Exodus chapter 8. Exodus chapter
8. Read the first four verses with
me. Exodus 8. The Lord spake unto
Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord,
Let my people go, that they may serve me. And if thou refuse
to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs. And the river shall bring forth
frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thy house,
into thy bedchamber, upon thy bed, into the house of thy servants,
upon thy people, into thy ovens, into thy kneading troughs. And
the frogs shall come up both on thee and upon thy people,
upon all thy servants. We've been studying through the
gospel, yes, the gospel of Exodus. And we began with the first plague,
blood throughout the land. We saw what that means, and the
gospel. Man is a bloody creature. He
shed a lot of blood. And God shed the blood of His
Son. It's seen everywhere. And now
we look at these three plagues together. We're going to try
to look at these frogs, lice, and flies. This is not, as I
always say, I don't want to just pique our interest or satisfy
our curiosity, but this needs to be a blessing from the Lord.
This needs to be a lesson we learn from our Lord. We need
to see the hand of God. What we want to see is the hand
of God in all things. Whatever it is, it is the Lord. Down to the smallest thing, down
to lice. Our Lord controls. It was Brother
Chapman one time said, man may be a marvelous creature and all
these other things are marvelous creatures. He said, I marvel,
John said, I marvel in a gnat. Only God can create a gnat. Now
he's got a brain and a nervous system and a respiratory system
and a circulatory system. A gnat? We see the hand of God, whatever
it is, it is the Lord. The plagues, the judgments upon
Egypt, then and they continue now. Because of unbelief and
sin, that's why the Lord sent those plagues and why he sends
his judgments today. Romans 1 says that very thing. The wrath of God is revealed
from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who
hold the truth. in unrighteousness. It's God's
Word. They have it. They reject it.
The heavens declare His glory. The firmament showeth His handiwork.
His eternal power in God is clearly seen, but man says, no. They
reject God. The world today, like Egypt then,
didn't know God. They didn't call on God. They
didn't thank God. All they said was, no God. Our gods, our gods
are gods. These gods we make up are our
gods. This is our god. These gods, we let them be gods.
And we will do as we please. There's no God and we'll do as
we please. But God says, no, I am God and
I will do with you what I please. And he made it clear, didn't
he? All through Exodus. He knew Pharaoh was never going
to let them go until he finishes his plan. And you made him accountable. I'll show you one more thing.
I'll show you one more thing. I'll show you one more thing.
How much does he have to show man for man to believe he's God? These three plagues, frogs, lice,
and flies, please don't ask me any questions afterwards. Okay? We preach in part. Don't analyze
the food, just eat it. Don't ask me questions because
I don't know all the answers. But what I've given you, I've
studied long and hard to give it to you. Just eat it. Just
take it for what it is. We just know in part. I know
this, that there's spiritual application to everything. Everything
written is for our learning and comparing spiritual things with
spiritual things, okay? And all these plagues are symbolic,
like the vials, seven vials that the angels opened in the Revelation.
It's all symbolic. And false religion like Jehovah's
Witnesses and all that, they They had these seminars and movies
and all that, and they show all these monsters and gargoyles
and all that, and they depict it as something real. And it's
all symbolic. It's all going on right now.
All these plagues. Now, we can't read every verse,
obviously, in this chapter, but we just read verses 1 through
4. The first plague here of these three is the frogs. The only
other mention of frogs in the scriptures is Revelation 16. Psalms mentions it. David recounts
the Lord sending frogs on Egypt. It's the same story. But in Revelation
16, John said this, I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come
out of the mouth of the beast and the dragon. What could these
frogs be? What could they represent? These
unclean spirits are false prophets. False prophets. Lying spirits. Satan's ministers. And they,
like these frogs, they cover the land. They're everywhere. Can't get rid of them. They're
everywhere. They infiltrate. The Lord sent
these frogs and they were everywhere. They were in everything. The
people couldn't get away from them. Our Lord said that. Our Lord who has the stars numbered. Who can number the stars? God
does. He said many false prophets. When the Lord says many, that's
a lot isn't it? Many false prophets have gone
out into the world. And they're everywhere. They're
in everything. They're in every house. Paul said this, they creep
into houses, didn't they? Creep into houses, leading silly
women captive. John said, we need to try the
Spirit, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
Like frogs, they're ready to pounce on you. And they came out of the river.
