THROUGH THE BIBLE - Exodus 8..

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

Brothers and sisters, let's open up our Bible to the book of Exodus, please. Exodus chapter eight. And let's continue with the corporate reading of a scripture by God's grace that we have his word and that we can read it together and that we can meditate upon it together. We're going to be reading together, as we always do, one chapter at a time and giving a brief Christological overview of the chapter after our brother is going to be bringing us the Word of God. So we're going to be reading chapter 8.

I'm reading from the English Standard Version of the Bible. This is the Word of God. Let's read it with reverent hearts and paying much attention to each one of the words. Then the Lord said to Moses, Go into Pharaoh and say to him, Thus says the Lord, Let my people go that they may serve me. But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with frogs.

Then I shall swarm with frogs that shall come up into your house and into your bedroom and on your bed and into the houses of your servants and your people and into your ovens and your kneading bowls. The frog shall come up on you and your people and on all your servants. And the Lord said to Moses, say to Aaron, stretch out your hand with your staff over the rivers, over the canals and over the pools and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt. So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. But the magicians did the same by their secret arts and made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.

Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, Plead with the Lord to take away the frogs from me and from my people, and I will let the people go to sacrifice to the Lord. Moses said to Pharaoh, Be pleased to command me when I am to plead for you and for your servants and for your people, that the frogs be cut out from you and your houses and be left only in the Nile. And he said, Tomorrow, Moses said, be it as you say, so that you may know that there is no one like the Lord our God. The frogs shall go away from you and your houses and your servants and your people. They shall be left only in the Nile.

So Moses and Aaron went out from Pharaoh and Moses cried to the Lord about the frogs and he as he had agreed with Pharaoh and the Lord did according to the word of Moses. The frogs died out in the houses, the courtyards, and the fields, and they gathered them together in heaps, and the land stank. But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the Lord had said. Then the Lord said to Moses, say to Aaron, stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth so that it may become nuts in all the land of Egypt. And they did so.

Aaron stretched out his hand with the staff and struck the dust of the earth, and there were nuts on men and beasts. All the dust of the earth became nuts in all the land of Egypt. The magicians tried by their secret arts to produce nuts, but they could not. So they were not on men and beast. Then the magician said to Pharaoh, This is the finger of God.

But Pharaoh's heart was hardened and he would not listen to them, as the Lord has said. Then the Lord said to Moses, Rise up early in the morning and present yourself to Pharaoh, as he goes out to the water, and say to him, Thus says the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me. Or else, if you will not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies in you, and your servants, and your people, and into your houses. And the houses of the Egyptians shall be filled with swarms of flies, and also the ground on which they stand. But on that day, I will set apart the land of Goshen where my people dwell, so that no swarms of flies shall be there, that you may know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth.

Thus I will put a division between my people and your people. Tomorrow this sign shall happen. And the Lord did so. There came great swarms of flies into the house of Pharaoh and into the into his servants houses throughout all the land of Egypt. The land was ruined by the swarms of flies.

Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, Go sacrifice to your God within the land. But Moses said, It would not be right to do so, for the offerings we shall sacrifice to the Lord our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice offerings abominable to the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not stone us? We must go three days journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord our God, as he tells us. So Pharaoh said, I will let you go to sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness, only you must not go very far away.

Plead for me. Then Moses said, Behold, I am going out from you, and I will plead with the Lord that the swarms of flies may depart from Pharaoh, from his servants and from his people tomorrow. only let not Pharaoh cheat again by not letting the people go to sacrifice to the Lord. So Moses went out from Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord. And the Lord did as Moses asked and removed the swarms of flies from Pharaoh, from his servants and from his people.

No one remained. Not one remained. But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and did not let the people go. Amen. This is the word of God.

I would like to just continue reading, but we have just to do one chapter at a time. Now, brothers and sisters, here in this chapter we have Plague number 2, 3 and 4. We know the general story. There's going to be 9 or 10 plagues. And here we have plague number 2, 3 and 4.

