I'm glad to have Mike back. You
all can be too, just don't say nothing to him. You ain't got
to tell him. Exodus chapter eight, the gospel
of Exodus. I'm going to quote three different
preachers y'all know this morning, and that's a modern day commentary. Instead of going and reading
somebody that's 400 years ago, I can go listen to read somebody
that's alive right now and then call them and thank them about
it. Like I was saying the other day,
if we listen to something on TV or on a cassette or whatever,
CD, if there's something we don't want to hear, we can just say,
well, that's probably for somebody else, I think, for me. We're
looking eye to eye. Old Brother Mahan preached on this chapter,
and he preached all three plagues at once, the frogs, the lice,
and the flies. And he told them folks, he said,
now, when we get done, don't you ask me any questions. He
said, I've studied hard for this. We see through a glass dimly.
He said, don't analyze the food, just eat it. Man, there's a lot
here and there's a lot. We're looking at just the frogs,
but I'll tell you what Chris and
old brother David said on it too. Like last time, I said that was one
judgment with two viewpoints. And here we see the second plague,
which is really the third. God came with his messengers
to Pharaoh and said, let my people go. And he said, who's God? Buddy,
people's worried about frogs and lice and flies and blood.
That's a problem. That's where the problem starts.
We looked the last time, the waters, all the waters, the rivers,
the ponds, the birdbaths. If somebody had a thimble in
their cabinet, if it had water in it, everything turned to blood.
And they started digging next to the river thinking that earth
would, that's what we think, isn't it? Earth's gonna resolve
this problem we have. We can find our solutions in
this dirt, this red dirt. It wasn't. But the Lord's people
rejoiced. All those people of Egypt, boy, they was mad and
angry, and they said, hurry up and get this over with, and we're
thirsty, and our kids are thirsty, our animals are thirsty. It didn't
say anything about the waters of Goshen. The Lord's people
said, God turned all that blood, because of His blood, into wine,
and we drank it. And that makes you healthy and
happy. It makes you rejoice. It's good for your stomach. Wonderful,
isn't it? It's kind of the same thing here.
There's a plague of frogs, but there'll be the attitude of,
I hate these frogs and we're covered in frogs. And there'll
be the attitude and say, look what the Lord did. He looked
on us. He gave us these taskmasters. He's put us in this. He's hedged
us about like we looked last hour. He brought us right here
to cry out to him. He's heard us. And he said, I'm
going to bring you out with my hand. Now, I don't know exactly
how he's going to do that, but only God can do what just happened.
And then people are comforted. And there ain't a record either
of there being any frogs in Goshen. But there were witnesses to it.
Here in Exodus 8 verse 1, And the Lord spake unto Moses, Go
unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, You tell
him what I said. Let my people go, that they may
serve me. This message is always the same.
It's over and over and over. Salvations of the Lord. His people
needed deliverance. The salvation's needed because
we needed saving. There's a need there. And it's
commanded by God for His people. And it's gonna happen. And it's
not that in His good time and His good pleasure, by His mighty
right hand, that His people's gonna be let go and then we're
just gonna get us a PlayStation, an Xbox, and sit around and eat
ice cream all day. We're gonna serve Him. We're
gonna serve Him. Used to, we thought we had to. Now we get
to. Now we have a heart that wants to. That's a mighty difference. If God puts a heart in somebody
to want to serve, they'll serve him. They'll serve him. A man
can whip somebody into doing something, they'll begrudge.
That's like a, we knew a lady one time, she said, well, if
my husband says so, oh, that was so off-putting to submission
through the gritting of the teeth. That's what prisoners do. Somebody
says, well, I can't do that. A whole different attitude, isn't
it? It may look like the same motions going through, the same
outcome, but boy, there's a different heart there. They're gonna serve
him. Verse two says, And if thou refuse to let them go, behold,
I will smite all thy 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 in the
house of thy servants and upon thy people, into thy ovens, into
thy kneading troughs. and the frogs shall come up both
on thee and upon thy people and upon all thy servants. I spent a lot of time thinking
about frogs this week. Where do frogs come from? We
saw it last weekend, didn't we, buddy? Tadpoles. They come from
water, don't they? We'll see you in the next couple
weeks. Life comes from the dust of the land. Flies come from
the air. That's land, sea, and air. That's
every part of this cursed earth where mankind thinks life comes
from. And it's all cursed. It's a judgment
of God to man. Everything's cursed. Frogs come
from water, and they come out of this river, this Nile River
that we looked at last time. That's the river that Egypt worshiped.
