All right, if you have your copy of the scripture, open with me to Exodus chapter 10. We are looking at the judgments of God on Pharaoh as he is rescuing his people from the clutches of slavery, as he is fulfilling what he has promised to Abraham. We read this morning in Romans 11 that the promises of God are irrevocable. And God has made some promises to the people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And he is in the process here in Exodus chapter 11, he is in the process of applying the first portion of those promises to them to rescue them from a foreign country that has had them as slaves. He told Abraham that your people will be enslaved for 400 years and I will bring them out And he has told Moses at the burning bush on Mount Moriah, on the barren side of the desert, as it were, that he is going to rescue his people from Pharaoh. He's going to bring them out by a strong hand. And thus far, we have seen him make good on all of that. He is in a very gracious way giving opportunity to Pharaoh to respond properly to the demands and the call of God. We say, well, it wouldn't graciously have been him coming to him with his hat in his hand and saying, Pharaoh, would you please do this? God doesn't beg, my friend. God doesn't have to beg. He doesn't have to ask. God makes demands. The gospel is not a plea and a petition to the sinner, the gospel is a demand to the sinner to repent. And when God comes to Pharaoh, he is not saying, Pharaoh, listen, I really would like for you to let my people go. Could you find it in your heart to do this for me? He has yet to say that to him, and he will not say that here. In fact, as we look at the seventh plague, He tells him in verse 14 of chapter 9, I will send my plagues against your heart and amongst your servants. Most of your translations probably say, I'm going to send my plagues to you. And he's saying, I'm sending them to the you very personally to address you, because I want you to get the point. Part of the reason that he says that is many of the people had already gotten the point. And they have this leader in this palace that they cannot stand against. They have a leader in the palace that they cannot affect. He owns everything, even owns them effectively. They can't adjust any of his responses, but they are ready for him to get things in order and to do whatever this Moses guy says, as we'll see tonight in chapter 10. They're still more concerned with what Moses says than the power behind Moses. But they are at least beginning to give some some credibility to the fact that maybe we should, maybe we should just do what this guy says. It would be better for us, better for you, better for the whole situation. Because every time you defy this guy, something bad happens. And it happens just like he said it was gonna happen. And every time he comes, it gets worse. And it's about to get exponentially worse. He tells him that I'm going to come at you and my plagues are gonna be sent against your heart and amongst your servants. and your people, so that you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth." That was the seventh plague, and he said, hail that destroyed everything. He said, anything left outside, the hail is gonna destroy. Livestock, people, whatever's there. Pharaoh was hard-hearted, and many of his servants, they left their people out, they weren't concerned about it, and the hail came and did exactly what God said it was gonna do. Verse 25, the hail struck every plant of the field and shattered every tree of the field. And only in the land of Goshen, where the Israelis were, the sons of Israel were, there was no hail. Not only did this plague come, but the plague came with a limit. And the limit was between your people and my people, according to the Lord. These are unmistakable things that Pharaoh is seeing, yet his heart is hard because Pharaoh wants to have Pharaoh's way. We're going through shepherding a child's heart in Sunday school. I don't think that ever Pharaoh was told no when he was a kid. He never experienced corporal punishment. Pharaoh had what he wanted all the time. He had no self-control. God has set this hail to destroy animals. He has destroyed the trees and the crops. The flax and the barley were struck down. The wheat and the spelt were not struck down, for they are late ripening. But God's about to take care of that, too. Tremendous judgments coming in the form of what we've come to refer to as plagues. He started with turning the river to blood. Then he sent frogs everywhere. He has been systematically dethroning every idea of false gods that these people had. There are lists of the gods that, and I've given you some of the lists as we've gone through this. Several of their gods were connected to the river, but they couldn't stop what Yahweh did to the river. Had a fertility god connected to the frogs. Gods that were connected to the quality of the air when the gnats came. The flies that came. They broke out in boils. Plague on the livestock. They had a great black bull that they worshipped that God just dethroned him as all the cattle died. He couldn't keep the cattle safe. Then he sends this plague of hail. And they worshiped gods that were in the heavens that caused the weather to be what they needed it to be. In this day and age, if we want to have irrigated crops, we build apparatuses that will bring water. In their day, they didn't have that option outside of some places in the Nile Delta. They could redirect the water and they could water fields. Outside of that, you needed to fall from heaven. I've often wondered, most of the farmers that I've ever met were really wretched people as people go. Not concerned about the things of God, didn't even want to talk about God unless they were cussing. And I always wondered, how is it that you farm and you are so dependent on the one that controls the weather but you give no credibility to him? These people would have been a little bit different because everything in their life was religious. They had a God in the heavens, they had a God of rain, God of the wind. Egypt would have been very much like what I understand it is in Brazil. Some scientists went from LSU and went to Brazil and taught the people in Brazil, the farmers in Brazil, how to farm rice and sugarcane the way that we do it here. They have far better soil there than most of the places here, and they produce great sugarcane, but they were