And 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 on 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. 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 swarms of flies. And 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 into the wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord our God as he tells us. So Pharaoh said, I will let you go, sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness. Only you must not go very far away. Plead for me. And 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 and from his servants and from his people tomorrow. Only let not Pharaoh cheat again by not letting the people go 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, and from his servants, and from his people, and 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 with a very severe plague upon your livestock that are in your field, the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds, and the flocks. 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 set 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 sent, 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 then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Take handfuls of soot from the kiln, and let Moses throw them in the air in the sight of Pharaoh. It shall become a fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and become boils breaking out in 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 in 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. Would you please bow your heads with me? Almighty God, we are here to hear the truth of your word, so close my mouth, do away with my opinions, Let anything that you do not want your people to hear be forgotten and missed from these notes from my mind. Let the truth of your word fall on the people here tonight. And let the truth of your word take hold in their hearts. Let it sprout, bring forth fruit. Let us not look at your word and be hearers only. I pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Okay, well, here we are back to our sets of plagues and exodus. We're at the second three tonight, because if I preach a sermon on all ten, we're gonna be here for ten months. And you won't remember the first one by the time I get to the last one. So, get the condensed version here. Hopefully it'll stick. There are a few things I want you to keep in mind a frame to this picture if you will One why is God doing this? Well, obviously he's said himself that he is redeeming Israel But why is he doing it this way? If he is God if he is sovereign if he has purposely hardened Pharaoh's heart Then what is the purpose of this? Why all this back and forth with Pharaoh? Why not just Instantly, supernaturally, stop holding Pharaoh's atoms together. Allow him to disintegrate and free Israel. Well, remember, all things happen because all glory is to God alone. Why? Because everything's for his glory. In chapter 14, he explains this for us. saying, I will get glory over Pharaoh, and concludes with saying, they will know that I am God. So coupled with the promise of deliverance for God's chosen people, from chapter three, we are seeing a simultaneous judgment and redemption. Sovereign, omnipotent, gracious, eternal king is revealing both his person and his ability. His person through his stated purpose, to share his love with his people, and to correct and rebuke his creation as a good father, and to destroy sin as a holy and righteous judge, to display his ability. Now, you should probably be aware by now, if you've been in this church for any length of time, that the physical world is a sort of facsimile of the spiritual world. We saw this this morning in our New Testament reading where in Hebrews that this world is just a copy of true things, that everything we make in this world is a copy of true things. And our Father instructs us by allowing us to see through these physical images into the spiritual world and observe who He is and what sin is really like and the ruthlessness of our enemy. and how he overcomes all of this wickedness. That becomes the most obvious to those with eyes to see in the midst of supernatural events like the plaguing of Egypt. Those without eyes to see don't see any spiritual aspect to this at all. They just see the suffering of this life. They don't understand the execution of judgment on these pagan, poser gods. They only see their own pain. And so as we begin with our text, we see the batches of plagues beginning to show more obviously. As with the first set of three and the last set of three, which we will see, this set begins with, the Lord said to Moses, rise up early in the morning and present yourself to Pharaoh as he goes out onto the water and say to him, thus says the Lord, let my people go that they may serve me or else. It's a lot of words, but that's basically the same construction and most of the same words at the beginning of each third set. So 1, 4, and 7 all begin this way. And so, once again, we're seeing the mercy of His warning before sending the deserved and earned consequences of sin. And then also, did you catch what he said about when he was speaking to Pharaoh? He says, go out to Pharaoh on the water. There's been a week of blood coursing through the banks of the Nile. And it's clean enough, again, that Pharaoh is going out to bathe. There's more mercy scattered here. More