If you'll take your Bibles now
and turn back with me to Exodus chapter 8, we've been looking at these plagues
of Egypt. There were ten plagues in all,
and each plague given by divine purpose and order. Our God is a God of order and
purpose. He does things in his time as
he will according to his purpose. I'll never forget Brother Mahan
telling me about Ralph Barnard asking him to quote Romans 8.28.
He quoted about half of it and said, Ann, and Ralph said, don't
you know the whole verse? He said, well, yes, sir. He said,
I think I do. And he said, all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them who are the
called according to His purpose. And old Roth screamed out, purpose. He said, God does things on purpose. That's our God. He's the God
of order and purpose. It says, He worketh all things
after the counsel of His own will. And mark it down. Whatever
it is that's going on, be it good or evil, He worketh all
things after the counsel of his own will. Now, there are several
reasons for the plagues. Arthur Pinck gave some of these. The first reason they were given
was to manifest the presence and power of God. That's the
first reason that he gave these plagues. When Aaron's rod transformed
into a serpent, swallowed all the other serpents. It was a
plain declaration to both them and us that nothing that we can
produce can overcome, stop, or prevent God's purpose from coming
to pass. Nothing. Nothing you can produce
can overcome His purpose and His presence and His power. And
then the second reason for giving these plagues is a punishment
for their cruel treatment of God's elect. We're told to be
careful. Be careful how you talk to God's
elect. Be careful how you treat God's
elect because they're angels. They have angels. God has appointed
them angels. And their angels are standing
before the face of their father at all times. All he has to do
is nod that head. That's right. Be careful how
you treat them. This was a punishment. God punished
Cain and put a mark on him and all the earth. Punished him over
the death of Abel, so God judges all those who set themselves
against His people. He said, our Lord said to His
disciples, He taught this. He said, now you go preach. You
go into these towns and villages and homes. And when you go there
and they despise you, He said, he that despises you despises
me. And he that despises me despises
him who sent me. And our Lord said this. He said
it'd be better for you, it'd be better for you to have a millstone. Anybody here know what a millstone
is? That's a huge, huge chunk of stone that they use to grind
flour and stuff with. Huge stone. He said, it's better
off for you to have a millstone tied around your neck and thrown
into the depths of the sea than to offend one of these little
ones. And then thirdly, the plagues of Egypt were given as a judgment
against their pagan idolatry, and it was given in such a way
as to publicly expose their impotence. Now you remember I commented
some on that psalm where he said, He said, I'll have them in derision. And that derision is to be made
a public spectacle of. You remember when they used to,
you read some of the history books where they used to put
men in stocks? That's what that was all about.
They were publicly humiliated. They were brought up there, there
was no torture involved, but they were brought up there and
they stuck their hands and their feet in that thing and closed
it down and there they sat up there and everybody passed by,
laughed at them and threw things at them and all that. And then fourthly, these plagues
plainly demonstrate how God holds men responsible for their actions. He holds men responsible all
through here. He shows that. Every man whose
name was not found written in the Lamb's Book of Life was strictly
judged. Isn't that what it says there
in the Book of Revelations? According to their works. One
fellow told me one time, he said, I don't know about all this gray
stuff. He said, all I want is what's coming to me. I said,
oh, you don't want that. No, you don't want that. You
don't want to be judged according to your works. But that's what's
going on in Egypt. That's what's going on. That's
what they wanted. That's what they declared. And that's what
they got. And then fifthly, these plagues increased in scope and
severity as a judgment against their rebellion their rebellion
and their willing refusal of truth declared by God's messenger
to them. They were judged for it. They
were judged for what they heard. Exodus 8, verse 2, he said, and
if thou refuse. Do you see it? He knew he was
going to refuse. He told Pharaoh, for your own
good, he said, if you refuse, he said, I'll smite your border
with frogs. And then, sixthly, they were
sent as a warning, not just to those in that day, but those
for all times concerning these first five things that I just
gave you. They were warnings to all men.
You remember back in the Old Testament, the Philistines captured
the Ark of the Covenant. And boy, it brought down the
wrath of God on them. They didn't want any part of
that. They called Israel and said, come and get this thing.
Get it out of here. We don't want it. It was a curse to them.
