God's Power on Full Display

It’s easy to grow comfortable and casual in our relationship with God. We focus so much on his love and grace that we lose sight of his power and authority over our lives and over all creation. Through the plagues, God showed his complete supremacy over the false gods of Egypt.  He revealed himself not only to Egypt but to His own people, calling them back to a reverent fear and awe of who He truly is

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning, everybody. Good to see you today. Listen, if you are visiting with us today, we're so glad that you're here. My name is Ryan. I'm one of the pastors here at Impact. And we are in the middle of a series through the book of Exodus, and we have creatively titled the series Exodus. So if you have your Bibles, let's open to Exodus chapter seven. Just a little warning here. We are going to try to get through about four or five chapters today. And if you know me at all, you know I struggle to get through four or five verses on a Sunday. So your prayers are appreciated at this point. But we're going to be doing a lot of jumping around as we kind of look through this next section of the book of Exodus. And so much of it ties together with this common thematic thread. That's what we want to camp out on today and unpack. So a little different approach and style, but excited to get into God's word with you. We have been going through this Old Testament historical narrative of God delivering his people from 400 years of slavery to the land of Egypt. And God raising up a man named Moses, one of his people, sending him to Pharaoh and demanding, let my people go. And Pharaoh said, No, twice, two times. Pharaoh says, No, absolutely not. I don't know Yahweh. I don't know the Lord. These are our slaves. And so go pound sand, essentially, is what Pharaoh told Moses and his relative Aaron as they were being obedient to the Lord. And so that's what we see. Now in chapters 7 through 12, we're going to see God dealing with Pharaoh's hardened heart by bringing a series of ten plagues of increasing intensity and severity upon the land of Egypt. And I was pre prepping and studying for today, and I was reminded of an occurrence that happened when I was in college many, many years ago. But I was part one of the sports teams there. And we uh we had access kind of later at night to go and use the gym. And one of the guys on the team somehow got a key to the gym. And I don't think we were technically supposed to be in there, but the security team on campus kind of knew us and they just kind of turned a blind eye. They didn't really say anything. So we kind of became emboldened and we would occasionally do it at first, but then when we saw the safety team didn't really do anything about it, we kind of started feeling like, hey, we're we're we're good. We can do more of this. And so we started going more frequently. And there was one particular security guard, his name was Maneeb. And Maneeb was a large human specimen. He was about 6'4, and I'm pretty sure he competed in bodybuilding. So he was just, I mean, they couldn't find a shirt to contain his biceps. This was a large man, and we respected Maneeb. Nobody messed with Maneeb, but he was always around when we were in the gym when we technically shouldn't have been. And so he was kind of coming in and just going, all right. And so we kind of got comfortable with Maneeb and we started ribbing him a little bit. And then he popped back in and we started kind of taunting him, like, yeah, you're not going to do anything about this. We felt really cool that we were kind of giving him a hard time. And there was one day where Maneb, I kind of felt like just went, Yeah, I've had enough of this. And so he walks into the gym. We're like, hey, Maneeb, what's up, man? Yeah, we're kind of teasing him, calling him weak, and all these things. And I had just finished doing a set of bench press. And so I was pretty proud of what I had just lifted. I'm like, oh, this is pretty good. I mean, this is a new personal record, feeling good about myself, like I'm strong. And Maneev's like, oh, Ryan, is that a new best? I'm like, yeah, man, I'm doing great. And he walks over to the bench that I had just finished doing a personal record of weight on, and he walks up to it, he grabs it off the rack, and he does five reps of bicep curls with it. And then he re-racked it and he looked at me, smiled, and just walked outside. I stopped messing with Maneeb after that moment. Because he needed to remind me what he was capable of. Guys, there are times as followers of Jesus, with as close as we feel to him, knowing his love, his mercy, his grace, all of these things about him, there are times where you and I, as Christians, need to be reminded of who God is, his power, what he is capable of. And that's what I think he wants to do today. In Exodus chapter 7, we're gonna start here, verse 3. We we camped out it toward the end of Exodus 7 last week, but I want to back up even further in verse 3. God is about to tell, he's gonna tell Moses what he's about to do to the land of Egypt and to Pharaoh