Thank you for that beautiful reminder of the goodness of the gospel. Well, I need your prayers this morning. A little under the weather, but the Lord can use congested throats and all kinds of people, so I would like you to take a moment, if you would, and just lift me up in prayer as I prepare to present God's word to you this morning. Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to come before you and to hear your words proclaimed. We thank you that you're speaking God. You're not a silent God. You're not a God who's hiding and waiting for us to find you. But you are the hound of heaven. You come after us. You seek after us. You find those who you are determined to find. You soften hardened hearts. You redeem your people, you protect them from the day of judgment through the blood of your Son. This morning we come before you ready to hear and receive what you would say to us. We pray that our hearts would be open and receptive and transformed so that we are more like Jesus after today than we were yesterday. We pray for that in the name of your precious Son. Amen. Well, we've been going through the book of Exodus bit by bit. And the book of Exodus, if you've not been along with us, is really a book about God redeeming his people according to his promises. So he made some promises to Abraham that he would give his people land and they would be more multitudinous than any people in the world, and that they would be a blessing to every tribe, tongue, and nation. But the problem in Exodus is that these people are in captivity to Pharaoh. It doesn't look very much like what God had promised his people. And so God shows up and he says, I'm gonna show you through your captivity what my name really means. He's given his personal name to Abraham and he's given it now to Moses. And now he's looking at his people and he's saying, you know my name in theory, but I want you to experience my name. I want you to know more about me than you ever could without the suffering that you're going through. But the problem is when I try to redeem you, Pharaoh is going to harden his heart against me. He's not going to let you go. That's not going to happen. That's not on his agenda. And so what I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to show up. and I'm going to have to fulfill my purposes through his hardened heart." Alright, we're going to see what that means in just a second. He starts to do that in the last couple chapters, we've seen that, that God has started to cast judgment on the Egyptians. He's already destroyed the Nile, which was an Egyptian god, and then he's destroyed, well he's plagued the people with frogs, which is sort of a polemic against one of their other gods, the god of fertility, and now this morning he's going to send two further judgments on the Egyptians. And what's happening here, I want you to notice, the Nile is sort of far away from people's houses, right? It's sort of out there. The frogs are at people's feet. What we're going to see today is that it's almost like Pharaoh is in a cave, and there's a rising tide. And first the tide is sort of far off, and then the tide is at his feet, and now the tide is climbing and climbing and climbing up to his neck. And the Lord is making his plagues, and this is the word that's used, you need to remember this word, heavier and heavier. Okay, don't forget that word. That's the specific words that's used. The plagues become heavier and heavier upon the Egyptians. So we're going to read chapter 8. We're going to finish it off today. We're going to start with verse 16 and go all the way to the end of the chapter. And I just want to encourage you that the reading of God's Word is not just the thing we get over with before the sermon. The reading of God's Word is something that's commanded in Scripture. And so it's a benefit to your souls to listen as God speaks in His Word. So listen as though these are the words of God because they are. Verse 16. 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 gnats in all the land of Egypt. And they did so. Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and there were gnats on man and beast. All the dust of the earth became gnats in all the land of Egypt. The magicians tried by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they could not. So there were gnats on man 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 had 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 on 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 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'm 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. So Yahweh is starting to get on Pharaoh's nerves. He's changed the water into blood, he sent the frogs, and that was kind of cute, but now things are getting really annoying. First he sends gnats, which we don't quite know what that is, but what is clear is it's something that sucked blood. You notice it's on man and it's on beast. It's either lice or mosquitoes or some little annoyance that's clinging to people. And it's not only there and choking them and getting in their nostrils, but it's biting them. We were at, was it Dan Nicholas Park? Is that right? In Salisbury? And we were walking along and I saw this place where there's a little bridge over some water and it was