Of course, that's a picture of Christ is what that is. But it
was a curse to them. They wanted rid of it. They didn't
want any part of it. And so they told them. And the
Israelites came and got it. And they brought it back. And
when they brought it back into the camp of Israel, they let
out a mighty shout. The whole outfit, that whole
nation, no telling how many hundreds of thousands of them there, all
screamed out in a shout of joy because they brought that ark
back into the camp. But when the Philistines heard
it, they didn't understand what that was. They didn't understand
what that noise was. And they said, God has come into
their camp. They said, woe is us. Who shall
deliver us out of the hands? Now listen to this. Who shall
deliver us out of the hands of their mighty gods that smote
the Egyptians with all those plagues? That's over in 1 Samuel
chapter 4. You can read about that. God
stamped such an indelible fear upon the nations when he had
finished with these plagues that to this day even the great nations
like the United States and England and France and all these other
nations won't have anything to do with setting themselves in
opposition to that little country over there called Israel. That's
how indelibly God stamped the fear of God in all nations concerning
his people. Now tonight, I want us to look
at this third plague. These plagues are important,
and they teach us a lot about the things that's going on here
today. And I want us to look at this
plague of life. Now, Arthur Pink noted something
else. I'll give that to you before
we get into our actual study. In the first two plagues, Moses
was called to confront Pharaoh. In the third plague, he didn't
say anything to Pharaoh. God just told him to curse the
land. There's no warning, nothing given. He set these plagues. And another
thing he pointed out, and I believe there's a little something to
this. I don't know exactly what it is just yet, but I have to
agree with him. These plagues are set in groups
of threes, and then the last plague The death of the firstborn
is set off all by itself. And in each group of threes,
he confronts Pharaoh with the first two, and then on the third
one, he just curses the land. He warns him twice, and then
he judges him. He warns him two more times,
and then he judges him. And then he warns him two more
times, and then he judges him. And then finally, he just judges
him. But in each of these groups of three, He speaks to him two times and
then he don't speak to him anymore. So let's note this in our study
here that God doesn't always warn men. It's an act of grace
when God warns men. He's under no obligation to warn
men. They were warned in those first two plagues, but God doesn't
warn men all the time. He doesn't do it. Just being
obstinate in their rebellion, old Pharaoh, he brought the hand
of God against his people, and that without warning. Over in
Proverbs chapter 29, verse 1, he makes this statement. You
don't have to turn there because you'll recognize it right away
as soon as I begin to quote it. He that being often reproved,
that hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be cut off. Ain't that
what he said? Suddenly. And that without remedy.
I had no need to confront him because there is no remedy. He
cut off. And against all the professing
Israel that came out of Egypt and for the same reasons that
he smoked the Egyptians, he sent strong judgments against their
rebellion and unbelief. And something that came to me
while I was studying on this very point right here is the
fact that he gave ten times He gave plagues to Egypt. Ten
times he did the same thing to Israel. You remember reading
that? These ten times he said, they're
not going to be a number eleven at the end of it. At the end
of it. His final curse came without
warning and without remedy. Then the second thing that I
want us to look at tonight is the plague itself. Lice. I looked this up in the dictionary
and I was surprised to find this out. This is the first thing
I learned about lice. It's the plural name for that
vermin. Lice. He's not talking about
one. He's talking about many. Louse
is the name when it stands alone. It's a louse. What's a louse? Well, the dictionary says a louse
is a biting, sucking parasite that feeds on the flesh of men
and beasts. That's what it is. They've just
got one purpose in life and that is to feed on the flesh and reproduce
others whose nature is to do the same thing. Lice in general
are associated with uncleanness. You remember you used to go to
school and somebody had a lice man, they isolated him way over
here. You don't get around him, he's
got a lice. And from that word, louse comes
our word lousy. I'm having a lousy day. That's
where it comes from. Strictly speaking, to be lousy
is to be totally infected with lice. That's what the word means.
