Exodus: The Ten Plagues Part Two

This sermon continues the study of the Ten Plagues, examining plagues six through ten (Exodus 9-11). It moves from the boils and hail to the climactic 10th plague, the death of the firstborn. The message connects the plagues to God's judgment on the gods of Egypt, their prophetic fulfillment in the book of Revelation, and the urgency it creates for our own lives.

Scripture References

• Exodus 9:8-9: The plague of boils.
• Exodus 9:18-21: The plague of hail, where some Egyptians "feared the word of the Lord" and were saved.
• Exodus 11:4-7: The announcement of the final plague, the death of the firstborn.
• Revelation 8:7-8: The end-times judgments echoing the plagues (hail, fire, blood).
• James 4:14: "What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes."
• 2 Corinthians 5:10: The judgment seat of Christ for believers.
• Revelation 20:11-15: The Great White Throne judgment for unbelievers.
• Philippians 1:21-23: "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."

Key Points

1. The Plagues Get Personal The plagues intensify and become more personal. They began by attacking Egypt's economy (Nile, livestock), but the sixth plague, boils, is the first to directly attack human flesh. God is "turning up the volume" of His revelation.
2. God's Heart: An Invitation in Judgment Even in severe judgment, God offers a way of escape. During the plague of hail (Plague 7), God gives a warning to bring livestock inside. The text explicitly states that some of Pharaoh's servants "feared the word of the Lord" and were saved, showing God's desire to rescue anyone who will listen.
3. The War on Gods: Defeating Ra The plagues were a systematic humiliation of Egypt's gods. The ninth plague, darkness, was the most significant. It was a direct assault on Ra, the sun god, who was the chief deity. Since Pharaoh was seen as the human embodiment of Ra, this plague was a total humiliation of both the god and the king.
4. The Final Exodus: Plagues in Revelation The plagues of Exodus are a preview of the "Final Exodus" described in the book of Revelation. The end-times judgments use the exact same imagery: hail, fire, blood, darkness, and sores. What God did to one nation that hated Him, He will one day do on a global scale.
5. Your Personal End Times Whether or not we are in the "last generation," every individual is in their own "personal end times." Life is a mist (James 4:14). The two most important days of our lives are the day we respond to the Gospel and the day we stand before Jesus.

Conclusion

The tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, is the climax and the clearest picture of the Gospel in the Old Testament. Judgment is real and coming for all. But God provided a way out: the blood of an unblemished lamb. Those who applied the blood to their doorposts were saved.

This truth gives believers a "win-win" perspective on mortality. As Kathleen Candy, a beloved member of this church, famously said while battling cancer, "Either way, I win." This echoes Paul: "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."

Calls to Action

1. Acknowledge Your Mortality: Recognize that your life is a mist and you are not guaranteed tomorrow.
2. Prepare to Meet God: Ensure you are "covered by the blood of the Lamb" (Jesus) so you are prepared for your "personal end times."
3. Live with a "Win-Win" Attitude: Adopt the perspective of Philippians 1:21, knowing that for a believer, death is not a loss but a gain.

Transcript

Hey. So we are, we are in the middle of an Exodus series. My name is Glenn Power, and I started the plagues last week. I started it with a cool video, which is a way better intro than, rebuking you guys for talking for too long. But we are going to continue on. If you remember, we we just did five of them.

There's ten. We're going to finish them today, and I just I just wanted to say that, it may look like I'm wearing the exact same clothes as last Sunday, but this is a different shirt. It's the same color, but this is the long sleeve version of the shirt I wore last week. And so with from this angle, with this sweater, it looks all the same, but it's a different shirt.

So I wanted you guys to know that this plague six.

I was, I was studying this week. I do, I do sub in, the local high schools for a few days a month, and, there's actually so many flies in the high school classroom that I was in that I couldn't read. And I was trying to read about the plague of flies. And there are flies buzzing around me.

So I actually went to the office. This is not a made up story. I went to the office and I asked for a fly swatter and she said, I'm sorry, everyone is using their fly swatter right now because we have a fly issue. And I thought plague. So you got Golden West right now. And sure enough, as I walk back to the classroom, every teacher I saw like had a fly swatter in one hand and this is crazy.

