Okay, brethren, let's turn to
Exodus 10. Our text will be Exodus 10, verse
3. And Moses and Aaron came in unto
Pharaoh and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews,
How long will thou refuse to humble thyself before me? Let my people go that they may
serve me. How long will thou refuse to
humble thyself before me? What keeps a sinner from humbling
himself before God? It's a proud heart. a proud heart. Pharaoh was full of pride. Pharaoh
was full of pride. God didn't have to do anything
to Pharaoh for Pharaoh to have this pride in his heart. It was
there by his first birth. It was there by natural generation. He was born with it. And the
same is true of every sinner in their natural born state. In 1 Corinthians chapter 2, Paul
said, The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit
of God because they are foolishness to him. Neither can he know them
because they are spiritually discerned. How long will you
refuse to humble yourself before God? Well, if these things are spiritually
discerned, That means it's going to take God revealing these things
in our heart, and we're going to be proud until we've been
humbled by the Spirit of God. That's how long. That's how long. I want to show you four times
here in this account with Pharaoh, four different times where he
attempted to get Moses, and really it was God he was attempting,
to get to compromise with him. I want to share, those would
be our divisions, these four separate times where that happened.
And what I want you to see in it is, in each one of these things
that Pharaoh did, this compromise is not humility. This compromise
is not bowing to God. That's not what it was. God requires
total separation from this world. into Christ and he requires no
compromise with the world. None at all. God requires that
we trust His Son, that we bow to Him in humility with a broken
and contrite heart. We trust His Son to save us by
the work of His Son apart from our works with no compromise
about it. There can be no compromise. There
can't be a mingling of our works with His. God won't allow that.
True submission, true humility is a broken and a contrite heart. The scripture says the sacrifices
of God are a broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart,
O God, thou shalt not despise. So, let's go over now to Exodus
8, and let's look at verse 25. Exodus 8, 25. Here's Pharaoh's
first proud offer. Exodus 8, 25. Pharaoh called
for Moses and for Aaron, and he said, Go ye, sacrifice to
your God in the land. Now first of all, let's note
what God's command was. Verse 20. Verse 20. Thus saith
the Lord, let my people go that they may serve me. That's what
God commanded. Let my people go that they may
serve me. Now Egypt represents the world. That's what it represents. And
Pharaoh is not only a hard-hearted sinner, which is what he is,
but he's also a picture of Satan. He's a picture of the devil himself.
Ephesians 2 says, he's the prince of the power of the air, the
spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. The
spirit that now works in every person here who doesn't believe
God is the spirit of the prince of the power of the air is Satan.
It's the one pictured here in Pharaoh. So you've got Egypt
picturing the world, picturing its darkness, and its bondage,
and its sin, and its idolatrous gods, and its false religion,
and all of that. And then you've got Pharaoh here,
who himself is a hard-hearted sinner, but he's also a picture
of Satan here. Scripture says, if our gospel
be hid, it's hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of
this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not. Lest
the glorious light of Christ shine unto them, and give them
life and light to see, and to hear, and to understand, and
to believe. Christ has to bind the strong man. And he has to
command him what Moses was sent to command here, let my people
go that they may serve me. This is exactly how it will happen.
You hear me preaching this. You hear me preaching this word
of what Moses said. Moses says, let my people go
that they may serve me. And Christ will speak the word.
And he'll find the strong man and he'll let his individual
elect child go. by God's grace, by Christ working
in it, and he'll be let go. That's what's got to happen.
But secondly, look here now, notice the Lord sent Moses with
this message that God alone sovereignly performs this operation. God's
the only one that does it. Look at verse 22. Well, God promised
to send a bunch of flies, but look what he says in verse 22.
And I will sever in that day the land of Goshen, in which
my people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there, to the
end that thou mayest know that I am the Lord in the midst of
the earth. And I will put a division between
my people and thy people. Tomorrow shall the sign be, And
the Lord did so. And there came a grievous swarm
of flies into the house of Pharaoh and into his servants' houses,
into all the land of Egypt. The land was corrupted by a reason
of the swarm of flies. Now God has a people. It's obvious
here. God calls his people my people. That's what he said, my people.
