So we're in Exodus chapter nine, and we're going to look at three more of these plagues. And you'll notice as we move through it, if you didn't read ahead, you'll notice as we move through it, that the first and the second of these, the narrative is fairly short. When you get to the third plague, the Plague of Hell, it's a long narrative, and I'm going to divide that up a little bit. The other two I'm just going to read. But I sat there and I read that, and I thought, that's an awful lot just to read together at one time. So I'm going to divide that third one up into thirds. So let me pray, and then we'll read regarding this first plague, at least the first of today. This is actually the fifth of the plagues. But let me pray. Our Father and our God, we pause before we journey into your word, Lord, to ask your blessing on it, Lord, that we ask that you give us ears that are attentive, that can hear spiritual truths. We pray for hearts that can receive, the implanted word, and we pray for minds that can understand your word. We pray that your Holy Spirit would apply your word to our lives. Meet us right where we are and speak to us. And we thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. So here we have the plague upon the livestock, and that's verses one to seven. Okay. Then the Lord said to Moses, go into Pharaoh and tell him, thus says the Lord 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 be on your cattle in the field, on the horses, on the donkeys, on the camels, on the oxen, and on the sheep, a very severe pestilence. And the Lord will make a difference between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt. So nothing shall die of all that belongs to the children of Israel. Then the Lord appointed a set time, saying, Tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land. So the Lord did this thing on the next day, and all the livestock of Egypt died. But of the livestock of the children of Israel, not one died. Then Pharaoh sent, and indeed not even one of the livestock of the Israelites was dead. But the heart of Pharaoh became hard, and he did not let the people go." So do you see the severity of these plagues increasing? And it's going to increase as we move through these three today. At first, it was an incredible inconvenience, these plagues, to the people. But he hadn't really harmed their property, so to speak. He hadn't really harmed them yet. He will. But here he targets their property, their beasts of burden. Ancient Egypt was an agricultural system and so much of what they did was farming. And to not have these animals would have been a great hardship. It would have been a great financial impact on their economy. If you can imagine all of a sudden all your equipment, which is cows and whatnot, ox, are dead. So that's what's going on here. This text and the story as a whole reminded me of the Old Testament prophet Nahum. If you remember the book of Nahum, you know, at first Jonah went to Nineveh and Nineveh repented and later they sinned again. And he sent the prophet Nahum to prophesy doom over them. And in Nahum chapter one, verse two, it says, God is jealous and the Lord avenges. The Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord will make vengeance on his adversaries, and reserves wrath for his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked." God is a God to be reckoned with. He doesn't mess around, so to speak. So here God targets the Egyptian animals. And I thought when I read that, I remember years ago I went to the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis with my wife, and I was surprised when we got to the stadium where this thing was going on that they were lined up protesters from PETA because, as it appears, Southern Baptists eat too much meat. They were angry. And I thought, boy, would this not anger a PETA group, you know, to come out and say, what do you mean he just, you know, wiped out the animals? What did they do? What did they do that was wrong? They didn't have hardened hearts. Well, you got to remember the Bible says, and I'll read you a couple of verses, Psalm 24, 1, it says, the earth is the Lord's. and all of its fullness the world, and all those who dwell therein." And Psalm 50 verse 10 says, "...for every beast of the forest is mine," God says. Every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. They're His animals. He can do what He wants with them. He's God, right? So let's at least address that. There is a verse here that you have to deal with. It's verse 6. Because it says, "...so the Lord did this thing, On the next day, and all the livestock of Egypt died. I won't bore you with the long study I read dealing with the original Hebrew, but that word all can also be translated all sorts of. And that's probably the way to understand it here, because we have yet to come to the plague of hail, and where these animals are once again going to be brutalized by a plague. So it's not all in the sense of every single one, but all sorts of these animals died, probably