nice and quaint and nobody was over there. So I said, hey family, let's go walk to that nice quaint little place over there. And so we did. But as soon as we stepped near the bridge, we got plagued. Little gnats all over the place. And they were in our nose and they were spitting them out of our mouth. And we were out of there like that. We were gone. And can you imagine that, for days and days and days at a time, being in that? I certainly can't. But that's what the Lord sends. He sends Pharaoh, you notice what's happening, the rising tide. First the frogs are at the feet, and now he's sputtering, he's choking, the water's rising. Up to here. Alright? And what's interesting about this plague is that this is the first time the magicians cannot replicate it. They try by their secret arts, but they can't do it. Which makes sense, you know, you can put a frog up your sleeve. but it's hard to keep a bunch of mosquitoes alive up your sleeve and make that work. It doesn't pan out. And what becomes clear in this verse, this is sort of the lady speaketh too much moment, where the magicians say, wait, there's a God here doing something. They sort of give away their cards, don't they? What does that mean? There hasn't been a God present in all the things they've been doing before. they've been doing parlor tricks. And so they, I saw this, some of you guys surely have seen the YouTube video of the guy who got attacked by a bear this week and he comes out and he's got like, you know, he's like totally in shock because he's so calm about it. He's like, yeah, my arm got ripped off by this bear. I'm on my way to the hospital right now. Just be careful out there. It's like, what are you doing on your selfie phone? you know? But that's what's happening here with the magicians, right? They just stepped on the territory and they're like, oh wait, there's a mama bear here with cubs. We need to back off Pharaoh. But Pharaoh looks at them and says, Now he hardens his heart. He hardens his heart. Now notice the magicians don't actually say, this is the finger of Yahweh. They don't say this is the finger of the God of the Hebrews. Maybe a better way to think of this is them saying, this is the finger of a God. We don't know which God, but it's a finger of a deity. All right? But Pharaoh hardens his heart. And so God sends another plague. He sends the flies. And that word literally just means swarms. If you look back at ancient sources, you'll see that Jewish historians say that they were dog flies. which accounts for the blindness and eye disease in Egypt. Because what would happen is these dog flies would attack people and they would cling to their eyelids. And they would spread diseases as they chewed on people's eyelids. And so this is going all over the place. You notice, at first it's sputtering and now this is just intolerable. Flies on the eyes, it's not good. And so this is getting painful. The tide is rising and God is threatening. His plagues, notice, are becoming heavier and heavier and heavier. And I love the way that the Lord tells Moses to find Pharaoh. He's not getting invitations to the palace anymore. He says, as Pharaoh goes out to the river to get a drink, go meet him there. Sort of like, if you ever watch the show Columbo, where he just kind of shows up where the bad guy is, and he starts getting annoyed. He's like, why are you here? He's like, oh, I just got one question for you. Let's see what's going on here. Moses shows up at the water. Oh, by the way, he's like, okay, what? By the way, the Lord's going to send something else. And he does, and he sends it to him. He sends the swarms of flies. Now, what's interesting here, verse 22, it says that these swarms did not touch God's people on the land of Goshen. What is very likely is that this has been occurring the whole time, that God's people have not been touched by the plagues. But God is making it explicit this time. He's saying, I want you to notice this time, see all these blood-sucking flies? They don't show up in the land of my people because I'm making a distinction between you and them and I'm showing you that know I'm the king of Egypt and I'm the God of my people. You're not the king of Egypt and the God of my people, which is what Pharaoh claims. So the flies come and God says he's going to make that division and finally Pharaoh gives his first hint that he's sort of giving up. And he says, He says, OK, OK, OK, OK. All right. You go worship, but I just want you to use our church. All right. Use our pagan facilities. I want you to do that. And I don't want you to go out of the land. And I love Moses response. He's like, no, bro, that's not happening. It's like, listen. For one, if we do that, you know your people are gonna stone us, all right? We can't worship another God in your temple. You know that's gonna cause chaos and rioting. And number two, we have to worship exactly the way that our God told us to worship and he told us to worship out there, all right? And so Pharaoh concedes in the way a very proud person concedes. Say, okay, go out of the land, Just don't go very far. He's sort of putting that little, I still have a little bit of control. Don't go real far. I still want you at arm's length. All right? And so Moses is like, all right, but don't trick me