And not everyone is God's people. He clearly says there, my people
and thy people. There's a difference there. There's
God's people and then there's Satan's people. And God alone
separates His people from the rest of the world. In verse 22
He said, I will sever. I will sever in that day the
land of Goshen in which My people dwell. And He says in verse 23,
And I will put a division between My people and thy people. And
verse 24 says, And the Lord did so. The Lord did so. It's not
the sinner who makes us to differ. It's not, I don't just decide
one day, I'm going to work up my will and I'm going to make
the difference. I'm going to let God save me
today. He's been trying, He's been wanting to. Christ went
and shed His blood and just hoping I would let that blood have some
effect on me. God don't save that way. He don't
save that way. God works this. He puts the difference
between His people and the rest of the people in the world. It's
the electing, redeeming, sanctifying grace and power of our God that
makes a sinner to differ from the rest. 1 Corinthians 4.7 says
this. 1 Corinthians 4.7. It says, Who maketh thee to differ
from another? Who maketh thee to differ from
another? What hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now if
thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory as if thou hast not
received it? You see, everything for a believer
is but the grace of God. And everything for a believer
is what God has given. So he has no room to boast, no
room to glory. Now here you have, here you have
Israel, the children of Israel. They're all in bondage in Egypt.
They can't do anything. They can't put a difference between
themselves. They're slaves. They're a picture of a sinner
in bondage and sin. Here you got Pharaoh and you
got all the Egyptians. They're dead in sins and trespasses.
Pharaoh can't make himself believe God. He don't believe anything
that's been told to him. So here in all these people in
Egypt, you have a picture of every single person in mankind. for all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God. That's what you have a picture
of here. And yet, in that whole land, God chose to be gracious
to some, and to put a difference between them and the others,
and to save them out to himself, for himself, freely by his grace,
and give them an eternal inheritance. That's the picture here. So,
what shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with
God? Would you call that unrighteous? That you got a whole land of
people that are all guilty and not worthy of the least of God's
mercy, and yet God's going to be merciful to some of them?
You call that unrighteousness? He said to Moses, I'll have mercy
on whom I will have mercy. I'll have compassion on whom
I will have compassion. So then it's not of him that
willeth, it's not of him that runneth, it's of God that showeth
mercy. He said, that's the very reason
I raised you up, Pharaoh, that I might show my power in thee
and make my name known. Therefore, whom he will, he has
mercy on, and whom he will, he heartens. This is what we're
seeing here. But now thirdly, watch this.
It was when Pharaoh heard, when he saw that it's God who in sovereign
power separates his people from the others. That's when Pharaoh
started trying to strike a bargain. That's when he started trying
to compromise with Moses and with God. Look at verse 25. And
that's when Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron, and he said,
Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land. Now, watch the craftiness
here in this. He says, he tells them they can
all worship together. He says, y'all can all worship.
He says, Go ye. That means, Moses, you and these
people in Goshen, y'all can all get together and worship. And
he tells them, he says, he don't insist they worship his God.
He says, go ye, sacrifice to your God. But he says this, but
sacrifice to your God in the land, right here. God had told
them they got to go three days journey. They got to leave and
get out of there. But Pharaoh says, sacrifice right
here in the land. Your God, worship your God right
here in the land. Now in our day, most people would think
that what Pharaoh just did in offering this compromise was
a sign of true humility. This is a sign of a man who's
really humble. He's willing to compromise with
these people. When religious men hear us speak
dogmatically, like Moses did, Moses came to him and Moses said,
God's about to separate. He has and he's separating his
people. And he's about to do this tomorrow.
You're gonna see this, that God's the one who puts a difference.
You're gonna see that it's God, the Lord. He's the Lord in the
midst of the earth. He's putting a difference between
his people. And when a man hears God's preacher preach like that,
and preach dogmatically like that, and he begins to see his
people be separated so that they stand with that message, and
they stand with God, and they're not willing to compromise with
unbelievers. You know what that man'll do? He'll say, Now, I
believe we're being a little too judgmental. We need to understand that even
though they differ in their doctrine from us, and they say Christ
died for everybody, we're all still worshiping the same God.
And they'll say, so don't be narrow and don't be too strict
on this thing. We're all going in the same direction.
We need to be, we need to compromise with one another and receive
one another. And everybody says, oh, that is humility. That man
is so humble. God don't. God said of Moses,
I mean of Pharaoh, thus said the Lord God of the Hebrews. How long will you refuse to humble
yourself before me? This wasn't humility at all.
