We're going to be here, start off with verse 1 through 14, see where the Lord leads us this morning. And the Lord spake unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me. And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs. And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading troughs. And the frogs shall come upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon all thy servants. And the Lord spake unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch forth thine hand with thy rod over the streams, over the rivers, and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come upon the land of Egypt. And Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came out and covered the land of Egypt. And the magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt. Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron and said, Entreat the Lord, that He may take away the frogs from me and from my people, and I will let the people go, and they may do sacrifice unto the Lord. And Moses said unto Pharaoh, Glory over me! When shall I entreat for thee and for thy servants and for thy people to destroy the frogs from thee and thy house, that they may remain in the river only? And he said, Tomorrow, and he said, Be it according to thy word that thou mayest know that there is none like unto the Lord our God. Amen. And the frog shall depart from thee, and from thy houses, and from thy servants, and from thy people. They shall remain in the river only. And Moses and Aaron went out from Pharaoh, and Moses cried unto the Lord because of the frogs which he had brought against Pharaoh. And the Lord did according to the word of Moses, and the frogs died out of the houses, out of the villages, and out of the fields. And they gathered them together upon heaps, and the land stank." Let's pray. Heavenly Father, what we're seeing, if we don't gather anything from this this morning, which I know Thou will be teaching us a lot together, that when Thou calls out to Thy creation and commands it, it will obey Thee, even if it's frogs. I ask that Thou would bless us, Lord, as we go forward and help us to understand this incredible, wonderful passage that Thou has gifted to us and revealed to us when Thou had no obligation to do so. What we have just read is the perfect word of the holy and errant God Almighty, and I pray that we will ingest these words and we will learn them and we will consider Thy word this morning. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. Okay, so the title of the message this morning, it isn't easy being green in Egypt. Come on, it's not easy to come up with a title for frogs. I wanted to be a little more reverent, but that's it. I had to go there, I'm sorry. Frogs. And the Lord spake unto Moses." Once again, the Lord speaks unto Moses. What does, then, the Lord speak unto Moses mean? It means He spoke unto him. He actually audibly talked to them. And as we were talking today in the Sunday school class in Galatians chapter 1, and you get to verse 16, Paul says, the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ, revealed Himself to me. What does it mean? He revealed himself unto them. That's exactly what it means. It's not some metaphor. We see here that this was the first of three rendezvous meetings at this river with Pharaoh to inflict these great plagues. We've seen Moses in no doubt in an intuitive, inquisitive state of fear by pleading with the Lord to not call him. In the beginning of this career of Moses... By the way, Moses was now about close to 83 years old when he comes into this. So it shows how at any age the Lord can use us in a great way. It's incredible. He went all the way to 120, 40 some years, and his objections were very valid. And one of the objections was, what am I going to tell these people? They've been 430 years, they've been worshipping the gods of the pagans, and now they're worshipping everything around but the Lord. The Lord tells them, you tell them I am that I am. So we see Moses and Aaron are directed by God to the high ground to stand on the river brinks we'd seen the last time and give Pharaoh a fair warning. The picture is seen here. Moses and Aaron are standing on the high riverbanks. Pharaoh now considers them to be gods, although he had more faith in the magicians. He at one point did mention that he had considered Moses and Aaron some form of god. But when they kept speaking about their god, Jehovah, It infuriated Pharaoh because it took all of the glitz and glitter away from Pharaoh. If there's a God higher and mightier than Pharaoh himself, Then that means Pharaoh's not number one anymore. So that didn't sit well with him. And remember, you get into the book of Exodus, what have we been learning with Pastor Coleman the last several weeks? We've been learning about Joseph. That Pharaoh knew Joseph and loved the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Even though he was pagan, he still respected and revered him. Uh-uh. Just like today in our White House, we have a Pharaoh that knows not Joseph. And that's what happens here. This Pharaoh has no place for the deity of Jehovah. None. He hates him. And he's very stubborn. In my opinion, and I love to put opinions, that's one of the perks I get for standing up here. It took guts for Moses and Aaron to stand on the high ground over Pharaoh. All it took was this, just one little one of these from Pharaoh to blink his eye and the