Why did Moses and Aaron have to go back to Pharaoh again? Two, why was living in Goshen during the plagues a blessing? Three, why couldn't Pharaoh's magicians stand in his presence? And four, what were plagues four, five, and six? So begin with Exodus chapter 8 beginning in verse 20. And this is the word of God. Then the Lord said to Moses, rise up early in the morning and present yourself to Pharaoh as he goes out to the water to 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 on you and your servants and your people and into your houses and the houses of the Egyptian 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 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 offering 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 these 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. Not one remained, but Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also and did not let the people go. Then the Lord said to Moses, go into Pharaoh and say to him, thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, let my people go that they may serve me. For if you refuse to let them go and still hold them, behold, the hand of the Lord will fall on with a very severe plague upon your livestock that are in the field, the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds and the flocks. But the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, so that nothing of all that belongs to the people of Israel shall die. And the Lord said a time, saying, Tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land. And the next day the Lord did this thing. All the livestock of the Egyptians died, but not one of the livestock of the people of Israel died. And Pharaoh said, And behold, not one of the livestock of Israel was dead. But the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go. And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, take hands full of soot from the kiln and let Moses throw them in the air in the sight of Pharaoh. It shall become fine dust over all the land of Egypt and become boils breaking out and sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt. So they took soot from the kiln and stood before Pharaoh. And Moses threw it in the air, and it became boils breaking out and sores on man and beast. And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils came upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians. But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them as the Lord had spoken to Moses. There ends the reading of God's word. Let's pray together. Lord, our God, we do thank you for your word. And Lord, we thank you for the record of your mighty hand at work back in these days of old. Lord, we know that you are the same God and you are the same mighty God who brings justice against wickedness and preserves those who you call to be your own. Lord, as we explore your word once again tonight and witness these things, Lord, may we understand more about you, more about your ways, more about your grace and your kindness towards your people. Lord, help us to receive your word tonight. Please be with the preacher and please be with all of us who will hear. as we come to you in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, Pharaoh had already been warned five times. He's seen miraculous feats. He's seen three massive plagues on the land. What's it going to take to get him to turn around? How many times does he have to be shown? How many times does he have to be told? We know the answer. But we are in the midst here of The fourth plague about to start. It starts with a familiar conversation with Moses and Pharaoh. Moses, again, is meeting Pharaoh in the morning, Pharaoh probably on his way to his morning devotionals at the Nile. And that's how the day starts. Pharaoh is still holding the people of Israel. Pharaoh is still devoted to the false gods of Egypt. And he is hardening his heart again and again. So Moses and Aaron's task is not over by any stretch. The conversations that take place between God's people or God's leaders and Pharaoh are familiar. It's a familiar pattern. We're going to see some diversion tonight. But what is consistent is Pharaoh's obstinacy. He has a hard heart. And while it may seem soft at some points, he goes right back to his hardness. God is giving commands to Pharaoh. He's not negotiating with him. He's not offering a suggestion. He could not be more clear in his command that he sends through Moses, let my people go. Let my people go. And it comes with a warning. And the warnings come with increased intensity. But what Pharaoh needs to know is that he's not contending with man. He's not contending with Moses or Aaron or even the people of Israel as a whole. He's contending with Yahweh God. Now, I want to remind us that the big picture here is a spiritual picture, right? These things are taking place in real time, in a real place on earth between Pharaoh and Moses, the people of Israel and Egypt. But what's really going on here is a representation of that continued conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. What we do find new here is that God makes a clear distinction between his people and the people of Egypt. Now, I've always thought that they were distinct in the first three plagues, and perhaps that's true, but here we have it