Exodus chapter 10 and verse 1. And the Lord said unto Moses,
Go in unto Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart
of his servants, that I might show these my signs before him. And that thou mayst tell in the
ears of thy son and of thy son's son what things I have wrought
in Egypt and my signs which I have done among them. that ye may
know how that I am the Lord.' And Moses and Aaron came in unto
Pharaoh, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews,
How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before me? Let
my people go, that they may serve me. Else, if thou refuse to let
my people go, behold, to-morrow will I bring the locusts into
thy coast. And they shall cover the face
of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth. And
they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which
remaineth unto you from the hill, and shall eat every tree which
groweth for you out of the field. And they shall fill thy houses,
and the houses of all thy servants, and the houses of all the Egyptians,
which neither thy fathers nor thy father's fathers have seen,
since the day that they were upon the earth unto this day. And he turned himself, and went
out from Pharaoh. And Pharaoh's servants said unto
him, How long shall this man be a snare unto us? Let the men
go, that they may serve the Lord their God. Knowest thou not yet
that Egypt is destroyed? And Moses and Aaron were brought
again unto Pharaoh. And he said unto them, Go, serve
the Lord your God. But who are they that shall go?
And Moses said, We will go with our young and with our old, with
our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our
herds will we go, for we must hold a feast unto the Lord. And
he said unto them, Let the Lord be so with you, as I will let
you go, and your little ones. Look to it, for evil is before
you. Not so. Go now, ye that are men,
and serve the Lord. For that he did desire, and they
were driven out from Pharaoh's presence. And the Lord said unto
Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the land of Egypt for the
locusts, that they may come up upon the land of Egypt, and eat
every herb of the land, even all that the hail hath left. And Moses stretched forth his
rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind
upon the land all that day and all that night. And when it was
morning, the east wind brought the locusts. And the locusts
went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the
coasts of Egypt. Very grievous were they. Before
them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall
be such. For they covered the face of
the whole earth, so that the land was darkened. And they did
eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which
the hail had left. and there remained not any green
thing in the trees or in the herbs of the field throughout
all the land of Egypt. Then Pharaoh called for Moses
and Aaron in haste, and he said, I have sinned against the Lord
your God and against you. Now therefore forgive, I pray
thee, my sin only this once, and entreat the Lord your God
that he may take away from me this death only. And he went
out from Pharaoh and entreated the Lord. And the Lord turned
a mighty strong west wind, which took away the locusts and cast
them into the Red Sea. There remained not one locust
in all the coasts of Egypt. But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's
heart. so that he would not let the children of Israel go. Amen. May the Lord bless this
reading also. The last time we met together
and talked about these passages, these plagues, we saw how the
plagues of Egypt, the plagues that God brought upon Pharaoh
and his people, were not simply with a view of obtaining the
release of God's people, although that is spoken about very often. But the last time, and again
this time, we see this hint, we see this thread in the Lord's
words to Moses that God planned to make an example of Pharaoh. an example that would be to the
children of Israel throughout all their history, and an example
that would be to the rest of the world. What God did in Egypt
will be spoken of until the end of time. It is the lesson of
judgment It is the lesson of ruin and complete breaking of
the pride of man. And it will stand until the final
judgment, when the patterns that are provided in the history of
Egypt and in the history of God's judgments will find a repetition
and a fulfillment and a completion in the judgment of all flesh. because all men and women, boys
and girls, will bow before God. Men and women from all the nations
of the world will bow before God. And it's interesting to
compare the way that the Apostle John uses the plagues of Egypt
as an analogy to describe the judgments contained in the book
of Revelation. And in Revelation chapter 9,
we discover that locusts are mentioned there in the judgments
that will fall upon the earth in the closing ages of the world. There is a pattern in the plagues
as we've moved through them that has become somewhat predictable. Moses is sent to Pharaoh, demands
are made, judgment is threatened and ignored. and pain follows. And one would think that there
would be lessons learned, but this shows us the hardness of
the heart of man. It shows us the depravity of
the nature of man and how he always feels as if he can hold
out against God. And here the plague is locust.
And these creatures are brought into the land of Egypt in vast,
vast clouds upon a wind, an east wind that blows. And the numbers
are unimaginable. quantities. When locusts come
upon a land they can cover an acre, maybe a few acres, maybe
in massive, massive swarms they can cover a hundred acres and
cover some miles. This is over the whole country,
and Egypt is a huge country. And so we see that this was certainly
a miracle. And while Egypt is a land in
which one might expect occasionally to see locusts, although usually
they're a little bit further south in Africa, Nevertheless,
it would not be entirely unfamiliar. But these locusts were different.
Different in the quantity and different in their size. We're told that there was never
locusts like these seen before in Egypt, nor have there ever
been hereafter. And these were sufficient to
cover the ground so that you could not see the ground. They
were deep enough to cover the ground. They were intense enough to blot out the
sun. They consumed all vegetation.