the vast majority of them. So there's still plenty of livestock when we get to the seventh plague today, when we take a look at that. Tony Moreta, in his commentary, said, the stench would be horrendous and the cleanup would be exhausting. I couldn't even imagine. If you saw on the news recently, one of our local beaches had a whale beached itself. Did you see that in the news? It doesn't usually happen up our way, but it was the eastern shore. We were reminded by the reporter that years ago that happened somewhere and they tried to get rid of it with a stick of dynamite and it turned into a absolute nightmare, stuff everywhere, didn't get rid of the carcass. And so they said, well, what are you going to do with it? And they said, they had bulldozers, and they were going to bury it right there on the beach. And some of the residents were like, I don't know if I like the fact they're going to have this big rotting whale right out where I go out to the beach. But can you imagine all the countryside of Egypt just littered with carcasses of dead animals to deal with? It's interesting, the Egyptians, because remember we talked about how this is really Yahweh displaying who he is and all of his greatness and power to Pharaoh, and really showing Pharaoh that your gods are nothing. Your gods are nothing. Remember when he finally gets them out, away into the wilderness and gives them the Ten Commandments, he tells Israel, you'll have no other gods before me. None. Right? And so God's making himself known here. But the Egyptians worshipped. They saw cows as sacred. A lot of the animals they saw as sacred animals. And they worshipped them. The very thing that God gave them as a provision in his common grace, they turned around and said, well, this is our God and worshipped. And that's what Paul says in Romans chapter 1, that we exchange the truth for a lie, and then rather than worshiping the Creator, we worship the creature. That's in the heart of unregenerate man, is to turn to something other than the true and living God. I read this, that Hathor, H-A-T-H-O-R, Hathor, was often depicted as a cow, symbolizing her maternal celestial aspects. Although her most common form, and this is one of their deities, was a woman who wore a headdress of cow horns that had a sun disk in between them. And you can look at, I looked that up, and you can find pictures and paintings and whatnot that they've discovered depicting this pagan goddess that they worshiped. So God does make a distinction, right? We see that as we move through the plagues. The Lord will make a difference, verse four, between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt. So nothing shall die of all that belongs to the children of Israel. God's bearing witness to Pharaoh, right? That I make a distinction between these who recognize me as their true and living God. And didn't he say that? He tells Pharaoh that Yahweh is who? He's the God of the Hebrews. In other words, the Hebrews are mine, says Yahweh, where Pharaoh was saying, no, the Hebrews are mine. Do you see the battle going on here? And God is slowly chipping away at Pharaoh's power and his ability to hold on. So that's plague number 5. Plague number 6 is the plague of boils. And this is verses 8 to 12. So let's read that together. So the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Take for yourselves handfuls of ashes from the furnace, and let Moses scatter it towards the heavens in the sight of Pharaoh. And it will become fine dust in all the land of Egypt, and it will cause boils that break out and sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt. Then they took ashes from the furnace and stood before Pharaoh, and Moses scattered them toward heaven. And they caused boils that break out and sores on man and beast. And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils were on the magicians and on all the Egyptians. But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not heed them, just as the Lord had spoken to Moses." Do you remember the pattern that I pointed out to you last week as we go through the plagues? There's three sets of three leading up to the final, the 10th, the Passover. And the pattern's like this. The first plague, you're to go to Pharaoh early in the morning. The very first one, down by the river. The second, you're to go into Pharaoh. The idea being, you go into his throne room. And these first two, you warn him. The third, there's no warning. You just go and perform a sign. No warning to Pharaoh. And that happens three times in a row. So here we are, again, there's no warning here. This is the sixth. This is the last of the second series of that cycle. We've got one more series to go through. There's an increasing severity, right? Now man and magician are physically plagued. From the king to those in prominent positions within his court, down to the common Egyptian, all the way down to the beasts, but really significantly even the sorcerers. Even those whom Pharaoh has been turning to, to say, well, maybe