So this will be review for you,
but I just don't want to skip over this passage. I want everyone
here to hear this. Now, we've seen how the Lord
God gave repeated warnings to Pharaoh. Over and over, He warned
Pharaoh of his judgment. And Pharaoh continually rebelled. And so we read in Exodus 10.21,
And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward
heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even
darkness which may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his
hand toward heaven, and there was a thick darkness in all the
land of Egypt three days. They saw not one another, neither
rose any from his place for three days. But all the children of
Israel had light in their dwellings. The title of my message is God's
Israel shall have light. God's Israel shall have light.
Now this darkness that we see here is an example of sin. The darkness of sin. Proverbs
4.19 says the way of the wicked is as darkness. Now they know
not at what they stumble. So this darkness is a picture
of sin. And you notice here that the
darkness came from the Lord. The Lord told Moses, stretch
forth your hand toward heaven. Stretch forth your hand toward
heaven. And it was the Lord who said this. This was the Lord's
doing. You see, just like God warned
Pharaoh that darkness was coming. if he didn't obey. God warned
Adam in the garden and he told him, in the day that you sin
against me, the day you partake of that fruit that I forbid,
the day you transgress my one law, thou shalt surely die. Darkness shall cover you. Darkness
shall enter in. And Adam died. He ate the fruit. He disobeyed God and Adam died
and all His people died in Him. Now when Adam died, he died a
threefold death. A threefold death. First of all,
he died spiritually. He died within. He lost the Spirit
of God. He lost communion with God. God
withdrew His Spirit from Adam. He will not dwell with a sinner. He withdrew from Adam. And when he did that, he took
his light from Adam and left Adam in the darkness. That's
why here that's illustrated by him saying, stretch forth your
hand toward heaven. This darkness came from the Lord.
Wherever the Lord's presence is, there's light. Where the
Lord's not present, there is not light. And there's only darkness. So he died spiritually, but he
also died physically. The minute that he partook of
that fruit, he began to die physically. The reason for all sickness and
all death is sin. It's sin. That's why we all get
sick and that's why we die. It's because of sin. So he died
physically. He died spiritually and he died
physically. And then, if God had not intervened,
You remember God intervened and He took an animal and He made
coats of skins and He covered their nakedness, a picture of
God saving Adam and Eve and covering them in the righteousness of
Christ. But if God had not intervened, Adam would have died eternally.
He would have met God in judgment and God would have cast him out
and he would have died eternally suffering forever in hell. And so that was the darkness
that we all died in the sin that covered us, the darkness that
covered us in Adam, all of us. That's pictured here in verse
22, there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt. So
everybody in Egypt was covered in darkness. Scripture says in
Adam, all die. We all died in Adam. By one man,
sin entered the world, and death by sin. And so death passed upon
all men, because in Adam all have sin. There's no exclusions
to this. We all died in Adam. And so due
to sin, how are we born? Spiritually dead. We come forth
in this threefold death. We're dead spiritually, inwardly,
we have no communion with God, we're cut off from God. Come
forth dying physically. The moment you are conceived
and come forth from your mother's womb, you start dying. We've
been dying ever since. We're going to die physically.
And if God does not intervene, we're going to meet God in judgment
and we'll die eternally. So we came under this threefold
death. Now sin is total darkness. It says here in verse 21, even
darkness which may be felt. You know, we would not confess
we were sinners. We would not claim to be sinners. But now that we are born of God
and have the light of Christ, we know something about sin.
And even when we didn't know or would not be honest about
our sin, we still felt it. And this whole world feels sin
and the consequence of sin. You see it all over the place.
The news is basically the reporting of sin and the consequences of
it. Every song you hear sung in popular
music is a song about the seven deadly sins. That's the subject
of every one of them. One of those seven deadly sins.