They said, oh, all of our gods are born in different little
nooks and crannies around this river. That's foolish. Our God is. He wasn't born. They
benefited from that river, didn't they? They watered all their
crops in that river. They caught fish from that river.
They had joy in that river. They had recreation. Them kids
learned how to swim and play in that river. That's where they
came from. What are frogs? We know what
frogs are. We can go read a science book,
can't we? What does God say about frogs? There's four places in
the scriptures that frogs are mentioned. Here, twice in the
Psalm, David mentions it, just saying what happened here about
frogs. And then the Lord tells us in Revelation 16 what those
frogs were. Let's look at it. Revelation 16. David said in Psalm 105 that
the frogs were in abundance in the chamber of the kings. And
he said these frogs, they destroyed them. It was lowercase K and
kings plural. I thought there's just pharaohs.
There's one pharaoh in Egypt, wasn't there? No, we're all kings.
We thank kings, don't we? I think we're the boss. Revelation
16, verse 13. And I saw three unclean spirits
like frogs. What's a frog? Unclean spirit.
Come out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of
the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they
are the spirits of the devils, of devils, working miracles which
go forth unto the kings, lowercase k, of the earth and of the whole
world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God
Almighty. That's what every person is,
apart from the grace of our Lord and Christ. We're our own kings. We're our own gods. We're our
own prophets. We're our own priests. That's
666. Everybody's worried to death about it. They think Bill Gates
is going to put robots in them or something. That's man, man,
man. Man puts himself in the place
of the prophet. Man puts himself in the place of the priest. And
man puts himself in the place of king. That's what mankind
ought to be worried about. We're at war with God. in our nature, in our instinct,
unless God comes and delivers us. We're our own kings. We're our own frogs. We'll see
it in a minute. That's going to be in every house,
in every oven, in every bread trough, in every bedroom, in
every bed, all over the people, the servants, and the kings,
and everybody. Where'd that come from? How come
everybody thinks they're their own king? You ain't gonna tell
me nothing. Might have some man reign over me. I'm a king. It happened in Genesis 3. The
serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die. For
God doth know that in the day ye eat of, then your eyes shall
be open and ye shall be as gods. Knowing good and evil. I know.
I know. I had a buddy Gomer, he'd say,
what time is it? And you'd say, well, it's 10,
he'd go, I know! Just to shake people up. That's
why we say we know, for we know what the question is. Be like
gods. What does mankind say? Sign me
up. Yeah, buddy. I want to be the boss. Man likes
that, don't they? I thought a lot about frogs and
I'd look them up some. They're in the tea between me
and the serpent. That's the only beast on this
earth. God says it's cursed. Well, there's good snakes. No,
there ain't. God says there ain't. He said they're all cursed. I
don't want nothing to do with them. And I thought, well, frogs are reptiles. Well, they're not. They're amphibians,
but I don't like them anyway. I'll pick frogs up and move them
or something, but I don't want to do that with snakes. I don't
have the same enmity between me and frogs, but I thought about
frogs a lot, from tadpoles to big bullfrogs. What are frogs?
They're shapeshifters. They're one thing and they turn
into something else, don't they? Just like those ministers of
Satan that transform themselves into ministers of light. And
they say things that are right, and they quote God's Word, and
they have a form of godliness, and they can talk. Hmm, they
mutate from a cute little tadpole to a big bullfrog. And when they're
around, we've learned here, when they're awake, the snakes are
awake, ain't they? They go hand in hand. And they're loud, and
they're bolsterous, and they're stubborn. You ever seen kids
race frogs? They get frogs lined up, catch a big old bullfrog,
and they gotta take a stick or something, and they smack behind it, and
they try to get that frog to jump, and they go whichever way
they wanna go, but they're trying to race a frog, and sometimes
them frogs just sit there the whole match. They don't go nowhere.