able to produce three rice crops in a year. Egypt would have been that type of climate. They didn't have harsh one way or the other. The climate was well-suited for an agrarian economy. And they needed the weather to be right, they needed the rain to be right, and they had these ideas of a God that controlled that, and they attempted to appease that God. Well, when Yahweh steps in, He wants to leave them with no leg to stand on. He wants to leave them with no excuse for holding to a false god. He wants to remove all hope that they have in anything outside of him. And he is annihilating everything that Pharaoh and his people have ever put their faith and trust in, and he is showing it to be empty and hollow. And many of the people are beginning to get the point, but Pharaoh never does. And we read in this passage that God has had enough of Pharaoh's hard heart and Pharaoh's heavy, weighed-down-with-sin conscience. And the grace of God has run out for Pharaoh. God has hardened his heart and has judicially sentenced him to the remainder of his life in unbelief. And when he is going to die and drown in the Red Sea, he is going to go straight to hell after having seen the most clear representation of the wrath and glory of God that any unbeliever has ever seen. He's going to watch it happen. You understand that Pharaoh is going to stand, he's going to be on a chariot with a horse that he wants to ride in amongst these people to slaughter them, and God is going to hold him back with a cloud. And you can think about it as a cloud in the terms of dense fog that we have here. That doesn't hold anybody back. Yeah, but it's not the glory cloud of the Lord. And he holds him off for an entire night. And you would think that any man in his right mind would have had that night to think about what he was doing and thought better of it. Pharaoh doesn't. Pharaoh right here is going to have his fate sealed. And all that God is going to do here is give him what he wants. I tell you all the time that you don't always want what you think you want. And Pharaoh does not want what he thinks he wants, but he's about to have what he wants, and it will be too late for him. We never read of a repentant heart. We don't read of the horror on his mind when he saw his end come in the rushing of the collapsing waters of the Red Sea. But he will have an eternity in hell with a fully informed conscience to remind him of this every moment of his existence. You rejected him and put yourself here. Let us read. We're looking at plague eight. Judgment eight, the locusts. Now this comes on the heels of the plague of hail. And this begins the last of the three. Moses is going to speak to Pharaoh face-to-face here. Tell him all that's going on. Then do it with precision. And the next thing that's going to happen, the next judgment is going to be the judgment of darkness. And he's not going to meet with Pharaoh. Pharaoh's going to call him in. And ultimately, tell him he doesn't ever want to see him again. Moses says, you'll have it as you wish. And he gets no warning for the last one. The only warning they get for the last one is watching what the Israeli people do. They're going to know that something is up because these people are doing something strange. But Moses is going in here. And this will really be the final time that the Lord speaks to Pharaoh and warns him. Let us read. Exodus chapter 10 verses 1 through 20. Then Yahweh said to Moses, come to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants with firmness, that I may set these signs of mine among them. and that you may recount in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I dealt severely with the Egyptians and how I put my signs among them that you may know that I am Yahweh. Then Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh and said, thus says Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, how long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go that they may serve me For if you refuse to let my people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your territory. and they shall cover the surface of the land so that no one will be able to see the land. They will also eat the rest of what has escaped, what remains for you from the hail, and they will eat every tree which sprouts for you out of the field. Then your houses and the houses of all your servants and the houses of all the Egyptians shall be filled, something which neither your fathers nor your grandfathers have seen from the day that they came upon the earth until this day. And he turned and went out from Pharaoh. And Pharaoh's servants said to him, how long will this man be a snare for us? Let the men go, that they may serve Yahweh their God. Do you not yet know that Egypt is destroyed? So Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh. And he said to them, go and serve Yahweh your God. Who are the ones that are going? Moses said, we shall go with our young and our old, with our sons and our daughters, with our flocks and our herds we shall go, for it is a feast of Yahweh for us. Then he said to them, thus may Yahweh be with you if ever I let you and your little ones go. See, for evil is on your faces. Not so. Go now, the men among you, and serve Yahweh, for that is what you are seeking. So they were driven out from Pharaoh's presence. Then Yahweh said to Moses, stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come up on the land of Egypt and eat every plant of the land and all that the hail has left remaining. So Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt And Yahweh directed an east wind on the land all that day and all that night. And when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts. And the locusts came up over all the land of Egypt and rested on all the territory of Egypt. They were very heavy. There had never been so many locusts, nor would there be so many again. For they covered the surface of the whole land, so that the land was darkened. And they ate every plant of the field and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left. Thus nothing green was left on tree or plant of the field through all the land of Egypt. Then Pharaoh hurriedly called for Moses and Aaron. And he said, I have sinned against Yahweh your God and against you. So now please forgive my sin only this once and entreat Yahweh your God that he would only cause this death to depart from me. And he went out from