Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Well, good morning again.
[00:00:03] Like we just saw each other.
[00:00:06] It's good to see all of you. If you would turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter seven. That's where we're going to be this morning. Exodus seven. Looking at verses one through 13.
[00:00:17] I know he moaned and complained about it last week. You know, when Traci talked about preaching in genealogy, I was a little bit jealous because I just. Last time I preached, it was the book of Ruth and I. I had to deal with one of those genealogies and I felt like I had just gotten comfortable with it. And then he took it from me. And so I had to figure out how to, how to preach this text today.
[00:00:37] But Tracy did a great job last week, as he always does, and has set us up well for today. I mean, over these last several weeks, we've been walking through the opening chapters of Exodus, watching God move in a people who had forgotten what it meant to be free.
[00:00:56] The Israel groaned under the weight of slavery in Egypt.
[00:01:01] And we've met Moses, who God chose to use to deliver his people, but who Moses himself didn't really consider himself to be the man for the job.
[00:01:13] And we've heard all of his objections. He says, you know, who am I? And then he's like, well, who are you, Lord, that you should choose me this way? And like, well, you know what if they don't believe me?
[00:01:24] He has all these different questions, and through every one of them, God has answered, I will be with you.
[00:01:32] That's been his constant refrain. And last week we watched God recommission Moses for this mission because he's already had a failed attempt before Pharaoh.
[00:01:43] And Pharaoh's response to Moses was to make the Israelites labor even harder, right? He said, you're going to make bricks, but you're not going to do without straw.
[00:01:51] And we're going to double the production. And so Moses comes back to God and he's very shaken by this response.
[00:01:58] He's like, why did you ever send me?
[00:02:01] Like, what did you think was going to happen?
[00:02:05] And so God responded with something even firmer for Moses to stand on. He gives him his name and he gives him his covenant. And he says, I am the Lord.
[00:02:15] That's his response, right? When earlier other parts of the scripture, who should I tell them send me? Well, just tell them I am, excuse me, his name and his covenant stand firm. And this is what God gives to him. And so this is what gets us here to this morning, that we are at the threshold of probably the most well known part of Exodus, which is the plagues, which is these great acts of judgment that God has already promised that he is going to bring.
[00:02:48] And before the first sign is performed, before Moses ever even walk into Pharaoh's court, God pauses to settle something in Moses.
[00:02:59] But not just in Moses. I think in us as well.
[00:03:03] He tells Moses exactly who he is.
[00:03:06] He tells him exactly what he's going to do, and he tells him exactly what it's going to cost.
[00:03:11] And the reason he gives for all of it, like the. The. The word and the wonders and even the hardened heart of Pharaoh, is this is it so that the world would know that he is the Lord.
[00:03:25] That's the central purpose for what God is wanting to do, is so that the entire world would know that he is God.
[00:03:33] And so let's read this text together and then we sort of walk through it and see what God has to say to us today. So if you would.
[00:03:42] Exodus, chapter seven, beginning in verse one, you read along with me.
[00:03:47] This is what God's word says.
[00:03:49] It says, on the day when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, the Lord said to Moses, I am the Lord.
[00:03:57] Tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, all that I say to you.
[00:04:01] But Moses said to the Lord, you know what?
[00:04:05] We're not in chapter seven right now. I went back a couple of verses. Anybody else catch that?
[00:04:09] You're smart people. I believe in you. I was going back for some context. I just began in 6, 28. Now we're in 7, 1. All right, we're tracking on again. And the Lord said to Moses, see, I have made you like God to Pharaoh. And your brother Aaron shall be your prophet.
[00:04:25] You shall speak all that I command you. And your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh and to let the people of Israel go out of his land.
[00:04:33] But I will harden Pharaoh's heart.
[00:04:36] And though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you.
[00:04:42] And then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment.
[00:04:52] And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.
[00:05:01] Moses and Aaron did so. They did, just as the Lord commanded them.
[00:05:07] And Now Moses was 80 years old and Aaron 83 years old when they spoke to Pharaoh.
