Exodus 8-9 • Plagues on Purpose
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
As we continue our journey of unlimited grace through the book of Exodus, we come to that portion of the account dealing with the plagues that fell upon Egypt. They are numerous, they are complex, and they're heavy, and as a consequence we can end up shutting our ears to all the details. So I've got some voices to help us read. Let me ask that you look in your Bibles at Exodus chapter 9. Now Josh is actually going to start in Exodus 7, but as we go through the plagues, listen to these various voices as they read selections of Exodus 7 through 9, and if you want to meet us at the end of the journey, then keep your Bibles open at Exodus 9. We'll pick it up there. Josh. Then the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh's heart is hardened, he refuses to let the people go. Thus says the Lord, "By this you shall know that I am the Lord. Behold, with the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall turn into blood." And the fish in the Nile died, and the Nile stank, so that the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile. But the magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts, so Pharaoh's heart remained hardened and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go into Pharaoh and say to him, "Thus says the Lord, let my people go that they may serve me. But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with frogs." And the Lord did according to the word of Moses. The frogs died out in the houses, the courtyards, and the fields, and they gathered them together in heaps and the land stank. But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
Then the Lord said to Moses, "Say to Aaron, "Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats in all the land of Egypt." The magicians tried by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they could not. So there were gnats on man and beast. Then the magicians 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.
Then the Lord said to Moses, "Rise up early in the morning and present yourself to Pharaoh as he goes out to the water and say to him, "Thus says the Lord, "Let my people go that they may serve me, or else if you will not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies on you and your servants and your people and into your houses. 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." So Pharaoh said, "I will let you go to sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness, only you must not go very far away. Plead for me."
Then Moses said, "Behold, I am going out from you and I will plead with the Lord that the swarms of flies may depart from Pharaoh, from his servants and from his people tomorrow.
Only let not Pharaoh cheat again by not letting the people go to sacrifice to the Lord."
So Moses went out from Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord. And the Lord did as Moses asked and removed the swarms of flies from Pharaoh, from his servants and from his people. Not one remained, but Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also and did not let the people go.
Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go into Pharaoh and say to him, "Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, let my people go that they may serve me, for if you refuse to let them go and still hold them, behold, the hand of the Lord will fall with a very severe plague upon your livestock that are in the field. The horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds and the flocks, but the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, so that nothing of all that belongs to the people of Israel shall die. And Pharaoh sent and behold, not one of the livestock of Israel was dead, but the heart of Pharaoh was hardened and he did not let the people go."
And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, "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 over all the land of Egypt and become boils breaking out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt."
And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils came upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians.
But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh and he did not listen to them as the Lord has spoken to Moses.
As you're traveling with us, look at Exodus 9 and verse 13.
"Then the Lord said to Moses, "Rise up early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh and say to him, "Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, let my people go, that they may serve me. For this time I will send all my plagues on you yourself and on your servants and your people so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth. 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 have raised you up to show you my power so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth. You are still exalting yourself against my people and will not let them go.
Behold about this time tomorrow I will cause very heavy hail to fall such as has never been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now." Verse 27.
"Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, "This time I have sent. The Lord is in his right and I and my people are in the wrong. Plead with the Lord for there has been enough of God's thunder and hail.
I will let you go and you shall stay no longer." Then verse 34.
"But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants."
Let's pray together.
Father, would you instruct us by your word?
We confess the times may seem remote and the truth remote as well, but you had intention when you had your Holy Spirit record these words.
Speak to us still as you intend that we the people who would be humbled by your work for us through Jesus Christ might seek you through Him. We pray in His name. Amen.
The words were not ones that you would expect to hear from an aspiring young preacher in training, but this is what he said.
"My mother's worst fears were realized when she spoke to her neighbor.
My mother had been witnessing a growing relationship between her friend Betty and a man who was visiting.
Betty seemed to be callous to whatever the relationship was and how it was developing.
And so my mother, tentatively but with care, asked some questions.
Betty are things getting too close?
Are your contacts too frequent?
And surprisingly Betty answered with candor and great honesty, "It's all right.
You don't need to worry.
God has given me this new relationship and I'll be so much happier with Him than with my husband."
