Let's go back to the book of
Exodus this evening, the book of Exodus. And we're going to
chapter 7, Exodus chapter 7. And I'm going to begin the message
kind of in a little different way. I want to address a question
and it is, when was it that God created the angels? Well, evidently
it was just before he created the heavens and the earth. And
I say that based upon a passage of scripture in which the Lord
is speaking to Job in Job 38. And the Lord asked him several
very pertinent questions. And it also included the question,
where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? The
morning stars sang together, and the sons of God rejoiced. Who are those morning stars? Who are those sons of God? Who
are we to understand by those two descriptive phrases? Well, we're to understand the
angels of the Lord. And the angels watched in awe
and amazement. As God proceeded after they had
been created, God proceeded to create the heavens and the earth
and all that in them is. And the scripture says He did
that in six days. Numbers chapter 20 verse 11 says
that. For in six days the Lord created
the heavens and the earth and all that in them is. And the
angels watched in amazement as the Lord of glory who spoke them
into existence He spoke everything else into existence and they
beheld his great power and his wisdom and his might in making
all things. And I would dare to even venture
to say that the Lord, upon creating these angels, informed them,
at least to some degree, as to what their purpose would be in
Him creating them. And their purpose would be, and
we know this from Hebrews chapter 1 and the very last verse of
chapter 1, they're ministering spirits that God would send forth
to all of those who shall be the heirs of salvation. And no
doubt the Lord informed the angels of that when He created them. You're going to be ministering
spirits. I've created you for a purpose.
You're my servants. And you'll be ministers to an
elect people that I'm going to set my heart upon. I've already
set my heart upon them. I'm choosing them unto salvation
and giving them to the second person of the Trinity. And the
angels, I'm sure, were captivated by all that God had to say because
they were faithful, faithful servants of God. And they learned
early on what their ministry would be. They would be the helpers
of, the encouragers of, and in some ways the protectors of all
of the elect of God. Our Lord Jesus spoke of, when
he was speaking to his disciples and then remembering them, he
said, they're angels. The angels of God serve us. They're here to help us, and
they were appointed to that task even before we were ever on the
map, accepting the purpose of God. And I do not doubt but what
God told the angels. He instructed the angels, I'm
going to create the heavens and the earth. And on the earth,
I'm going to create a race of people. They will not be like
you, angels. They'll be different from you.
But I have chosen a number out of the race that I'm going to
create. I'm going to create a man and
a woman. And from that man and woman, We know Adam and Eve,
from Adam and Eve will come a whole race of people and God instructed
the angels, I have chosen a portion of the race of mankind. And they're
going to be, they are my people. I'm going to save them by my
grace. And here's how I'm going to save them, because they're
going to fall into sin. They're going to be disobedient
to me. But I'm going to save them by means of the Son of God. My Son. One equal with Myself. And He's going to go to the earth
and He's going to become like unto them. Like unto sinful flesh,
but without sin. He's going to live in obedience
and then He's going to die for the sins of these people that
I have entrusted to Him. And the Spirit of God's going
to call them by His grace to a faith and to a knowledge of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And you, the angelic host, you
will be ministers to these, my people. And the angels received that
commission willingly, at least most of them, but not all of
them. Because one of them, Lucifer,
he rebelled against this. He rebelled against God. And great pride was found in
his heart. He was very arrogant. And God
created him in such a fashion that this would become his attitude
toward God. Because nothing sneaks up on
God. Nothing catches God off guard.