These frogs came out of the river. This world is a river, an ever-flowing
river of iniquity and sin. It just keeps flowing, doesn't
it? And it seems to get worse all the time, doesn't it? Muddier
and muddier, filthier and filthier. This world is a river of iniquity. And man drinks iniquity, Scripture
says, like the water. And man plays in this river of
iniquity. Man plays in it. This is a world
full of iniquity, a world full of evil men and seducers who
wax worse and worse. They were bad years ago. Just
when you think they can't get any worse, they do get worse,
don't they? Can't get more bizarre, they
do get more bizarre. Can't get further away from the
truth, they do, don't they? So these frogs came out of the
river and these false prophets come out of this river of iniquity
called planet Earth. Frogs are nocturnal creatures,
meaning they love the darkness. They come out at night. That's
fitting, isn't it? Satan and his demon. This Satan
is called the ruler of the darkness of this world. The darkness of
this world, and though his ministers, Paul said, they disguise themselves
as angels of light, they are in fact in darkness. You know, There was a time called the Dark
Ages in history. Everybody recognized the Dark
Ages. Medieval years. That's what modern
man called medieval years. It was evil all right. From about year 400 A.D. to 1400, when God raised up men
to translate the scripture. But from 400 to 1400, a thousand
years, there were no Bibles. And without God's Word, there's
no life. You know why there were no Bibles?
Because religion kept the Bibles from people. You know that? There
were copies of the Bible, all right, but they were in monasteries.
They were in the cathedrals. And these evil men kept them
to themselves to keep the people in darkness. To keep the people from reading
God's Word that would make them free. Free from what? Them! So
they kept the word from the people for a thousand years. It was
a time of darkness. That's all of Satan's ministers.
The God of this world blinded the minds of men, lest the light
of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine unto them. But God raised up men of light. Zwingli Huss, William Tyndall. These men, do you remember William
Tyndall? He translated the first English
Bible and they burned him at the stake for doing it. Right
before he died, he stood before all that panel of these evil
men, these cardinals dressed in all that red, and these judges
of him, and he said, God willing, he looked at them. He said, God
willing, I'm going to make the plow boy know more about God
than you do. And they said, no, you're not. We're
going to burn you at the stake. Boy, they burned his body. He
lit a fire, didn't he? That's what those two other martyrs
said. One of them turned to his friend,
his brother, and said, Brother, play the man. Be a good cheer. God's going to light a fire in
England that will never be put out. The fire of their bodies
burned. Right after William Tyndall died,
burned at the stake. And while they were burning him,
While they were burning him at the stake, his dying words were
this, Lord, open the King of England's eyes. One or two years
later, King James said, we're going to write a Bible for everybody
to read. Pharaoh said, this is what I
decree. You have, have you? Dark ages
are over. The light is now shining. We
have one. We have one. We're not in darknesses. Thank God. You know what it took
for us to have this book. How could we take it for granted?
But these frogs, these slimy fellows, imagine, you know, frogs
are loud, croaking at night time. You've been out there, you think,
a nice quiet night, If the frogs are out, it's not it. That's
what Proverbs 7 actually says. Proverbs 7 talks about the woman
who lures the simple man. It's a type of false religion,
luring her with flattery and all that. And it says she's loud,
she's proud, she's stubborn. You can hear her coming a mile
away, going to a restaurant. Go into a restaurant, you know
who's the preacher is in there. He's the loudest fella in there. Like these frogs. Imagine the croaking noise of
these frogs. They were everywhere. Everywhere. And the continual croaking of
these slimy fellas to me is a noisome pestilence indeed. It's the worst
noisome pestilence on this earth to me. It grieves me. Good evening. Oh, how blessed Israel was to
have two men. Just two men. Is two men enough
for everybody to hear the Word? God's people. They're all going
to hear it. From these two chosen men. They're
going to hear the truth. Who God is. How blessed. How
blessed is the Church. The Church has been and is right
now. 1 Kings 18 is the story of Elijah
and all the prophets of Baal and the prophets of the groves. 450 prophets of Baal, 450 prophets
of the groves. That's 850 prophets to one true
prophet. Is that right? 850 prophets to
one true prophet. You know it says, literally it
says in 1 Kings 18, when God wasn't answering them, they leaped
up and down on the altar. Like frogs. God's not mocked. How foolish.
