Exodus chapter 7. The title is
One Judgment and Two Responses. This is the first judgment that
the Lord is sending upon Egypt that they're going to know about.
That's going to be painfully obvious. And there's two attitudes
to this. Two takes on it, if you will.
It's easy to read this and nothing but condemnation and horrible
things taking place. But for the believer, in the
light of Christ, we'll look at these things, though they may put us out for a little bit,
they may make discomfort, may be really unpleasant for many
times. We're going to look at this, and you'll see it too,
I'm confident. This is fabulous. This is wonderful. This really is comforting to
see this. Here in verse 14, we'll read to the end of the chapter.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Pharaoh's heart is hardened.
He refuseth to let the people go. Get thee unto Pharaoh in
the morning. Lo, he goeth out unto the water,
and thou shalt stand by the river's brink against he come. And the
rod which was turned into a serpent shalt thou take in thine hand.
And thou shalt say unto him, the Lord God of the Hebrews hath
sent me unto you, saying, let my people go. that they may serve
me in the wilderness. And behold, hitherto thou wouldst
not hear. Thus saith the Lord, in this
shalt thou know that I am the Lord. Behold, I will smite with
the rod that is in my hand upon the waters which are in the river,
and they shall be turned to blood. And the fish that is in the river
shall die, and the river shall stink, and the Egyptians shall
loathe to drink of the water of the river. And the Lord spake
unto Moses, say, say unto Aaron, take thy rod and stretch out
thy hand upon the waters of Egypt, upon their streams, upon their
rivers, upon their ponds, upon all their pools of water, that
they may become blood and that there may be blood throughout
all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood and in vessels
of stone. And Moses and Aaron did so as
the Lord commanded. And he lifted up the rod and
smoked the waters that were in the river in the sight of Pharaoh
and in the sight of his servants. And all the waters that were
in the river turned to blood. And the fish that was in the
river died and the river stank and the Egyptians could not drink
of the water of the river. And there was blood throughout
the land of Egypt. And the magicians of Egypt did
so with their enchantments. And Pharaoh's heart was hardened,
neither did he hearken unto them, as the Lord had said. And Pharaoh
turned and went into his house, neither did he set his heart
to this also. And all the Egyptians digged
round about the river for water to drink, for they could not
drink of the water of the river. And seven days were fulfilled,
after that the Lord had smitten the river. It says there in verse
15, the Lord's speaking to Moses, and he said, Get unto Pharaoh
in the morning. You get up early and you get
there before he shows up. Lo, he goeth out unto the water,
and thou shalt stand by the river's brink, against he come, and the
rod which is turned into a serpent shalt thou take in thy hand.
First time, Moses and Aaron, they went into Pharaoh's palace,
didn't they? And now, Pharaoh unknowingly,
is going to be coming to Moses and Aaron. He didn't know that
yet, but that's what the Lord had purposed, wasn't it? And
this was a command of the Lord to Moses to go early. Not when you felt like it. Not
when you thought it might be a better time. He gave a time
and a place, and he said, do it. And he went to that river.
I thought of Philip and that eunuch. The Lord said, I got
somebody down on that road. Get to him. And it said with
haste. I don't know how far that was. Philip ran. The Lord gave
him something to do, and he was going to do it. And they met
there at the river, didn't they? The Nile is the longest river
in the world, and the origins of that name has a lot to do
with what it looks like. But it's a dark and a rich blue
water in the contrast of that desert. And on its banks is nothing
but life, greenery, because it's growing from that river. All
of Egypt knew of this river and most of them had settled by it.
That's what most settlements, like you look at Australia, most
of the people's around the edges where water is, right? They ain't
in the middle. Most of the people settled by this river and they
knew it. And they knew that this river, it watered their crops.
They said, this is how we grow food. We like that river. And
then they fished in that river. So we get a lot of protein out
of that river. They got good fish in it. We're going to live here.
And they bathed there. They cleansed themselves in that
river. So they didn't get sick. So they
weren't dirty. So it wasn't offensive to other people. And they drank
of that river. That was fresh water for them.
Get all you want. They had recreation on that river.
Some of you all have had recreation on a river before too. Go swimming.
Go boating. They had boats back then. You
think little kids didn't play in boats back then? They weren't
born grown men with mustaches. They played in that water. And
they fished in that water. And they swam. They taught their
children how to swim in that water. So often, I thought, mankind,
and I mean most of the time, were thankful for the gifts that
the Lord gives us and not for the gift giver. Not for the one
that gave them. We're just thankful for what
we got. Many of the gods of Egypt, throughout all their history,
you don't have to read those things. It ain't good for you.