this isn't as bad as I think it is. And they were able to somehow conjure up matching plagues. And then they couldn't do it. They're like, well, we can't do this one. Remember, they're the ones that confessed, this is the finger of God. They said. And he wouldn't hear them. And now they can't even stand. Whatever this ailment looked like and felt like, they couldn't even stand in Moses' presence. God has dealt with these sorcerers and magicians really finally and fully. We're not going to see them really coming up in the story anymore. They're kind of knocked out of the picture. And do you see how Yahweh, I mean, he could have done this all in one quick move, but he didn't. He chose to chip away, because, and we'll see this in the third plague, that God is putting Himself on display, in all of His power and might, that the world might know. That the world might know that Yahweh is the true and living God, and He has a people for Himself. That's what He's really doing here. I got this from, I'm going to read you a little quote from Joseph Excel's commentary. And he's more like an editor, and he gets a lot of quotes from other individuals and assembles them and edits them and whatnot. So he's actually pulling this from another guy named Geisen, but let me read this to you. says, let this incident lead us to think how great will be the anguish and confusion of wicked men and persecutors when the Lord Jesus Christ shall come again to earth, and when the light of God shall shine upon them, then the corruption of their unconverted souls will openly appear, and they will not dare to show themselves before the holy angels or before the redeemed, who are covered with the robe of Christ's righteousness. Only imagine what would become of any of us if for every evil thought Every wicked word, every falsehood, every slander, every angry word, an ulcer or a boil were to appear on our faces. How horrible we should seem if all the pollutions of our souls were to appear outwardly on our bodies. It is well for us to think occasionally of such things, to examine the sins of our heart, to humble ourselves before God, and to feel more deeply the need of being washed in the blood of Christ, which cleanses us from all sin. It is our Lord Jesus Christ alone who can present to himself his church, that is, the assembled of his redeemed people, glorious and pure, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and without blemish." Right? Can you imagine if every sin you ever committed turned into a boil on your body? That's what he's getting at. And what a merciful God to send his Son, Jesus Christ, that if we're in Christ, those sins have been atoned for. The boils, if you will, have been removed from our souls. So now we move into the third plague, a much longer narrative. I'm going to divide this up because it's just such a big chunk of scripture. So this is the plague of Hell, part one, its announcement. And that's from verse 13 to 21. Then the Lord said to Moses, Rise early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me. For at this time I will send all my plagues to your very heart, and on your servants and on your people, that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth. Now, if I had stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, then you would have been cut off from the earth. But indeed for this purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name may be declared in all the earth. as yet you exalt yourself against my people in that you will not let them go. Behold, tomorrow about this time I will cause very heavy hail to rain down, such as has not been in Egypt since its founding until now. Therefore, send now and gather your livestock and all that you have in the field, for the hail shall come down on every man and every animal which is found in the field and is not brought home, and they shall die. He who feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his livestock flee to the houses. But he who did not regard the word of the Lord left his servants and his livestock in the field. We'll talk about that last little bit there in a bit. That really intrigues me that that's what the text says. So it's a turning point in the severity. If you look at verse 14, you can see God's ratcheting this up. He says, I will send my plagues to your very heart, to your very heart, to the core of who you are. Remember, it's increasing. At first it was boils on the body, disease of the skin that he sends to human beings, and now it's death. If they will not listen to the Word of God, it's going to be death. And so he says, this is going to cut you to the quick, Pharaoh. This is going to hit you at the heart level, is what he's saying. Matthew Henry in his commentary writes, I will send my plagues upon thy heart, not only temporal plagues upon thy body, but spiritual plagues upon your soul. Note, God can send plagues upon thy soul. Note that God can send plagues upon the heart, either by making it senseless or by making it hopeless, and these are the worst