But from this comes that word lousy and then being a louse
is slang for being a despicable person. That's what it says in
the dictionary. If you're a louse, you're despicable. So, God commanded
Aaron to smite the dust that it might become lice throughout
all the land of Egypt. All right. Now, the third thing
I want you to see in this plague and something I might mention
while I'm on this subject of lice is there are three kinds
of lice. There's a head lice and there's a body lice and then
we're not even going to talk about that third lice. You know
what it is without me mentioning it. The whole man, the whole
man is represented in this little vermin called lice. The whole
man. All of his passions. All of his
wants, all of his lusts, all of his nature is represented
in this little tiny creature, John, you can't even see apart
from a microscope. Represents the whole character
of man. Now thirdly, let me show you
the spiritual lesson here in this pledge. In Revelation chapter
11, verse 8, talking about fallen man, talking about the kingdom
of darkness and natural man's hope. He calls it spiritual Sodom
and Egypt. Now what he's talking about here
in this chapter is this world spiritually speaking. He calls
it Sodom and he calls it Egypt. So that when we're talking about
these plagues and these things that have taken place down in
here in Egypt, we're talking about spiritual lessons and we're
talking about the spiritual condition of this world. Spiritual Egypt,
spiritual Sodom. That's what this world is. The
two witnesses that he talks about over there in Revelations 11,
where this is found, who lay dead in the street, they stood
in spiritual Sodom and spiritual Egypt. They stood in this world,
pastors and evangelists, standing in this evil place, a world steeped
in idolatry and heathenism and moral perversion. The Scripture
said, by one man sin entered into the world, and death by
sin, and so death, spiritual death, spiritual blindness, spiritual
ignorance passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. In
Adam, he said, all died. How many? All of them. All of
them. Well, how far does that go? To
the end of the world. They all died. Man was brought
forth of the dust He was smitten by the rod of God and become
an evil lice to plague the whole world. God smoked the dust because
of man's rebellion and to glorify His name by saving His own people
out of that curse. That's what's taking place down
here in Egypt with this curse of the lice. Man is by nature
a parasite feeding on the flesh and He's there for the glory
of God. That's why God calls him to become
what he become. That's why God cast out Satan
in this earth, allowed Satan to be in his garden, allowed
him to confront Adam. All of these things happen for
a purpose, same as they happened down in Egypt. Same thing happened
in the garden. Remember what I told you, he
worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. Man is, by nature, a parasite. It's his nature, as it is for
lice, to insatiably feed on the flesh, gorging himself time and
again and producing, as it goes, more of the same. That's man. Let me quote you something out
of Isaiah, talking about John the Baptist. The voice said,
cry. And he said, what shall I cry?
All flesh. That's what we're talking about,
isn't it? All flesh is grass. And the glory of man is like
the flower of the field. The flower fadeth because the
Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely, He said, the people
is grass. All natural men feed on the flesh. It's their nature. It's their
appetite. It's their passion. It's their will. Turn with me
to John chapter 3. In John chapter 3, the Lord is
talking to Nicodemus who came to the Lord in the darkness. All that come to Christ come
out of the darkness. That's how they come. They come
out of the darkness. They come to Christ because that's
where they live and that's where they are. And old Nicodemus,
he begins to tell the Lord what he knows. Now that's natural
man. That's the first thing I know
about this vermin who feeds on the flesh. He's proud. He thinks he knows a lot and
he doesn't know anything. He insatiably feeds on this flesh.
And old Nicodemus, he was a master theologian. Master, that's what
rabbi means. He was a rabbi. He held one of
the highest offices in Israel and some of the Those who held
the highest offices are the ones who approved Him, schooled Him,
and taught Him, and gave Him His title. And he comes to the
Lord, and he begins to tell the Lord what he knows. And listen
to what the Lord says to him here in verse 3. He said, Jesus
answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except
a man be born again, he cannot perceive the kingdom of God.
You're talking about things you don't know. That's what the Lord
told him. And he said to him, except you
be born again. And then Nicodemus said to him,
how can a man be born when he's old? That's my question. How can the old man be born?
He can't. He can't. That old man is that
old man. Nicodemus is right. How can he
be born? He can't be born. He can't be
born. There has to be a new creature
born in you. That old creature's already born.
He's already born. He's already old. He's already
infected. How can that old man, how can
a man be born when he's old? Jesus answered, Verily, verily,
I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit,
he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Why? Why? Why must a new man be produced? Verse 6. What's that say? That which is born of the flesh
is flesh. That's all it's ever going to
be, Russell. Flesh. It's not going to evolve into
something better. It's flesh. What's going to happen
to it? Same thing happened to the lice.
It's going to go back to the dust from whence it came. That
which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born
of the Spirit is spirit. I want to start with just the
basics tonight and show you what this flesh is. These lice represent
the nature of man that feeds on the flesh. What is the flesh? What's he talking about? Spiritually
speaking, now I'm talking to you tonight. Naturally, but spiritually
I'm talking to you. What is this verminous beast,
this lice that feeds on the flesh and feeds and gorges itself on
the flesh? That's all it lives for. It just
has one purpose in life and that's to just gorge itself on the flesh
of man and beast. Let me give you just a few of
the basics and talk to you for a little bit here about this
flesh. There's nothing in this flesh to contribute First of
all, to the revelation of God. You can forget pinning somebody
back there in the corner and saying, now listen. You better
listen to what I'm telling you. And you start giving him this
one, two, three. He can't hear you. He don't know what you're
telling him. You might as well be talking
to that door. This flesh contributes nothing to the revelation of
God. Not one thing. Be smart or ignorant. Don't make any difference. We
see somebody come in and you thought, boy, that man had some
potential. I really thought he... Why? Because
he's smart? Huh? Is that what it takes to
understand God? Being smart? Being educated? I'll tell you what the Lord said.