That's my job. I'll go study these things out
for you. Most of the gods of Egypt were
born on that river. They had different places. I
said, oh, this is where this god was born. And this is where
that god was born, by the river. And they'd go and they would
worship in those places. They worshipped the river. They worshipped the
gods they say were born of that river. And I thought, how foolish. How foolish. Our God has no beginning. He said, Moses, you tell them
I am. That means He is. He didn't start
and He ain't going to end. His Kingdom is from everlasting
to everlasting. That's God. And then these people,
this land of Egypt of their own imagination, they come up with
something that just makes them happy and they were content with
that and it was just real easy to be around. I like that God. Well, it's flooded a little bit.
Well, you know, I know another spot on the river over here.
That's where I learned how to swim. We'll go worship that God." That was
the state. Some writers of old that I can
have some confidence in, they said Pharaoh was going down to
that river early in the morning to wash. He was going down there
to wash. Just take a bath in the morning.
Get up. Maybe brush his teeth. I don't know what he was doing.
Going down there to clean himself for the day. And other men who
proved to be faithful, they said, no, he was going down there to
worship. Because that's where their gods were. They thought
that river was the gift, was life, not the gift giver. And
he was getting up early in the morning to go down there and
worship at that river. And you know what? I agree with both
of them. Because that's what man's trying to do. When they
go to some place that they think they can wash themselves, and
they can feel good about themselves, and think they're clean for the
day. That's what this river's showing us. Pharaoh was going
down there first thing in the morning. He was diligent, wasn't
he? It was early. The Lord tells us to rise up
early. Some people don't like, I like to sleep in. Cameron was
gone the other night. Yesterday, I slept all the way
in until 6.30. Late day. But he got up early, went down
there. That's exactly where God was
pleased to send his messenger right in the face of Pharaoh's
idols and Pharaoh's self-worship. He meets us at our point of rebellion.
When we say, I won't have it, I don't like it, I don't want
nothing to do with it, that's exactly, whatever that is, that's
different for different people. Pick something. Whatever our
point of rebellion is, God's faithful to meet us right there
where it is. This one's going to reject it.
That's what I see. This makes me happy because he didn't leave
me to my own devices. He found me. I was the lost one,
not him. That's why I say there's two
approaches to this. We see the condemnation of Pharaoh, but
we see the Lord's faithfulness to us. Don't we? The Lord met
us right early. Got us right on time. He met
us right at our point of rebellion. Moses took that rod in his hand.
He said, you take that rod with you, Moses. Remember what that
was? He said, that's the one that turned into a serpent. Do
you remember us looking at that before? That's Christ coming
to this earth, that rod of Jesse, being made the curse for us and
swallowing up all the other curses that was against us, our sin
and death and Satan and the law and whatever. He accomplished
all of it and then he's back on his throne. Do we have that
rod with us? Look at that. Did Pharaoh like
that rod? He didn't. We have it, don't
we? The Lord said, search the scriptures,
for in them you think you have life. He's telling the Pharisees,
you think that your daily readings and your devotionals and all
this other junk means you're a good little boy or girl? He
said, but they testify of me. You can read about that rod on
every page. He should take the Word of God
down there with him. Moses was going to preach to Pharaoh. Moses got up early and went.
He did it, didn't he? Here's Moses' message, verse
16. The Lord told him what to say. And thou shalt say unto
him, The Lord God of the Hebrews hath sent me unto thee, saying,
Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness. Moses
came and God told Moses. He said, you look them dead in
the eye and say, God sent me here. You were brought down here, but
God sent me to you. All right, here, take notes from
you, Pharaoh. You're here to take notes from
me. God sent me. I'm God's man. And here's the
message. Deliverance. He has a people. We looked at that last hour,
didn't we? That he paid for that atonement.
It was for somebody, wasn't it? God had a people there and all
this is pictured. He refers to it over and over
and over again throughout the scriptures. I'm a God that brought
you out. I'm a God that parted the sea. I'm a God that kept
my people in wilderness. I'm a God that did this. That's me.
The Lord staged all this in His perfect plan to teach us something. And this was this message of
the one sent of God. I can't tell you, you can't understand
it fully unless you experience it. I can't tell you how often
I pray, God, if I don't have your words, kill me. Don't let
me go. Don't let me tell a false message.
