It's my great privilege to bring
the Word of Truth to you this morning. And we're going to be
considering Moses and Pharaoh this morning. Of course, we're
not going to consider the whole of all the dramatic events, but
we're going to try and stand and consider the drama that we
see before us. And as I was reading through
this, I thought that we, in our lives today, often confronted
with drama. It's one of those things in society,
when you think about it, they watch the television, it's always
drama, lots of dramatic things, and they like, particularly the
weekends, to have some sort of costume drama show, and also
the very dramatic films you can see films now that are the way
they are made are very clever and they're very violent and
we're caught up with it but what the Lord would say to us is that
the greatest dramas are in the word of God they're recorded
for us in scripture and they are recorded for us to take note
of for all time And one of the difficulties, and I'm guilty
of this, is we become familiar with things, don't we? And we
get to know. I can remember teaching children
in Sunday school the story of Moses and the plagues and so
on. And to some people it's almost seen as it's what you teach children. But that's quite wrong. And I
was thinking about it and trying to get things in perspective
and I thought well if we think of the life of Moses and we think
of all that he went through and the situation with Pharaoh this
was one of the greatest dramas in human history it has been
recorded in the word of God we must take note of it and people
mock the things in scripture but we should be doing the complete
opposite When we read of the creation account, it is mocked.
But it is evidently true all around us that what is taught
is a complete lie. And what the word of God sets
forth to us, that we had a perfect creation and it's now breaking
down, is the truth. It's not we've got an explosion
of things that are going up. It's complete nonsense. It's
irrational. Even if I think I wasn't a Christian,
I don't think I could believe this nonsense. the global flood, and I was fired.
People mock that. In my younger days, they had
a mocking television program about it. But it's patently obvious
that's what happened to the world, how we can understand the world
as it is today, the topography and the geography. You cannot
explain them. You cannot explain why there are so many fossils
in the ground, why complete dinosaur skulls are held together, unless
you believe in a colossal flood. It's not possible. the word of
God is true and yet the world would have us believe it's myths
I mean I was confirmed as a young boy in the Church of England
and I've got my confirmation book still at home And it says
in there, the first 10 chapters of the book of Genesis are all
myths. That's the book I was given as a boy in the Church
of England, and it's a lie. We want the truth, don't we?
From this pulpit, that's what we seek, all of us, to declare
the truth. We are sold, we watch the news,
we watch things on television, read the papers, but do you know
you're being told the truth? I always say, if you see an item
of news, or you read something in the paper, but it's something
you know about, something you're involved in, you find that they're
not telling it as it is. You don't agree with it. I've
often felt that, and yet we believe what we're told. the Bible we
can believe I honestly believe we can believe everything in
the Bible it is true what is recorded is what actually happened
what people actually said what God did and God says to us I
want to speak to you clearly this is my word I own it and
he says perfectly in these last days we should come to this he
has spoken for his son Jesus is the Word of God, the Logos.