Pharaoh and entreated Yahweh. So Yahweh changed the wind to a very strong west wind which took up the locusts and drove them into the Red Sea. Not one locust remained in all the territory of Egypt. But Yahweh hardened Pharaoh's heart with strength and he did not let the sons of Israel go. Sometimes we read these passages and they're very exciting. And they are exciting. Life and times of people of God had some exciting things happen. But in all of this excitement, friends, there is a very strong note of tragedy. As we look at Pharaoh and we see what Pharaoh receives, sometimes we think, yes, he's finally going to get it. Yeah, he's finally going to get it. We must remember that but for the grace of God, where would we be? Verses 1 through 6, we see God's final demand to Pharaoh. He's not going to speak to Pharaoh like this again. This is it. Next two things that Moses is going to do, he does without speaking to Pharaoh. In fact, after the next one is the last time he speaks to Pharaoh at all, but he speaks to Pharaoh because he's called in, not because God sends him there. Verses 7 through 11, we will see a feigned debate. There's going to be something of a negotiation, but it's not a true debate. We'll see that it's feigned. Verses 12 to 20, we see the frightening destruction that God is going to bring. Let's look at this final demand first in verses 1 through 6. Verses 1 and 2, we see the demand defined. God is going to define. very specific terms what are his demands and why he has these demands God is as concerned in your life and mine with the why as he is concerned the what that we do and in this passage we see not only what God is demanding but why He is demanding why he is doing what he's doing in Egypt. Because you could look at this up until this point and just think that God is trying to bully Pharaoh to make him do what he wants him to do. Well, this is what I want. And if you want to debate it, I'll just make it worse for you than every time. And I'll finally make you do it. I'm going to break you of it. That's what despotic rulers do. That's what the IRS does to people. It's not what God does. God is not capricious, he is not arbitrary, he doesn't ever do anything on a whim just to find out what's going to happen. I know what some of you are probably thinking, well of course he's doing this to rescue his people. Let me ask you this, why would he rescue these people? Why would he care about these people? Remember, we haven't heard any of the dialogue between Moses and Aaron and these people since they went in and Pharaoh doubled their workload and put them in an impossible situation and effectively set out their annihilation in his response to Moses' first demand for them to be released. Remember he told him, you're lazy, that's why you're coming in here wanting to go and celebrate. No more straw, keep the same amount of bricks they come to favor of said you're gonna kill us what why would you want to kill us he says your people ask for this you remember they went out of the told moses we let pharaoh's presence a confronted moses standing there to meet him in chapter five and they said may we all we look upon you and judge you've made us a foul smell in favor of side of the side of the service to put a sword in their hand to kill us the moses runs a lord why do you brought harm to this people why did you ever send me Woe is me we all have been there ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name He has done harm to this people and you have not delivered your people at all Chapter 6 Yahweh promises what he is about to do Now speaking to Moses he says you will see what I will do to Pharaoh for by a strong hand He will let them go and by a strong hand. He will drive them out of his land We haven't seen anything in these people, any interaction with them. We don't know that their heart has changed whatsoever since that. We don't have any indication that anything has changed. It's not as though these people were all on their knees petitioning God to come and do what he's going to do. It's not like they were fasting and praying and have prayer meetings and whatever people do trying to get God's attention. It doesn't say they were doing anything like that. They really didn't have time for that if Pharaoh had doubled their workload like that. They're going about just attempting to merely survive from today until tomorrow. Let me get home today to be with my family and not get beaten to death because I cannot do what the taskmasters have set before me. And they think they're in a hopeless situation. They got their hopes up with Moses, then they had their hopes dashed because they expected God to do it their way. And here's Moses, still standing in the gap for them, still honoring the Lord, still going before the Lord for this stiff-necked, hard-hearted people. Remember, he's going to tell them in Isaiah 48, I knew that you had a neck of sinew and a forehead of brass, but I've decided to do what I'm going to do anyway because I'm doing it for my glory. God's not doing this just because he feels sorry for his people and he wants to rescue them from Egypt. He's going to define for us here why he is making this demand of, let my people go. We're going to get a little glimpse and a little bit of an insight into what God is doing and what he is saying here to Moses. For this to be the place where Moses writes it, we are now weeks, maybe months, into this deliverance through these judgments. And this is the first place that we read that Moses says God says this to him. This may be the first time that Moses has had this instruction given to him. Maybe Moses up to this point thinks that God is going to do this because he feels sorry for these mistreated people and he made promises to their predecessors and he's going to honor that. This is not a people that deserves what he's about to do for them. But it's a good thing that he doesn't do only good things for those that deserve it, because he'd have a very short to-do list every day. Verses 1 and 2, then Yahweh said to Moses, come to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart. Can you imagine if God would say that to you? Go to Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the world, who holds your fate in his hands every time he sees you. And if he's not satisfied with you, he can have you slaughtered on the spot. Go to him, because I've hardened his heart. What you would expect