[00:05:14] Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, when Pharaoh says to you, prove yourselves by working a miracle.
[00:05:19] Then you shall say to Aaron, take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh that it may become a serpent.
[00:05:29] So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded.
[00:05:35] Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants and became a serpent.
[00:05:42] Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers, and they, the magicians of Egypt, also did the same by their secret arts.
[00:05:52] For each man cast down his staff and they became serpents.
[00:05:56] But Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs, and still Pharaoh's heart was hardened and he would not listen to them.
[00:06:06] As the Lord has said, this is God's word. And so let's pray and ask that he would teach us today.
[00:06:14] Lord, thank you again for this time.
[00:06:18] Thank you that you have spoken to us and you've given us your scripture that we can go and we can see and we can remember and that we can know the same message that you wanted to communicate to them, that you are the Lord, there is none like you.
[00:06:38] And that through a demonstration of your word and signs and wonders and a demonstration of your power, God, it would increase our faith and our trust in you. And so I'm asking for that today.
[00:06:50] Ask that you would teach us and guide us as we look at your word. In Jesus name, amen.
[00:06:57] When I was growing up, I remember a few moments when one of our teachers or our coaches would catch wind of a problem, and then they would pull everyone in to address it, right?
[00:07:12] Like this very tense, very serious, come to Jesus kinds of meetings.
[00:07:19] And once we all got together, we'd all look around trying to figure out who exactly that they're talking to, because we all knew that it was really just one or two people, you know what I'm saying? Like, we all. Everybody's in trouble, but we all kind of know who it is.
[00:07:36] You ever had one of those kinds of meetings?
[00:07:39] Always felt like a middle school or high school whodunit, you know, start searching for the clues and the hints drop, like, who are they actually talking about?
[00:07:48] And even though I, like, I knew it wasn't me.
[00:07:52] Never was. I was a good kid, right?
[00:07:56] Even though, like, I knew it wasn't me, I remember still feeling like I needed to lock in, like I needed to pay attention.
[00:08:04] Like, I began to wonder, like, maybe I did do something wrong. I don't know, maybe I need to, like, just see what they have to say or at least don't check out, because I might need to be aware of the situation in the future.
[00:08:18] And I think there's a similar dynamic in our text today. Something like this that on the verge of bringing the plagues to the Egyptians, we know that God is talking to Moses and to Aaron and that through them, he's going to be talking to Pharaoh.
[00:08:35] But as the word of God for the people of God across all ages, he has pulled us here into this meeting, and he wants us to hear what's going on. He wants us to lock in and see what he has to say. Pharaoh has already asked this very prideful question, and it's becoming a recurring theme in our story so far.
[00:08:59] His question was, who is the Lord that I should obey his voice?
[00:09:04] That was Pharaoh's response. And in his own way, Moses hasn't listened to God either.
[00:09:11] But he wants us to hear, all of us. He wants us to hear that God will make himself known through His Word and his power.
[00:09:19] And if we listen in, we'll see too, that we should not look at our own inadequacies or measure our faithfulness by the fruitfulness that we see, or to be unsettled in this world by the counterfeit powers that we encounter.
[00:09:38] Because God will make himself known.
[00:09:41] And we must receive from God either his Word for obedience or receive it as a warning for resistance.
[00:09:53] God's word always divides, and it separates out those who listen and obey the Lord and those who resist his word.
[00:10:04] So we're listening today for are we listening for a word that we might love him and obey him?
[00:10:11] Or are we listening in a way that our heart continues to resist against him?
[00:10:17] So let's walk through this text together and just begin to see how this unfolds. I think the first thing that God does is at the opening of chapter seven. I think he addresses Moses deepest problem.
[00:10:30] And it's not that he don't talk good. Right. We learned last week that he had uncircumcised lips. And I think Tracy did a great job. Like, it's a little bit more than that. You don't say those normal kinds of things.
[00:10:40] At deeper root, it wasn't about the way that he speaks.
[00:10:46] The truth is that God's word transforms the ones that he sends.
