If you'll turn back with me to
Exodus chapter 10, this is the account of the eighth plague
which God sent upon Egypt. And I want to remind you that
these last plagues are the plagues brought upon Egypt who, because
of their persistent rejection of truth, God has given up to
a reprobate mind. He turned them over to themselves. What a frightening thing for
those of us who know something about this flesh, for God to
turn you over to yourself. Well, does that mean that God
didn't know or ordain all things? If He waits to this point, and
then because of what men do, turn them over to themselves,
does that mean God didn't know what they were going to do? Absolutely
not. It simply means that God is righteous
and just in all His dealings with men and angels. He's righteous
in what He does. He's just in what He does. All
men, the Bible said, by one man sin entered into the world, and
death by sin, and so death, that spiritual death, passed upon
all men. Now, that death having passed
upon you, Is God unjust for turning you over to yourself? What's that ungodly man going
to do? He's going to wax worse and worse.
That's what the Scripture said he's going to do. And if God
doesn't intervene, that's what lies out before all men. Did
God ordain the fall of man? He appointed a Savior before
man failed. Did He ordain the fall of man?
Absolutely He did. Did God force Adam to sin? Not at all. Not at all. Did God ordain the fall of Satan
and those other angels that followed it? Absolutely. He tells you
that in the Scripture. Did He force Satan to sin? Not
a word of it in the Scripture either. Did God ordain Pharaoh
to this end? The Scripture leaves us without
any doubt. For this same purpose have I
raised thee up. But did God coerce him in any
way to make him sin? Absolutely not. I've showed you
through these first plagues how opportunity after opportunity
after opportunity. Moses didn't come in and say,
that's it for you, bud. God's going to burn you up. He's
going to throw you in the sea. You're done. You never hear Moses
say that. Moses come in and told him the
will of God and was very kind in his speakings with him. God cannot be tempted with sin,
as what James said, neither tempteth he any man. But every man is
tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Everything God does, He does
on purpose. But nowhere in God's purpose
does He ever compromise His holiness and righteousness. He's righteous
in all His dealings, even with those He's condemned. And it's
an amazing thing when you understand that and you go through and you
see God's dealings with these men like Pharaoh and these ungodly
men who just are condemned of God. They've done ungodly things. They're God-hating men, idolaters. enemies of God, and yet God is
righteous in all His dealings with them. Something we need
to get in our head, because it's been stamped in there by religion,
is that God does not try or attempt to do anything. God does everything
He wills to do. He worketh, the Scripture said,
all things after the counsel of His own will. Try, if you
can, to imagine Adam in a perfect environment. He's perfect in
his being. He's perfect in his marriage.
He's perfect in his service to God, yet after only one confrontation,
just one. Now, we're not talking about
a pretty good man. We're talking about a perfect man. We're not
talking about a pretty good place to live. We're talking about
an absolute perfect environment. He's got everything a man could
want. And he has God's presence around
him. And with only one confrontation,
he's just got one commandment to keep, and he only has one
confrontation with sin. And not only does he fall, but
he plunges all his posterity into sin. Now, is there any point
in playing this out in all his songs? You see what? That's why
when you go to Romans 5, it doesn't deal with all of his sons. It
states the fact of what happened to his sons, and it just deals
with Adam. And it deals with Christ. There's
no need to follow up and see what all Adam's sons did. They're
all falling in his nature, falling in darkness. They're not going
to do... What can they do that their perfect father couldn't
do? There's no point in it. Neither is there any point in
going through with the children of God. Because their Father
did the same thing. Only His works were unto righteousness. You mean God's not going to judge
us individually? Yes, He's going to judge every
man, the book of Revelation says, according to His works. But if
a perfect man in a perfect environment can't resist even one exposure
to sin, what are we going to do? If God had left Adam's race to
itself, there'd be nothing but a world full of devils. God looked
on Adam's race. Now, these things are important
to what I'm going to tell you tonight. God looked on Adam's
race after only ten generations. You think about that. My father
was still living when there was six generations of us. In only
ten generations, God looked down from heaven on men and said,
they're altogether wicked. That's all He could find was
wickedness in men. Every imagination of the thoughts
of their hearts was only evil continually. Why am I stressing all these
things? Because I want you to know that
reprobation is not God hardening the hearts of men who might otherwise
seek Him. It's God hardened in the hearts
of rebellious, sinful men. Not God fixing His eternal damnation
on men who otherwise might come to Him and ask for mercy. That's
not what it is. It's God hardened in the hearts
of men and women who do not want to retain. Read Romans chapter
1. They didn't want to retain God in their knowledge. Ain't
that what it said? They knew the truth. Some of them heard
the gospel preached and rebelled against that truth. Some of them
had the light of conscience and creation and rebelled against
that truth. But they did not want to retain
God in their knowledge. When they heard His name, they
refused to glorify Him in His true character. And they turned
the truth of God into a lie and changed the glory of the uncorruptible
God into an image made like under their ungodly imagination. You know, we talk about election
and men go, oh, what an ungodly thought, election. Well, election
is not God choosing ten good men out of a hundred good men
and sending the rest of them to hell. That's not election.