He said, you better take a look at your calling again, because
there are not many wise men after the flesh. Not many. When Peter answered the Lord's
question, as to who they believed him to be, saying, Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God. What did the Lord say to
him? Do you recall? He said, Blessed art thou, Simon
Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee,
but my Father which is in heaven. This flesh contributes nothing,
zero percent, to the revelation of God, not one In John chapter
1, talking about those given power to become sons of God,
those who believed on His name, it says they were born, not of
blood. What else? Not of the will of
the flesh. Ain't that what it says? Nor
of the will of man. That which is flesh, our Lord
said, is flesh. Get it straight. Write it down. Don't leave that. That which
is flesh is flesh, John. It's always going to be flesh.
Its nature is always going to be the same. Feeds, feeds, and
feeds. The Lord was talking to this
religious man, men there. He had them all gathered together,
and He was talking to them about eating His flesh. You remember
that on John chapter 6? talking to them about eating
his flesh and drinking his blood. And those Jews argued and reasoned
among themselves. They debated the issue, saying,
how can this man give us his flesh to eat? How can that be? What could he
possibly mean by that? He's a madman. And they turned,
left. Verse 53, Then Jesus said to
them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except you eat of the flesh
of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you've got no life
in you. Then that debate come to even
those who call themselves His disciples. and followed Him. And they said, this is a hard
saying. Who could hear it? And they turned and went away. The Lord turned to the twelve.
He said, you going to go too? They said, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal
life. And our Lord had this to say
to them in John 6.63. It is the spirit that quickeneth. Now listen, the flesh profiteth
nothing. Nothing. My words are spirit and they
are life. This flesh is occupied by sinful
nature and all that it can produce is natural, fallen, sinful things. That's all it can do. It can't
do anything else, John. God said to Noah, my spirit shall
not always, that is, it shall not continually strive with man,
for he is flesh. He's flesh. And he tells him
what that flesh is. He says his wickedness was great
in the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually. In Galatians chapter 5, verse
19, we're talking about the flesh. I'm talking about what the heart
of a natural man feeds on. He glories in the flesh. He looks
to the flesh. He lives in the flesh. He reasons
in the flesh. They come in here, Nathan, and
they sit down to hear me. And they hear me with their natural
ears and their natural heart. And that's how they reason. And
they weigh that in what? In what they see. In what men
tell them. Galatians 5.19, he said, now
the works of the flesh are these. Here's what this flesh produces.
Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft,
hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, sedition, heresies,
envying, murder, drunkenness, revelings, and all such like.
That's the work of the flesh. In Romans chapter 7, the Apostle
Paul deals with this dual nature of man after he's born of God. And he tells us that he's engaged
in a warfare. A part of him, he calls both
parts I. There are two I's. You read through
Romans 7, you'll see there's two I's all the way through.
And this one I wants to do good, but the other I won't let him.
And that other I wants him to do evil. But the good eye won't
let him. So that neither one can have
their way altogether in this person. Neither one. Paul said,
so that I cannot do the things that I would. He's engaged in warfare. And
he said when he did that which he knew better than to do, it
was no longer he that did it, but sin that dwelled in him. Now watch this. Romans 7, verse
18. For I know, what do you know?
What does the man born of God come to know? What does he know? For I know that in me, that is,
in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. It ain't in there. You're
going to hunt for it. Oh, yes, you are. You're going
to hunt for it. I don't know anybody who don't. They hunt
and look. Boy, they want it to be, but
it ain't there. It ain't there. It ain't there. Man is an unclean vermin. He's
a parasite who feeds on the flesh. He feeds on its passions and
its lusts and its desires. It consumes his mind and his
heart, and nothing short of being born of God can overcome this
nature of sin. Now let me just run through.
If you want to, you can turn with me to the book of Romans.
I'm just going to use the book of Romans. I'm going to go through
here. I want you to see in a few short
verses. My whole message tonight is practically
all Scripture. I think it's all self-explanatory. In Romans chapter 3, verse 20,
summing up the evil nature of man who is under the curse of
sin, He said in Romans 3 verse 20, Therefore by the deeds of
the law there shall no flesh be justified in my sight. Why? Because all flesh is under
sin. That's why. That's why. And it cannot, it is not subject
to the law of God, cannot be subject to the law of God. It's
contrary to the law of God. Romans chapter 4 verse 1, He
said, what did our father Abraham learn about the flesh? What did
he learn? He was a fleshly man. He lived
over there in Mesopotamia. His daddy made idols for a living. He helped his daddy make these
heathen idols. What did Abraham learn about
the flesh? And he said this, he learned that it could not
justify him before God. You read through that chapter.