Don't let me do anything but say what your word says. Let
me warn. Let me comfort. You have to do that. But you
be with me and don't send me by myself. And Moses said, I'm
here. God's got a people. Let them
go. They're going to serve him. They're
going to serve Him. And behold, hitherto, thou wast
not here. What did Pharaoh say? I don't
like you. I'm the boss here. I don't like
you. I don't like that you sin here.
And I don't like what you're saying. And these people, that's my servants,
they're my slaves. You're going to make them not
work? And they're just going to go and worship God for this? They're going to serve you in
the wilderness? No. That's unproductive. I have a
better plan. They're going to stay here and
they're going to work hard. Remember he took the stuff, the straw from them, made
their taskmasters rule over them even more harshly? He said, I
don't like you, I don't like this deliverance business, and
I sure don't like them worshiping God. He asked plainly before
we looked at it, who is he that I ought to listen to? So what did the Lord do? Verse
17, Thus saith the Lord, In this, and what's about to happen, I'm
going to do something. And in it, thou shalt know that
I'm the Lord, that He's God. There won't be any shadow of
doubt in the Egyptians' minds. There won't be any shadow of
doubt in Pharaoh that there's a sovereign God, He's on His
throne, and He does what He wants. That's terrifying. See, it's
not just the sovereignty of God. We know God's sovereign. That
ain't bound to Him. Understanding the doctrine ain't
bound to the Almighty. It's not bound to Christ. It's
not. And to have some knowledge that
isn't that. Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation
is not anything we can interact in. It's something of our doing.
That's like those demons. They went to the sons of Siva.
They was out there preaching and doing all kinds of crazy
things and had their book of curious art. They was making
a cartoon of the gospel. And the demons came and they
whooped them and stripped them down, violated them out in the streets,
and they said, Christ we know and Paul we know. Who are you?
What a thing, isn't it? But the Lord said, you're going
to know. I'm going to do this. Turn everything to blood. And
you're going to know that I'm the Lord. Behold, I will smite
with the rod. that is in my hand upon the waters
which are in the river, and they shall be turned to blood, and
the fish that is in the river shall die, and the river shall
stink." It's gonna die, it's gonna stink, and every drop of
water, if it's in a cup or whatever, it's gonna turn to blood. You thank all your idols. I thought
of all my idols, my way of life, my recreation, my food, everything
I thought was good and all the things I thought was going good
for me. God said I'm going to smite it and it's going to stink. Has God done that for you? All
those things we relied in, and all those bodily exercises, and
all that knowledge, and all that enlightenment, and all that experience.
Has He made that to just stink? I thought to the fishes. All
them little bumper stickers of fishes people have, little fish
on their car. Does that stink to you now? God made me know that. And everything
that was before that I thought was going to, all the gifts that
I wasn't grateful for, it was the giver. And everything else
stinks but Him. I've got to be like Him. I've
got to be where He is. I'll eat what He eats. I'll drink what
He drinks. Wherever He abides, I abide. His people's my people.
Wherever He's buried, I'm going to be buried. Just like Ruth
and Naomi, right? We're attached at the bone marrow. We're attached
at the soul. I'm yours and you're mine. Has
the Lord done that for us? Well, all that stuff's really
good and it just ain't as good as what we've got now. No. If
this is the work of the Lord, He said it's going to stink.
This will be unusable for you, isn't it? Well, that's one take. You take them Egyptians, been
in bondage 430 years, and they said, God's heard us. I'm getting
way ahead. God's heard our moanings and our cries, and God's, we've
seen what he's done. He sent his man to tell us these
things, and we see them waters going to turn red. Oh, he's working
now. We've learned about what's going
to happen when the Lord comes, right? There's clouds going to
be rolled back like a scroll. I don't know what that's going to look
like. Could you imagine if clouds started rolling back as a scroll? Look
up. This is it. I didn't know what he was talking
about before, but I know what he's talking about now, and this
is it. He's coming. Not the Armageddon, not the end
of the world, not the apocalypse. The almighty King of Kings is
coming, just as he said he would. And I'd be happy. You think Egyptians
was happy? The Lord said he's going to bring
us out with a mighty hand. Here we go. This is good news. What about
the Egyptians? And the Egyptians shall loathe
to drink of the water of the river. They're going to hate
it. Everywhere I see is blood. You stop talking about that blood.
Stop telling me about that atonement. Stop telling me that I need atonement.