whole armies could have came and taken both of them and killed them one of a million ways. Pharaoh was absolutely no stranger to executions. You can tell that about the Israelite babies. Wicked, wicked man. It took guts to do that. Well, what happened was that already Moses and Aaron already gave Pharaoh a wonderful manipulative. And when now, remember, he's on the second plague now. They've already gone through a horrible time when he turned that Nile River into blood. Can you imagine what that looked like and smelled like? We see that they had stood over, this first plague was not just confined to the waters of Nile, the first plague was all the waters in Egypt, it contaminated all of them and it was mammoth. And the plague here at the river, basically we find out that each one of these plagues were a manifestation, that each plague was an absolute manifestation, they were part of the gods that the Egyptians worshipped. The Lord used the things that they used as gods against Him and turned them on Him as plagues. They worshipped the Nile River. They thought it had cleansing powers. They thought it had fertility powers and all these things. They also worshipped frogs. Why frogs? We see this narrative continues with God's stretched out arm against the nation of Egypt. The rivers of blood with a stench had already putrefied the waters and dead fish. There was all kinds of dead, every type of game you can imagine, and fish in the waters, and it was really horrible. Pharaoh had closed his ears, and then all of a sudden he says that he would cater to Moses on some level. And basically, we see here that now the waters were cleansed. My opinion, one of the reasons why the first plague was taking the Nile River and turning it into blood is that is the very waterway that the babies, the Israelite male babies, were thrown into and they were murdered. And the Lord used that as an opening act for this. And so what happens is, one thing you didn't want to see You did two things. You did not want to have Moses against you, and you never wanted him to stretch his arm out against you. Never. Once he stretched that arm with that rod on it, anything could happen. It could either be the water turning into blood, or frogs coming out of the mountains, or a Red Sea parting in order to be able to get through to dry land to get away from Pharaoh, who, of course, later down the road we will see Pharaoh was just swallowed up by that very Red Sea that he was going after the Israelites in. Pharaoh had closed his ears. He had finally listened a little bit. The Lord says, let my people go. Pharaoh said, I'll do it. The Red Seas, the Nile River and all the waterways went back to normal. And then he lied. He went back and he says, I will not let your people go. So one thing you don't do is you do not get into a wrestling ring with God. You already have lost before you've gotten inside of it. Christ says Himself, I have overcome the world. It's already over. But as many people do, stupidly they continue to shake their fist in the hands of an angry God. One of the reasons why all of these plagues, I do believe very prominently, were worshipped is why many cults and many rituals today are still greatly intact and why you go to any of their facilities and hundreds of people show up when you sit in a little Bible-believing church like this with 30 or 40 people. One of the reasons why people go in the masses is because of something that I think has really been a problem over the years. And people worship not predicated on the truth of Jesus Christ, They worship predicated on tradition. My grandfather did it. My uncle did it. My mother and my father did it. My great-grandfather did it. I'm not changing. Well, are they standing with you in heaven when you're standing up against a very, very judgmental God in the Day of Judgment? It says 70 years, half the man, and then comes the judgment. Are they going to stand with you? Who's going to stand with you? Jesus Christ is. He is the attorney that you all have to worry about. So why? I think it makes sense, like Moses, to follow Him. That's one of an endless amount of reasons. Pharaoh closed his ears. One possible reason for the conglomerate of false gods in Egypt could be what was called in the Latin, what we looked in the Sunday school class today, the argumentum op popularum, like in the Sunday school class, where vast numbers of pharaohs and Egyptians believed the rivers, the frogs, the sun, the animals were deity. And what that term argumentum op popularum means, it means basically 60,000 Frenchmen cannot be wrong. So when you get a mass number of people and they all agree the same thing, that becomes the standard. That's when Lady Justice peeks through the blind and Roe versus Wade is passed. And all these other wicked laws, when everybody agrees it doesn't make it right, the most basic right in our lives is to have life, and they've even taken that away from the babies. And you see, this is why everything was a deity to the Egypt, because of a populist poll. Somebody grabbed the baton and they all just kept believing this. And so now, they're going to learn the hard way. So this week we have a new plague and it's being cast down into Egypt and the title of the message, basically, it isn't easy being green in Egypt. Well, green frogs made it very hard on everybody. It's funny because my mother, I'll never forget this, my mother saw this for the very first