I love that, the way that John has expressed that in his writings. So we should believe. So we have
before us this tremendous drama, and there's Moses. Think about
Moses. Moses was a fugitive, wasn't
he, from Law, remember? he rose up too early in the will
of God and slew an Egyptian and when it was known he had to flee
Egypt yet he'd been brought up as an Egyptian prince as the
son of Pharaoh's daughter he'd been very privileged an Egyptian
education and so on and he was found he married and was found
in the wilderness looking after sheep and that was Moses just
an eighty-year-old shepherd in the wilderness think about this
God came to that man in the burning bush. He didn't really know God. He had to take the shoes off
his feet. He had to learn holiness. You and I have to learn holiness. God has to teach us that. It
can be a hard lesson to see. And what did God say to him? He wanted him to go to Egypt
and to go to Pharaoh and say, I want you to let all my people
go. Can you imagine that? I mean,
we cannot humanly put our mind around that. Moses was completely
overawed by this, and you know, like others, like some of the
prophets, he tried to back out of it, didn't he? Chapter 4,
verse 10. He said, O my Lord, I am not
eloquent, neither heretofore nor since Thou hast spoken unto
Thy servant. I am slow of speech, and of a
slow tongue. Oh, I can't go and speak. I can't do that. It's not possible
for me. And God was quite cross with
him. The law was anger. The anger of the law was with
him. We read in verse 14. He said, isn't Aaron the Levite
thy brother? I know he can speak well. And
so Aaron was to speak. And it would seem, we're not
told, it would seem that when Moses went before Pharaoh, it
was actually Aaron who spoke. And sometimes we feel meek, don't
we? And in a sense, a Christian should
be a meek person, but sometimes we're called to serve the Lord,
and the human heart says, oh, I can't do that. That's too much
for me. I think for those of us who have
to come and preach, anyone who's spoken in public, no, it's not
easy. But people say, well, we think you should, and we'd like
you to, and you trust in God, and you trust he will help you. I think Moses, I want to say
this one, is like a type of the believer. We should identify
with Moses. Yes, we're not going to do what
he did, but he lived the life of faith. There was a man, an
elderly man. I mean, I'm quite old. He was
older than me. looking after sheep in the wilderness
and he was told to go to the world's superpower and say let
all these people go what greater drama Can there be, perhaps,
than this story? It's a wonderful, wonderful account
that God sets before us, and we have so much of it recorded
in detail. It's a miraculous part of Scripture. The world would love it. They could explain all this away
if they could. They love to rubbish the Word of God, and we know
that parts of the Christian Church make little of it. We know the
Church of Rome makes very little indeed. makes much of the church
and man and very little of the Word of God but we need to know
this but you see Moses was told to go and speak before Pharaoh
and the Lord said I will bring plagues and Moses believed God
that God would send the plague he not only had to declare it
to Pharaoh he had to believe that God would actually do it.
Tremendous faith that Moses had to exercise And God sent the
plagues. But we know in the early plagues,
they were replicated by the magicians of Egypt. And so they would say,
we can do this, that's nothing special. But then the lice came. And I'm sure you know that. And
the magicians could not do it. They could not replicate the
lice. So there were lice everywhere.
And the magicians said unto Pharaoh, this is the finger of God. and
Pharaoh's heart was hardened and he hearkened not unto them
as the Lord had said the Lord had told Moses at the beginning
that Pharaoh's heart would be hardened against these things
and that he would not let the children go this was the finger
of God and when we read this account you've got to bear that
in mind remember the finger of God at another occasion Belshazzar's
Feast and he wrote the words of judgment in the finger of
God and the plaster of the wall, weighed in the balances and found
wanting Daniel interpreted it, of course Belshazzar lost his
life that night this was the finger of God, remember the finger
of God wrote on the ten stones that were given to Moses they
were written of God and those ten commandments have that authority
to this very day We must take note. The finger of God means
this is the hand. God has touched. God has spoken. God has moved. We must take note.
And woe to us if we don't take note. Woe to us spiritually if
we do not take note of what God says. Now this is a miraculous
part of Scripture. And people can mock this, you
know, and say we're not going to believe these things. And
we cannot do that. We must take note of those things
that God has clearly taught. And we see Moses was quite concerned,
he said, when he was told that he was having to go, he said,
but perhaps they won't hear me or my voice. This is chapter
four, verse one. The Lord hath not appeared unto
thee. And the Lord said unto him, what is that in thine hand?
And he said, a rod. and he said cast it on the ground
and he cast it on the ground and it became a serpent, a snake
and Moses fled from before it and the Lord said unto Moses
put forth thine hand and take it by the tail and he put forth
his hand and caught it and it became a rod that they may believe
that the Lord God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob have appeared to him. He's given another
sign, he put his hand in his robe, when he took it out it
was leprous, when he put it back in. These signs were shown to
Pharaoh, but Pharaoh still did not believe and we read at the
beginning of our passage how they went and showed these signs
to the children of Israel to show that God had appointed Moses
and Aaron that they should go in and represent them to Pharaoh
and as we saw in this chapter, I read that chapter 5, you see
how badly it worked for them they went and rehearsed the words
of God and they were thrown out, they were put out, the world
would not believe them and I'm sure you've had that experience,
you've perhaps talked to people about what you believe, what
you do here on the Lord's Day, and they'll have none of it.