The shock was not just the relationship, but Betty, a professing Christian, seemed to have absolutely closed her ears against the instruction of God's Word and the consequences of her sin. Not just the reality for her family, but the consequences of judgment that were sure for her future if this was the course of her life.
My friend said it wasn't just that the sin was real, it was the callousness which was almost unbelievable.
I say that to you because I think we often wonder why things like the plagues of Egypt are recorded in the Bible. We relegate them to some aspect of a Sunday school story or music drama in a movie that is making much of the special effects of the frogs and the river turning to blood and the flies over everything.
And we forget that while the plagues came upon an evil people, they were recorded for God's people.
God is saying even to His people now, "I am making my grace plain to you." How is grace apparent in the curse of the plagues?
Because God is saying, "If I did not love you, I would not warn you."
And these plagues and all of their reality are not just the records of crises, of drama long ago. This is the diagram of the progress of sin as it closes our ears to the reality of consequences. It is, if you are a doctor, the pathology of spiritual deafness.
How does our own hardness of hearing progress so that we no longer hear the plain word of God and the consequences that everyone should be able to hear regarding sin in our lives? What after all is this account meant to teach us of the plagues that fell upon Egypt? Surely one great thing that we are supposed to understand is God expressing to us the greatness of our God.
What after all is being made plain? We kind of read the accounts and do not recognize the significance that would have been stated to the Egyptians as well as the Hebrews who knew whom and how the Egyptians worshipped.
The plagues move from river to land to sky to life. And while we don't perceive it, what all the Hebrews knew was this was targeted attack as God was going from lesser God of Egypt to greater God of Egypt saying, "That one is not greater than I. That one is not greater than I. That one is not greater than I. I have no rival."
You may think that some idol is going to be able to satisfy or protect you, give you security or sweetness of life. But God is saying, "There is none greater than I and none shall stand before me." It is what Moses himself will say as he summarizes these accounts later for the children of Israel in the book of Numbers. In Numbers 33 he says this, "While the Egyptians were burying their firstborn, God was also executing judgment on the gods of Egypt." Here is the targeted attack as though God is saying, "You think that's more powerful? You think that will succeed where I cannot? I will show you that I have no rival." The gods of this age are not gods of river and land and sky.
They are the idols of money and sex and position and distractions of media and substance that say these will help you, these will satisfy you.
And God says with plainness, "These will result in your destruction and I love you enough to tell you this is not the answer that you think it is." And to make that clear, he actually begins to have this Moses, the one that he has trained so well through the time in Pharaoh's palace where he learned the language and the literature of the Egyptians, centuries of culture of literature, writing and training that is being poured into Moses. So now when he begins to write under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it is with a complexity and intricacy that is absolutely amazing. We just hear these plagues as kind of interesting little mysteries from the past.
But Moses knew exactly what he was doing and he begins to use the words of creation to describe the plagues as they progress according to the days of creation, God saying through Moses, "Your world will be undone by the sin that you think satisfies." You know how it goes.
All of Egypt had its pools of water turned into blood.
Moses who is writing that account is the same one who wrote Genesis 1 where he said God pooled the waters of the earth together to form the seas.
As the message goes on, you read about the frogs conforming to the swarms of living things that begin to crawl upon the earth. After the frogs, the insects, the swarms of creeping things that move upon the earth. After the insects, the flies, the creatures that begin to operate in the skies above the earth. After the flies, the livestock affected by the sin of the plagues, the land creatures were the next in the creation account. After the land creatures, vegetation now affected and crushed by the hailstorm that comes.
And after the hailstorm, the darkness that descends upon the land as sin itself begins to run its course. And after the darkness, death.
As God is reminding us that sin has its ultimate consequence in the curse where God who said in the day that you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die, spiritual death has spread.
And He shows it. But it is to make something clear to us that these plagues of the indication that sin is in itself a de-creation. God is speaking to His people and He said, "Your world comes undone by your sin." The voices about you, the voices of the world, sometimes the voices of family in your own heart, says, "This will be better. This will be fun. This will be good. This will be satisfied. This will make me a success."
And God is saying, "The world comes undone when you stop listening to God."
And to make the point clear, this same language is picked up by the Apostle John in the book of Revelation as he begins to describe the judgments that fall upon the earth for its evil. Revelation 16, verse 1, John says, "I heard a loud voice telling seven angels, "Go and pour out the seven bowls of the wrath of God." And how does that de-creation progress? Verse 2, "Painful sores came upon the people."