time. There was a song and it was called Being Green and It was played for the very first time in 1970. It was written by a songwriter named Joe Raposo. And Jim Henson sang the song for the voice of Kermit, It Isn't Easy Being Green in 1970. And at four years old, I will never forget how hard my mother laughed. She thought that was the funniest thing. Here comes this little frog. Now, we're not laughing as much today because Kermit has been a staple in everyone's lives for the last 40-something years or 50 years. But this is the first time it ever came on TV. She thought it was hilarious. And she didn't let me forget that because there are many times that I would come to her when I was real little Kids would beat up on me at school, they would make fun and all. I would come to her and I would complain and she would sit there with this melancholy look and she would go, it isn't easy being green. She would do that and she would throw that right back at me. So anyway, and I do have this printed up in green by the way. Frogs, frogs, and more frogs will be the central motif of this plague. Frogs to come everywhere into the houses, the bedrooms, beds, servants' houses, on the people, into the ovens, and into the kneading troughs, or vessels in which dough, after being mixed and leavened, was left to swell or ferment. Go home today and make lunch, and think about frogs popping out of your oven. If you saw one frog, it'll freak you out. when they're coming out of every hole in your house. Somebody's trying to send you a message. John Calvin said so brilliantly regarding the second plague, We know that Egypt, on account of its many marshes and the sluggish and almost stagnant Nile, was full of frogs and venomous animals. Now, when great multitudes of them come forth, suddenly cover the surface of the fields, penetrate even to the houses and bedchambers, and finally ascend even to the royal palace, It plainly appears that they were before only restrained by God's hand and thus that the God of Hebrews was the guardian and keeper of that kingdom. The Egyptians regarded frogs as sacred. They worshipped them. They were thought to have magical powers and were symbols of fertility to the Egyptian culture. Egyptians wore amulets in the shape of a frog and it was a national prohibition to kill frogs. Boy, did they wish they were dead today. Doesn't that sound familiar today? Look at all the animal protection organizations today where they lift up spotted whales, they lift up all these animals. And I am certainly not standing here taking up for beating animals. But when it becomes that they're more important than babies being aborted, there's a problem with that. The frogs were idols. The croaking of the frogs from the river and pools of water signaled to farmers that the gods who controlled the Nile's flooding and receding had once again made the land fertile. So Aaron had stretched out his rod, and there's frogs. There's many different ways that people could have died from all of these frogs. I'm going to give you several facts about frogs, now that we're having a biology lesson this morning. There are more than 6,000 species today. These familiar amphibians are famous for their croaking sounds, leaping abilities, bulging eyes, and slim, slimy skin. They live in around still or slow-moving fresh bodies of water, such as ponds, marshes, streams, lakes, or rivers. Did you know this? Frogs have teeth. The small teeth on the roof of their mouths are not typically used to bite or chew. They keep the frog's dinner from escaping before it's had a chance to swallow it. However, if a frog feels threatened, or you hand-feed a pet frog, certain species can bite you, and they can inflict a bacteria that can make you one miserable human being that's very deadly. Frogs don't drink water. These aquatic creatures absorb water through their skin. Not all frogs can jump. While most long-legged species can jump as distance greater than 20 times their body length, those with shorter back legs can hop, crawl, or walk. The South African sharp-nosed frog holds the world's record for the longest jump. It jumped 44 times its body length. This 3-inch species leaped more than 130 inches. To match that, a 5-foot tall person would have to jump 220 feet in one leap to equal the length of this frog being able to jump. I'm only saying this, it's applicable, because there were all kinds of different frogs that appeared out of all of this, and look what they're capable of. The world's tiniest frog is called the Padafrin amanuensis. It's about the size of a common housefly. It lives in leaf litter in the rainforest of Papua, New Guinea. The heaviest frog on earth is aptly named the Goliath. It grows up to 12.5 inches long and weighs about 7.1 pounds. It's found in the rainforest of Africa. It comes out at night and dines on fish, crabs, baby turtles, young snakes, and other vertebrates along the river's edge. Its average lifespan in the wild is up to 15 years. Can you imagine having a frog that weighed that heavy? But just wait. There are frogs that are actually longer. Here's an interesting factoid. The golden poison frog native to Central and South America rainforest has the distinction of being the most poisonous animal in the world despite being about the length of a paperclip. Its skin secretes enough nerve toxin to kill 10 humans. Most poison frog species are colorful. The vibrant color warns predators to