It's God choosing ten vile sinners out of a hundred condemned vile
sinners and sending His Son to die for the crimes and live to
work out a righteousness for them and then send His Spirit
to change their hearts. You see what I'm saying? There's
a big difference. When I talk about election to the natural
man, that's what he hears. There's 100 good men and God
chooses 10 of them and turns the rest of them over to himself. And these plagues of reprobation
were not sent to a people who were trying to repent and find
mercy with God. They were rebels who, because
of their obstinate rejection of truth, had been sealed to
everlasting doom. Well, I thought God had to give
everybody a chance. Salvation is not by chance. It's
not by chance. God doesn't do things by chance
and circumstance. And it's 100% owing to the free
and sovereign grace of God. And that's what He's teaching
Israel in these plagues. Everything and everybody that
God intended to save, He gathered and put in Goshen. That's where
He put them. And God's wrath fell on the rest
of that whole outfit. Only in Goshen are they spared
the plague. Only in Goshen are God's people
preserved, and only in Goshen can one see the plagues in their
proper light. Are you with me so far? All right. Everything and everybody that
God has determined to save, for the glory of His name, He's put
in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And like Israel of old, we're
born in a cursed land, raised surrounded by idolaters and heathens,
and born under the influence and rule of an evil king. But
God's made a covenant on our behalf long before we're born,
an everlasting covenant of grace. And God's going to honor His
word. And He's going to honor His promises. And so He sends
an ambassador into the world to effect the deliverance of
His people, the Lord Jesus Christ. And they're all called unto Christ,
for they're kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation,
ready to be revealed at the last time. And like Israel of old,
we're all huddled together in fear as we watch and see the
God of glory pour out his vials of wrath on this world. Do you
not fear when you turn the TV on and you listen to these men
preach? Do you not fear when you go to
the store and you see people you know and they talk this foolishness? Talking about praying people
out of hell and praying for the dead and all this kind of nonsense
and paying men, paying money for men to get men out of purgatory. Where in the world people come
up with that kind of stuff? That's those plagues, these spiritual
plagues. That which we're reading about
here is only typical. These things are just typifying
those spiritual plagues of our day. And I tell you, the book
of Revelation is a good commentary on these plagues. You read these
plagues, and you go to the book of Revelation, and it'll give
you the spiritual plague. It'll tell you what's going on. To endure the walk in the wilderness.
and survive the trials that lay ahead. And to have a willing
heart to enter into God's rest, we must see the plagues in their
proper light. Now, we're going to find out
down the road that everybody 18 years and older who saw these
plagues didn't really see these plagues. That's right. God said to them over there in
Numbers, I think it's Numbers chapter 14, where they've tempted
him. He said, you've tempted me these
ten times. And now, he said, I swear, as
the earth is going to be full of my glory, not one of you who
saw my wonders in Egypt is going to enter into my rift. Not one
of you. And you can read about them again over in Hebrews chapter
3, Psalm 1. These plagues did not teach Egypt
anything. Even after the death of all their
firstborn sons, Egypt will pursue Israel into the sea where God
will bury them forever. They plotted. But these plagues were there
to teach Israel. Exodus 10, verse 2. I read it
to you just a few moments ago. He said, I am going to do these
things that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son and thy
son's son what things I have wrought in Egypt and my signs. which I have done among them
that you may know." Now watch this. How? See that? Here's what's going on. I'm going
to teach you how that I am Lord. I'm going to show you how I am
the Lord. And you're going to tell your
sons, and your sons are going to tell their sons. This thing
is not just for you, but this thing is for all future generations. All the spiritual plagues brought
upon this generation to whom we minister are signs to be read
and understood. That's what he's telling me.