Verse 3, "The sea became like blood and every living creature died in the sea." Verse 4, "The sun was allowed to scorch the people and they cursed the name of God who had power over the plagues."
Verse 8 and 9, "The throne of the beast and its kingdom were thrown into darkness. People gnawed their tongues and anguished. They cursed the God of heaven.
But their hearts were hardened and they did not repent." It is the fantastic weaving of the Scripture of this warning that goes from the first to the last chapters of the Bible. As God is saying, "I want you to understand, not only do I have no rival, but the plan that I have for my people of goodness and blessing and prospering and knowing what this creation has to offer, knowing what your families have to offer, knowing the relationships that are sweet, knowing what it means to walk with me so no crisis overcomes you." It all comes undone.
When you stop listening to me, and that means that there is the judgment of your own making by your walking away from God and closing your eyes to the consequences of your own, it should be so plain.
So why don't people listen?
The answer, at least in part, is because they think they have reasonable substitutes for what God is saying is His plan for our lives.
In chapter 7 and verse 22, you remember Moses turned the waters of Egypt to blood, and the Egyptians do exactly the same thing through their magicians. Hey, God's got power.
We got power.
Whatever He can do, we can do too.
What God supplies, we can supply as well. Listen to the way people who are walking away from God or unwilling to draw near to Him speak.
I'm happy.
I'm satisfied.
I'm doing okay.
Why do I need your God?
Or worse, the people who knew the blessings of the kingdom and are now going a different direction?
I think of a friend of this church who, taking up with a married man, said the very same words.
He's rich.
Now I've got more money, and I've been to more places, and I'm having more thrills.
I'm just fine.
Words masking the deep doubts as she ignores the insensitivity of her partner or the wandering eye that begins to check out the other skirts even when she is with him.
The deep doubts in her own heart of what will happen when the sex gets old or she gets old.
And inside God is saying, "My child, I am warning you. Consider the consequences of your sin. You may think you have reasonable substitutes." Listen to your own heart.
This makes you happy. This is satisfying. This is fulfilling.
Even when we will not confess that, God is going to make it clear. In the seventh chapter in the 24th verse, the magicians don't just say they can do the same thing, but they say even if we can't provide what Jehovah provides, we've got reasonable alternatives. The water has turned to blood, but if we dig trenches next to the rivers and the lakes, the water that seeps through the mud, we can drink. We'll survive on muddy water.
Does our world sometimes say that too?
I'm doing just fine. I survive. It may not be the best. It may not be a perfect life, but you know, I'm making it. I'm doing okay. I'm surviving on this muddy water I am drinking.
Yeah, I went with her, and we fight all the time.
And my health is not what it once was.
I wonder what will happen when I can't take care of myself.
My mind, even at work, wanders to the weekends. I can't focus anymore. My friends, my friends.
I'm not sure any single one of them would sacrifice for me.
My wife and my children, they now fear me.
But I'm fine. I'm just fine.
And we drink the mud and think because we survive, we can tell God we're just fine.
It's not just that the world has substitutes that it claims are just as good. It's not just that we seek alternatives that just get us by.
It's ultimately the world keeps turning in such a way that we can ignore what God is saying to us.
In chapter 8 and verse 15, there is respite.
Just for a little bit, there was a break in the plagues when Pharaoh sees that there was respite, we are told.
He hardened his heart again and would not listen.
Sometimes we make a mistake. In our minds, we've seen the movies enough that we think just one plague follows another plague follows another plague follows another plague.
But in reality, if you look carefully at the text and you look at the crops that are being affected, at the seasons that are being affected, you recognize that these plagues are happening over long periods of time with months between them.
As though Pharaoh gets the opportunity between the plagues and say, "Whew, I'm glad that's over."
And in that little respite, hardens his heart again.
The way people you and I know, the way you and I sometimes do. When we say there's no need to change, I mean for a while I really thought I was going to have to change.
But you know, I still wake up in the mornings, the world keeps turning.
The boss seems to be approving me again.
I still got the weekends. I can get a break, a little respite.
The kids can still have fun at Chuck E. Cheese.
My parents don't care.
And you know, I've always got my guns or my reels or the game to give me a lift.
