Exodus: The Ten Plagues Part One

This sermon explores the Ten Plagues (Exodus 7-10), one of the most iconic and disturbing parts of Exodus. The plagues are not random acts of anger but a deliberate act of revelation, raising questions about God's justice, His purpose, and the hardening of Pharaoh's heart.

Scripture References

• Exodus 7:4-5: God's stated purpose: "The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord."
• Exodus 9:15-16: God tells Pharaoh He could have struck him down at once, but "raised you up to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth."
• Exodus 12:12: "On all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments. I am the Lord."
• Exodus 12:38: A "mixed group" (including Egyptians) left with Israel.
• 1 Corinthians 10:19-20: What pagans sacrifice, "they offer to demons and not to God."
• 2 Peter 3:9: "The Lord is not slow... but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance."
• Exodus 15:11: Israel's response: "Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?"

Key Points

1. The Purpose of the Plagues: Revelation The plagues are an act of revelation. God's primary stated purpose is "so that the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord." This revelation comes in three forms: Revelation (Yahweh is superior to all gods), Rescue (He fights for His people), and Retribution (He fights against the wicked oppressor).
2. Why Ten Plagues? A Patient Judgment God explicitly says He could have wiped Pharaoh out with one plague. He "raised Pharaoh up" to demonstrate His power to the entire world. This "slowness" was an act of patience (cf. 2 Peter 3:9). It turned up the volume, allowing more people—even a "mixed multitude" of Egyptians—to witness His power, repent, and join the rescue.
3. A War on the "Gods" of Egypt God wasn't just fighting Pharaoh; He was executing judgment "on all the gods of Egypt." This was a supernatural war against the demonic forces behind the idols (1 Cor. 10:20). Each plague was a targeted attack on a specific Egyptian deity (e.g., Plague 1, Blood, attacked Hapi, the god of the Nile; Plague 2, Frogs, attacked Hecate, the frog-headed fertility goddess).
4. The Hardened Heart The text shows a progression: Pharaoh hardens his own heart, then God hardens it. Pharaoh, a wicked ruler, had already chosen his path. God then sovereignly used that stubbornness for His greater purpose: to display His glory to the nations so that more people could be saved.

Conclusion

The Egyptians weren't the only ones with false gods. We have our own idols: success, money, power, independence, and the god of self. Sometimes, God must make war on our gods, exposing our false securities and tearing down the things we trust in. He does this not to destroy us, but to expose our idols until all we have left is Him. This is where true worship begins.

Calls to Action

1. Identify Your Idols: What "gods" (security, success, self) are you trusting in?
2. See God's Hand: If your "gods" are failing, consider if God is making war on them to draw you to Himself.
3. Worship the One True God: Respond as the Israelites did: "Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?"

Transcript

All right, all right, grab a seat. Hopefully there is one for you.

Grab a seat.

Hey, each week the pastor is here. Radiant Visalia, radiant until airy and radiant Exeter. We get together to study the Bible together and prepare to preach. And so it's been really exciting to get together and have different people contribute different things. We have this teaching team, and instead of Exeter and Larry just mimicking what we're doing. We're studying together, which is a beautiful thing.

Glenn Power is leading that team. So each and every week he's bringing us to the table, giving us stuff to chew on together and helping each one of our pastors wrestle through the text and faithfully preach it. So he's a huge gift to us, and he's preaching here this morning, right after we to tune our attention to the screen.

We're just wanting to help you. Hear about the plagues. Like it was the first time.

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Once I called you brother. Once I got the chance to make you laugh. Was all I ever want to from the start. I see the fire baby now. And even now I wish that God had chose another serving as your foe on his behalf is I sing tonight. One day I sing everything on. Every time. This was my home.

All this pain and devastation. How it tortures me inside. All the innocents who suffer from your stubbornness. And from. I'm just on the witness. Stand up every day I'm just talking to. There's nothing I said, I said, I said I'm sorry. I said, all right. Called brother who I must to call down. Another blow said, I'm scared. I said, I'm so let my people go.

I still the strength of oh.

You go I told brother, how could you have come to hate me? So is this what you wanted? I said stuck, I understand my heart. Be harder. I'm in my mind. I'll hide the truth. Think from this will still be so I will never can your people go to go faster. Can go I will not let you. My people go up.