steer clear. Now the longest frog that they have found can be 16.7 inches. I've seen big frogs standing around some of the ponds here in Fork and they get to be, I've seen 12-inch frogs. They're big and they're incredible. Here's another thing. Frogs may bite if they feel scared, threatened, or in danger. Some frogs have a very strong bite and some even have sharp teeth. Biting is a defense mechanism frogs use to surprise, scare, or harm their enemies, especially if they are close to being eaten. Frogs play dead by slowing down their breathing and camouflaging as a defense mechanism to hide from predators or seem less appealing to them. Predators look for movement, and if a frog looks dead or immobile, a predator has few chances of attacking. This is all incredible. I give these attributes to the frogs because the Lord created them. And look at all the adaptations that they have that the Lord, how the Lord created them. They don't have evolutionary adaptations. That's not even possible. But when the Lord created them, He created them because He had specific purposes for them. Do you know the word army is a derivative of the word frog because of its green color and because of its camouflage? That was one of the ways that the word army came from. And basically back here we now see armies of frogs. And the Lord calls them and they obey Him. Frogs were confined to this specific destination to wreak the fullest havoc over a designated people. In other words, why did the frogs not go north to Canaan or east to Midian? There are a lot of proofs here in this message that God is who He says He is and He is the great creator. Number one, they were confined to a specific area. They didn't go outside of that. That was the Lord putting that border on the frogs. Number two, the frogs did not eat the people. They could have. They can be very dangerous. And you think that the Lord has the power to tell the frogs to eat people? Yes, He does. He made their lives miserable. These frogs were not woken up and forced out of their abodes to hop around and be a random annoyance. They had a specific mission that the Lord gave them. They were not fierce armies of men from opposing countries with valiant soldiers with their horses and arms, but a multitude of reptiles from the Egyptians' precious Nile River. They came out of the Nile River just after the Lord had healed the Nile River. And once again, He uses it. They are on a mission from God Almighty and sent to wage war on a designated group of people. So we hear, as we've covered many verses already, we see that Moses told Pharaoh that if thou refuse, in verse 2, to let them go, I will smite thee with frogs. In verse 3, the river shall be filled with them, your houses, everywhere you go. Verse 4, and the frogs shall come upon thee. He said they will touch you. They will come upon you. They will be in your face. They will be all over you. It's funny, I remember that old saying, we were talking about it years ago in one of the Sunday school classes. It was supposed to be a saying, I mean, you see it in, I think, the Indiana Jones movie, the third one, where Charlemagne or Charles the Great, the emperor of the Romans said, let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky. Remember Sean Connery when he says that on the beach in the last crusade? And that's exactly what the Lord's using here. He can use any means. But you want to know what it reminds me of when we read about these frogs being obedient? How many times has God used the animal kingdom to carry out His perfect plan? Go through Scripture and pick some of them out. There are many. Remember Balaam's jackass to deliver a most important message? Two she-bears that devoured recalcitrant children for mocking Elisha and second kings? What about the end of Jezebel? Anybody remember what was the use of destruction for Jezebel? Dogs. And dogs are scavengers. I know we love them. They're little pets and they come in and we feed them and we do all this stuff. But they're scavengers. And that's how Jezebel met her end. There was an order for God to shut the mouths of the lions. When Daniel was cast into the den, these lions' vocation was to execute and devour anyone thrown in. And that night, Daniel had a lot of lovely furry pets. There's a song at the Creation Museum. Remember, Noah used to love it. Buddy Davis used to sing it. And it was a song about the lions, and it goes, Here kitty, kitty, kitty, here kitty, kitty. And he's sitting there petting them all night. Daniel didn't have one problem with those lions. But when the Lord turned them on the people, those presidents and all that turned him in, then the lions woke up. Don't wake the lions up. What about a great fish to escort Jonah to Nineveh where God wanted him? You think that was a coincidence? You think that was an evolutionary, some kind of an evolutionary baseline that all of a sudden after billions of years this whale just decided to go grab Jonah and spit him out on dry land? No, this actually happened by the absolute formation and creation of our Lord God Almighty, Jehovah Elohim, the great creator and judge of the earth. What about in the New Testament? Remember when the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus and he was baptized. What was it that descended upon him? As a dove, yes, we see that. What about a little humble colt to escort our Savior into Jerusalem for the triumphal entry? And if you ever