again. Don't do that again, because these plagues are getting heavier, you remember. And look at verse 32. Moses goes out and he prays. The flies are removed. But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also and did not let the people go. What we're starting to see come into prominence here is the hardness of Pharaoh's heart. And so this morning, I'm gonna go on a little bit of an excursus and bring us back to the text by talking about this idea of the hardened heart. Because many of you probably have had questions as we've been talking about this. If we go back a few chapters, the Lord says, I'm going to harden Pharaoh's heart. I'm going to do it. And Paul quotes that in Romans chapter nine, that the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. And yet in this chapter we see, verse 32, Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Pharaoh hardened his heart. How do these things work together? All right, what we're gonna do this morning is we're gonna ask three questions about that. Question number one is, what is a hardened heart? What does that mean in context? Number two, we're gonna ask, what does a hardened heart look like? It's a little different than the first question because what we're asking are, what we see in this text are five characteristics of a hardened heart. So do I have a hardened heart? Not just what is it, but do I have one? Do I share those characteristics? And number three, we're gonna ask the question, how does a hardened heart become soft? So question number one, what is a hardened heart? Well, remember earlier I told you to remember the word heavy. The plagues are getting heavier and heavier and heavier. All right, the word for heavy is also the word that's used to describe Pharaoh's hardened heart. Pharaoh's heart became heavy. All right, that word is the word kabod in the Hebrew. And I remember that from seminary because that word also means glory. So I remember when the angels are covering their faces, or they covered their eyes, they didn't see God's glory. So you can remember that Hebrew word, I covered their eyes, so they didn't see God's glory. So glory. weight, callousness. And this is purposeful because what's going on here is sort of the battle of the bulge, all right? So Pharaoh is saying, I'm heavy, I'm glorious, I'm authoritative. And the Lord is saying, you think you're heavy? Let me just keep sitting on you until you cry uncle, okay? We'll see who's heavy. And that's what the plagues are doing. He's saying, let's see who's glorious. Let's see who's heavy. Let's see who's weighty here. So a hardened heart is not just someone who is resistant to God. Someone who has a hard heart has a heavy heart. It means you count yourself with great weight, with glory. You count yourself king. You count yourself glorious. You count yourself weighty. All right? That's what it means. C.S. Lewis, in his book, The Great Divorce, he said it well. He said, you know, there are two types of people in the world. One type is going to stand before God and they're going to say, Thy will be done. And the other type is going to stand before God and God is going to look at them and say, Thy will be done. And that's what hell is. Hardened hearts. Your will be done. You want to be king? Sure. You can be king of your dark, hellish little kingdom. You can have a heavy, heavy, glorious place all to yourself, but it's going to be terrible because it's not the way the universe is designed. Now one question that comes up when we're talking about a hardened heart is sort of that tension, right? Did God harden Pharaoh's heart? Did Pharaoh harden his heart? What's going on there? The best way I know to explain that is from my own background as a writer, all right? I studied writing when I was over in Europe, and one of the things you learn as you're studying writing, excuse me, is that, excuse me again, is that really bad writers create characters that are very flat. All right. You just use them to move the plot along. If you ever, have you ever read a really bad book where you're just like, why did he do that? Oh, I see why. So that the author could get to that thing right there. That's a bad writer. Somebody who can't create a character that makes genuine decisions. They just make decisions robotically to move the plot along. All right. There are other authors who are called postmodern authors who create great characters but the plot never goes anywhere. Just sit around and be great characters. One way I think that's helpful to think about the two stories we have going on here between Pharaoh hardening his heart and God hardening Pharaoh's heart is to think of a good author. When I write a good character, a good character, that character You know you've sort of gotten into a rhythm as a writer, because that character seems to be making their own decisions. You just kind of follow it, right? They're genuine. It's like a real person there. And yet, who's authoring their actions and decisions? I am. It's not robotic. I'm not just using them to move the plot along. They're making free decisions and yet I'm their author. And the two extremes here are that some people look at our will and they say, well, God's just standing by and he's just sort of, he's not the author. He's just kind of waiting around to