Oh man.

If you're confused, that was the the song from Prince of Egypt. But clips from Exodus Gods and Kings. Somebody mixed them all together and it was awesome, Parts of it kind of seem like a horror movie, but man, by the end I didn't know if I wanted to cry or cheer. So we are we are talking about the plagues, the ten plagues of the book of Exodus, one of the most iconic, one of the most famous parts of the book of Exodus.

If you had a top three most iconic moments of Exodus, it would probably be, parting of the Red sea, Ten Commandments, and the ten plagues. I mean, these are like the top three of the book of Exodus. Maybe the burning bush should be thrown in there, but these are the top three. But when we think about the Red sea, I think it's just inspiring.

It's exciting. But I mean, as you can tell from that video, when we think about the plagues, it can be a little bit disturbing. It can be a little bit scary. Can make us wonder a little bit about God, who's sending all of these plagues. He's sending all of these intense judgments. And so there's we have questions when we read this story.

It's not maybe as straightforward as the parting of the Red sea, which we, we cheer at. How are we to process the plagues? Was this the justice of God? Was this God in a bad mood? You know, was God just, like, going off that God just loses patience? So he started raining down plagues. Why ten plagues? I mean, why why not one?

When the one gone, the job done, like, couldn't have just sent one plague that pretty much did the trick. And then finally, if you read through the chapters Exodus seven through ten, there's a, repeated reference to Pharaoh's heart being hard, or in some cases, God hardening Pharaoh's heart. And that's there's a lot of questions like, how is that fair?

God hardening Pharaoh's heart? How is that fair? So these are some of the questions we have about this. And we're going to answer some of these this morning. But I want to start off with what God wants us to focus on. What he says is the main point of the plagues. And so Exodus seven is actually a good picture of this Exodus seven, verses four and five.

This is God talking to Moses. And he says, even then Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you. So I will bring down my feast on Egypt. This is the NLT translation. Then I will rescue my forces, my people, the Israelites, from the land of Egypt with great acts of judgment. When I raise my powerful hand and bring out the Israelites, the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.

And I like this passage because it actually has the the three components that I think are the focus of the plagues, the three things that God wants us to see. Every time we see one of these judgments, we see rescue, we see judgment, and we see a revelation of who God is. That last part of the passage says, And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.

That's that is the purpose of the plagues that's most repeated in the text, that they would know that I'm the Lord, that they would know that I'm God. And so our questions matter. But the purpose is to show us what God is like. And so we want to we want to keep that in our mind as we read this story, that this is teaching us something about God.

Every chapter, every passage is teaching us something about the character of God. I like this quote from Tim Chester. He says this about the plagues. He says the plagues are an act of revelation. God sends them so that people might know that he is the Lord, that there is no one else like him, and that his name might be revealed in all the earth.

I just love that phrase, that the plagues are an act of revelation. If the plagues are an act of revelation, if they're revealing something to us about God, what are they revealing? What are they saying? And just to put on the screen the three things that I just said, they are revealing that number one, Yahweh is God. He's superior to every so-called God or authority.

So this is revelation number two. Every plague is revealing to us that Yahweh fights for his people. This is rescue. This is the part we love and we want to see this in the plagues that God is rescuing us. He's fighting for his people. And then finally, this is probably the one that's the most clear from the video we just watched heard.

When we think of the plagues, this is retribution. This is judgment. This is Yahweh fighting against the wicked. He's fighting against the wicked oppressor. So it's all three of these things. Every plague is a revelation, and it's teaching us these things to to keep learning about this, to see it in a different way. I thought a chart would be helpful.

The Bible, it is the it's the living word of God. It's also a story. It's also a literary work of art. And the more you read it and study it, you see that great care was put into the writing of it, and that there are patterns. So I want us to look at some of the patterns just from, from a visual perspective, the ten plagues are actually you can divide them up into three sets of three.

And this isn't just something that we invented. This is something that we're supposed to see. And you'll notice this if you look at the middle of the chart every, the first plague in each cycle of three, it says that Moses goes out and talks to Pharaoh at the Nile, the second of each set of three. It says that Pharaoh goes in and, sorry that Moses goes in and talks to Pharaoh.