And Satan, upon hearing that the second person of the Trinity,
that is, the Son of God, that He would go to the earth and
live and then die, lay down His life, a ransom for His people,
and then be raised again, and that He would rule the world,
Satan envied the position that the Son of God was promised. and arrogance being found in
his heart, he rebelled against God, and he said, I will not
be a minister to these people that you're gonna save. I will
not do that. And I will not bow down to a
man. I'm an angelic. I'm an angelic
being. I'll never bow down to a man. And he rebelled against God. And one-third of the angels said,
we're going with you. We rebelled too. And Satan wasted very little
time, apparently. After all things were created,
Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, walking in fellowship
with God. Satan entered into a serpent, who was more subtle, than any
beast of the field. And as he, in fact, hold your
place there in Exodus chapter seven. Go back to Genesis chapter
three. I was reading several different
translations of this today. And one writer who is supposedly,
he's dead now, but he was quite the, expert on Hebrew, he said,
verse 1, it should read, now that serpent, a particular servant,
the serpent was more subtle, more crafty than any beast of
the field which the Lord God had made. And as serpents are
not known for being crafty or deceitful, this was a specific
serpent. Because this was a serpent in
which Satan dwelt for a bit. And Satan, within this serpent,
and Satan speaking to the woman, he immediately cast doubt upon
the Word of God. He said to the woman, Yea, hath
God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? Of
course he knew that's what God said. But Satan always casts
a doubt upon that which God has said. And he wants you to doubt
what God has said. And the woman said, verse two,
and the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the
trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in
the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of
it. And then she added, neither shall you touch it. lest you
die. Whenever doubt is cast against
the Word of God, then the tendency becomes also to add to the Word
of God. And we must not add to the Word
of God nor take anything away from the Word of God. And then
the serpent, he says directly to Eve in verse 4, the serpent,
that is Satan, he said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die. He spoke directly against what
God had said. First he cast doubt, and then
he just says, in essence, God's lying to you. For God doth know
that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened,
and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." And to a degree,
he was correct in saying, your eyes will be opened, and you
shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. They would know what
good was, but they wouldn't know how to do it. And they'd know
what evil was. They'd never known what evil
was before, but they won't know how to avoid it. They won't know
how to escape it. They won't know how to overcome
it. They won't know how evil can be gotten rid of only by
the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
what they didn't know. And the woman saw, verse 6, and
when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, it was pleasant
to the eyes, a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of
the fruit thereof, she did eat, and gave also unto her husband
with her, and he did eat. We learn from the writings of
the apostle Paul that she was deceived, Adam was not. Satan did deceive her. He was
very subtle. He was very crafty. He slithered
into her presence and took her off guard and he presented this
forbidden fruit to her in such a fashion that she went ahead
and ate of it. And nothing happened to her. And the reason nothing happened
to her was because she was not the representative of the human
race. She represented nobody. Adam did. And Adam, he willingly ate. It says in verse, the end of
verse six, and he did eat. Literally, he willed, he deliberately
ate. of that forbidden fruit, that
fruit which God had said, don't eat of it. In the day you eat
of it, you'll surely die. And Adam willingly, deliberately
defied God. And back of all of this was the
serpent. And verse seven says, in the
eyes of them both were open. And they knew they were naked.
They lost that glow about them in the perfection that God made
them. And that was, it had evaporated. It was gone. And they sewed fig
leaves together and made themselves aprons. Look at verse eight.
And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden
in the cool of the day. And this is good. This is good.
They don't know it, but it's good for them. because God did
not abandon them. God did not turn his back on
them. You see, in a way that we can
never comprehend, that fall of Lucifer and the fall of one third
of the angels and the fall of Adam was all according to the
determination of God, a determination he made before the world ever
began. Evil. Evil. People say, I don't
understand the origin of evil. Well, everything originates with
God. And evil originated with God. And He brought it to pass
for His great glory. You see, everything that God
does is always to honor Himself. And His great glory is that He
had already determined, He had already ordained the means whereby
the evil, the iniquity, the sinfulness of His people would be put away. And our debt would be paid by the
Lord Jesus Christ. So in verse 8, they heard the
voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of
the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence
of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. Let's hide from
God. How far has man fallen? Just in a short space of time. You know, toward the end of chapter
2, the Lord brought every animal before Adam and said, Name this
one, okay. Name this one, name this one.