see what we're going to do. Well, that's not right. And other people think, well, Pharaoh's hardening his heart because God is mechanically making him do things he wouldn't do otherwise. No, that's not true. Romans 1 says, the hardening of the heart is God giving us up to our own desires. There's genuine choice there. And so we can really see this in two different lights. God is genuinely authoring Pharaoh's decisions. He's sovereign over them. In fact, he says, I'm doing this to move the plot along. I'm using his genuine choices so that I can proclaim my name in Egypt. There's a purpose to it. And yet we can also see that Pharaoh makes his own decisions. There's tension there, but you have to hold both of those things together. So that's what a hardened heart is. That's from a theological perspective, how we can think about it. It's really someone who's made themselves weighty. And God ultimately is the author of that. And yet we, in some sense, also are the authors of our hardened hearts. So we can't abdicate responsibility. But the question in this text is, how do I know if I have a heavy, hardened heart? How do I know if I think that I am glorious? And what we see here, I think, are five indications that we have a heavy or hardened heart. I want you to look back at verse 15 here. Verse 15, we see this all throughout this narrative, but it comes to prominence in verse 15. When Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, that there was a break from the plagues, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them as the Lord had said. All right? One of the marks of somebody who has a hardened heart is that you can give up your sin for a season when it has consequences. But as soon as the consequences are removed, you're right back at it. You're right back at it. John Owen wrote of this verse. He said, the man who's hardened in his heart is like a man who's walking to a destination and all of a sudden it starts storming. And he runs for shelter. He takes a break from his journey, but as soon as the storm passes, he's back on his way again. Now a hardened heart can give up sin for a season. Because a hardened heart is responsive to fear. Oh, I don't want those bad consequences. But as soon as those bad consequences disappear, I'm right back on my way again. Yeah, I've got an anger problem. As soon as it starts messing with my relationships and people start saying, oh, I don't want to be around you anymore, I'm not going to do that. But as soon as it seems safe to have an anger problem again, we're right back at it. That's not true repentance. There's no genuine hatred for sin. and love of what is good. It's just a desire to avoid the consequences. That's what we see in Pharaoh over and over again. Oh yeah, yeah, no, I'll worship Yahweh, yeah, you can do whatever you want, and then the plagues are back, but then they're gone. No, no, no, nevermind, nevermind. He's just going right on his dandy way, right? So obedience out of fear, not love. Giving up sin for a season because of the consequences, not because of a hatred of sin and a love for God. Number two, I want you to notice the reaction of the magicians. Verse 19, then the magician said to Pharaoh, this is the finger of a God. And notice the hard-heartedness of the magicians. This is the finger of a God. They are unwilling to say, this is the finger of the God of the Hebrews. This is the finger of Yahweh. And this is what a hardened heart can do. A hardened heart is perfectly fine saying, I believe there is a deity. I believe there is a God. But a hardened heart will never give a specific name to that God. You know why? Because once you give a name to God, that God requires obedience. And if your heart is hard, what is the last thing you want? The last thing you want is to change your personal life. All right, this is really interesting, by the way, if you're here this morning and you think, well, you know, I believe Christianity is cool, but I don't believe that the Christian God is superior to other gods. You sort of have a problem here, because what does verse 22 say? God's whole point in the Exodus is to show that he's superior to other gods. Who subscribes to the Torah? Jews, Christians, Muslims, the three major religions of the world, all say that they believe the Torah. And the God of the Torah says, I am superior to every other God in the universe. So if you want to say, I don't believe that God is superior to anybody, I believe the Christian, the Muslim, the God of Islam is the same as the God of the Hindus and the Buddhists, you have to say, I believe that all gods are equal, which is a dogmatic claim against the three major religions of the world. How does that make sense? It doesn't make sense. And the reason you haven't thought it through is because why? because it's really convenient to have an impersonal God. Do you know what an impersonal God is? A weightless God, a gloryless God, a God who doesn't matter. I worship a God, a deity. When we say that, it allows us to remain heavy in our own sight, glorious in our own sight, king in our own sight, because that God isn't really God. So, number two mark of a hardened heart is, I acknowledge an impersonal God, but not a personal God with a name. Number three, notice what is said in verse 25. Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, go, sacrifice to your God within the land. Third mark of a hardened heart. I'm willing to obey God within my boundaries. I'm willing to obey God, sure, within my boundaries. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's, notice I'm not related to him. Ray Kroc says, I love this quote, says, I believe in God, family, and McDonald's, and in the office, that order is reversed. I wonder if that's true for any of us today. Oh yeah, no, I believe in God. I can speak the Christian lingo. I can listen to God songs on the radio on K-Love. I can come to church on Sundays, but God cannot touch my business decisions. He can't touch my marriage. He can't touch my addictions. He can't touch my friendships. He can't touch my past. He can't touch my future. You can't have any of that. I'll obey you, God, within my boundaries, within my land. I'm still king. You hear that? I'm still king. I wonder how many of us could pray the hypocrite's prayer. God, you can have my Sundays as long as you don't make me change the way I spend my money, love my spouse, parent my kids, run my business, spend my weekends, care for the needy, enjoy my entertainment, choose my friendships, take care of my body, vote, care for my environment, give up my addictions, or alter my reputation in any way, shape, or form. And somehow we've got the idea that God is just tickled with that sort of thing. Oh good, well at least you're coming to church. No, no. Pharaoh could do that. Oh yeah, you can obey God within my boundaries. That's a hardened heart, friend. That's a hardened heart. That's not worship. That's not worship, okay? If God is quarantined to your Christian group and your Christian friends and your Christian day of the week, that's not worship. That's hard heartedness. It's hard heartedness. Number four, notice in verse 28, after Pharaoh says, you know, you don't go very far away, he says, sorry, let me read 28 for you. 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. This is the fourth mark of a hardened heart. I'm gonna give up my sin. I'm gonna cut ties with my sin, only I'm gonna keep them at arm's length, just in case I need them. What does Jesus say about this? He says, if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. All right? If you're an alcoholic, you can't go from alcoholism to temperance with alcohol. You can't just say, okay, I'm gonna give up my sin, but I'm not gonna go very far away. I'm just gonna keep it here in case I need it. That's hard-heartedness. That's hard-heartedness. How many times have I talked to high school kids and it's like, okay dude, you struggle with pornography, you can't have a personal computer where you don't have accountability. Okay, well, but I just won't do it anymore. What are you doing? I'm just keeping it at arm's length, just in case I need that idol again, right? No. You've got to cut that off. Oh, if you want to be faithful to your spouse, you know, you have to stop seeing this man or this woman. Well, I'll just stop my sin, but I want to keep that at arm's length. That's hard-heartedness. It's hard-heartedness. Well, if you want to stop getting in trouble with the law or getting into drugs, you've got to stop hanging out with this group of people. Well, we're just going to be friends, you know. They're my friends. I'm going to hang out with them. I'm not trying to give you legalistic rules for how to live your life, but what I'm saying is, if you have an area of struggle and an area of sin, you can't be like Pharaoh and say, I'm just going to keep it at arm's reach right here just in case I need it. That's hard-heartedness. You know another thing we say when we're hard-hearted? Look back at verse 10. I love this. Moses asked, when do you want this plague of frogs removed? What does Pharaoh say? Tomorrow. Why would you say tomorrow? Can you imagine the conversation with his wife that night? It's like, oh yeah, Moses said we could get rid of these plagues whenever we want. What did you say? Tomorrow. Tomorrow, why would he say that? I'll tell you why. There's only one possible explanation in my mind. He was giving his idols one more chance. He was giving his idols one more chance. How many times have I heard that with people? Oh, yeah, you know, you need to give this up. I will, I'll do it tomorrow, next week. You have to give up this relationship with this girl, it's not healthy. I will, she's not in a good place right now, I'll do it next week. You know what, brother, sister? Satan loves when you say that, you know why? Because your heart is gonna be more hard tomorrow than it is today. Hearts are not neutral. They're getting harder or softer. So Satan loves it when you say, I'll give that up next week, because he knows your heart is going to be seven days harder than it was this week. A hard heart keeps sin right here, just in case I need my idol. And Jesus says, no, that's not OK. All right. Nobody who's fit for the kingdom of God takes up the plow and looks back. You've got to cut ties. This is the one thing Pharaoh would not allow Moses to do is cut ties with Egypt. All right. Giving up sin is a commitment. You know, when we were in high school, We used to have this janked trampoline. This is not like the above ground pool sized trampolines