THROUGH THE BIBLE - Exodus 7..

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Well, good evening, everyone, and welcome to church. What a great privilege is to have you worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ with us once again.

Would you please open up your Bibles to the book of Exodus chapter seven, Exodus chapter seven. We continue with our corporate reading of scripture, as we always do, reading a chapter congregationally from the beginning of the Bible till the end of the Bible. We are in Exodus chapter seven this time. And we are going to be reading together, paying much attention to each one of the words of our Lord. I'm reading from the English standard version of the Bible, Exodus chapter seven.

And the Lord said to Moses, See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. But I will harden Pharaoh's heart. And though I multiply my sensei and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my host, my people, the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment.

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. Moses and Aaron did so. They did just as the Lord commanded them. Now Moses was 80 years old and Aaron 83 years old when they spoke to Pharaoh. Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, when Pharaoh says to you, prove yourselves by working a miracle, then you shall say to Aaron, take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh that he may become a serpent.

So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers and the magicians of Egypt also did they by their secret arts. For each man cast down his staff, and they became serpents. But Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs.

Still, Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord has said. Then the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh's heart is hardened. He refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he is going out to the water, stand on the bank of the Nile to meet him and take in your hand the staff that turned into a serpent. And you shall say to him, The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, send me to you saying, Let my people go that they may serve me in the wilderness.

But so far you have not obeyed. Thus says the Lord, By these you shall know that I am the Lord. Behold, with the staff that is in my hand, I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall turn into blood. The fish in the Nile shall die, and the Nile will stink, and the Egyptians will grow weary of drinking water from the Nile. And the Lord said to Moses, Say to Aaron, take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over the rivers, their canals and their ponds and all their pools of water so that they may become blood.

And there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, even in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone. Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded. In the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants, he lipped up the staff and struck the water in the Nile and all the water in the Nile turned into blood. And the fish in the Nile died and the Nile stank so that the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile. There was blood throughout all the land of Egypt.

Verse 22, But the magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts. So Pharaoh's heart remained hardened and he would not listen to them as the Lord had said. Pharaoh turned and went into his house and he did not take even this to his heart. And all the Egyptians dug along the Nile for water to drink. for they could not drink the water of the Nile.

Seven full days passed after the Lord had struck the Nile." Amen. The Word of our God and Savior. Beloved brethren, we have here in chapter 7, the second encounter of Moses and Aaron with Pharaoh. This is the second encounter because in chapter 5, Moses and Aaron had already had an encounter with Pharaoh, and they had requested on behalf of God to let the people go out of the land of Egypt.

The encounter that we have here in Chapter 7 is going to be different to that first encounter that took place in Chapter 5. And even all the encounters that will take place from Chapter 7 onwards, which is 10 or 11 encounters, will be different in nature to the encounter that happened in Chapter 5. Here in chapter seven, brothers and sisters, we have not only Moses and Aaron coming before Pharaoh, bringing the commandment of God to let the people of Israel go out of the land of Egypt, but also from this point onwards, Moses and Aaron are going to bring a manifestation of the power and the authority of the God who has commanded them to go to Pharaoh with this commandment. It is not only that will come to request verbally to say, let the people go. But from this point onwards, a demonstration of the power and the authority of the God of Israel is going to be brought before Pharaoh.

And now this is very important because the way that the Lord is going to communicate the message from now on is by establishing the order of the relationship of these four characters of this story. The Lord is going to establish the order of the relationships of these four people, of these four characters, if you want, God, Moses, Aaron and Pharaoh, the order of the relationship one to the other from this point onwards. He starts chapter seven by saying, just as God is God of Moses, Moses is going to be like God unto Pharaoh. And this is very important. He's not going to be like a God with a small G, but he's going to be like God, capital G, unto Moses.

So that means that every time that now Moses and Aaron are coming before Pharaoh, they're not only coming with a message of liberation for their people, but they're actually coming on behalf of God himself. And it's such that representation of Moses, like God unto Pharaoh, that Aaron, his brother, is going to serve him as the prophet. And then here we have God communicating or speaking to Moses and Moses to Aaron and Aaron to Pharaoh. This is very important, beloved brethren. Because every time that Moses and Aaron will come before the presence of Pharaoh, it's like if God himself was presenting himself before Pharaoh, bringing this confrontation of let the people go.

