Good evening, all. If you would, take your Bibles and open to the book of Exodus, the book of Exodus chapter one, and look back about one page, and we're gonna start by reading Genesis chapter 50, verses 24 through 26. Genesis 50, 24 through 26. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die, and God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land unto the land which he swear to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. So Joseph died, being 110 years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, for your glory, O Lord, hide me, push me aside, but may the power of your word be on display. I thank you in Jesus' name, amen. Genesis 15 that Pastor Collins read. God makes a covenant with Abraham promising to give his posterity the land of Canaan. Yet we see at the end of Genesis that the book of Genesis ends with, in Egypt, they are in Egypt. They have not made it to the promised land. Where is the fulfillment of the promise that God has made? So this evening, we're going to have a few different parts of this message, the first being the past and the cast, the past and the cast. And so as we're considering what's going on in Egypt, I want us to take a look at Egyptian afterlife and judgment, their religious system, a little glance. And this is coming from the book of the dead, from the papyrus of Ani. Ani and his wife Tutu have died, and they have entered the hall of judgment. Both are bowed in submission before the balance of truth. Then there is Anubis. Anubis is a god who has the body of a man, but the head of a jackal. He is in charge of the weighing that will determine the judgment of Ani and his wife. Behind Anubis is Thoth, the god of writing. And since he is the god of writing, he is in charge of recording the judgment in the book. Behind Thoth is yet another god. This god is Ammit. He's rather different. He had the head of a crocodile, the torso and arms of a lion, and the rear of a hippopotamus. He stood waiting to devour the condemned sinner. And so it goes. Anubis calls for the heart of Ani to be placed on the balance scale, and then the feather of truth and righteousness is placed opposite. And whether the heart finds balance with the feather of truth and righteousness determines whether it is condemnation or eternal life. For those of you wondering, in this episode, Ani finds or his heart is found to be not too heavy. But that is where the people of God have been left into this religious idea is what they are surrounded by. And then as we get into the book of Exodus, we begin to learn what it has been like for them during this time. Again, Genesis ends with the words, in Egypt. So Joseph has died. There is a new Pharaoh who does not know the good that Joseph did. And this small family has grown into a nation. Chapter 1 verse 7 tells us that they have multiplied The children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly and multiplied and waxed exceeding mighty and the land was filled with them. They go into Egypt a seed, but they grow in the womb of Egypt until they will be born as an infant yet fully formed nation. Pharaoh, however, attempts to abort this fully formed nation before its birth. Verses 12 through 14. The more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and all kinds of work in the field. In all their work, they ruthlessly made them work as slaves. Let's get down to verse 22. And Pharaoh charged all his people saying, every son that is born, you shall cast into the river. Every daughter you shall save alive. The seed of Abraham is trapped in Egypt. They were subjugated and enslaved, afflicted with hard labor, ruthless taskmasters. Pharaoh has issued an order that all the male children of Israel are to be killed. Their situation, their future was hopeless. They were facing genocide, a holocaust, extinction. Where is hope? God, if there was ever a time that someone would say, where is God? What are you doing? You have made promises and we, your people are here and we are suffering. This is where that cry would be. In fact, if we go to chapter two, look at starting in verse 23, Exodus chapter two, verse 23. During those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel and God knew. Beloved, it has caused the people of God to pray to their God. God's plan for 400 years of affliction is right on course. But what about the rescue? What about the judgment of the nation? They would need a deliverer. And thus we find Moses. You know the story. Because of the edict of Pharaoh, Moses's mother, seeking to save her son's life, she puts him in a basket and puts him in the Nile River and goes down the river and who finds him but Pharaoh's daughter. Think of the irony. Pharaoh's child delivers a child who would later deliver God's children from Pharaoh. But Pharaoh has broken the law. And this is a grievous transgression. So in Egypt, there have been thousands upon thousands of ancient writings found. And yet, out of all those writings, never has there been found a law code. Now, all around the area, There have been plenty of law codes found, but none in Egypt. There's no written law in Egypt because Pharaoh's word is law. I ask you, what does that sound like? It sounds like a God. Turn to Exodus chapter five. Look at verse one. And afterward, Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, thus saith the Lord God of Israel, let my people go. You see the phrase, thus says the Lord is an official introductory formula for the very words of God. The prophet does not change, but he relays those words precisely. And Egyptians know this. They know this because they use the same formula in their writings. You would read, thus says Adam Ray, thus says Osiris, thus says Isis. We would see these very same things in their own writings. And so we come to Exodus chapter 5, come down a few verses to verse 10, and we see, the taskmasters of the people went out, and their officers, and they spoke to the people, saying, Thus saith Pharaoh. Pharaoh, beloved, is considered a god to the people of Egypt. He is, according to them, the incarnation of the sun god, Ra. It's interesting that in all of this, we're finding out that Pharaoh is considered a god, but we never find out Pharaoh's name. Seems like a pretty important thing to leave out. The reason is that