read that story, if you hear the real truth about the history of it, it wasn't some jackass or some big donkey that he sat up like this beautiful horse. Literally, Christ's knees would have been dragging on the ground because it was this tiny, tiny little thing. that obeyed him from his first calling. And we do know that one of the sayings in our culture today that's been down through many years is, you can be as stubborn as a mule or as stubborn as a jackass. They're stubborn animals. That little mule, that little donkey took him in there perfectly and never once flinched. Isn't that incredible? Many times. Our Lord's means of carrying out His plans are unfathomable. He can use any part of His creation to carry out His sovereign plan. And we see in verse 6, And Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. That is so important to stay close to God because He has unlimited power, and He gave it to Aaron. All throughout Scripture, men, weak men, very weak men were lifted up by God and used to do great powerful things. Moses being one of them, you see here. And Aaron, when the rod was lifted, all of a sudden he lifts that rod and everywhere frogs just start coming at him. The magicians tried to do so, but we don't read a whole lot about the sorcerers. They had a certain amount of demonic power in order to be able to mimic some of the miracles that the Lord gives. Remember all the way back when Moses finally stops objecting God, he stops saying, Lord, what will thou have me to say to them? Lord, I am not an eloquent speaker. Lord, I can't do this. And he's telling them. All of a sudden, he finally gets over and the Lord says, Open your ears and shut up. I'm going to give you your brother Aaron. He's going to help you. And it's funny. Most of the time, Moses does all the speaking anyway. Isn't that funny? But Aaron, he comes along, and all of a sudden, the very first thing the Lord says to do, He shows a miracle. Stick your hand into your cloak. It'll become leprous. Pull it out, and I'll heal it. We could get into a whole three hours on leprosy here and how bad that is and all the ceremonial laws, but you didn't want leprosy on your hand. It wasn't very good after he had it. Sticks it back in the cloak, pulls it out. Perfect. Then what happens next? He throws down his rod. Boy, that rod's important. Throws down a rod and becomes a snake. So what happens? The sorcerers do the same thing. The snakes come slithering out. And what happens to him? God's snake won. It devoured him, right? Look at that. And so, you know, it's incredible in how Leading all the way up to this, we've already seen the power. And the Lord carries out His means. He brings the frogs. And here's some verses to remember. His plan is unfathomable and it is by all means, it is immutable. There's no changing the Lord's plans. There's no trying to correct His providence. There's no devising false gods and creating your own religion. You're going to lose. Isaiah 55.8.9 says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. Verse 9. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Remember here how Paul the Apostle He ends Romans chapter 11, and it sounds like a Davidic psalm. And it's these verses at the end are a pillar of the Reformation. I love these verses. And he says, Romans 11.33, Oh, the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. And in King James, which I love, exclamation point. How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. Job 11.7, go back to Job. Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto His perfection? So it was again that Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters and the power of God is shown. It's shown if you look in the book of Proverbs with the creation of an ant. Or the creation of an elephant. He can go any way. And you know ants can destroy you too. just as much as an elephant can stomp on you, and the Lord holds back on that. What a display. We see the great monarch of Egypt with all of his horses, chariots, and weapons, cannot defeat a bunch of frogs. He can't do it. He's helpless. Well, this is an application to not disobey God. What would happen to Israel is laid out all throughout the book of Deuteronomy. And this is what would befall Israel if they did not listen. This is what happened to Egypt and Pharaoh when they would not obey God. Let me read some of these verses. Well, Deuteronomy 28, verses 21 and 22. "'The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee "'until he hath consumed thee from off the land, "'whither thou goest to possess it. "'The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, "'and with a fever, and with an inflammation, "'and with an extreme burning, and with a sword, "'and with blasting, and with mildew, "'and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.'" Now, those were oracles of woe, but what did the Lord say He came back all throughout the Old Testament when He told the Israelites? If you obey me, now think about Moses and Aaron right now, they were obeying the Lord, not perfectly, we can't, we have to trust the Lord because we're so weak and wicked. But the Lord, whenever you have the Lord in your life, it's because of His grace, not that you did it on your own, you can't. Look at how, what the Lord says as opposed to oracles of woe. We all want to fit under the column of oracles of Weal. Because if you obey Him, and you love Him, and you follow Him, and you