Now, in the sight or in the mind of Pharaoh, this is actually a big deal. This is a big deal, because just remember, beloved brethren, that for Pharaoh, he was a worshipper as Pharaoh, as the king of Egypt. He was a worshipper of multiple gods, many gods. And even he thought of himself as the king of Egypt, as a god unto the people. So he was the one who will hold in his hand all the power and all the authority for the people that were in the land of Egypt.

And not only that, but the Israelites, the people of Israel, they were a big portion of the people that lived in the land and they were working and they were pushing the economy of this whole nation. So when Moses and Aaron will come before him to say, let these people go, This was, beloved brethren, a confrontation against the power and the authority of Pharaoh and all his gods, as he thought that he had all this power within the land of Egypt. This was a divine confrontation. It was a divine confrontation of the God of the Israelites, the God of the Hebrews, and the gods of the Egyptians. He knew that Moses and not only, of course, God knew that and Moses and Aaron knew that.

And this is why, beloved brethren, he is going to give here the purpose of this divine confrontation. If you go to verse five. Or better from from verse four. Every time that now Moses and Aaron will come with this divine confrontation of his power and his authority. The Lord is going to answer the question that Moses asked in the end of the previous chapter.

Remember that in the previous chapter, he said, How will Pharaoh listen to me? That was the question that Moses asked God. And then the Lord is going to answer the question in verse four. Pharaoh will not listen to you. He will not listen to you.

Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my host, my people, the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment." Then he says something very interesting in verse 5. The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. Before that, in verse two and three, the Lord had said to Moses that he was going to speak on behalf of God and that he was going to harden the heart of Pharaoh, that Pharaoh was not going to let him go and that God was going to give Moses and Aaron these signs, multiply my signs and multiply my wonders. And I'm going to take the people out of the land of Egypt with great acts of judgment.

Now, beloved brethren, This was a confrontation, a divine confrontation of the power and the authority that Pharaoh had or he thought that he had. He thought that he was the king and all the power and all the authority depended on him and came from him and that nobody had given him that power and authority because all that power and authority was in him alone. So when he comes with these signs and wonders, and in fact, God is going to give him a sign, the first sign, and he's going to give him the first wonder of many other wonders that will come in the following chapters. The Lord was confronting the divine power and authority of Pharaoh, the first sign is that the staff of God, as he says in chapter 4 and 5, or the staff of Moses, as he says in chapter 6, or the staff of Aaron, is going to become a serpent. Now, Pharaoh, the king of the Egyptians, he will call his magicians or sorcerers, and they will come by the power of Satan.

with the secret arts, they will duplicate and do the same. But something very interesting happens here, beloved brethren, because a serpent is a symbol of authority. And more than likely, Pharaoh would have had in his vestment or in his garments a symbol of a serpent. So a serpent was representing power and authority. So then when the serpent of the staff of Aaron or the serpent of the staff of God will come and eat up or swallow up the serpents of the magicians or the sorcerers, This was an insult, a confrontation to the power and the authority of Pharaoh, that there is a God, the God of these Hebrews, the God of these slaves, that is sending these two men, saying that they're speaking on behalf of Him who has a power that I cannot deny.

That was the first sign. Then he did not listen to that first sign. It says that his heart was hardened. So the first wonder will be also given in this case. And that wonder, beloved brethren, was also with the purpose of bringing these confrontations of this man that is placed between the righteousness of God, who says you should do this, And then this man, out of his heart, he decides to take his own righteousness and do things according to his own will and not the will of the righteous God of the Israelites, who is the righteous God of this universe.

The second wonder now is going to be also a confrontation or attempt against, if you want, the divinity of the people of Egypt. Remember, I think our brother mentioned, or probably I had it in my mind, that the Nile was a representation The Nile was a representation of divinity in the Egyptians. So now God will come and strike the waters of the river, the Nile River, and they will convert those waters into blood. Now, by the power of Satan, beloved brothers and sisters, by the power of Satan, magicians and sorcerers will come and do One would have expected that according to their power and their power, they would have reversed that which God had accomplished through Moses and Aaron, but they couldn't. They just simply duplicated that.

