.
Speaker 1: The fish still chooses to take it, but the guy's so smart, he put it exactly where it would suit his good purposes to feed the people of the village.
Speaker 1: And God says I know you don't understand.
Speaker 1: I've got good purposes in freeing my Israelites and I will leverage Pharaoh's craziness and his own stubborn, hard, hard will, and I will sometimes affect what he was already going to do, in order to demonstrate my glory.
Speaker 1: If your mind just went pop, that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: It should go pop, because we can't totally understand it, because we're not God.
Speaker 1: God blesses name and that's another reason to praise him.
Speaker 1: But there's a warning here, there's a real warning.
Speaker 1: The warning the Israelites are seeing, the warning that is happening right in front of their eyes to Pharaoh is my friends, there comes a point if you keep on hardening your heart, if you keep on, no, I will not hear, I will not listen to God.
Speaker 1: There may come a point where God says all right, I'm done, I'm done trying to reach you Like you've hardened, you've, I've learned the lesson.
Speaker 1: You do not want me to reach out to you, you want me to go away.
Speaker 1: You may have your wish, I will go away.
Speaker 1: So, god, according to the scripture, he will do stuff like harden the heart.
Speaker 1: But here's the great news, according to the same scripture and more so and more examples.
Speaker 1: God softens a heart and opens a heart.
Speaker 1: So if you say I don't want a God that hardens hearts, well, baby, what are you going to do about?
Speaker 1: You?
Speaker 1: Need a God who's going to soften your heart.
Speaker 1: What are you going to do about that?
Speaker 1: It works the other way too.
Speaker 1: The Bible's full of examples of where God is softening hearts in order for people to accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
Speaker 1: In fact, this is the new covenant prophesied in the old covenant by Ezekiel.
Speaker 1: It says I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit in you.
Speaker 1: I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.
Speaker 1: Now you might cry foul on God Foul.
Speaker 1: Well, you're doing it for him, god.
Speaker 1: They didn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even their choice.
Speaker 1: You just took their stony heart and give them a heart that was soft and receptive and open to the things of the gospel.
Speaker 1: You said that's unfair.
Speaker 1: God says I didn't ask your advice.
Speaker 1: I do what's best and wise and righteous always, and I do it in grace for you.
Speaker 1: Acts 16, 14,.
Speaker 1: As Lydia listened to us, the Lord opened her heart and she accepted what Paul was saying.
Speaker 1: Guys, there's so much hope in the idea that God softens hearts.
Speaker 1: Are we hearing this?
Speaker 1: God is gracious and God softens hearts.
Speaker 1: That's why you can have hope that you can keep praying for your child's heart to be softened.
Speaker 1: You can keep praying for your coworker's heart to be softened.
Speaker 1: You can keep praying for the president's heart to be softened Anybody, you can keep praying and God will work, because God's not above affecting a human heart for his glory and his purposes.
Speaker 1: But let's just be clear it's God alone who can do it.
Speaker 1: Pharaoh can't do it, ain't no gods of Egypt that can do it.
Speaker 1: God alone can do it.
Speaker 1: So if you're up against a real tough person, someone who's really stubborn or really hard, have no fear.
Speaker 1: Just start worshiping God, that he's the God of the heart and nobody stop Him.
Speaker 1: I needed this.
Speaker 1: Personally, this is what I needed when I was 18 years old.
Speaker 1: I was even reading the Scriptures.
Speaker 1: I was around Christian people and I knew, oh my gosh, god wants me to ask for His forgiveness and give Him my heart.
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it, and so we just prayed for three months.
Speaker 1: God, would you give me a soft heart.
Speaker 1: And you know what he did.
Speaker 1: After month three, he gave me a soft heart and I accept that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.
Speaker 1: God softens hearts and sometimes there may be something he's calling you to do and you don't even.
Speaker 1: I just don't even want to do it, I don't want to.
Speaker 1: Okay, well then, pray that you would want to Pray for a soft heart.
Speaker 1: Pray that God would help you do what you cannot do.
Speaker 1: Your stuff is mine, your body is mine, your heart is mine.
Speaker 1: And number four here's the last one the favor is mine, the favor is mine.
Speaker 1: I will 23,.
Speaker 1: I will make a distinction between my people and your people.
Speaker 1: God says it's blessed to be my people.
Speaker 1: Now we have a false God.
Speaker 1: Here too, we're enamored with celebrity.
Speaker 1: We're enamored with stories of like rags to riches.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, there's so much luck and you know now they're on a yacht and so much favor and they've got so many followers.
Speaker 1: And it's just amazing.
Speaker 1: And there's some people we look at and we're like they look like they're favored.
Speaker 1: How can they be favored?
Speaker 1: They're so bad, they do so many things that are evil.
Speaker 1: Why are they favored?
