out seen and remember Loretta
she's got some kind of ulcer thing on her eye so she's not
feeling well remember her in your prayers also remember those
other requested prayer remember Fred he's going for his PET scan
Friday Friday and then the 27th for his consult right okay remember
Fred in your prayers also sharing standing deer and and Pam driver
a family of Pam driver Remember Dee Parks, Kathy Robinson also. Remember those folks in your
prayer. Any other prayer requests? Okay.
All right, let's begin our worship service with hymn number 212,
Nothing But the Blood. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that
makes me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing
but the blood of Jesus, for my part ? Nothing but the blood of Jesus
? For my cleansing this my plea ? Nothing but the blood of Jesus
? Oh precious is the flow ? That makes me white as snow No other
fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus. Nothing can for sin atone, nothing
but the blood of Jesus. Not of good that I have done,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that
makes me white as snow. No other fount I know. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. This is all my hope and peace,
nothing but the blood of Jesus. This is all my righteousness,
nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that
makes me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing
but the blood of Jesus. In number 222, there is a fountain
filled with blood. ? There is a fountain filled with
blood ? ? Drawn from Emmanuel's veins ? ? And sinners plunged
beneath that flood ? ? Lose all their guilty stains ? ? Lose
all their guilty stains ? Lose all their guilty stains
And sin as floods beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains
The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day. Wash all my sins away. Wash all my sins away. Wash all my sins away. May I, O Val, as He, wash all
my sins away. Dear dying Lamb, I pray. ever lose its power. Till all the ransomed church
of God be saved to sin no more. Be saved to sin no more. Be saved to sin no more. In the ransomed church of God,
be saved to sin no more. E'er since I breathed thy song,
the stream, thy flowing wounds supply, redeeming And shall be till I die. And
shall be till I die. And shall be till I die. Redeeming love has been my theme
and shall be till I die. When this o'er-lisping, stammering
tongue I sigh, I'll sing thy part to save. I'll sing thy part to save. I'll sing thy part to save. Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I'll sing thy part to save. If you have your Bibles, turn
with me, please, to the seventh chapter of Exodus. We'll read verses 14 through
25. And the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh's
heart is hardened. He refuses to let the people
go. Get thee unto Pharaoh in the morning. Lo, he goeth out
unto the water. Now shalt stand by the river's
brink against he come, and the rod which has turned into a serpent
shalt thou take in thine hand. And thou shalt say unto him,
The Lord God of the Hebrews has sent me unto thee, saying, Let
my people go, that we may serve in the wilderness, and behold,
hitherto thou wouldst not hear. Thus saith the Lord, and this
thou shalt know, that I am the Lord. Behold, I will smite with
the rod that is in my hand upon the waters which are in the river,
and they shall be turned to blood. And the fish that is in the river
shall die, and the river shall stink, and the Egyptians shall
loathe to drink the water of the river. The Lord spake unto
Moses, saying to Aaron, Take thy rod, and stretch out thine
hand upon the waters of Egypt, upon the streams, upon the rivers,
upon the ponds, upon all the pools of water. they may become
blood. There may be blood throughout
all the land, both in vessels of wood and vessels of stone.
Moses and Aaron did so as the Lord commanded. He lifted up
the rod and smoked the waters that were in the river and the
side of Pharaoh and in the side of his servants and all the waters
that were in the river were turned to blood. And the fish that was
in the river died and the river stank. and the Egyptians could
not drink the water of the river. There was blood throughout all
the land of Egypt. And magicians of Egypt did so
with their enchantments, and Pharaoh's heart was heartened.
