Let's go back to the book of
Exodus. This evening, Exodus chapter
eight. I wanna talk to you about flies.
Flies, we've talked about the Nile River, we've talked about
frogs, we've talked about lice, gonna talk tonight about flies.
Flies. God sent these judgments upon
Egypt It was for several reasons. Certainly, as I read there in
Romans chapter 9, the Lord said He's sending these judgments
to make His power known to Pharaoh. You know, the Lord showed mercy
and He showed compassion and grace to Israel, but there was
no compassion or mercy or grace to the Egyptians. They weren't His people. I know
God owned them, God made them, God provided for them, but He
never addressed them as His people. He addressed Israel as being
His people. That's the nation He chose. And
as I read there in Romans chapter 9, I hope you noticed the emphasis
that I made where, here's what the apostle said, not all Israel
are Israel. And just because they were the
children of Abraham, that doesn't mean they were the children of
promise. You see, all of Israel, in the
Old Testament, in many ways stood as an emblem of all of the elect
of God, the true people of God. But that doesn't mean that all
of natural Israel were converted. It doesn't mean that they were
the true children of God, because as we just read there in Romans
chapter nine, and you read with me, and I read nothing into the
passage, I just read the words there, the Lord says that there's
a people that are His true people, His real Israel. National Israel
did not constitute the true people of God. They didn't all know
God. Many of them, they died in unbelief. And their bodies were buried
in unmarked graves. They were strewn all across the
wilderness. And of those who left Egypt,
over 20 years of age, only two men made it safely into the land
of promise, Joshua, That's Jehovah who saves, that's what His name
means. And Caleb. And Caleb's name means
God's faithful dog. You say, it would be horrible
for man to be called God's faithful dog. I'd gladly be called God's
faithful dog, wouldn't you? It would be an honor to be His
dog. Because I promise you, he will
rake some crumbs off the table for his dogs. Had a brother down in Tyler,
Texas. And he and his wife had a little
boy. And I preached a message on Caleb,
God's faithful dog. That's what they named him, Caleb.
That's a good name, a good name. But those are the only two men
over 20 years of age who left Egypt that went into the land
of promise. Just two. So don't ever think that all
of these Israelites who were in Egyptian bondage, don't entertain
the thought that, well, they were all saved, they were all
forgiven, they were all righteous, they were all washed in the blood
of the Lamb of God. They were not. There was a remnant,
a remnant according to the election of grace. Even as there is today. The Lord has not left Himself
without a witness in this world. He has a people. They're His
people and they constitute true Israel. They're the Israel of
God. They're the true children of
Abraham. They are the seed of promise. And those who are the true children
of Abraham look to Christ Jesus and rejoice in Him even as Abraham
did. Because that's what the Lord
said about Abraham in John chapter 8. Abraham rejoiced to see my
day. He saw it and he was glad. When did he see Christ's day? I believe it's when Isaac, he
was ready to offer up Isaac. And the Lord said, stop. There's
a substitute in the bushes there. And I want you to kill that substitute,
that ram, instead of Isaac. In the stead of Isaac. That is
substitution. Substitution. and Isaac was spared, and we're
all said to be the children of Isaac, the offspring of Isaac. That's the promised seed, the
promised seed. But to go back, these children
of Israel in Egyptian bondage, they do picture, they do picture
the true people of God. And the Lord's gonna deliver
them. You see, they were in such a terrible condition, they could
not save or deliver themselves from Egyptian bondage. That was
an impossibility. And as we go through this, I
hope you're keeping your... You've heard this expression,
keep your eye on the ball. Well, keep your eye on this.
This is all about God by His mercy, by His power, and by price. He's going to deliver the Israelites
from Egyptian bondage. And here's keeping your eye on
the ball is this. It's a picture of how God saves
sinners who cannot in any way save themselves. It's about the
liberation of a people. Yes, God chose a people unto
salvation before the world began. To deny that is to deny the Word
of God. And the Lord has ordained the
means by which those people will be washed from their sinfulness
and robed in purity. And that's in through and by
the Lord Jesus Christ, who came down from heaven to live and
to die, to lay down His life, a sacrifice for God's justice. And thereby, He washed us from
our sins in His blood and He robes us. in his own righteousness. Keep your eye on the ball. Keep
your eye on the ball. When I started to play golf,
and I'm still no good, but this guy who was giving me lessons,
he said, keep your eye on the ball. And you know, if you watch
baseball, I like to watch baseball. Even the professionals, Major
League Baseball players, somebody hit a high fly ball, he's out
there, and he's got, there's a guy on base right there, and
he wants to throw that guy out too if he starts running, and
he takes his eye off the ball, and he hits a glove and falls
in the grass. He can keep his eye on the ball.