Jealousy, pride, anger. I forget the other. Anyway, it's
one of those. It's all about sin. Sin that may be felt. We were such as sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death being bound in affliction and iron. And this sin is blinding. It's
blinding darkness. It says there in verse 23, they
saw not one another. They saw not one another. So
dark they couldn't see the man standing next to them. And by
nature, we're all blind. We're blind to the triune God,
we're blind to spiritual things, and we're blind to His people.
Scripture says, they meet with darkness in the daytime, and
grow up in the noon, day is in the night. Scripture said, Christ
said, He that hateth his brothers in darkness, and he walketh in
darkness, and he knows not whether he goes, because that darkness
has blinded his eyes. And look over at 1 Corinthians
chapter 2. I want you to see we're blind
not only to the things of God, we're blind to God's people by
nature. We don't understand them, we
can't understand why God's people come to hear the gospel that
they do and rejoice in Christ and rejoice to hear that they
can do nothing and God must save them. We didn't understand that
when we were dead in sin. And the unbeliever right now,
unregenerate, blind, he can't discern why in the world we would
love this gospel. Look here, verse 10. It said, well let's
start with verse 9. I hath not seen nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man the things which
God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed
them unto us by His Spirit. You see that? That's the only
way we know anything. God revealed it by His Spirit.
Look down at verse 14. But the natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness
to him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned. He can't know the things of God. But he not only
can't know the things of God, he doesn't discern God's people.
Look at verse 15. But he that is spiritual judgeth
all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. Those that
are blind can't discern. They don't have spiritual discernment
to understand why you who believe want to come and hear this gospel.
And that's all you want to hear is Christ preach. Men will say,
well I don't mind hearing Christ preach, but after a little while
I want you to tell me what I need to be doing and talk to me about
me a little while. God's people just want to hear
about Christ and His works. But they don't discern that because
sin is darkness, it's blinding. And then sin is debilitating
darkness. Back in Exodus 10.23, it said,
neither rose any from his place for three days. They didn't get
up. They couldn't get up. They couldn't
go to work. They couldn't do anything because they were in
darkness. And brethren, you and I, when
we were in the darkness of sin, we couldn't do anything that
was righteous. We could not do any work to please
God. We've seen it over and over that
all the fruit that an unregenerate, blind sinner in darkness produces,
the only fruit he produces is death. It's darkness. It's dead fruit. The paths of
uprightness. We've left the paths of uprightness
to walk in the ways of darkness. That's what we did in Adam. And
so this darkness of sin, it prohibits us not only from doing anything
that's righteous before the law, it prohibits us from coming to
Christ the light. Go to John 3. This is why Christ
said we had to be born again. John 3, it's amazing, isn't it?
Isn't it a testimony to the darkness of the sin blinded man? And he'll
read John chapter 3 and the one verse he'll pick out is, For
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting
life. And he'll say, see there? It's by my will, it's by whosoever
believeth. But he ignores the rest of the
context of what Christ is saying. And what Christ is saying here
is, this is the manner in which God loves. You've got to be born
of God. You've got to be given spiritual
discernment to know God. Because God so, after this manner,
loved the world. He's going to send his gospel,
he says there. Christ must be lifted up. You must be born again. And here's why. Read on. It says,
Verse 19, this is the condemnation. Light is coming to the world.
And men love darkness rather than light because their deeds
were evil. And he's talking about those
self-righteous deeds. He's talking about the very best
righteousness you've worked out. If I've worked all my life in
church, and I've done all these religious deeds, and I've got
all this invested in religion, I'm not going to stand for a
man telling me that that's all filthy rags, unless God makes
me to know it and believe it and part from it. And so that's
what his deeds are evil and it says for everyone that doeth
evil hates the light. Neither comes to the light lest
his deeds should be reproved. He won't come to Christ and lay
down all his self-righteous deeds and all his thinking he's good
and thinking that it's by his will and his works that he's
made accepted of God. He won't lay that aside and come
to Christ the light and confess. All my works were worked by Christ.