And I've had people be quite angry, quite fierce with me,
as it were, they want to put me out. And we see also, as we
see in our day, if you're a child of God trying to live faithfully
in employment, education and so on, they put burdens upon
you. And they do, don't they? They're
putting burdens on us. Very careful what we say. We
say certain things. If we speak of our faith to a
Muslim at work, we could lose our job. If we're a science teacher
at school and say we believe in creation, if you're a physics
teacher, then you can't be employed because that's off message. They
put burdens upon you. so this is nothing has changed
this what happened to Moses and the children of Israel is what
happens to today now we take we see Pharaoh here and I want
Moses we can we've got to identify him as a kind of typical believer
walk in the life of faith and we see Moses see Pharaoh as a
type of leader type of the world And we can see that clearly.
There's much to see in Pharaoh. He was, of course, the leader
of the world's greatest nation then. He was the superpower. Perhaps we could think of China
or United States today. The President of the United States,
President of China. These are very powerful men,
aren't they? Mr. Putin pretends he's powerful,
but he's not in the same league, really, as his other two. But
he tries to be. But Pharaoh was, this was the
superpower. And the mindset, now understand
the mindset. It wasn't just that we are greatest
militarily, but we have the greatest wisdom, the greatest knowledge,
the greatest technology, the greatest religion. Understand? Why do they build those pyramids?
These were, that was a tomb. That was for Pharaoh's afterlife.
They have tremendous knowledge. We're only beginning to discover
some of it, aren't we, in science, in astronomy, the mathematics
of building the pyramids is truly remarkable. These were not primitive
people. Don't get deceived by the evolutionary
views of the ascent of man. These people have always been
very intelligent. We were made in the image of
God. We are all children of Adam.
we have always had great abilities and early societies many of them
were far more sophisticated than we're led to believe and I can
remember as a young man being taught about cavemen and primitive
living that is a myth we've always lived in some form of organized
society this was a super state and the mindset of Pharaoh was
I am the world's greatest man and My religion is what upholds
me, therefore my gods are the greatest gods. We are the people
and we have the gods. They had 2,000. I've got a sheet
here which you can have a look at afterwards. They had over
2,000 gods. Amun, of course, was the senior
one, but they had all these different gods. And they were the people. And I'm sure you recognise that.
You know how it is with nations. I mean, the British nation were
a bit like that at one time. We are the people, you know.
We controlled so much. 150 years ago, we thought we
were the people. And we'd done wicked things.
Who'd run the slave trade? Britain. You know, we think of
our history, but the arrogance of this nation. That's why people
don't like us today. Irish and others. We don't see
it, but they see it. Pharaoh was like that and his
response was typical. And this is the centre point
of our consideration this morning. It's chapter 5 and verse 2. You may have noted it when we
read it. Pharaoh said, who is the Lord? That I should obey
his voice to let Israel go. I know not the Lord. neither
will I let Israel go that is the voice of the world isn't
it? today it's not just Pharaoh then who is the Lord? what is
Christianity? what is the church? what are
your standards? what are the Ten Commandments?
what's the Lord's Day? whatever it is that's something
of God we won't have it who are these people? they have no authority
and we won't let you go we're not going to obey you that's
what Pharaoh said this fugitive, 80 year old fugitive
comes to represent the slaves who are building all my monuments
and a lot of them are still there, they're wonderful, lovely to
see and some of you may have seen them and the pyramids and
he's saying all these people are doing all this work for you
I want you to let them go and to leave and worship their God
Can you understand Pharisee? No way. You're not going to do
this. It's an economic decision. I'm not going to make it anyway.