because of their hardened hearts and because of their refusal to obey God. Here's what he tells Moses, verse 3 But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. This is what we refer to as these plagues. Verse 5. The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them. Did you guys catch at the end here where God even tells Moses not just what he's gonna do by sending these plagues upon the land of Egypt, but he also tells Moses why he's going to do it. Did you catch that in verse five? So that when I stretch out my hand, they shall know that I am the Lord. When you look at this question of why did God send the plagues, he doesn't just answer it here. Repeatedly throughout chapter 7 through 12, we see God not only putting the plagues into action, but telling Moses, telling Pharaoh, reminding them of why he's doing these things. That it's not just because he's a cruel, vindictive God. There is plan and purpose in it. In verse 17 of chapter 7, later on in the chapter, uh, speaking of the first plague, of the water of the Nile becoming blood, he says, By this you shall know that I am the Lord. In chapter 9, verse 16, God is speaking to Pharaoh and says, But for this purpose I have raised you up, Pharaoh, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth, which is just another way of saying, so that I may be known throughout all the earth. Right? God's purpose in these plagues, in his judgment against sin and against Egypt, this type of the world today, was to make himself known to his own people and to the people of Egypt, to show an entire nation that neither knew nor feared God exactly who he was and is and remains to this day, and to reveal judgment against this world that rebelled against him, that perpetrated evil throughout his creation, that brought destruction upon everything that he had made. This was his purpose in the plagues. When you look at the 10 plagues, it's super interesting. We don't have time to break down every single one of these, but I encourage you guys to do your own research on this. Every plague corresponds directly with a member or one of the Egyptian pantheon, the the gods of Egypt. So when you look at all the different gods that the Egyptians worshiped and devoted themselves to and trusted in and thought that they were super powerful beings, every one of these gods, each plague defied one of their gods right to their face, right? The water becoming blood in the Nile, and they were dependent upon the Nile River. And there was a God, a protector of the Nile that was supposed to keep the waters clean and safe and drinkable so Egypt could survive and thrive. And God said, Yeah, watch this. And he turned the water of the Nile to blood, killing the fish and all the things they depended upon. The second plague was one of frogs. This is kind of weird, right? None of us here, if we were God, would be like, oh, dude, I'm gonna do a plague on the land of Egypt. I'm gonna show my power. How are you gonna do it? Frogs. None of us would have thought of that. Why did he choose frogs? There was an Egyptian goddess who was depicted as a frog. She was the fertility goddess because frogs lay a lot of eggs. And so the Egyptians treated them as sacred creatures. You couldn't kill them, and yet they were invading every area of life and they were trying to kill them and get rid of them, and they couldn't do it. So God was demonstrating his power over that goddess of fertility. There was a plague of gnats, or if you look in the Hebrew, it could also be considered lice. And part of that plague, God tells Moses to take his staff and to hit the ground with it, and the dust kind of rose into the atmosphere. And from that dust, all of these creatures, the either gnats or lice, invaded all of Israel and they couldn't get rid of it. And this was because of the God of the earth that the Egyptians worshiped and bowed down to and served. And God was demonstrating his power over that Egyptian God. So every single plague corresponds with a God or goddess that the Egyptians worshiped and devoted themselves to. So not only was God displaying his power over all creation, but the plagues were indisputable proof, a demonstration of God of His supremacy and authority over these false gods and idols of Egypt. In our world today, still worships and serves false gods. A God is anything that takes the place of the one true God. And we have myriad gods here in our culture as well, these counterfeit or fake gods that we worship and serve. Paul speaks of these gods that we worship and serve. He refers to them in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 4. And here's what he says about this: speaking of unbelievers, those who are just the part of the world and not followers of Christ. He says, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. So when he mentions the God of this world, lowercase G, do you guys catch that? He's not speaking about the true God. Who is he referring to? The devil, Satan, the enemy of God. There is a spiritual enemy that we read about in the book of Genesis and throughout Scripture that God wants to make sure we