Stuff's happening in Visalia right now, guys. Okay. For real now. Plague six, we're jumping into it. So the sixth one, God transforms a cloud of soot into boils on man and beast. Okay, I'm going to read a passage from this.

Exodus nine eight and nine says, take handfuls of soot from the kiln and let Moses throw them in the air in the sight of Pharaoh. It shall become fine dust all over the land of Egypt, and become boils, breaking out and sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt. And so remember each plague, there's actually, ten, 15, 20 verses that describe what happens in the storyline.

And God talks, Moses talks, Pharaoh talks. Sometimes there's a lot. And so we're just I'm just kind of summarizing it and then giving a little bit of commentary on each one so we can move through it. And if you remember last week we talked about the three main things that God is doing in each one of these judgments.

He's showing us that there's no one like the Lord. That's his revelation. Secondly, he's saving as many people as possible. That's his rescue. And then thirdly, he is bringing his holy justice on those who harden their hearts against him, and that's his retribution. So remember, the plagues are an act of revelation. That's what Tim Shuster said. And every plague is a revelation of what God is like.

He's rescuing and there's retribution involved for this one. The the plague of boils. We'll just notice that they're getting more and more intense, and they're getting more and more personal. This is the first one that touches human flesh. So up until now, God has come against the economy of Egypt. Remember, he turned the Nile into blood. That was like there that was their life source.

I mean, Egypt is all it. It's all about the Nile. Their economy comes from the Nile. And so that was an assault against their economy. The the livestock were killed. That's an assault against their money, their finances. And we talked last week about how God was making a holy war against the gods of Egypt. So in this one, though, it gets more personal because now it's starting to touch people's bodies.

Now it's it's touching the Egyptians bodies. So each plague, it's remember he's turning up the volume. He's he's trying to get his message across for anyone who will listen. Okay. The next one. Plague number seven. God rains hail and fire down on Egypt. Exodus 918 through 21 says this. This is God talking says, behold, about this time tomorrow I will cause very heavy hail to fall.

Such as never has been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now. Now therefore send get your livestock and all that you have in the field into safe shelter for every man and beast that is in the field and is not brought home, will die when the hail falls on them. Then whoever feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh, hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses.

But whoever did not pay attention to the word of the Lord left his slaves and his livestock in the field. And I like this one. I don't know if it's okay to say that I like one of the plagues, but I, I like I like the account of this one. That's this. Better to say it that way. I like the account of this one because it shows God's heart.

Again, he he gives an invitation. If you listen to my word, you can actually be saved from this. You can actually grab all of your stuff, your livestock, yourself, and you can get inside and you can save yourself and you can save your property. And the most shocking part is that some people didn't listen even after whatever this number seven, even after six plagues, still people were like, nah, it's okay.

I mean, it just shows the the hardness, the stubbornness of the human heart, not just Pharaoh, but I mean, probably all of us could relate to that a little bit. Just the stubbornness of nah, I know, yeah, I've seen six and Moses is called his shot each time before it, but now I'm good. I don't want to listen to that guy.

I'm going to stick with my gods. So this this is what we're dealing with. But I just love this picture of God's heart where he's he still opens his arms and says, hey, if you want to be saved, there's still time. Okay? The next one is plague eight. God sends the locusts. This is actually one of the longest accounts.

I think it's, close to 30 verses. So the plague of hail and the play of the locusts are super long. So there's a lot going on, a lot of dialog, a lot of revelation about who God is. But we're just summarizing it the way I wanted to summarize this one is a little bit different. I wanted to read a quote from a fiction novel about a locust plague, because it just kind of brings to life what's going on here, because sometimes the Bible is just so terse and abrupt.

Right? It's like, and then the locust came next plague. It's like what? Like what happened? What did that look like? And, how many of you guys read little House on the Prairie in fourth grade? Oh, wow. Way less. I had to, So little House on the Prairie is by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and it's a series of books that were actually based on her life.

And in one of her books on On the Banks of Plum Creek, she describes a locust invasion that actually changed the course of her life and her family's life. They almost they almost didn't recover from it. And so I want to read an excerpt from that.

