Alright brethren, let's turn
in our Bibles to Exodus chapter 8. God is absolutely sovereign. And that means that nothing in
this earth happens without God directly
bringing it to pass, no matter how big or small, no matter how
good or evil. God said, I form the light and
create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things. God is sovereignly bringing glory
to His name by delivering His people to serve Him. It says here in verse 1, ìThe
Lord spake unto Moses, ìGo unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, ìThus
saith the Lord, ìLet My people go, that they may serve Me.îî
And God is sovereignly bringing glory to His name by sending
strong delusion upon His enemies. That's what's typified in the
frogs. Verse 2, And if thou refuse to
let them go, behold, I will smite all the borders with frogs. and the river shall bring forth
frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house,
and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house
of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens,
and into thy kneading troughs. And the frogs shall come up both
on thee, and upon thy people, and upon all thy servants. And
the Lord spake unto Moses, saying unto Aaron, Stretch forth thine
hand with thy rod over the streams, over the rivers, and over the
ponds, and cause frogs to come up upon the land of Egypt. And
Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and
the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. And the magicians
did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs upon the
land of Egypt. And then God is sovereignly using
His enemies to glorify Him. Verse 8 says, ìThen Pharaoh called
for Moses and Aaron and said, ìEntreat the Lord, that He may
take away the frogs from me and from my people, and I will let
the people go, that they may do sacrifice unto the Lord.î
And Moses said unto Pharaoh, ìGlory over me.î When shall I
entreat for thee and for thy servants and for thy people to
destroy the frogs from thee and thy houses, that they may remain
in the river only? And he said, Tomorrow. And Moses
said, Be it according to thy word, that thou mayest know that
there is none like unto the Lord our God. And the frogs shall
depart from thee and from thy houses and from thy servants
and from thy people, they shall remain in the river only. And
Moses and Aaron went out from Pharaoh, and Moses cried unto
the Lord because of the frogs which he had brought up against
Pharaoh. And the Lord did according to the word of Moses. And the
frogs died out of the houses, and out of the villages, and
out of the fields. And they gathered them together upon heaps, and
the land stank. But when Pharaoh saw that there
was respite, he hardened his heart and hearkened not unto
them as the Lord had said." As we look into this passage and
we see God bringing glory to Himself as He pours out judgment
upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt, that gives you and me assurance
that today, right now, everything that's happening in this world,
God is doing it to glorify Himself. Everything. First of all, God
is sovereignly bringing glory to His name because everything
He's doing, He's doing to set His people free that we might
serve Him. That's the first cause why God's
doing everything in this earth, is to bring glory to Him in delivering
His people so that we might serve Him. He said there, the Lord
spake to Moses and He said, Go to Pharaoh and say to him, Thus
saith the Lord, let my people go that they may serve Me. Now
Pharaoh was in a very powerful position. So powerful that he
was able to keep all the children of Israel as slaves in bondage. He's a type, we've seen this,
he's a type of Satan and his seed. He's a type of the devil
and wicked spirits and wicked false preachers and wicked men
who follow such. Yet Satan and his seed are no
match for the sovereign God of glory. They were raised up so
that God might glorify His name. God has and He is and He shall
set His people free. And we all shall serve Him. Now God has a people. They are
His elect people. And God shall deliver His people
and shall set us free. First of all, Christ set His
people free in righteousness. He did it by His righteousness. That's the first thing that we
talk about when we talk about our deliverance. Christ set us
free by His righteousness. God is holy and righteous. That means that His law must
be upheld. His law must be honored. Justice
must be carried out to perfection. And so God will not show mercy
unless His justice is honored. That's the only way He'll show
mercy. Well, the soul that sinneth must die, the Scripture said.
Scripture says God will by no means clear the guilty. So how
then can God be merciful and honor that word? How can He be
merciful and honor that justice? The only way God could do that
was for God Himself to provide the Lamb and He by Himself justify
His people and uphold the law. And that's what Christ came forth
and did. On the cross you behold the positive
side of the law and the negative side of the law being fulfilled.
The negative side of the law said the soul that sinneth must
die. The wages of sin is death. And so Christ, the Son of God,
went forth and took the sin of His people upon Himself and took
the place of His people and bore divine justice in our room instead. And by that He fulfilled that
negative side of the law. And His fulfilling that negative
side of the law was His fulfilling the positive side of the law.