understand is real, He exists, and He is literally hell bent on the destruction of your soul. His aim and goal, before he faces eternal wrath and punishment from God, knowing what's coming, his goal is to take as many of us as the image bearers of God with him before he goes. And he operates and moves and works amongst us with his legions of demonic spirits. And guys, we hear this kind of stuff, and some of us we go, that's just weird. And it may be weird, but it's real. And some of us need our eyes open to understand we have been born into a spiritual battlefield. And we're walking around every day completely oblivious. Can you imagine walking into an actual war zone without any clue that war is going on? That's the danger of what we're we're experiencing on a daily basis. We're being attacked by a spiritual enemy trying to separate us from God, and we don't understand why things are so hard and why these things may be happening. And please know this is not a sermon going, there's a demon behind every bush. There's a pastor that I had growing up who's uh part of our church here today. I'm so honored and blessed to have him here, Marty Edwards, and he had to deal with a lot from me growing up too. And I had a group of guys when we were in high school, and and we uh for whatever reason, we just loved the Lord so much and we were growing in our faith. And I was probably about a sophomore or a junior, and we started a club called 24-7, the 24-7 crew, because we were 24 hours a day, seven days a week, serving Jesus. And we would go and look for don't laugh, you guys laughed at me. Okay, it was pretty stupid, but we thought it was so cool, and we were like driving around everywhere looking for people to share Christ with, and and one of the things that we started studying on was spiritual warfare. And when you talk about the spiritual battle and you get a bunch of warm-blooded young males together, you better believe we were all about it. And so we kind of saw ourselves, we desperately wanted to find some kind of like the demon kind of a situation, and we wanted to be demon hunters. We're gonna take these demons out, man. We're gonna speak the name of Jesus, and they're gonna be like, no, no, no, no, no, you know, run away, it's gonna be awesome. And so we're looking for this. And somebody caught wind of this and set up a meeting to meet with Pastor Marty. And I'll never forget, he sat us down and so graciously and so lovingly said, guys, we don't want to go picking a fight with God's enemy. There needs to be an understanding of who he is and what he's capable of. But when we have an encounter, when we are being attacked, rest assured you need to understand you have nothing to fear. Nothing to fear because of who God is and the power in the name of Jesus that is greater than the legions and forces of all of hell. But it begins with understanding there is a spiritual enemy. Ephesians 6, 12, Paul writes, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. What is he talking about? We don't wrestle or fight against flesh and blood, against people. People are not, they are never the enemy. This is why Jesus said, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, because we think of them as our enemies. They're just victims to the true enemy, which is the enemy of God. And there are dominions, there are rulers and authorities and spiritual forces of evil in this world. Guys, we don't just battle against the sinful influences of this world and its systems. We battle against the demonic spiritual forces of evil behind these influences and systems. While demonic spirits are real, as I mentioned, they're not to be feared ever. Yeah, last week we we talked a little bit about the Egyptian magicians. You guys remember that? Guys, it was a week ago. You seriously don't remember that the Egyptian magicians, when Moses did this sign, Moses and Aaron, they did the sign of God where he threw a staff down on the ground and it became what? A serpent. Okay, you remember, good. Became a serpent, and then the Egyptian magicians, by their arts, their secretive arts, did the same thing. Remember that? But then the staff of Moses, the staff of God, swallowed up the other two staffs. But but part of the question is how did they do that? Yeah, it could have been deception, trickery, sleight of hand, but but really the insinuation is they did it through the evil spirit, the demonic spirit that they devoted themselves to and worshiped. Because the gods of Egypt were not just like Marvel characters that were make-believe and imaginary. Behind each of these gods and goddesses they worshiped and served was a demonic principality or authority in that region. And so that's what they were dealing with. That's what Moses was dealing with. And so as they did these things, they did it by their secret of arts. We see it wasn't just with the staff. Uh, when you talk about the first and second plagues, you see them doing something similar. Right? So the Nile is turned to blood, the frogs come in, and what we read in each of those instances is that the magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts. So