So it goes like this, plunk! Something hit Laura's head and fell to the ground. She looked down and saw the largest grasshopper she had ever seen. Then huge brown grasshoppers were hitting the ground all around her, hitting her head and her face and her arms. They came flooding down like hail. The cloud was hailing grasshoppers. The cloud was grasshoppers.

Their bodies hid the sun and made darkness. Their thin, large wings gleamed and glittered. The rasping whirring of their wings filled the whole air, and they hit the ground and the house with the noise of the hailstorm. Laura tried to beat them off. Their claws clung to her skin and her dress. They looked at her with bulging eyes, turning their heads.

This way and that. Mary ran screaming into the house. Grasshoppers covered the ground. There was not one bare bit to step on. Laura had to step on grasshoppers, and they smashed, squirming and slimy under her feet. Then Laura heard another sound, one big sound made of tiny nips, snips and knives the grasshoppers were eating. You could hear the millions of jaws biting and chewing.

Day after day. The grasshoppers kept on eating. They ate all the wheat and the oats. They ate every green thing, all the garden and all the prairie grass. The whole prairie was bare and brown. Millions of brown grasshoppers were low over it. Not a green thing was in sight anywhere. So this is just a graphic depiction of what was going on.

And and in the book the the farm is, is completely ruined. All of the crops are gone and they actually spend months. They come to the edge of starvation. The father has to travel hundreds of miles to to find another job. And and actually, interestingly, in the book, it all changed one night when the mom was reading the Exodus account to the kids, and they read The Plague of the locusts, and they all prayed together as a family.

And the next night, a huge rain, fall came and all the crops started to grow back. So just, just a good depiction of what's going on here. It brings it to life a little bit. Okay, plague number nine, we're getting close to the end. Darkness covers the land for three days. Okay, with this one, I want to come back to the Egyptian gods.

All right? Remember, we did that last week. We kind of matched up the plague with different gods that God was targeting and warring against in these plagues. And this is actually my my favorite one. So in this Egyptian pantheon, I've heard, I've heard before, there's over 50 gods and goddesses in the Egyptian pantheon. The most important one was the sun god.

Ray, or some people call it RA. So the sun god was thought to be the creator. So he had a, ranking order over the other gods and goddesses. Egypt. And also, interestingly, Pharaoh was thought to be the human embodiment of RA, the sun god. So he was at one time he was the son of RA, but he was also the human representation of RA, which what does that remind you of?

I mean, Pharaoh really was the Antichrist character in this story. And so I have a picture of Rau here.

One of the one of the ancient pictures RA had, a bird head. I think that's the sun over his head. Here's a quote from Tim Chester describing some of the mythology behind RA each day. Re or RA, the sun god was thought to sail through the celestial sea in a boat. Then at night, he would descend into the netherworld before rising victorious again with the dawn.

But during the ninth plague, he did not rise. Those three days of darkness were a clear sign that he had been defeated. And so isn't that crazy? Knowing the mythology that the Egyptians saw every sunrise as their creator god RA, rising victoriously like here, was proof that RA was still in charge. The sun comes up again, and then the ninth plague comes.

Three days. No RA, nobody's coming, nobody's rising. And member. This is the the main one of their gods. So this is like God taking down the Goliath of all their gods. Yahweh had not just undermined the nation. He had systematically singled out and defeated and humiliated each one of the Egyptian gods and goddesses.

Okay, the last one, plague number ten, is death of the firstborn. And of course, this is the most intense. And we're going to have some more time either, next week or in a few weeks to talk more about the Passover, which is related to this one. So I'm just barely going to touch it. But I think more more will come.

Exodus 11 four through seven God says this about midnight. I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die from the first born of Pharaoh, who sits on his throne, even to the first born of the slave girl who is behind the hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle.

There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast. That you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. And for this one again, there's so much we could say about this is that this is the climax of the plagues.

Remember, there were three sets of three, and that left this one standing alone. This is the 10th one. There's something unique. There's something very severe about this one. But the one thing I want to point out is that, again, God makes a distinction between Israel and Egypt. And as we talked about last week, it wasn't just based on nation or ethnicity, it was based on faith.

Egyptians were invited into this thing if they wanted to. And during the 10th plague, you guys remember that the this is where the Passover was instituted. This is where God invited the Israelites to to take an unblemished lamb and slaughter it. And paint the blood over the top of their doorpost. And when the destroyer came, this angel of death, they would go out and bring death to the firstborn, when it would see the blood, it would pass by the house.