mercy in the midst of judgment, and yet, Pharaoh will not listen. the plague of swarming flies are sure to come. But another thing we see here, hinting at the grouping of these plagues, is that the first three come on everyone in Egypt. Everyone in all the land partakes of this curse, because everyone in all the land is cursed. There is none righteous, no not one. There is no one whose sin is not putrid and vile like the rotting blood and decaying carcasses in the presence of a holy God. Total depravity is displayed in every heart. Ezekiel 20 expounds on how the Israelites had begun to participate in the worship of the Egyptian gods. But now we see something that seems almost surreal when contrasted with that idea. Everyone, including the Israelites, participating in idolatry and sinning against God and yet God in his mercy sets the Israelites apart he says 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. Now, we will see this continuing for the remaining plagues of this set. The distinction between the people of God, the people He has chosen who do not deserve to be chosen, set apart from the world everyone else that God has simply not chosen to be gracious to. We find that the people of God, there's something different for the people of God. They have been chosen and set apart in spite of their sin. The elect of God experience favor from God, despite having negative merit. Now, I've been at this church a little while now, but I don't know if I've ever explained to any of you about negative caring. Sometimes, Something will come up and I say, I negative care. Especially with political ads and the ridiculous amount of text from the past month. I negative care about what you're texting me. I would have to care more than I do right now to not care at all. Leave me alone. Do not text me again. And they do. It doesn't matter if you text stop, the same people will text you again. But we have something like that. It's negative merit. When we stand before God, it's not that our righteousness is bad, it's that there's no righteousness and we're in the negative. We've gone all the way to the other side. And that's true for the Jews in this situation as well. Though they have earned the same punishment as the world, the people of God find that it isn't applied to them. There is something greater than sin between them and the wrath of God. The same wrath that is ruining the land, the swarms of flies. Isn't it fascinating how We left off on the third plague with the magicians crediting the plague of gnats, or possibly mosquitoes, to the finger of God. And then when we look up what Jesus has to say about the finger of God in Luke 11, he brings up Beelzebub, the Philistine god of the flies, and flies is our next plague. When you jump to another part of scripture to understand what you're reading better, and then it sends you right back to where you were, to the next paragraph of where you were. If you don't believe that this is the Word of God, I don't know what planet you're on. So all throughout history, we see these demon-poser gods just finding a new name, and they keep trying to draw men away from the one true God. I guess the god responsible for the flies was forgotten after all this, because the only relevant Egyptian gods that I found were supposed lords of the sky or air. And there were several. There's one called Sh. Very, very, very handy name. And this god is the god of the atmosphere, which makes sense why his name is Sh. It's the sound of moving air. But even this god didn't seem to be able to do anything to stop Egypt from experiencing ruination by these simple little winged creatures. And on top of that, the humble of fly was a symbol of good luck. The Egyptians would make necklaces from golden fly pendants to wear like a modern superstitious pagan might carry a rabbit's foot. Queen Ahotep had a fly pendant from basically the same time period. May have been the exact same time period. And it was on display at the Luxor Museum. Maybe it still is, I don't know. And the actual pendants are massive. There are three pendants on a golden chain. They're five inches long. Gold. Gold. Three five-inch pendants. This thing's heavy. This cannot be comfortable to wear. But we're wearing this because it's good luck. This is what we believe. And then, when I see this pendant, all I can think of is Flava Flavin and his ridiculous clock necklace. This is what we wear because it's gonna do something for us. Right? We gotta be carrying around three pounds of gold on our neck. This cannot be a comfortable thing to wear. We're wearing it because we believe they're going to do something for us. Well, how interesting is it that they're placing their faith in the ability of a creature to bless them rather than the Creator, and that doing so, you just might find a curse rather than a blessing? That's funny. I wonder why that happens. There's no reason the Creator would be jealous of his glory being given to a false god or an idol would. So we could ask Egypt, how are those fly charms doing today? Is the idolatry working out for you? Apparently not too well. We see more cracks beginning to form in Pharaoh as he says to Moses, go, sacrifice to your God within the land. Moses said it would not be right to offer sacrifices in your land. Sacrifice to the Lord our God, there are abominations