we see this fabrication, this counterfeiting of God's power that the enemy tries to do himself. But that has limits, and we see that limit. Eventually, the Egyptian magicians can't deal with the power of God any longer. The third plague was the plague of gnats or lice, and we read that the magicians tried by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they could not. By the time we get to the sixth plague, the plague of boils over all of Egypt's flesh that they couldn't get rid of in spite of their goddess of health that they devoted themselves to, we read that the Egyptians themselves let me get it here. The boils came upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians. So not only could they not stop the boils, they were all infected by it too. We see the clear limitations of the spiritual powers of this world. As the enemy of God will always bow to the authority of the one true God because of what he has done through his son Jesus Christ. Because of the victory Christ gave us at the cross and through his resurrection that we do get to celebrate on Resurrection Sunday coming up next week. He has given us the victory. Paul tells us this, Colossians 2, verse 15, speaking of Jesus. He disarmed the rulers and the authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him, in Christ. The defeated enemy has no power over us as children of God. It is a toothless dog, and we are terrified when all it can do is come and try to gum us to death. And we live in fear, so many of us. We live buying into the tactics. Guys, the enemy has been defeated. It is powerless and weaponless. The only tactic it still has and it utilizes and we allow it to have is deception, lies, manipulation, and fear. Trying to stir these up in us and we buy it hook, line, and sinker. Forgetting that the only power the enemy has over us is that which we give to him. Because Jesus has disarmed him, defeated him. He's done. So why live in this fear any longer? Why live in the lies of what he tries to get us to believe about who God is, who we are, and God's purpose and plan for us. My prayer is that each of us can experience spiritual freedom. I'm so thankful for ministries and groups we have here, like our spiritual care study that's coming up here very, very soon. And we have a process of what's known as the steps to freedom, walking people through these areas of bondage, slavery spiritually that a lot of us may still be in, believing the lies of the enemy because of what we've been told, uh what people have seemed to voice to us throughout our life. And we believe these things instead of the truth of what God says about himself and about us. And we need to be set free from these lies, from that powerless power he tries to exert over us. That group starts next week. You guys can go online, go to the events page, and look for the registration there for the spiritual care study. I encourage you guys to check it out. So many in this unbelieving world refuse to acknowledge the power and the authority of God. Guys agree with that? Too many of us in this world refuse to believe the power, the supremacy, the sovereignty, and the authority of God in his creation. They worship and serve, devote themselves to the false gods and the demonic spirits of this world. Money and power and love and sex and entertainment and everything the world says, this is what life is about. And there's these spiritual forces behind that. And we devote ourselves to it. So many that are lost in this world believing that. But it's not just unbelievers, it's not just the world. Even within the church, within Christendom, as Christians, we too too often refuse to acknowledge the power and authority of God in our own lives. We're not willing to submit to his word. Because there's something in us that kind of doubts who he actually is in his power and his glory. If you notice here in Exodus, we see that God, He's not just making Himself known to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians, He's making Himself known also to His own people who have been slaves in Egypt for so long they didn't know who Yahweh was. And so God was revealing to his own people who he was in his power and his authority. We see that. Exodus chapter 10, verse 2. God says to Moses and to his people, I'm doing these things, I'm these plagues will be will happen to Egypt, that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them, that you may know that I am the Lord. So it wasn't just for an unbelieving world, it was for his unbelieving people. As it is so easy for us as Christians to focus exclusively on the love and the grace and the mercy and the compassion of God. And I'm so grateful for those things and glad that we focus on them because so many of us were so beat up and broken down. We need to be reminded of that over and over again, don't we? We need to preach that gospel to ourselves every day. But it loses its efficacy, it loses its effectiveness if all we do is focus on the love and mercy of Jesus to at the expense of his holiness and his power and his wrath against sin and evil that destroys his creation.