[00:10:52] So when God commissions someone, that is in itself is transformative. That when we're up against our own inadequacies, God's commission overcomes our disqualifications when we begin to disqualify ourself. But due to our story or our giftings or our skills, God's commission and His Word is what overrides all of that.
[00:11:16] So Moses has run out of objections.
[00:11:19] God has answered every single one of them.
[00:11:22] But Moses still doesn't go. Because what he's really saying is in every Objection is, I'm not enough for this task.
[00:11:30] And God's answer to that in these opening verses is not to fix Moses, right? Moses says, I'm a man of uncircumcised lips. God doesn't go, well, let me fix your lips, let me fix your mouth. He doesn't do that.
[00:11:43] He redefines his character. Look with me at verses one and two.
[00:11:49] It says, and the Lord said to Moses, see, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land.
[00:12:05] Our English translations actually softens the Hebrew. Here it says that Moses is Elohim, God, not like God, which is what the English translation says, says, yahweh has made Moses Elohim to Pharaoh.
[00:12:25] Now, this doesn't mean that Moses is divine. It doesn't mean anything like that.
[00:12:32] It means he will stand before Pharaoh with full authority of God's word and his power, that God's commission, it transforms who he is. God gives him a new identity.
[00:12:46] And we understand, like, historically, from history, we know that this Pharaoh has a name, but it's not given to us in this text. As far as we're concerned, he's a nameless power.
[00:13:01] And I think that's intentional.
[00:13:03] Egyptian Pharaohs believed themselves to be God, and they had the power to maintain the cosmos like they thought. They thought that was in their purview of their rule and their authority.
[00:13:15] And there's what God does. He sends in two old shepherds to confront what is perceived to be the most powerful man the world.
[00:13:25] Moses, who once had everything in Egypt and then ends up and flees to Nowhere, Midian, for 40 years.
[00:13:34] And he's already failed once to Pharaoh.
[00:13:37] And God says to Moses, I have made you God to him.
[00:13:44] And notice what God says.
[00:13:47] He goes, I have made you.
[00:13:51] The tense here is that it means it's already something that's accomplished that before Moses has done anything and before he's gone, it's as good as done. It's a done deal.
[00:14:02] God has already accomplished it. And he doesn't stop there. He tells something. He tells Moses something that probably should have made him even more anxious, but instead it becomes this other, this, the second ground of his confidence. Look with me in verses three through five, he says, but I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and there will multiply signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. Pharaoh will not listen to you.
[00:14:27] And then I will lay my hand on Egypt. And bring my host and my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.
[00:14:44] Do you notice what God is doing? God has taken over all of the verbs in this text. He says, I will harden, I will multiply, I will lay my hand, I will bring out Moses. Job is not to produce results.
[00:15:02] Moses. Job is to go and speak what God commands.
[00:15:08] And the outcome of that belongs entirely to the Lord.
[00:15:12] And I think this matters so much for this condition that we've described, because one of the reasons that you and I hesitate, or the reason that we end up measuring our faithfulness by our fruitfulness, or the reason that we feel disqualified, is that we're still treating ourselves as the main variable, as the main character.
[00:15:37] But God's commission removes Moses from that role.
[00:15:42] The outcome is not in his hands. He doesn't have to be adequate. He just has to be obedient.
[00:15:50] This is what we see in verse six. It just says, Moses and Aaron did so.
[00:15:56] They did just as the Lord commanded him.
[00:15:59] And that's the whole result of God's word. It's simple. It's one sentence. No more auditing, no more objections.
[00:16:09] They went, and God's word accomplished what it set out to do.
[00:16:14] It produced obedience in an inadequate messenger.
[00:16:20] And then this detail in verse seven, Moses was 80 years old and Aaron was 83 years old when they spoke to Pharaoh. And that's not a. We should know this, that no word on the entirety of Scripture is a throwaway. God is intentional about every single word that he includes in Scripture.
[00:16:40] And so these are old men whose best years are behind them.