They're stubborn. Look at Proverbs 7. Get to the Psalms, go write one
book, Proverbs 7. Verse 10. This is speaking of that lady
of Babylon, great whore of Babylon. Proverbs 7, 10, and behold, There
met him a woman with the attire of an harlot, and a subtle heart. She is loud and stubborn, and
her feet abide not in her house. Now she's without, now she's
in the streets, and lithe and white at every corner. This evil
spirit, this unclean spirit, it's loud like a frog, it's stubborn,
and her feet don't abide. Go all over. I thought of Elijah
when those prophets bailed down there, and he was mocking them,
and they wouldn't listen to him, and they started getting frustrated.
They went all day long, and they cried. He said, maybe he's asleep.
Maybe he ought to yell a little bit louder. We're going to gang
up on what they thought was God and get him to do something.
He said, maybe he's out of town. Maybe he's busy. Maybe he's in
the bathroom. Maybe you gotta wait on him.
And they got mad, and it said in 1 Kings 18, Oh, Baal, hear us,
but there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped
upon the altar, which was made, jumping up and down and cutting
a shine. I see people getting baptized in kiddie pools, and
what do they do to come out? Ha! Just throwing their hands all
around, and loud, and bolsterous, and stubborn, and ain't saying
nothing. Nothing distinguishable, nothing plain, nothing simple,
nothing bold. Just yacking. That's his false
spirits, isn't it? And they crept into all the places
around them. It was in the bread troughs,
it was in the ovens, it was in the bed, it was in the shower,
it was in the toilets, it was in the birdbaths, it was everywhere,
out in the fields, everywhere. This was all over. Paul said
to Timothy, he said, they have a form of godliness, but denying
the power thereof. They think they did it. He says,
from such, turn away. For of this sort they are which
creep into houses and led captive silly women laden with sins,
led away with divers' lusts, telling them what good they could
do, ever learning. Boy, they got commentary stacked
to the teeth, and never able to come to the knowledge of the
truth. We didn't get to the right doctrine, you didn't get to the
right person. Christ is the truth. They're looking for, searching
the scriptures, thinking they have life, and them scriptures
testify of Him. These frogs, these false spirits,
these frogs, they're in every room, every bed, every oven,
and right where the bread rises in the kneading troughs, where
the food comes from. Our brother David said, he was
preaching on this, he said, I like bread with butter, I like bread
with honey, I like bread with peanut butter, I like bread with
jelly, but I don't like bread with frogs. I laughed, I can't
eat it. Ain't no food there. Well, you
can eat frog legs. You catch a bullfrog that big. Matt was
talking about frog legs last week. How much meat do you get?
Huh? It ain't that. You got to kill 50 of them to
have a sandwich. And then what do you got left
over? Nothing but a whole bunch of stinking guts. Oh, it ain't
good for nothing, is it? There's nothing to eat. Just
like nothing to drink in that first plague, right? I thought
of the sea. Water, water all around and not
a drop to drink. That's a famine. There was a
famine of water, now there's a famine of bread. Because there's
frogs in it. And that's exactly what the Lord's
showing us. In Amos 8, it said, Behold, the days come, saith
the Lord, I'll send a famine in the land. Not a famine of
bread, nor thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the
Lord. So it is in our day. There's frogs that are loud and
bolsterous, yapping on every corner and in everybody's house,
and look people in the mirror. I don't need nobody to tell me
nothing, I know everything I need to know. I'm a king. And there's
a famine. Because they have their own words,
not the word of what God says. And they don't want to hear it.
And somebody says, this is what God says, they get mad, just
like Pharaoh did. And they say, you're mean, Moses. Moses is
there to get his people. Well, Pharaoh said, God saved
me too. Get me out of Egypt. I know I'm the king. I'll go
be a doorkeeper in your house. Well, come on, brother Pharaoh.