The first one has already taken place in the previous chapter. You might remember when Moses came to Pharaoh, he gave the first sign, which was the transformation of the staff into a serpent. That was a sign. But then there was a strike or a stroke or a plague as we use it in English. The first play was converting the water of the Nile into blood.

That was the first one. Here, we have the second, which is the frogs. We have also the third one, which is the gnats, or the lice better. And also we have the fourth one, which is the flies. Brothers and sisters, we can see interesting things as we see these three plagues.

These are the judgments of God striking the people of Egypt because they are not letting the people of Israel go into the wilderness to serve the Lord. The first thing is that we can see that these plagues are affecting the elements, important elements, in this case the water, the earth and the air. The frogs were coming out from the waters of the Nile. The waters of the Nile, they had like high importance in the mind of the Egyptians and the Lord was striking the waters of the Nile and then frogs were coming out of the of the waters affecting the houses, the bedrooms, the vets, their cooking instruments, everywhere the frogs were coming from the water. Second important thing that we see is that the earth, the dust of the earth, this is also, there's a strike there and the Lord strikes that and the earth converts into lice or into gnats.

And the third one, or the fourth one, plague, in this case, the third one here in our chapter, is the flies that is affecting also the earth. God is demonstrating that He is God over gods, the gods of men, and that He has power over the water, over the earth, and over the earth. Now, another important thing here is the response of the magicians, or what the magicians can actually do. In the first plague that we have here in the chapter, the frogs, is that the magicians can actually do the same thing that the Lord had done through Moses and Aaron. But when it comes to the second plague, or the third here, the plague, the Nazareth, the lies, the magicians are not going to be able to do the same thing that the Lord had done.

And they're going to say something very important here. They say, this is the finger. Now the magicians, these people that were working by the power of Satan, performing things in the past, duplicating the things that Moses and Aaron had done, they are now unable to do the things that only God can do, but they acknowledge now that this is the finger. God from there they are not going to be able to do these things anymore, but the response of God's of Pharaoh's heart is going to be interesting because in this chapter it seems that Pharaoh Repents a little bit and then he promised and he says I'm going to let them go with certain conditions but eventually he's going to harden his heart and he is not going to let the people go and Now, brothers and sisters, this is going to repeat and repeat every time that we go through the plagues of these strikes of these judgments of God upon the people of Israel or the people of Egypt, because they are not allowing the people of Israel to go into the wilderness to serve the Lord. But something very important that I want I want you to have in mind in your mind and that we remember as a congregation.

that everything that we see here in these plagues or these strikes or these judgments of God, when we're going to see from the first one to through the second, third, fourth into the last one of the plagues or the judgments of God. These are the covenantal workings of God. Remember that in chapter two, he said that God remembered the crying out of the children of Israel and that he remembered, God remembered the covenant that it was given to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. So everything that we're reading, all of these judgments, all of these actions, all of these things that happen are the providential working of God because of the covenant that it was given to His people. And if we could summarize the purpose of the covenantal workings of God, it would be simply this.

That God is doing all of these things to reveal His glory. God is doing all of these things that we're going to be reading in the land of Egypt and with His people only with a purpose. And that purpose is the manifestation. It is the revealing of His glory. But brothers and sisters, I want us to meditate upon this very interesting thing, because the manifestation of God's glory affects us depending on the side of the line that we are.

If we are God's people because of the covenant that we have with God, then the revelation of the manifestation of God's glory, it's a blessing and it's a mercy and it is grace unto us. But if we are on the other side of the line, let's say the Egyptians, if we are not in a covenantal relationship with God, then the manifestation of God's glory It is for judgment, it is for death, and it is for condemnation. There is a sense in which Israel and Egypt simply summarize the two types of people that exist in the world, people that are in a covenantal relationship with God because of His mercy, because God is the one that remembers His covenant, the covenant that He instituted with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the other people who are outside of that covenantal relationship of grace, but that they are still submitted to obey God because he has given them life and he has created them. Brothers and sisters, what we have here is just a manifestation of God's glory. And this affects us depending on what side of the equation it is.