try, and you try, and you try, and you try, and you repent, and you ask forgiveness, and you read your Bible, and you pray, you love the Lord, I will bless you, I will bless your wife, I will bless your cattle, I will bless your house, I will bless all of your generations. I've never seen that to fail. It's incredible how the Lord does that. We see an excellent Latin term that describes what happens next. It's called the dictum factum, or no sooner said than done, Aaron lifts the rod. And the dictum factum not only happens when Aaron lifts the rod, but when we turn around and for the second plague, the Lord brings it to a close and he pulls back the frogs. This is an amazing under insurance guidelines with earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes. Isn't it amazing that today in our atheistic society, it still says in some of your contracts, we will not cover acts of God? It doesn't say we will not cover acts of evolution. Well, that'd be a tough thing to do. Well, it took a million years for my house to burn down. Well, I want you to cover it. No, not going to happen. But it's amazing how they're called acts of God. Can you imagine turning in frogs destroying your house? They say these are acts of God, and in many cases, a homeowner is not covered. Common sense would also explain that the frogs are an act of God. There's no doubt about it. We see the magicians and their enchantments. And in verse 8, we see here that Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron. It's amazing. He calls for Moses and Aaron and said, Entreat the Lord that he may take away the frogs from me and from my people, and I will let the people go that they may do sacrifice unto the Lord. That was a mouthful. This passage, we read the response of reading, brings it all together. And it says how in verse 37 in Psalm 78, "...their hearts were not right with him, neither were they steadfast in his covenant. The Lord brought frogs, and the Lord giveth..." What did Job say? Well, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And boy, how blessed they must have felt. And this is kind of a different platform on the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away when he took away the frogs. You ever get in the middle of a situation in our weather or any type of problems in this state of Maryland and you're so glad it's over? What about the hail we get every now and then? What about those horrible days of snow when you're kind of stuck in? What about these impending locusts that are supposed to hit us? What about these Chinese flies last summer that were everywhere? They were all over the place and they were just eating holes in all the trees. Wasn't it great to see them go away? I think we've been through that. I mean, we've seen things that we'd love the Lord to take them away. Well, we see here the power of God's attributes. Well, for just a small little minute, we see Pharaoh being much like many religious leaders today. In verse 8, he says, basically, Pharaoh calls for Moses and Aaron. He says, if you will get rid of these frogs, I will now believe on God and I will let his people go. Don't ever forget why the Lord told this all the way back in Exodus 5 and said for Moses to tell God to let the people go. Why? He said, so that they can come out in the wilderness and worship me in my sanctuary. And that gives a great emphasis on why, how important it is for us to worship the Lord in His sanctuary. Let's see, Psalm 73, 13. Until I entered into the sanctuary of the Lord, then understood I their end. That's prophetic. Not prophetic, not pathetic, prophetic. He proceeds to say, I will let the people go. Verse 9, glory over me, carries a very important message. Moses here uses a very important directive to sum up his position. He is saying your enchantments and wizardry carry no salvation for you and your country. Glory over me is a blessing that God has granted to have me to be an intercessor to God for the removal of this plague for you. Now, I'm not going to go into this, but I can tell you why there's still a lot of confusion today among the Jewish ranks when they push back the Messiah. Moses was a type of Christ. He was. A Christ is a messenger. But he was not the Christ. He was not the Messiah. And to this day, many Jews believe that Moses was the true Messiah along with Abraham. But Christ himself said, Moses rejoiced to see my day. and here Moses is playing the part of the messenger. He is in between God, who Christ himself is dictating to Moses exactly what's going to happen and exactly what needs to happen and how it's going to all come through. Moses then alludes to the dwelling of the frogs in the river, important in that the frogs' natural habitat is the river, where humidity is a necessary condition for the comfort of these frogs. They were comfortable. Why would they leave? by God's design. And that's exactly what happened. They were designed to leave, they were designed to come, and they were designed to overtake Egypt. And basically, when you go back to the plague of the absolute hard blood, the water turning into blood, never forget who it was that was standing on the high ground over Pharaoh. The Lord had set him over Pharaoh for a specific reason. And everything to this point that the Lord said all throughout the book of Exodus, what is the percentage rating of all the prophecies and how they came to fruition? You know, they say, actually, the