to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice abominable, if we sacrifice offerings abominable in the eyes of the Egyptians, pardon me, will they not stone us? Well, that's kind of a strange thing to say, isn't it? Did the Egyptians not do sacrifices? Are sacrifices an abomination? No. Actually, the Egyptians sacrificed all kinds of things. Cats, hawks, jackals, crocodiles. If you know anything about your Old Testament, you know basically all of the unclean animals were sacrificed in Egypt. But the rams of Israel sacrificed. The bulls and the goats, the heifers, all of the things that were acceptable to sacrifice to the Lord, those were Egyptian gods. For instance, Khum was a ram god who made people on the potter's wheel and placed them in their mother's womb. Now this quality would be later and properly re-attributed to Yahweh by the prophets. But there were several other gods, such as Hathor, part woman, part cow. Another lovely god, wouldn't you love to run into that on the street? You see, to make a proper Hebrew sacrifice, they would literally be laying the representation of Egyptian gods on their altar. The Egyptians still held faith in their gods at this time. They haven't given up all hope in their gods yet. So Pharaoh agreed and said, I will let you go sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness. You must not go very far away. Obviously, he means it. Plead for me, he says. Why does he say that? Why on earth does Pharaoh, the highest ranking authority and power in the earth, say to Moses, plead for me? Pharaoh knows instinctively what we all know. What we all know, and yet, because of our pride, simply won't act on. If we humble ourselves and plead for mercy, we would find it. But that means admitting that there is something wrong with us. Worse still, it would mean admitting that we aren't God. We aren't autonomous, that in fact, we are too weak and broken to be righteous. In this verse, Moses is an image of something that is standing between the wrath of God and His chosen people. An intercessor, a great high priest, even as we will see in the last play, a sacrifice that took the full fury of God's wrath so that the elect might be spared. Before his name is revealed in scripture, before we read Jesus, we again get a snapshot of his great intercession. It is contrasted at the same time with all the false gods of mankind failing miserably to do anything at all to propitiate God's anger with sin. But even in that, without God's grace, Pharaoh could not escape from his own pride. Again, he went back on his promise when the Lord released the pressure. So the Almighty moved on to a greater judgment, but not without first graciously sending yet another warning. But for rejecting the command of God and for continuing an arrogant rebellion, Egypt would now have its food supply wrecked. When the animals that weren't to be eaten, such as the donkeys and horses, were being plagued, it would hamper agricultural production on top of that. You don't have the animals you eat. You don't have the animals you plow the field with. They're all under plague. And further still, the glory of Egypt's armies, the chariots. They needed those horses. Two or three to chariot for the average chariot. This isn't even including generals or Pharaoh himself. We'd have a lot more than that. They needed tons of horses. Right now, every horse was sick. Egypt would not be going on the offensive anytime soon with its armies. And this attack would be even further devastating still when the camels that they needed to travel across the deserts that surrounded Egypt were also sick. Now, you cannot patrol or defend your own borders at full strength. And furthermore, you need those camels to cross those deserts so you can trade with the rest of Arabia. This is one of the most critical problems for Egypt that no man could have ever imagined. Just let all the animals get sick once. What are you going to do? You're hamstrung in every aspect of life. Who you gonna call on now? What's the Egyptian god for this? Well, remember those early days of the smartphone? Remember this phrase? There's an app for that. Well, in Egypt, there's a pagan god for that. Sekhmet, the lion-headed woman in charge of plagues, she might help. You could pray to her. Of course, she has a literal insatiable bloodlust. One particular battle, you know, she killed all the enemies and then proceeded to attempt to kill all humanity until she was tricked into drunkenness by the rest of the Pantheon. Yeah, it sounds promising. That kind of personality defect could work against you. But you can still check with her. You'll probably be okay. Have you ever stayed the Pagan Gods? When I study the pagan gods, it makes me appreciate the one real true God. He is not just omnipotent, eternal, omniscient, but He is also good. There is not a shadow of turning in Him. He is not as sinful as I am. He is not just like us, as are all the false gods of our vain imaginations. He is good. He is holy to the superlative degree We all deserve to have our blood wet the ground for our countless sins. And so would any God that man could imagine. But praise God, His grand plan of substitutionary atonement is a lot different than ours. One thing we see from this event, and every animal sick and dying, is that all the blood of the sheeps and rams and bulls, if every animal