But brothers and sisters, this was also again a confrontation of the power and authority of these men and the terrifying thing of all of this The terrifying thing, because now this man is placed before these two great events that are confronting his power. His authority. And then in verse 22, it says, when the magicians of Egypt did the same thing, that Pharaoh's heart remained hardened and he would not listen to them as the Lord had said. The Lord had said that he will harden his heart. And eventually everything that the Lord said to Moses and to the prophet of Moses, Aaron, was taking place.

But the terrifying things in verse 23. Pharaoh turned and went into his house, and he did not take even this to heart. He did not care. This was not a concern. He did not take that to his heart.

Beloved brethren, he was placed before the righteous judgment of God and the righteous requirement of God. And then he chose from his heart to continue the path of his own will. And this did not cause any type of remorse or any type of concern in the mind of Pharaoh or in the heart of Pharaoh. This is very important, beloved brethren, because thorough when New Testament revelation is given unto us by the grace of God and by the power of the Spirit, and when the apostles will come to reveal the things of the Old Testament and apply those things for the church, the apostle Paul in Romans 9 is going to take the example of Pharaoh, and he is going to speak of this glory, this glorious abundance of mercy. He's saying that God gives mercy to his wills, and he wants to give mercy, and then he hardens the one that he wants to harden, beloved brethren.

that you may not be confused or deceived by the sinful thoughts or the remaining sin that might be in you, that takes you to exalt men and then to reduce God, that may take you to question why would God harden the heart of Pharaoh and why would God harden the heart of many other people? That's not the question, beloved brethren, because Pharaoh, from the beginning of who he was and who he is, was never willing to obey or to listen to the righteous requirements of God. It was not that Pharaoh had in his heart all the willingness and all the disposition to listen to the requirements of God, and that God came and hardened his heart against his own will. None of that. The heart of Pharaoh is a representation of the heart of fallen humanity, that we are dead in our trespasses, that we cannot submit to the righteous requirements of God in Romans 8 verse 4.

that we cannot comply with the requirements of the law of God, that every time that we try to do it, we end up doing our own righteousness. The question is not why God hardened the heart of Pharaoh. The question is why God gives mercy to humans at all. That is the question why He gives mercy, why He extends His hand of mercy upon the hearts of sinful humans. Because if it's not because of the grace, beloved brethren, of God, then we are going to naturally harden our hearts in the same way that Pharaoh did.

But you know the glory of New Testament revelation in Romans 9, verse 23 and 24, he's speaking of the revelation of the glory of God in the vessels of mercy. That is, that God has desired to reveal his glory in those who will be recipients of the mercy of God. So those who, instead of being hardened according to their natural ten trends, God is revealing his glory in those who reveal or those who receive mercy. That is the glory of the gospel. Because if you then jump to Romans chapter five, he will speak that the same apostle Paul, that those who by grace or faith in the Lord Jesus Christ have been justified, that they have peace with God.

And those who have been justified by faith and have peace with God, They rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And then go to Romans 8, verse 22, it speaks that those, the children of God, rejoice and waiting for the revelation of the glory of God. Beloved brethren, it please God, according to the counsel of His will, Ephesians 1, 11, to set for himself in Christ before the foundation of the world, Ephesians 1, 3, someone, a group of people, his church, his people that he chose before the foundation of the world in Christ to bring redemption through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that when his glory is revealed, The question that Satan and the unrighteous will bring against God is, why did you justify the one that was unjustifying? And he will say, because justice was satisfied upon my son, Jesus Christ, who bore their sins, and all my judgment was put upon him. There was a glorious exchange, and therefore I am the just and the justified of the one who you call ungodly."

This is the mercy of the gospel, beloved brethren. Apart from Christ, our heart naturally will tend to be hardened. You see, this is the gospel. Every time that the gospel is preached, every time that the message of Jesus Christ is preached, the divine glory, the eternal power of God is portrayed before a sinner. The righteous requirement of God of repent and believe is placed before a sinner.

And then the sinner has the option to obey to that commandment or then to neglect that commandment. Everything it is from the grace and from the mercy of God who transforms the heart of those who will naturally end up in hardened and gives them mercy so that they will be able to call him father when we were haters of God. May God give us eyes, beloved brethren, to see all of these glorious things of the gospel. Amen.