This went on till Adam, who had an intelligence far superior
to ours because it was an unfallen intelligence. But here he is,
this man who had been intelligent, who was very smart, had a very
high IQ. no doubt used all of his intellectual
abilities. You know, they say what we use,
what, 10% of our brain power, something like that? Adam used
all of his, because he was an upright man. He didn't have any
sin. You want to see how far he's
fallen? He knew God made everything,
and now he's hiding behind a tree, trying to hide from God. This
is this wise man. This is an intelligent man. That's what sin has done for
us. That's what it's done to us. And we think we can hide
from God in the midst of his creation. Adam knew better than
that before the fall. God is everywhere. He's present
in all places. Well, they hid themselves, verse
nine, and the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him,
where art thou? Where are you? And I've said,
and preachers have been saying this for years and years, God
never asks questions for information. This was a question raised to
Adam to make him more aware. Where are you now? What kind of state are you in
now? Look at your condition now. And Adam said, I heard thy voice
in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked
and I hid myself. The Lord said, Who told thee
thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof
I commanded thee, that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The
woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree,
and I did eat. And indirectly, of course, he's
blaming Eve, but he's really blaming God. This is your fault. If you hadn't given me the woman,
then I would be in this condition right now. And the Lord God then
said to the woman, what is this that thou hast done? And the
woman said, the serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the Lord God said to that
serpent, because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all
cattle, Above every beast of the field, upon thy belly shalt
thou go, and thus shalt thou eat all the days of thy life."
The only animal that God cursed was the serpent. And I will put
enmity, I will fix, I will set, I will appoint. enmity between
thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed, it shall bruise
thy head. The seed of the woman is going
to bruise your head and thou shalt bruise his heel." And so
right from the beginning we see Satan's fall and Satan tripping
up Eve and then Adam following in her footsteps and sin entered
into this world. Now go back to Exodus chapter
7 and it all happened through a serpent, a serpent. Now look with me in Exodus chapter
7 when the Lord sent Moses and
Aaron to Pharaoh The Lord told Moses and Aaron this, verse 4.
He says, Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, and it's for a reason,
that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies,
and my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt
by great judgments." This is all happening. Moses and Aaron,
please understand this, and we need to understand tonight, that
all of this happened according to the sovereign will of God.
It's the Lord who first hardened Pharaoh's heart. Look at verse
3. Back up one verse from where
I began. Look at verse 3. And I will harden
Pharaoh's heart and multiply my signs and my wonders in the
land of Egypt. And it's amazing how many commentators,
and I face this in Bible college, it's amazing how many professors,
how many so-called experts on Old Testament history will even
deny that God is the one who hardened his heart. No, no, no,
no. He hardened his own heart. I
beg your pardon. God hardened his heart. God hardened
his heart in order to accomplish his own design and purpose, which
was that Pharaoh would be reluctant to release the children of Israel,
and he would keep them in captivity. And this would happen in order
for the Lord to make known His great power over all the Egyptian
people and over all the forces of nature. And in time, it all
happened so that God would rescue His people by the blood of the
Lamb. That's the ultimate teaching
of this. And no accidents with God. Nothing happens with him
that's unforeseen by him. And it isn't just that he knows
all things. The reason he knows all things
is because he appointed all things. He's directed the path of everything
and everybody. He had all power and all authority
over Pharaoh. He could have melted his heart
if he had so chosen. He could have brought that mighty
monarch to his knees and made him cry out for mercy if it had
been God's... because it was God's prerogative.
But he wasn't pleased to do that. And he hardened Pharaoh's heart.
He hardened Pharaoh's heart so that the Egyptians would find
out who God is. And so Israel, would also find
out who their God is, that He's all-powerful. Well, so the Lord
is in control of all of this. And we get down to verse six. And Moses and Aaron did as the
Lord commanded them, so did they. And this is very, it's vital
that you understand what's going on here. Because all of a sudden,
Moses did not hesitate to follow the instructions that God gave
him. Before this, we saw him hesitating. We saw him fearful. We saw him saying, I can't talk. Send somebody else. That's the
way he was before this. But not now. You don't hear Moses
talking like that anymore. Now he's willing to go, and Aaron
is willing to go, and they go forth to Pharaoh with God's message. Because you see, that's what
God's servants do, they go forth with God's message, not a message
of their own choosing. We have a mandate, every preacher
of the gospel, has a heavenly divine mandate to go forth and
preach the substitutionary death and resurrection of the Lord
Jesus Christ and declare to sinners salvation is all of grace and
all in Christ Jesus. And we don't water it down. We
don't say, well, God rules in most situations. No, no, no.
