If you will, take your Bibles
and turn with me to Exodus chapter 8. We've completed our study on
Ephesians. And a couple of Wednesdays ago,
I brought this lesson out of Exodus on one of the plagues,
the plague of the flies. And my recorder ran out of minutes,
and we didn't get it on the recording. And I've had so many people call
me wanting me to record it and put it on the internet that I
decided to go ahead and do it for you this morning. So some
of you have already heard the points of this message, and some
of you haven't. Israel, down in Egypt. What's this all about? What's
Israel gathered of God according to the Word of God, according
to the prophecies given to Abraham hundreds of years before they
ever went down there? He told Abraham that he was going
to gather all his seed down in Egypt. And they were going to
be down there 400 years and suffer all kinds of torment and pain
down in Egypt. And then with a strong hand,
God was going to come in and deliver Now, what in the world
is all that about? Well, they went down there as
a figurative people. You've got to, if you don't understand
Israel of the Old Testament as a people who are a typical people,
they're a people typical of God's Israel, then you'll never have
a right understanding of anything that God has to say about Israel.
Natural Israel is not the same as the Israel of God. They're
a figurative, typical people. And what was going on down there
is God picturing, typifying the deliverance of His people that
was going to take place in the days of Christ. As God did in Egypt, He's doing
it in our day. He's gathering His elect out
of the heathen nations of this world to give them the inheritance
and the promises of his everlasting covenant of grace through the
Lord Jesus Christ. And their bondage pictures our
bondage. If we go back and study that
bondage in the light of our own knowledge of the gospel, we'll
see there a great illustration of what God's doing. We see it
in detail as it's pictured back in those Old Testament types.
Paul tells us over in Romans 9, verse 8, that they which are
the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God.
Those people back there are not the children. Some of them were,
but not all of them. Well, how do you know that, preacher?
I know that because nearly two million of them came out of Egypt
and died. Their carcasses fell in the wilderness
and never went into Canaan. There's only two out of that
original group who came out of Egypt that ever entered into
Canaan. Only two. Joshua and Caleb. Joshua being
a picture of Christ and Caleb standing for all God's faithful. And their calling and conversion
typifies our calling and conversion. And he tells us, but the children
of the promise are counted for the seed. The children of the
promise. In Galatians chapter 3, verse
7, he says it again. Know ye therefore that they which
are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham." These are
the true children of God. Now the conversion of the sinner
has to do with the revelation of truth. When we're talking
about conversion, we're talking about a revelation of truth. It has nothing to do with the
things that religion talks about as far as your conversion. To
them, conversion is quitting the old habits and starting new
ones. Joining the church and all that type of stuff. Getting
involved with social ministries and walking in the picket lines
trying to get rid of the alcohol and all that. That's what they
call conversion. That's not conversion. Conversion
is being converted out of darkness into light. Conversion has to
do with the head, the understanding, and the heart. That's true conversion. Who God is. The truth about man. That's a revelation. Oh, I tell
you, the first time I heard from a preacher's lips who quoted
from the Word of God the truth about man, how shocked I was. I knew I was a sinner. But I
kind of like that fellow told me, I ain't always done the right
thing, but he said one thing I could... No, there isn't even
one thing. Most men don't have any idea
how sinful they really are. And he tells us the truth about
false religion. That's another big shock, isn't
it? You mean all the religion in this world that's around us
is false religion? That's exactly what I mean. That's
exactly what I mean. False prophets. You mean these
guys that stand up and they do a lot of good. They gather money
for foreign missions and they gather support for orphans and
all that type of thing. You mean to tell me they're false
prophets? That's exactly what I'm telling you. False prophets. And then there's the truth about
Satan's power. Satan has a power irresistible
to the natural man. He can't resist it. It overwhelms
him. It overcomes him. It deceives
him. The smartest of men. Satan will use your own wisdom
and tie you up in knots and have you justifying yourself. College
professors and wise men, men who can do things I never thought
about doing. He can just tie them up in knots. The truth about Satan's power
and presence in the world and who he uses and what he's doing.