It could not justify him before God. It could not give him any
confidence in God's promise. And it could not contribute to
his own salvation in any way, shape, form, or fashion. He believed
God. And it was counted to him for
righteousness. The flesh profiteth nothing. And then in Romans chapter
6, verse 19, Paul said, I speak after the manner of men, that
is, addressing their mannerisms, because of the infirmity of your
flesh. He said, as you have yielded
your members, servants, to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity,
even so now yield your members, servants, to righteousness unto
holiness. For when you were servants of
sin, you were free from righteousness. What fruit had you then and those
things whereof you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is
death. But now being made free from sin and become the servants
of God, you have your fruit unto holiness and the end to everlasting
life. For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord. We can't look to this flesh.
This flesh is full of infirmities. It's wicked in its nature. Romans
7, verse 22, he said, for I delight in the law of God after the inward
man, that man of faith, that Christ that's formed in you.
But I see, that is, I perceive another law in my members, warring
against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to
the law of sin that is in my members. Oh, wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death. I thank
God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind,
that is the mind of Christ, I myself serve the law of God, but with
the flesh the law of sin. Now here's the conclusion, Romans
8.1. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are
in Christ Jesus, now listen, who walk not after the flesh,
but after the Spirit. Do you see that? For the law,
verse 2, of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me
free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could
not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own
Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin
in the flesh. In order that the righteousness
of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the
flesh but after the Spirit, For they that are after the flesh,
what do they do? The same thing them lice did.
They gorge themselves on the flesh. They that are after the
flesh do mind the things of the flesh. They run after its passions
and promises. They sit and gloat in its glory. They feed on it. Feed on it. All the time. It's where their
treasure is. It's where their heart is. It's
where their mind is. You see what he's saying here?
They that are after the flesh, they mind the things of the flesh. But they that are after the Spirit,
the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally, fleshly minded
is death. But to be spiritually minded
is life and peace. Here's the conclusion, verse
8. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. Can't do it. The revelation or manifestation
of the lice is not something magicians could produce with
their enchantments. It can only be seen by the smiting
of the rod in the hand of God's priest. That's how those lice
came into being. That's how they're seen. When
God, in God's purpose, He'll manifest those lights. When He
does, you'll see them. You'll see them. And when you do, you'll cry with
these magicians. This is the finger of God. Now,
I'm going to tell you something. I've been to church most of my
life. Sitting in them churches, I can remember like it was tomorrow. I can remember how they talked
about things and how they talked about things that they did for
the Lord and spiritual things and how they gloried in them
things. And they'd have their little testimonials and walking
down aisles and all this, even the hymns that they sung. I remember
all those things there. But I'll tell you one thing I
never heard the whole time I was in there. All flesh is grass. I never heard that. Why? Because God never manifests that
in their presence. They know nothing whatsoever
about sin. Sin. And the first work in the
Kingdom of God is the revelation of sin. He's going to make these
Israelites gather over here in Goshen. Now from here on out,
these plagues, I have no reason to believe that these plagues
didn't, that these lives didn't go right on over on Israel too.
But from this point on, nothing else gets on Israel. From the
time of this revelation, the flies and the locusts and nothing
else went into Goshen. Everything else fell on Egypt
alone. Those magicians cried, this is
the finger of God. And man talks about his sin and
his repentance and his revelation of sin and he glories in these
fleshly ideas of his conversion until he sees the presence and
power of God in this smitten dust. When he sees that, when
he sees the dust smitten, and what is that but man? God took
man from the dust, and He smoked the man. And that man become
a lice in the eyes of God. He become a plague in all earth.
What plagues this earth is man. That's where the plague is. You
listen to how religion talks. I'll tell you what we need to
do. We need to get out here and march up and down the road against
pornography. And we need to get out here and
march up and down the road against alcohol. Get this county dry. Get that stuff out of here. We
need to get out and march against this and march against that.
And they don't know all the while they're just feeding on the flesh.
That's all that is. Feeding on the flesh, feeding
on the flesh. But I'll tell you when God shows you what that
is. He shows you what you are, just a vermin of what we are,
feeding on flesh, feeding on the flesh. Our Father, we thank You for
the study tonight. I pray that these words will
not just be words, but that You'll open our eyes to see our own
nature, to see what we are, that we might turn from it. and
that we might learn to despise it, and that we might learn not
to hope in it and glory in it, but to turn us to You and shut
us up to Your grace and Your mercy and Your wisdom. We ask
You for Christ's sake. Amen.