in the land were sacrificed, there wouldn't be enough blood to wash away our filthy sin. The sacrificial system that we will learn about in a few chapters is only a reminder of looking to the true sacrifice and an act of faith for them that will believe in the work of the high priest who was to come. the blood of the animal itself did not cleanse away any sin. And then, like salt in an open wound, Pharaoh sends a messenger to find out how the livestock of the Hebrews are doing. Son of a gun! Pharaoh, every single one of them is in good health! It's just like God said, supposedly, through Moses, you know, Just like he promised. I can't believe it. I don't know. I don't know. It's uncanny. It can't be real. Pharaoh just says, basically, I'm going to hate him harder. So the third plague of this group is like the third plague of the first group. No warning, just a consequence. Maybe you noticed that where the first three plagues were initiated by Aaron using the staff, that became a reptile. The second set of three plagues were initiated by Moses' words, and now Moses' simple gesture of throwing soot into the air, which underscores further meaning to the plagues. Remember in the beginning of Exodus 7, the Lord tells Moses that he will be like God to Pharaoh, and Aaron will be as his prophet. The first three plagues are as if a prophet, armed with the power of Christ and the cross, was at work. And the second set is as if God himself were bringing these judgments, because the intensity of these plagues have also clearly increased. And there's a beautiful picture tucked in right there. Group of judgments fall on all of Egypt, everyone. But after the work of the cross, God's chosen people are set apart from the wrath of God. God's wrath is turned aside from them. Foreshadows of the gospel are manifesting so tangibly you could trip on them. And so numerous that you cannot miss them. Like the soot that miraculously covered all the land To understand what this is about, we have to know what soot is. Soot is a byproduct of burning trash and impurities. Whatever won't properly combust, or maybe won't even burn at all in the midst of a fire, won't produce soot. This is not ash. I've heard some conflate the two. I once thought the same way. But there is an important distinction that we will miss if we conflate these two. Remember, everything is important because our material world is pointing to a spiritual world. Ash is the solid residue that is left when combustible material is thoroughly burned. Ash is the byproduct of crude combustion. If you remember Isaiah 6, and you should since Nathan copied my sermon notes and stuck it in the morning bulletin, I'm just kidding. He has not seen my notes. Or was I? But in the presence of the all-consuming fire, the prophet in Isaiah 6 felt his want, his failing, His soot appeared. His sin became apparent to him. Prophet's lips were cleansed with a coal. That kind of fire, if it could hypothetically speaking ever burn out, would only produce ash. If you remember the ceremony for cleansing the priest in the tabernacle, I was going to say read Numbers 19 for your homework, but we also saw this in our New Testament reading of Hebrews this morning. Nathan's Bulletin was really doing some heavy lifting today. They would collect these ashes. It is, it is. They would collect these ashes from a red heifer sacrifice and mix them with water, and then they would dip hyssop in that and sprinkle it over everything, as we saw in the Bulletin, the New Testament reading. So this hyssop plant Sprinkling the water with the ashes all over everything would make everything ceremonially clean again. And they would do this for everything involved with the temple or the tabernacle and even the priest. So these cleansing fires that produce only ash must burn very hot with lots of oxygen. The soot comes from a fire that either doesn't burn hot enough to consume everything or it's burning trash. And the soot floats up with the escaping heat and creates a nasty black smoke that covers everything it touches in a near-permanent black. It's like a window held up to the spiritual and we can see the truth of our unrighteousness. When our righteousness is proof-tested on the altar before God, we see how blackly it burns. It is polluted and polluting. Our self-righteousness isn't. In the furnace of the all-consuming fire, there is not even ash. His righteousness is. Our righteousness makes us sick and diseased and suffering, because our righteousness isn't. What we have is not righteousness, it's sin. He has a righteousness and His righteousness is pure. His righteousness makes us well and healthy and blessed because His righteousness is. Would you attempt to present this spiritual filth to the God of purity? Would you give God your own sin or rely on the righteousness of Christ? And that is the image we are presented with these magicians, these false priests. Their own sin is consuming them in sickness so that they could not stand in the presence of Moses, who is a type of God in this picture. Only the true priest can stand in the midst of judgment for sinners and not be judged. Can he stand between us and the wrath of God toward sinners? Is he the distinction between sinners of the world and the true Israel? Well, because God the Son, having the full authority of God, submitted to the will of