They devoured whatever was spared from the hail that had fallen
in the previous plague, or anything that grew afterwards, and they
also entered people's houses. And yet once again, when the
effect of the plague was felt, and when Pharaoh sees the cost,
the king pleaded for respite and promised whatever Moses wanted. But again, his words were hollow.
And upon the lifting of the plague, we find that Pharaoh refuses
to let God's people go. However, as we have seen, It
was all in God's purpose for by this means God's power would
be seen in judgment as a testimony to Israel and a lesson to all
the world. Here are a few things that I
want us to draw from these verses today. We're now on plague and
one by one there has been a rise, an escalation in severity of
these plagues. And while all of them were troublesome,
particularly these most recent plagues, the Moraine, the Hale,
the Locust, had the ability to devastate the country economically,
and in the end destroy the whole nation. Locust swarms could strip
vast areas of land of all its vegetation, all that grows and
all that is green. And once attacked by locusts,
a whole year's crop would be spoiled and a poor harvest would
follow and many people would starve to death. Egypt had been
saved from destruction by drought and famine once before in the
days of Joseph. And now because of these locusts,
starvation once again was a real possibility for the people. Moses
had said to Pharaoh, thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews,
how long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before me? Let
my people go that they may serve me. But Pharaoh was too proud
to humble himself. And even his servants and his
wise men are now beginning to say to him, look Pharaoh, the
price of resisting this man Moses, the price of resisting his God
is too great. And he said to Pharaoh, let the
men go, that they may serve the Lord their God. Knowest thou
not yet that Egypt is destroyed, or Egypt is being destroyed? But pride is the root source
of many sins. The prophet Obadiah says, the
pride of thine heart hath deceived thee. You hear that? We're told that, I think it's
Jeremiah, the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked.
And here's the reason why the heart is deceitful. Because the
pride of thy heart hath deceived thee. It's the pride of men. It's men and women and boys and
girls thinking that they're better than they are. and thinking they
can do for themselves and they can sort themselves out and they
can overcome no matter what the challenges are and they'll be
all right by themselves. But blow by blow the Lord God
was smashing and breaking Egypt. and smashing and breaking Pharaoh
because he refused to humble himself before God. The lesson
here is that this is what God will do. There will come a day
when every knee will bow to the Lord Jesus Christ, but it will
be an enforced bowing even then, and God will judge his enemies. What Pharaoh could not do and
indeed what no one can do if left to themselves, the Lord
Jesus Christ has done for us. The Apostle Paul tells the Philippians,
the church at Philippi in Philippians chapter two, verse five, he says
this, let this mind be in you. Think about this. this mind that
was in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it
not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation,
and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the
likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled
himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross. By the humbleness, by the willing
humiliation of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, sinners
like us find forgiveness for our proud spirits and our deceitful
hearts. May God grant us mercy and not
the punishment that we deserve. Here's just another wee point
that I want to leave with you. And I think this is important
for us to remember. In our studies of these verses,
we must always note that God's dealings with this fallen world
is with a view to the saving of his church and people, and
with a view to the judgment of those who remain in their sins. but God is saving his people. Without God's decree to save,
his chosen people would have been the same as all the rest. And in that case, this world
might have been judged long ago. There's nothing here in this
world that God needs, nothing here in this world that God desires. except he is pleased to bless
his people. He delights to smile on those
whom he has called his own. And he is pleased to open up
his store of grace and mercy to sinners like us. Who are these
people that God delights in? Who are these people that he
has called his own and he has promised to save? Well, we see
them pictured in Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And remember,
Jacob was the one whose name was changed to Israel. So every
time we talk about the children of Israel, we're talking about
the children of Jacob, who was the son of Isaac, who was the
son of Abraham. You remember, we've gone through
speaking about these patriarchs. We're still in the same story.
And God gave his promises to Abraham, and Abraham believed
God. And for the sake of those promises,
we call them covenant promises, God blessed and protected and
preserved the children of Israel for thousands of years, distinguishing
between people and nations. And that was a picture of God's
election, God's election of grace, his choice of men and women,
boys and girls, to bring into his family, to make them his
people and to establish them as his church. To give them freedom
and deliverance and liberty, not from the slavery of a nation
or out of a prison or out of captivity, but out from under
their sin. And that is a captivity and that
is a slavery in itself. But God's covenant people have,
in the Lord Jesus Christ, a way of liberty and deliverance. And how do we identify these
people? Well, they are just like Abraham. They have faith in the
promises of God. God said to Pharaoh, let my people
go. And when Pharaoh refused, God
himself broke Israel's chains of slavery and gave them the
freedom from the land of Egypt. And so too, believers are liberated
by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ from the chains of sin
and death. They were set free, the Lord's
people, the Lord's elect, the Lord's church were set free from
slavery and servitude when the Lord Jesus Christ died on the
cross as their substitute. God still has a covenant people. It's not a nation, it's not a
nation that lives in a particular country or speaks a particular
language. But it is a spiritual people.
Men and women, boys and girls who have faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ, who trust Christ and believe in God's promises. and
he will bless and he will protect and he will preserve his people
in their faith for all time on this earth and for all eternity
in heaven. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us. Amen.