unknown 21:59

If we need

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Neglect his awesomeness and majesty and might. We're doing ourselves a disservice, and we're not believing in a whole and complete God. We're picking pieces of him that we want to focus in on. Never forget that in Christ we have a personal relationship with a seriously and supremely powerful being. Luke chapter 5, love this story. Simon Peter, one of the disciples early on in Christ's ministry. So he calls his disciples and they're following him, and they knew something's different, something special about this rabbi. And they had hopes. And so Simon Peter was one of those who looked to Jesus as man, this is the great rabbi. He teaches like nobody else teaches. We want to follow him. But none of his disciples up to this point really understood who he is as the Son of God. And so it was Luke chapter 5 that he's teaching people, and his disciples had been out in their boat. They've been fishing all night long. And these were fishermen. They grew up on the Sea of Galilee and they fished all night. And we read they caught nothing. Now, some of you guys are fishermen in here. Yeah? You guys anybody go fishing? Anybody actually actually catch anything? There's a difference, right? There's a difference. You know, we don't catch something, we're like, oh man, but it's still fine because we're just going to relax, enjoy, have fun. So you catch something, it's great. If you don't, no problem. We'll try it again later when I get a chance. That's not what these guys were doing. They were fishermen by trade. It would be more equivalent like you worked a graveyard shift all night, and after you're done, ready to go home, your boss comes up to you and says, Hey, forgot to tell you, we can't actually pay you for everything you did today. That's the frustration Peter must have been feeling here because it was their livelihood. And so he's going, Man, this is frustrating. They're cleaning their nets. Jesus tells them, goes out. Now, Jesus, by trade growing up with his dad, Joseph, his, I guess we call stepdad, he was a carpenter by trade. He worked with wood, with stones, and built things. And so he goes up to the boat, he sees Peter, sees all the guys, and they're all discouraged. They caught nothing all night long. And he tells them, Hey, why don't you throw your net on the other side of the boat? Can you imagine being Simon Peter in that moment? Like, hey, Jesus, thank you, Mr. Carpenter Man. We're fishermen. We grew up on this lake. We know where fish are, where they're not. If we can't catch fish, ain't nobody catching fish. Thanks, Jesus, but stay in your lane. But he said, Lord, we fished all night and caught nothing. Nevertheless, at your bidding, we will do it. And they cast the net on the other side of the boat, and it was so filled with fish, boats were sinking. And as they dragged it to shore, Simon Peter jumps out of the boat and he comes and he falls at Jesus' feet. Here's what we read Luke 5:8. When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. And Peter was comfortable with Jesus. He'd been following him for a bit. He knew who he was as a great teacher. But when Peter finally came face to face with the raw power of God's Son, he fell on his face, so aware of his sinfulness and weakness and inadequacy. And he said, Depart from me, Lord, I can't even be in your presence right now. As in contrast, so many of us, you and I, we have gotten so comfortable and casual in our relationship with Jesus that there's no reverence, there's no awe of him. We freely flirt and frolic with the gods and goddesses of this world. We give them open access to our life, inviting them in, remaining in that bondage, thinking nothing of it. We don't feel any real need to live a life of holiness, to be holy as He is holy and calls us to be holy, set apart and different. We are comfortable and perfectly okay to tolerate sin in our own lives and everywhere around us, as long as it means I don't have to make myself or other people feel uncomfortable. Many of us we worship a caricature of God. And we need to be reminded of who he is, not this caricature version that over-emphasizes or embellishes certain parts at the expense of others, other aspects or attributes of his deity and who he is. We can't emphasize this love at the expense of his power and his holiness. You want to know evidence of this, by the way? Guys, think about how often when you and I we face a scary situation, we face difficult, challenging, seemingly impossible circumstances, and we are so quick to come to the Lord and we're just like, Lord, please just you know love me in this moment and bring your comfort. And these are good prayers because he's near to the brokenhearted. And so we pray for that comfort, we pray for him to just be with us and make us feel better in the moment. But but how many of us truly believe that when we face that kind of circumstance, that our God, who is all powerful, is