And because we get a little break, we tease ourselves into convincing our hearts that everything's okay. It's all fine.
We can read the accounts of what's happening to other people. We can read in our own hearts the suffering, the questioning, the doubts, the dread of what may still be coming. But for the moment, we got a little break.
And so we do not listen.
Why do we not listen?
Because of reasonable substitutes.
But more than that, because there are just categorical refusals where we recognize to turn around, to recognize the sin, to recognize its consequences, and go a different direction, to go to a different person, to go back to my family, to go back to the place where I know I'm being obedient to God. The price just seems too high. And so even though we may recognize all the consequences that God is talking about, we just categorically first step say, "I'm not going back."
Why is it that there are so few deathbed conversions?
It would seem to be so logical, right? That, wait. The way that church is talking, because Jesus took the penalty for my sin, all of it, upon the cross. If I will confess that I have been a sinner and I believe that Jesus took my sin upon the cross, that God is going to take a whole lifetime of sin and put it on Him, why not do that? Pretty good, bad, if you're wrong. Who cares? But if you're right, heaven, why so few people take that step?
Because if on my deathbed I say, "God was right," then I was wrong for a lifetime.
And pride and just a categorical refusal to believe that God could be calling me to change my ways and my heart and turning me and my family to a better way when I've given so much of myself to a course that is apart from God. It just is what people do not want to do. I'm going to die soon.
Why acknowledge all of that now?
And what could be heaven for them is ignored because they are unwilling to face the realities that God is making plain. It's happening here. There's an absolute categorical refusal to see what is plain and to hear what God is saying.
Chapter 8 and verse 18, "The magicians tried to equal Moses' plague of creating gnats over all the land.
And they said to Pharaoh, "We can't do that.
We can't create gnats."
They're not trying to create elephants.
They're not trying to create giraffes. They're not trying to create sta—just all gnat.
We can't do it, Pharaoh. And then they say, you heard it read, chapter 8 and verse 19, "The magicians said to Pharaoh, "This is the finger of God." This is not hocus pocus. This is not smoke and mirrors. This is not a little trick with a serpent's neck kinked.
This is real.
This is God at work. We see the reality of a God in action.
Pharaoh, we can't do that. This is real.
And Pharaoh will not listen to the realities. And it's just that he will not listen to the realities of the hand of God, the finger of God being in evidence in things that are around him. He refuses to face God's blessings that are so apparent as well.
Chapter 8, verses 21 and 22, God speaking through Moses to Pharaoh says, "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 all the earth."
There's a protected people.
There are people being blessed.
Pharaoh, even if you don't face the realities of God's work in your life, face the blessings in their lives. There are people for whom God's presence makes a difference. They live without the crisis, the worries, the same set of concerns. It's not that there's no concerns for Christians,
but we approach them differently with an understanding of a God who's working all things together for good, who gives us not just this earth, but eternity to measure the work of his hand.
For so many years, I taught seminary students preparing to be pastors. And I would say to them at times, you know, you fear doing funerals when people are at life's extremity.
And you look forward to doing weddings when people are entering life's great joy.
But here's the truth.
When you do funerals for God's people, and you see people at the very extremity of life's hurt and grief, and there is joy in them, profound hope of what God is providing for that person and that family and ultimately union, forgiveness of sins, unity with Christ,
heaven of their union again, you see people at their deepest well of grief still hopeful with a profound joy.
And you see the opposite.
You see people face death without hope, and you see its absolute devastation on people. You have the opportunity in a funeral to see how the gospel penetrates a heart, empowers people, works in ways you cannot even imagine. You become a minister of the gospel in a funeral, and you recognize, "I have brought wonderful things into the lives of God's people. This is the reality they are living." There is huge blessing even in the midst of great hurt.
You fear funerals. You will see God there.
Now weddings you ought to fear because sometimes you just see people there in all of their press and push.
But when you see God blessing His people, it ought to change you. And I recognize that there are people even here today who are now ready to just kind of refute everything I just said. Wait, wait, wait. I've been in this church.
I've seen these people.
You say there's evidence of God's blessing. Here I see pride and anger and bitterness and broken homes and hypocrisy.
All true.
All true.
But what else is here? In the midst of human brokenness, there are people who are saying, "I have received a Savior."