specifically stated that he's going to make a difference, a division, a distinction between his people and the people of Egypt. And his people are in this territory called Goshen. And he's said that the people of Goshen are not going to be affected by the plagues. You think of the vantage point. We'll look at this a little later. The vantage point of being in Goshen. and recognizing that you've been spared all the things that the people of Egypt are going through, what must have that been like? What kind of thanks should that stir up in the people of Israel? It's interesting to note, and I think significant to note, that the word here for distinction is really from the word redemption. It's more than just setting them apart, but it's actually not just a division, but taking them out from the plagues, from among the Egyptians, and preserving this people. God preserving this people to be his very own, redeeming them from lostness and making them his own covenant people. Well, God is going to answer Pharaoh again. And while the plagues come on the people, we also want to remember that the plagues are addressing God after God, false god of the Egyptians. It's stated that way in Numbers, by the way, in Numbers 33, that the plagues came on their gods. On their gods also the Lord executed judgments. Now, remember they're false gods. But wherever there's false gods, wherever there's idols, there's always a spiritual reality behind them. And so when people are worshiping these false gods, it's not just that they're worshiping some innate thing, in one sense they are, but there's a spiritual dynamic going on there. What we're going to see is Yahweh reinforcing his dominion over everything, over heaven and earth, over all the powers, principalities of darkness behind the false gods. Well, the first plague is going to be a bunch of bugs. Again, more bugs, possibly mixed multitude of flying pestilence, blood sucking bugs. The Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament calls these dog flies. blood-sucking flies. Some will see this as scarab beetles. That is one of the big idols of the Egyptians. If you go to a museum where there's any Egyptian stuff, you will see a bunch of little scarabs that they found that were used as their little idols. And so it's very likely that this was a part of that because this great god in the minds of the Egyptians has not been addressed yet. So these scarabs. I couldn't help but think of green flies or horse flies. I don't know if you're familiar with them. When I was a kid fishing on the bay in New Jersey, whenever the wind came from the west over the bay and over the marshes from the land and into the bay, swarms of green flies would get on you. And they were big, but you couldn't feel them at first. And by the time you saw them, it was too late. They were leaving these big welts. sucking blood and injecting something into you. Whatever the case is, these were a massive, massive amount of flies. And my guess is that there's all different kinds of flies. In Psalm 78, 45, we read, He sent among them swarms of flies which devoured them. We would say we're being eaten alive. But the thing about these flies is they're everywhere, whatever they are, whether they're various kinds or whether they're one kind, they're on everything. They're in everything. Alfred Edersheim, who is a Jewish scholar, both New and Old Testaments, says, this plague is to this day most troublesome, painful, and even dangerous, as these animals fasten upon every uncovered surface, especially the eyelids and the corners of the eyes, and their bites cause severe inflammation. It doesn't sound very pleasant. These flies are everywhere. You know what a nuisance a couple flies can be, especially if they're stinging flies. These are everywhere. Well, the plague is vast, and obviously pharaoh and his people are very disturbed by this. We want to consider what gods might be addressed here. It's not exactly sure. I think in each of these plagues, it could be so many different of these false gods. Some suggest, and you'll recognize this name, some suggest Beelzebub. You'll recognize from the New Testament that that is the devil. And so there's this god that they would worship that is understood by God's people as the devil himself. So perhaps this Beelzebub, which is lord of the flies, is the one being addressed here. Again, it could be control over the scarab or Kepri, the god, the dung beetle. That's right, dung beetle. These beetles were known for rolling up balls of dung. And in the Egyptian mind, they imagined that there was a giant dung beetle that rolled the sun across the sky and then went into the underworld and then rolled it across the sky each and every day. But in reality, these beetles were dung beetles. It's just exactly what it means. Well, pharaohs about had it. He can't take it anymore. So he starts to negotiate with Moses. And you can picture this conversation with Pharaoh swatting all these flies while he's talking. But he basically says to Moses, you can go, you and your people can go, but you have to stay here. You can go and worship your God. You can go and worship Yahweh, but you have to stay here. And Moses says, that's unacceptable. First of all, it's not what they were commanded to do. And Moses wants to do what they