plagues. Pharaoh must now expect no respite, no cessation of arms, but to be followed with plague upon plague till he is utterly consumed. Note that when God judges, He will overcome. None ever hardened his heart against Him, and prospered, Matthew Henry says, and that's true. Do you remember back when you had a hard heart towards God? I can remember back when I did. I had a hard heart and God had to break through to me and break me that he could rebuild me in Christ. And I'm sure you know what that looks like if you've experienced it, you know. So the purpose in this is that Pharaoh might know the supremacy of Yahweh. He's the one and only true Almighty God, right? The Lord of hosts is He. One commentator wrote, it's a warning that plagues will strike not just Egypt, but Pharaoh's inner being, intending to make him finally acknowledge God's supreme power over all the earth. So God's sovereign purposes, and I have to park on this for a minute. Okay, so this is important theologically, so I want to park on it. And maybe you were thinking the same thing I'm going to go to. But when you read our chapter nine of Exodus, verse 16, let me reread that verse. but indeed for this purpose I have raised you up." Now this, through his mediator Moses, this is Yahweh, God Almighty, speaking to Pharaoh. And he says, Pharaoh, this is why I've raised you up, that I may show my power in you, and that my name may be declared in all the earth. That's an important verse theologically. Because people might say, why on earth are you taking your church through the Old Testament book of Exodus? I mean, shouldn't the New Testament church be in the New Testament? Why aren't you going through a gospel? Well, I can tell you that the early church thought it was important, because Paul labors that verse. in Romans chapter 9 in your New Testament. And I want to read that a little bit, because what Paul, the apostle in the New Testament, is trying to convey, and you'll see it in the text, is God is sovereign. God owns it all. God can do what He wants. He's God. I mean, and the quicker we get to the point in our human existence of acknowledging that and telling God, you know what, you're God. I'm not. I don't know what you're doing in this. I don't know why you do this or why you do that. Sometimes you tell me why in your word, but not always. But you're God. I can't question your wisdom. You're altogether wise in your own being, right? So Romans 9, and let me start in verse 15. He says, Paul writing to the church, He writes, he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion. So then, the apostles, picking up on the Old Testament passage, it says, so then, it is not of him who wills, in other words, it's not about human will, more of him who runs, human doings, but of God who shows mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, now here we go, for this very purpose I've raised you up that I might show my power in you and that my name may be declared in all the earth. Therefore, now Paul's picking up on that. Therefore, he has mercy on whom he wills, and on whom he wills he hardens. And you'll say to me then, why does he still fall in fault? Who has resisted his will? And then here's his rebuttal. But indeed, oh man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed, say to him who formed it, why have you made me like this? Does not the potter have power over the clay, with the same lump, to make a vessel for honor? and another for dishonor? What if God..." Now he's talking about Pharaoh here, guys. "...What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory to the vessels of mercy?" which he had prepared beforehand for glory." And then listen to what he says. He's talking about the vessels of mercy now. "...even us, whom he called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles." And, beloved, where that teaching takes me is, one, I have no right to question God about anything. Whatever he's doing is much wiser than what my plan would be. You ever tell God your plan? Hey, Lord, I was going to do it this way. And God's like, yeah, well, guess what? It's not going to happen that way. I mean, we're really growing in wisdom if we just bow the knee to God and say, Lord, this is not what I thought, but okay, it seems to be your will here. That's how yesterday rolled and unfolded before me. But secondly, if you find yourself as an object of His mercy in Jesus Christ, Be thankful to God who shed his mercy on you, sent his son to die for you. His son was ridiculed, misunderstood, had his beard plucked out, nailed to a cross where he hung and died. But in that death, he atoned for the sins of anybody that put their faith in him. Praise him for that. And don't question God's wisdom. There's a lot I don't know. People ask me stuff about some of the deeper theologies. I'm like, I don't know. I really don't know. But I know God's good. And I know His will is perfect. And I know I should be thankful because I find myself as an object of His mercy. And I don't deserve that one bit