And He not only paid the penalty for my sin, He is paving a future course, a better path, a different way for me to go. And what that means is I have a hope that I would not otherwise have had. I'm different than I once was. I think about what we just know statistically from the government about the generosity of Bible-believing Christians.
We are the most generous people group in this nation.
Why?
Because we believe that God has blessed us and it is our privilege and joy to give and to bless others. Occasionally on the news, you'll hear about some celebrity who has given $10,000 to some charitable cause. Or Paul McCartney, $20,000.
And I think of the people in this congregation and people to whom I ministered for years. That is small potatoes.
As people who make far less, are far more generous with their income and wealth, even when they are impoverished, they are concerned that other people would know God's blessing to them.
And what about their families itself? How is there blessing and evidence among God's people? I mean, after all, the people get married in the church, they get divorced just as often as those outside the church.
Well, not everybody accepts those figures. You may remember, focus on the family with James Dobson, say, "It's not true that 50% of all Christian marriages come undone.
It's only 37%."
Well, that's not a very hopeful figure either.
And then you get the more recent figures by someone like Ed Stetzer, who said, "Look, if we don't just survey the people who call themselves Christians, but the people who are regular in the worship of God, who pray daily, who have their children and families in regular devotions, 90% of those marriages never come undone."
The blessing of God. What about the children? We know that when children, even of Bible-believing families, go off to college, two-thirds will leave the church.
Actually, Stetzer says, "Of those families who are regular in worship and devotion, two-thirds of those will stay in church, even in college, and even more will return when they start having their own children."
Profound blessing, profound change if we will just listen to the reality. And we don't just need the statistics. We need to actually, with honesty and integrity, consider the people that we know. You would have delighted to listen to the testimony of one of our elder candidates for these coming fall elections. As he just said, "Honestly, I was going another way in college, and I looked at a young man in my dorm who lived with peace, even though his peers pressured him, who lived with a joy that I could not explain. He said, "It took me months, but finally I made the call. I called him up and I said, "You have something that I don't have.
What is it?
I've got to have what you've got."
It was just this evidence. God is at work. He's at work not just in the realities of what we can see, but in the blessings that He has provided if we're willing to listen.
Not just to the blessings, but willing even to listen to the pain that is apart from the knowledge of God. Chapter 9, verses 11 and 12, "The magicians could not stand because of the boils that came upon them, and all the Egyptians."
If we're really to listen, I mean really listen, then we will be here to hear cries of pain from those who are walking apart from the Lord. I do not want to sound insensitive or triumphal, uncaring in any way, but I mean for us to really hear our world.
All the news lately about the celebrity suicides.
Why?
You got money, fame, respect, you got everything.
Why is it not enough?
Because God is saying, "If we'll listen, there is an emptiness your own heart will affirm if you walk away from me." You get everything and you end up in a rehab clinic.
You get everything.
You're wealthy beyond your imagination as a child, and you just keep acquiring.
You can't even use everything that you've acquired, but you just keep purchasing and acquiring and building as a — something is going to make you happy and satisfied. And you haven't found it yet.
Or maybe you're someone who knows you'll never acquire so much.
And so your entertainment becomes the partying, that is the sex or the drugs or the drinking. And everybody is saying, "I'm so happy.
I'm doing so well."
They even have a few kids, can't take care of them, don't especially want them, but they'll love me. They'll affirm me.
And over time you recognize if you'll really listen that this is not partying.
This is escaping.
The emptiness, the longing, the things that do not satisfy. And as a consequence, people who go through that as they begin to recognize this is empty, I better serve God, but I don't want to give up everything over there.
We begin to bargain like Pharaoh did. I want relief from the consequences of my sin. I just do not want to leave the sin.
Pharaoh begins to speak to Moses when he does listen a bit.
That's right in verse 25, "I'll let you sacrifice to your God within Egypt."
Which means make God stop.
You can worship the way you want, but I still got control.
A little bit later, Pharaoh says, "You can go worship. You can actually go outside the borders.
Just don't go very far. Make God stop."
Which means I can keep control and regain it when I want to.
Just don't have God affect me in my desires.
And finally, chapter 9, verse 27 and 34, Pharaoh says, "I'll say I'm sorry.
I sinned against God and my people, and we were wrong. Oh God, I'm sorry."
Where by the time you get to the end of the chapter, he's just persisting in his sin.