able in that moment to intervene and to save us from that circumstance, to rescue and redeem us? We don't pray prayers of deliverance, we pray prayers of comfort only. Now, if we pray prayers of deliverance and God has different plans and he wants to bring comfort, glory to God, it is his plan, we submit to that. But is there any boldness and confidence in the power of the Savior we serve? And whenever we talk about God's sovereignty, his power, his supremacy, guys, we have to address some theological filters in a lot of us. And if you're not a theologian in any way, just hopefully this can be informative, maybe a little educational and encouraging for you. If you are a theologian out here going, oh, I love theology, lean in. In Exodus 7, verse 3 through 5, we read God telling Moses, here's what I'm gonna do. I don't know if you guys caught the very first statement God makes to Moses. He says, I will harden Pharaoh's heart. Do you guys get that? Now we skip right over that. I don't think we should skip over that. Because here's the immediate thought that should come to us. Wait, hold, hold on a second. So God says, I'm gonna harden Pharaoh's heart. Then when Pharaoh's heart is hardened and he doesn't do what God wants him to, he gets punished for it? That's a little messed up. I mean, Pharaoh had no choice, right? God hardened his heart. So what in the world is going on here? Can we unpack this a little bit more? Let's let's kind of read some verses or or see what God says throughout these chapters of Exodus. Looking at the references to Pharaoh's hardened heart in these passages, and in these chapters, two times we see God saying, I will harden Pharaoh's heart. Four times we read, the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. Three times we read, Pharaoh hardened his own heart. And seven times we read, Pharaoh's heart was hardened, but it doesn't tell us who was doing the hardening. Let's close in prayer. Right? Did God harden Pharaoh's heart or did Pharaoh harden his own heart? You know the answer? Yes. Yes. And we want to understand it so bad, and we've got to make sense of it and exactly how this is working and what's the chronology. And we're trying to figure out where God's hardening and Pharaoh's hardening, how it all took place, and what was before what? The chicken and the egg. And we're wrestling through all of these hard and hard issues, and it's just hard. And we want to put God on our human timeline, and we forget God is outside of time. He's outside of this spatio-temporal world in which we live and by which we are bound in our finitude. Like God is eternal, He's outside of all this stuff, and so He's speaking and revealing things to us, and we at times feel like we have to understand everything about God. And so we try to force him into our little limited boxes of our own human reason and understanding. And the result of that is highly problematic. Throughout church history, whenever we try to force God and who he is and what he's done into our theological reason box, guys, the result, you know what it is? Heresy. You look at the nature of our triune God. God is three, yet he is what? One. Father, Son, Spirit, God. There is one God and only one God. No God has been made before him or after him. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. Yet Father, Son, Spirit, God. One God, three persons. And in our brain we go, well, that doesn't make sense. And we want to reason through it. And so we try to explain, well, they're each gods, but really they're one in purpose. And we end up with a heresy known as modalism or others. So that the early church had to speak against this and condemn it and say, no, there is one God, and yet, yes, Father, Son, and Spirit, they're God. You look at the nature of Jesus referred to as the hypostatic union of Christ, the union of God and man, and how it is necessary because only man is deserving to die for our sin, but only God is capable of dying for our sin. And he is fully human, fully God. And yet in Christ, both of those coexist. And we go, that doesn't make sense. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. And so Jesus must not have been actually a human. He's God, so he must have just appeared to be human. This is why John the disciple writes and says, Listen, our eyes saw him, our hands handled him, our ears, we heard him. It's not just spirit. We ate with him, dined with him. He was a person, and yet he was God. Heresy is the result. When we try to make sense and say, no, no, God has to fit my understanding. Guys, by definition, if an eternal and all-knowing God could be fully comprehended by you and me, we would be the same as him. It's impossible. Now, this is not a crutch. This is not an intellectual crutch to say, oh, I just can't figure it out. And so we just go, whatever, and we stop pursuing. We stop leaning in. We stop learning about who he is and growing in our understanding of him. Because he has revealed so much about himself.