And then in the third of each set, there's no warning given. Just God sends the plague. And so because of these literary cues, we can see that we're supposed to see this pattern. There's three sets of three. There's the Nile turns to blood, frogs come dust to gnats, and then the cycle repeats. Moses goes into Pharaoh again at the Nile flies the livestock die.

There's boils. The cycle starts again. Then we have hail, locusts and darkness. There's there's some other cool things on this chart, but that's really what I want to just focus on, is that this middle part that we can see the cycles. The other the other thing that's helpful about seeing it in this way is that the 10th plague stands alone.

There's something unique about it. It's not part of the other nine. There's something special.

Okay. So other questions we have why why ten? Why were there so many plagues? I mean, couldn't God have just stopped after one? Can he have just sent like one really bad one? And that would have done the trick? Well, lucky for us, God explains himself. He answers this exact question in the story in Exodus nine. This is what God says to Pharaoh directly.

He says he kind of says the obvious, for by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. But for this purpose I've raised you up to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed, and all the earth. And so he just says, yeah, of course I could have.

Of course I could have just sent one plague and I could have wiped you off. I have that much power. I'm that much superior to you. And this would have been a revelation to Pharaoh. Pharaoh thought of himself as God. The Egyptians worshiped many gods, but he himself, the Pharaoh, was one of the gods himself. And so this is God saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I am Yahweh.

It it would have only taken me one, but it's for this purpose that I raised you up to show you my power, and so that the whole rest of the world would know who I am. In other words, this thing is way bigger than you, Pharaoh. This is about the nations knowing who I am, how great I am, how powerful I am, how superior I am to every other God, how good I am.

So Pharaoh found himself caught up in a drama that was much bigger than himself. And because of that, God sent plague after plague after plague, ten in total. He was turning up the volume on each one to show a little bit more of who he was, and so more people could be rescued in the long run, the more people could receive a witness.

So before I quoted, Tim Chester, you know, the the plagues are an act of revelation. I'm going to read the full quote now because the second part of it is really helpful. So again, Tim Chester says this. He says the plagues are an act of revelation. God sends them so that people might know that he is the Lord, that there's no one else like him, and that his name might be revealed in all the earth.

And it seems that people did come to know this, even while Pharaoh remained blind to it. Exodus 1238 tells us a mixed group left Egypt, since no other nations other than Israel and Egypt are mentioned in the narrative, it seems that this group included Egyptians, in which case the plagues had acted for salvation as well as judgment, as they revealed to all the great uncompromising, unchangeable truth.

I am the Lord. I love that it's kind of an obscure reference, but it's so helpful showing us that later on a mixed multitude leaves. That means Egyptians as plague after plague happens, Egyptians are looking up, going, I think this guy is really the one true God, and I'm with them. And so Egyptians started leaving their own land to join the Israelites.

The plagues were acting as rescue and they were acting as salvation. Another, another Bible verse that came to mind as I was thinking about this is is a second Peter three nine says, this. It says the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises as some count slowness, but he is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance and in context it's it's talking about.

If you could leave that up for one second in context is talking about the objection that Jesus isn't coming back soon enough, you know, why isn't Jesus coming back sooner? Can't he just take care of this? Just get it over with. Come back now. And Peter says, no, no, no, he's patient. He's actually fulfilling his promises because he wants more people to be saved in the long run.

But speaking of Exodus and the Egyptian plagues, the same truth is occurring where it's like, well, come on, can't we just do one plague and get it done? And God saying, no, no, no, I'm being patient because I want more people to reach repentance. And God knew the perfect number. The maximum number of people would be saved. As God stretches this thing out even further, hardening Pharaoh's heart at times.

As as kind of a side note, but just helpful for us is we're we're going to get into the storyline of the plagues themselves. But we're just we're just getting an overview right now, kind of thinking of processing it together. But it's helpful to realize that actually, the exact same thing happened with Jesus and his healings as Jesus was healing people.

