Let's go back to the book of
Exodus tonight. I started to begin dealing with
the troubles, the turmoil, the plagues, the 10 plagues that
God sent upon Egypt. I started to begin to deal with
those tonight, but I'm going to wait till next Wednesday night
to do that. And I want to speak to you for
a few minutes on some verses found here in the seventh chapter
of Exodus. And I'll begin in Exodus chapter
seven and verse number three. This is the Lord speaking to
Moses. And the Lord says in verse three,
and I will harden Pharaoh's heart and multiply my signs and my
wonders in the land of Egypt. Make sure you note that God said,
I will harden Pharaoh's heart. He's going to harden Pharaoh's
heart in order to bring to pass that which he has already ordained
to do. Indeed, Pharaoh is a vile man
and a wicked man. But God rules over vile and wicked
men just as he rules over righteous and godly men. There is not one
person upon all the earth who has ever lived but what God didn't
rule over him and do his will through that man's life. The
Lord worked in the life of Judas, to do what God had purposed for
him to do. Indeed, we read in the book of
Luke, our Lord said that he said concerning himself, the son of
man goeth as it was determined. But woe unto that man, woe unto
that man by whom he's betrayed. Our Lord, you see, he controls
all things, both good and evil. Job's wife chastised her husband
verbally and said, why don't you just curse God and die? And
Job said, what? Shall we not receive, shall we
receive good things from the Lord and not evil as well? Things
that are not pleasant? Things that are dismal? things that are hurtful to the
flesh. God said he creates good and
evil. And he does that in such a way
that is beyond our capability of understanding. But make sure
you understand this, at least believe this. All things are
of God. That's very important. If you
want to have peace in this world, peace in your heart, peace in
the midst of turmoil that's going on all around you, Peace in this
world that is ungodly and wicked and troublesome to the hearts
of the people of God. If you want to have peace in
this vile world, may God enable you and enable me to believe
that He rules over all things both good and evil. He is working out His purpose
always. Job said, he knoweth the way
that I take. And it may be a rough way. It
may be a difficult way. It may be a pleasant way. It may be a different or a difficult
way. But I assure you, the Lord knows
the way you're taking because he put you in that way. And as I've said I don't know
how many times. If there was a better way or
a better road for you to be on, your all-wise, all-loving Heavenly
Father would have you on another road if that'd be what's best
for you. You see, the Lord is going to
harden Pharaoh's heart for the ultimate good of the children
of Israel. That's not gonna be for the ultimate
good of Pharaoh. We just read. All things work
together for good for them that love God. To those who are thee
called according to his purpose. Things are not gonna work out
for good for Pharaoh. Things don't work out for good
for anybody who's gonna perish in their sins. But all things
work together. It's a marvelous machinery. How God in his providence causes
every single thing that happens in your life to work together
for your good. Not so much for your eternal
good, because the things of the flesh don't have anything to
do with our eternal good, but they work together for our spiritual
good down here. They work together for good. God says, I'm gonna harden Pharaoh's
heart. I have no problem saying that
and believing that, do you? I have no arguments. I would
not charge God foolishly. He owns everything. He owns everybody. And that which God is pleased
to do with you, with me, or with anybody else of Adam's fallen
race, that's God's business. He raised up Pharaoh, a wicked man, a vile man, a filthy
man, a cruel man, a man who hated God, a man who hated God's people. a man who would show them no
mercy, who made life for them as difficult as he could possibly
make it. But God was using him. And he
was using him in order to fulfill his purpose toward the Israelites. And there are people who deal
with you. Perhaps deal with you honestly
and kindly and nicely. And then others deal with you
in maybe a hatred, hateful way, a cruel way. But aren't those
who deal with you kindly and those who deal with you cruelly,
aren't they both equally under the sovereign authority of your
king? See, that's why when he was at
Cushah, I believe it was, he was stoning David. And one of David's soldiers said,
you want me to pull out my sword and cut his head off? Whatever
the guy's name was, I forget his name. And David said, he
couldn't curse me except that God said, Curse David. Curse David. And nobody can touch
your soul, okay? Nobody can harm your soul. And
if somebody says something to you cruelly, or they do something
to you that is painful you and hurtful for you, well, certainly,
we understand, and I've had that to happen to me, that hurts.