Neither did he hearken unto them, as the Lord had said. Pharaoh
turned and went to his house, and neither did he set his heart
to this also. All the Egyptians digged round
about the river for water to drink, for they could not drink
of the water of the river. and seven days were fulfilled
after the Lord had smitten the river. Let's pray. Our Father
in heaven, most blessed Lord God, King of kings and Lord of
lords, ruler, sustainer, and consummator of all things that
are in this world and this universe, we praise you for your might
and your power, your goodness, your kindness, your tenderheartedness
toward wretched sinners. We thank you for sovereign, effectual
grace that saved our souls, for the mercy that you show us every
day. We thank you, Father, that you
have considered us in the multitude that you chose from the foundation
of the world, whose names you wrote in the Lamb's Book of Life
before the foundation of the world. who in your good time
sent a man to preach the gospel to that they might hear and through
the gospel you gave them life and faith that they would believe
the truth that they were saved by the grace of God through the
shed blood of Jesus Christ. We thank you, Father, that we
can say such things that can be uttered from our poor, helpless
lips and think on the things that are too high for us, too
holy, and yet understand them because you've given us faith
to do so. Father, we pray for those who
are sick and going through trials. We pray especially for Fred as
he's getting ready for the PET scan and later on for the consult
on his lymphoma. We ask, Lord, you be with him
and be with Arlene and the rest of the family ministering to
him. Also, Father, be with those doctors. Help them to understand
and appreciate Help them, Lord, to be able to discern what the
problem is. We pray you to heal him. Use
them to do so. We pray, Father, for Dee Parks
as he continues to battle with his cancer. We ask, Lord, you'd
be with him and Christy and the kids, Moose and Sandy. CJ, Lord, help us to remember
our brothers and sisters as they struggle in this world. pray
for sarah and chris and the boys we ask your help for them we
pray for ourselves tonight as we gather here that you might
be pleased to open up your word to us give us grace cause us
in our minds to understand and our hearts to receive and believe
we know that thou art god there is none beside thee there is
none like unto thee you declare the end from the beginning you
make things happen It couldn't happen, Father. Nothing is impossible
for you. You do all your pleasure. We
bow in great thanksgiving that it's you, our God, our blessed
Savior, who controls all things. Help us now to bow to you and
worship you in spirit and in truth. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Now this is the record of the
first plague in Egypt, pronounced upon Egypt, whereby the Lord
turned the waters of the Nile River and all its tributaries
into blood. Every river, according to this
passage of Scripture, every river, every stream, every brook, every
pond, every rivulet, ran crimson for seven days. The plague was
upon every vessel and cistern and bowl and pitcher in the houses
of the Egyptians, while in Goshen, where the Lord had severed His
people from the Egyptians, the water ran pure and everything
was okay. This plague is attributed to
the hardness of Pharaoh's heart, and his heart was hard because
God had made it so. The Lord had done so that Pharaoh
would not relent until the plagues became so ruinous and the devastation
became so great that Pharaoh himself would willingly send
the people out of the land. This is the first of the plagues.
This plague was upon the lifeline of Egypt. The Nile and its tributaries
were the source of all that pertained to life, supplying agriculture,
livelihood to business, and sustaining herds and flocks. Our Lord told
Moses when Pharaoh was going to be walking by the river for
his morning stroll, I guess, by the river, and he says, you
go where he's at by the river bank, you take the rod from Aaron
or take Aaron's rod and you touch the waters with it and they will
turn to blood. And it touched the life of the
Egyptians because this river was life and it most likely exacerbated
the hatred of the Egyptians toward Israel because in Goshen the
people thrived even to the point that the Lord allowed no dog
to bark against an Israelite. He was controlling everything.
It was a fateful day when Moses handed the rod to Aaron and he
touched the waters with it. The atmosphere filled with the
repulsive odor of fish begin to dying, and that rancid emanation
filled Egyptian nostrils. Egypt became a stink tank, and
the people were loathe to drink of it, and you know how one fish
will make a whole city smell bad. I remember the flood of
93, and the mud under the trailer and under
the church was about five inches deep, and that's where I had
to go fishing. and I had to fish with my nose.
Crawling around until I found some stinky earth and dig down
four inches and find a dead fish. I'm glad I got them all, but
you remember how big Big Cove smelled when all those fish washed
on land. For a while, we were a stinky
place. The Nile River was important,
was very important. The water of life had turned
to the blood of death. There may have been some recompense
involved here. When Moses was born, the Pharaoh
enthroned at the time put out an edict to throw all the Israelite
babies into the Nile and drown them, effectively turning the
Nile at that time into a river of blood and death. This act
of God in some form may be God's vengeance for that horrible act. and that is understood as a precedent
that is set in scripture. Over in Revelation 16, the same
language is used for a plague from one of the angels. Revelation
16, verse 3, it says, And the second angel poured out his vial
upon the sea, and it became as blood of the dead man. And every
living soul died in the sea. The third angel poured out his
vial upon the rivers and the fountains of water, and they
became blood. And I heard the angel of the water say, Thou
art righteous, O Lord, which art, and was, and shall be, because
Thou hast judged thus. For they have shed the blood
of saints and prophets, and Thou hast given them blood to drink,
for they are worthy." So this act back in the days of Moses
may have been an act of vengeance for those babies that had been
thrown into the river. Also we find, as I just read
to you in verse 22, that the magicians and the sorcerers were
able to duplicate this miraculous thing. They did so also, the
Lord said. Though through magic and sleight
of hand and bait or switch or some other flim flam, they were
able to turn water into blood. Where they got the water is not
known and is left for speculation. They might have went to Goshen
to get some, I suppose, because at the time they were doing it,
all the water had already turned to blood. But the DESIRE of the men to
exhibit the POWER of God is the basis and bailiwick of false
and free-will religion. Over in 2 Thessalonians chapter
2 and verse 4 as it describes the son of perdition, as it describes
those who would stand in the Church of God and claim to have
the POWER of God, For salvation belongs to the Lord, but some
will say that salvation belongs to them by their will. Others
say they have the power of the Spirit, have faith-healing powers
and such as that, and they make millions and millions of dollars
doing that sort of thing. In verse 4 of chapter 2 of 2
Thessalonians says, Who opposeth and exalted himself above all
that is called God. You say, I don't know anybody
that does that. If you know someone who believes that God can't save
them unless they let God save them, that person has exalted
himself above all that is called God. That's what they've done. They've said, I'm God. I'm more
powerful than God. I can keep him from doing what
he wants to do. all that is above God, or so
that is worshiped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple
of God, that is in the church, showing himself that he is God,
that he's the one that has power. That's what these magicians did.