to hear, especially in modern Christian vernacular, go to Pharaoh, for I finally got his heart right. You prayed for me to change his heart, and I did. Lord, would you change this man's heart? Don't you know that Moses prayed that? Lord, would you change his heart? Moses was not excited about having to do what he did. We tend to see it with this Macho mentality that he went in there and said, okay, you won't let him go take this waved his staff around I would imagine Moses was a little bit reluctant to do what he was gonna do here because he knew what was coming Moses had seen God accomplish what he said with a precision that was mind-boggling and he knows what's gonna happen if locusts come You and I don't really deal with locusts. That's not a big issue on this continent. It's a tremendous big issue in the Middle East and in Egypt. When the locusts come, any of you plant a garden, any of you have a winter garden? I know Joe does. I think Joe and Cliff have some winter garden. Brother John, you don't do winter garden? You do some stuff. Yeah. You put, you have little mites and stuff that mess with your mustard greens and collard greens ever? You have little bugs that come in? Yeah, well in the spring you have all kinds of things. Corn, you're gonna have to spray corn for several things. We have the capacity to do that. Sevin dust is great. Malathion is great. There's several chemicals that are at our disposal to be able to take care of some of these bug infestations. We can go out in a 150-acre soybean field that is being infested with stink bugs and we can go in and spray permethrin. I don't think it does anything to the bug. I think it just smells worse than the bug and it drives them out because it's a terrible smell. You get it on you when you walk in the beans. They didn't have access to any of that. Today, you can spray 150 acres of soybeans in about 20 minutes. They didn't have that option. Plus they had something that came in that they didn't have any chemical. They don't have a chemical today that can deal with a swarm of locusts. And you can see it coming. There's nothing you can do about it. Any of you seen the movie Hidalgo? with Beagle Mortensen riding the horse across the desert. Pretty good show. And as soon as he really gets started on this trek across the Arabian desert, there's a swarm of locusts one night. And they wake up in the morning, there's locusts all over the ground. And the girl says, here, put these in your bag. You can eat them later. He said, I ain't eating that. She said, you just ain't hungry enough yet. They're about three inches long. Ladies that don't like roaches and I know some of the ladies in our church are really terrified of a grasshopper You take a grasshopper and you shoot it with the rays that made spider-man into spider-man. You get a locust They come in a swarm But it's like a cloud in the sky and it makes clips type shadow and darkness on the ground and And there's nothing you can do about it, you just hope that there's something left. Locusts will come in and in a matter of hours do damage that will take four or five years to recover from. They come in, they eat everything that is green. When they run out of the green stuff, they start eating anything else that they can chew through. The ends of the stems on the tree, when they get to where they're not satisfied with that, they eat all of the bark off the trees. And they just come in and they lay waste to everything in their path. But they usually come in a swarm that is somewhat contained. It would be almost like the path of a hurricane. It's a big swat, but it's not covering, it's still not covering an entire country. What he's about to do here is send a locust plague. These people hear locusts and they are mortified by that idea. Man, we can't handle locusts. And I'll remind you that this is on the heels of a hailstorm to end all hailstorms that has destroyed just about everything. God says to Moses, go to Pharaoh, for I've hardened his heart. I don't know what the Lord has asked you to do in your life. I don't know what position you've been put in where you know the right thing to do, and it's uncomfortable, and it's gonna be maybe a direct confrontation of another person. You've never been put in a position like Moses is here. And Moses, for sure, has been petitioning God to soften this man's heart and cause him to change, and he says, now go to Pharaoh, where I've made him pliable, he's gonna listen. That's what Moses would hope. But Moses knows what God has already told him. I'm gonna harden his heart, and the only way he's gonna let them go is I'm gonna force him to do it. Go to Pharaoh, because I've hardened his heart. Well, Lord, if you've already hardened his heart, I really don't need to go now, do I? We don't hear any argument. We've heard a lot of argument from Moses in the past. Really, the last argument we heard was in chapter 6. He's saying, why did you send me here? Back in chapters 3 and 4, we had a lot of questions, a lot of argument. Here, we don't see any of that. When it comes to verse 3, we see that Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh. But God is defining what he wants. Moses to do as he goes and makes this demand of Pharaoh. Come to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart, his heart and the heart of his servants with firmness. I've hardened all of their hearts. Now, that's going to come into play, I think, in verse 7, because the counselors and the servants of Pharaoh that are close, God says he's hardened their hearts, but even through the hardness and the firmness that God has made in the callusing of their heart, they see some need for response, but not Pharaoh. Then you see a little word here, a little four-letter word, the word that. It's a term of explanation, a term of conclusion. Go to, come to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants. So he's telling him, go to Pharaoh, for this purpose and i have hardened his heart in the heart of his servants for this purpose here we see the the defining of this demand why go to pharaoh why is he hardened the hearts of pharaoh and his servants that i may set these signs of mine among them look at the personal nature of this god is taking all of this on himself i'm about to do what i'm going to do these are my signs i'm going to set among them you go because i sent you i have hardened their heart So that when you get there, they will