[00:16:45] If I was to give it a modern, contemporary equivalent in our world, they should be fishing and eating early bird specials at Denny's with the All Star Classic.
[00:16:59] They're laughing.
[00:17:00] Everybody in the 80s over here, they know.
[00:17:05] But God's purposes does not expire on our timeline in either direction. I mean, we can go to the New Testament the way that Paul talks to Timothy. He says, hey, don't let anyone look down on you for being young, right? Set an example for all the believers. And then he goes to Titus and says, hey, Titus, you need to encourage the older men to spend some time with the younger men and the older women to spend time with younger women.
[00:17:29] Like, no matter which direction that we go, age doesn't operate according to, like, in the same way for God's purposes.
[00:17:38] And There's a moment that many of us have experienced, and maybe it's been in personal ministry, maybe it's been in parenting or in another kind of relationship where we know that we know what we're supposed to do and we find every reason not to do it.
[00:17:57] Maybe it feels just too big. Maybe it's overwhelming.
[00:18:03] The person that we're talking to, they never listen.
[00:18:06] You know, I've tried this before and it didn't work.
[00:18:10] I'm worn out from trying.
[00:18:14] And the longer that we stand there working through all of our different weaknesses and our inadequacies, it's the less likely that we're willing to take another step of faith and trust in the Lord.
[00:18:26] And the thing that I've noticed about these situations in my own life, I have this internal debate with myself, right?
[00:18:33] Been trying to either both talk myself into it or talk myself out of it.
[00:18:37] Like, am I qualified for this? Is this going to work?
[00:18:41] What if they don't receive it?
[00:18:45] And the problem with this internal debate is it's always about me.
[00:18:51] Can you relate to that?
[00:18:53] That this internal dialogue for why I shouldn't do something has nothing to do with God's power or what he's commanded me to do. It always has to do with me.
[00:19:06] We often look at our own inadequacy instead of at God's character and his commission.
[00:19:12] The instruction of this text is, believe in his character and receive his commission. Believe who he is and what he said he's done, and then go obey and go do it.
[00:19:23] And I think this applies to every person in the room who knows what they're supposed to do and just hasn't.
[00:19:30] Because maybe you don't feel ready.
[00:19:33] Maybe if you're a parent, you know, it might be that gospel conversation that you want to have with your child, but you're maybe afraid of messing it up and saying it the wrong way.
[00:19:44] Maybe you're the friend who hasn't spoken the truth because you don't feel qualified to speak about someone else's sin. Like, who am I to say anything about what. What they do in their life?
[00:19:55] Or as a church member, you've been given a task, you've been given a calling, a vocation, and it has been answering the call that God has given with a just not yet, because the timing is not right.
[00:20:12] The reason for God's that God's commission is sufficient for us, for our inadequacy is because the same God who commissioned Moses is the one who gave us Jesus.
[00:20:24] That Jesus is the truer and better Moses. That he too was sent by God into a world that would not and did not receive him.
[00:20:33] That he too was given full authority not just to be made like God. To Pharaoh, he was God. To Pharaoh, God himself taking on flesh and disarming the rulers and the authorities.
[00:20:47] The one that Paul calls the power of God and the wisdom of God.
[00:20:51] And Jesus went not because he was calculating the outcome.
[00:20:58] He knew what he was getting himself into. And he laid his life down willingly. He trusted the commission. And the resurrection is proof positive that the mission was a success.
[00:21:10] That the same God who raised Jesus from the dead has commissioned you and me.
[00:21:15] And that should be the ground of our obedience. That should be our confidence that we will be successful. That it's not our skill, it's not our readiness, it's not our academic degrees or our family pedigrees. It's him.
[00:21:32] He is the Lord. And he is. He will make himself known in the world.
[00:21:38] You won't get to obedience by working up more confidence.
[00:21:44] We go to bed every night because we're tired.
[00:21:47] And we serve a God who never sleeps.
[00:21:50] He doesn't slumber.