with kiddie nets that are double wide. It's not what it was. It was a triangular trampoline. Half the springs were rusted off and missing. There were cigarette holes all over the place. When you jumped on it, your feet would hit the ground. And then you'd leap up into the air. So we would dare each other to do things on the trampoline. Because if you're insurance, you're like, oh. Because we were boys, I don't know why. So we were on the trampoline, and the biggest dare that you could do was to try to do a backflip on our trampoline. Well, we learned pretty quickly that you can't halfway commit to a backflip. right? You can't change your mind in midair and be like, nope, not doing this. That's not going to happen. You can't, as you're bouncing the final time, be like, I'm not sure, because then you just land on your face, right? You just got to commit. You know the old joke about the difference between involvement and commitment? It's the difference between the eggs and the bacon. The chicken was involved. The pig was committed, right? This is what Jesus says about sin. You can't be involved, all right? If there's a sin struggle in your life, you need to cut ties with everything that makes you stumble or you will continue to become harder and harder and harder in that area. So that means today when you go home, do it. Whatever it is for you, do it. Last thing, number five. Notice what Pharaoh says right after that in verse 28. Plead for me, Moses, pray for me. You know, Pharaoh is living his religion through other people. He's got his magicians, he's got his Moses. A hard heart, a hard heart is perfectly okay with practicing religion in public, right? Pray for me, oh yeah. Oh yeah, let's listen to the Christian radio. Oh yeah, let's hear the preacher boy on Sunday. But a hard heart, has no private practice of religion. There's no searching the scriptures for yourself. There's no pleading to God on your own. A hard heart is perfectly capable of being a Christian in public, but not in private. That's a hardened heart. What would you say to me if I said, oh, I talk to my wife in public, but we don't say a word to each other at home? You'd say that's a dead relationship. Well, that's right. Pharaoh can request prayer. He can practice his religion in public. But Pharaoh is unwilling to seek God on his own. Notice, when God says, this is what I want, in verse 22, he says, what do I want out of these plagues, Pharaoh? I want you to know that I'm the Lord in all the earth. You, personally, you. Pharaoh doesn't want that. He says, okay, I'll just, I'll become part of this cultural Christianity thing. Go ahead, pray for me. That's not religion, all right? That's not the religion that pleases God. If you're perfectly okay speaking the Christian language in public, but you don't seek God in private, that's a mark of a hardened heart. I've got to give a little corrective to that. If you're okay seeking God in private but not in the community of your church body and with a doctrine that's been handed down for centuries, you also have a hard heart because you've made yourself authoritative. My personal interpretation of my Bible is authoritative. Well, that's a hard heart too. You have to have both of those things. Both of those things. So the question is, maybe you say this morning, yeah, I'm actually feeling some of those symptoms. Maybe I do have a hardened, heavy heart, a self-glorifying heart. What do I do about that? Maybe you feel really depressed about that right now. Well, that's a good place to start. It's a really bad place to finish. If you came here this morning and you heard, oh, I've got a hardened heart, and you leave, and that's all you hear, you're worse off than when you came. So you've got to listen to the solution. You've got to listen to the solution. Notice what God says in verse 22. The solution to Pharaoh's hardened heart was to what? to know that the Lord was the God in all the earth. It wasn't to look at himself and say, I'm so bad, I'm so hard-hearted. It was to take his eyes off of himself and put them on the glory of God and the weightiness of God, the kavod of God. See, Thomas Chalmers, he's an old Puritan dead guy, which is why I like him. He had a sermon that he preached called The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. All right, say that with me. The expulsive power of a new affection. What does that mean? Expulsive, it gets rid of. An affection, it's a love. The expulsive power of a new love. And what he said in that sermon is he said, you know what? If I get on you about your sin, and I tell you how horrible it is, and how fruitless it is, and how hard-hearted you are, and I leave you there, I leave you hopeless. All right? Because, he says, the human heart is always going to seek after glory. It's always gonna seek after weightiness. It's always gonna seek after that chavod, all right? It's always going to seek after it. This is why he puts this in a sermon. He says, when people retire or they're handicapped and they can't work, they become miserable. Why? Because your heart is designed to go after something, to seek something, to do something. He says, if I tore down your house because it was a bad house, and I didn't tell you that you could have a new house, you'd be miserable. You'd