This is one of the clearest gospel pictures in the Old Testament. Israel, Egypt, all of us alike. We are under judgment because of our sins, and yet because of an unblemished lamb, because of the blood, the the atoning death of that lamb. We're saved. We're protected. There's salvation in the lamb. This is what Passover. This is what the 10th plague teaches us.

We're going to end the storyline right there for now. And I just want to I want to comment on this a little bit. Just remember last week we talked about takeaways from the plagues, talked about some of the ways that this is it may not seem immediately relevant to our lives unless you're at Golden West and there's a plague of flies, but otherwise it feels like, well, what does this have to do with my life?

And I shared a story of a time where I felt like God was making war against my own personal gods and idols in my life, and he was doing it for my freedom. He was doing it for my salvation, for my rescue. We've talked about how this shows us the heart of God, and that's the meaning. The most relevant and helpful thing there is.

But I want to draw out one more thing that's relevant about the story of the plagues. That might be a little bit surprising. And that's the the the book of Revelation actually teaches that the plagues are coming again. If you if you look at Jesus in his first coming in the incarnation, he comes very different than the way God revealed himself from the plagues, didn't he?

Humble, discrete. Really, you know, just a few shepherds know that he's there. But in the Exodus, God shows himself off. He shows off his power, his glory, his miracles. The Book of Revelation teaches that God is going to come that way again, that right now we live in the in-between time. We're where we have time to give our allegiance to Jesus, to to paint the blood over our own, our own doorpost and be saved.

But God is coming again with judgments. I want to give a, just a couple pictures of this from the book of revelation. First, this, Philip Riken, he's a commentator on the book of Exodus, and he makes this connection to. And I just I want you to see that this is not some stretch. This is not like, oh, Glenn really is like into the book of revelation.

And so of course, he brings revelation again. I mean, that's a little bit true, but when you read through the book of Revelation, then the connection is clear. Any first century Jew reading that document would have been like, it's the Exodus, it's the Exodus happening again. It's the final Exodus. In fact. And so Phillip Reich says this. He says, in the same way that God punished the Egyptians for their worship of other gods, he is planning to punish unbelievers at the end of history.

In his mercy, he will give them one final opportunity to repent of their sins and believe in Jesus Christ. Now here's a couple of examples from revelation. Revelation eight verse seven says this. The first angel blew his trumpet, and there followed hail and fire mixed with blood, and these were thrown upon the earth, and a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.

What does that remind you of? Seventh plague. It's it's hail again. But what revelation shows is it happens again on a global scale, not just one nation that hates God, but on a world that hates God. Another verse here, revelation eight eight, the second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood.

A third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. So what's this one? It's the first plague, remember? The Nile turned to blood. Now we have a third of the seas turning to blood. So again, it's what happened in Egypt. Egypt? The exodus happening on a global scale. This is God's preparation for the return of Jesus.

It's dramatic. He's displaying his glory. He's doing it again. What he did in the book of Exodus. There's so many other connections we can make in the book of Exodus, but we just don't have time. If we just kept on reading through revelation together, we would see a plague of darkness, a plague of locusts, plague of death, more plagues of blood, plagues of sores and boils, and even another final plague of hell.

But in revelation 16, the hailstones are said to be 100 pounds each. So again, it's the Exodus, but on a bigger scale, it's it's the last one. It's the final exodus. We also see in the book of revelation that God makes a distinction between his people and the ones that hardened their heart against him, just like the book of Exodus.

And I've already made the connection between, Pharaoh and the Antichrist. The Book of Revelation actually shows a counterfeit trinity. There's a there's a false prophet, there's a beast, and there's a dragon. And we see each one of these in the Exodus story. You remember the sorcerers instead of the sorcerers. We have a final false prophet at the end of the age.

Instead of Pharaoh, we have a beast. We have this human embodiment of evil that sets himself up against God Almighty. And then finally, instead of RA, the sun God and the gods of Egypt, we have the God of this age, Satan himself. We have the serpent. And in this final exodus, all of them are defeated instead of. In the story of Exodus, we have Pharaoh, the sorcerers.