the Father, and came to earth as a lowly man to be born of the Virgin Mary, with both the essence, the full essence of God, and the full essence of man, in one person but without mixture, And despite being tempted as we are, lived in perfect obedience to the Father, even unto death in the place of sinners, and resurrected, thus fulfilling the law of God and proving the righteousness of the Son, he does. We most often focus heavily on the death of Christ and almost as much on his resurrection. And this is a worthwhile endeavor, something we should think about all the time. As Paul explained, if there is no resurrection, this is all a waste of time, we should have gone home a long time ago. But without Christ's voluntary death on your behalf, there is no atonement. His death is important, it's critical. Just so is his resurrection. But we need to also not lose sight of the fact that everything about our salvation is dependent on more than the atonement and the resurrection. We also need Christ's righteousness. Remember, the atonement is wiping away the sin. It doesn't give us righteousness in the sight of God. Because Christ lived and obeyed and proved his perfect righteousness, we can have righteousness in the sight of God. It can be presented to the Father because it is pure and true, and better still for us, having the fullness of God and man in him, Christ is qualified to mediate between God and man. That's why we say we are saved from the curse of sin and the wrath of God by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. In Christ alone we proclaim because only Christ can stand between the punishment of sin and us. And ours is not a blind faith. This is one of the most ridiculous arguments I've ever heard against Christianity, against belief in Christ. Oh, you just blindly believe in Christ. No, no. This is the only belief system where it is not blind faith. We have been called to put our faith in Christ after he has done the work. Our faith is set on a foundation of reality and fact because of what Christ has already done. We are called to place our faith in his ability after he has done his work. It is a Think about what Israel is doing right now, right? Israel is experiencing the power of God to deliver them with these ten plagues. And then, after they are brought out into the wilderness, away from Pharaoh, after they are delivered, God formalizes the covenant with them. He doesn't say, believe in me, I'm your God. He shows them He is their God, and then says, believe in me. We have all the proof we need for faith. There's nothing blind about it. There is no excuse, there is no reason to not submit. Christ is your King, no matter what you think about Him. Better to bend your knee and say like, the people to Joshua, whatever you say, I will do. Or as we just read in Luke, make peace with a king of mercy while there is still time, or like Israel, in Egypt here, you will find your destruction. And so what about the material aspect of this plague, the boils, right? Well, as always, there's a God for that, or rather half a dozen. This is the most entertaining part of the Egyptian pantheon. Who did an Egyptian pray to for relief from boils or ulcers? Well, I found no less than six vain imaginations that were supposedly responsible for the health of Egypt. But don't worry. It is only somewhat totally confusing, and it is clear as mud. After several hours of research, it all began to fit loosely together. You have to know them all and be in the good graces of each because you needed to pray to the one that was responsible for the different aspect of the disease and healing, like the prevention of disease, or a strong life force, or healing of injuries and sickness, and even the God for resurrection. Now, I think this is his own indictment before all the plagues. Now, once again, we see they must all be in the toilet, or on vacation, or asleep, to borrow from Elijah's pamphlet of suggested excuses for demon-poser gods. All of these gods are no help at all. So I'm thankful that when I pray for an illness, I pray to the Lord God Almighty. When I pray for injury, I pray to the King of Ages, the Sovereign God Almighty. And when I pray for unknown sickness or pain, I pray to the Lord of Lords, God Almighty. And when I pray for cancer, I pray to the Lord God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. And furthermore, still and better yet, I can pray in anticipation the aid I desperately need. And yet again, furthermore, I can look to this one true God, this immutable God Almighty, for my deliverance, my cleansing, my righteousness, my sanctification, my endurance through suffering, my provision, my sustainment in all things, and my preservation until the end, until the final day, until I stand before God in judgment. I don't need 1,500, literally 1,500 gods. I have the one true God. And all believers, we have the I am that I am. The one God who can do everything that they can't. We have the I am that I am. who is all we need, who is more than we deserve, and is infinitely filled with love and grace and joy for his elect. When we look to heaven, he who is our God and our help is there and he is riding swiftly to our rescue because he is nothing like the gods of the earth or our imaginations. He is holy, he is faithful, he is gracious, His is the power and the glory forever. Amen.