And then when we see how the revelation of God's glory is affecting the people of Egypt, then we should tremble because there's just a couple of things that we can see in this chapter and through the different plagues of how God's glory is manifested to these people of Israel. First, that God is demonstrating that He is the God of gods. When He was affecting the water, the earth, and the air, and then He's going to affect the livestock, and the animals, and everything. He is demonstrating there's a confrontation of God's authority and God's power, and then He's demonstrating that there is no other God like Him. that the God of Israel is the God of creation, that He governs over everything.

But not only that, that this God of God is also the King of kings. That Pharaoh, it doesn't matter how much he thinks of himself, and how much power he has, and how much he thinks that he can control the land. God is King of kings, and He is the one that places the King's Pharaoh pleased himself just with the fact that his magicians will be able to perform a similar thing. That the fact that the magicians were just performing a similar thing that what Moses was doing will communicate to the conscience of Pharaoh, okay, I have the same ability to perform the same. He was feeling his pride, he was feeling his soul, but not even when the magicians were not able to do exactly the same thing.

The heart of Harold was not hardened. Actually, it was hardened more, and he did not listen to those things. God is not only God of gods, but he's also the King of kings, and he's also the Lord of lords. Brothers and sisters, as we read through these chapters, chapter 7, 8, and what comes, You have to pay attention to the many times that the Lord says that the purpose of the things that he's doing is that you may know that I am the Lord is speaking to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians. This is what it says in verse three and four of the previous chapter, that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord.

And then here through these three different plagues, that he may know that I am the Lord. Why? Because there is a sense, beloved brethren, in which our Lord, our Savior, He is also the Lord of everyone in this world. There is a sense in which the God is not only the God of the Christians, but the God is the God of everyone. And we have to always acknowledge this, that people outside of a covenantal relationship with God are also submitted to obey the God of gods.

the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Now, this is very important, beloved brethren, because in this world, there are only two types of people. There are only two types of people, people that relate to God as Lord. But we can relate as God to our Lord in Jesus Christ. And then this Lord is not only our creator, but he's also our father and our savior.

But if we are not inside of Jesus Christ and a covenantal relationship in Christ by grace, We also have to relate to this God as God and Lord. But that relationship is for judgment. This is what the Apostle Paul speaks of the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the types of people that submit to the Lordship of Christ. Go to Philippians chapter 2, and I will finish there to show you this point. Philippians chapter 2.

This very famous passage of the scripture that speaks of the lordship of the Lord Jesus Christ and the exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ in chapter 2 verse 5. Look what the apostle says about the lordship of our God, Jesus Christ. Verse 5, have this mind among yourselves. which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man and being found in human form. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Now, verse nine. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. Now, the purpose of this exaltation is verse 10. So that at the name of Jesus, every, not only the knees of the Christians, not only the knees of those who have received grace, but at every knee should bow in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Everything that He is doing with the people of Israel and the people of Egypt is a manifestation of God's glory.

And God's glory affects people depending on which side of the line you are. But every single knee, even Pharaoh's knee, will bow to Jesus Christ. Some people will bow out of the grace that has been given to us by the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and some other people will bow because of the judgment of God that it is given to them justly and perfectly because God is pure, holy and righteous. There are only two types of people, beloved brethren, and the difference is on which side of the line we are. And we do not place on this side.

It is God, the one that takes us just as God. Remember his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And now he's going to liberate the people of Israel from the bondage of slavery with Egypt. The same Lord has remembered a covenant in Christ before the foundation of the world and has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Him, in the Beloved. And that's why we're taken out of darkness into His marvelous light.

Brothers and sisters, we serve the Lord of Lords. God of gods, King of kings, the one that rules over everything. He's not only the ruler of the church, he is the ruler of the world and that should give us peace. Amen?