But it's not for us to strike out in vengeance against them
because somehow or other God orchestrated everything. And that's what we've got to
remember. Think of the death of our Lord Jesus. Who's behind
that? You say, well, Satan entered
into the heart of Judas. That's true. And the Sanhedrin, they were
opposed to salvation by grace alone, through Christ alone. And they were all up in the air
and they were all upset over Jesus of Nazareth. People saying
He's the King and that He's the Savior and He's come to seek
and to save that which was lost. And they were upset over somebody
having a different religious viewpoint than they did. That's
true. But back behind it all, back
behind Pilate's decision, back behind Herod's cruelty, back
behind the vileness of the Roman soldiers who showed Christ no
mercy, no mercy, back behind it all, get a hold to this now,
was the purpose of our God. which was being fulfilled even,
even through all of that cruelty. And if we, if the Spirit of God
would grasp our hearts so that we could see and really believe
that, we wouldn't get so upset when things happen. You know,
it said, why do bad things happen to good people? Well, first of
all, aren't any good people. There aren't any good people.
But to the children of God, really, there are no bad things. Not if God really reigns. Is that right? Not if God reigns. There's nothing bad. There's
nothing that can hurt you, nothing that can harm you. He causes
all things to work together for your good. And so the Lord hardens
Pharaoh's heart. And guess what? The Lord's gonna
bring good out of it. And though Pharaoh is an evil
man, watch what God does with him. God will use him to magnify
our Lord's great and glorious name. And then when God is finished
with him, he'll drown him in the Red Sea. And he'll go out into eternity
where he is right now, separated from God in the everlasting condemnation
of being an object of the wrath of God in hell. And that, my
friend, is the God that most people in religion, they don't
know him. They have no knowledge of this
God. Look what the Lord says in verse four. But Pharaoh shall
not hearken unto you. He's not gonna listen to you.
Why isn't he going to listen to you? because God's going to
harden his heart. He just told you that. Well,
what is the purpose of that? Why in the world would God harden
a man's heart? Why in the world would God keep
the gospel from him which would soften his heart? After all,
he softens the hearts of those whom he will. If you're a believer,
he softened your heart. In fact, He took away from you
the heart of stone and gave you a heart of flesh. But He didn't do a work of grace
for Pharaoh. He just left him. He left him
in his spiritual deadness, in his disinterest in the things
of the true God of heaven and earth. The Lord says, well, He's not
going to hearken to you, Moses. Now you give him my message,
but he's not going to hearken to you. Watch this. In order that I may lay my hand
upon Egypt, Moses, this is all going to happen. His rejection,
Pharaoh's rejection of my message that you're going to deliver
to him, this is going to happen in order that he will reject
this message, that I may lay my hand, not a hand of love,
not a hand of grace, not a hand of mercy, but a hand of judgment,
a hand of vengeance, a hand of wrath upon Egypt. and bring forth my armies. And my people, the children of
Israel, I'll bring them forth out of the land of Egypt by great
judgments. I'm going to harden his heart.
I'm going to send these judgments upon all of the Egyptians in
order that I will bring forth my people. I chose these people. I'm going to redeem these people,
the firstborn of the people by the blood of the Passover lamb. I'm gonna redeem them out of
the land of Egypt. And I'll do so by great judgments.