Signs of mercy and signs of grace and signs of kindness and longsuffering
and love and signs of judgment and justice and eternal reprobation. There's nothing outside of Christ
but eternal doom. That's what he's telling us here.
There's nothing out there. That's what he's showing to them.
There's nothing out there. I know you were raised here,
and I know that you've been under their influence, but I'm showing
you that these people out here are under the wrath of God. He that believeth not the wrath
of God, ain't that what it says? Abideth on them. Abideth on them. That's why they don't hear you
when you talk to them. That's why they're not broken
when you cry for them. The wrath of God abideth on him. That's why Pharaoh, he's sorry
that all of his crops is gone, and he's sorry that the judgment
of God's on him, and he's sorry for the pain, but he's not repenting
of his sins. And each time he repents, he
repents of his repentance. Nothing outside of Christ but
eternal doom. He that believeth not shall be
damned. The salvations of the Lord were
in His hands to do with what He will. And whatever He will
is going to be just and holy and right. It just is. And there's nothing that ought
to strike fear into our hearts as much as God's eternal reprobation
of men. Doesn't it strike fear in your
heart when you talk to someone close to you, your wife or your
neighbor or people that you've known for 40 years and you sit
down and you talk to them and you open up the book and they
won't even look in it to see what it says? I've heard all
that before. I don't want to hear it. I don't
want to talk about those things. Doesn't that strike fear into
your heart? God's hardened their hearts. Why? Because they hardened
their hearts. And there comes a time when God
just says, that's it. That's it. And He marks you out
for everlasting doom. Paul talked about it. He said
these heretics, he said after the first and second admonition,
what'd he say? Leave them alone. Is that what
he said? You need to think about that.
Some of these folks you just keep going back to and you've
been back to them a thousand times and you just keep going
back and they keep giving you the same answer. Leave them alone.
Leave them alone. That's what happened. God's left
them alone. Leave them alone. You can pray for them. But John
said, there's a sin unto death. He said, I say not that you ought
to pray for that. If that's where God's put them,
you can pray until the end of time. Ain't nothing going to
happen. It ain't going to change nothing. It won't change anything. He
prayed, or Paul prayed and weeped and did everything he could do
over in natural Israel and God sent the whole outfit to hell. That's reprobation. I'll tell
you, John said, and we know that we are of God and the whole world
lieth in wickedness. How did he know that? Huh? Because God put him in Christ
and showed him the plagues. And he showed him the hand that
preserved him, that hand of grace that preserved him over in Goshen.
And he let him see the plagues. The fact that Egypt was prosperous
and influential and highly educated did not make them godly. And
I tell you, this whole country that we live in has been hoodwinked
in believing because we're prosperous and world-renowned by all the
nations that we're one nation under God. I'm sorry. I just ain't buying into that.
I ain't buying into that. Fact is, I can't find God in
a whole outfit. It doesn't mean they're of God
because they were influential. Egypt was the most educated,
rich, influential, powerful nation in the world. And God marked
them out for reprobation. The fact that they were powerful
and well-established and highly esteemed by the other nations
didn't mean they were highly favored of God. Egypt was raised
up in power to one end, and that was to declare the glory of God
in the deliverance of His people. The Lord said, Behold, He said,
the nations are as a drop of a bucket. I've got some here
tonight old enough to know what that means. We used to go out
to well when I was little, out at Granny's house. Take that
old rope and we'd pull that bucket up out of that well, shut the
lid back, and we'd take that bucket and pour it into another
bucket to go in the house. We didn't get all the water out
of it. There's still a drop in there. You know what we did?