And then God's eternal purpose of grace and on and on and on
is this revelation. That's conversion. Conversion. And Israel and Egypt, if you
look at them down in Egypt, they didn't appear to be blessed,
did they? I tell you, if you was a bystander with no prior
knowledge of the Let's say you were over in one
of these heathen countries and you were just watching what was
going on down there. Moses came down there and he started to
preach and Israel was over here in Goshen and the rest of Egypt's
out here under these plagues and stuff. I'll tell you, you
would have thought Egypt was the blessed and Israel was the
cursed. Israel was the slaves, wasn't
they? Huh? They were the slaves. Who needed
delivering? Egypt didn't need deliverance,
did it? Israel did. You can go on and on with this
thing. They didn't appear to be blessed and actually Egypt
appeared to be blessed and Israel cursed. Moses first came down
to Egypt. You really think anybody thought
those Israelites were truly the children of God? And are we not right now by comparison
the same as them? There anybody over here who's
been to, what's the big church over there, Trinity? Anybody
over there? Let's take this little building
here and this little humble group of people over there. And there's
this big crowd sitting out there, two or three services on a Sunday
morning, so it can fit them all in the same building. And you're
standing out there at this little group, and you ask, take a poll
of all the pastors by. And you're over here saying,
we're the elect of God. They're the curse. Every one
of them laugh at you. That's how Israel appeared in
Egypt. And it typifies how God's church appears right now in this
day. But you see, Israel was not yet
manifested in their glory. There's going to come a time
when Israel is raised up as a nation, typically, and glorified in this
world to all the nations bowed before. But that day wasn't yet. That day wasn't yet. And neither
is it yet right now. And Israel was not yet even recognized
as a people. What do you know about a people?
These are not people. These are slaves. These are subjects
of Egypt. They're citizens of Egypt. We
do with them what we want to. Israel was not yet separated
from Egypt and delivered from its bondage. And it is as God
calls them out and manifests his presence and power with them
that they're revealed to the world. And you can just go on
and on with the comparisons. Do you really believe that these
little groups here and there, these just little pockets of
believers over here, 10 or 12 here, and maybe 15 or 20 here,
and a big group would be over 100, wouldn't it? I mean, I'm
talking about some of the biggest groups in this country of grace
believers wouldn't amount to much more than 100. You really
believe that they're the elect of God while the masses of long
established organized religion are the impostors? Preachers
sure don't seem that way. No sir, not till God gathers
you in Goshen and shows you the plagues. You see what this is
all about? These plagues is how he divides
his people, how he separates his people from the rest of the
world. That water turned into blood
shows religion of this world and the effects of false religion
that substitute sanctification for the atonement. They want
to take the washing that's pictured. There's water and blood are the
two things that's pictured all through that ceremonial worship
in the Old Testament. Well, they want to take that
water and take it into the Holy of Holies. Well, that water didn't
go in there. What went in there was the blood.
The blood, not the water. The water's out here. Religion
takes the water and they put it in the place of blood. That's
what that plague was all about. And then there's the frogs. The
frogs, according to Revelation 16, 13 through 14, says, are
the spirits of devils working miracles which go forth unto
the kings of the earth and of the whole world to gather them
unto the battle of that great day of God Almighty. These are
false prophets. False prophets. They come out
of the mouth of the beast. And they're false prophets. And
they're false prophets of backwards religion. And you can almost
without question assume that all they say is the opposite.
It's the opposite. Just take one and just let him
ramble. Whatever he talks about justification, you just take
the opposite and you've pretty much got the truth. If he starts
talking about the will of man, just take the opposite. Start
talking about the love of God, just take the opposite. It's
upside down. It's backwards. And then came
the lice. The lice represent the true nature
of fallen man. His appetite for the flesh. He's
a flesh eater. That's all he lives for is flesh.
He eats the flesh. He loves the flesh. You take
a lice and put it on a cake and he'd die. He loves the flesh. That's what he wants. He wants
the flesh, and that's what natural man wants. I don't care. I can
stand up here and preach anything I want to preach. As long as
I mix in some flesh with it, he'll come, and he'll see it,
and he'll rejoice. The minute I take the flesh out
of it, he's got no appetite for it. That's the lice. And that
nature is in these false prophets, and it's in this backward religion.