Get in the wagons, we're leaving. God has to break us and make
that grace irresistible like we looked at last hour. Verse
5, back in Exodus 8. And the Lord spake unto Moses,
Exodus 8, 5, say unto Aaron, stretch forth thine hand with
thy rod over the streams. Remember that rod? That was the
one that came down to the ground, became the serpent, turned back
into a rod when it went back up. Christ coming to this earth,
that rod of Jesse, being made sin for his people, and back
to his throne in glory right now. And that's his word. We
have his rod right here, don't we? What's going to make his
frogs be a parent? What's his word? Somebody just
saying that's what God says. Look, right there it is. Chapter
and verse. That'll shut him up, won't it? Right there it is.
That's it. They got wrought over the streams and over the rivers,
over the ponds, and caused frogs to come up on 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." I said, what? That preaching business, anybody
would do that. There's already frogs coming out everywhere. Pharaoh called for Moses and
Aaron. Frogs are everywhere and said, and treat 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.
You go to, I'm not talking to God. You talk to him. You go
talk to God and you tell him, get these frogs away from me
and my people. And then I'll let the people go. Quid pro quo,
right? This for that. You ever heard
that? If the Lord will do something
to me, I'll do something for the Lord and his people and I'll
help him out. Lord, if you just get me out
of this mess, I'll serve you forever. Lord, if you just get
me through this job promotion or whatever, I don't know. That's
thoughts of natural man. You do something for me and then
I'll do something for you. Moses picked up on this. They
might've been not anybody else picked up on that. Moses has
been around for a minute. He's like, hmm. I know what you
just said. What come out your mouth, what's
in your heart? He gave Pharaoh a little bit
of sarcasm. Look at verse eight or verse nine. And Moses said
unto Pharaoh, glory over me. That means embellish over me.
Do something. Do me a favor. Will you just
tickle my fancies? Won't you do something for me,
Pharaoh? You tell me when to pray to God. And you tell me
when to tell God to make his frogs go away. When shall I entreat
for thee, and for thy servants, and for thy people, to destroy
the frogs from thee, and thine houses, that they may remain
in the river only? You tell me. Do me a favor, Moses.
You want me to go pray to God? Tell me when you want it done,
when you want the Lord to do it, and I'll do it. You pick
it. What would you have said? This
whole land, and your ovens, and your kneading troughs, and your
bed, and your... It's just loud all the time. Riveting, riveting, riveting,
just thundering. When would you have asked to make that go away?
Old brother Chris said, he goes, if there's a pharaoh, there's
probably a Mrs. Pharaoh, and that's probably worse than them frogs. She says,
won't you, you're king, won't you do something? Get some servants,
shove these things out of my house, I need to go sleep. I
would have said right now, wouldn't you? Take us right now. I was in a trial one time, it
was hard. My mom told me, she said, why don't you ask God to
take that from you? I said, oh, it's not time yet. Like I knew how
long the trial ought to last. And God kept me in it. It was
hard. And as come a time, I begged, Lord, take away right now. And
he did. He had shown me how proud that was of me thinking I'm the
one that is wise and I'm the one that's king. And I determined
how long the suffering ought to last. When do people need
deliverance from all these deceiving and dividing false witnesses?
When? In 2 Corinthians 6, Paul said,
For he saith, I have heard thee in the time accepted, and in
the day of salvation have I succored thee. Behold, now is the acceptable
time. Now is the day of salvation.
What do we always say? We take things out of context
and we misquote God's word. We ought not do that. I do it
too. I don't want to. Today is the day of salvation.
Well, it's worded that way a couple of times, but now. Not between
now and sunset tonight. Right now. The only time I'm
ever alive is right now. When's salvation? Right now.
When do we need deliverance? Right now. From ourselves. From
this loud nocturnal frog that's bold and loves darkness rather
than light. Now. Now. Well, it was eight
years ago I had an experience. I ain't alive eight years ago.
I'm alive right now. I need grace right now. I need
mercy right now. Verse 10, Exodus 8, 10. Here's
Pharaoh's answer. Moses said, do me a favor, buddy.
You tell me when you want me to do this, since you think you're
the boss. And he said, tomorrow. And Moses said, be it according
to thy word that thou mayest know that there's none like unto
the Lord our God. The Lord will use this to prove
to you he's on his throne and you ain't on no throne. You're
just on a hunk of wood. We'll have, you can have it your way
today. You'll see what happens. You want this tomorrow? A bunch
of the old commentators, they said that Pharaoh may have said
tomorrow, hoping that them frogs would just disappear that night.