It was pride, is what it was. It was pride. He was trying to
bring together what God said, I've severed, and you're not
bringing it together. And Moses' answer declares why
Moses could not compromise with the world and with false religionists
and why we can't do it. Moses was a truly humble man.
Moses' heart had been broken by God and it was humble toward
God. So he did what God said. You
know the only sacrifice they offered in Egypt was the Passover
and that was to carry him out of Egypt. They didn't offer any
sacrifices. They didn't join with them. They
couldn't join with them. They could not join with them.
Look now, here's why. Verse 26, Exodus 8, 26. Moses
said, it is not meat so to do. You know what the word meat means?
The word meat means upright. It's not upright so to do. Moses
is saying, if we do this, it's going to be underhanded. This
is not going to be on the up and up. Meet means firm, established,
faithful. He's saying, if I compromise
with you concerning the truth of God, it'll be an indication
that I'm not firmly established upon Christ our rock and I'm
not being faithful to God or His people. That's what it'll
be an indication of. So it's not meet, so to do. Moses
was sent as an ambassador for Christ to lead God's people. And if he compromises with Pharaoh
on this thing, he's going to betray God and he's going to
betray God's people. And he can't do that. He cannot
do that. Some time ago, I got a phone
call. And somebody asked me, a congregation, like they do
sometimes, they were having a multi-church Sunday meeting. And there was
going to be a bunch of churches come in of all different denominations. And they asked me, would I come
to this? They asked me, would I bring
this congregation where they are on a Sunday morning to meet
with them? And they said, and everybody's
going to do it. And all these other churches are going to do
it. And there's going to be a bunch of people doing it. And they
said, and you're going to get about 10 or 15 minutes to preach.
And I said, no way, no way I'll do that. I can't do that. You
asked me to come preach on another day. When you give me the opportunity
to preach the gospel to you, I'll be happy to do it. But I
can't bring this congregation to another church on a day when
we're worshiping the Lord to sit under people who are preaching
who in the world knows what. I wouldn't be faithful to God
if I did that. I'd betray you and I'd betray God if I did that.
And that's exactly what Moses is saying to him. No, we can't
do that. And then look in verse 26. He
says, here's the other reason. For we shall sacrifice the abomination
of the Egyptians to the Lord our God. Lo, shall we sacrifice
the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will they
not stone us? And Genesis 46, 34 says, every
shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians. And here Moses
is saying, we're going to be offering sheep, and those are
abominations, an abomination to each. And he says, so shall
we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to the Lord
our God? And will they not stone us? Now you see the sovereign
hand of God here. He's holding up Egypt as a picture
of this world in a false religion for us. And in order to make
this a clear picture of it, He gives Egypt, somehow through
all their history, they think that a shepherd and sheep
are an abomination and they hate them. They hate them. The picture
is clear. That's what this world and ungodly
religion thinks of our shepherd and of His sheep. Our shepherd
is Christ. Our sacrifice is Christ. His
under-shepherds are His preachers, and His sheep are His people.
And this world thinks that Christ is an abomination, and they think
that His preachers are an abomination, and they think His sheep are
an abomination. And they hate them. They disdain
them. Why? Why is that? Because we preach
and believe. Here's the number one reason.
We preach and believe that Christ Jesus, God the Son, redeemed
the elect of God and only the elect of God when he laid down
his life at Calvary. And we believe that He actually
successfully got the job done when He laid down His life at
Calvary. That's the number one reason.