And then comes the plague of the flies. And the flies, this
is the first of the plagues where God makes this distinction. He
said, I'm going to divide by this plague my people from this
world, from Egypt. I'm going to separate them. I'm
going to show you a division, he said. Exodus 8.22. He said, and I will sever in
that day the land of Goshen. in which my people dwell, that
no swarms of flies shall be there. To the end thou mayest know that
I am the Lord in the midst of the earth. And I will put a division
between my people and thy people. Tomorrow shall this sign be."
Now, I ain't talking about the next day. The next day, the plague
of the flies came. But this is talking about our
day. Tomorrow. He's talking about the spiritual
fulfillment of this plague. What's the fly a picture of?
Well, the fly is a picture of the false convert. These false
prophets and this backward religion goes out into the land and they
make converts. That's their aim. That's their
goal. Our Lord said, you come up with sea and land, didn't
he? Well, why? He said to make one prophet like
unto yourself. And when you made him, what is
he? He's twofold more the child of hell than the guy who made
him. That's the false convert. Now, with each rejection, the
plagues become more and more severe. More and more severe. Each time Pharaoh rejected what
was preached to him, there was a plague poured out, and each
plague more severe than the one that preceded. And now Pharaoh
comes again. It said, Lo, he told Moses, he
said, you go out there early in the morning. Lo, Pharaoh cometh
unto the waters. Pharaoh, he'd already met Pharaoh
at the waters once before, didn't he? And out there in those waters
of religion, and out there in those deceitful waters out there,
he went out and met him, and God poured out the plagues on
him. But here he comes again. He's coming right back to the
same river. He's coming right back to that river of false religion. He's coming right back to that
same source. And that's why he adds this word,
lo, he coming to the water. Nero again stands before the
river. That's his favorite place of
worship. But God sets his servant there to meet him and to warn
him again of what will come to pass as a result of his continued
and obstinate rebellion. But what in the world could be
worse than lice? What kind of a curse could be
worse than lice? What could be worse than the
nature of some flesh-eating vermin? That's what man is. What could
be worse than that? What could be worse than a parasite?
That's what the dictionary said, Lysar. They're a parasite who
feeds on the flesh. What could be worse than the
judgment of God which left mankind in total depravity of their nature? What could be worse than that?
Just one thing. An ignorant, depraved, fallen
son of Adam deceived into believing he is a son of God. That's a
worse plague than the lice. A religious convert. The Bible
says he's two-fold more. Two-fold double. Double. Two-fold more the child of hell
than the religion that produced him. And no judgment of God surpasses
the judgment of God on false religion. I challenge you, look
in the Scripture. Everything in the world that
man could possibly do is recorded in the Word of God. Men with
men, women with women, all these things we don't even like to
talk about. All of these things are recorded in there. And yet
this judgment surpasses the judgment of all of that heaped together.
The judgment of false religion. He said of the false converts
in his day, those Pharisees and Sadducees And scribes, he said,
he'll be more tolerable in the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in
the day of judgment than for you. Ain't that what he said? Well, how in the world is a fly
a picture of false religion? A fly is a maggot with wings. Now, that's how it pictures false.
This is how God would have you view false religion and that
which false religion produces. This is not a picture I put in
here, this is a picture that God put in here, and a fly is
nothing in the world. We were sitting down at Olive
Garden last night having a meal, and this fly started buzzing
around, buzzing around, buzzing around. Pretty soon, he lands
in my salad. I just took the salad and pushed
it aside, because I know what a fly is, and I don't care to
eat after him, do you? All these false converts, maggots with wings, they're born
in the dead carcass of the beast. Everybody knows what the beast
is. That's false religion. That's false religion. These
maggots are born in the dead carcass of the beast, and they
feed there until they reach their fullness, until God sees that
fullness to be met. Ain't that what he told Abraham?
He said, they're going to stay down there 400 years. Why? Because
the fullness of the iniquity of the Amorites is not full yet.