[00:21:53] Our own will will shrivel under the weight of all of these demands and the things that God is trying to accomplish. But he is able to do it through us. You get there by meditating on who God says you are and. And then simply doing what he commands.
[00:22:11] And so we should receive it and go in his name.
[00:22:15] I think that's the first thing that he wants us to see. But not only does God's word transform an inadequate messenger, I think God's power exposes the heart, that trust in counterfeits.
[00:22:29] Look with me at verses 8 and 9.
[00:22:32] It says then that the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, when Pharaoh says to you, prove yourselves by working a miracle. Then you shall say to Aaron, take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh that it may become a serpent.
[00:22:47] I want you to notice that God doesn't say if Pharaoh demands a sign. He says when he does.
[00:22:54] God has already anticipated the challenge and he's already prepared the answer for what's ahead.
[00:23:01] And Moses walks into a court not surprised by what he finds, but. But fully prepared.
[00:23:06] And the sign is the staff.
[00:23:10] So it's just ordinary thing that Moses carries as a shepherd. He carries it in his hand. It's a shepherd's tool.
[00:23:17] God doesn't call Moses to use someone else's equipment to get a new, shiny new object that might be threatening to Pharaoh.
[00:23:28] He takes what's already there. And God is the one who Transforms what it means.
[00:23:34] In verses 10 through 12, it says, so Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded.
[00:23:40] Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent.
[00:23:45] The Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers, and they, the magicians of Egypt, also did the same by their secret arts. For each man cast down his staff and they became serpents.
[00:23:56] And Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs.
[00:24:00] I mean, it's a really cool scene. Like, there's so, so much detail in there.
[00:24:05] And my imagination for this scene is from Prince of Egypt, where Moses is playing with the big boys now, judging the room, seeing some head nods. Look, if you don't know what that is, all is well in your world. If you do know what that is, it might be time to make that annual appointment at the doctor.
[00:24:27] Okay, but this is my imagination going to Prince of Egypt, where there's song and dance and, you know, they're all kind of crafty and they're kind of making imitations based on what Moses and Aaron have done.
[00:24:44] But I think there are other several things that we need to see in this text. And the first of which I think this is the warning shot, man. God has been tremendously patient.
[00:24:54] He's been tremendously patient. And this is another warning shot to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians. It's a preview of what's to come.
[00:25:03] I mean, this act doesn't harm Pharaoh. It doesn't really bring any harm to the kingdom yet.
[00:25:12] But God is demonstrating again how long suffering or how patient he is.
[00:25:17] God says later that. That he could have. He could have already destroyed him. And he doesn't.
[00:25:23] But then comes this final word of verse 12, and it ends everything. It says, Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs.
[00:25:31] It doesn't beat them, he doesn't outlast them. He swallows them up.
[00:25:36] One serpent consumed all the others. We don't know the number.
[00:25:41] And it gets really interesting to figure out, like, what kind of serpent are we talking about?
[00:25:45] I think our imaginations go to something like a cobra or a snake, which is the symbol that Pharaoh would have had on his head.
[00:25:54] Something. It's a crocodile, which is a fun thought to have.
[00:26:00] But this is the deep truth of the sign that the counterfeits, they can imitate, but they cannot consume.
[00:26:10] It can produce the appearance of a real thing, but it cannot do what only God can do.
[00:26:16] The world is full of powers that try to imitate the real thing. And this is not something that new. This is. Every generation has its own kinds of magicians, these really polished alternatives to God's way and to God's gospel.
[00:26:33] That can produce things like peace, that can produce things like community, that can produce things like purpose and like hope.
[00:26:43] And we are often impressed by them.
[00:26:47] And for a moment, they. They look like the real thing.
[00:26:51] And Pharaoh uses this opportunity, the fact that his sources are able to reproduce what Moses and Aaron done. He uses this as an opportunity to give himself permission again to resist God.
[00:27:08] But we should not be unsettled by the counterfeits of what they can do.
[00:27:13] We need to look at what they cannot do. And I think this applies to every believer in this world, watching the world around them look at what it produces. It looks like things that the church claims to have.