That's the number one reason. Because we believe God put a
people in Christ and Christ redeemed that people. And He don't need
our help making that work effectual. When He had by Himself purged
our sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Father. When
He had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down at the right
hand of the Father. He didn't sit down until their
sins were gone. He didn't sit down until the
work was finished. He didn't sit down until He had
accomplished the work the Father sent Him to do. And He accomplished
the work the Father sent Him to do. Now if He purged the sins
of everybody, everybody's going to be saved. But He didn't. He
purged the sins of those the Father gave to Him. And because
He purged their sins, Of God, they're in Christ from before
the foundation of the world. And of God is Christ made unto
us our completion. He's made our acceptance with
God, by God. And He's made our wisdom and
our righteousness and our sanctification and our redemption so that we
don't glory in anything we've done because we got nothing to
glory in. All we did was sin. He did it
all. And that message is the message
that declares that all men are absolutely, totally ruined in
sin. That message declares that not
only can you not contribute a little bit to your help with salvation,
Or not only can you not save yourself, you can't contribute
a little bit to your salvation. You can't do anything. And therefore,
the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. They hate this message, and they
crucified our Christ, and they would stone us if they could
do it and get away with it. That's so, brethren. That's so. Look, here's another reason,
verse 27. He says, We will go three days' journey into the
wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord our God as He shall command
us. The third day speaks of resurrection. And the only ones who are going
to do what Moses did right here are those who have, by the Spirit
of God, been resurrected to newness of life in their heart. When
Christ resurrects us to newness of life in our heart, Christ
becomes our only sacrifice. our only sacrifice. We don't
have anything else to offer to God. All we have to offer to
God is the Son He gave, the Son that came and did the work for
us, the Son who came and revealed Himself in our heart, the Son
who told us and taught us by His grace, I'm the only one God
will receive from you. And so by His power, we say,
Father, He's the only one we have to come to you in. He's
the only one we offer. And when He speaks in power,
we obey His authority. He becomes our Lord, and His
command becomes the final authority on the matter. His Word does.
Because when He speaks in the heart, it's effectual. It's effectual. And so Moses stood here, and
he said, No. No, we're not going to worship
here with a bunch of idolaters. We're not joining in with a bunch
of freewill works religionists. We're going three days journey,
just like our master commanded us, and we're going to worship
God right there. End of story. That's what he said to them.
First Corinthians 6.16. What agreement hath the temple
of God with idols? For you're the temple of the
living God. As God has said, I'll dwell in them and walk in
them and I'll be their God and they shall be my people. Wherefore,
come out from among them. God never does say, go in and
dwell among them. He never says that. He says,
Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord,
and touch not the unclean. And I'll be, I will receive you,
and be a father unto you, and you'll be my son and daughter,
saith the Lord Almighty. And that's what we do. When He
speaks it, that's what we do. Until then, we'll linger around
in there with them. But when He speaks it, they're
coming out. They're coming out. We're not
ashamed of Christ anymore. So let this world say you worship
in old fashion. Let them say, you know, you need
to get some peppier music and you need to do these different
things like we're doing and making things more contemporary. We
just keep on doing what we're doing. We don't mind bearing
their reproach, because Christ Jesus the Lord bore the exact
same reproach when He walked this earth. And He bore that
reproach and went without the count, and by shedding His own
blood, He sanctified us and separated us from the whole bunch. And
it's by that same blood that has separated us that we don't
mind bearing the reproach. Hebrews 13, 12 says, Wherefore
Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood,
suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto
him without the count, bearing his reproach. The proud heart,
just like Pharaoh, thanks the differences between us and them,
the differences between their God and our God, can be settled
if we'll just meet in the middle and each party make a few mutual
concessions. But God doesn't operate like
natural men operate. He don't think like natural men
think. God tells us, He speaks in our hearts and He says when
it comes to things spiritual, He says when it comes to the
heart that I've humbled and the heart that I've made to bow down
to me and to obey my word, He says there cannot be any compromise. Here's why. lest by any means,
as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds shall
be corrupted from the simplicity, the singleness that is in Christ
Jesus." If Moses would have done what Pharaoh was compromising,
and what he was offering here as a compromise, Christ would
have ceased to have dwelt in their midst. They would have
been corrupted and turned away and lost forever. Alright, here's
the second thing. Pharaoh's second attempt at compromise
is in Exodus 8 verse 28. There's one verse after. And Pharaoh said, I will let
you go that you may sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness. only you shall not go very far."
Not go very far. Now this is what some people
think is humility. Some folks think that what God
speaks of when He speaks of humbling ourselves before Him, some folks
think what that means is that we make a few changes in our
lives and we get some religion and we put one foot in the church
and we keep the other foot in the world. That's not humility
either. That's not humility either. Satan
has no problem allowing us to think that we're free, that we've
been delivered from his bondage. He has no problem with us becoming
religious at all. He has no problem whatsoever,
just so as we stay not very far away from the world, just so
as we stay connected with the world. He doesn't have a problem
with it at all. God demands, and He affectsly works in His
people, a complete separation of our hearts from this world
before we can ever worship and serve and walk with God. There's
got to be a separation made. He said, I'll do the severing.
I will sever," he said. It's not enough not to go very
far. That's not enough. We've got
to go out all the way. We've got to go out all the way.