Because the positive side of the law is, Thou shalt love thy
God with all thy heart, soul, and mind, and thy neighbor as
thyself. And you and I nor any other sinner
have ever done that nor can ever do that in the perfection that
God demands. But on that cross, Christ did
it. And he did it by laying down
his life for God and for his people. Greater love hath no
man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. And so, before God, he is God's
righteousness. He's the only one God will receive
a sinner in. We have to come to God through
faith in Christ. And to every believer, He is
the Lord our righteousness. The only righteousness we have
is the Lord our righteousness. That means we can't say that
we've added to that righteousness by our law keeping. Our only
righteousness is Christ Jesus, the Lord our righteousness. And
the second way He delivers us is through the work of sanctification,
which is giving us a holy heart. Because we come into this world
corrupt with a deceitful nature and we can't be freed from that
bondage by any work we do. And so Christ, in the day of
His power, just like He sent forth Moses and Aaron, He sends
forth His preacher declaring, Thus saith the Lord, preaching
the Word of God, the Gospel of Christ. And as that word is going
forth, Christ prays the Father, and the Father sends the Holy
Spirit, and the Holy Spirit regenerates His child and gifts us with faith
in Christ and repentance from our dead works. And in that day,
in that hour, For the first time, we're delivered from the bondage
of sin. We're able to believe on Christ.
We're able to behold that He alone is our righteousness. And
it's because of God is Christ made unto us righteousness and
sanctification. Christ is both our sanctifier
and our sanctification. That's why we don't glory in
making ourselves holy or say we make ourselves more holy.
That is what Christ does when He calls us and regenerates us
and puts a new nature within us, created in His righteousness
and His holiness. That's when you're holy. So that's
the deliverance He gives us from the deliverance of righteousness
and the deliverance of holiness. And one day He's coming again
and He's going to deliver us fully, finally, completely, forever
from this body of death, from this world into His presence.
And so everything He's doing right now in this world, is for
the glory of His holy name in the deliverance of His people.
Everything you see happen today that's evil and wicked and you
scratch your head and you wonder what God's doing and you don't
understand what God's doing, now you know He's delivering
His people and He's bringing glory to His name. That's what
it's for. Everything good, evil, small,
big, that's what it's for. Now secondly, God is sovereign
to bring glory to His name by sending strong delusion upon
His enemies. He said in verse 2, He said to
Pharaoh, If thou refuse to let My people go, behold, I will
smite all the borders with frogs. And he did it. Now Satan and
any man that refuses to let God's people go, shall incur the judgment
of God. Because those that do so don't
believe God. They don't trust God. They don't
believe God. We see here that God's bare,
just His bare sovereignty in the fact that He sent these frogs
physically, literally. Everything that God has created
is at His disposal. That's why He's called the Lord
of hosts. The whole host that He created is His to use as He
will. And He does, just like He used
these frogs. But notice, God glorified His
servants and He glorified His gospel by using Moses and Aaron
to bring this plague through the rod of God. That's how he
brought this plague. He did it through the rod of
God, which is a picture of the gospel being preached. The Lord,
verse 5, spake to Moses and He said, Say to Aaron, stretch forth
thy hand with thy rod over the streams, over the rivers, and
over the ponds, and cause frogs to come upon the land of Egypt.
All judgment that comes upon men is for one reason. They refuse
to bow to God and believe on Christ. They refuse to believe
the gospel of Christ. That's why God pours out judgment
on men. That's why He does it. If men
will not glorify God by believing the gospel of Christ, God will
make it so that they are hardened in their sin and they can never
believe on Christ. It's called reprobation. Turn
with me to Revelation 16. Revelation 16. These frogs or
a type of wicked spirits, false preachers, and the corruption
that they bring about, the corruption of
the natural heart, this is how God sends men strong delusion. Revelation 16, 13. John said, I saw three unclean
spirits like frogs. come out of the mouth of the
false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils,
working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and
of the whole world to gather them to the battle of that great
day of God Almighty." That's another way of saying He's sending
forth through these devilish spirits strong delusion to reserve
men for the day of perdition. For the day when He will judge
them in righteousness and cast them into outer darkness forever.
That's the great day of judgment. And God uses false preachers
to do this. Go to 2 Timothy 3. Here we have
a description of Janice and Jambres. They were the magicians that
imitated God's true preacher in Pharaoh, that day there before
Pharaoh. Their name was Janice and Jambres.