not listen. Because I want the world to see, I want them to see the signs that I will do. I want to manifest my glory in a way that the world has never seen, and I'm sending you there to do that. I have hardened His heart and the hearts of His servants to where they will not turn from what they have judicially caused and brought upon themselves. They have hardened their hearts to the point that I'm going to give them what they want. They're no longer going to have the option of repentance. I'm going to leave them where they desire to be. The grace has run out. Up until this point, you could have made the case that it's the grace of God that has brought these people to reconsider what—to a point where they should have reconsidered what they were doing in order that they might repent and turn to Him on His terms, but here all hope for that is lost. God says, I'm doing this not so that they might repent, but that I might set my signs among them. He's going to say and twice. This is multifaceted, what he's doing. He's not doing it for one reason. There are three aspects to this definition of the demand. Go to Pharaoh, you're going to demand that he let my people go, and this is why, so that I may set my signs among them, and that you may recount in the hearing of your son and your grandson how I dealt severely with the Egyptians. You ever wonder why God lets you deal with what you deal with in life? You ever wonder why God has brought the particular trials and difficulties in your life that are very unique to you? Agonies and difficulties. We look back and say, I know that I survived this because he carried me through it. You ever wonder why he has done that? Part of the reason that he does that is so that you might be a testifier to those that come behind you, your children first and foremost. those that are around you, that you might be a testifier to the grace of God and you might testify to the great signs and the great manifestations of His power and of His capacity, manifestations of His grace, manifestations in this scenario of His wrath toward those that will not repent. I'm letting all of this happen to the children of Israel. They are in obstinate rebellion as far as we can garner from this. We have no reason to assume that they have softened one bit. This plague of locusts may be the one that actually got their attention and said, you know what, we better start listening to Moses because there's not a whole lot left for us here. Because listen, all of this is happening to Egypt and not to Goshen. They would really have no reason to leave Goshen This point because there's nothing bad that's happened here But they will leave God is doing this as these so that these people will see what is happening and that these people will see this is what happens when you defy Yahweh when Moses says thus says Yahweh you better start stepping and fetching if he says jump you don't say huh you just start jumping and I like that movie, the guy said, if you hear me say, eject, eject, eject, and you say, huh, you'll be talking to yourself. What was that, Top Gun? Don't ask questions. God says it, you do it. And he says, I'm going to do this, and I've hardened Pharaoh's heart, and you're gonna go into what to you is an impossible situation, so that I may set my signs among them, so that I can unleash my glory. Manifest my glory unleashing my my retribution And that you may recount in the hearing of your son and your grandson how I dealt severely with the Egyptians You know, they were gonna have opportunity to say look son. This is how this is how Yahweh dealt with us Yeah, it was hard it was it was harder than I could even explain to you I But His grace toward us was such that He is worthy of every moment of praise and every moment of adoration, every moment of service that we can offer to Him in this life. Son, I want you to know this, God. Friend, I want you to know that this is what this God of heaven has done for me. It starts with our children. And what he is telling Moses is, I want all of you to back out of this and look at what I have done. Not just say, hey, man, you should have been there and seen what I saw. No, this is so that it points back to the glory of God, not merely to say, yeah, well, I've survived this, I went through that. It's not about bragging rights for you and I. It wasn't about bragging rights for them. It was about bragging rights, if you will. It was about the proclamation of the glory of God. Recount in the hearing of your son and your grandson, this is not something that you keep to yourself, this is something that is to be handed down from generation to generation to generation, a godly posterity, leaving a godly legacy. This was his intention from the beginning. That you may recount in the hearing of your sons, your grandson, how I dealt severely with the Egyptians, and, there's that word again, How I put my signs among them. Did you tell them what happened? I'm going to say, well, how could that be possible? Because God did it. You don't need an explanation beyond that. How could one Jew get massacred one afternoon? Well, I guess massacre is not the right word. Get slaughtered one afternoon, about 33 years after we started keeping calendar in the year of our Lord. 20 or so years after Herod the Great died, that one Jew, just this obscured carpenter from nowhereville born to Mr. and Mrs. Nobody, you're telling me that that one guy died on a cross like thousands, tens of thousands of other Israelis in his day, you're telling me that one guy was so special and that one death was so special that that's gonna pay for the sin of somebody else not just somebody else everybody else that will put their faith and trust in is not just for some of god's people but for all of god's people you're telling me that that in the accomplished that much on that cross how can that be is god did and not only did he do it he declared it prior to having done sometimes that's The only answer that we can give, son, all I can tell you is God did it. This is what he did in our life. This is what we saw him do. They are to recount it and leave to their posterity a great vision of the God of heaven. And lastly, The last reason for the demands, the last of the defining characteristics of this demand is the last clause in verse 2, that you may know that I am Yahweh. So that you can tell your children and that you, Moses, that you, John Q. Christian, that you may know