Our heart has to be like the Apostle Paul. He said, God forbid
that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ
by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. The world is dead to me and I'm
dead to the world. That's what Paul's saying. I
don't fit in with the world anymore and the world don't want me fitting
in with them anymore. The world's dead to me and I'm
dead to the world. This separation is a separation
of heart though. Be sure to get that. Every one
of Israel came out of Egypt. Every one of them came out of
Egypt. But very few came out in their heart. Most of them
left their heart in Egypt. They wanted to be back in Egypt.
Once they got in the wilderness, they wanted to be back in Egypt.
Lot's wife came out of Sodom physically, but she didn't come
out in her heart. She looked back. She wanted to
be back there in Sodom, and God killed her in judgment. Many
make an outward change. They dress different. They act
different. They speak different. But their
heart's not been made new. This is a heart separation. It's
a heart separation. I hope that's not the case with
anybody here. It might be. I hope it's not, though. I hope
it's not. Somebody may have outwardly separated
themselves from the world, they may have confessed Christ in
baptism, they may have joined a church, they may have come
to every service, and yet their heart still be set on the world. God says in Proverbs 23, 26,
My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my
ways. How many times do we say that
to our children? I may not say it in those words,
but when I'm trying to get him to focus and pay attention to
what I'm teaching him, that's what I'm saying. Son, give me
your heart and observe my ways. Sometimes they can sit there
and be looking right at you and be looking like they're paying
the utmost attention to you. And when you get finished, you
turn around and ask them what you just told them and they don't
have a clue what you said. Are we that way? Are we that way
with God? Be honest with yourself. Where's
your heart set? Whose ways do you prefer to observe
most? When the heart is set on Christ,
we're more eager, more eager to hear His gospel and to read
His word than we are to hear all the racket that this world
has to offer. We're more eager because we're
more eager to observe His ways than the ways of this world.
Which one is it? We're going to be more eager
for one or the other. It's not a mixture. It's one or the other. Which one is it? The heart that's
been truly humbled, truly humbled by God's grace. It never feels
like, it never thinks that not going very far, we never feel
like that's far enough. We never feel like we've gone
far enough out of this world. We always want to be further
and further out of this world and nearer and nearer to Christ.
That's the heart that's been humbled. He never does look at
himself and say, well, I've gotten out, separated, good and separated
from this world now. I feel good about myself. Oh,
that man's right in the middle of it, right in the middle of
the world. The man whose heart's been broken, he's always saying,
I just, I'm not far enough out of this world. I want to be out
of it. I want to be out of it. I want to be out of it. Here's
the third thing. I'll hurry. Pharaoh's third compromise
is in Exodus 10, verse 10. Exodus 10, verse 10. And Pharaoh
said unto them, Let the Lord be so with you, as I will let
you go. Oh, now he's got a good dose
of religion. He tells them, oh, the Lord be
with you. I'm going to let you go. But
now watch what he says. And your little ones. Or it might
be worded, but as for your little ones. Look, for evil is before
you. Look out there in that wilderness
how dangerous that wilderness is. Not so. Don't take these little ones.
Go now ye that are men. and serve the Lord. For that
it is desired." That's what you've been asking for from the beginning,
Pharaoh said. So you go and you worship, you men, but you leave
your little ones here. You leave them behind. And they
were driven out from Pharaoh's presence. Satan knows, just like
Pharaoh knew, that if our children are left behind in the world,
if they're in the world, that is a way that we'll have half
our heart worshiping God and half our heart on our children
that are in the world. And Christ tells us the only
true worship there is is wholehearted worship. Our heart can't be divided
between Him and our children. Listen to this, Matthew 10, 37.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of
me. He that loveth son or daughter
more than me is not worthy of me. He says in another place,
if you hate not your father and mother, you hate not your son
and daughter, but he's saying the same thing here. If you love
them more than me, giving them more consideration or giving
them consideration at all in these matters, the spiritual
matters, it won't do. It just won't do. Our Savior
requires, as we follow Him, that we must not allow one, not our
husband, not our wife, not our son, not our daughter, not our
mother, not our father, to come between us and the worship of
Christ. Cannot let it do. That means
if we truly love Christ and we truly love these who are dear
to us, there's something we're going to have to do. There's
something we're going to have to do. Satan, just like Pharaoh
was doing, tries to prevent our whole hearts from being set on
Christ. He's trying every way to keep having our hearts set
on Christ. Because, and He's using, He uses
our dearest loved ones to do. It just looks like everything
in this world. And the Lord said it would be
this way through Paul. He said in the days to come they're
going to be lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. And
everything is so pleasurable now. It's just so fun. You got
all the sports, and you got all the music, and you got the academics,
and you got travel, and it's on and on and on. Everything
is so fun. And so our own children are often
begging us and saying, yeah, y'all go on. I want to stay here
in the world. That's fine with me. Y'all go
ahead and go. I want to stay. I've got two young children.
