Exodus chapter eight, and we're going to read from verse 16 through to verse 19. So I've got some short readings today. And the Lord said unto Moses, say unto Aaron, stretch out thy rod and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt. And they did so. For Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod and smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man and in beast. All the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of Egypt. And the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could not. So there were lice upon man and upon beast. Then the magician said unto Pharaoh, This is the finger of God. And Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he hearkened not unto them, as the Lord had said. Amen. May the Lord bless to us this reading from his word also. There's only, as we've mentioned, a few verses here that speak to us of this third plague of lice. And it's interesting to note that it comes hard and fast behind the plague of frogs. It's interesting to note that it comes with no prior warning given to Pharaoh, at least none that we are informed about. A warning had been given by Moses to Pharaoh on the two prior occasions of the plagues, the plague of the water turned to blood and the plague of the frogs, but no warning is given here. And another thing that we notice is that the plague consists of a multitude of lice. lice. Now some people have suggested that these might have been some kind of gnats or even mosquitoes and both can be very troublesome. But in fact there's no good reason for us to diverge from what the Bible says in this matter and these in the scriptures are called lice. Now, whether that means that they are the same creatures that we know as lice today is not possible to say, but again, why not? And my favorite encyclopedia tells me that lice is a group of wingless insects containing nearly 5,000 species. So I don't know whether this was one single species of louse that filled the land of Egypt. or whether there were numerous different species that all came up together. Actually, it's probably more likely that there were a number of different species because we're told that there were lice in men and there were lice in the beasts and ordinarily the lice that you would get in men and animals would be different. So that might imply that there are different species here. We might call them ticks, but they likely sucked the blood of the host. They would certainly cause illness and they would certainly spread disease. This was a very unpleasant experience. And it shows us that God can make the tiniest and the weakest and the most disgusting things do his work. Paul tells us in the book of Romans that the weakness of God is stronger than men. And here is an example of that. Ordinarily a man might take one of these little lice or one of these little louses and just crush it between his fingers. But here in the volume in which they came and with the ferociousness of which they came, we find that they were in plague proportions and they troubled the Egyptians. Another interesting thing about this plague is that Pharaoh's magicians could not replicate this miracle. and although they had had some success it seems in the previous miracles, this causes them to attribute this particular plague to the hand or actually to the finger of God. which is interesting, because often it's called the hand of God or the hand of the Lord, but on a few occasions we read about the finger of God. It was the finger of God that wrote the Ten Commandments. But here the finger of God is given the credit for raising up this miracle, and perhaps the magicians thought, well, we're not able to deceive pharaoh anymore by the things that we do. We need to give another reason for this and we don't want to give Moses and Aaron the credit, so we'll say that it was God himself that did it. But what we discover is that Pharaoh's heart is again hardened and he would not listen either to his magicians or to Moses and Aaron, the request to let the children of Israel go and worship God. And this shows that even although Pharaoh was losing the support of his own palace, his own supporters, his own magicians, He was adamant and he was obstinate and he was determined not to give in to Moses and Aaron or to the God of Israel. You might think that such displays of power and distress, the resulting distress, would convince a man or a woman that they could not beat God. And they better just obey. But Pharaoh had a higher opinion of himself than he ought to have had. And in the end, that would cost him and his country dearly. There's a couple of little lessons that I want to draw just from these few verses to leave with you. And the first one is this. God's warnings are a blessing. and a call to act. We've read here or we've seen here that on this occasion there was not a warning given. But if God gives us a warning, that's a blessed thing and a thing that we should take note of. Sometimes we hear people say, well it happened without any warning and there was nothing that we could do about it. And when they say that, they imply that if they had had some prior warning, then they would have taken steps and they would have acted in such a way as to prevent the incident or the event from happening or mitigating the trouble that it caused. But the truth is that that isn't always the case anyway. Sometimes warnings go unheeded. And they had done previously with Pharaoh. And now there was no warning given and he found himself suddenly in this country of Egypt plagued with lice and all the discomfort that they brought. And this didn't need to happen. But the price and the cost for Pharaoh to listen to God was too great. It would have meant, if he had done what God wanted, if he had done what Moses and Aaron had said, that would have meant financial loss for Pharaoh. All these free workers would have got to go away. It would have meant a loss of political esteem. His enemies would have called him weak. And it would have meant a loss in personal pride. And those were all too much for him to pay. God has warned us about what he is going to do. He has told us that he is going to judge sin. And he has told us that the wages of sin is death. And we ought to listen and we ought to act accordingly. And yet we can't, because like Pharaoh, our hearts are naturally hard and our pride won't let us. It is the price that we're not prepared to pay. But if that is the case, let us not forget that God warned us about this judgment to come and we chose to ignore it. Someday, like Pharaoh, we will live to regret that decision. But if God is merciful to us, If we are enabled to listen to the voice and the word of God, it will be because God changes our hearts and God shows us mercy. The prophet Isaiah, a little bit later in the history of Israel, wrote, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. We like our own way better than God's way. and we will always like our own way better than God's way until God softens our heart. Therefore it is our prayer that the Lord will convince us by the greatness of Christ in the gospel of a better way than our way, of a new and living way that is found in following the Lord Jesus Christ The letter to the Hebrew says, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? And here's another point. The magicians realised that their trickery could only get them so far. You know, there are a lot of magicians in churches today. What do I mean by that? Well, what I mean by that is that there are a lot of churches that do not preach the true gospel of Jesus Christ. And they lead people to think that they are saved and that they are going to heaven by faking or mistaking God's way of salvation. There are lots of religions, there's lots of counterfeits, but there's only one true faith. And that faith is the faith that will lead a sinner to peace with God. The Lord Jesus Christ says, I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. May the grace of God soften our hearts. May the grace of God bring us to Christ. May the grace of God show us that one who is the true and living way of salvation. Amen.