We need you. You're doing all this work for
us. And you can see how hard that was. The heart of Pharisee. Stubborn unbelief. And we've
seen many, many gods they had. Let them go. But of course Israel
were slaves. Their position could be seen
as feeble. They could themselves looked
through Moses and Aaron and said well actually they're very powerful
we could come out of this very badly and you can see that their
doubts were beginning you can see it in the reading coming
in upon them but there's a titanic battle ahead isn't there this
is one of the most titanic of wars in scripture between God
and the will of Pharaoh and of the Egyptians that God should
make it absolutely clear who he was and who were his people
and the children of Israel had to learn through this and it
would seem he repented you see that in chapter 12 and verse
31 he seems to repent doesn't he but it's false and he called
this was after the last terrible plague They've been the Passover,
they've been the death of the firstborn, animals and children,
even the son of Pharaoh. And you've got to remember, we're
not going to go through the place, but at this point, we have seen,
sadly, I watched the news, you see Syria totally destroyed. And we don't know what to do
about it, and we're not going to go into it. But you see the
devastation, we see this awful earthquake In Italy, 300 dead,
the devastation, whole villages destroyed. That's what Egypt
was like, probably. By the time we get to those plagues,
think of what has happened, what plagues, what terrors, the loss
of life, the terrible things that have happened to Egypt. Could society, the locusts had
eaten everything, all the animals had virtually died. Was there
anything left to eat in Egypt? Anything to drink? They were
in a terrible state. And it took, at that point, the
loss of lives. Then we see Pharaoh seems to
repent. But remember, he's allowed it
to get to such a state. The stubbornness of the heart
of sin. Our hearts are stubborn. They
are. The Lord knows it. Our hearts are so bound in sin.
They're so stubborn. Oh, we need the grace of God.
to come and melt us, don't we? All of us. Our hearts are so
willful. And Pharaoh allowed all that
to happen. Why? Because he couldn't admit for
one moment that Moses was right. Why? Because of that you then
totally demolish your own power, your own authority, your own
religion. Everything that Pharaoh stood
for hinged upon this. And it wasn't just giving in
to the Hebrews. It was saying, their God is above
my God. This is the truth. And the world
around us won't have that. They will not, to this day, they
will not have the true God. They will not have Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, will they? They're so stubborn. And terrible
things can happen to people in their lives and they still won't
yield. Pharaoh gives in, he says, He called for Moses and Pharaoh.
This is 1231. By night... and said, rise up, get you four
from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel, and
go serve the Lord as ye have said. Take your flocks and herds.
And we know they went out with Egypt's spoil. The Egyptians
said, oh, take all these things. They gave them jewels and all
sorts of possessions, which of course were used later in the
tabernacle, but they gave them their spoil. They went out rich. They probably gave them carts
and means of transport. to go. They wanted them out.