that I am Yahweh. I am doing what I am doing in the world, I am doing what I am doing in your life, so that you may know that I am God. and praise be to him that he does, otherwise we would have no clue who God is or what God does. How does the demand define? Let's look at the demand described, verses three and four. Go to Pharaoh, because I've prepared him. I've hardened his heart. I've prepared his servants. I've hardened their hearts. I'm going to release my signs among them. This is going to be something that you talk about for the rest of the history of your people. Moses doesn't ask a question. Moses doesn't hesitate. He doesn't balk. No doubt as he is on the way, he is thinking about what is going to happen. In my mind, he must have told Moses what to say, although he may have waited until Moses got there and then told Moses what to say. You can about imagine what that was like. I'm not sure where Moses and Aaron were, but they were not in the capital. And he says, go to Pharaoh. I've hardened his heart and Moses on the way there is thinking about this all Moses knows on the way There's God has hardened his heart and he wants to manifest his glory for all to see and it's going to be something so spectacular that we will never stop telling our family about it and I've got to go into this guy and I really he may not it doesn't tell us that he knew before he got there I like to think that he did but it doesn't tell us that he did They come to Pharaoh and said to him. I Moses speaks for God to Aaron and Aaron speaks on behalf of Moses thus says Yahweh the God of the Hebrews How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me friends? That's a great question That's a gospel question How long will you Resist humbling yourself before me. How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? I We tend to talk about the gospel as something that you receive, like you go and pluck an apple off of a tree. It's not like that. Responding to the gospel is bowing your knee to the demand of God. You bow your knee to Jesus, King Jesus, the Lord, Jesus Christ, the one, the only, the King of God's heaven, the Savior of God's people, the Lord, the owner, the master, the possessor, the kurios. You have to humble yourself, because you have to come to the point and say, you know, and some of us have walked with, some of you have walked with the Lord probably longer than I've been alive. And it may be something in your past that you don't even remember the moment or the day. All you remember is that one day you got dunked, and that's how you kind of remember when you were saved. But the dunking didn't do anything for you except put you a landmark in your past. It was at the moment of humiliation and humbling yourself before this God that has declared your need for a Savior. And you say, yes, I agree. I need a Savior because I am a sinner desperately in need of being saved from the wrath of God. I deserve God's wrath, but God has sent His Son to pay for my debt. and to provide for me the righteousness that he will accept, I accept his terms, I surrender myself to him, I humble myself before this God and receive his message in that humility. It's a reception that is more of a surrendering to a bestowal. It's not that you pluck an apple off of a tree, it's that you bow before him and he showers you with his grace and you receive it because he has He has lavished it upon you rather than you receive it because you went and got it. You can make the case for a person having to say, I will accept God's terms, I will receive God's terms of salvation, but it comes back to this. I humble myself before him. I don't know how many times you think are too many for God to continue to allow a person to hear his gospel and not respond to it. I don't know. I know of people that I've known through this church that said they heard the gospel a hundred times before they even cared to listen to it. I can't even imagine that. We see Pharaoh, he's up to eight, and God's already hardened his heart. But God has hardened his heart because God had a purpose and a plan in it. That's not to say, well, we tell them the gospel eight times and after that, then they're sealed and they're fake. The Bible doesn't say that. It doesn't say that anywhere. How many times do you think Paul the Apostle heard the gospel? He had to hear it a lot because it infuriated him sufficiently to start slaughtering everybody that believed it. And then one day, a millionth time, he thought about the gospel, God knocked him off his horse and said, today's the day, boy, you're coming. And there had to be a day like that in your life where you had to humble yourself before him. You remember what Paul said when he hit Damascus Road? Who are you, Lord? He spent three days that he tells us about in Philippians chapter 3, where he was blind and he didn't eat, he didn't drink anything, and he was counting the cost of what it would be to follow Christ, and he humbled himself before him. Pharaoh has had eight plagues, and he has seven judgments, and he has watched what Yahweh has systematically done to every idea that he had of God. And lastly, he thinks, well, that God wasn't sufficient, and that God wasn't sufficient, and that one wasn't sufficient, but I am. and I am the last God of Egypt and I am sufficient and the death angel is going to come and completely dismantle any option of that in his mind either and he will still remain hard-hearted. He will still not humble himself. How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Friends, sometimes it's a very difficult thing to humble ourselves before another person. Got to tell somebody you're sorry, got to go back and answer for something boneheaded that you've done. It's tough. Sometimes at work you've got to have, you've got a boss that you really don't think that you should have to be under and you've got to humble yourself. But friends, it is a blessed act to humble yourself before God. What other option do you have? There's no good option outside of humbling yourself before God. they will have tried everything except that he's going to try to negotiate again here and again in the next but he's trying to negotiate with god like he's a man in fact he has forgotten that behind moses is the god that is doing all of this he's gonna quote-unquote trick moses into to call it off the dogs and he's gonna go back to do things the way that he wants to we see that in in