chances of one of those miracles or one of the prophecies that actually would come through, if you tried to predict them on your own, you would have a higher chances of winning the lotto than ever predicting something like what's in Scripture. Over and over and over and over, every single prophecy, 100%, came to a perfect fruition when the Lord spoke it and said it would. And every time He told Moses to pronounce that prophecy, remember, what was the job of a prophet? Anybody remembers the job of a prophet? Pastor Olson, I think he gives a really good summation of that. The job of a prophet is to give bad news. But the job of a prophet was to give oracles of weal and oracles of woe. His job, just as the job of an apostle, which is very similar, as we see in Paul in Galatians chapter 1, all through there, same as a prophet, is to warn the people. The job of a pastor and a preacher and a prophet and a minister and a teacher is to not sit there and entertain them and make them feel good about everything, but to understand that there are times when there's tough. That's when you read Scripture, you're seeing the lives of the men in Scriptures warts and all. You're not giving these beautiful polished renditions of them like you see with the liberals today when they talk about all these people in the past. You're seeing everything that happened to them from the Lord's point of view. We saw some of the negative points of Moses following up here, and we're going to see some more of them down the road. But here we see Moses being used in a great way, and he also told Moses, one of the prophecies is your brother Aaron is coming to help you. What do we see here, another prophecy fulfilled? Aaron's the one that stretches out the arm. He said, tomorrow in verse 10, and he said, Be it according to thy word that thou mayest know that there is none like unto the Lord our God. That is a mammoth verse. And the frog shall depart from thee, and from thy houses, and from thy servants, and from thy people. They shall remain in the river only. What I'd like to say about verse 11 is the detail that's there. It's no generalizations. They say specifically where the frogs are resonating. They're going to be in the houses, the servants, they were in the kneading troughs, they were in the ovens, they were in every place that you could see them. And then the prophecy is the Lord is going to remove them. So Moses and Aaron then in verse 12 went out to Pharaoh. Moses cried unto the Lord because of the frogs which he had brought against Pharaoh. And I believe part of that crying was the fact that it wasn't just the Egyptians that got invaded by frogs. Who else was it that got invaded? Yes. Thank you. Israelites. Moses loved the Israelites. They were his people. He defended them. He was a good leader. He cared about them and he loved them. And we see how the wonderful, beautiful, long-suffering of the Lord God Almighty and the Lord did according to the words of Moses and the frogs died out of the houses. Out of the villages and out of the fields. Always remember, there's been a lot of question even today, why is it that Israel was called the children of God and His chosen people? Why is it? Was it something the Israelites had inside of them that they have some righteousness about them and they deserve to have that type of treatment of the Lord? The number one reason, you can go all throughout the Old Testament, look it up. He loved them. If you're saved today, you know it in your heart, because I'll tell you, one of many marks of a Christian is you're not saying, no matter how long you live, I hope I go to heaven. If you love Christ and He's in your heart, you say, I know where I'm going. And I'm so confident with I know, it's not just a faith, it's not some arbitrary belief that basically can be in equality with all these other beliefs out there, it's just one of many. No, you're saying, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me." John 14, 6, Christ is the only way. And you know it. You know it in your heart. And you know it so much that you take this, you take what you hear, you take what you read, and you know it so confidently that you do not compromise it, and you give it to other people, and you warn them, and you love them, and you teach them the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul said in Galatians, if there be any other gospel, let it be accursed. There's only one. Pastor Steve Lawson, I love to quote this, he said, there's one way to heaven, many ways to hell. One way to heaven, and that's through Jesus Christ. And we see how Moses just loved the Lord. Well, number 14. That must have been a real fun week. And they gathered them together upon heaps, and the land stank. Now, I know we got to stop here, I know it's getting past 12, but listen. We're a little spoiled today, okay? In fact, we're spoiled horribly. And I'll show you how we're spoiled. What happens today when it snows? You get the State Highway Administration has big, beautiful, brand new, they get the best of everything, the big, beautiful wheel loaders with five-yard buckets, big enough diesel engines to move mountains of snow all over the place. They have cranes, they have backhoes, they have dozers, they have pushers, they have landfills, they have endless areas in order to bury your trash. You get a garbage truck coming to your house twice a week. You ever think about what a tough time you'd