He won't do it because He will not lay down His works and His
person and His will unless God intervenes. He can't do it. Now there was a time, I read
this story about back before the days of electricity and there
was this little girl that was riding a train And she was in
the carriage car with her mom and dad. And the porter came
along and he began to light the lamps in the carriage car. And the little girl said, why
is he lighting those lamps? It's daytime. It's light outside. And the mother said, just wait
and see. And so they waited. And in a
little while, that train went into a dark tunnel. And when
it went in that tunnel, she could see. And then she understood
why he lit those lights. These scriptures that I'm declaring
to you are the light of truth. Just like those lamps in that
train. But you see, sinners can't see why we preach this. They can't see this, they can't
understand it at all. It's going to take God revealing
your sin to you. It's going to take God bringing
you into this darkness. that can be felt, that's debilitating,
that strips you and makes you see that you're just incapable
of pleasing God at all. And when you're in that dark
tunnel, then the light of these scriptures will shine and you'll
see God's wisdom and you'll see why He's revealed this sin to
you. So that you cast all your care
on Christ and He gets all the glory. Now secondly, notice this. While all Egypt was in darkness,
God gave light to Israel. Verse 23 says, But all the children
of Israel had light in their dwellings. Now the first thing
I want to know is who are the children of Israel? The children
of Israel represent somebody. Just like the darkness represented
somebody, the children of Israel represent somebody. They represent
God's Israel. They represent what Scripture
calls the Israel of God, the children of promise, God's elect. Go to Romans 9. We'll just read
Scripture and we'll see the answer. And this is so clearly revealed
right here, Romans 9. Verse 6, he's talking about,
you know, there's so many in Israel that didn't believe the
gospel. He said in verse 6, but it's not as though the Word of
God has taken no effect. It's not like the Word of God
has been unable to affect what God purposed. Because they're
not all Israel which are of Israel. In other words, God didn't mean
purpose to save everybody in Israel. That's why they didn't
all believe. They're not all God's Israel which are of the
children of Israel. Look at this, neither because
they are the seed of Abraham are they all children. It doesn't
matter that they're all natural sons of Abraham. But in Isaac
shall thy seed be called. You know what that means? Here's
what it means. Remember God said this, they
which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children
of God, but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.
Remember Isaac and Ishmael? Who was Ishmael? He was the child
that was born by Adam's work. I mean Abraham's work and Abraham's
will and Sarah's will and Sarah's work. They doubted God and so
they went and took the handmaid and He produced the child Himself. That's the Son of the flesh,
born of the flesh. He represents all religious folks
who are coerced into a decision for Christ by men And men change
the doctrine and they water it down and they bring the law down
to a man's level and they tell a man he can fulfill it and they
produce children of the flesh. Children born of man's will and
man's work. But Isaac, Isaac was that son
God promised. Isaac was that son God said,
I'm going to come and I'm going to be the one who births this
child. I'm going to be the one who produces this child. And
not with any help of any man. Sarah was barren and she couldn't
bear children. And yet God made her to bear
a child. And that's who Isaac was. That's
the children of promise. Look, for this is the word of
promise. This is God's promise. At this
time will I come and Sarah shall have a son. You see that? Look,
and not only this. There's another example. When
Rebekah also had conceived by one, even by her father Isaac.
You had twins of the same father and of the same mother. They
were both in the womb. They had neither one of them
done anything. Look at this. For the children being not yet
born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose
of God according to election might stand. The reason God's
telling us this is to tell us what the purpose of election
is. The purpose of election. I got a good article in the bulletin
on this if you read it. He's telling us here the purpose
of election. And here's the purpose of election. Salvation's not
of works, but of Him that calleth. It's of God that calleth. And
so God said to Rebekah, before these children were ever born,
He said, the elder shall serve the younger. As it's written,
Jacob have a love, but Esau have a hated. The article points out
that God hating Esau, it was not a positive angry hatred toward
Esau. You understand when scripture
says, Christ said, unless a man hate his father and his mother
and yea, hate himself also, he's not worthy of me. He doesn't
mean that we're not to be angry and that kind of hatred against
our mother and father. We're not to be that way against
ourselves. We're to totally disregard them
and totally pass them by for Christ. And that's what this
hatred means. He just didn't pay any regard
to Esau. All his affection, all his love,
all his choice, everything was on Jacob. And the focus here
is not Esau. Now I can see how he hated Esau. The focus here is Jacob. How
could he love Jacob? That's the question. How in the
world could he love a stinking sinner like Jacob and like you
and me? What shall we say? Is there unrighteousness
with God? God forbid. He said to Moses,
I will have mercy on whom I'll have mercy. I'll have compassion
on whom I'll have compassion. So then, it's not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that shows mercy.