We need to hear that because sometimes we turn God into a mom of toddlers who is saying to them, "Now just say you're sorry.
Say you're sorry."
And so the three-year-old says, "I'm sorry." Just waiting for a little sister to get back within arm's reach again.
What kind of a God do we make up that this God is saying, "Okay, just tell me you're sorry and everything will be okay." No, this is somebody who is saying, "Do you not recognize the consequences of your path? Do you not recognize the plague you are to your own future and family and happiness and satisfaction?
Wake up! Open your ears to reality that you yourself are creating.
I'm not just asking you to say, "I'm sorry."
I'm urging you to acknowledge before the God who made you that the course that you have been on is wrong so that you can go to the course that he prepared for you, the one that is blessed and good and gracious in its earliest intent. God is saying that to us. Why don't we listen? It should be obvious, the blessings that he intends for his people, the consequences so evident in a world are the people who are turning away from him. Why don't we listen?
Ultimately it is just plain irrational resistance.
It doesn't have an explanation. It doesn't have any way that you can ultimately prove that it's the better path for you. So why do we persist in it?
Because friends and peers and maybe the company and masters and mistresses tell us, "This is okay."
And Satan whispers to you, "You're just fine. You're just fine."
And against all those voices at moments, we have to listen to another voice.
It's the one in here.
Pharaoh said, "I have sinned."
And then he ignored his own voice and resisted God again.
Finally I recognize there could be a human rebuttal for everything I've said to this point.
It seems that families that walk with God are more blessed. Their careers are more stable. Their families are more stable. Their children are more stable. The sex is better. The relationships are better. Everything we can say statistically is better for Christians on the whole. Are there exceptions? Yes!
And where we experience the exceptions, we call for a God who said, "I will be with you and I'll walk you through this broken fallen world in such a way that it does not overwhelm you. No temptation will take you but such as is common for man. And I am faithful. I will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation provide a way of escape so that you can stand up under it." Here God is saying, "Trial and difficulty do face us.
But we face it with the knowledge that God will be with us and help us even through that because He is loving and preparing an eternal plan."
What's the great evidence of that even in this set of chapters where we see nothing but plagues?
The evidence is that there is not nothing but plagues.
There is a group of people who are not touched, do you remember?
Those who live in the land of Goshen.
Those who are walking with God. Those who are His people.
Now I must tell you that when I hear the phrase "land of Goshen," I think of a mild curse that my grandfather used to use. When he was upset, he'd say, "Land of Goshen!"
Means something different.
What it means is drawing near.
God is drawing near.
It's the language that James, the brother of Jesus, would pick up in the New Testament as He would say to people who were listening to God, hearing His voice, responding to Him, "You draw near to God and He will draw near to you."
And the eternal hope and the peace for your heart and the reality of sin put aside is what God will provide. After all, He provided His Son to come near, to walk this earth, to pay the penalty for your sin so that as you put your faith in Him at any step along the way, He says, "I'm going to walk with you the rest of the way." It may be hard, we may have some valleys to go through, but we're going to do this. We're going to walk through this together. I'm with you now because when you draw near to me from the oldest times God was saying, "I will draw near to you.
After all, I sent Jesus for you and I will provide for you."
Folks Kathy and I are going on vacation.
And as I thought about this message, I just wanted to make sure there is nothing unsaid.
Here's the reality.
Some people even here now are going a very different direction than God's plan.
God is speaking to your heart.
That's going to satisfy, really?
What evidence do you have for that?
Can you cite that would say that's the better way?
But here is God saying, "No matter what, I will forgive you and walk with you and be near to you.
Draw near to me." Do it.
Say God, I confess my sin.
I trust Jesus took on himself.
I want him to walk with me now and me to walk with him.
And that is the promise of God.
You draw near to him. He will draw near to you and walk you on the journey the rest of the way. He is that good.
Father, I pray for those who are here that you would bless them by your Holy Spirit, first by letting them hear, opening their ears to the realities of the Word and even their world, not seeing it through the filters of false satisfaction, false claims of pleasure,
that actually would see the world as you are describing it, a de-creation until you start rebuilding, an undoing of all that is precious until you forgive and make right and walk with us.
So we turn to you.
Heavenly Father, walk with us. We're drawing near.
Draw near to us, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.