They were magicians and they imitated God's true preacher. And they're the false preachers
that we see God using. Now here's a description of them.
Verse 1, this know also that in the last days, which the last
days started when Christ came. The last days have been going
on since Christ came. In these last days God has spoken
to us by His Son, Hebrews 1 tells us. So we're in the last days. And in the last days, perilous
times shall come. Now here's a description of these
false preachers. Men shall be lovers of their
own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient
to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce
breakers, false accusers, incontinent, That means uncontrollable, fierce,
despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded,
lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, having a form
of godliness, but denying the power thereof. What are we supposed
to do with men like this? Are we supposed to try to look
in the Scriptures and find Scripture that we can refute their arguments
with and go to battle with them and try to prove them wrong?
Is that what we're supposed to do? Nope. Verse 5 says, from
such turn away. Turn away your ears, turn away
your attention, turn your back to them. And don't listen. For
of this sort are they which creep into houses and lead captive
silly women laden with sins. That means that silly women is
just another name for the false church. Satan's seed. It's a
silly woman, and led away captive, laden with sins, led away with
different lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the
knowledge of the truth. Now, as Janice and Jambres withstood
Moses, so do these also resist the truth, men of corrupt minds,
reprobate concerning the faith. But, because God's sovereign,
He's using them. They shall proceed no further,
for their folly shall be manifest unto all God's people, as theirs
also was, as Janice and Jambres was. Now, that's what God was
doing there using Janice and Jambres. He was in control of
Janice and Jambres. Now, one of Egypt's idol gods
was a frog. That was one of their idol gods
that they worshipped, was a frog. And so what you have here with
these frogs coming up, they're puffed up, they're dirty, they're
a symbol of the proud, puffed up, arrogant, unclean spirit
which defiles a man. That's what they represent. And
it's a thorough defilement. These frogs were everywhere in
Egypt. You could not go anywhere without
coming in contact with these frogs. And this defiling spirit
defiles everything about a man and everybody he brings under
his influence. And so in sending these frogs
to overtake Pharaoh and to overtake Egypt, we have a picture of God
sending a strong delusion to men so that men believe a lie.
Does God really do that? Listen to 2 Thessalonians 2.10. They received not the love of
the truth that they might be saved. and for this cause. God shall send them strong delusion
that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned
who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
So now get the lesson here. When we see men reject the gospel
of Christ and go after lies that appear to you and me to be so
delusional, you don't understand how can they possibly believe
the things they believe. When you see that happening in
this world, sometimes it will be loved ones, sometimes it will
be folks that you thought were brethren, and it's hurtful, it's
sorrowful, but when you see it, understand this, God is sovereignly
bringing that to pass. He's bringing that to pass and
He's working it in justice to glorify His name and save His
people. Romans 9.17 says this, For the
Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have
I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that
my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath
he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. God's doing it. God's in perfect
control. Never think, when you see such
things happen, never think anything is happening out of the control
of our sovereign God. He's bringing it to pass. Now
thirdly, this is the last thing. God is sovereign to use those
enemies to bring glory to His name. Even the enemies that reject
Him and appear to us like we just can't figure out what's
going on there. God's using them also to bring
glory to His name. Notice here, when God's judgment
frightened Pharaoh, and that's all it was, he got afraid, he
got frightened by this judgment that had come to pass. And so,
what that did was that caused him to falsely repent. Judgment doesn't bring a man
to repentance. God may use that in conjunction
with His goodness, but Romans 2 says it's the goodness of God
that leads you to repentance. It's God showing you Christ and
showing you sin in our Lord Jesus Christ that brings men to repentance.
Judgment won't do it. You preach hell and show scary
movies and just scare the daylights out of people and make them repent
and make a profession and all they've done is made a false
profession. And there's proof of that in
the Scriptures. It talks about God sending judgment and men
in hell won't repent. They won't repent. That rich
man in hell, after he heard the Word come forth and say, they
have the Word of God, he still kept saying, no, no, send somebody
from the dead, they'll believe Him. Judgment won't work repentance. God's goodness does. But look
at here now, when God frightened Pharaoh into this false repentance,
Pharaoh didn't call Janice and Jambres to help him. That was
his false preachers, that was his magicians, his sorcerers,
his religious men. He didn't call them to help him.