They wanted their favour. Actually, go away. We want you
to go. We want to be nice to you when
you go, but please go. But Pharaoh, we see, alas, did
not really repent. We see in chapter 14, rather,
he repented again to his own loss, probably, and they pursued. Just if we look at some of the
verses in chapter 14 there, And we see the Lord hardened
the heart of Pharaoh, verse 8, and he pursued after the children
of Israel. And the children of Israel were
worried because they saw them coming and they could see this. But Moses says in verse 13, unto
the people, fear ye not, stand still and see the salvation of
the Lord. What great faith Moses now had
to believe that God was going to save them when all this army
was coming after them. and we see that they were going
to be preserved and that the children, we read at the end
of the chapter, walked on dry land, verse 29, chapter 14, in
the midst of the sea and we read verse 30, the Lord saved Israel
that day out of the hand of the Egyptians and Israel saw the
Egyptians dead upon the seashore and Israel saw that great work
which the Lord did upon the Egyptians the people feared the Lord and
believed the Lord and his servant Moses this challenge to us this
morning when we read such a thing in the scripture do you fear
the Lord you should and do you do you believe the Lord do we
believe the Lord do we believe those things that came and were
said and done through his servant Moses We all have, everybody,
I can assure, has their own God or their own raison d'etre. They
do. They believe something, I can
assure you. We believe, we stand for something. But what is it? That's the challenge
when you read the scriptures. That's what God would say. God
has spoken clearly. Now, what is it that we believe? And even if they're not gods,
they look to something, I can assure you. Look at the governments
of our day, they have the same spirit as Pharaoh. We could do
what we want. We can just pass a law through
Parliament and we can abolish marriage. We can kill the unborn. We can do all sorts of things
like that which are an offence. We can scrap the Lord's Day and
trade upon it. We can let people kill themselves. We can confuse sex. People can change sex. We can
teach it to children at school. We're like Pharaoh. God is not
mocked, you know. It's a very solemn day, isn't
it, that we live in, when you think about it. What has happened
in the last 50 years? Oh, we deserve the wrath of God. And we attack the Word of God
deliberately. We deliberately attack, as I've
said earlier, origins. We attack social order, the role
of men and women. The Prime Minister wants to get
into this, so doesn't she? And kick away those standards
perhaps that God has sent. And if you belong to scientific
societies, if you believe in the Christian faith and in creation,
they put you out. The Royal Society was founded
by evangelical Christians who believed in the Word of God and
believed in God created. If you turn up today to the Royal
Society to join as an evangelical Christian, they say you can't
join. That's the world we live in today and They wanted to explore
and understand God's creation and universe and the wonders
of it and learn from it. Today, we want to put up atheism
as the truth. And because they don't come to
science the right way, they don't see things properly. They miss
many things. The science is poorer because
of that. What about the atheists? Oh,
the Dawkins and these people, they want you to believe nothing.
a very clever writer going back before the last war, Aldous Huxley,
as an atheist, but he was clear, he said, if there is no God,
there is no morality, there is no right and wrong, therefore,
we can do what we want. And that, I have to say, is the
spirit of the age we live in. We can do what we want, as long
as it's passed through Parliament, gets the Royal Assent, That's
the law. And that's good. If we pass a
law, isn't it? 2 plus 2 equals 5. That's good. That's the world you live in
today. And this was the kind of world, this kind of arrogance
of Pharaoh. And all these gods and all their
false religion, everybody had to go along with that. And it
was all a lie. Along comes the word of God. Along comes the truth. And it
batters it down. It prevails. See that? We must
understand. We must have faith in God. Word
of God will prevail. God is not mocked. It's like
calling evil good. I mentioned that earlier. Isaiah
chapter 5 and verses 20 and 21. It's a very solemn thing that
we do in our society today. It's not a trivial thing, is
it? and no good will come of this at all whatsoever. Woe unto
them that call evil good and good evil, that put darkness
for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and
sweet for bitter. Woe unto them that are wise in
their own eyes and prudent in their own sight. We've got a
society full of people like that who will not acknowledge the
truth of God's word. On the contrary, they deliberately
set out to try and ravish it and undermine it. But God is
not mocked. Now these signs were wonderful. You think of the signs, the miracles
we've read of how there were perhaps the smaller signs. He
threw a rod on the ground, it became a snake, put his hand
in his robe, it became leprous. But beyond that, the things that
God did through Moses, all those plagues against Egypt, And then
he took them forth and preserved them from the armies that pursued.
They crossed the sea. You can read books telling you
how they got across the Red Sea. It wasn't a miracle. If you read
modern books, you can probably read modern Christian Bible dictionaries
that would tell you that it was just a wind and this happened.
It was just a marsh, really. It was a bit of a strong wind.
They were able to walk across the marsh. No, it wasn't. This was like a war. on their
right hand and a wall on their left. This is a wonderful miracle.
And the Egyptians drowned. If it was shallow water, how
did they all drown? No. The waters came back and
they saw the bodies on the seashore. They drowned in that sea. And
the miracles didn't stop there. They got into the wilderness.