We threw it back in the well. We didn't bother with it. He
said, that's the way the nations are. You seen them old balances,
you know, in some of the symbols of our country? They got those
balances up there. He said, He said, these nations,
he said, are like the small dust on the balance. They don't even
wipe it off because it don't even affect the scale. He said,
the isles are but a small thing with me. He said, behold, he
said, I sit on the circle of the earth, and all the inhabitants
thereof are grasshoppers. Grasshoppers. He'll have us to
know what these nations are before God, and he tells us, woe be
to those nations that forget God. If there's one thing that marks
the fall of every great nation that this Bible records that's
ever been, it's the low opinion they had adopted of God. God
bowing to man's will and God submitting to man's decisions
and God compromising his character and God subject to evolution
and circumstance and not able to do, God done all he can do
and it's all up to you. He said, you thought I was altogether
such a one as thyself, but he said, I will reprove thee and
set them in order before thine eyes. I'm going to show you who
I am. That's what he's doing now. He
says, I'm going to show you how that I'm Lord. Now with these things in mind,
let's look at this eighth plague, the plague of the locusts. Why
locusts? We've looked at the flies and
looked at the life. Why locusts? What's the spiritual
significance of this tiny little insect? Well, I'm going to give
you several things tonight, and I pray that the Holy Spirit himself
will be our teacher when it comes to these things. First of all,
these locusts, according to Revelation chapter 9, if you'll read verses
1 through 11 when you get home after a while, they come up out
of the pit of hell itself. Now that's how he depicts these
locusts. There was a smoke, he said, there's a star. We already
know what the star is. This is the false preacher. The
star fell from heaven, and he had a key to the bottomless pit.
And he unlocked that pit, and lo and behold, a smoke rose out
of that pit, and locusts came out of the smoke. That's what
it talks about over there. Listen to this, I'll read it
for you. The fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven
unto the earth, and to him was given the key of the bottomless
pit. And he opened the bottomless
pit, and there arose a smoke out of the pit as the smoke of
the great furnace. And the sun and the air were
darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit, and there came out
of the smoke locusts upon the earth. And unto them was given
power, as of scorpions of the earth have power. And it was
commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth,
neither any green thing, neither any tree. But these locusts,
these spiritual locusts, only those men, that's who they attacked. These men which had not the seal
of God in their foreheads. Everybody not sealed and gathered
in Christ. These locusts turned loose on
us. What are these locusts? These are those demon spirits,
is what I believe they are. Demonic spirits. And these are
those angels which kept not their first estate, but were held in
everlasting chains of darkness under the judgment of that great
day. Many of the writers that I read say that these locusts
depict false prophets. And I don't have a problem with
that at all. But why does a false prophet preach what he preaches?
Huh? Because of demonic spirits in
him. And so we're really saying the
same thing, but I'm separating these things because I believe
God separated them here in these plagues. Listen to this, the
Spirit of God, Paul said, speaketh expressly that in the latter
times some shall depart from the faith giving heed to seducing
spirits and doctrines of devils. That's 1 Timothy 4.1. And these are both evil spirits
and doctrines of devils and they're false prophets and their message
of men's works and free will. It's saying the same thing. The
Lord Himself talks about the unclean spirit going out of a
man, didn't He? He said that unclean spirit went
out. He didn't say why he went out. He didn't say he was forced
out. He said he went out. And while
he was out, that fellow said, hmm, boy, my house is filthy.
I think I'll clean it up. And he got his broom out, and
he cleaned everything up, and changed his habits, and changed
his life, and all that. And the spirit came back and
said, boy, look at this. I think I'll go back in, and I'm going
to take seven more with me. Worse than hell. Demonic spirits. These spiritual locusts are turned
loose upon all this unbelieving world. And Satan, with the permission
of the Lord, unlocks their chains and sends them in great swarms
upon all those who are not sealed in their foreheads of God. He turns loose these demonic
spirits. If you can't see that nowadays,
you're blind. You're just blind. They're everywhere. Everywhere. What do these spirits
do? They take away the means of life. That's what they do. Everything
that God spared in the hail and the fire that ran upon the ground. Everything that was left. There
was nothing green left in Egypt when these things got done. Nothing
green left in Egypt. There was hardly anything left
as it was. Just a few trees here and there,
some small vines, and they said the wheat and the rye was small
yet, just barely coming up. But now the sky is made dark
by such a swarm of locusts as no man had ever seen before on
the earth, and never will see again. covering the very earth beneath
their feet to where they couldn't see the earth. As far as you
could look out there, as far as you could see, all you could
see was locusts. Locusts. Everywhere locusts. Locusts on
the trees. Locusts on the grass. Locusts
on the vines. Locusts on the ground. Locusts
everywhere. Locusts in the sky. You couldn't even see the sun.