[00:27:27] And we start wondering if it really matters.
[00:27:31] Is there really a distinction between the church and in the world? Is it really worth following God?
[00:27:41] And we have so many examples of this. But the grace of this text, I think we find, as we cast our imaginations forward, is found in John 3, 14, 15.
[00:27:53] Jesus points back to this very moment in Exodus.
[00:27:56] Moses lifting up the staff in the wilderness and says, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
[00:28:08] The staff that became a serpent in Exodus 4, the staff that swallowed the Egyptian serpents in Exodus 7, and the staff that was lifted up in the wilderness in numbers 21. All of that. God's intention is to point us to another piece of wood. It points us to the cross, that the cross of Jesus is God's final sign.
[00:28:33] And the resurrection is proof that no counterfeit can replicate it.
[00:28:39] Death itself is swallowed up. First Corinthians says, death is swallowed up in this victory.
[00:28:46] There's no counterfeit spirituality.
[00:28:49] There's no alternative gospel. There's no polished imitation of the good life that can swallow up death, which God tells us is the last great enemy.
[00:29:04] Only the real thing can do that. And the real thing has been done. And we're just a couple of weeks away from remembering of what Christ has done for us.
[00:29:16] And so if you look again at what you have, not at your feelings about it, we look to the cross as this objective symbol about what Christ has accomplished. We look at the resurrection, we look at the sign that consumed all of the counterfeits.
[00:29:35] And we let that reality be more commanding than what any other kind of Egyptian in our world is producing.
[00:29:46] God exposes the counterfeits.
[00:29:49] And now we come to probably the most uncomfortable verse in the text.
[00:29:55] And I want to suggest that it's also the most pastoral meaning, like just to kind of pay attention to it more. Verse 13, it says, still Pharaoh's heart was hardened and he would not listen to them. As the Lord had said, Aaron's staff has just eaten the magician's staff.
[00:30:17] There's no longer any question about which power is greater.
[00:30:22] And Pharaoh is not moved by it.
[00:30:25] His heart was hardened. And it says, as the Lord has said. God told Moses that this would happen, and he named it before it did, so that Moses would not be surprised, so that Moses would know that it's not a failure of God's plan.
[00:30:44] This is an execution of God's plan. This is God's intent. And I think this is important for a couple of reasons.
[00:30:52] First, for those who you're measuring faithfulness by your responses that you're getting, I think the text is honest with us.
[00:31:00] Pharaoh had a staff that was eaten by the other staffs right in front of him, and he chose not to believe.
[00:31:09] The hardened heart is not primarily an evidence problem. It's a problem of the will.
[00:31:18] More technique, more persuasion, more impressiveness does not break the will that has set itself against God.
[00:31:30] It is evidence that we live in a fallen world, but God is still at work.
[00:31:37] And the second thing is, for those whose hearts are hard right now, this verse is a warning shot to you that as you sit here today, Pharaoh was hardened in increments. It took place a little bit at a time, and God is patient.
[00:31:58] But the text says clearly that there's a point coming in when the hardening is fixed. And what originally was refugal is now a settled condition. That if you think about the same sun that softens wax is the one that hardens clay.
[00:32:17] That's what God does when there's different conditions of the heart. And so the question for you today is not whether you. You've seen a sign, you've seen it, you've heard the word of the Lord, and the question is, what will you do with it?
[00:32:35] And this text doesn't end at verse 13, and it doesn't end in chapter 7, and neither does this story. There's a moment in John's Gospel again, where Jesus is asked by some of the Greeks who want to see him.
[00:32:51] And I think his response is really striking. He doesn't say, hey, bring them in, like, let's deliberate about these things. He says, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
[00:33:04] Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, and it remains alone. But if it dies. It bears much fruit.
[00:33:13] And then he says, and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.
[00:33:23] That Jesus, he is the final staff. He is lifted up. The sign cannot be imitated.
[00:33:31] The cross is the place where God makes himself fully known, not just in his power, but in his love.