God makes a fool out of men, lets them make a fool out of
themselves. If you want to see what this
so-called Pentecostal holiness religion is, just Google it. But then, holiness revival. Just look at it. People are literally
hopping up and down. Nothing's changed. We read in
Ecclesiastes 1, there's nothing new under the sun. It's all the
same. Man's the same. God's the same. Truth is the
same. Man's going to do what man's always done for all of
us. The next thing, look at verse
16. Exodus 8, verse 16. The Lord
said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod, smite the
dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout the land
of Egypt. And they did so. Aaron stretched
out his hand with his rod. See, everything God did, He did
with this rod. And we've clearly seen this rod
is God's Word. Christ, when He comes, will smite
the earth with the rod of His mouth, the Scripture says. So
this rod is His Word, and this rod is through a preacher. Aaron,
the preacher. Read on, verse 17. He smoked
the dust of the earth and it became lice in man, verse 17,
and in beast. And all the dust of the land
became lice throughout all the land of Egypt. Magicians did
so with their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could
not. They tried, but they could not.
They were lice upon man and beast. Then the magician said unto Pharaoh,
they just threw up their hands and said, this is the finger
of God. Pharaoh's heart was hardened.
He hearkened not unto Moses and Aaron as the Lord had said. Now
these lice came from the dust and what we're seeing here is
frogs came from water. These lice comes from the dust
of the earth and the flies come from the air. That's all the
elements of it. Land, sea, and air. And God uses
all of this. When God destroyed the world
by flood, by water, and what effectively happened was God
took the earth and just buried everybody in it. Right? Just buried the whole
human race in it. And then it says in Genesis 8,
God sent a wind. and blue, and the waters assuaged. Well, the whole earth was buried
by water and earth, and God sent the wind, but there were eight
people. Only eight people. Chosen of
God. Called of God. Brought of God. Taught of God. Put of God in
the ark. Of God was made unto them. Everything. Their salvation. Eight people
were saved. And when it was all over, and
God sent that flood and all to destroy the whole world to save
them by water. And then when it was all over,
He opened that door into a new land and a new country. That's all of God's people. Like
the children of Israel, God sent in His plagues a judgment upon
Egypt for their unbelief and sin, but it's the salvation of
God's people. It's the goodness of God. All
the plagues, every plague was a goodness of God to Israel. You believe that? Everything,
no matter how evil it may appear, no matter how awful it may seem,
God sent it His judgments upon the world for their sin, but
His goodness to His people to save them. Lice are real small, nearly undetectable
pests. Our daughter, when she went to,
was in grade school, I think, she came home with head lice.
I'm sure most everybody in here, it's bad. There's three kinds
of lice. There's head lice, there's body
lice, and there's pubic lice. And lice is always because of
uncleanness. That's how they breed. That's
the flesh. They feed on unclean flesh. Head, body, sex. Lice. God sent it. Because the flesh is unclean.
You hear me? Nothing new. Nothing new. And
these parasites Like sins, they were constant aggravation and
irritate, incessant irritations and wouldn't, you can't get them
off of your heart. You have to go through. I shouldn't
say this, but our girls, when they were grown
up, our granddaughters got head lice. And many read where if
you put mayonnaise over their head, they'd get rid of them. So they put mayonnaise over their
head with a plastic bag. That was, that's funny. Anyway, I should have said that,
but anyway. But what are these things? Because
man loves sin and not God, because man loves sin and not holiness,
God sends, allows man to be vexed constantly by sin. Constant,
incessant, irritating, vexing thoughts and fears and worries
and troubled mind, body and soul. Digging at us. Digging at man. It won't go away. Our Lord said,
no rest for the wicked. No peace. Not going to happen. Can you imagine? Lives all over
the head and bodies everywhere. They couldn't get rid of them.