That's what these so-called faith healers and men like that on
TV and radio do today. They say they have power. They
have power that normal people don't have. They have second
blessings, and they have power to make the Spirit do things.
I heard one big evangelist say that he actually commanded God
to do things. He commanded Him. He said, We
can command God to do things. Well, if you can command God
to do sin, then that means God is your servant. You're God,
and He's not. And that's what these magicians said. Oh, yeah,
Moses turned the water to blood. We can do that, too. And so they
did. This verse, along with verse
23, indicates that Pharaoh believed the magicians and thus disbelieved
Moses, but the heart that God hardens cannot believe the truth
and never will believe the truth. And according to this, everything
is going exactly to plan. God said, I'm hardening His heart,
Moses. All these plagues you're going
to do, He will not hear you. He will not hear you. I want
us, as old A.D. Mews used to say, take another
lick at this. That's the story that we have
before us. As I was reading this account,
I thought of another miracle. Another miracle came to mind.
At the wedding of Cana, our Lord turned the water into wine. Here
Moses turned the water into blood, and the Lord turned water into
wine. Here is a picture of the effects of law and grace. The
effects of law and grace. What Moses did represents the
effects of the law. Water is life, and in Scripture,
blood is death. Blood is death. Simply put, the
effect of the law in every aspect, every which way it is applied,
is death. Moses turns the water to blood.
The law was added because of transgression, and because of
transgression the Lord said, The soul that sinneth it shall
die. And the word blood and death are interchangeable in scripture.
In fact, in scripture blood is analogous with death. The only
thing the law can do, any and always and forever, the only
thing the law can do is bring about death. That is all it can
do. Look over at Romans chapter 7
just for a moment. Here Paul talks about the effects
of the law as opposed to the effects of grace. In Romans chapter
7 he uses marriage as the example of a law that is not able to
be broken. He says, Now know ye not, brethren,
for I speak to them that know the law, so you will understand
what I am talking about, how that the law hath dominion over
a man as long as a man lives. So if a man is under the law,
that man is under the law as long as he lives. For the woman
which hath a husband is bound by the law to her husband so
long as her husband lives. The husband is a picture of the
law, and the wife is a picture of one who is in submission to
the law. But if the husband be dead, she is loose from the law
of her husband. So if the husband dies, he representing
the law that is forever, if he dies, then she's no longer under
that law. No longer under that law. The
law has no power over her. But if the husband be dead, she
is loose from the law. So then, if while her husband
liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress. She can't be married to two people
at the same time. But if her husband is dead, she
is free from that law so that she is no adulteress, though
she be married to another man. So if her husband dies, she's
not under that husband anymore. She's not under the law anymore.
She's free to marry someone else. Now this is talking about Christ
and Moses. It says, Wherefore, my brethren,
ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ. That's
who we're married to now. that ye should be married to
another, even to him that is raised from the dead, that ye
should bring forth fruit unto God. This is that relationship
Moses brought, turned the water to blood, Christ turned the water
to wine. It says, For when we were in the flesh, that is, when
we were under the law, the motions of sin, which were by the law,
did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto what? Death.