I don't want to hear it. I want to go back to having a
good time. I want to go skiing and I want to play with my little
gods. I want to teach my kids how to swim. That's what you're
supposed to be doing. You're supposed to be teaching the kids how to swim. The Lord said, they're going
to loathe it. Loathe it. Verse 19, And the Lord spake
unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and stretch out thy
hand. The Lord said earlier, He said,
I'm going to stretch out my rod. And here He said, Moses, you
tell Aaron to take out that rod. The Lord walks in His people.
He said, these are My servants. They ain't got enough sense to
pick a rod up. They don't know nothing to do, but I'm going
to walk in them. I'm going to work in them. I'm going to use
them. We sit under air, and take thy rod, and stretch out thy
hand upon the waters of Egypt, upon their streams, and upon
their rivers, and upon their ponds, and upon all their pools
of water." That's everything. Everything. Don't just make this
blood and everything else okay. It's going to be in totality. Total, every drop of water that
you know you need, it's physically, most I'm proving something here,
they're gonna know I'm God. Every bit of it's gonna be blood.
Blood, everything. Every pool, every birdbath, everything. That they may become blood, and
that there may be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in
vessels of wood and in vessels of stone. You know, I think I
got a gallon of water left there in the back of the car. Nope,
that's blood. Well, I got some in an attic.
It's in stone. It ain't in wood. You know, wood could be penetrable.
Nope, that's blood. That's blood. And Moses and Aaron
did so as the Lord commanded. And he lifted up the rod and
smoked the waters that were in the river in the sight of Pharaoh.
Pharaoh saw this. And in the sight of his servants.
And all the waters that were in the river turned to blood.
And the fish that was in the river died. and the river stank,
and the Egyptians could not drink of the water of the river, and
there was blood throughout the land of Egypt." Water's necessary,
isn't it? We need water for life, biologically. Carnality, right? There ain't
none. There ain't none. And you'd probably get so thirsty,
you'd try drinking the blood. And that is already bitter to
you, and you didn't want it. And now you hate it even worse,
because it's thick, and it doesn't taste right, and it doesn't hydrate,
and it ain't what I needed. I hated this stuff. I want to
go back to the way it was. And everything, all that. I thought,
too, if it was bird bass, if it was a bough, if it was a wooden
vessel, a stone vessel, no matter what, wherever there was water,
we thought we had stocked up for later. We was OK. It was
a doomsday prepper, and we got water to put back. I'm all right. God said, every bit of it is
blood. Every bit of it is blood. And that's what it said in Jeremiah.
He said, my people have committed two evils. He said, Jeremiah,
go warn them. You go tell them plainly. He
said, my people have committed two evils. The first one, they
have forsaken the fountain of living waters of sin because
they believe not on me. We forsook Christ, the fountain
of living water. He said, I'm that living water.
If you have this, you have Bellies of water just coming out of you.
You won't be able to talk about nothing else, but they forsook
Christ and They've hewed out them cisterns Broken cisterns
that cannot hold water. We think we've done something
That we're gonna be okay Well, I've done this or I believed
or I drove the church real far away I went to a conference one
time back in the 80s or something or whatever I don't know picks
up and Lord said I'm gonna prove every one of them cisterns to
be faulty and Anything that your hands touched, I ain't gonna
have it. And so he's showing these Egyptians there's blood
and everything. Blood and everything. Do you
remember the first miracle Christ performed in his public ministry?
When we started looking at John? It was at a wedding, wasn't it?
And they had wine, and they run out of wine. And his mom came
to him. She said, they're out of wine.
And she told them boys, so whatever he says, do it. And he took a
bunch of big old barrels, didn't he? And he turned the water into
wine. He turned the water into wine.
And that governor said, man, normally you start out with the
good stuff, and then you go on to the cheap stuff. This time, this is the best.
This is the finest wine that's ever been tasted. Lord, that
was his first miracle, wasn't it? Well, I thought, what is
it to drink blood? If I had to drink, I'd never drink blood
if I had to. That's death, isn't it? Well, if I keep doing this,
I'm gonna die. And it smells bad. And that's just a picture
of God's judgment. Without the shedding of blood,
there's no remission of sins, and that's what we got coming.