That's sin, isn't it? That's sin. No peace. Verse 20, look at this, the Lord
said unto Moses, now rise up early. Here's the last of these
three, fly. He said, rise up early in the
morning. You know, God's Word, God has spoken from the beginning
of time to sinners, hasn't He? God, in great mercy and grace,
came into the Garden of Eden, the person of Christ, I believe
that was Christ, walking in the voice of God, walked in the kugel
of death. I believe that was Christ, he's the Word. And he
came walking, and the first two sinners, God should have killed
them both. Why would God put up with the
angels that kept not their first estate? Thousands, millions of
them, God put them in chains and threw them in the dark. And
here these two, these two creatures of God had everything that God
could give them. All the goodness of God. God
loved them. God had mercy upon them. God
provided for them. They just up and rebelled. Said,
no, we're like Satan. No, we'll be God. We don't want
you to be God. We want to be God. God should
just snuff them out like ants, you know. But God. rich in mercy, for his great
love were with the loved sinners. He didn't take on the nature
of angels. He took on the seed of Abraham, sinners, made in
the likeness of sinful flesh to redeem them. And the Lord
Jesus Christ came walking into the garden that day and said,
Adam, And you hear his voice. It's
both convicting and it's soothing. It both strikes fear and gives
hope. You've heard it, haven't you?
Senator, what have you done now? Where are you now? I've come
to find you. I've come to redeem you. Isn't
he a good guy? Good. God has risen early. The Word of God has come early.
And the Scriptures even says that. He sent the prophets rising
up early. You've read that, haven't you,
John? Over and over again. Jeremiah rising up early. Verse 28, So
he came before Pharaoh, and lo, he cometh forth to the water,
the Lord said. And saying him again, Thus saith
the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me. Else, if thou
wilt not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies upon
thee, upon thy servants, upon thy people, and into thy houses.
The houses of the Egyptians shall be full of swarms of flies, and
also the ground wherein whereon thou art they are. And I will
sever in that day the land of Goshen, which my people dwell
in. No swarms of flies will be there.
He didn't say this about the lice and the frog, did he? He did about the fly. All right,
these are creatures that come from the air. What do you suppose
they are? Demons. Satan's demons. Our Lord, the miracle he performed
more than any other was cast out devils, because they're everywhere. People today call it this addiction
or that addiction or this or that and the other. He has this
demon. Demon possession. They're everywhere.
Everywhere. Evil spirit. Ephesians 6 talks about it. We're
not wrestling with flesh and blood, he said, but rulers of
the darkness, principalities of power in the air. Revelation
18.2 says that. Turn to Revelation 12. You know, God sent these flies
upon an evil world. God sent these flies, which represent
evil spirit. Does God send evil spirits? Yes,
he does, too. They wouldn't go anywhere if
he didn't allow them. Would he? Does Satan and his
devils have free reign? Ask Job. Let's look at the book
of Job. Satan wanted Job, but he couldn't
touch him. These flies couldn't Touch Israel,
not one. Our Lord said to Simon Peter,
Satan hath desired you. Aren't you glad? Revelation 12,
look at this. The Lord sent the devil and his
angels to earth. Revelation 12 says, verse 9,
the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the devil
and Satan, which deceived the whole world. He was cast out
into the earth. His angels were cast out with
him. And verse 10, oh, I heard a loud voice saying in heaven,
but now has come the salvation and strength and kingdom of our
God, power of His Christ, the accuser of our brethren cast
down, which accused them before our God day and night. How are
they going to overcome it? What's the difference between
the world and God's people? The blood of the Lamb. Word of their testimony, faith.
They love not their lives unto death. Read on, verse 12, Revelation
12, 12. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens,
and ye that dwell in them, God's people. Woe to the inhabitors
of the earth and of the sea, for the devil is come down unto
you having great wrath, because he knoweth he hath but a short
time. Who said it? God did. Ahab, the king. Remember, God
was speaking. between themselves, God, Father,
Son, the Holy Spirit, and they said, who shall we send to deceive
Ahab? Have you read it? And a spirit
came, an angel came forward and said, I'll send him. And God
said, okay, I'm going to send a lying spirit to deceive Ahab. God sent this lying spirit. Now, let me read it for you.