at all. Right? Matthew Henry writes, God sometimes raises up very bad men to honor and power, spares them wrong, and suffers them to grow insufferably insolent, that he may be so much the more glorified in their destruction at last. And that's definitely a picture of Pharaoh, right, as we go through the story. Now God said that His purpose here is that He raised up Pharaoh, gave him all that power, that God's power would be manifest in him. That God's name will be declared in all the earth. And I want to take you a little farther into Exodus, because you'll see that this is what God actually achieves. When they're on the conquest campaign later through the leadership of Joshua, those nations had heard about their deliverance from Egypt. This word got around of what this Yahweh had done for the Hebrews. That got around. But where it got around to probably first was Moses' own father-in-law. Remember him? He's a pagan Midianite priest. And when you get to chapter 18, I just want to read a little bit of that. We'll get to it later, God willing. But it says in verse 10 of 18, And Jethro, that's Moses' father-in-law, and Jethro said, Blessed be the Lord who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, out of the hand of Pharaoh, and who has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know, But the Lord is greater than all the gods. For in the very thing in which they have behaved so proudly, He was above them. Then Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took a burnt offering and other sacrifices to offer to God. And Aaron, Aaron's the high priest, and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses' father-in-law before God. They had a sacred meal together. I don't think there's a commentary I read that didn't see that as the conversion of Jethro. And what did God use to really bring him to faith in Yahweh? The exodus, right? So this does come to be. So, moving on. He makes a distinction even among the Egyptians. Now, we're not talking about just Goshen and the spared, which they are. But he says, there's going to be two different kinds of Egyptians here. And that's in verse 20. He who feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his livestock to flee to the houses. They were safe from the hell. God had warned them and they took heed to God's word. But then it says verse 21, But he who did not regard the word of the Lord left his servants and his livestock in the field. Right? To what? To die. They died in the field. Reminded me of Proverbs 12.10. A righteous man regards the life of his animal. You've got to take care of your dog. You've got to make sure your dog's fed and loved, or your cat, or whatever you've got. Righteous man takes care of his animal. Not these that had no regard for the Word of God. They just left them in the field, and they got pummeled with the hail. So fearing the word, but perhaps not fearing the source of that word. I don't think this is a God saying that all these Egyptians had saving faith, but they did fear the word of Yahweh. They'd heard what he said other things and it came to pass, but you don't see anything where they really turned in faith. I think that would have been mentioned if that was the case. Douglas Stewart picked up on that and he says, it's a belief short of conversion. People's belief in something they had been told, but not saving faith in the one who had revealed it to them. It was, however, a belief sufficient to cause some Egyptians to act immediately based on their experience of the sudden onset of the prior plagues. And I've met people like that, I'm sure you have too. People that really don't bow the knee to Jesus Christ, but they're living their lives sort of under the biblical principles of wise living. The book of Proverbs is always called pathway theology. Here's the path you want to be on for things to go well in your temporal life. And there's some people that do a lot of those things, but they don't have saving faith. And you look at them and you think, well, things are going pretty good for you. They're handling their money wisely. And it's like, well, yeah, Proverbs speaks to that. I mean, the Bible talks to all of this. But ultimately, it's almost a scary place to be, because ultimately, at the end of that path, it's hell and destruction, because you need a Savior, right? It's not enough just to walk in biblical wisdom, although it's wonderful. We should walk in biblical wisdom. But we have to know the One who is the wisdom of God, Jesus Christ Himself, right? So plague of hail, the seventh plague here, part two, is devastation. And this is 22 to 26. Then the Lord said to Moses, Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be hail in all the land of Egypt, on man, on beast, on every herb of the field throughout the land of Egypt. And Moses stretched out his rod toward heaven, and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire darted to the ground. And the Lord rained hail on the land of Egypt. So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, so very heavy that there was none like it in all the land of Egypt, since it became a nation. And the hail struck throughout the whole land of Egypt. all that was in the field, both man and beast. And the hail struck every herb of the field, and broke every tree of the field. Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, there was no hail." It's amazing. I just love this story. No hail in Goshen. God's guarding His people. There's a couple other places in the scriptures that speak of God sending hell, like destructive hell. And one of those is in Joshua. So I'm going to read you a little story. Just to give you a little background, where I'm at in the story in Joshua is there's this coalition of five kings that come up against the children of Israel, the Israelites. And they do battle, and the Israelites prevail. And they kill a lot of these enemies that came against them. And they're driving them away. So now they're in retreat, right? And at that point we pick up the story, and this is Joshua 10.11, it says, "...the LORD cast down large hailstones from heaven on them as far as Ezekiah, and they died. There were more who died from the hailstones than the children of Israel killed with a sword." The hail was more impactful causing death than even their sword fights were, is what the Bible says. Let's give you a little picture here. Psalm 148.8 says, fire and hail, snow and clouds, stormy wind fulfilling his word. Yes, indeed, God is in control of the weather. That's why we turn to him when we need rain. He likes us to pray for what we need, and he provides. But God is in absolute control of the weather. I was looking around, and I read somewhere else, and I thought, I'm going to look this up and see if this is so. I hate conveying something to you, and I find out, oh, it's just something that was spread around the internet. You ever see that stuff? And you're like, that's not even true. But this is confirmed, and I saw it in a couple commentaries. But to confirm it, I went to the Guinness Book of World Records.com, a great source for theological insight. And they recorded that on May 2017, the World Meteorological Organization announced the highest reported historic death, that they knew of anyway, death from hailstorms. And it was in April 30 of 1888 in India, where 246 people were hit with hailstones as large as goose eggs or cricket balls. It says, most deaths resulted from both concussion and from exposure, because after they were knocked out by the hailstones, many fell unconscious into the piles of hail, and they froze to death. I only read that because it might give you a little more of a picture of what's going on in Egypt when this hail plague is poured out upon Israel. And I'll remind you from our Revelation study that when you look at the tribulation described in Revelation, that there's going to be hailstones that weigh 75 to 100 pounds in the Great Tribulation that the book of Revelation speaks of. Whether that's figurative or accurately, it's just going to be these giant ice balls. We'll find out. Unless you get Rapture out of here. Whatever your theology is. So, Plague of Hell, Part 3. The aftermath. The aftermath. Verse 27 to 35. And Pharaoh sent and called for Moses and Aaron, and said to them, I have sinned this time. The Lord is righteous, and my people and I are wicked. Entreat the Lord that there may be no more mighty thundering and hail, for it is enough. I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer. So Moses said to him, As soon as I've gone out of the city, I will spread out my hands to the Lord. The thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail, that you may know that the earth is the Lord's. But as for you and your servants, I know that you will not yet fear the Lord God. Now the flax and the barley were struck, for the barley was in the head, and the flax was in the bud. But the wheat and the spelt were not struck, for they are late crops. So Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh and spread out his hands to the Lord. Then the thunder and the hail ceased, and the rain was not poured on the earth. And when Pharaoh saw that the rain, the hail, and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet more. and he hardened his heart, he and his servants. So the heart of Pharaoh was hard, neither would he let the children of Israel go, as the Lord had spoken by Moses." What's kind of puzzling here is that Pharaoh, in my translation, I think of just every translation I looked at, said, I have sinned. I've sinned, he says to Moses. Douglas Stewart, again, if I could read him, says, nothing in what Pharaoh said need lead us to believe that he actually was sorry for his sins and seeking forgiveness from God, the God of Israel. Rather, he was at most admitting to being wrong for having treated the Israelites as he had, and doing so temporarily under the pressure of the worst, most damaging plague he and the Egyptians had yet. encountered, right? So he's basically saying uncle, if you will, if I