unknown 33:29

St.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Anselm of Cancerbury, one of my theological heroes, talks about faith beginning being the beginning point. And that when it comes to theology, all theology is, is faith pursuing understanding. And so when we start from a place of faith in who God is, that we know we're not going to be able to understand anything, and we approach this with a level of humility that reminds us there's no way we're taking all of this and being able to go, I got it figured out. When we approach with that faith and humility, when we reach a point of going, God hardened Pharaoh's heart, but Pharaoh hardened his heart and how this all, and I just, Lord, you're incredible. Thank you that you didn't allow my heart to be hardened the way that Pharaoh hardened his own. Thank you that I have a softened heart because of what Jesus has done, that you've forgiven me and saved and redeemed me. And the only response, guys, hear this, it's worship. It's worship. We're not gonna have everything figured out. Understanding there's a divine perspective, a human perspective, and God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and Pharaoh hardened his heart, and God is sovereign, yet man is responsible and has a will. And we can rest assured that we can hold these in balance and tension because that is the full counsel of scripture. And so there's so many debates. And if you're familiar with Calvinism or Minianism and where these align and where's impact, here's where impact is: we teach God's word. And when God's word talks about the sovereignty of God and his election and him predestining us and all of these things, that is what we teach because that's what God's word says. And when it comes to man's free moral agency, that we are culpable and responsible to choose and make a decision with the will he has given us. That's what we teach. Because that's what this says. Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. And we see these interplaying over and over again. We have three categories of nature as Christ followers. We have what is natural in accordance with nature in created order, we have what is unnatural, which is not in accordance with nature, but then we have a third category. What is it? When it comes to God, supernatural, outside of nature, transcending nature. Because why? We're talking about God, and so we can't understand everything He does. These miracles, these plagues, all the stuff that God does here, it is supernatural acts of God. We also need to recognize three categories of reason. There are things that are reasonable according to our understanding of the world. There are things that are unreasonable that are not aligned with reason and what we understand of the world. But guys, to have the humility to recognize there's that third category of super reasonable that transcends our reason, that we can understand because we are limited, and his ways are higher than our ways. As high as the heavens are above the earth, he tells us in Isaiah. So are his ways higher than ours and his thoughts higher than ours. To recognize that, to be in awe of that, to let there be the mystery of who God is. It's a beautiful place of worship. To recognize our own limited understanding and to rest in faith in him, in that. It's beautiful. My daughter just recently, she's a freshman at college, and she tagged me on social media. She'd never done that before. And I'm like, what is this? What is this? And I look at it, she tagged me on this like contest. And you had to tag a certain amount of people and mention the site and all this stuff to get like all of these things that she wanted, like an iPad, like a uh one of the thermos things, the Stanley thermoses, uh, uh like an eye, an Apple pen, some really expensive like UG shoes, like all this really cool stuff. And and I see this and I'm like, oh babe, come on. And so I took it upon myself to impart my fatherly wisdom because these are like scam things, you know, you're not ever gonna really win. And if somebody does win, all they're trying to do is market and get more traction, and then they start spamming people. It's just not a good situation. So I was worried, oh, she's gonna tag other people. So I call her up and I'm explaining to her why she shouldn't have done this and don't do these things anymore. It's not a good thing. And she's like, okay, dad, sorry. And it was so nice to be able to impart wisdom that she did not yet have. So anyway, she won the contest. Um, and we started having all of these things shipped to our house, like over a thousand dollars worth of stuff. I'm like, babe, let's go to Pachanga. You're you're on a roll right now. Crazy, right? Because I'm trying to instruct her from my vast wisdom and fatherly knowledge to impart to my child, help her understand. And God's like, Ryan, you know nothing. I have a different plan and a different purpose. You guys ever encountered that limitation before? When we ask these questions, like, how could God do something like this? I'm reminded of Romans 9 because Paul addresses this actual question and he tells us specifically, this is the coolest