Throughout this story of the liberation of Israel, keep your
eye on the ball. It's all about God delivering,
redeeming His people by price. Doing for His people what they
cannot and will not do for themselves. The Egyptian army is too great,
it's too powerful, there's too much opposition against them,
and the Israelites are helpless. Oh, there's a bunch of Israelites,
there's no question about that, maybe upwards of two million
people. But to face the greatest army
on earth? They're captives, they're captives. And you see, they're a picture
of us and our spiritual condition. There's no salvation in self. There's no salvation in man's
will. There's no salvation in man's
works. Salvation's of the Lord. And
if Israel is going to be liberated, it'll take the strong arm of
God to do it. And I'm telling you, if a sinner's
gonna be saved, gonna take the mighty arm of God. And the mighty arm of God, his
name is the Lord Jesus Christ. He's going to have to do the
work. That's what this is all about. So keep your eye on the
ball now, okay? Don't lose sight of that. That's
what this is all about. It's a picture. It's a picture. See, in the Old Testament, the
Holy Spirit of God has painted beautiful pictures for us of
our Lord Jesus Christ and of the salvation He would come and
accomplish by His substitutionary justice satisfying death upon
the cross. And the Spirit of God paints
beautiful portraits, beautiful portraits of Christ and this
salvation. May God give us eyes to see the
beauty of it. And that's what a lot of people
don't see. They just see the Old Testament as being just history,
just history. Well, I tell you, we can learn
something from this history. And I know if you learn social
studies, learn American history, Kentucky history, world history,
it'll do you some good. But it ain't going to do you
any everlasting good. But I'll tell you what, from
the history of the Old Testament, if God opens our eyes, opens
our minds, and opens our hearts, we can see in the deliverance
of these people, there, that's a picture of our deliverance.
in the land that was to be sacrificed to God and the blood put on the
doorpost. There I can learn from that historical
narrative of redemption of what a price it cost to save me. It took the blood of the Son
of God. So we learn. We learn. Well, let me show you a few things
here from this passage of Scripture. And let me read to you. Here
in chapter 8, and I'm going to read, actually
I'm going to read verse 19 first. And this is at the end of the
problem with the lice. Then the magician said unto Pharaoh,
this is the finger of God. We can't do this. We can't duplicate
it. We can't even by Sleight of hand. We can't match
this. It's just an impossibility. Because
the Lord caused the dust to the ground to be lice. All of a sudden,
the dust to the ground came alive! It came alive! And you see, the
Nile River has a picture of the God of their life. The frogs,
that's the God of fertility. The lice, that's the God of the
earth. They said, we can't duplicate
this. But look at that next statement.
And I was thinking about this this afternoon. It says, and
Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he hearkened not unto them. He wouldn't hearken unto Moses.
He wouldn't hearken unto Aaron. He wouldn't even hearken to his
own magicians. And his own magician said, there's
some power greater than us that did this. This is the finger
of the God of the Israelites. And yet here Pharaoh, he hearkened
not. He wouldn't hear what they had
to say. Don't talk to me about that. And he wouldn't believe. And I thought about this. Oh
God, give me a hearing ear. So I'll hearken to your word.
You think about this. The Lord sent Moses and Aaron. Moses and Aaron to deliver his
message to a heathen king. and the king wouldn't listen.
I don't wanna hear what you got to say. And you know a lot of people
are like that when it comes to hearing a preacher preach the
gospel of God's grace. I don't wanna hear that. I'll tell you this, I wanna hear. Solomon said, the seeing eye
and the hearing ear. Lord's got to give them both.
Lord, give me a hearing ear. Soften my heart so I'll be receptive
to what you have to say. See, Moses and Aaron, they got
their message directly from the Lord, didn't they? Directly from
the Lord. And they go to this monarch,
this arrogant king, cruel dictator, heartless, godless, idolater. Thus saith the Lord, let my people
go that they may serve me. But he hearkened not. He's not
going to listen to God's servants. Will you listen to God's servants?
Because I'll tell you this, when any man, and I'm not saying
I'm either Moses or Aaron, I'm not like them, and I don't have
an inspired message. I'll tell you, when a man stands
and sets forth the word of God, just as it is in the book, and
you don't listen, you just not listen to the Lord. Because it's
His Word. That's His Gospel. Well, notice
this about Pharaoh. When it says, He hearken not
unto them, then it says in verse 20, And the Lord said unto Moses,
Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh. Lo,
he cometh forth to the water, and saith unto him, Thus saith
the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me. Now, we've
seen this scene before. The Lord said earlier, rise up,
go down to the river, because Pharaoh is going to go down early
in the morning to worship his God. And guess what? He's still doing that. He's still
doing that. He worshipped the Nile River,
which to the Egyptians and to Pharaoh was the very God and
the source of life. He hadn't learned anything. He hasn't learned anything. You
see, God turned that river to blood, death, the stench of death
of the fish. Pharaoh didn't learn anything.