Pharaoh as a man is not important. He is not a central character. Exodus is a deific confrontation. It is God versus gods. And so Pharaoh's daughter, has disobeyed the very word of that God in order to save the Hebrew infant who would then redeem and deliver Yahweh's people. The irony is sweet. It is put there purposefully by God. It is intentional. It drives this story. Everyone, the Israelites, as they hear the book of Exodus being read, this is what they are seeing. They know what's going on. That Pharaoh is their supreme being. But in contrast, that we don't know the name of Pharaoh, look in chapter two, verse 10, and let's see about Moses's name. Exodus chapter two, verse 10. And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses. And she said, because I drew him out of water. And sure enough, the Hebrew name Moses is Moshav, and it means to draw out. But what's so interesting is that the name Moses is a common Egyptian name, and it means the son of. And so we read of Thutmoses, the son of Thut. This was a major Egyptian god. There was also Achmoses, another god, and it was the son of the god Ach. But here, there is no object to the genitive. It is simply son of with a question mark. The son of what? The son of whom? Who is Moses the son of? I don't think it would be right for me to proceed without asking you that very question. Are you a son or daughter of God? Do you seek to always obey scripture? Or do you find yourself saying such things as, well, I know what it says, but I believe something else. Ask that question. Are you a son or daughter of God? Hebrews 11, 24 says, by faith, Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. So we see we have no name for Pharaoh. We have the name of Moses, but who's the other player in the scene? It is God. What about God? Exodus chapter 3, look at verse 13. And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers has sent me unto you, and they shall say to me, What is his name? What shall I tell them? And God says unto Moses, I am that I am, the self-existent one, the one who needs no one or nothing else, the one who is outside of all things, yet holds all things together. He is all in all. He's not as Pharaoh, one of many, but he is one and only. Revelation 118. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. We are given God's name. We are given the servant's name, Moses, but God does not dignify Pharaoh by naming him in his name. record of history. So we have seen the past and the cast. I invite you to follow with me to the declaration of war. Exodus chapter five, verse one again. And afterward, Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go. Beloved, Is this not the cry that we hear today? I hear it often when I witness to the lost. I don't know your God, so I don't have to do what He says. I don't believe in your God, so He has no authority over me. If your God wants me to believe in Him, He had better prove Himself to me. Surely you have heard some of these as well. And so God has come to Pharaoh rather nicely and said, let my people go. And Pharaoh has responded to God rather rudely. Watch what happens next. Turn to Exodus chapter seven. Moses and Aaron went in unto Pharaoh, and they did so as the Lord had commanded. And Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers. Now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments. For they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents. But Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods. Beloved, the national emblem of Egypt was the cobra, the serpent. It was even on Pharaoh's crown, the cobra's head. And so God, in effect, has gone up to Pharaoh's front door and knocked on his door. He's ripped the flag off of the flagpole. He's ripped it in half. He's thrown it down. He stomped it. And he said, I declare War on you! And you may not surrender. I will see this to your end. You see, that rod, that cobra of Yahweh's swallowed all of the others. But look at this, verse 13 and 14. And he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he hearkened not unto them. As the Lord had said, and the Lord said unto Moses, Pharaoh's heart is hardened. He refuses to let the people go. The hardening of Pharaoh's heart is found about 18 times in this story, pretty much equally divided between God hardening Pharaoh's heart and Pharaoh hardening his own heart. There are two primary words that are being translated from the Hebrew, translated into hardening. The first word is the word kazakh, and it means to make strong, and it is used primarily in a war situation. Thus, we see the idea that Pharaoh's heart is being made strong in battle, in rebellion against God. But the other word that is found in verse 14 is the word caveid, and it means heavy. It is the idea that the heart is being made heavy. How did we open this up? We opened it up with a balance and a scale, the scale of righteousness with the feather of truth and righteousness and God. is the one before all of Egypt that is placing Pharaoh in judgment. The funny thing is, is that In the book of the dead, the Pharaoh almost always bypasses the judgment because he is considered the very emblem of truth and righteousness, and the God of the universe is calling the God of Egypt out, that he is no God. He will not pass judgment. So I ask you, who is in charge? Thus saith Yahweh, or thus saith Pharaoh? This past week, I was having a conversation with two young men in their 20s, and we were discussing eternal matters, and they both confessed to me that they'd never been in church. And that frightened me. had never been in church. They seemed pretty proud of it. And we began to get on the subject of heaven and hell. And one of them, I watched as he began to resent the things that I said, and I was able to just see his heart harden and harden. Yet the other, he says, I'm really interested in what you're saying. Can you tell me more? Beloved Jesus said, of the spirit, the wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. The very spirit of God can come into a place like this with everyone here and blow through and you not feel a thing. And the person beside of you, softened to the gospel cry. Pharaoh's heart was hardened. The unfolding battles, Exodus chapter 7. And this is the time when Moses goes before Pharaoh, and he takes his rod, and he smites the Nile. And the Nile is turned to blood to such an effect that all of the fish die, and all of the water that has come out of the Nile is turned to blood. It stinks. They can't drink it. They have no water. The Nile River, during its inundation, was deified as the god Hopi. Hapi was the god of water and fertility. When the Nile rises, it supplies much water and nutrients to the soil for their growing. Grow strong and be fertile. Hapi is a major god for the Egyptians. 