uh... and dealing with people that are in alcohol and drug addiction. They come to the end of the line. They've piled up too many consequences to escape from them all. Oh, I don't want it anymore. And very often, just as soon as the consequences are lifted, they run right back to it with all of their might. And they do that with their siblings. They do that with their friends. They wind up doing that with their parents to the conclusion that all of their family has given up on them. They've betrayed me too many times. I'm not going to help them anymore. They've lied to me too many times. That's what Pharaoh is doing here. Oh, but Moses, if you'll call it off, I'll give you whatever you want. I'll do whatever you want. And as soon as it's lifted, in this passage, he does the same thing. I had my fingers crossed, whatever it is. Nah, I think I'll have my way, thanks. Appreciate your help. How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go that they may serve me. What would it have meant for Pharaoh to humble himself before Yahweh? To do what Yahweh said, to trust Yahweh, to put his faith and trust in what Yahweh said, let my people go that they may serve me. And if you've got any sense whatsoever, you'll come with them. and you'll serve me. Not serve you any longer, not serve your gods, but that they come and serve me. Not that you allow them to have me as a god in this pantheon of other gods. He is separating himself above all other ideas of God and above all other levels of authority in man, and he is placing himself at the pinnacle. He says, I want you to know that I am Yahweh, that there is none like me. This is the demand being described. It was defined in verses 1 and 2. Let them go that they may serve me. Verse 4, here's the warning. Here's the description of what happens if the demand is not met. For if you refuse to let my people go, behold, My boys were watching a football game today. I don't know if any of y'all watched the Saints today. It was their last game of the season. They had some pretty big highlights in the game. Katton made a really great catch. A lot of concentration, caught the ball on a deflection, kind of juggled it in the air for about eight yards and caught it. It was beautiful. And we looked at that and said, check this out. And you don't get to see it. Hold on, the replay's coming. Man, you got to see this. You're just not going to believe it. Wait till you see it. That's the idea of Behold. Now, when my son said that to me, they've seen a lot of football, so I knew that this was something that I probably wanted to watch, and I watched the play. And friends, this is God saying, behold. Pharaoh, you will not believe what I'm about to do. You've never seen anything like it. It's something that I, the likes of which I have never allowed nor sent in this earth, in this world. Behold. If you refuse to let my people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your territory. You let my people go, or I'm bringing locusts. And I put the word behold in front of the locusts. Just him saying locusts would have caused people to get a twitch. Locusts, we can't handle locusts. We haven't seen locusts in I don't know how long. We don't need locusts coming here. We can't survive locusts. Plus, think about this. We just, we barely survived the hail storm. Now the locusts are coming? What hope do we have? They had a little bit of a hope at first because the barley and the spelt hadn't been destroyed, but the locusts are coming. They're not going to leave anything behind. They're going to leave dirt behind. Locusts spell disaster for people. They spell disaster for this people that are already reeling from the disaster that has befallen them with the death of the cows, the boils from head to foot. They kept them incapacitated. No one could worship. None of their priests could go and do any worship. They had no way to even reach their supposed gods in order to appease their supposed gods. So now their supposed gods are angry with them. And this god of the Hebrews is angry with them. They don't know where to turn. Now he's telling them, behold, there's going to be a plague of locusts. And he doesn't just say it to Pharaoh. He says it to everyone in the palace. And remember, they had gotten together some cans and string and smoke screens. What was a smoke signal that they had the Morse code with the mirrors? They're spreading this out to everybody people know as quickly as they possibly can because every time Moses goes in there all hell breaks loose in Egypt and Moses is there and Moses has just used the word locusts. These people are mortified. This is disaster for them. We see in verses five and six the disaster described. This is what God said he's going to do. It would have been enough for him to say I'm going to send locusts on the territory. And it would have been something in Pharaoh's mind that he could have said, well, maybe somebody got a news report that the locusts are coming. Maybe they saw the swarm that was coming out of the desert. But God gives precise definition and description of what's going to happen. He tells them the time. He tells them where they're going to come. He tells them what it's going to be like. It's not generic. He's very specific. He describes the disaster. Look at verse 5. And they, the locusts, shall cover the surface of the land. We've talked about frogs covering everything, being in their bed, in their bathtub, in their bread bowl, everywhere. We've talked about the gnats were everywhere, the flies were everywhere. He says that the locusts are going to cover the surface of the land so that no one will be able to see the ground. Now frogs are there, that's just kind of nasty to be around. It's a significant, severe, you could say, inconvenience when frogs are all over everything. Would have been tremendously unpleasant. But to see locusts everywhere? These people would have been mortified. How are we going to survive? This means starvation. This means famine. We have no idea what that means here. We still produce about 200 times more sustenance in this country than we actually need for our people to survive. We have to have an export business. These people didn't have that as an option. This would have meant people starving to death, horrific conditions. And as I said, it usually would take four to five years to recover from a regular, normal locust plague. This is God's locust. Cover the