And maybe he had got good counsel from men. He sought the counsel
of flesh and blood and those magicians. So we made frogs come
up. Give us, give us 10 more hours, buddy. I bet by sunup,
we can get rid of these frogs. And he goes, you know what? We'll
wait till tomorrow. You let the Lord do this tomorrow.
And then if they were able to get rid of all them frogs, then
he wouldn't have to acknowledge that the Lord did it. And he
wouldn't have to acknowledge that God's prophets had told him the
truth. And he wouldn't have to lose face in front of his people.
I get that. I think him commentators may
have been on to something. But you know the only thing I could
think of was Felix. Paul preached to him. We'll get
to it eventually in Acts 24, but Paul went and preached to
him and his wife. And Felix said, he reasoned of
righteousness, of temperance, of judgment to come. He thought
of his end and he thought of righteousness. And Felix trembled,
just shook all over. And he answered to Paul, and
he said, go thy way for this time. When I have a convenient
season, I will call for thee. That's a whole lot. You've given
me a whole lot to think about. Well, to think about later ain't
today salvation. Now is salvation. And we said,
well, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. Well, when
the kids grow up, you know how many excuses I've heard people not attending?
House break a dog, probably train kids. My dog's sick. Shoot it! It'd be kind to it. I know another
fella, his dog died. Believer's dog died. I don't
know why I tell you that. And somebody got on to him and
said, Believers ought not act such way. It's just an animal. What's God say? Proverbs said the righteous is
kind to his beast. Because we know we're beasts
and we ain't nothing but dogs. Lord was gracious to us. Makes
you a little kinder to that little lap dog we got at the house.
Verse 11, and all the frogs shut apart from thee and from thine
houses and from thy servants and from thy people. And 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 against Pharaoh. It doesn't say Moses
waited till the next morning when Pharaoh said to cry to him.
He immediately went to the Lord. That's a good thing to do. And
the Lord did according to the word of Moses. And all the frogs
died out of the houses, out of the villages, out of the fields.
And they gathered them together upon heaps, heaps. and the land stank. You just
think every parking spot out there has a 10 feet high pyramid
of dead frogs in it. Big bullfrogs. All over the whole
land. All of Egypt. Out in the fields,
out in the streets, everywhere. They didn't know where to put
them. They didn't know public works to come scoop them away
in a garbage truck. They stunk. They heat them up
the best they could. I said last week, and at the
beginning of this one, there's one judgment, two attitudes,
isn't there? I thought that place stunk. Egypt, picture this world,
stinks. Mankind loves it. I got an old
nature that loves it every bit. That new man thinks it stinks.
The Lord said in Isaiah 65, those which say stand by thyself, come
not near to me, I am holier than thou. These are a smoke in my
nose. He said it's a stench. That's
what stinks to God. Self-righteousness. A fire that
burneth all the day. Do we turn from the stench of
those false witnesses that we used to be so dear to? Has God
made that stink to us? And not just that they were wrong,
I was right there with them. I was the stinky one. I was the
one down in the miry pit. I was that frog down there that
was loud and stubborn and loved darkness and wanted to pop off
and jump all over the place and go wherever I wanted to go when
I felt like going. God save me from that. That stinks. I used
to argue doctrine as hard as I could and fight with people
and thinking I was winning and I wouldn't tell them of Christ.
I don't even want to think about it. I just want to, ah, make
it go out of my head, Lord. It stinks. Our desire to be loud
and stubborn kings to ourselves. God turned us from that. He made
Christ a sweet smell, and everything else putrid. That's what he's
done. We see these frogs, and the Lord's
done this, this is his hand. And everybody thinks they like
them loudmouthed frogs until they've got to deal with them.
And they don't want nothing to do with them, now they want rid
of them. Paul said, we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ,
and them that are saved and them that are perished. He said, when
we preach, I say that one message, and so many people get ahold
of me and say, that was wonderful, man, I needed that, thank you.