have if you didn't have that garbage truck coming twice a week? You'd have a lot of fun finding places to place that garbage, wouldn't you? My point is, They had to clean up the frogs by hand. They didn't have any loaders. They didn't have any technology. They might have had some wooden wagons and maybe a few animals and ox carts to load them up on. Can you imagine being on the dead frog cleaning committee? That would have been a real good appointment for you if you were being really massively punished. Can you imagine the dead, stinky frogs? I used to help my grandfather. My grandmother had this little tiny shore down there in the back river. Oh, I hated it. I loved being down there with him. I loved working with him. He died when I was nine. But we used to have to go every early spring and clean the beach up with dead catfish and dead crabs and they were all stunk. It stunk so bad we had to hand-dig them and bury them and all. I can't imagine doing an endless number of frogs. But the conclusion of the message today is the greatness of our Lord. The Lord did clean him up. He did promise. He did promise Pharaoh that he would take those frogs away. And he spoke through Moses. And Moses said, if you will listen to the Lord, you've already seen what he's capable of. If you think about that, go all the way to the New Testament and think of all the miracles Christ himself did. And the Pharisees still came to him and said, Lord, can you show us signs and wonders? He had already healed people. He had already grown limbs back. He had already raised them from the dead. He fed the 5,000. We still don't believe you. Can you show us another sign? He said, I'll show you another sign. Just like Jonah was in the belly of that fish for three days, when I go to that cross, you'll see a sign. You'll see something. That's it. I'm done. And basically, here, it's a little different for Pharaoh. God's not done. He's never done. And he's about to inflict eight more plagues that'll finally start getting his attention. So, you always have to look in all of these wonderful messages, you always have to look for what is the central motif of Scripture, it's the salvation of the Lord, sparing us. And the very fact that the Lord didn't raise up every animal on the earth at this point and just devour every Egyptian shows His long-suffering, His patience, and His kindness with the defiance of Him. I don't know what's going to happen here in America. America is in total defiance of God right now. You can put it any way you want. You can be politically correct, politically incorrect, or say whatever you want. But when you go into our state houses, you look at the commercials on television and see what's in our Congress and in the White House. This country has shaken its fist at God's face. so hard that it's incredible. As John Piper, he looked out of his window in Minnesota, he said this years ago, I looked out all over Minnesota and could not understand why the Lord hasn't destroyed America for aborting babies. That's what he said. But I will say this. You had thousands of Egyptians. You had one Moses. The prayers of the righteous availeth much. Don't think your prayers don't matter. Don't ever think your worship doesn't matter. It matters. You may not think about it, you may feel maybe real beaten down and very small right now, but when you leave this earth, I've heard another pastor say out there, I love it, he says, some of the gifts that the Lord gives you, he wants to wait until he sees you to personally hand them to you. One way or the other, you'll know. But be faithful, follow him, do like Moses. Moses wasn't perfect. But he loved the Lord. And so, isn't it wonderful? I wonder how Moses felt when he heard at one point later on, maybe when he went to heaven, that it says in the New Testament, Moses rejoiced to see my day. He loved Christ. Moses himself said, there will be a servant that's going to be coming, and woe be unto you that won't listen to him. He knew. Alright, so that's the frogs. We have some more plagues later on. Let's finish with prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for this lovely message. It's thy message, and it's the message that's written in thy scriptures, all 14 verses. That's the message. Thy word is holy and inerrant, as brother Dave said today as he did the responsive reading. Wonderful, wonderful benediction saying that thy word is holy and inerrant. We can trust it. We know that the standard is true and we know that Thou has said that my laws are not burdens and are not grievous. So hide them in my heart that thou might not sin against thee. Lord, bless everyone here. Watch over their families. Be with them, and I pray that Thou would protect them and guide them and teach them and reveal to them Thy plan every minute of their life. And I pray that as we leave here today, that we will know that the mission field starts at the end of this driveway. And during the week, give us many to witness to. And I pray for those that are sick, those that are healing from surgeries. Lord, heal them, bless their hearts. Pray for thy church, glorious today. Other pastors who are preaching, bless their hearts and their services. Pray that thou would bring many into the fold. And I ask, Lord, that thou wouldst just, Lord, have mercy upon us. And let us pray always in our prayers. Not my will, but thy will be done. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.