land so that no one will be able to see the land. They will also eat the rest of what has escaped. What do you mean what has escaped? What remains for you from the hail. This is exactly what they would have been thinking. The hail just destroyed all this stuff. What's left for them to eat? Whatever it is, they're going to eat it. Pharaoh, if you don't let my people go, I'm gonna send my locusts over here. I told you that I'm gonna get your attention. I'm coming for you. I'm coming to put you in a place that you cannot deny me anymore. I'm gonna send my plagues against your heart and against your servants and your people. There's none like this God on all the earth. What remains from the hail will not escape, and they will eat every tree which sprouts for you out of the field." This is an absolute disaster. This is a monumental disaster. It would be bad enough for these locust plagues to come at a normal time, but to have one that no one has ever seen? Your houses and all your servants and the houses of all the Egyptians will be filled, something which neither your fathers nor your grandfathers have seen from the day that they came upon the earth until this day. You've never seen anything like it. You've never seen anything like it. That's why he said, behold. Behold, I am going to send locusts. Not, I'm going to send locusts. I am going to send locusts. And when God does it, it is absolutely to the hilt. He does everything to the utmost. When he provided a remedy for sin, he didn't provide it just a little bit. He didn't provide just enough. He provided it to the hilt so that Jesus could pull himself up on the nails in that cross and declare for all of the earth to hear, te telestai. It is finished. It is paid in full. And he's telling him here that what I'm sending is going to be absolute disaster. to the nth degree. No one has ever dreamt about this. Your wildest dream has never depicted for you what's going to happen. And he gives him a time. He says, this is going to happen tomorrow, in verse 4. He gives him a time frame. He doesn't leave any room for Pharaoh to say, well, maybe he got lucky. He just, you know, he just, maybe he's just got this futurist. Maybe he's got a demon that told him something and he just got lucky. No, they're going to come and I'll tell them they're going to come where I send them from, where I send them. You don't know where they come from. You don't know where they're going to go when they leave, but they're going to come. I said, this is the final demand. This last sentence in verse six, Moses doesn't debate. Moses doesn't go in and say, well, maybe I need to add a little extra to it to try to help him to understand it, to make it easier for him to swallow, whatever. I'm going to help God out. Moses went in and said exactly what God said. And he turned and went out from Pharaoh. Can you imagine that? Come in, tell this guy the one thing he doesn't want to hear in front of everybody that matter the most to him, and you just turn and walk out. I don't think Moses did it arrogantly. I think Moses did it because he just knew. This is what I have to do. This is what he has told me to say to you. And just like every other time, exactly what he said is what's going to happen, and there's no hope. Your heart is hard. I can see it. He's already declared it. Moses probably left here with something of a broken heart. Because I've just declared to this man that if you do not humble yourself before God, he is going to destroy you in a way and with a magnitude that you cannot begin to fathom. And that is what we do as we give the gospel. If you don't repent and turn to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith, what God has for you cannot be described. We love to go to what Paul said in Corinthians, that no eye has seen, no ear has heard what God has prepared for those that love him. And friends, equally, equally indescribable. No eye has seen, no ear has heard what God has planned for those that defy him in this life and refuse to humble themselves before him. Hell is as indescribably awful as heaven is indescribably wonderful. And Moses left out of this meeting with Pharaoh knowing that about Pharaoh. There was nothing more to say. Pharaoh didn't want to hear it. Moses didn't want to talk about it. In verse 7, we see even Pharaoh's hard-hearted servants begin to petition him. They say, look, man, we've got some objections to this. Pharaoh doesn't want to hear it, and Moses knows. Moses turned and went out from Pharaoh. He's going to be brought back just to find out what he already knew. We'll see next time in verses 8 through 10. Pharaoh's ultimate response to Moses in verse 11 Friends it is always better to humble yourself before God at the first possible opportunity And to continue on hard-hearted hoping Hoping I don't even know what Hoping Against hope that maybe he doesn't know what he's talking about What God says his people should do. What God says all people should do. Because the alternative is unacceptable. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for this record of our brother Moses, the great prophet of the Old Testament. What he learned about you, what he learned while serving you. The example that he sets for us, a man that not so much reluctantly but a man heavy of heart going to do what you had called him to do and knowing what the response was going to be Lord help us to to have such a vigor in in us to go and do what you have called us to do what you expect of us we might be found as faithful as Moses on that judgment day that what Yahweh said is what we did we might be more concerned for your glory and the manifestation of that glory and the declaration of that glory to an unsaved world, that we might be more concerned with your glory than we are concerned with people's reaction and people's response. Lord, we want people to be saved. We want to be instruments of yours to bring in the harvest of righteousness. But Lord, may we be more concerned with being faithful to you and allowing you to bring it in when you are ready. And we are concerned with attempting to make ourselves more effective. May we be faithful to the message that you have given, just like Moses was here. And may you be as effective in accomplishing your purposes through us as you were through Moses. Lord, be honored in the lives of your people, and be honored by our time here tonight. We pray in our Lord Jesus' name. Amen.