Not everyone was responding with the soft heart. The healings of Jesus were causing some people to come closer to God and soften their hearts, and it was causing other people to harden their hearts. It's the exact same as the book of Exodus. I mean, the Pharisees are the prime example of this. When Jesus healed person after person, were the Pharisees like, oh praise God, thank you.

Another person is healed now. They were finding ridiculous reasons why Jesus shouldn't healing. More like nope, sorry, it's the Sabbath now. Sorry you can't heal this guy this way at this time they were seeing the same revelation of God, but they were responding differently. This is how the human heart works. We all want signs and wonders, but we don't realize that it's actually the state of our heart that matters.

The same sign and wonder can can cause one person to fall on his knees and worship God, and another person to harden his heart and rail against God. This is what we're seeing in the book of Exodus. Okay, one other thing I want to bring up before we we get into the the plagues themselves, is that God was doing one more thing through all of these, and he was making war against the gods of Egypt.

Now, if you're if your paradigm is just completely materialistic, you know, not supernatural, that's not going to make sense to you. It's going to be like, well, why did God need to make war against the idols and statues that the Egyptians were worshiping? That's that's unnecessary. But this is what God himself says. Exodus 1212. He says he's talking about the 10th plague here.

He says, 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 judgments. I am the Lord. And he actually says this one of their time in the book of numbers. He says, I'm I executed judgment against the gods of Egypt.

So what's what's going on here? Why did God need to make war against these idols? Wasn't just showing his glory enough? Well, we get some insight about this from the Apostle Paul in first Corinthians. Paul's talking about idols as well. And Paul says this about idols. He says, what do I imply, then, that food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything?

No. So? So Paul acknowledges, yeah, idols are nothing. They're just little wooden statues. It's they're nothing except they're not nothing. Because he goes on to say this. No, I imply that what pagan sacrifice they offered to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. And so the principle is this as the Egyptians were worshiping these idols and these gods, they were actually interacting with demonic forces as they were doing so again, if that seems crazy, this is the world view of the Bible.

It's a supernatural worldview. And so as as God is making war against the quote unquote gods of Egypt, he is actually making spiritual war against real demonic forces over the land of Egypt. At one point in Jesus's ministry, he said this I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. And I love that phrase because I think I imagined that's what was happening as God was making war against the the gods of Egypt.

That Satan is falling like lightning again, that principalities, demonic authorities are falling like lightning, clearing the way so there can be a jailbreak. So the Israelites and all the believers can walk out free. So there is divine war happening behind the story of the Exodus. It's not just what we see on the natural. All right. You guys ready to get into the the story itself?

All right. This is this is the fun part okay. So before the ten start, there's a bit of a preview. There's a prelude. All right. So the prelude is this. And I can't you know every plague has like 1020 verses underneath it. So I don't have time to read it all. So I have to summarize a little bit here and tell the story.

But the prelude is that Aaron Staff turns into a serpent and swallows the sorcerer staff. So there's this little mini showdown before the big showdown in the Book of Exodus, and Aaron throws down his staff just like God told him, and Moses turns into a snake. It's awesome. And here's what's even more surprising to some people. The sorcerers did the same thing.

They threw their staffs down and their staffs turned into serpents. Now, this was not like a magician sleight of hand, you know, this was not like one moment he's got the staff in his hand and he's like, look over here and then throws a snake on the ground like, that's not what's going on here. We just talked about the supernatural worldview of the Bible is that there's demonic forces behind these Egyptian gods and these Egyptians, sorcerers and magicians.

So their staffs actually turned into snakes by magic. Again, I know that puts us a little bit on tilt, but but this is what the text is telling us. But this is not the best part of the story. The best part of the story is that has all these little snakes are crawling around. You know, Aaron snake, you got sorcerer.

Snake. Aaron snake begins to swallow all of the other snakes. And it's just this it's just this awesome display of God saying, yeah, I am, I am the Lord. Like, there's more where this came from and this, this little story becomes, a preview or a microcosm of the whole thing. It's a battle of two supernatural sources, but one is going to swallow the other one completely, and it's actually a foretaste of the very last judgment, if you think about it.

How did how did the Egyptian army and Pharaoh eventually die? The Red sea swallows them. This is God giving them a preview and saying, this is what will happen if you don't soften your heart. Okay, now, as soon as I say that though, if you don't soften your heart, we have to acknowledge this other elephant in the room, which is that there are many verses that say God hardened the heart of Pharaoh.