There's going to be a time when it comes full. When it comes
full, then God's going to act. He always does. When it reaches
its fullness in just a short period of time, that wiggling
maggot is transformed into a fly. He doesn't look anything like
he used to look. Outwardly, everything's changed
in appearance. All of his looks, all of his
actions, everything's changed, John. In a moment, in a twinkling
of an eye, that old wiggling maggot feeding in the dead carcass
of the beast is now a fly. And he's buzzing around and flying
around. He ain't crawling around in that carcass anymore. He's
up here buzzing around. He appears to the natural eye
to be a new creature. Just one problem. There's been
no change in his nature. His appetite is still for the
carcass and still for the dunghill. You want to find flies? Go out
to the dungheap. That's where they swarm. And
that's where God caused them to swarm all over Egypt, all
over that dunghill of Egypt. These flies came all over those
dead carcasses out there. Those flies laid their eggs. He loves the dumb. Well, preacher,
you're just making a play on words. Turn with me to Job chapter
25. We'll see if I am or not. Now,
I challenge you to go through the Bible. Take your Strong's
Concordance. Take your Strong's Concordance.
It's going to tell you what that original word is and what that
word means. It's going to tell you every
place, so you can contextually define that word. It's going
to tell you every place else in the Bible where that word
can be found in a strong concordance. I'd strongly recommend that you
get one. And I challenge you to look that
word up, Old Testament or new. It's got about, I think, five
or six different names that's given, translated for that word
worm. But in every instance, it means this, wiggling maggot. Every instance. Not a single
instance in which that word worm doesn't mean wiggling maggot. Job 25, verse 4, he says this,
How then can man be justified with God, or how can he be clean
that is born of a woman? Behold, even the moon in it shineth
not, yea, the stars are not pure in his sight, how much less man
that is a Wiggling maggot. You see that? And the Son of
Man, all He produces, wiggling maggots. All men are maggots
and all their sons are the same. And in hell, our Lord tells us,
is a place where the wiggling maggot dieth not. Ain't that
what He said? Where the worm dieth not. That's what it means. As he was
in this world, so shall he be forever and ever. The fly, though it changes outwardly,
never loses its appetite for the flesh. And as I said before,
it loves the dung heap of self-righteous religion. When Paul talked about
his conversion over in Philippians chapter 3, you can read through
there, but most of you, I think, are familiar with it. And he
talks about what his hope used to be. And all his hope was tied
up in self-righteous religion. It was tied up in his bloodline.
It was tied up in his consecration. It was tied up in his zeal. And
it was tied up in all of these things. He was a Pharisee. He'd been taught in religion.
He gained the highest possible position you could get in religion.
Now what did he say about all that? When he began to be converted
of God and began this revelation of truth and light and began
to see Christ for who he was and God for who he was and man
for who he was, what did he say about all that self-righteous
religion? He said, I do count it but dung. Ain't that what
he said? That's right. And that's what religion is.
It's nothing but dung. It's a big dung heap of man's
self-righteousness And the fly loves to swarm the dung heap. Find the dead carcass of a beast
and you're sure to find hundreds of wiggling maggots and swarms
of flies. In Acts chapter 12, Herod, he
revels in what the crowd, he got up and made this big oration
to the crowd. And the crowd said, this is the
voice of God. And he just reveled in that.
He rebelled in that. What a self-righteous rebelling
in this old King Herod. He rebelled in how the crowd
praised him as God. What God do to him? Huh? He devoured him with maggots,
and he was eaten right there on the spot. Nothing more accurately describes
the false profession of religion better than the twofold appearance
of the fly. He's a maggot with wings. That's
what he is. That's what he is. And there's
many things that you can see in the fly that pictures that
professor of religion. His eyes, for one thing. I looked
up the fly on the internet and it says his eyes is made up of
thousands of lenses. Thousands of lenses. He don't
just see like we do out of our two eyes and poke and have one
picture, but he's got all of these lenses and they're all
taking in information from all over the place. Well, that's
an unbeliever. That's how he sees. He's got many eyes. Many eyes. And that false convert's
eyes are divided. He sees the light of natural
reasoning and tradition. Takes in all of his fallen faculties. His emotions, his sight is affected
by false teaching and worldly influence, traditional religion,
and on and on. He'll take his friends who never
read the Bible and they say, well, in my opinion, and he'll
take that. He's got thousands of eyes and
they take in information while the convert has only eyes for
Christ. You remember the scripture over
in the Corinthians where Paul talks about the simplicity of
Christ That word simplicity means singleness. Singleness. He had only eyes for Christ.