I know what that's like. The Lord said it'll be like a
man's foes are in his own household. And that's what you feel like
sometimes. But if Christ is first in our
heart and we truly love our children, then we will not let them come
between us and the world, between us and Christ. We will seek to
it as long as we're able that they're under the sound of the
gospel and taught the word in our homes. Look at verse 9. Moses said, We'll go with our
young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters,
for we must hold a feast unto the Lord. He said, we're going
and we're taking them with us. We're taking them with us. It's
our responsibility, brethren, to teach them. It's our responsibility
as parents to make sure they're under the sound of the preaching
of the gospel and that nothing is interfering with it. Nothing.
And that we're teaching them that the gospel of Christ Jesus
is the most important thing in the world. The most important
thing. The only thing that is important. It's the responsibility of the
father, first of all, because just like it's my responsibility
to teach us right here in the Lord's house, it's the father's
responsibility as the head of the house to preach in the home.
And if the father doesn't know the Lord, it's the mother's responsibility
if she's been called. But it's our responsibility.
We can't make them believe. We ought not force them to believe.
We ought not try to coerce a confession out of them. That's the worst
possible thing a person can do. That makes them twice dead. Now
they got a false profession and think they're secure in Christ
on top of being dead in trespass and sin. We're not required to
do that. We're just told to teach them. We're just told to preach the
gospel to them. Look back up at verse 2. This is why the Lord
said he was delivering them out and why he was working this grace
toward them in the land. And this is why he's doing it
toward us. Verse 2, that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy
son and of thy son's son what things I have worked in Egypt
and my signs which I've done among them that you may know
how that I am the Lord. That I'm the Lord. I read Ezekiel
3 to you for this point. For this point right here. See
what I'm saying? Now, I made this to Melinda on
the way over here. I was thinking about this. If
Satan, if we don't, like I said, the Lord's got to give them grace.
He's got to give them grace. He's got to renew them in their
heart. But if we don't do what we're responsible to do, and
he gets them to compromise on that first thing, to where they
join with the world's religion, And then they compromise on that
second thing where they got one foot in religion and one foot
in the world? You think it's hard now? It'll be twice as hard
then. Because now they're saying, Daddy,
I don't want to go with you to your church. Come go with me
to mine. Why don't you ever go with me
where we worship? And if a man's not rooted and grounded in faith
by God's grace, he'll do it. And next thing you know, he's
right there in Egypt worshiping with them. So, that's so. Thus saith the Lord God of the
Hebrews, how long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before me?
Through humility, a broken and contrite spirit to worship Christ
with a wholehearted devotion. We don't let nothing, not our
dearest loved ones come between us and Christ. And after we've
taught them, if they do turn out that way, we still stand
with Christ. Stand with Christ. It may be
the Lord will have mercy on them. We can only do that by His grace,
but that's what we're to do. Here's the fourth thing. This
will be very brief. Verse 24. Hex 10-24. Pharaoh called unto Moses, and
he said, Go ye, serve the Lord. Only let your flocks and your
herds be stayed, and let your little ones also go with you.
Now, the flocks and the herds represent our possessions. That's
what it represents. True humility is to worship God
with all our possessions. all our possessions. The Lord
walked this earth one time and He came up to some people, and
their mothers and their fathers were in need. They were elderly
and they needed to be taken care of. And these holy, holy people
were saying, Oh, we can't give this money to you, Mom and Dad,
to help you because it's Corban. That means it's sanctified, it's
set apart and reserved for the work of the Lord. We've got to
use it for that. And the Lord looked at him and he said, you
bunch of hypocrites. He said, Isaiah spoke well of
you. You draw near to me with your mouth. He said, but your
heart's way away from me. Why? Because their heart was
set on their riches. Their heart was set on their
possessions. The Lord said of old, will a man rob God? He said,
yet you've robbed me. But you say, where have we robbed
you? God said, in tithes and offerings. And it'd be well to
note for the preachers who want to stand up and use that text
and start fleecing God's people and coercing them to tithe, God's
people aren't under a tithe. We've been redeemed from under
the law. We give cheerfully, willingly, because we want to,
by His grace. And if you don't want to, don't
give it, because God won't receive it anyway. It ain't in faith.