They're thrown into the Red sea, and we'll read about that in a couple of weeks. In the book of Revelation, we have the beast, the false prophet, and the serpent himself thrown into the lake of fire and the people of God. Instead of entering into another wilderness, we enter into our eternal Promised land forever. It's the. It's the final and best exodus.

So Exodus gives us a preview of the end. And I know as soon as we talk about revelation and the end, there's all these questions that come up like, okay, are we going to be here during all those plagues? Are they literal? When is it going to happen? Or are we in the end times? Are we in the last generation?

And I don't want to talk about any of that this morning, actually, I love talking about that. But we're not going to talk about any of that this morning. All I want to point out today, besides this huge connection between Exodus and the final exodus at the end of the age, is that whether or not we are in the last generation, whether or not we are in the end times, each one of us is in our own personal end times because we only have one life to live.

We just have one life. Whether Jesus comes back next year, 100 years from now or longer, we have one life to live. This is how James says it in James 14. He says, yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life for? You are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

And then here's a passage in Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes 912 says this for a man does not know his time like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare. So the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them. What both of these passages are pointing out is that we really don't know the future with all of its details, do we?

We have prophecies in the Bible. They give us glimpses and pictures, but none of us know our own personal end. And we could look at maybe exceptions to this. You know, the Apostle Paul seemed to know that he, with his time was coming. Sometimes people are on a hospital bed and they know that their time is coming. But we are warned in these passages to not count on that.

We're warned that we really don't know. We have a teaching team where we talk about these texts ahead of time and how we're going to approach them. And and I was talking with Ralph Garcia this last week, the pastor of Exeter. And Ralph is, he was and is, a police detective. And so as part of his detective work, he has to investigate crimes.

And he was sharing with me the he'll he'll go back to surveillance videos. And a lot of times he's investigating, a really serious crime, maybe a murder crime, maybe where somebody actually loses their life. And Ralph is tasked to go back and watch the video of that person right before they were killed or right before this tragic event happened.

And he said it was just it's just really, it really sticks with you is the way he said it, watching this person on camera and thinking, this is the last few minutes of their life and they don't know it. He was describing one person who just whistling, just joyfully going about his day before this violent crime happened.

Just a month ago. And I won't share details because I just want to be respectful. But my my own aunt and uncle suffered a violent home break in and my aunt lost her life in the home in my my uncle did not. We don't know. We don't know. And we all hope that it's not going to end like that.

It's not going to be a violent end. But we really don't know. These are they. They were believers. They knew the Lord. Now, the the point of all of this is I, I'm I'm pushing us to think about the day of our death. And that's not very comfortable, is it? It's not very fun to think about the day of our own death.

And I know, I know that, I might sound like a billboard up here, you know, like, are you prepared to meet God? You know, I drive on the five in Southern California, and there's that billboard, like, are you prepared to meet God? But the reality is that the church is supposed to be a place where we do this, where we talk about things like this, where we move past the superficial and we talk about the the fact that we're mortal, the each one of us is going to stand before God or like Ecclesiastes, these are like James say, we don't know the future.

We don't know what tomorrow may bring, may be a happy surprise. It may be the end of our life. And we don't know that. Professor Tyler Vander Wheel of the Harvard School of Public Health, and you'll see the connection here in a second. But he wrote that regular church attendance is so good for your physical health that it would be considered a miracle drug.

So, Rebecca McLaughlin, she's a writer. She says this in an article, she's talking about this study from Harvard. And she says in my book, I reckon with the data on the mental and physical health benefits of weekly church attendance. These results can't be explained away simply by social contact. As Vander Wiel explains, social support is critical. Yet this accounts for only about a quarter of the effect.

The religious element seems to be vital. Parents who join the same people each week to cheer for their kids sports team won't see the same level of benefit. We humans seem to thrive when we worship together. So this is this is fascinating that and I've I've preached actually several times on the epidemic of loneliness and how important it is to have friends and community.

But in this study, they're saying it's critical to have community, and it's critical to have friends. But you don't see the same health benefit as gathering together with people to worship. It's specifically religious gatherings. Why is that? And I think one of the reasons is that we when we gather together at events like this, we worship God and we tackle the big issues of life.