God rules in all situations. And He is the only one who can
bring forth good out of evil. He's the only one who can bring
forth light out of darkness. Only God can do that. And He
said, I create light, I create darkness. All things are of God. So, the Lord determined all of
this and then There's an interesting statement, I was thinking about
this again this morning, in verse 7. Because in some ways, just
a casual look at this I suppose would say, this doesn't seem
to fit. So you got in verse six, and
Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded them, so did they.
And then in verse eight, and the Lord spake unto Moses and
unto Aaron. You say, okay, yeah, that's keeping
in the context, I'm following. But the Spirit of God, he put
something else in here. Verse seven, and Moses was fourscore
years old. Moses was 80. And Aaron was four score and
three years old. He's 83 years old when they spake
unto Pharaoh. And we might be tempted to say,
this seems out of place here. But it really isn't out of place
when you consider this. Here are two men who are getting
old. They're not in the prime of life. They're not in the strength of
their days. This is at 81 being 83, Aaron's
83 and Moses was 80. These are the times in life when
people are slowing down. Retirement age, taking it easy. You got aches and pains. Things
are not as easy as it used to be. So what can we learn from this? When Moses and Aaron went forth
to Pharaoh, they didn't go in their own strength. They went
in the strength of the Lord. Do you remember what the Lord,
through the pen of Paul, says in 2 Corinthians? The Lord said,
my strength is made perfect in weakness. Right? That's what
the Lord said. And I know that some of you are
80 and a little better. You may be saying, well, I'm
running out of energy. There's not much I can do. What
can Aaron and Moses do? They're 83 and 80 years old. It's not what can they do, but
what will God do through them to bring Himself glory? I've known preachers get up 80, early 80s, mid 80s, and they'll
retire. I'm getting too old. Moses didn't
retire. Aaron didn't retire. Who was that? Was it Joe we were talking about?
How can you retire from a calling? If you're called to preach the
gospel, you just keep on preaching as long as you can preach, as
long as you can keep going. And here's the Lord, He's going
to give added strength to Aaron and Moses. And so then they go into Pharaoh,
verse 8, and they give forth God's Word. When Pharaoh shall
speak unto you, saying, Show a miracle for you, then thou
shalt say unto Aaron, Take your rod, cast it before Pharaoh,
and it will become a serpent. You see, Pharaoh, he's the natural
man, see. And the natural man seeks after
signs and wonders. I want to see proof. I want to
see evidence that your God is real. But you see, faith, faith
doesn't need visible evidence. Faith believes the bare, naked
Word of God. That's what faith does. Faith doesn't need evidences.
Faith doesn't need to see wonders. Faith reads in the Word of God
who God is, the abilities of God, the power of God, the wisdom
of God, and faith believes God doesn't need anything tangible.
You remember when Thomas was absent, the Lord Jesus appeared
to his disciples after his resurrection and Thomas wasn't there, and
then the other brethren said, we received such a blessing,
the resurrected Savior met with us, and you know what Thomas
said? Except I see. I'm not gonna believe. Seeing
is believing. No. Believing is seeing. And so then
the next Lord's Day, Thomas is with the disciples. The Lord
said, it's me. Thrust your hand into my wounds. And Thomas said, my Lord and
my God. The Lord said, you're blessed. But blessed are those who haven't
seen, but believe. We haven't seen. We haven't seen
the Savior. We sure believe him though. It's
a gift of God. Well, when Pharaoh says, show
me a sign, Aaron, take your rod, throw it down at his feet, it'll
turn into a serpent. And it did. And I do not hesitate
to say that serpent pictured our Lord Jesus Christ. That serpent pictured him, it
portrayed him who was going to go to the cross of Calvary and
hang on that cross as Moses lifted up that serpent in the wilderness.