He sent frogs. God sent frogs. Frogs are in
everything. Didn't learn anything from that.
God sent lice. Then the Lord gave respite. And Pharaoh, his heart still
just as hard as it could be. I'm gonna tell you something,
these physical judgments, God may use them to get a man or
a woman's attention. I wouldn't say that God wouldn't
use them to get their attention, but I'll tell you what, they
won't bring you to Christ. That's gonna take a supernatural
work in the heart to cause a person to come to Christ. Judgments won't do it. God may use a judgment. He may
use sickness. He may use an accident. He may
use a flood. He may use a fire. I don't know
what God might use to get somebody's attention. But you'll never turn
to Christ apart from a sovereign work of grace in the heart. Isn't
that right, Joe? Got to have a work of grace in
the heart. Otherwise, good intentions fall by the wayside. And several
of us have heard, you know, we go visit somebody, maybe a family
member, and say, please pray for me. Maybe I've got cancer
or heart disease or been in an accident, this, that, or something.
Pray for me, and if the Lord will heal me, I'll come to church. Our worship, well, number one, God doesn't
make deals. He's not a deal maker. And secondly,
He may, to fulfill His own purpose, He may grant healing, just to show that that I promise I'll do better. I'll come to church just to show
what a sinner's made out of. Nothing. Nothing. Pharaoh's right back at the river
worshiping his God. I tell you what, unless God does
a work of grace in the soul, that's what a sinner will do.
He'll just go right back to his God. Go back to his idol. Back to his idol. There's no
improvement with Pharaoh while his heart's just getting a little
harder and a little harder. And secondly, the second thing
I want to point out to you, the first thing is no improvement
with Pharaoh, and the second thing is he hears the same message. Let my people go. God says, they're
my people. He never said of the Egyptians,
they're my people. He didn't say that. They're your
people. He said, let my people go. God had his people then, and
he is gonna spare them. He's gonna liberate them. And
I said, they're a picture. They're a picture of the true
Israel of God. And then we come to the flies.
Let me get to this real quick. The third judgment, or the next
judgment, I should say, swarms of flies. The Egyptians, well,
let me read down through here. Look at verse 21. Else, if thou
wilt not let my people go, behold, be amazed, be astounded, Give
me your attention, I will send swarms of flies. upon thee, and upon thy servants,
and upon thy people, and upon the houses, and upon the houses
of the Egyptians shall be full of swarms of flies, and also
the ground whereupon they are. And I will sever in that day
the land of Goshen, in which my people dwell, that no swarms
of flies shall be there." And I'm going to talk about that
next week. To the end thou mayest know that I am the Lord in the
midst of the earth." Here's how powerful God is. I don't know
what you think of God and the God that you worship, but the
God of glory, He has all power over all things and He brings
forth this millions and billions of flies. and are all over the land of
Egypt, except God put up an invisible barrier, the land of Goshen,
and didn't one fly cross over into Goshen. That's how mighty God is. Well, I'll talk about that more
next week. God made a difference. But let
me talk about these flies. You know, I got a fly bothering
me there. I may have just got him, I don't
know. Can y'all, you see that? No, I'm not getting Pentecostal
or anything. I've got a fly bothering me up
here. I'm talking about flies. The Lord sent these flies, like
he just sent this one here, A disgusting pest. The chief god of the flies that
the Egyptians worshipped as well as the Phoenicians was Beelzebub,
the god of the flies. The Lord says, you gonna worship
flies? Have your fill of them. And they
were everywhere. They were everywhere. In fact,
Beelzebub was supposedly the protector of the worshippers
from flying insects, two-winged insects. If you want to see a host of
flies, walk through a cow pasture and see all them cow piles. You
see all them flies? They're nasty creatures. Psalm 78, 45. You want to look
at this. I can read it to you real quick,
but if you want to turn with it, Psalm 78, 45. Show you something
here. Psalm 78, 45. Psalm 78, 45, he sent diverse
sorts of flies among them which devoured them and frogs which
destroyed them. All kinds of flies. I didn't
know, did you know mosquitoes are a type of fly? Mosquitoes
are a type of fly. There are over 100,000 different
kinds of flies. Have you ever got bit by a horsefly? My friend, that hurts. They can
flat do some damage. Deer flies, when we go to Michigan,
we like to go out and play a little bit of golf. A lot of deer flies
up there. Man, those things can bite. Little bitty fellas. Little bitty
fellas. Cruel. Man, they'll bite. They'll draw blood. All kinds of flies. Fruit flies. Blow flies. It's just bunches
and bunches of them. And God sent all kinds of flies. All kinds of flies. I read that
a normal housefly, a female, lays from 1 to 250 eggs at a
time. and the larva of a fly. You know what that's called?