were commanded to do. But two, it would be an offense to the Egyptians. Because if they didn't worship the way the Egyptians did, and they observe that worship, as Moses said, they'll stone us. That will be an offense. Our worship is so contrary so different than, I'm paraphrasing here, your pagan worship, that it will offend them and they'll want to kill us. And so that's not going to work. And so Pharaoh comes back, well, how about you just go out of here, but don't go too far? And so that seems like a good settlement. There's some question about the three-day travel thing here. We dealt with that earlier on when Moses was dealing with Pharaoh, but that seems reasonable. And so they set up to do that. However, however, Pharaoh hardens his heart. Basically, nevermind. Well, that certainly isn't going to fly with God, sorry for the pun, but many beasts will die because Pharaoh hardens his heart. And so the next plague has to do with an indiscriminate death of livestock, some virus infecting all these beasts that are in the field. And I think that's significant. We think of things like the avian flu on poultry or the swine flu. Many of us remember that the swine flu, the pig fever, whatever they call it, swine fever, mad cow disease. Do you remember that one? How, how terrible that was not only infecting cows, But it was especially frightful and horrifying because it could infect people. And it was a devastating sickness. And so there's something going on here, attacking that God sends. These are all God's sending, by the way, attacking their livestock. And what's going on here is it's not just their edible creatures, it's their work creatures. And so you have this attack on their economy through the work animals, you have an attack on their food sources, you have an attack on the animals that they did use for worship. And so we see here a confrontation of these god animals that they had, or animal gods, these mixed creatures. And so it's very likely that God is confronting Apis, is a bull god. It's said in Memphis, not Memphis, Tennessee, Memphis in Egypt, that there was a place in the temple where they had a stall for a bull that they believed was the incarnation of this god Apis, a live bull that they would keep there. But as would happen to any bull over time, it would die. And when the bull died, they'd have a big, fanciful funeral for it, and then they'd replace it with another incarnation of Apis. To be equal opportunity, it would probably also address goddesses of Isis and Hathor, which were also animalistic-type gods. But there was a massive loss. We read there that all the animals were lost, and I don't think that's a categorical loss. Some were reserved, perhaps in barns, as we'll see that there are some animals that still remain. These might have been the ones that were out in the fields, but Pharaoh has a hard heart once again. Once again, because of Pharaoh's hardened heart, another plague will come. This time, maddening boils, welts on everyone, pestilence, oozing, growing, bursting, horrible. What's interesting about this one is Moses is told to take soot out of a kiln, and these kilns were the very kilns that the bricks were baked in. And so there's an irony here that the very coals or the very ashes, I'm sorry, from the kilns that represented their hard labor were used as Moses threw it in the air, probably something that some of the magicians did now at the hand of God turned into these boils all over the people. all over the people. Even the magicians can't stand in the presence of Pharaoh, because they're afflicted by the boils as well. And so many gods addressed here, mostly goddesses of healing, have been proven worthless to the people of Egypt. They can't do anything about this plague. Well, at this point, we're seeing an increasing hardness of Pharaoh's heart. Now, please understand that Pharaoh is always responsible for the hardness of his own heart. But there is the principle where God will give people over to themselves. And so that's when we read at the very end, verse 12, But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them as the Lord had spoken to Moses. And so that's our narrative for tonight. I did promise when I began this part of Exodus on the Plagues that I would address gods of our culture and gods of our heart. And I want to spend a little less time on that tonight because I want to get to something about the view from different places. When you think about our culture and these gods, and you think about how we are people who love our comfort, and people who love a good economy, and people who love our health. And those things aren't bad in and of themselves, but when we make those things our gods as a culture, it's a dangerous thing. When we will put our comfort above everything else, above morality or anything, we're in trouble. When we worship our economy and we rely on our economy so much that we don't really care about the integrity or the morality of our leadership, as long as the economy's good, we're good. It's a dangerous place to be. When we put so much stock in our healthcare system, when we rely on our medicine as if we were going to live forever somehow, again, medicine's not a bad thing. Medical field's a great thing. But if that's where we're putting our trust, if our God has