What did they find? There wasn't any food. There wasn't any water,
was there? God provided the manna and manna
means, what is it? That's what they called it. When
they saw it outside, they said, what is it? It was bread and
the taste of it was wonderful. Honey, coriander and so on. It
was a beautiful thing. And they were sustained in the
wilderness. They were provided with water
in the wilderness. And if you read the scriptures,
their clothes did not wear out and they remained in good health. The miracles that were associated
with Moses were truly incredible. Where else can we read such a
thing in Scripture? This is here for all time. God wants us to
note what was being done and said, that Moses went by faith. We see it time and again, he
turned to God, didn't he? That's what we must do. To walk
by faith, we must turn to God. We may not get signs, wonders
and miracles, but I'm sure those who walk with the Lord will be
able to say God appeared for me. God did answer a prayer. Trust you can say, I can say.
Things happen and you can say, this was the finger of God. And he revealed himself to me,
he helped me, he showed me something just at the right time. I can
look back on a longish life now and see many times, oh, the hand
of God. I mean, I don't mean like Moses,
but Moses was called And he was a meek man, you know? Some of
you might think, oh, I can't do much in Christian service.
What can I do in the church? I'm just a meek person. Moses
didn't want to speak. He was just a shepherd out in
the wilderness. No, we must look to the Lord to help us. All of
us, if we're believers, have that which we should do to serve
the Lord. There's no such thing as a Christian
who's not serving the Lord. It does not exist. What is it? We may not be called to go to
Pharaoh, But what is the Lord saying to you and to me? What
should we do? You can read biographies of people
just doing humble jobs, in the end, doing great works for God,
quite remarkable, because they believed God and God was with
them and helped them. What faith have we in God? Do we believe Him and His Word
and the signs that we should believe? Do we believe the greatest
sign? What is that greatest sign, that
greatest pattern that God has put before us? Is it not the
person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ? Yes, we can see those
great signs, but even when he did signs and wonders, people
didn't believe. If you know, in John chapter
6, there was a feeding of the 5,000, and people came to him
and said, well, what sign are you going to show us? Who are
you? God is with you. They will not
believe that which God has shown to us. Will we believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ? Let's turn, can we, to John chapter
1 and verse 17. John chapter 1 and verse 17 for
the law was given by Moses but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ I like that verse We know, don't we, that the law
came by Moses. It's essential that we had the
law. God spoke. God showed us what
righteousness was. God showed us what sin was. God showed man that he was fallen.
God showed man that he had a need of a Savior. Grace and truth
came by Jesus Christ. The Jews have the law, but that's
not enough. You might have the law. You might
have an interest in religion. It's not enough. you need grace
and truth, we need to seek God that we might be enabled by his
grace to believe same chapter again verse 45 we see Philip
finds Nathanael and saith unto him we have found him of whom
Moses in the law and the prophets did write Jesus of Nazareth,
the son of Joseph. Oh, we need to find him. We need,
of course, him to come by sovereign grace and reveal himself. But
we need to respond to that revelation of God to our very hearts. And we thank God we have the
gospel records that set forth these things so clearly to us.
Jesus had his many battles with the Jews we read in chapter 5
and verse 39 search the scriptures for in them ye think ye have
eternal life and they are they which testify of me the whole
word of God as we know and our pastor so often points out to
us is messianic it speaks of Christ we have here right through
scripture the revelation of Christ and we thank God we're not left
in any ignorance or darkness he says in verse 46 of this chapter
5 for had you believed Moses you would have believed me for
he wrote of me Moses looked to the Lord Jesus Christ the Jews
looked back to Moses but Jesus said but Moses looked to me Who
are we looking to today? Who is that source? There were signs of a great prophet.