thing. He's talking about this hardening of Pharaoh's heart. And in Romans 9, verse 19, he says, This, You will say to me then, why does God still find fault? For who can resist his will? Right there's the question. Listen to his answer. But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, Why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable? Here's what blows my mind. Paul could have given this whole theological explanation of going, listen, here's why. There's different kinds of God's will. There's the sovereign will of God that controls everything. We can rest in that. There's the moral will of God he has revealed through his word. There's his permissive will, things he allows. There's his causal will, things that he puts into practice. There's all kinds. Let me explain this to you, Romans. Paul doesn't do any of that. He doesn't try to make it fit their little reasoning box. You catch that? They're like, well, what's wrong with God? That's not fair. Why would he raise Pharaoh up for this and then punish him for doing that? And Paul's response is, Who do you think you are? You're the pot. He's the potter. And if he makes a decision and a choice, we submit ourselves to that because he knows not only what we don't know, he knows all things we can't ever know. All of our objections to the idea of God's sovereignty and control in this world and in our lives because it is ultimately rooted in humanism. Man, we talk about humanism, we have throughout the years over and over, but I still can't help but see it in my own thinking, my own way of living, and all of you as well. It is so deeply ingrained. Humanism, if you're not familiar with it, it's this philosophical postulate that life is about man, that humanity is at the center of existence, so that even God Himself exists for our purposes. He is our great genie in the heavens that is there to grant our requests. Because we hear about Jesus coming for us and giving his life for us and how much he loves us and he's always with us. And we start thinking it's about us. And we feel entitled, we feel deserving of the undeserved favor we should be in awe of. Like God, where were you on that one? It's humanism. We've got to detach and understand, guys, this is not our story. It is his story, and he's brought us into it for whatever reason. And we get to be a part, we get to play a role. But if we can start thinking free from humanism, that it's not about man, all of a sudden these questions of God, how could you, God, why would you, they all disappear. Because we realize who we are and who he is. And this is his story, not ours. Can you imagine if you came home from a vacation and you're sharing with me a story that was like this crazy story and you can't wait to tell me about it? And you start telling the story, yeah. Well, we were here, and and this person came in, and you know, I said this to him, and I go, Whoa, whoa. Why why'd you say that? That was dumb. You should have said this. You're like, well, yeah, yeah, I know, but you just hold on, bear with me. And so then you keep telling the story about something that this other guy said, and I'm like, well, that was stupid. Why did he say that? In this situation, he should have said this. Yeah, I know, but it's because I did this. Well, why did you do that? That was stupid too. You should have done this instead. At some point, would you not be like, hey, Ryan, I appreciate your engagement in my story, but can you shut up for a second? Because whose story is this? My story. It's not your story, Ryan. Quit interrupting. Now I'm so grateful for God's patience. But guys, we do not hear with the plagues a story of a crazy, cruel, vindictive God who pours his wrath out upon poor little Pharaoh and all these unsuspecting Egyptians who just didn't know any better. I mean poor things. What we see through the plagues is the one and only holy and perfect God who created all of Egypt and Pharaoh for his glory to bear his image, bearing with patience and endurance centuries of rebellion against him, of corrupting his creation through their sin and evil, of enslaving his very people for 400 years until finally God of all things said, Enough. Enough. And we live as if this life is about us and it's always going to be. At what point will God love us enough to say no more? No more. Can we stand together? Father, thank you for your patience and grace toward us. And Lord, I thank you that even as we talk about your power, your authority, your sovereignty, that you have called us to yourself, that we are able to approach your throne with confidence. Lord, not because we are entitled to it or worthy or deserving of it, but because it is a throne of grace. Lord, I pray that we will, those of us who have almost neglected, who refuse to reflect on, to acknowledge, to meditate upon your power over your creation, God, that you will meet us there in that place. God, forgive our lack of faith. Show us who you are. And Jesus, thank you for meeting us here today. Thank you for your word. And thank you that even those things we can't fully comprehend. We pursue understanding, but when we don't, we worship. In Jesus' name. Amen.