[00:33:36] This is where the judgment falls on the one who deserved none of it. That he who had no sin be became sin for us.
[00:33:46] That where the hardened heart finds its own real hope is because the one who was hardened against nothing took the full weight of it all.
[00:33:55] The resurrection is the swallowing up of every counterfeit, that death, the ultimate enemy, it's been swallowed up.
[00:34:04] Shame has been swallowed up. The accusations of the accuser that the believers face every single day, it's been swallowed up. The death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting?
[00:34:20] And because of that, the highway is open. Like the verses that we reflected on from Isaiah. There's now been a highway that's been opened not just to Israel, but to Egypt and to every nation and to you.
[00:34:36] That if you're sitting here and you begin to discern that you might have a hardened heart, like pharaohs, where you're watching the signs and you're kind of, you've been summoning your own magicians, things that are satisfying to you and finding reasons to resist. Here's what I want you to hear. The highway of salvation runs to you.
[00:34:55] God wants you as part of his people.
[00:35:00] And that's good news. For as you sit here today, you've heard the sign. And how will you respond to it?
[00:35:14] I think as we came to this text with a condition, that we have received God's commission.
[00:35:22] But we often look to our own inadequacy, and we measure faithfulness by response. And we can often be unsettled by the things that we see in the world.
[00:35:32] And I think the text speaks directly to our condition, that when you and I feel inadequate, we look at God's calling on us. We look at his commission. That God has made you what you need to be for the moment that you're in, not by improving you first, but by authorizing you.
[00:35:56] The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is. Is the one that lives in you. And this commission is real.
[00:36:05] That when the counterfeits begin to look really convincing, we need to shift our focus, look away from them and look to the cross.
[00:36:15] The cross has consumed them. The resurrection displays it. There is no power in the world that can replicate what God has done that God did something on that hill outside of Jerusalem that the world can never touch and never replicate.
[00:36:32] He has swallowed up every other counterfeit.
[00:36:36] And when the hearts around you are hard and your faithfulness feels like it's unseen, as it often does, like man, is this really working?
[00:36:44] Is this really being effective? Is this really worth my time and my energy?
[00:36:49] We look at the mission that God makes himself known. That hasn't changed. As we look ahead to Isaiah 19, we see of Egypt eventually worships, the highway is wide open for them. Your obedience is not at random. It's a part of God's great design and his great story that he wants to reveal himself to the world.
[00:37:14] And if you're sitting in Pharaoh's seat this morning, if you are the one who has been watching summoning, living beyond the reach of the gospel's claim on your life, I want you to hear this.
[00:37:31] The way has been made open for you.
[00:37:35] There's always someone you could turn to, any person, any believer here in the room or to a pastor. You could turn to them. And you can know, perhaps for the first time, you can know that Jesus is Savior. Jesus is Lord, and you can know him and find salvation in him. And so the way has been made open to you. God said he would make himself known to the Egyptians. He did. He is making himself known to you right now. Through his Word will you receive what he's given.
[00:38:09] The Lord is making himself known both through his word and a demonstration of his power through inadequate messengers and unstoppable signs. And this is a mission that will not fail. And the question for all of us is what will we do with what we've heard?
[00:38:27] That's the question for us today. And so let's look to him.
[00:38:34] Let's leave here full of confidence that God will work out through each one of us his mission ultimately for his name and his glory. Would you pray with me, Lord? Thank you for this time.
[00:38:53] Thank you for your word.
[00:38:57] I myself am an inadequate messenger.
[00:39:02] So my trust is what has been said today will bear fruit beyond my capacity, beyond any of our capacities, that there's something by your spirit that you're doing in the heart. And I pray it's unsettling.
[00:39:19] I pray you're doing something in our hearts even now, all of us, through your Word.
[00:39:26] And that as we sing in response and as we pray, Lord, that you would continue to show shape and mold, to give us more hearts of flesh that are sensitive to your word and to your will.
[00:39:42] So, Lord, would you do that now?
[00:39:46] Would you bring glory to yourself and change us in Jesus name, amen.