And we see in scripture there were many great prophets, but
there were also other rulers, very similar to Pharaoh. God
reinforces this message, doesn't he? There was Sennacherib, remember
him? Came up to Hezekiah. There's
Nebuchadnezzar, and we can remember him, and we can remember God's
dealings with him. and how he had a revelation of
God. He was brought down very low
and was caused to confess the God in heaven. We don't know
the true state of that man's heart, but he was shown something,
you know. He was brought very low and said,
we must worship the God of heaven. And then, of course, we know
that they had their own gods, these men. And of course, to
come were Greece and Rome. and they had their own panoply
of gods, 12 senior gods with Zeus and Jupiter being the equivalents
in both of those societies men have their great gods and at
times different societies dominate the world and they're going to
let the Romans believe their gods were the gods and if you
were a citizen of the Roman Empire you were expected to worship
their gods and you could be in severe trouble as Christians
came in trouble under Nero and others because they would not
worship these gods they wanted to worship the God in heaven
and in our society today if we don't go along with the agenda
which we find increasingly difficult to do they're going to be hard
on us But we have to stand and trust in God. We have to see
the realities of the world around us. Jesus said, in John 8, verse
36, that my kingdom is not of this world. And we have to see
that we, in the kingdom of Christ, are in a spiritual kingdom. The
world thinks of kingdoms, always thinks of worldly power. Even
the Church of Rome thinks of its worldly power. But Jesus
said, my kingdom is not of this world. It's a spiritual kingdom.
It rules in your heart. It rules in my heart. If so be
we are in Christ. The amazing thing to me is that
Pharaoh saw all of this and didn't believe. Even to the end, he
did not believe. He still held on. And I know
in free will circles they say, oh, if we could see signs and
wonders and miracles, people will believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ. But there are people who saw Jesus face to face, Pilate
saw Jesus face to face. He could see that he was a good
man. He could see that he was a man who did not love to be
condemned, but he was a politician and it was giving him trouble.
So I just let the Jews sort it out. He saw nothing. Herod just
saw him as a person, a miracle worker. He saw nothing, nothing
at all. Annas, Caiaphas, who'd been in
succession, the chief priest, they knew all the law and the
prophets, they knew this probably by heart. They saw nothing. Now when we present the gospel
here, what do you see? What do I see? Moses, by faith,
knew God, had an experience, and he was obedient. Pharaoh
saw nothing in Moses. The world sees nothing in you
and me at all. They think we are, on the contrary,
they think we are foolish, silly, they think we're ignorant, they
think we're superstitious, and so on. But blessed are we if we can
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what Peter says. This
is what, by faith we have the Word of God, can we believe?
Peter talks about rejoicing that the trial of your faith be much
more precious than of gold that perisheth though it be tried
with fire might be found unto praise and honor and glory at
the appearing of the Lord of Jesus Christ who having not seen
ye love in whom though now you see him not yet believing you
rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory oh you have
not seen him Do you love him? That's the test. Do we believe
the word of God? Do you believe the testimony
of our Lord Jesus Christ? We're into the realm of faith. I can't give you that faith.
This is a gift of God. I can't, as it were, do something. You can go to, I have to confess,
I used to go to rallies and evangelistic crusades and people were told,
they were taken perhaps to a decision room or somewhere and they were
told, Here's a prayer, now if you say that prayer and you sign
the decision card, give it to me, you're now a Christian and
we'll write to you, give us your address and we'll give you a
church to go to. It's wicked. God does not work
like that. You can go to an alpha course
because you can't go to church. It's too much of a shock. So
you go to an alpha course and you have to go to six sessions
with coffee and that, and then at the end of the six sessions
you do the prayer and fill up the car, then you go to the service.
Well, we don't do that. God doesn't do that. He says,
here's the Lord Jesus Christ. Will you believe him? Here is
Moses. These are the miracles. I've shown my hand. This is the
hand of God for all time. Can you, in all of history, can
you show me anywhere that's like the dealings with God, Moses,
and Egypt? I don't think you can. Will you
believe in the word of God? And so it's a great, great test
to us. Where is our faith this morning?