95% of the people lived within a quarter of a mile of the Nile. Herodotus says that Egypt is the gift of the Nile. God is setting his sights on this major artery of Egypt The results They can't drink the water and everything in the river dies there God happy Cannot provide their needs and cannot resist Yahweh Yahweh is destroying hobby There's only one who can provide the sustenance needed for life, and it is not Hoppy. There is only one who can provide for your needs, and it is not the government, it is not your pension plan, it is not your Roth IRA, it is not your 401K, it's not a free college education, it's not free healthcare, and it's not a new Green Deal. It's Jesus. After all of that, verse 22 tells us, Pharaoh's heart was hardened. It is made heavy in the balance. The next battle, Moses goes to Pharaoh and says, let my people go. And if you refuse, I will send forth frogs. And so the frogs came and the frogs are everywhere. They're in their houses. They're in their beds. They're in their kitchen. They're in their ovens. They're in their pots and their bowls. There are frogs everywhere. Wouldn't you know it? There is a God, a frog God. This was a goddess, the goddess Hecate. It was a woman with a frog's head. She was the wife of the creator God. So God is not only attacking Amun-Ra, he's attacking his wife as well. He would form bodies on a potter's wheel, and then Hecate would blow the breath of life into them. One of Hecate's jobs was to control the frog population, which the crocodiles ate, therefore controlling the crocodiles. And this plague Yahweh overwhelms Hecate with so many frogs. The crocodiles can't take care of them. Hecate cannot repel nor resist Yahweh's overpowering regeneration of frogs. They have become a curse against Egypt and not a blessing of fertility. God versus gods. Yahweh is the sovereign one. He is sovereign over Egypt. He is sovereign over her deities. He is sovereign over all things. But look at verse 15 of chapter eight. When Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them as the Lord had said. Chapter 10, verse 21. The Lord said to Moses, stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to be felt. And so Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was pitch darkness in all the land of Egypt three days. They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days, but all the people of Israel had light where they lived. Pharaoh is the incarnation of the Egyptian chief deity, Amen-Ra, their creator god, the sun god. And God has darkened their chief god. When the sun rises in the east, Amen-Ra symbolized life and resurrection. When Amon-Ross sank in the west, he symbolized death and the underworld. Everyone, listen, how much they believed this, everyone lived on the east side of the Nile. And all that were dead were buried on the west side of the Nile. They believed this with all of their hearts. Here, Yahweh darkens the sun for three days. Amon-Ra did not rise, did not give life, but merely characterized death, judgment, and hopelessness. Verse 27, but the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not let them go. That heart is getting heavier and heavier and heavier. Pharaoh cannot overcome Yahweh and all of Egypt knows it, but now Pharaoh is in the hands of an angry God and he will not let him go. From this point forward, every time that Pharaoh's heart is hardened, it is Yahweh who is doing the hardening. Exodus 14. The Egyptians have chased the Hebrews to the Red Sea. The sea has been opened for God's people to pass on dry ground. And the scriptures tell us that as they pass through in the night, at the break of day, the Egyptians chase them into the Red Sea. They are going from west to east. It is daybreak. The sun is rising. Amun-Ra is coming up. They see their God coming to their rescue. They see life. They see resurrection. And God says, no. and the waves come crashing down. God judges all the gods of Egypt. There is no hope in that God. Exodus 33. Turn to verse 17, please. And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken, for thou hast found grace in my sight. Listen, and I know thee by name. And he said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory. Guess what? That little word glory there is the Hebrew word Coveyed it is the Hebrew word for heavy Moses says Show me your weightiness, your heaviness, because the heaviness of Pharaoh was sin and iniquity. God, what is your heaviness? And God responds, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. The conveyed, the heaviness, the glory of God is His sovereignty over all things and everyone. He is God of gods, the Lord of lords. Some say, maybe even now we're saying, Ryan, I think you're crazy. I don't see any of that stuff. that these are gods. Exodus chapter 12, verse 12. Exodus 12, verse 12. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment. I am the Lord. I'm not making this up. Numbers 33, four says, while the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn whom the Lord had struck down among them, on their gods also the Lord executed judgments. God will have no other god before him. And if you or someone you love has other gods, that judgment awaits them. And if there be someone here tonight who can admit, I don't believe that stuff, I encourage you. Consider what happened to the wealthiest and most powerful man on earth when he refused God. there may come a time when your surrender will not be accepted. From the book of Hebrews, chapter 4, Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached as well as unto them, but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest. Today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Heavenly Father, you and you alone are God and sovereign, and you have all the glory in Jesus' name.