So God's Israel are those whom God shows mercy. God's Israel,
these who are going to have this light, are those who God chose
before the world began. They're those who He's going
to send the gospel to. They're those who are going to be given
light. by God and born of God. They're children of promise.
Now I know that when we're in darkness, we hate the doctrine
of election. We consider it not fair. You
notice this, when men are in darkness, they always, we did
this, men always put themselves on the side of the goats instead
of the sheep when they're in darkness. And they rail against
God and call Him unrighteous for choosing people and passing
by others. But when God comes and reveals
Himself and reveals your sin to you and shows you how unprofitable
and unworthy you really are, it makes you own it. And then
He reveals that He chose you in Christ. Then you're put on
the side of the sheep by God and that's where you always have
been. You just didn't know it. And then you love the doctrine
of election. Because you know, if God hadn't
chosen me, I would not have been saved. If God hadn't chosen us,
no man would be saved. So, how did this difference come
about? Go back over there to Exodus chapter 11. This will be the next passage
we're coming to. We'll have a whole message on it, but I just want
to show you this verse, and this is how the difference is made.
God said, remember, He said He's going to pass through Egypt,
and all the firstborn are going to die. That means all the firstborn
who are Egyptians, and all the firstborn who are Israelites,
they're all going to die. But there was a difference put
between them. God provided a lamb for the children
of Israel. So their firstborn died in a
lamb instead of themselves having to die. They had a substitute
who died for them. And so God said this, verse 7,
But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move
his tongue, against man or beast, that you may know how that the
Lord doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel. The
only one who makes you to differ from another, and makes me to
differ from another, and makes all God's elect to differ from
all the children of this world, the only one who makes the difference
is God. I didn't make the difference.
You didn't make the difference. A preacher don't make the difference.
The church don't make the difference. Nobody makes the difference but
God. Those that are born are born
not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, nor of
blood, but of God. It's God who makes the difference. Now here's my third point. Just
like God made the difference for these children of Israel
and He provided that lamb to die in their place, God provided
His Son to die the death that all His elect owed. He gave His
Son to come and be our substitute. He's the Lamb, the Lamb of God. Verse 23, Exodus 10, 23, They
saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three
days. So when you read that word three
days, do you think of anything? When you see the word three in
Scripture, you see three days. The first thing I think about,
I think about the three hours of darkness that Christ was in
on the cross. You see this three days connected
with this darkness? That's the first thing that came
to my mind was three hours of darkness on Calvary's cross.
And then three days later, Christ came out of the grave, out of
the tomb, out of the darkness of the grave. Matthew 27.45 says,
from the 6th hour there was darkness over all the land. Just like
our text here, darkness was over all Egypt. From the 6th hour
there was darkness over all the land until the 9th hour. And
about the 9th hour Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, Eli,
Eli, lama sabachthani, that is to say, my God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me? Now what did we see about Adam?
What was the threefold death he died? He died spiritually. He lost the communion he had
with God. He lost the light of God inwardly. And then secondly, Adam died
physically. He began to die physically. And
thirdly, he died eternally. He did die eternally. I said
God intervened. He did intervene, but he did
die eternally. He's doing it in Christ. All God's people are going to
die eternally. You got to for justice to be filled. The difference
is God provided His Son to die that death for. So for God to
be the just and the justifier, Christ comes forth and He dies
these three deaths. On the cross, in that darkness,
He dies spiritual death. Now spiritual death is a moral
death. It means in a man what it meant
was, it meant for Adam and you and me that we couldn't do anything
righteous. It meant that we hated God. We lost any desire for God. Period. But see, Christ is the God-man.