And the more I've been thinking about this, the more I've been
thinking about Pharaoh and how modern leaders are like him,
aren't they? They're so arrogant and they're so convinced they're
right and they want to be military powerful to prove that their
ideas and their system is superior. But we see God, like all the
old empires, they all crumble, don't they? They're all brought
down to size. We don't know what the future
holds. God is not mocked. Jesus said that John 6, I am
the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never
hunger, and he that cometh to me shall never thirst. But I
said unto you that you also have seen me and believed not. That's what he's saying. He's
declaring himself so clearly to all these people. They've
seen him and believed not. We've heard the word of truth. Have we seen Jesus? Have we believed
in him? That is the great test. I've
taken that from this. Now, Pharaoh took items into
the pyramids. Pyramids are wonderful because
they've all been looted and robbed to death and all the tombs. They're
still finding some things, some amazing finds that tell us about
the society Egyptians have, very sophisticated. But they built
an afterlife for Pharaoh because he was a sort of a divine person.
And so when they put him in the tomb, he had his chariots, didn't
he? He had his weapons and all sorts
of ornaments and bowls. Wonderful finds, like the tomb
of Tutankhamun. What they found in there, they
put on display. But he's dead. They found the bones. You go
to the British Museum, it's got all these mummy bones. I don't
know how many they've got there. The Egyptians won them back.
I think they were quite welcome to them. They've got all these,
but they're dead. Where's the Lord Jesus Christ?
Yes, he was put in two. He's risen, isn't he? Triumphant,
glorified. You won't find any bones. Why?
Because there's a man, a glorified man in heaven. Pharaoh died. He became bones. Our gospel is
a wonderful gospel. What he was believing was a lie.
It was glorious. Of course, it looked fantastic.
Visually, if you imagine, you can imagine living in Egypt in
its prime. And all those still spectacular
monuments there, but all intact and beautiful. You'd have been
over, or any visitor to Egypt would have been overawed and
said, these are the people. But is there anything more wonderful,
more lovely, more glorious than the Gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ? Moses was me, Jesus was me, wasn't he? But he humbled
himself, became obedient unto death. What can compare with
that? Nothing, nothing can compare.
With that, it's very hard to communicate it, but we do our
best. And true religion is not like
the world's religion. The world's religion is all showy
and trumpets and makes a big thing of itself, like the false
religion in Rome. Our religion, true religion,
is meek, it's mild, it's quiet, it's obedient, it's submissive.
But it's a wonderful, it's a lovely, it's a perfect thing. What can
compare with it? Nothing can compare with the
Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. God is the God of living. That's
what Jesus said to the Jews. He's the God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob. He said He is the God now of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They are the living on the Mount
of Transfiguration who appear there. Representatives of the
Law and the Prophets. Moses and Elijah. God is the God of the living.
Pharaoh was the leader of the religion of the dead. And that's
the world's religion. Around us we see death in society. It's awful. There's only life,
true life, in the Lord Jesus Christ. and we see that in the
atonement not just that he died for our sins people miss the
fullness of the gospel in a chapel like this we believe in propitiation
he averted he turned away the just wrath of God towards us
Nothing else can do it. None of these other religions
understand that. Islam has no understanding of personal sin
and atonement, I can assure you. It's totally, totally... Their
God is not our God, whatever you be told by the politicians.
It does not compare. We sang, and that's why I sang
Psalm 115. You read of the false gods having
eyes they see not mouths they speak not. That is the world's
religion. They make their own gods. But
where are we? That's the big challenge this
morning. We've looked at these things briefly, but it's a wonderful,
wonderful account. Where are we? What's in our heart? When these truths come to us,
when we read of Moses and the miracles, when we read of the
person and work of Christ, don't we like Pharaoh? This is what
he said, who is the Lord that I should obey him? Is that your
heart or is that my heart? to let Israel go I know not the
Lord neither will I let Israel go and he never really did but
do we know the Lord will we obey him will we follow him that that
is the challenge of the gospel or that the Lord would would
speak to us and reveal these things and reveal the greatness
of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ Amen