Now how is that fair? You know, how can God harden the heart of Pharaoh and then judge him for it? Like, oh, your hearts hard. Sorry I got to judge you. I'm hard. Harden it. But yeah, I'm going to judge you for it. As in, how does this work? So I'm just gonna give like a minute on this okay.

So I know this is going to be unsatisfactory to a lot of you. There's a lot of good resources out there on this. But there's two things we need to see, actually, before the two things in the text itself, some references say Pharaoh hardened his heart. Some of the references say God hardened Pharaoh's heart and then some of the references, just to keep it confusing, say, and his heart was hardened.

It's kind of ambiguous, like what is going on there? So what are what are we to make of this? Okay, the two things that we need to see. The first is that Pharaoh is a, a wicked ruler who has already hardened his heart against God before the drama of the plagues occurs. Okay, that's the point of the verses that say Pharaoh hardened his own heart.

It's showing us that that Pharaoh has already chosen his fate. All right. And that's important for us to see that this is not this is not God forcing somebody who otherwise would have repented like Pharaoh was really a good guy, but God hardened his heart and just, man, he can't he can't repent because God forced him in this.

That's not what's going on. Pharaoh has already chosen the direction of his heart. Okay. Secondly, we have to see that this is a very unique circumstance. This is not meant to be a picture of what God, what God does to people for the eternal salvation or their eternal condemnation. That's not what this story is about, right? This is a world leader who's already chosen his fate.

He's already hardened his heart, and God is further hardening it so he can increase his glory before the nations. This is a very unique circumstance. Here's here's a quote from Douglas Stuart on this. He says it like this God's causing Pharaoh to be stubborn is simply not presented in the narrative as a general permanent phenomenon. So this is not about eternal election or rejection, but rather is an ad hoc action of God temporary in nature, i.e. Pharaoh's mind was not permanently made stubborn so that he had no ability to repent later in life, and limited to the special purpose of humiliating the Egyptians and their false religion.

So the bottom line is that for somebody who has already hardened their own heart and chosen to be wicked, they've already chosen to set themself against God. God has the sovereign right to further harden them, to move them around like a chess piece on a chessboard, to increase his glory, to further the drama so more people can know him.

Okay, so let's, let's, let's go on with the plagues. Plague number one, God turns the Nile in all the water of Egypt into blood. Now, with each one, I'm just going to summarize it and I'm just going to give a couple of observations. So so it won't take too long. And the first observation is that if you read through the commentaries on the plagues, there are some commentaries that desperately try to come up with natural reasons for these plagues happening.

Like, okay, so the the Nile turned red, so there's red algae that probably started to spread all throughout the River Nile. And because of this red algae, you know, the next plague frogs probably started to jump out of the Nile because there is so much red algae. And then the frogs started to swarm the land. And then after the frogs died, then the the flies and the gnats come.

And then because there are so many flies and gnats, there's disease. So the cows start dying. You know, they kind of like stretch it into something that could have normally happened, you know, just average year in Egypt. Nile's turning red frogs. It's like one Egyptian turns to another is like, oh, the gnats are back every year. You know, a plague of gnats.

Man. The problem is that when you when you read through the text, if you take it seriously what it says, it doesn't allow for that kind of reading at all. But here's one example I could give five. But here's one example. In Exodus 720, it says this in the sight of Pharaoh.

In the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants, he lifted up the staff and struck the water in the Nile, and all the water and the Nile turned into blood. There is blood throughout all the land of Egypt. So it's very clear that he lifts up his staff as everyone is watching again in this moment, God is all about the drama.

Not always. You know, there are many books of the Bible where he's working in low key, mundane ways, and that's actually his normal mode of operation. But in Exodus, he's all about the drama. And so as everyone's watching, Aaron lifts his staff, hits the water, and then it begins to turn to blood. It's like, man, that red algae really crept out there really fast right when he hit the Nile.

That's crazy. No, no, no, that's not what's happening. The the Nile smelled like blood. It tasted like blood. And also, there are other references that say that in the canals and in the buckets, the water turned to blood. This is not red algae. This is God supernaturally turning the water into blood to make a point. God is, making war against the Egyptian gods.