And here will be the result, verse five. And the Egyptians
shall know that I am the Lord. That man sitting on his throne
in Egypt in the palace, he's not the Lord. You know, they
worshiped him as God. The Egyptians worshiped him as
a God. But they're gonna find out he's
no God. He's a dunghill God's all he
is. He's a pretend God. They're gonna find out he doesn't
have any power at all. I have all power, the Lord says. And they'll find that out when
I stretch forth my hand upon Egypt. and bring out the children
of Israel from among them. Keep this in mind. For 400 years, the Israelites
had been in Egypt, in the land of Goshen. And it was the last,
the first 300 years or so, apparently were quite nice. But then God
raised up a king, a pharaoh, who, he had no knowledge of Joseph
and all the heroic actions of Joseph, how he was so wise to hoard up grain during seven years
of plenty, and then having saved all of that in the treasuries
of Egypt, then everybody else is going to get hungry and then
he would sell it to people. And he would make Pharaoh a wealthy
man, make a lot of money for Egypt. But this Pharaoh that God raised
up during the time after 300 years
or so, because apparently, and you can look at what historians
estimate, that the children of Israel suffered somewhere between
80 and 100 years during their lives in Egypt, okay? Somewhere between 80 and 100
years. All 400 years weren't in cruel bondage. The last 80
to 100 years, they were. They were filled with difficulty,
disappointments, troubles. But through all of the turmoil
of those final 80 to 100 years, even when they began to worship
the gods of Egypt, the Lord never forsook them. Even when they were quite contented
during the good years. I'll just call them the good
years, okay? The 300 years or so that they
enjoyed life. During all those years, the Lord
indeed, he was providing for them and he caused the Egyptians
to be friendly toward them. And the Israelites, I'm sure,
were thinking, hey, we're gonna live here happily ever after.
It's a sweet end to our story, and we'll just, we'll live here,
and we'll retire here, and everything will be wonderful. But the Lord
had ordained for them to travel to a land he promised Abraham.
You can't sink your roots in the land of Goshen. That's not
the land of milk and honey. That's not the land that God
promised Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Not Goshen. And the Lord,
as He has the ability to do, and He often does this, He has
ways of loosening the roots that we establish in this world. And
that's what he did with the Israelites. He loosened their roots. And
all of a sudden, those pleasant days turned into days of agony
and trouble, great trial. And Pharaoh said, and we've studied
this back in the first chapter, Pharaoh said, this evil Pharaoh,
he said, they're growing. They're growing in number. They
could join themselves with our enemies and overtake us. We'll
treat them cruelly. He appointed taskmasters. Build
some cities for me. And they did build some cities
for him. You can read about him in the
first chapter. And then they still thrived.
The Israelites, they multiplied. They were becoming hundreds of
thousands of people. And he made life even more difficult
for them. But all the while, the Lord is
fulfilling his purpose. Because he was with them, and
they stand as a picture of the true Israel of God. The Lord says, I'll never leave
you and I'll never forsake you. That doesn't mean you'll never
have troubles, never have sickness, you'll never have loved ones
that are sick or loved ones that pass away. Doesn't mean those
things at all. You see, the Lord had, he had
one son without sin. but he has no sons without troubles. Right? One son without sin, the
Lord Jesus. And we have sin and we do have
troubles. He didn't have any sin, but he
had troubles. He met a lot of vile people along
life's way. But you know what? All things
were working together for good for Him, the Son of God. Oh yeah, they were working according
to the purpose of God. Everything that happened to Him.
There was nothing that our Lord Jesus had to endure as a perfect
man. There was nothing he was called
upon in the providence of God that wasn't ordained for him
every step of his journey all the way to the cross. It was
all purposed by God. And consider this. Just as every
step of his journey to his death and to his resurrection and ascension,
just as every step of his life was ordained of God, his steps
were no more ordained of God than yours are. Isn't that something? Do you believe that God ordained
every step in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ? Well, of course,
we all believe that. Well, then believe this as well.
As God ordained the steps of His eternal Son, so He ordained
the steps of all of His adopted sons and daughters. Isn't that
wonderful? That's just absolutely glorious.
and as He caused everything to work together for the good of
the Lord Jesus. You see, in His death, in His
triumph, in the midst of the agonies of the cross of Calvary,
when man did his utmost to the Son of God in cruelty, in vengeance,
in hatefulness, And when our God poured out all of His wrath
upon the Son of God, who bore our sins in His own body on the
tree, still all things were being worked out for the good of the
Son of God. Because look, look who sits at
the right hand of God now. Look who's been exalted. That
despised Galilean. That one that they accused of
blasphemy. That one they said he does his
works by the power of Beelzebub. But look where he is now. By his sacrificial death and
his triumph over all of his enemies, it all worked out to his exaltation. Isn't that something? And all of the things that happen
to all of the children of God, they'll all work together for
our good. And one of these days, we're
going to be exalted into the presence of our Savior. Exalted by the Lord. Now indeed, he will from time
to time make life difficult for us. Lest we become comfortable,
too comfortable here. I don't know of anybody that
wouldn't want a comfortable life. Hey, it's a little easier to Be, to rejoice in the, like in
the day we had today, just a pleasant day. Wasn't, the heat wasn't
overbearing, it wasn't too cool. It was a really pleasant day.