Even so, Christ said, even so must the Son of Man be lifted
up that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have
eternal life. In Numbers chapter 21, you can
read it later. I'm sure you're familiar with
it anyway. The children of Israel murmured
against the Lord and he sent fiery serpents. They bit the
people and people were dying. They said, Moses, do something,
do something. And Moses said, Lord, what can
I do? The Lord said, put a serpent
of brass on a pole. And you tell anybody who's been
bitten by that fiery serpent, the fiery serpents. to look to
that brazen serpent, and they'll live. And when the Lord said
to look or to see that brazen serpent, it wasn't just a casual
glance. It was a focus on it. You see,
believing on the Lord Jesus is not a casual glance. It's not look at him, Look to
him at Christmas and Easter, for instance. You concentrate on him. You see,
here's what faith is. Faith is looking, resting, knowing,
believing the Son of God, the only Savior of sinners. And we've been bitten by the
fiery serpents. We've been bitten by sin. Sin
that entered into this world by means of Satan who inhabited
a serpent, serpent, that serpent. And then when Adam fell, we all
fell in him, therefore we're all sinners. But God lifted up His only begotten
Son. He lifted Him up to die on a
cross. And all who focus on him, all who concentrate on him, all
who believe him, all who look to him shall be healed of the
serpent's deadly venom. So we can say, look and live.
Look and live. Well, Aaron did that, but then
Look down at verse 11. Then Pharaoh also called the
wise men and the sorcerers. Now the magicians of Egypt, they
also did in like manner with their enchantments, with their
enchantments. And you know, commentators differ. Some say that the rods of those
magicians actually became snakes, actually became serpents. And
some say because they were magicians, that is, illusionists, it was
all sleight of hand. I don't know. I don't know. I'll leave it to you to draw
your own conclusion. But I do know this. They threw down their rods. They either actually became serpents
or they deceived Pharaoh, deluded him, and tried to fool Moses
and Aaron by this. If it was just an imitation, their goal was to bring disgrace
upon Aaron's rod that turned into a serpent. And I'm almost persuaded, I'm
kind of 51% to 49% of thinking that this was an illusion. And I say that because based
upon 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, you know when somebody receives
not the love of the truth, You know what God might send
to them? A very strong delusion that they'll believe a lie. You
see, Moses and Aaron had already confronted Pharaoh with the truth. The Lord said, the Lord said,
let my people go. And Pharaoh said, who is the
Lord that I should obey his voice? I don't know the Lord. He wouldn't
receive the truth. And Aaron cast down his rod and
it became a serpent. And serpents were very important
in Egypt because on Pharaoh's headdress was a symbol of a coiled
up cobra. ready to strike. Go to Google
it yourself and you can read about it. They worshipped serpents
and Pharaoh himself, who is a picture of Satan by the way, and Egypt
is a picture of the world. Pharaoh worshipped serpents as
did his magicians. His magicians threw down their
rods and they turned into serpents or made them look like serpents.
God just hardened his heart. He wouldn't believe the truth.
He sure will believe a lie though. And I'm telling you, it is so
vital that we believe the truth of the gospel of God's free and
sovereign grace to sinners through the Lord Jesus Christ. We have
no idea. We really don't. We have a little
idea, but we don't have the fullness of the blessing that we enjoy
week after week by being confronted with the very truth of God. God
help you to believe. God help me to believe. Those
of you who are watching, God help you to believe because if
we don't believe, He might send us a serpent. A bunch of serpents. And we'll believe the lies of
that serpent, Satan. He'll send us a strong delusion. Let me show you this and I'll
let you go. So look at verse 12. They cast
down every man his rod, and they became serpents. But Aaron's
rod, that's Christ, he swallowed up their rods. His serpent swallowed up all
the false serpents. You see, our Savior, He has triumphed
over that serpent who beguiled Eve in the garden. Our Lord has
crushed His head by His sacrifice upon the tree. And when our Lord
Jesus died, Satan and one-third of the angels were kicked out
of heaven, and He holds them in darkness and everlasting chains,
because it says in Revelation chapter 12, now is salvation
come. When's the now? When Christ died. when Christ died. And verse 13, he God hardened
Pharaoh's heart that he hearkened not unto them as the Lord had
said. Oh Lord, don't harden my heart.
Soften my heart. Soften my heart to be receptive
to the truth of your glorious gospel. Soften the hearts of
these who are here. Soften the hearts of those who
are watching. Take away the heart of stone.
Give us a heart of flesh. And may we look to that one typified
by Aaron's rod that would later bud. Aaron's rod that became
a serpent that He swallowed up, Christ swallowed up in triumph
all of His enemies. And He shall always triumph over
all who oppose Him. Well, may the Lord bless the
preaching of His Word tonight. Would you get your psalm books
again?