Locusts. Every house was filled. Joel
describes it in his prophecy. He doesn't use the term, but
he describes them perfectly. He said, they ran to and fro
in the city and they ran up the wall and climbed upon the houses
and entered at the windows like a thief. That's in Joel chapter
2. Eating everything in their sight,
taking away all the promise of life. Ain't that what they did? Ain't no promise of life out
there. No promise of a future out there. Nothing. And nothing left in
Egypt. Empty stalks and twigs. Takes
away the very promise of life. Our Lord said to the false prophets
in His day, you will not come unto Me that you might have life.
Why? Because the locust had taken
it away. It wasn't because he didn't preach
it. It wasn't because he didn't read it. It wasn't any fault
in him. This was the perfect preacher.
This was the Word made flesh and dwelt among us. And I told
you Sunday, he stood right before. They kept telling him, if thou
be the Christ, tell us plainly. He said, I told you. Why didn't
they hear him? Because of these spiritual locusts.
They'd taken away all promise of life. It's gone. It's not
in their doctrine. It's not in their churches. I
get so tired of people telling me, well, the Lord revealed Christ
to them down there at that church. He didn't do any such thing. There's not a single promise
of Christ preached from the pulpit of the average church in this
country. Not one drop of promise. A fellow got up, and my wife
was listening to him, and he announced his text to be on the
grace of God. And she said, well, I'm going
to listen to him for a minute. He got on there, and first thing
he said is, You need to be gracious to folks. He didn't know what
grace was from the man in the moon. The locusts left no hope for
the Egyptians. There's still grass in Goshen.
There's still cattle in Goshen. There's still sheep, horses,
oxen. All these things still in Goshen.
But boy, you look out everywhere else. I went over to visit Caleb
back last summer. They're under severe drought
over there. And about two-thirds of the way over there, there's
this big valley. It's a long, gentle sloping valley. You can just see for miles out
there. And they got windmill generators all along that thing.
But when I got there, when you start down in that valley, there's
still some grain on both sides. You come up the other side, it
looks like a paper sack. There's nothing green over there.
It's gone. That's the way Egypt was. They
sat there in Goshen and looked out, and that whole land looked
like a paper sack. There wasn't anything green.
There wasn't any herbs. He said there wasn't any fruit.
There wasn't any leaves. Nothing. You won't come unto me that you
might have life. And this is God's intention toward
those in Goshen, that they might see outside of Christ, there's
no hope. If we leave Christ, Paul said,
there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, just a certain fearful
looking for judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour
the adversaries. And Paul said, in time past you
walked according to the course of this world, according to the
prince of the power of the air. Now listen, the spirit that now
worketh in the children of disobedience. What is that? That's that spiritual
locust. That's what it is. And they all
serve, you read Revelation chapter 9 all the way through, they all
serve Apollyon, or Abaddon in the old Hebrew, that's Satan. What do they do? They whisper
in the hearts of unbelieving men the doctrines of devils. They cry, peace, peace, where
there is no peace. In Revelation chapter 9, they're
said to have the venom of the scorpion. These spirits are locusts. Their bite is painful, but not
instantly deadly. What they do is they bite you
and sting you and cause you to swell up and hurt, and they leave
you like that. That's the way they leave you.