He called God's messenger and asked God's messenger to call
on the true and living God. Look here in verse 8. Then Pharaoh
called for Moses and Aaron and said, Entreat the Lord that He
may take away the frogs from me and from my people and I'll
let the people go that they may do sacrifice unto the Lord. Why
didn't he call Janice and Jambres? He knew those men were fakes.
He knew those men were phonies. Anybody could cause the frogs
to come up and fake that. God had already worked it. So
when they faked it like they were doing it, it was God that
did it. They didn't do it. But when He
knew, they couldn't make them go away. Because God did it. God did it. So God made everybody
see that Pharaoh acknowledged that God is the only true God.
God worked that to make everybody in Egypt see Pharaoh, acknowledge
God's messengers, and acknowledge the true and living God, and
call upon Him. And then, in His sovereign power,
He gave Moses wisdom to see through Pharaoh's phony repentance. And
look at verse 9, And Moses said unto Pharaoh, Glory over me! You want this done, Pharaoh?
Here's what you're going to have to do. You're going to have to
go out tomorrow and stand on your ledge and before all the
people in Egypt and tell them, Moses is God's messenger. Not
these fellas, Moses is God's messenger. And so God used even
His enemy to bring glory to His messenger when Pharaoh had the
glory over Moses or else God wouldn't work this. And so he
did. He went and gloried over Moses.
And then, by his sovereign power, God gave Moses the wisdom to
say, Pharaoh, now right here publicly, you set the time that
you want these frogs to disappear. And that way everybody will know
the Lord did it. Look at verse 9. And Moses said to Pharaoh, ìWhen
shall I entreat for thee and for thy servants and for thy
people to destroy the frogs from thee and thy house, and they
may remain in the river only?î And he said, ìTomorrow.î And
he said, ìBe it according to thy word that thou mayest know
that there is none like unto the Lord our God.î See, everybody
was brought to see by Pharaohís own words. that this was worked
at the exact time that Pharaoh said he wanted it to happen so
that they would know there is no other Lord but the Lord our
God. He used Pharaoh to bring glory
to his name. And then, in his sovereignty,
he used his enemy to glorify God using Pharaoh's fake repentance. Look at verse 15. But when Pharaoh
saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart, and he hearkened
not unto them, as the Lord had said." So everybody there in
Egypt knew that Moses and Aaron were God's true messengers. He
used Pharaoh to declare it. They knew their God was the true
God. He used his enemies to declare
it. They knew that their gospel was the true gospel. They used
their enemies to declare it. And God showed that without God
granting repentance to a sinner, he cannot repent and turn himself
to the true and living God. He can't do it. And all of this,
God showed everybody, all of this came to pass exactly as
God had before said it would. So everything about this, God
in His sovereign power used His enemies to glorify Himself while
He's saving His people. Now, brethren, let me tell you
this. I know that our hearts may be
broken. The days may appear very dark. There may be times when we just
are at a loss for what is happening and why it's happening the way
it's happening. We might see the lies as being delusional,
but understand this. Everything is coming to pass
right on time by the direct hand of our sovereign God. And everything
that's coming to pass has been purposed from eternity and it's
all bringing glory to God's name. Everything. God is freeing His
people to worship Him. God is sending His enemies strong
delusion that they should believe a lie. And God is making His
enemies glorify Him even in their delusional state. Now, knowing
that, we can rest easy. God is in full control. God is
in full control. His people shall be saved and
Christ shall receive all the praise and all the glory according
to God's eternal purpose. You can rest right there. That's
a soft pillow, a soft bed to rest in. God is totally, absolutely
sovereign. Amen. Let's stand together. Lord God, we thank You that we
do not have to worry or be troubled by anything we see coming to
pass in this world. You are on Your throne. Make us to remember this, make
us to know and be thankful for your free deliverance, free justification,
free righteousness in Christ. Make us rejoice that those that
believe a lie and are turned over and hardened do so by your
hand. It's not out of your control.
Make us rejoice, Lord, that you're using even your enemies to bring
glory to your name. And make us do the same. Make
us not sanctify the enemy and sanctify the troubles by our
fear and our sorrow over these things. Make us sanctify You.
Make us see You as holy and separate and in complete control working
Your eternal purpose. We thank You, Father. We praise
our Lord Jesus Christ and we ask that You hear us in and by
Him. Amen. Thanks.