He's God and man. And even though God forsook Him
and God withdrew Himself from Him and took His light from Him,
I don't know how that's so. Because that's God on the cross.
And He's a man. But He said, Why hast thou forsaken
Me? But when that happened, brethren,
The Godhead of Christ sustained Him as a man. And as a man, as a servant of
God, we read throughout the Scriptures, He never ceased calling on the
Father in faithfulness. So it didn't corrupt Him, but
He tasted everything about that spiritual darkness that could
be tasted with the exception of becoming a rebel. All the
infirmities of sin, He experienced it. He experienced every bit
of it. And darkness gives us an idea
of it. This is why He said in Scripture, He said, He said, My soul is sorrowful
even unto death. As He is talking about your inward
man, My soul is sorrowful even unto death. And he said in Psalm
22, 14, My heart, my inner part is like wax. It's melted in the
midst of my bowels. He was dying that spiritual death
that we deserve. And then Christ also, as scripture
says, while he was doing that though, you remember, and I made
this connection, and I'm almost certain this is what I am certain,
this is what he's talking about. Remember Hebrews 12 says, when
you get down and discouraged, he says, consider Christ. Because
you have not yet resisted unto blood striving against sin. Remember in the Garden of Gethsemane
when Christ sweat, as it were, great drops of blood? That tells
us He was striving against sin. He was resisting sin. And it
was so powerful His capillaries burst and He sweat blood. And
then on a cross He bled resisting sin. That's what he did. He was never corrupted. He remained
faithful to God. And that's how he accomplished
that spiritual death and destroyed that spiritual death for his
people. And then he also died eternal death. That eternal death
that if you meet God in judgment and God casts you out, it's eternal
death. It's a loss of God's presence. Remember Christ said, God will
say, depart from me, ye cursed. depart from me, depart from my
presence. Can you imagine what it would
be not to have the presence of God? There's nobody here, nobody
in this world that has never had been without the presence
of God. God's presence is with us all
the time. That's what restrains sin, but to not have the presence
of God. Apart from Me, God said, men
shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence
of the Lord and from the glory of His power, Scripture said. That's eternal death. And that's
what Christ was dying on the cross when He said, My God, My
God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? And you see the gnashing of teeth
that will be in hell by the fact that what was going on to Christ
by men all around Him. They were gnashing on Him and
God didn't restrain it. God didn't stop it. Because He
had removed the presence of His power. And He allowed man to
do and the devil to do what he would. And that's what we would
do by nature. If God took His hand off of us
right now, we would do that exact same thing. That exact same thing. So He died eternal death. He
died eternal death. And eternal death includes a
knowledge and an everlasting understanding of God's anger
and God's displeasure with you. A perfect understanding of that.
And while Christ suffered, He understood that. This is the
Son of God's love and yet He understood that hatred God had
toward Him. That's why it's called an everlasting
fire and a worm that never dies. It's knowing God's anger toward
you. That's why Christ said in Psalm
89, 38, Psalm 22, 14, Psalm 18, 5, He said the sorrows of hell
accomplished me about. The sorrows of hell. And then
our Savior commended His Spirit into the hands of the Father
and He gave up the ghost and He died physically. He died physically. So our Savior put an end to death
for His people. He died spiritually, He died
eternally, and He died physically. And by His death now, justice
demands that all for whom He died shall be delivered from
this threefold death. We got to be delivered from spiritual
death by being regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God. Remember
how we wouldn't come to the light because we love darkness? We
wouldn't come to the light because we love darkness. God's given
Christ the glory. Scripture says that thou mayest
say to them that are in darkness, show yourselves. And when this
gospel is going forth and Christ speaks into the heart and says,
show yourself, you're coming out of the darkness and you're
coming to Christ the light. And what do you come confessing?