Those who are infected with the poison of their heresy, they
suffer a constant torment. Their works and will can only
testify of their guilt. but never offer any true sense
of pardon or peace. Egypt's left alive, but they
had no promise of a future. If in this life only we have
hope, we're of all men most miserable. Isn't that what it says? And
then secondly, these locusts all come from the east. Ain't
that what it says? What's that mean? You follow
through the Scriptures from the very beginning, from the Garden
of God. You go from there all the way
through the Scriptures, and I tell you, the East always has something
to do with the presence and purpose of God, all the way through. The Garden was east of Eden. There was a river. You remember
the message I brought on the river? It flowed east out of
Eden into the Garden. That's God's purpose. And it
flowed out from God, His purpose, into that garden, into that sacrifice
of Christ, into that manifestation of Christ and that declaration
of Christ in the garden. And then it divided up into four
rivers, went out into all the world and all the rest of the
world and everything in it had to drink out of those rivers,
out of those waters. That's the purpose and presence
of God. East. You worship east out of
the temple. The tabernacle had to be set
up facing the east. On and on and on. Job was a great
man out of the east. Had to do with God's purpose. The sun, which is a picture of
Christ, you can read about it in the psalm, rises in the east. The wise men came. Where'd they
come from? They found a star in the east
and followed it. And his coming shall be, he said,
as the lightning that shineth out of the east unto the west. These locusts were sent from
God to accomplish his eternal purpose of grace. Paul says,
talking about Pharaoh and talking about these things over in Romans
chapter 9, he said, what if God, willing to show his wrath and
made his power known, endured with much longsuffering these
vessels of wrath fitted to destruction? In order that he might make known
the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had
afore prepared unto glory. What if he did that? He's the
potter. These locusts were demon spirits
sent to take away all the hope of Egypt. And they left nothing
in their wake to give any hope of life. And then thirdly, their
presence was irresistible. There's nowhere you could go
to escape these locusts. They're everywhere. Huh? You
can't go to the barn and escape them. You can't go to the river
and deer hunt and escape them. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. You can't get away from them.
They'll lay out there drunk and debate these things. All of the houses of Pharaoh's
servants were full of locusts. That's what it says, isn't it?
Full of them. Who's Pharaoh? Who's he represent? That's Satan. Who's his servants?
That's all the false prophets. What's it say about their houses?
They're full of locusts. Full of demonic spirits. And
then fourthly, their sound was deafening. I remember we had
cicadas. You know what a cicada is? That's
a locust. According to my dictionary, they're
17-year locusts. They come every 17 years. There's
some come every seven, but a cicada comes every 17. And we had cicadas
this past year. Not a big plague of them, but
we had some. But I remember on the way, whenever
I go there to visit one of you all over there, I'd go over that
way, and when we drove down that little strip of land that goes
past Garland there next to the railroad track and where all
those vines and trees are, I'm doing 55, 60 mile an hour past
there. My windows rolled up, and I could
hear them things chirping over in them trees. That's how loud
they was. What about a swarm the size of
Egypt, huh, that darkened the sky? What kind of noise must
they have made? Their sound has went out in all
the earth. You see what God is telling us
here, what He's showing us here about these demonic spirits.
They went out and their voice has been heard from one end of
this globe to the other. All Satan's ministers' houses,
they're full of them. And then notice this distinction.
These locusts go in swarms. They go in swarms. God's ambassadors
go one at a time. Huh? They go one at a time. Here's Satan with his swarms.
He's sending swarms out into the earth. God sends one man
down and gathers all his children into the ocean. Isn't that something?
You know why? Because God was with him. That's
why. God was with him. Locusts go in swarms. To accomplish
the plague, a multitude is required, but when God's present, it doesn't
even take one, but it's pleased God to send one. And then last
of all, their characters described in Revelations chapter 9. I'll
give you a few things there. All these locusts had crowns.
These spiritual locusts, they all wore crowns on their head.
I think they wore crowns for two reasons. One is because they
warm in pretense of being kings and priests unto God. And then
the second reason is to claim their lordship, or as it says
in 2 Thessalonians 2, they sit in the temple of God as though
they were God, claiming that they are God. I'll make my decisions. It's my will. You can't tell
me what to do. And then secondly, it said their
faces are like the faces of men. Locusts pretending to be men.
Putting on, as it were, sympathetic faces, happy faces, sad faces,
or whatever kind of face it takes to deceive men. Whatever they
want. You want a happy preacher, he'll be a happy preacher. You
want a sad one, he'll be sad. You want him to cry, he'll cry.
Whatever you want him to do. They're deceitful workers, Paul
said, who transform themselves into the apostles of Christ.
And then he says, the hair is the hair of a woman. They're
very alluring and charming and impressive. And they are, for
the most part, just spineless effeminate men who are not fit
to rule the house of God. But these men with the hair of
women have teeth like a lion. Isn't that something? What a
monster he's describing here in Revelation chapter 9. I know
preachers who stand up and try to make this a physical beast.