2 Thessalonians 2 says this, Because they receive not the
love of the truth, God sends strong delusions that
they might believe a lie. God sent these fly. And because
man won't believe God, He sends these liars, and they believe
them through their own combination. But God, His people, they're going to
overcome. They're not land of Goshen. The
flies weren't there. God said, don't let one fly in
there. Oh, my. The difference, look
at our text. God says in verse 22, the land
of Gosia, that there be no flies, that they may know I am the Lord
in the midst of the earth, in the midst of my people. He said,
I'll put a division between my people and the people of Egypt.
I'll put a division. You want to know I'm God and
these are my people. We have struggles with lice and
flies. I mean, lice and frogs. They're
everywhere. They're all around us. They vex
us and all that. But these demons, thank God, God won't let them have us. Satan and his demons cannot have
God's people. And the difference is God. God's
the difference. These are His chosen people. The difference is God's choice. The difference is God's love.
The difference is God's mercy. The difference is God's truth
He revealed to them. The difference is the blood of
the Lamb. Are the people of God different than the world? They
sure are, in every way. Vexed? Yes. Irritated, yes. But our Lord said this, sin shall
not have dominion over you. Satan shall not have you. None. You know, that you may know,
He's Lord. He's your Lord. Aren't you glad? Aren't you glad God reigns over
lice? Even our sins, people. Isn't
that wonderful? Wonderful. They all saw the hand
of God. Don't you see the hand of God
in every facet of your life? Don't you see the hand of God
in everything going on in the world? Don't you see the hand
of God? Now look at, in closing, I've got to quit. It says, Pharaoh
called for Moses, verse 25. He said, Go sacrifice to your
God in the land. Stay here. You can sacrifice
God, but stay here amongst us. Oh, no. No, no, no, no. Moses said, no, sir. It's not
meet for us to do so. He went on to say so much as
that Egypt's an abomination to us, and we're an abomination
to the Egyptians. Oh, no, no. We're not staying
here. We're an abomination to them, and they to us, and they
to God. We've got to go. We're going to go out in verse
27. We're going to go three days into the wilderness. Outside the camp, that's where
we're going. That's what Hebrews 13 says.
Let's go forth unto him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. We're out in the wilderness.
No, we can't join with them. Modern religion, we can't join
with the world. How can light have fellowship
with darkness? How can Christ and Baal worship together? Can't do it. Won't do it. God's
people won't do it. It's abomination. What they do
is an abomination to that. What we do is an abomination
to them. And nope, nope. Nothing in common. Now I'm staying
here. We're leaving. We're going out
of here. Verse 30, Moses went out from Pharaoh and entreated
the Lord. And the Lord did according to
the word of Moses, and he removed the swarms of flies from his
servants, from his people. Now, God is so good. God is tender
mercies over all his works, as Scripture says. The rain falls
on the unjust as well as the just. God's the Savior of all
mankind. If anybody's still living, it's
because God saves his life. In His hands we live and move
and have our being. Do men acknowledge God? God's people do. God's people
do. And God can send the severest
judgments and afflict man with every form of affliction there
is. He won't call on God. Or maybe He will. He'll get a
little bit of religion like Pharaoh. Pharaoh in this story later on,
Pharaoh repents. And what he says is, you go pray
to your God. He didn't pray to God. In fact, my father's brother, he
was to be a general in the army. He died shortly before he became
a general in the army, a colonel, only 48 years old. Of course, you know, my dad talked
to him, his parents had talked to him, and he'd heard my dad
preach and preach and so forth. And one day, somebody asked him,
he was at my brother's funeral, and one of the brethren of the
church came up to him, just assuming he was a believer like his brother.
And he said, where do you go to church? Where do you hear
the gospel? And he said, oh, I don't. He
said, my brother's got enough religion for both of us. And
the Lord killed him. Killed him. Like that. So Pharaoh
is entreating someone else to go to God for him. He's not going
to God. No matter what God does, he's
not going to come to God. Egypt didn't either. Nobody in
Egypt did. How long ago? But everybody in
Israel was. Every person at Israel was groaning,
and calling, and meeting together, and hearing the Word, waiting
and hoping to go out. And Lord, Lord heartened Pharaoh's
heart again, again. Okay.