can use the vernacular. Uncle, you know? That word can be translated, I've sinned, or it can be translated, I've acted unjustly, I've been unfair, and I think that's where Douglas Stewart is going. One of the telling things there though, even in verse 27, is he says, I have sinned this time, as if he had never sinned before. And John MacArthur picks up on that, and he says, any improvement in Pharaoh's theological understanding, notwithstanding the following confession of a righteous Lord, a wicked people, was rendered suspect by the face-saving caveat this time. Lacking repentance, it brushed aside all previous reaction and disobedience as having no significance at all." So Pharaoh here doesn't have a relationship with Yahweh. He asks Moses to pray for him, right? And in doing so, you don't see him fall to his knees and cry out to the living God himself. Right? Which is what really the, you think of the parable Jesus taught of the tax collector and the Pharisee. And the tax collector won't even look to heaven. He won't even get near the temple. He just beats on his breast and cries out to God himself and says, be merciful to me, a sinner. Now that's contrition. That's somebody reaching out to God. A number of years ago, it was a long time ago, there was a gentleman that worked for my company, and I didn't really know him at all. I saw him once or twice in the office. Somebody said hi to him or something. And somebody said, do you hear he's dying? I said, no, I didn't know he was dying. He was a young guy. And I found out where he lived. And I went to go visit him. I wanted to share the gospel with him. And I got to his house. His wife was happy I was there. And I shared the gospel with him. And I asked him if he wanted to pray to God. And I can't judge the guy's heart. I don't know where he was. But he said, no. He goes, why don't you pray and I'll be right here with you while you're praying. So I prayed for him. I don't know what God did with that. Maybe he got saved. I have no idea. But I just thought, you're still so proud that you can't pray in front of somebody at this juncture. You're on death's door. And I mean, he didn't look good. I mean, he wasn't going to last too much longer. His wife did write me afterwards, and she didn't know me from Adam, and thanked me for coming that day and for sharing the gospel. She took solace in that, that he had heard the gospel and wanted to give his life to Christ. True repentance. Look at Romans 7.18 where Paul writes, For I know that in me, in my flesh, nothing good dwells. For the will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. There's nothing good in this guy. That's true contrition, right? Galatians 5.17, For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, the Spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. We find ourselves sinning or saying something we shouldn't have said. And you're like, that's not in line with the Spirit. We're growing by God's grace, but we're not there yet. I liked in the movie Amazing Grace, if you ever saw that, it's a story about the slave trade back in whatever years those were. But John Newton is played by Albert Finney in that movie. It's a really good movie. And John Newton is shown on a scene at the end of his life, and it's been said that Newton did say this, but I got my quote from the movie, but where the John Newton character is talking to somebody, he says, although my memory is fading, I can remember two things very clearly. I'm a great sinner, and Christ is a great Savior. And beloved, if we ever get to the point where we get Alzheimer's or whatever path lies in front of us, I pray I can at least say those two things. I don't know much, but I know I'm a great sinner and God has provided a great savior for me in Jesus Christ. That's all I know. And that's enough. That's enough. So Moses' response is pretty telling about Pharaoh's confessing his sin and whatnot. Because Moses says, I know you're not really turning in repentance. I know you don't have faith in Yahweh. I know this. You're still hard. It's interesting to me that there's an assessment of the crop. Doesn't that seem like it just kind of got inserted into the middle of this narrative? It's like, why is that there? So it says, the flax and the barley were struck, for the barley was in the head and the flax was in the body. Well, that tells us what time of year it was. Probably a lot of your footnotes are going to say, oh, that means it's February or March when this happened, because that's when that would have been getting close to harvest, and the crop is destroyed. But the next crop was harvested a month later, and that is the wheat and the spelt. So they might have got hit, or the little plants might have got knocked down, but apparently they weren't so damaged that they couldn't recover and grow up to a full stock and provide grain, which would be good news for Egypt, except the locusts are coming. So we'll see that as we move on. Because you say, well, where do they find food to eat? Well, because