We all like days like this, but, you know, you get stormy days
and things like that. We don't enjoy those as much,
but the Lord sends them both, and that's the way it is in life,
isn't it? He sends us sunny days and He sends us stormy days.
but they all work together for our good. You see, learn this,
Israel, Israel in Egypt, in Goshen, in the last 80 to 100 years of
their dwelling there in that time of captivity, they were
exactly where God put them, exactly. because it was the Lord who sent
Joseph into Egypt to begin with. And then the time of plenty and
then the time of famine. And Jacob and his family started
getting hungry and they wound up going into Egypt and petitioning
that man who had headed up the granaries of Egypt, Joseph, They
didn't recognize him, but they went to him. They needed food.
And ultimately, Jacob and all of the children of Israel, numbering
70 people, they all wound up in Egypt. They are there by the
hand of God. And I don't know where you are
in life, but I do know this. You are where you are. by the hand of God. You are where you are by the
hand of God. And let us look, let us look,
not so much for comfort here, though I understand that, I mean,
I'm, I'm not a fool. I enjoy life and enjoy my family
and enjoy y'all. I'm thankful for this, but we
gotta set our sights higher. It's like Abraham. Abraham looked
for a city. He looked for a city whose builder
and maker is God. I'm looking for that same city,
aren't you? I'm looking for that same city. because it's a city that has
foundations. You know the earth has no foundation,
does it? Got some school teachers in here,
talk about science and so forth. It's just a ball hanging out
there in space. It doesn't have any foundation,
but heaven does. Because the foundations of heaven
for the people of God are the eternal loving kindness of God. What a foundation. Everlasting
love. The covenant of grace. What a
foundation. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, what a foundation. And the Word of God that can't
be broken. I'm looking for a city that's
got foundations. This globe we dwell on, it doesn't
have foundations, except in the purpose of God. God keeps this
sphere, this earth, this globe where it is. And I don't worry
about falling out of orbit. I don't worry about a meteor
hitting it and knocking it off course. I don't worry about getting
too close to the sun and poof, the whole thing will be gone.
And I don't worry about climate change. And I don't worry about
all these things that it seems like everybody else is worried
about, because I believe God. And this is not my permanent
home. I'm looking for a city that has
foundations. And I read about it in the word
of God. And I'll tell you, that city,
oh, how glorious it is. And we'll be there one of these
days. And the troubles that we go through,
We'll just keep going through it. But I'll tell you this. Our God sees the wickedness of
men just like he saw the wickedness of Pharaoh and the Egyptians.
And he has promised, vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I will repay. You better not
be on the wrong side. That's what I'm telling you.
You better be on the grace side, not the work side. You better
be on Christ's side, not another side. He's the master of our fate. and of our destiny. And as surely
as he ordained the destiny of his son, he ordained your destiny. The destiny of all of his people
and the destiny of everybody who aren't his people. He ordained those destinies too.
Because that's our God. He does his will in the armies
of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and nobody can
stop him from doing what he wants to do. Nobody can stay his hand
or say, what doest thou? You're not gonna do that. I expect
when somebody says to God, you're not gonna do that, I don't know,
I suspect that God laughs. He just laughs. at the stupidity
of people and the stubbornness of men and women and young people
who will not bow their knee to King Jesus. But if you're not
enabled by the grace of God to bow in this life, go bow at the
judgment. Everybody's gonna bow to him.
Everybody. Well, Lord said judgment's coming,
and next week, next Wednesday night, we'll get into the judgments
of God. But first, we'll sing, before
we leave, we'll sing 475 Redeems.