It's a work, trying to get something from God. He won't receive that.
But it'd be well to note that the Lord's speaking to preachers
when He said that. He's speaking to His priest when
He said that. He said, you're the one that's robbing me. So
from His preachers to all His people, God gives faith, and
we give cheerfully. Because the truth is, nothing
we own is ours. He gave it to us and He made
us stewards of His possessions to use for His will, for His
work, for the furtherance of His gospel and what He's commanded
us to do. That's what He's given it to
us for. And we can hoard it up if we want to and say we're separating
it for the Lord, but the Lord knows. He told those folks, that's
a bunch of hypocritical nonsense. But this pictured, too, the good
news of our gospel. Moses said there, he said, there
won't be a hoof left behind. There's not going to be a hoof
left behind. Moses was faithful. He said, we're going to serve
and worship God with all our possessions, with everything
He's given us. And it also pictured this. Whenever that lamb was
slain throughout Egypt, every lamb that was slain, Every person
for whom a lamb was slain was delivered out. They were delivered
out. There was not one left. And the
picture there is everyone for whom Christ died are all going
to be delivered out of this world. There will not be a hoof left
behind of his people. They will all be brought to faith
in Christ. You can't find one person in
this book that wasn't. Not one. They're going to be
brought to faith in Christ and they're going to they're going
to be brought out. Because our God, oh, we just don't realize
how sovereign He is. We don't realize how, I mean,
He hardened Pharaoh's heart here so that Pharaoh couldn't bow
to God just so He could show us all this. That's what He said
there. I hardened His heart just to show you all this. And then
when they got ready to go out of there, you know what He did?
He gave every one of those Egyptians after all these plagues that
had come upon them because of them. Because God's doing something
for them. All these plagues came upon Egypt
so that now all of their gods have been defeated. All of their
agriculture's been defeated. They ended up in Egypt in the
first place because of corn. Now they don't even have any
corn crops. They got nothing. Their economy's
been just blown. And yet, after all of that, these
people walked up to the neighbor's house and said, the Lord sent
me here to get your gold and your silver. And they took it
off and gave it to him. How so? Because that same sovereign
God put it in their heart to do it. And they did it. And they
did it. This God don't have a problem
bringing the gospel to his people and calling his people out, nor
does he have a problem giving his people faith to stand in
the face of opposition. Here's the four things we've
seen tonight. Those with a true broken and contrite spirit toward
God don't worship in the land with idolaters. We leave it. We leave it. No compromise, Moses
said, we're going out of here. Secondly, the humble, those that
have been humbled by God's grace, they go further than not very
far away from this world. They don't have one foot in the
church, one foot in the world. They're longing with our hearts
to be where Christ is at the right hand of the Father. We
want to be out of this world. Thirdly, those humbled by grace.
Let nothing come between us and the worship of Christ, not even
our dearest loved ones. We desire with all our heart
to teach them and instruct them, and we pray God will give them
grace and teach them and give them life and draw them to Christ.
If he don't, we pray God keep us trusting him over them. That's true of all of them. Fourthly,
those truly humbled by God's grace worship God with every
possession we got. There's a financial report back
there that Chris was sick signing. She sent it for us to have four
or five copies. That's not my account. I mean, that's not your account. That's my account. And that's
not my account. That's your account. Everything
there is ours. It's mine, and it's yours. So
that what's there is not a loss at all. It's gain, not loss at
all. We're doing it so we can worship
God. We're doing it so one day we can have a place where, hopefully,
when John and Carly get married and have a house full of kids,
and when William finds somebody who has a house full of kids,
and when Peter gets married and has a house full of kids, we'll
have a place where we can worship. And they can come here and bring
their children and their children, and we can have a place to worship.
So it's not loss. It's gain. It's gain. More valuable
than putting it anywhere else. Guarantee you that. Thus saith
the Lord God of the Hebrews, how long wilt thou refuse to
humble thyself before me? Amen.