comforted the economy or health, whether it's in our culture or in our lives, we're in trouble. God is our keeper. God is our provider. But I do want to spend the last moments on the view from different positions. Spectacular view. When you think about the setting here in Egypt, the broader land and Goshen, there's quite a different view, isn't there? You think about being under God's wrath in Egypt. It's a spectacular view of these plagues coming down and we'll see three more and then a fourth. That's absolutely devastating. But the view from under God's wrath, looking at what's happening and seeing that all is coming down, what must it have looked like? Does it get the people's attention that there's something wrong with where they are in their devotion, in their worship, in their reliance? as they see this plague after plague come down upon them and upon the people that don't belong to God. Now, strangely, it doesn't seem to affect Pharaoh that much. His heart is hard, but perhaps he's in relative comfort in comparison to his people, his citizenry. Whatever the case is, he keeps hardening his heart. He felt he simply had too much to lose to let the people go. But what I'm afraid of here is that we have a glimpse with these people, including Pharaoh, the leader, and these people under these plagues, I can't help but think that there's something of a taste of hell. Something of a taste of hell. Under God's wrath, along with Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies. What a disturbing picture. I just started listening to Dante's Divine Comedy And the first part is the more familiar one to people, Dante's Inferno. And he describes hell in such vivid, horrifying ways. But I can imagine that even he, in his grotesque view of hell, what he imagines and what he writes pales in comparison to what it's really like. And so from the perspective under God's wrath, even here just being a taste of his wrath must have been a horrifying thing, being on the wrong side of God. But what was the view from the land of Goshen? You would hope that they began to get a sense of God's mercy, of his grace, of his unmerited love for this people who, in and of themselves, were no better than the Egyptians. But here they are being spared this momentary taste, you might say, of the promised land. But even the promised land is just a little taste of heaven. But what they had there was a taste of heaven compared to what was going on in Egypt. And so the perspective from under God's wrath, the perspective from Goshen, but how about the perspective from the state of grace that I trust each one of us are in, thanks to God's mercy in Christ. Made part of the number of the Lords. How often do you think How often do you cherish the fact that you are a part of God's chosen people, blessed, spared, remembering what your state would have been outside of grace, appreciating the goodness of God to your soul, to your life? seeing what unbelief merits, seeing the wrath of God on unbelief, the misery that unbelievers live in. But from your perspective, one of the things you do see when you recognize God's mercy and love for you is you see Jesus on the cross. Because all those things, all those Things of wrath, all those plagues of our sin are laid upon Him, bearing the plague of sin so that we don't have to bear it. Your perspective, my perspective in the grace through Jesus Christ is phenomenal, spectacular, so undeserved, a scenic view unmatched in the most beautiful scenic view anywhere in this world. God's favored people spared all the darkness, the falsehood, the agony, the misery of sin. And just a taste now, because one day there will be no sting, no disease, no sickness, no sin, no Beelzebub, only in the presence of God in the new heavens and the new earth. Again, Goshen and the promised land compel and compare. compel in comparison with the wonders of heaven. I trust that's yours. I trust that's yours. It's what you look forward to. It's what you have a taste of now. Once again, here I am, God, showing his sovereign hand, wrath upon the unrighteous, mercy upon his own, mercifully redeeming his people from deserved wrath. so that we can say whether we're sleeping or waking or walking through life, we can sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. And may that be the song that resonates in your heart, stirs in your heart, comes out of your mouth, praise to the God of your salvation, your wonderful Redeemer. Let's pray. Father in heaven, you are so good to us. We don't even begin to understand. We can't even imagine really just how good you are to us. So undeserving. Recognizing that outside of your grace, we would still be under wrath. We would still be under the plague, the misery of sin. but because of your unmerited grace, because of your wonderful love, Lord, you have marked us as your very own. And Lord, while we still go through this life with different trials and tribulations, Lord, we know that we have it even better than Goshen, better than the Promised Land. We have a taste of heaven now, and we look forward to eternal bliss in the new heavens and the new earth. where we'll be absorbed in all the goodness and mercy of you, our great God. And we come to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, with the help of the Holy Spirit. Amen.