That's how you can tell a true believer. And then notice this,
when the fly appears, he's in his final stages before death. Now you hear me. He will not
experience another change. He's in his final stage before
death. Sometimes God saves men out of
religion, but in general, they're in the last stage of reprobation. He saved the Apostle Paul, and
he saved many of us in here out of religion. But most generally,
when this man, when this woman makes this profession of faith,
that's it. That's it. They're in their final
stages before death. I've often told you the story
of my mother-in-law, her friend. She had a lifelong friend and
they had kind of a something similar to a revival. They had
a kind of a Hollywood style evangelist came in there, big name preacher,
and he came in there and preached and he got thousands to come
down the aisle or hundreds or whatever it was and he got them
to make professions of faith and she did that. She did exactly
what they told her to do. She came to the front of the
church and he said, You know, later down the road, you don't
want to go to hell, do you? No. You want to go to heaven,
don't you? Uh-huh. And so on. Well, you believe
Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Uh-huh. Okay, well, you're saved. You're saved. I think she came
back the following Sunday or a couple Sundays after that and
was baptized and never darkened the door of that church again
and went out, 40-some years later, went out to meet God, hanging
on that profession of faith. You see what I'm saying? The
fly is in its last stages of reprobation. He moved now from
the wiggling maggot to something far worse. Far worse. Now he's a fly and he flies around. What do flies do? They lay eggs
in the dead carcass of the beast and they produce other flies.
That's why they're two-fold more the child of hell than the one
who made them. Sometimes God saves men out of
religion, but generally speaking, He don't. The Pharisees and scribes,
He said they'd be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind
lead the blind, they'll both fall in the ditch. Our Lord said,
leave them alone. Ain't that what He told His disciples?
Ephraim. This is Old Testament theology
too. Ephraim, it said, has returned
to his idols. He's joined to his idols. Leave
him alone. That's what the Lord said. Leave
him alone. And in the light of these things,
listen to Paul's words over here in II Thessalonians 2, beginning
in verse 8. Then shall that wicked be revealed,
whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and
shall destroy with the brightness of his coming. Even him whose
coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs
and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness
in them that perish, because they received not the love of
the truth that they might be saved. And for this cause, God
shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie,
that they all might be damned who believed not the truth but
had pleasure in unrighteousness. But we are bound to give thanks
always to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because
God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation. through sanctification
of the Spirit and belief in the truth, whereunto He called you
by our gospel to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus
Christ." Now, this is the division that God separates His people
by. In Isaiah chapter 7, the prophet
speaks of a time yet to come, a glorious day, this day of days,
this gospel age, Whenever you see that in the scripture, now
in that day, that's what he's talking about. He's not talking
about a specific day. He wasn't talking about the day
that Christ appeared, although that's incorporated in it. But
he's talking about this gospel age, this day of revelation and
brightness of the Father's glory. And in that, the prophet speaks
of a time yet to come, this glorious day, this day of days, the gospel
age, when God Himself shall give a sign. A virgin shall conceive
and bring forth a son whose name shall be called Immanuel, God
with us. And of that day he made this
prophetic statement, verse 18, Isaiah chapter 7. It shall come
to pass in that day that the Lord shall hiss for the fly. What fly? The fly that's in the
uppermost part of the rivers of Egypt. He is going to hiss
for the fly and hiss for the bee from Assyria. What is he
going to do it for? The same reason he did it for
back in Egypt, to set a division between his people and to reveal
the plague of false religion to them. In this gospel age,
the Lord has again sent the plague of the flies and He sends it
for the same reason. Now I will say this in closing.
Ecclesiastes chapter 10 verse 1 tells us this about flies. He said, dead flies cause the
ointment of the apothecary. That's the druggist, the true
druggist. He has a good medicine. But dead
flies, listen to it, cause the ointment of the apothecary to
send forth a stinking savor. All these flies are dead spiritually. They're all dead spiritually.
And all spiritual flies, when they get into the true medicine
of God's grace, they always set it in a bad light. I don't care
how you set it before them. You set it before them in the
most careful manner, and they'll go out that door. And he said,
well, he's just saying if a man loves Christ, he can go on sin
and live any way he wants to. Now, that ain't what I said.
But that's what dead flies do to the true medicine. That's
what did fly. They always said it in a bad
light. May God be pleased to hide us
in Christ and the congregation of his own. Hide us over in Goshen
and allow us to see these plagues that we might see come and fall
at his feet as his people. Amen.