And somebody say, what are you doing? That was horrible. To the one a savor of death and
a death, a stench, get it out of here. And to the other, a
savor of life and a life, oh, he smells good. just like Jacob. He dressed like his brother,
he brought the venison of his brother, and he smelled like
him. Smelled like him. Paul says, who's sufficient for
these things? Follow up to Thessalonica, he
said, It's cloudy. Maybe them clouds
roll back this morning, huh? Mankind's scared to death. They
say, oh, it's gonna be the apocalypse. That's great. We know how this
turns out. We can go home. That's good. Oh, they might die. Well, if they know God, this
is wonderful. It's gonna be the best day of their life. Better than the
day of their birth. He said so. These frogs, I just thought they
was all ribbiting. And they're, well, maybe they're good. Well,
we just don't know the hearts of men. That's true. I don't
know the hearts of people. God knows. Only God knows the
heart. He looks on the heart. I can't look on the heart. I
can't comfort the heart. I can't look on the heart. I'll
tell you what, I know what come out of their mouth. And believers
will say stuff backwards, and there's seasons that will say
things wrong, get frustrated, whatever, I get that. But as
the tenor of life, throughout five, 10, 15, 20 years, I know
what comes out of people's mouths. Just like Moses knew what come
out of Pharaoh's mouth, and I know whatever comes, what's in the
heart comes out the mouth. He said so. Old generation of vipers,
how can ye being evil speak good things? For out of the abundance
of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of good treasure
of his heart bringeth forth good things. They'll say, Lord did
it. I know it's a bunch of stinking frogs, but he'd make Christ sweet
to us. I know it's a river of blood, but he turned the water
into wine. We're happy. That's his blood,
that's his covenant. And an evil man out of his evil
treasure is bringing forth evil things. That's what comes out
their mouth. Verse 15. But when Pharaoh saw that there
was respite, he had relief, man. You go tell the Lord tomorrow.
My magicians can't do it. Get rid of these frogs. And the
frogs died. And it stunk, but it ain't as bad as it used to
be. We're on an upswing. He hardened his heart and hearken
not unto them. I ain't listening to Moses in
here. as the Lord had said. That's a heavy thing for Moses
and Aaron. Go preach to him, he ain't gonna listen to a word
you say. Why am I going? Can't I just leave him alone?
Because I said so, that's why I'm gonna go do it. It's for
my people's good. All them down in Goshen's gonna
see this, they're gonna rejoice. Pharaoh's gonna harden his heart.
Judgment made Pharaoh and anyone else. Remorseful. If we get caught doing something
wrong, whatever, we'll wish we wouldn't have got caught. Or
wish we didn't do it so we didn't end up with the punishment for
what we got. But judgment sends remorse, not repentance. Not repentance. Having a bunch
of frogs, a whole nation, everybody in Egypt was affected. And they
hated it. They had remorse. They didn't
call out to God. There wasn't repentance, there
was remorse. seeing God's grace in Christ, that's what brings
us to repentance. That's what turns us from self,
from frogs, from this frog, this shape-shifting amphibian, to
Him. We have to see Him, His righteousness. That judgment of the prodigal
son, he was down there in that hog trough. He took his inheritance
and he blew it, wasteful living, and he ended up, nobody helped
him, and he's down in the hog pen and he's eating husks. That's remorse. There's a lot
of times there's a false profession or somebody, they'll get religion,
even if it's at the right place where the truth is because of
a bad situation in life. That's just remorse. But it wasn't
repentance in that prodigal son until he considered the righteousness
and the grace and the faithfulness and the long suffering and the
love of his father. And he said, no, I won't go to
daddy's house. When he came to himself, He was already down
there, and he sure wasn't happy sleeping with pigs. He said,
how many hired servants of my father have bread enough to spare?
And I'm gonna perish with hunger? He's good to his servants. I'm
gonna rise and go to my father. I pray we see that God will make
us see we're the frogs. Mankind left ourselves, we're
shape-shifting loudmouths. And then we're made to see His
grace, the grace of God, to hear His people and send His mighty
right hand that we can rejoice in Him. I pray so. Brother Trevor and Brother Mike,
if y'all would come hand out the elements.