And our blood don't matter. It don't amount to nothing. Ain't
no value in it. And that's all that's around us, and the Lord
just showed them and showed them and showed them and showed them, and everywhere
they turned, judgment, stinking, death. We don't want no part
of that, do we? What about wine? If that River
Nile was nothing but good red wine that the Lord made. What's
wine do? Well you drink it and there's
joy. Right? There's easing of pain. And what
do we know in our day? Vitality. Health. It's good for
you. Have a glass of wine every now
and then. Good for your stomach, isn't it? Pop said that ten of it. For not
often infirmities. And for your stomach. For your
belly. Drink your glass of wine. The Lord said in John 6, "...Except
ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye
have no life in you. Whosoever eateth My flesh, and
drinketh My blood, hath eternal life, and I will raise him up
at the last day." Was He talking about cannibalism? No. Come on now. At last hour, we
just looked at the atonement. Because not our blood, or somebody
else's blood, but because of His blood, we have atonement. Because He willfully laid down
His life for us. That's shed blood. That's a sweet tasting
thing to us now, isn't it? Before it was nothing but rivers
of death and stinking. And we said, that's us. But He
shed His blood. My blood ain't worth nothing.
Now it's like sweet wine. There's joy now. There's health. There's easing of pain. That's
what, whenever we observe the Lord's table, Paul told the Corinthians,
he said, they'd given thanks and the Lord took it and he broke
the bread and he said, take, eat, this is my body which is
broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
He said, you look at his body, his person, his soul, right?
The outside and the inside, all of it. That's what he willingly
laid down and that was broken for us. He said, take and eat. You have to have something to
eat, don't you? You hungry? You hungry for righteousness? That's
me. Here, children, eat it." And
after the same manner he took the cup, and when he had supped,
saying, this is the cup of the New Testament in my blood, this
do ye as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. The Lord saw His people in bondage
and He heard them and the Lord was going to bring them out.
And they saw the judgment. They saw this blood everywhere
and that rivers and barrels and they rejoiced. Wouldn't you rejoice?
The Lord said He's going to do this and He's doing it. He's
doing exactly what He said He's going to do. I'm happy in this
culture I'm going to say this as tender as I can. In this culture,
people are greatly concerned about toxic masculinity. They're
afraid of strong men. From experience, I'll tell you,
you think a strong man is hard to deal with and is violent and
rude? Watch what a weak man will do. That's when you get genocides
and world wars and everything else, right? This is a strong
man. He said he's going to do it and
he's doing it. That's a captain of our salvation. I don't want
nobody else in charge. He does exactly what he says
he's going to do. He doesn't waver. Us slaves in
Egypt, we're going to be brought out. And we know that's what
the Lord's doing. We can't drink physical water
for seven days. Well, he can sustain me for a year. It don't
matter how long he sees fit. Maybe he'll kill me and then
I get to go home. They told him, sorry, don't threaten me with
a good time. They say that's bad. That's the best thing that
could happen. Verse 22, and the magicians of Egypt did so with
their enchantments. Remember, before, they had come
out with some kind of rod, and they threw it down, and it looked
like some kind of serpent. But Aaron's rod and that serpent,
it became, swallowed up all those things. And there was a huge
debate over if this was actually some kind of dark arts or witchcraft
or who knows what. I don't know. The Lord said so.
But they came out, and they turned water into blood. They performed
their magic trick. And I thought, you know, there
wasn't no water to turn into blood. What did they have? Rubbing alcohol? Witch hazel?
I don't know. It was something that wasn't
water. That's for sure. They got water, they got blood,
and they talk about these things. No, it's fine. It's the same
thing. See? See? No, you didn't start out the
same. You didn't end the same. These are God's prophets here.
And the evidence isn't in a thimble. The evidence is all over. In
every house, isn't it? Those who clung to their rivers,
they clung to their cisterns, they clung to their birdbaths,
they would not bow, they would not worship, they would not rejoice,
even knowing that this was the Lord's doing. God said, you're
going to know. Pharaoh, you're going to know. Everybody in Egypt's
going to know that I'm doing this. And they did know. The Lord told
the truth. And even then, they were trying to dig out their
own water. They wouldn't bow and cry out, Lord, be merciful.
You can do this. Maybe you can save me a sinner.
Tell us about that, Moses. Aaron, get over here. You do
the talking, I'll do the listening. They didn't, as we do this all
by ourselves. We'll go off, I'll dig a hole
over there. I don't like holes you're digging. I'll dig my own
hole. We're digging a hole, alright. Verse 22, the magicians of Egypt
did so with their enchantments, and Pharaoh's heart was hardened.
Neither did he hearken unto them, as the Lord had said. He didn't
hearken unto Moses. He didn't hearken unto Aaron.