I tell you, if I seen something like this, I'd run for the hill.
A giant locust with a tail of a scorpion, long hair look like
Medusa, and then got teeth of a lion. And they're cruel beasts
that devour everything that crosses their path. And then they have
on breastplates. I looked at that. What's that
mean? To me, that speaks of self-preservation. Self-preservation. They're always
trying to defend themselves. They need that multitude. They
need the crowd. If they come in and preach and
there's not 5,000 people in that thing, something's wrong. And
they get all defeated and depressed and ready to run for the hills.
Moses went down there by himself, just him and his brother. He
didn't have on a breastplate. He didn't carry a spear or sword.
He didn't have any armor on whatsoever. God was with him and he came
out of that whole outfit without a scratch on him. Breastplates. And then it says they always
appear as horses prepared for battle. They're organized in
a mass formation. All of them linked together,
all waiting upon the command of their head, all ready to go
to war. I'm going to tell you something.
God's ambassadors are ambassadors of peace. They're ambassadors
of peace. And now he said, he committed
unto us the ministry of reconciliation. I don't want to go to war. I
want to argue. We're ambassadors of peace. He
said, cry to Israel. Your warfare is accomplished.
The war's been fought and won. But the spiritual locusts are
engaged for war. They'll battle anything. Anything. Religious hucksters are always
lining up in battle array against something, ain't they? Listen
to them talk. They get this big huge thing
together and have the rallies and march down the street. This
reminds you of somebody getting the old time way of fighting
war where they lined up all them horses and they put on them big
uniforms on them with them big leather with the big spikes and
stuff coming out of it and they put this thing on the horse to
make him look intimidating. Boy, you'd look at them horses
arrayed for battle and they got these strange looking things
on their face. It just makes them look like
a beast ready to devour whatever's in front of it. Pharaoh in Egypt intimidated
everybody but God and his ambassador. No, they weren't intimidated.
Everybody else was. And then I'll give you one more
thing and I'll quit. Having delivered God's message
to this man marked out of God for reprobation, Moses, it said, turned himself
and walked away from Pharaoh without so much as a Biola. This was a potentate. He called
himself a god, and he was worshipped as a god in Egypt. This is not
a man you can just walk into his presence. But Moses, by the
command of God, did walk in his presence. And when he was done
talking to him, it said he turned himself. walk out. Old Robert Hawker said, when
God's ambassador is turned of God from you, war has been declared. War has been declared. And that's
what happened. And Pharaoh had his little piece
to say and had his little things to say, but God sent the locusts
anyway, didn't He? He sent them locusts down on
them. Well, as I look around this day, I see these plagues.
I see these spiritual plagues all around me. And I tell you,
the only place safe is in Christ. In Christ. I don't want any party
going out. I don't want anything in Egypt.
God convinced me that this world is doomed and damned. Reserved
under fire. That's what He teaches. You know
all but just a few of them that were 18 years of older that came
out of Egypt. There's only two of them really
understood that. The whole rest of that outfit, the whole time
they were in the wilderness, sit there and look at Egypt. There's nothing left of it. It's
in total ruin. All their firstborns dead. There's
plague after plague after plague after plague. up on Egypt, there's
nothing left in Egypt. And they lay back there and dream
about the flesh pots, dream about the leeks and the cucumbers,
dream about all those things. And that reminds me of some folks
I deal with today. Sometimes I preach to them and
talk to them and try to deal with them as best I know how
to deal with them. And they just sit around and
talk about the leeks and the cucumbers and all the things
this world has to offer. Isn't this world doomed? Everything
God's going to save, He put in Christ. That's it. The rest of
it, He's going to burn it up. Burn it up. God help us to see
it. Our Father, we thank You. We
thank You for Your Word. The Word is a fire and a hammer. It instructs us. It keeps us.
It shapes us. It purifies us. reveal unto us
the things that are necessary. We don't look at these things
in some kind of joy seeing these plagues poured out upon the earth,
but we look at these things and we're instructed by them and
we see how that you are the Lord. We see how that by the hand of
grace you've separated a people and then injustice and righteousness
have poured out your wrath on the rest of the world. Help us
to see these things and to glorify Your name, for Christ's sake.