All that the law can ever do, if you're under the law, all
it can ever do is make you bring forth fruit unto death, because
the law kills. That's what Paul said to Corinthians
in the second Corinthian letter in chapter 3. He made that very
clear. He talked about in chapter 4, he says, Therefore seeing
we have this ministry, now the ministry he's talking about is
described in the latter part of chapter 3. he starts back up here in verse
uh... five uh... chapter three he says but not
that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything of ourselves
for our sufficiencies of god and he's talking about preaching
the gospel who has made us able ministers of what the new testament
or the new covenant what was the old covenant the old covenant
was the law of sinai the law given what did it do brings forth
death brings forth death He said in
the New Testament, not of the letter, which is the law, but
of the Spirit, which is of Christ. For the letter, what? Killeth. But the Spirit giveth life. But
if the ministration of death, that's the law, written and engraven
in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could
not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for its glory of its
countenance, which glory was done away with. How shall not
the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious, or more glorious?
For if the ministration of condemnation, that's the law, the ministration
of condemnation, be glory, much more let the ministration of
righteousness exceed in glory. For even that which was made
glorious, that is the law, had no glory in this respect, by
reason of the glory with the excellence. The law had a glory
because it represented the purity and the holiness of God. However,
it had no glory when it was set aside Jesus Christ and his gospel,
which is a more excellent glory. It was like the illustration
that has been used so many times. Tonight, when you go outside,
if it has got dark, you will be able to see stars in the skies.
There'll be plenty of them. Up here in the mountains, we're
privileged because of lack of light from cities and things
to see a lot of stars. To see a lot of stars. We can
see stars. But tomorrow morning, about six o'clock when the sun
rises, where are the stars? They're still there, aren't they?
They haven't gone away. Where are they? They can't be
seen because a more bright and glorious and more excellent star
is now shining. It's shining. It's so bright
that you can't even see the other stars. That's what he's talking
about here. The gospel is so glorious that
when the law is set beside it, you can't even see the law. You
can't even see the law. Seeing then that we have such
hope, we use great plainness of speech. For that which is
done away with was glorious, that's the law, much more that
which remaineth is glorious. What was done away with was the
law. Moses touched his Touched the water of the Nile and it
turned to blood. That is why our Lord came, you see. He was
born of a woman, born under the law. He was born under the law
to redeem them that are under the law. It says in Galatians
chapter 4 and verses 4 and 5. He was born of a woman, born
under the law to redeem them that are under the law. Why?
Because they were under death. And so he was born under death. He was born under the sentence
of death as a human being. With his face set like a flint
toward Jerusalem, he came in this world to die. That's why
he came. There's no other reason for the
incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why they named
him what they named him for. He shall save his people from
their sin. That's what Jesus means. He came to die. He didn't
come to set up an earth of the kingdom. He didn't come as an
example. He came to die. Why? Because He was born under the
Law. He was born under the Law. When our Lord was made sin for
us on the cross, when He gave up His life, it is the same as
Moses turning the water to blood, life and death. Water is life. Christ is called the Water of
Life. The Law was satisfied with the perfect what of Jesus Christ?
His blood, His death. This is how the law was satisfied.
So he came under the law, born of a woman, born under the law
to redeem them that were under the law. So our Lord, however,
turned the water into wine. Water is life and turning it
to wine is talking about receiving life and receiving it more abundantly,
which our Lord said. Wine is symbolic of ease and
joy. I know it can be misused and
it can be called a strong drink and a raging. And drunkenness
is wrong, no matter how well you do it, but wine's not wrong.
Wine's just wine. In the hands of some, it may
become a crutch that they lean on, and they may become drunks
and alcoholics. That happens. But it's not the wine's fault.
In scripture, wine makes the heart of the king merry. In Proverbs
chapter 30, it makes the heart of the king merry. Paul said
to Timothy, if you've got a little upset stomach, take a little
wine. A little wine for the stomach's
sake. There's nothing wrong with that. Our Lord turned the water
into wine, which was symbolic of ease and joy. These are the
effects of grace. Water turned to blood represents
death. Water turned to wine represents
grace. When we receive the wine at the
Lord's table, both of these elements are present. The wine represents
the new covenant in Christ's blood, showing forth His death
until He comes again. Blood and death in those elements
of the Lord's table, but it is also a celebration. We take the
Lord's table, it's a celebration. We'll be doing that this Sunday.
That ordinance, at the same time, is a celebration of what? Our
salvation. So the blood and death of the
Lord Jesus Christ, under the law, under the law, was our salvation,
on the cross, and only on the cross. Moses turned the water
into blood, and Christ turned the water into wine. Did that
happen on the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ? This is the gospel
we preach. It is the good news of how God
has saved His elect. Father, bless us to understand
and pray in Christ's name. Amen.