be left in an unnatural state. You'd be homeless. If I told you to stop eating what you're eating, and I didn't give you new food, better food, nutritious food to eat, you'd be left in an unnatural state. He says, the human heart seeks after its own glory because, partially, it's designed to seek after a glory. And the solution to a hardened heart is not just to get down on yourself. It's to see the beauty and the glory and the majesty of the God who is Lord of all the earth. Notice what is said in verse 23. Thus says the Lord, I will put a division between my people and your people. Tomorrow this sign shall happen. Look down at your footnotes. What does that word division literally mean? I will set a redemption price for these people. You want to see God's glory? Do you want to see God's glory? Think about this truth. that when God was in Israel among his people, he protected his people from judgment through a redemption price he already had in mind. What's that redemption price? Well, the punishment for heavy-heartedness and hard-heartedness and self-glorifying, just like in any kingdom, that's treason. The punishment is death. And so we see later in Exodus chapter 12, that in order for the people to avoid the final plague, they have to have a lamb put to death and the blood painted over their doorways. And then we learn later in the book of John, John looks at Jesus, the son of God, and he says, behold, the lamb of God. Behold the redemption price that is paid for God's people. This judgment in chapter 7 to 12, this judgment is only a picture of the judgment that God will use against the whole world, against every hard-hearted person. We read that in Revelation chapter 16. All of these plagues come back in Revelation chapter 16. And what it's talking about is it's talking about God's judgment on the world. But notice what's said in chapter 17. Revelation chapter 17, he's talking about the hard heartedness of the world. It says they will wage war against the lamb, Jesus. But the lamb will triumph over them because he is Lord of lords and king of kings. Now listen to this. And with Jesus will be his called, chosen, and faithful followers. Who will escape God's judgment for hard heartedness? Not you. Not by your own redemption price. You can't pay your way out of it. The Lamb of God who was given as the redemption price for you. Now you can think about that all day and all night and for all eternity. The gospel isn't just this one little pat truth that you just memorize and move on. The gospel is like a diamond. that you can hold up to the light and you can look at it, every facet of it, over and over and over again. You can think about the glory of your redemption price, the holiness of God and the love of God coming together through Christ. You can think about that for all eternity. And as you think about that glory, as you think about that glorious and weighty truth, what happens? The weightiness of your own heart begins to lift. You're designed to look for glory. And tomorrow morning when you wake up, you're going to make a decision. Am I going to seek my glory today or am I going to seek the glory of God? Am I going to look at the glory of God? Am I going to look into the gospel and see the weightiness of who God is? There's a. There's a story about a woman named Dorothy Sayers. Some of you guys might know her if you love murder mysteries. She was the first woman to attend Oxford University. She was in advertising for a while, and then she ended up writing this Lord Peter Whimsey series. As the series goes on, halfway through, a character appears who was the first woman to attend Oxford University and was in advertising for a while and has all the personality traits of Dorothy Sayers. And what biographers of Dorothy Sayers say is they say what happened was Dorothy Sayers, a single woman, fell in love with her main character and she wrote herself into the story. Christian, we talked earlier about God as the author of your story. God loves his people so much that he wrote himself into your story. He saw that you needed a redemption price to be paid and he saw that no one else could pay it and what did he do? He wrote himself into the story through Jesus. He paid your redemption price. There's nothing more glorious than that. There's nothing more weighty than that. There's nothing more beautiful than that. Think on that and your heart will become soft. It's not about you. It's not about your own redemption price. It's about Jesus who wrote himself into your story and accomplished that for you. Lord, we thank you that we are not on our own to soften our own hard hearts. Lord, we need your Holy Spirit. to speak new life into us as we look on the beauty and the glory and the weightiness of Jesus, as we think about the goodness of the gospel, as we think about the redemption price you've set for your people through Christ. Lord God, we praise you and we think about that. You are worthy for us to think about that truth all day, all night, all week, every moment of every waking day. to hold it in our minds as glorious, to give us new affections for it that are so stirred that our own weight seems silly in comparison. Lord, we pray for that this week, that we behold your glory and your goodness through Christ in your name. Amen.