John 3 verse 21 says, He that doeth truth cometh to the light,
that his deeds may be made manifest, that they worked in God. God
worked them. I didn't work them. Including
my coming to Christ. I didn't work it. God worked
it in me. And I come confessing it. That's
what coming to the light is. If a man says, I brought myself
to God, he's still in darkness. That's darkness. But the man
who can say, Even my coming to Christ was worked in me by God.
That's the man who's standing in light. You're a chosen generation,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation of peculiar people that you should
show forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness
into His marvelous light. We didn't do it. He did it. God
who commanded the light to shine out of darkness is shining our
hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Christ Jesus. Brethren, true sanctification
is in the heart. True holiness is in the heart.
It's when Christ is formed in you. That's true sanctification. That's true sanctification. That's
holiness. That's when you start walking in Christ our light.
And by His light you have light. And then the justice of God demands
that all for whom He died must be delivered from physical death
in resurrection. So that means when we draw our
last breath in this world, our spirit, just like Christ, our
spirit is going to be with the Father immediately. We are going
to close our eyes in death and wake up with God in glory. And
when Christ returns, He is going to raise our bodies incorruptible. O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and
the strength of sin is the law, but thanks be to God which giveth
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. And then the third
death, justice of God, because Christ satisfied eternal death,
bore the judgment of God for His people. The justice of God
demands we must be delivered from that eternal death. You
know, Scripture says, Christ said, when the Holy Spirit comes,
He's going to convince my people of sin because they believe not
on me. He's going to convince them of
righteousness because I go to my Father and you see me no more.
That's proof that His resurrection is proof that God's pleased with
Him. He's the righteousness of His people. And He said, and
I'm going to convince them of judgment. I'm convinced some
judgment's settled because the prince of this world is already
destroyed. There's no accuser of the brethren anymore before
God because He settled judgment for us in Christ. Our judgment's
settled, brethren. You don't have to worry about
coming into... When you come into the presence
of God and Scripture says God's going to reward you according
to that which you've done, whether it be good or evil, for the believer
what that means is God's going to come into his presence. And
everything good Christ did, we're going to be rewarded for it.
Everything Christ did that was good, we're going to be rewarded
for it. And for the unbeliever, it means this, no matter what
you've done, that's good or bad, it's all going on the same side
of the scale. And it's not going to measure
up to the righteousness of Christ, and God's going to say, depart
from me. But He satisfied that eternal judgment for His people.
So brethren, this is the difference between the true and living Christ,
the true Christ of the Bible. You know, you got all these different
kinds of Jesuses out there. You got the Jesus of the Discovery
Channel, the History Channel. You got the Jesus that's preached
in most churches that can't do anything except you want what
you let Him do. You got the Jesus of the Jehovah's
Witness who's not God. You got the Jesus of the Mormon
who's not God. You got all these different Jesus
out there. How do you know the true one?
He didn't make salvation possible. He accomplished it. He accomplished
it. That's how you know you're hearing
the right one. He accomplishes all salvation. Everything that we need, Christ
is and Christ works in us. everything we need. Everything
we shall be, we shall be because of Christ creating us totally
anew and He gets all the glory. That's why all God's Israel shall
have light. We're going to all have light.
Christ said this, I am the light of the world and he that followeth
me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life. God's Israel shall have light. Amen. Let's stand together, brethren. We thank you, Lord, for this
blessed passage of Scripture and we thank you that you revealed
it to us by your light. Keep us in the light. Keep us
ever looking to Christ the light. in us, yet in our old man is
nothing but darkness. Keep us always walking in the
light of Christ alone. Lord, we pray that You would
shine like You have in our hearts and shine in the hearts of some
lost, dark, elect child here today and give them Your light. Make them to see, make them to
behold Christ and fall in love with Him. Forgive us our sins,
Lord. Be with us today as we attempt
to worship you. Make us truly do so. We ask all
these things in Christ's name. Amen.