there's another crop on its way, and God's going to send locusts to take care of that. So the Lord relents, and once again, sadly, Pharaoh is hardened. And again, Tony Moretta in his commentary says, in regard to the Egyptian gods, we are unsure which god was being confronted here. They had plenty to choose from. They had gods over all the elements. They had atmosphere god, a sky god, a goddess of moisture, gods present in the earth, gods of the wind. But God is certainly defeating these so-called gods of Egypt and showing himself to be the one and only true and living God. And as a final point, I'll end with this thought. I was reading an article by Kara Dedert, D-E-D-E-R-T, in this month's Table Talk, which is Ligonier's little devotional that I get. It was such a good article. She said when she was younger that her church, and some churches do this, they sing Not so much hymns that were written in the 1800s and whatnot like we do. But they sing out of the psalter. So they take the psalms and they might move the words around a little bit so that it flows a little better in the English. And they set it to music and they sing the psalms. And she said, I always thought it was strange that we had in our psalter to sing in church the laments. You know, the psalms, there's laments in the psalms, and the church would get together and sing them. And she quoted one of the songs in her hymnal, and the verse goes like this. Thou hast brought me down to darkness, neath thy wrath I am oppressed. All the billows of affliction overwhelm my soul distressed. And she thought to herself, I thought we were supposed to sing happy songs in church. Why are we singing the lament? And she said, it wasn't until I had a family. And she ended up with, I think, five kids. And two of them became deathly ill at the same time. And she said she went to the hospital. One was in surgery, I believe the story was. The other was on a ventilator. And very young child. And he couldn't talk because he was on a ventilator. And there was room enough for her to crawl up in the bed with him. And she said, I crawled up in the bed with him. And he just looked at me and started to weep. And she said, it was at that moment, because she was so down and out with what was going on in her family, she thought, that's all I can do is crawl into my father's lap and just weep. That's all I can do right now. And then I understood why we sing laments in church. And I want to read you just a little bit, and I'll close with this, but just a little bit of her article, because I just thought it was so good. But she wrote in that article, just a little excerpt, While not offering answers, the laments in scripture are tools in God's hand to keep our heart soft. pulling us away from bitterness, frustration, and apathy, which seem like the natural defaults that corrode and harden the heart. Lament becomes a life-giving pattern of relief and renewal for living with broken dreams. We become either receptive or hard-hearted. We grow in love. or in bitterness. We grow in devotion or apathy. Those years became an invitation to develop rhythms of joy and grace, even in the valleys of sorrow. A call to live as ordinary people with extraordinary hope. I used to think that God protected his people from breaking. I've realized now that following Jesus often means being broken again and again, and then bound up again and again with the hope that we have in Christ. The real danger is not grief itself. The danger comes when we make our grief the cross. rather than placing our grief beneath the cross. That path leaves us withering. There is no redeeming power in grief itself. Restoration and healing come only when we bring it to Christ. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He heals and binds. He does not shield us from descent into overwhelming places. He allows us to reach the end of our emotional, physical, and mental strength. But there he preserves us and works life into us. This is how perseverance is formed. As we resist turning inward into despair, God draws us outward toward himself." And I thought, That touched me, because we're studying what we are. And I thought, Pharaoh, over and over again, hardened his heart, hardened his heart, hardened his heart. God began to harden Pharaoh externally, after Pharaoh had hardened his heart so much. And I think, as Christians, we have to be mindful, as we go through the trials of life, not to harden our hearts, but to be open and come to Papa God with our trials. Let me end with that thought. Our Father and our God, we thank you for your word, Lord, your truth. And Lord, we thank you that we have a God who's sovereignly in control of every aspect of this universe and every aspect of our lives. And Lord, you're at work for the good. And we thank you and acknowledge that in Jesus' name. Amen. The blessing of the Lord. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. Go in the peace of Christ Jesus to a world that desperately needs to hear the gospel. In Jesus' name, amen.