Like we've already said. He's also making war against the source of, Egypt's prosperity. The Nile was the source of Egypt's economy. And so this is a devastating a blow blow to their economy that it turns to blood. But then, second, there was a God, god named Hapi, who was specifically associated with the Nile. And so this is God declaring war against Hapi, the god of the Nile.

We have a we have a picture of happy. See? There he is. He's he's floating on the Nile. Okay, let's move on. The second plague, God sends a plague of frogs that covered the land of Egypt. Okay. Continuing with God's war against the Egyptian gods, there was another god named Hecate, a fertility goddess who had the head of a frog.

And so I got a couple of pictures of her cats as well. There's a there's a statue, an ancient statue of a cat. And then the next one is a little bit more is somebody is drawing. So it's a human body and a frog head. And so as this plague of frogs begins to spread across the land, all the Egyptians would have known exactly what God is doing.

He's saying I'm God, not Hecate. I'm the Lord. What's also interesting is that the Egyptians had a law that it was illegal to kill a frog because of the the goddess to cat. And so think of the irony. Their land is now filled with frogs, but because of their law, they're forbidden to kill a frog. So it's actually a really good picture of idolatry.

We end up with way more than what we anticipated. We're surrounded by what we worship without the ability to to get rid of it. Okay, plague number three God creates gnats from the dust and they cover the land. So the word out there, it could also be lice. We're not sure exactly. I think most translations go with gnats.

And, this is what the magician, you know, the magicians have been keeping up with Aaron and Moses this whole time. They they end up turning a little bit of the the water to blood as well. They end up making their own frogs as well, which is really funny when you think about it. Like, you guys are not helping.

You're making we're in the middle of a plague of frogs and you're making more frogs. This is not what we need, right now. So finally when we get to the gnats, this is they're done. They can't. I love this in Exodus 818 and 19, it says the magicians tried by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they could not.

So there were gnats on man and beast. Then the magician said to Pharaoh, this is the finger of God. But Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said, now this, this is amazing, that by the third plague they have these magicians and sorcerers who were revered in the land of Egypt.

I mean, these were their most respected people, these magicians and sorcerers, and they've reached their limit, and they admit that they've reached their limit. Okay, this is not a this is not a game that's going into 11 innings. Okay? This is a game that on the third inning, one team forfeits. Team sorcerers say we're done and they walk off the field.

That's what's happening right here. This is not a close game. I love that they call it the finger of God to like of all the things they could have said, it's not like this is this strong arm of God. It's like they acknowledge this is his finger, this is the bear. This is just the tip of what God can do.

And they were right because there were seven more judgments where God was about to reveal his hand more than just his finger. There's something about God that he loves to put the declaration of truth in the mouth of wicked sorcerers and wicked kings. He does this all throughout the Bible. Okay, plague number four God sends flies to Egypt, but not to Goshen.

Okay, so we're on number four. So the the cycle starting again. Remember there's the cycles of three. And probably the most important thing about this plague number four is that this is where God begins to make a distinction between his people and the people of Egypt. This is what it says in Exodus 822 and 23, he says, but on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, where my people dwell, so that no swarms of flies shall be there.

That you may know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth. Thus I will put a division between my people in your people tomorrow this sign shall happen now this is really difficult for a any of the Egyptians at the time who are trying to explain this away and be. This is also really difficult for common commentators of our time, who are trying to say that this is something natural.

You have flies that are covering the land of Egypt, and nothing in the land of Goshen. So if you're living in the land of Goshen, where all the Israelites were, you see, just like a wall of flies, nothing in your land plague in their land. I mean, this is God showing. There's no mistake what's happening here. If the plagues are a revelation like we talked about the beginning, then what?

What is this one teaching us about God? And this is this is God teaching us that he makes a distinction between his own and the world, not because of our goodness, not because we're I mean, did the Israelites earn that? No, the distinction is because of his mercy. And so for those of us who call on the name of Jesus, there's a distinction between the way God treats us and the way God treats the world.

His his favor, his smile is upon us, and that's open for anybody who calls on the name of Jesus. His mercy. The last plague that I won't, say much about this is this is God sending death and disease upon the livestock and there there were actually several Egyptian gods that were represented by by bulls or livestock. And just one of them.

I have a picture here of, eight. This the bull god, an Egyptian bowing down and worshiping. Eight this the bull god. And you can you can imagine that at this moment, as all of the livestock were dying, which was like this God thing, this was like this thing that probably a lot of Egyptians were not bowing down and worshiping at this at that moment.

Okay. We're going to we're going to stop there. And next week we're going to we're going to finish the plagues. We're going to do the end of them. But I just want to end by saying that I think when we read through this, hopefully we can see how relevant this is just because it teaches us about God. I mean, that alone is enough for this to be really valuable.

But also, this is relevant because the Egyptians weren't the only ones with false gods. Just because we don't worship a cat or atheist doesn't mean that we don't have our own gods. Today. We have our gods of success, money, youthful attractiveness, power. These are the gods that we worship today, probably more than anything else. The God of self, this is the God of our land is that I am the the King of my own world.

I, I decide what I do, but what happens when God makes war against our gods like he did with Egypt? What happens? What happens if your business suddenly tanks? And the income that you put all your trust in is suddenly, suddenly gone? It's it's evaporated. What happens when you have a health crisis and your normal indulgences? You can't eat and drink like you used to.

And I'm not saying that every time this happens, this is God moving in and exposing our idols and gods. Sometimes bad things happen for other reasons, but sometimes it is.

And just with this story, when I was, when I was 20 years old, I left home for the first time to to go to university. I went down south to Vanguard University and at this point in my life, I had just turned back to the Lord. And so praying, talking to God was just kind of a new thing in my life.

And suddenly, within weeks of going to this university, my life completely fell apart. And here, here, here's what I mean. One of the main reasons I went to this college was so I could serve like my mom wanted me to go to a Christian school, and I wanted to serve. So I thought, when, when I'll go to a college, that's both of those things.

Within four weeks of of starting the school, I was boxing with my roommate, which sounds way more manly than what actually happened because he said, hey, do you want a box? I said, sure, I threw a punch in his head. He blocked it and he hit me one time in my side and I fell over and my ribs were bruised.

For the next six months.

So with bruised ribs, I couldn't lay down on my surfboard anymore. So the whole reason I went to this college was to surf, and now I can't surf for the next six months. In the same two weeks, my car breaks down. I can't go anywhere. I can't go down the street. You know, my friends were at the college ten minutes away, so my God of Independence was now exposed.

At this time of my life, drums were like the most important thing to me. Maybe, you know, besides surfing, maybe. And when I get there, I brought my whole drums in my car. And when I show up, I'm like, where can I store my drums? And they go, you can't, because you're not a music major. And I had can't put them anywhere in this whole college.

Like, no, sorry. And you can't play any of our drums either, because you're not a music major. So no car, no surfing, no drums. Finally, at this time I was also smoking cigarets, which, if you're 18, that's like a 90s version of vaping cigarets. And I ran out of money and cigarets. So no car, no surfing, no drums, no cigarets.

And I was railing against God like, what are you doing? God was exposing all of my idols. He was exposing all of my gods. Who's making war against them? There was a divine war happening over my life, and I was like, what am I going to do with all my time? And it just so happened that I was taking a New Testament class where we were required to read the whole New Testament.

So I'm like, well, I guess I'll do my homework. And so I started reading through the New Testament and I start just having conversations with God and I. I start to worship because I had nothing else to do. And so in this season, I, I got to know God. And this season ended up being pivotal. My whole my life ended up changing after this year, but it wouldn't have happened if God hadn't made war against my gods.

He exposed them. I didn't learn to worship by learning how to sing or learning a new song. I learned to worship when God exposed and tore down all of my idols, and all I had left was God. Let's stand. I want to read one last verse. This is what happened with the Israelites after ten plagues and a Red sea parting.

This is the response of the Israelites in Exodus 1511. They say this. They say, who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome and glorious deeds, doing wonders. And we just say, do it in us. God, expose our false gods. Teach us to worship. Pray that you'd convince every heart here today, including my own, that you're the one true God.

Yes. Amen.