We talk about God, redemption, salvation, death, judgment. This is the place where we push past the superficial. Everything in your week this week will push you to think about the immediate. Now, think about now. Think about what you can do for yourself. Now. Think about next week at most, you know, maybe next month at most. But church is where we look at the end of our life of all things.

And the good news again, is that we don't have to be afraid of that because of the blood of Jesus. We don't grieve as those who have no hope, and we can actually look towards the day of our own death with faith, with courage, and with peace. That's the promise of the gospel. Just going a couple more minutes into this.

There seem to be two different judgment days in the Scripture. There's the believer's judgment, and then there's the unbelievers judgment. Paul gives us a picture of this in second Corinthians 510. He says, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each 1st May receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

Secondly, there's the unbelievers judgment in revelation 20. These are for those who have not responded to the gospel. And it says this. Then I saw a great white throne, and him who was seated on it from his presence, earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened.

Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books according to what they had done. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. This is sometimes called the Great White Throne Judgment. So we have the believer's judgment, the unbelievers judgment.

Sometimes we hear people talk about the second most important day of their life, you know, a wedding or the birth of a baby. And I think we need to push those to third most important day of our life. I, I think the first, most important day of our life is when we decide whether we will respond to the gospel or not.

And then secondly, the second most important day of our lives is when we stand before Jesus. Okay, so I wrote all these notes, everything that I just talked about. I wrote these last Sunday. I, I preached on the plagues last Sunday. And then last Sunday evening I went to Starbucks and started writing these notes. This was this was the plan for this this morning.

And at one point as I was writing and I thought, gosh, this is getting pretty intense with the death stuff, like, man, like, whoa, boy, you know, like I was kind of like looking at my own notes, like, gosh, like, pulled back a little bit, like, this is a little crazy. And I just, I just felt like I was supposed to.

I felt like, I think we're supposed to talk about this this Sunday. As uncomfortable as it might be, at the risk of sounding like a walking billboard, you know, like, I just think we're supposed to talk about this, like, are you prepared to die? Like, are you prepared to meet Jesus? So I get home from Starbucks and 20 minutes later I get a text message from Mark Candy and Mark candy shares that his wife, Kathleen Candy, had just passed away.

Most of you guys know Mark and Kathleen Candy, but they are a huge doing just, I mean, under understatement to say they've been a huge part of our body ever since radiant has started. Radiant, was started by people who attended Saviors, where Mark and Kathleen pastored. And then for the last few years, Mark and Kathleen were pastoring at Tillery, radiant, and Kathleen was battling cancer for the last five years.

I think. And so as soon as I, I got that text, it was bittersweet. You know, we're rejoicing that Kathleen was standing before Jesus, but we're sad that she's gone. And after a little bit of that, I thought, dang it, I got to change my message. Like, this is going to be insensitive. Like, this is not I was kind of like, is this good timing or bad timing to talk about this?

And so I, I asked a few people and, and everyone I talked to just said, just trust the Lord with what you were already going to talk about. Just trust the Lord that this is what you're supposed to talk about. And so I wanted to end by just highlighting Kathleen as somebody who is the very thing we want to be.

We want to be ready for our appointment with Jesus at the end of our life. Kathleen was she was famous for saying these last few years that either way, she wins. She said if she gets healed from cancer, then she wins and that's awesome testimony. But if she dies and she gets to be with Jesus, she still wins.

And I just think that's the attitude I want to have. Like, it's a win win for those who have put their trust in Jesus. It is a win win. We are covered by his blood. We trade our guilt for his peace, for his joy, and we have the final exodus to look forward to the day that we're delivered from sin and bondage and death, and all the false gods of this earth.

And we get to walk into the eternal Promised Land forever. Let's let's stand together. I want to I want to read this verse. This verse is actually the last verse that Kathleen preached on. If you want to listen to it, it's on the Radiant podcast from last November. And she preached on this passage from Philippians, and she quoted this.

It says, for to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I'm to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me, yet which I shall choose, I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. And we just say, do that in us, Lord.

We ask that you would give us a revelation of eternity. Jesus and I just pray.

That hearts this morning would soften to your gospel. But even like Hannah quoted today, we would not heart in our hearts to your voice. Today we pray for a softening in our own hearts to respond to you and to live for you in your name. Jesus.