He didn't hearken unto that bloody water. Let me tell you about
the blood, I don't want to hear it. He didn't want nothing to
do with it. And Pharaoh turned and went to
his house, neither did he set his heart to this also. And all the Egyptians digged
round about the river for water to drink, for they could not
drink of the water of the river. That's what, I don't know if
you know anything about filtering water, it's probably another
bad illustration, but you can Google it. If you ain't got a
water filter, uh, ceramic filter or something. You can make a
water filter out of earth. Did you know that? You get you
a five gallon bucket or something, poke holes in it, and you put gravel
down, and you put some coarse stuff, and then finer sand, and
sand, and you layer it all through there, and you pour dirty water
on top, and it'll filter down over a long time through all
that earth, and it'll be good water you can drink. I don't
know how to make a filter like that. That's what these people,
they had that much sense. Can you believe that? Well, let's
go out eight feet, measure it out. All right, start digging. Now,
by the time that blood gets through here, it's going to be water,
boys. They're trying to give themselves righteousness, be
washed by their own digging of this earth. That's all of us by nature. I
can do it myself. I don't want to get help do nothing. Do you
want me to help you? No. I want to do it myself. And
there's things I just can't do. I can't pick up or I can't move.
And there's things I can't do. Carnally, physically. But I want
somebody to help me. And by nature, none of us want
help with salvation, Ethan. We'll handle things in this earth
with this dirt of Adam. What a shame. They're laboring.
I thought, you know how hard it'd be to dig a big ol' hole
like that down deep enough to try to wait till water seeped
in? That's a lot of patience and that's a lot of effort. It
gets you shoveled and gets you digging. Sometimes holes are
hard to dig, ain't they? They're laboring and they're
thirsty, but they're not crying out to God. You ever been laboring
in this dirt and thirsty and you said, Lord, I'm tired and
I'm thirsty? What'd he say? He has to send
some plagues for us to do that. We have to see His judgment before
we won't ever call out. All things are delivered unto
me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son but the Father, and he
knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever
the Son will reveal Him. Now everybody there knew this
judgment, but they hadn't had Christ revealed to them. And
He says, Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I'll give you rest. You won't have to dig holes next
to the river no more. You'll quit that. Take my yoke upon
you and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly in heart
and you shall find rest unto your souls. And just like we
looked before, that soul, that's a whole of us, isn't it? If our hearts ease, if the Lord
gives us contentment, do you know you have to learn how to
do that? People want contentment. You ain't learned it yet. You
have to learn. Paul says, I've learned in all things to be content.
He learned it. It ain't downloaded in one go.
It takes time. For us to have true heart contentment,
you know the first thing that's going to happen? If shoulders
are going, all that tension up in here. We still may hurt. Still
may be missing a hand or something. I don't know. We're still in
this body of death. There'll be some physical responses to that
too, won't there? Them old wrinkles from frowning
all the time might turn the other way and get some crow's feet
from smiling. Good things, isn't it? That ain't
death and decay. That ain't a bloody river no
more. That's a river of wine, of enjoyment and health. My yoke is easy, my burden is
light. Verse 25. And seven days were fulfilled
after the Lord had smitten the river. Seven is completion. Perfection. The Lord held that
trial. The Lord teaches us this in our
trials too. He held that judgment there. for the perfect amount
of time until it accomplished what it was sent to do. And the
bulk rebelled, kept it on their own way, we'll do this by ourselves,
they didn't cry out to God, but sung. And that same judgment,
a whole other attitude, a whole other response, clapped and said
the Lord did it. He held this on us for seven
days and He was gracious, He took it off of us. We deserve
to have bloody rivers for the rest of our lives. The Lord didn't
do that to us. Because His Son shed His blood,
He's gracious to us. I pray we can see it. I hope
everybody's got one opinion, one attitude towards this text
now. But you can see how there could be two, right? It's either
sadness or happiness. If He'd show us His Son and His
blood, give us our daily bread, our daily dose of Christ. We
need Him every morning. If we could see Him on His throne
and that that work's done, nobody can stay His hand or say to Him,
what doest thou? It's done everything, everything. You get a bug bite,
the Lord did it. And then now it ain't rivers of justice and
judgment, it's rivers of wine. We'd be happy about it. That's
a good thing. It's a lifelong experience to
go from praying to God, petitioning for what we want, what we need,
and what we think we need to have, and all those things, to
praise. From petitioning to praise to
say, thank you, you've already done it all. I've already had
that river's been there for I was born Lord. Thank you. We can
go swimming in it. We get a fishing. I got a boat.
It's great. And you've done all this. Thank
you. All right. That's pretty good.