A maggot. A maggot. They're disgusting. And you know the inspired writer
in Job 25 likened us to maggots? Maggots? If you want your stomach to turn,
just put a carcass out on something because you see, here's what
flies do. They feed on dead things. And
actually, they serve a useful purpose. I was teaching a Sun
School class years ago to little bit kids. And one little boy
said, the guy's talking about everything had a purpose. He
raised his hand, little Timmy, and I said, Timmy, what you want? He said, what's the purpose of
a fly? I said, I don't know, but God
had a purpose in putting them in this world. Well, they do. They do consume a lot of dead
flesh, a lot of garbage, rubbish. But the little baby ones are
maggots. Because you see, here's what
flies feed on, dead things. And that's us. We feed on dead
things. Maggots. And I want you to turn
to this. Look at Psalm 22. I'll give this to you. Psalm 22. And if you wrote that reference
down in Job, that was Job 25.6, by the way. Psalm 22. Our Lord Jesus is saying
this. Verse one, my God, Psalm 22. My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping
me and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime,
but thou hearest not, and in the night season, and am not
silent. But thou art holy, O thou that
inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee.
They trusted and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee and
were delivered. They trusted in thee and were
not confounded. But I am a worm. And the word
is maggot. Look it up in your concordance. But I'm a maggot and no man. A reproach of men. and despised
of all the people. Our Lord Jesus was despised by
people. It says that in Isaiah 53. Brother Joe Turner read that
passage to us this past Lord's Day evening. He was despised
and rejected of men. And they said of him, he's just
a worm, he's a maggot. He's a maggot. He's a reproach
of men. He was a byword. They cursed
His name. They cursed the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ. They hated Him that much. He
was to them as a maggot would be to us, and as well as to them. That's how much they despised
Him. Don't tell me that the natural
man doesn't hate the Son of God by nature. They hated Him so
much they crucified Him. They mocked Him. They made jokes
about Him. They detested Him. And to them
He was just like a maggot. A maggot. A reproach of men. Despised of the people. You say,
why? I would never feel that way about
the Lord Jesus Christ. All men feel that way about him
by nature. Because it's his sovereignty.
That's what men hate. And they said, we will not have
this man rule over us. He's just a maggot. You think about all the horrendous
things that were spoken to the Lord's face and behind His back
when He was on this earth. And as if what they said about
Him wasn't bad enough, then they had to kill Him. And the most religious men on
earth all got together and said, what are we going to do about
this maggot called Jesus of Nazareth? They said, let's kill him. Let's
kill him. And little did they know they
were fulfilling the will of God because God had ordained that
the only way sinners could be saved was through the death of
that Holy One. The Savior said, I'm a worm.
I'm a worm to them. I'm a maggot to them, and no
man. I'm a reproach of men and despised
of the people." And that word worm there can also be translated
as a scarlet worm, which was used when mashed. They used it to dye material
a scarlet color. There's the blood of our Savior. And I'll tell you what, you've
heard the story. I bet you some school teachers
have used that story. Spurgeon called it the wordless
book. The first is black page, that's
our sin. And then the red page, that's
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the red blood of the Son
of God, his sacrifice, washes black-hearted sinners. And the
next page is, whiter than the snow. The scarlet worm was mashed,
mashed, crushed beneath vindictive justice. And as a result, our
sins, which are many, are all washed away. Yeah, the enemies of our Lord
said, he's just a worm, he's just a maggot. And let me show
you one other thing right here. Here's two amazing truths. He said, but I am, there's his
name. That's how he identified himself
to Moses when he was at the burning bush. Our Lord spoke to him out
of the bush. He said, I am, tell him I am,
has sent me, has sent you. But you told him the opposite.
I am a worm. Wow. What opposite? It's going from here to here. From here to here. I'm a worm
lower than a man. Lower than a man. See, he who
is God over all was made lower than the angels. And the Savior
said in the eyes of men, I'm lower than a man. What am I to
the world? Just a maggot. Imagine people
saying that about the Lord of glory. And I'll tell you what they,
you know what they called him? You know what they said of him? They said, he does his miracles
by the power of, guess who? Beelzebub, the Lord of the flies. The dunghill god of the Phoenicians
and the Egyptians, that's what they said of him. And he endured
all that they had to say about him. And then he laid down his life
to save us. That's what it took to save our
poor souls. For the savior to be, like a
maggot, like a scarlet worm, mashed under the wrath of God. And that crimson flow washed
our sins away. Oh, what a marvelous Savior and
a glorious salvation is ours in Christ. Well, I'm going to
keep up with this message. I'll continue it next Wednesday.