Speaker 1: But you know the truth.
Speaker 1: Someone could look at us.
Speaker 1: And if they could see what's going on in our mind and go on in our hearts.
Speaker 1: They might also say how are they favored?
Speaker 1: Look what they're doing.
Speaker 1: And yet here's what the scripture says he causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Speaker 1: This is what theologians call common grace.
Speaker 1: This is where God is just being good to everybody right now.
Speaker 1: He's giving everybody rain, he's giving everybody sunshine, he's giving everybody air in their lungs.
Speaker 1: Now here's the lesson for us today.
Speaker 1: On number four the favor is not cars.
Speaker 1: The favor we're talking about is not bling.
Speaker 1: The favor we're talking about is a separating favor.
Speaker 1: It's a favor that says I'm going to take you out from among them and I'm going to protect you from the plague of death and eternal death, because if I don't, you're going to be on the line to pay for your sin and you will never be able to pay for it.
Speaker 1: There's a place called hell, and it's eternal and it's real, and that's the place where people that said no Lord, I will not let you pay for my sin, I'll pay for it myself.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Whether they mean to say it or not, if they're saying it they get their wish and everyone who trusts in Jesus Christ gets taken into the land of Goshen, spiritually speaking, and they're saved not from plagues but from the actual ultimate plague.
Speaker 1: My friends, this is a story of worship, it's a story of relationship and it's a story of Jesus.
Speaker 1: Jesus pays the price for my favor.
Speaker 1: Jesus pays the price for your favor.
Speaker 1: Jesus the innocent one.
Speaker 1: He accepts the rejection, he accepts the murder and he gets up on the cross as the son of God and gives his very life so that you and I can be saved from eternal death.
Speaker 1: That's what he does.
Speaker 1: That's the favor.
Speaker 1: Dog gone.
Speaker 1: That's the favor.
Speaker 1: Yo.
Speaker 1: That's what the favor is.
Speaker 1: It ain't stuff, it's him, it's connection and blessing with him.
Speaker 1: So the Israelites there are traveling companions, but we are Pharaoh and we are the Egyptians, and the son of God is coming in and saying I will save you from the plague, come on over here and get safe, because the only true son is treated like the enemy, so that the enemies can be treated like the son, like the son.
Speaker 1: Jesus is the one experiencing the judgments because we resisted.
Speaker 1: Jesus is the one experiencing the punishment because we loved stuff.
Speaker 1: He's getting punished because we loved the human body so much that we worshiped it.
Speaker 1: He's getting punished.
Speaker 1: He's getting punished because we scorned the favor of God to his face.
Speaker 1: And while he's being punished he says trust me, trust me, believe that I cover your sin, believe that I give you a life you cannot have apart from yourself, and I will take you to a truly favored place, and when your body expires, you'll be with me there in the permanent land of Goshen.
Speaker 1: What did the Israelites learn?
Speaker 1: They learned a lot of things about the power of their God, but we learned something because we're later on that they never learned.
Speaker 1: And Jesus talked about this in Luke 10, 24, said for, I tell you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, looking at Jesus and did not see it.
Speaker 1: And hear what you hear and did not hear.
Speaker 1: My friends, we are more favored than those Israelites, because now we see Jesus, we see the one who the plagues were really about.
Speaker 1: We see Jesus and he rescues us and he says by the way, as you're going through this week, as you're worshiping here at Fares, just remember the stuff is mine, your body is mine, your heart is mine and the favor is mine.
Speaker 1: Let's bow our heads, jesus, we want to thank you for being the God of all favor.
Speaker 1: We want to thank you that you're the God of everything is yours, all the stuff is yours, everything we have.
Speaker 1: And we just turn it back to you and we say, god, there's nobody like you, nobody comes close to doing anything like you do.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your heart for us, jesus and you would be willing to take the plagues and the judgment so that we could be safe.
Speaker 1: Oh Jesus, we nestle up right against your chest.
Speaker 1: We say thank you, god.
Speaker 1: Would you help us practice this gratefulness, reviewing all that you've done for us and do for us, and help us to worship in spirit and truth right now, in Christ's name, and a special thanks to those of you who give generously to support this ministry.
Speaker 1: It's because of you that this is possible.
Speaker 1: You can click on the link in the description to give now or visit Fierce Church for more information.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this podcast, why not subscribe?
Speaker 1: Share it with your friends.
Speaker 1: Click on the share button, take a screenshot and share it on social media or whatever.
Speaker 1: You would share such things.
Speaker 1: Whatever challenges you're facing, I know you can make it.
Speaker 1: Don't give up.
Speaker 1: Hang on to Jesus.
Speaker 1: He won't let go of you.
Speaker 1: Jesus loves you so much and we love you.
Speaker 1: I hope someday we get to meet in person.
Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening.