Exodus 8–10

Exodus chapter 8. I'll give you a minute to get there. Actually, while you're turning there, I want to show you a passage from 1 Corinthians on the screen. This is a particularly important passage as we're studying really anything through the Old Testament. It says, 1 Corinthians 10:6 (ESV)

… Now these things took place as examples for us… And when Paul wrote that statement, he was referring to Israel's history and how it is given to us in the Scripture. And so he says these things are given to us as examples. The Old Testament is an example. We can look at it and we can say, hey we can learn from this when we should be learning from it. We should be saying to ourselves, hey this is an example of the way God works the issues that come up when we sin. But there's also something that is important for us to understand from the Old Testament. God has factored into the events and people and circumstances of the Old Testament, types and shadows of things that are to come. You might hear us use that term from time to time. That is a type, we'll say, or a shadow, or even a prefiguration of something that is to come. Let me put a definition of, basically, this on the screen. The definition of this type is, Definition: A person, event or situation becomes a type or a shadow when it serves as a prophetic foretelling of future events or persons.

A person, event or situation becomes a type or a shadow when it serves as a prophetic foretelling of future events or persons. Alright? And there's a lot of things that we see in the Bible, particularly through the Old Testament that serve for us as types and shadows. And so what I did is I… I'm thinking here of this Book of Exodus that we're going through right now. And then we're going to get into, eventually, we're going to get into the Book of Joshua after the wilderness wanderings. And throughout the course of these 2 books, there are so many types and shadows. Let me put this first list of types in Exodus, and then also in Joshua. You have, Types in Exodus and Joshua  Egypt -  Pharaoh -  The people of Israel -  Passover -  The Exodus -  Crossing the Red Sea -  Wilderness Wanderings -  Crossing the Jordan -  Battles for the land - Egypt, you have Pharaoh, you have, The people of Israel. You have Passover, which we're going to be getting to here soon. Then, The Exodus, which is the leaving of the Jews from Egypt. There's the Crossing of the Red Sea, the Wilderness Wanderings. Finally the Crossing of the Jordan, there's about a 40 year gap between those two. And then we finally have the Battles for the land that go on during the Book of Joshua. And all of these things are types of something that we can look at in the New Testament. Let me fill these out for you.

Types in Exodus and Joshua  Egypt - A type of the world  Pharaoh – A type of Satan  The people of Israel – A type of people enslaved  Passover – A type of sheltering under the blood of the Lamb  The Exodus – A type of believers exiting the world  Crossing the Red Sea – A type of water baptism  Wilderness Wanderings – A type of learning to know God  Crossing the Jordan – A type of entering the promises of God  Battles for the land – A type of learning to walk by faith Egypt is a type of the world. Pharaoh is a type of Satan, or the enemy, if you will, who wants to keep us enslaved. The people of Israel are God's people or basically just people in slavery to the world, enslaved by the world, in the world, however you want to see it. Passover is a type of people sheltering under the blood of the Lamb, being saved from death. The Exodus itself is a type of believers exiting the world. The Crossing of the Red Sea is a type of water baptism. The Wilderness Wanderings is a type of learning to know God and to understand His Word and the challenges that come with that. The Crossing of the Jordan is a type of entering into the promises of God. And then the Battles for the land is a type of learning to walk by faith. We think sometimes that once you get saved, it's like, yippee!, now I'm saved and everything's going to be cool. No, that's when the battles start. You get saved and you start walking with God, you start learning about His Word. You start learning His promises and then you're challenged to walk out those promises, and guess what you deal with? You deal with battles. Every step of the way, you deal with battles. And so when Christians, when I hear them talking about the battles they're going through, it's like I don't know what's going on in my life, but everything is just so hard. There's just battles everywhere I turn, and wherever I seem to want to go, there's just something standing in my way. I'm like, welcome to the Christian life, this is it. Did you think it was something else? No.

Once you get into the land of promise, which is all the you've learned and understood and embrace the promises of God, now comes the battle, the hard part the difficulty. Because the enemy isn't just going to give up all these things and just go, well, then here you go. I see you're here in the promised land, here, just take the land. He's going to challenge you every step of the way and say, no, you can't come in here. And that's where you have to come back on faith and say, well, see, God promised, so I'm going to take that promise, I'm going to stand on that promise. I'm going to go forward by faith. That's hard. That is a hard thing to do. I want you to keep those in mind as we go through this. You guys might remember the last time we were in Exodus, we dealt with the very first of the plagues that came upon the land of Egypt, and it was the turning of the Nile to blood. And that must have been a terrible, terrible thing, but Pharaoh still hardened his heart afterward and would not let the people go. So as we pick it up in chapter 8 here, we come to the second of the plagues. It says,

By the way, apparently the Egyptians worshipped some kind of a pagan frog goddess who had something to do with fertility. Because they saw frogs populating as fast as they tend to do, they decided that there was some god of fertility that looked like a frog and they had an image that looked like that. Honestly, if I was Pharaoh, I'd have been done after plague number 2. I’d just said, as soon as the frogs came up on the land, I just said, take it, go, you can leave, take the frogs with you, I'm done, we're good, we'll stop building pyramids right here or whatever else we do with these people. I hate frogs. I just hate frogs. I tell you, when I was in seventh grade, we had to dissect them and that was like the worst thing in the world, because I just frogs.... Yeah, they're slimy, ugly. Anyway, forget it. Let's keep going. Okay.

Verse 5 says,

And I would have, if I was Pharaoh, I would have said how is that fixing the problem? Guys, I thought you were on my side, and they're just making more frogs. But, anyway. What else? It says,

Now I'm going to stop you here because as you know, what we've just read is a recurring theme, almost like a broken record. This is what we see. We see Pharaoh's hardness of heart. We see a plague come. We see Pharaoh petitioning Moses to mediate the situation as it relates to that plague. We see the situation abating in some way, shape, or form. And then we see, of course, Pharaoh once again hardening his heart. There are slight variations as we go through here, but this is the way it's going to essentially go. And

That's another mystery to me. I would have said, now, right this minute. But he said tomorrow. Anyway, and

Boy I tell you. “15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the LORD had said.” Now, I want you to notice very carefully there in verse 15, who hardened Pharaoh's heart. Says, “he hardened his heart” doesn't it? And that's again going to be a recurring theme until we get toward the very end. It's going to say, Pharaoh hardened his heart, Pharaoh hardened his heart, Pharaoh hardened his heart, Pharaoh hardened his heart, and then it's going to say, God hardened Pharaoh's heart. In other words, we talked about this at the beginning of Exodus. We talked about the fact that eventually, because of his unrepentant, rebellious attitude toward the things of the Lord, God eventually gave him over that rebellion and to that condition of a hard heart. And when someone is given over, we talked about how the apostle Paul wrote about that in Romans chapter 1. It's a very serious sort of a situation And it's that situation that's past the point of no return. That's essentially what's going to happen to Pharaoh, but for right now he is still hardening his own heart. All right. We move on. Verse 16,

By the way, if anyone here has a New King James (NKJV) Bible that you're reading, yours says, “lice.” But if you take a notice of…, there's a footnote there, and it'll say, it might be gnats. And then if you have a New American Standard Bible (NASB), yours, like the ESV, says, gnats, with a footnote saying it might be lice. You can tell what's going on here, or as we used to call them in grade school, cooties. Right? Yeah, so terrible, terrible stuff. Verse 17,

I remember a number of years ago, when was it? Back around 2010. Do you guys remember some of you that were around here? We had these black flies things that were just terrible one summer, and everybody was walking around with one of those face nets. When you'd go out to mow the lawn, you'd have to wear a face net because these things would just attack you and it was terrible. I'm sure it wasn't anything close to what the Egyptians were dealing with here from the Lord. But boy, I was ready, I'll tell you, to move away that summer. But anyway, we move on here. Verse 20. “Then the LORD said to Moses, “Rise up early in the morning and present yourself to Pharaoh, as he goes out to the water, and say to him, ‘Thus says the LORD, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. 21 Or else, if you will not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies on you and your servants and your people, and into your houses.” By the way, again, flies is somewhat of a guess because what the Hebrew literally says is, “I will send swarms on you and your people.” It doesn't specify, but the swarm or the word that's used here for swarm in the Hebrew refers to pesky insects. Could be flies, could be something like that, similar, whatever. The ESV translators picked one and put flies. “And the houses of the Egyptians shall be filled with swarms of flies, (the Hebrew says, “filled with swarms”) and also the ground on which they stand.” But check this out. Verse 22, “But on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, where my people dwell, so that no swarms of flies shall be there, that you may know that I am the LORD in the midst of the earth. 23 Thus I will put a division (if you will, a distinction) between my people and your people. Tomorrow this sign shall happen.”’” Isn't it cool to know that God knows who are His and He has a distinction between the people of the world and the people that are children of God. And how are we children of God? By grace through faith. Right? But God makes a distinction. And verse 24,

28 So Pharaoh said, “I will let you go to sacrifice to the LORD your God in the wilderness; only you must not go very far away. Plead for me.” 29 Then Moses said, “Behold, I am going out from you and I will plead with the LORD that the swarms of flies may depart from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people, tomorrow. Only let not Pharaoh cheat again by not letting the people go to sacrifice to the LORD.” 30 So Moses went out from Pharaoh and prayed to the LORD. 31 And the LORD did as Moses asked, and removed the swarms of flies from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people; not one remained. 32 But Pharaoh hardened his heart (there it is again) this time also, and did not let the people go.” So same thing. Like they say, second verse, same as the first. Chapter 9, here we go. The fifth plague. “Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. 2 For if you refuse to let them go and still hold them, 3 behold, the hand of the LORD will fall with a very severe plague upon your livestock that are in the field, the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds, and the flocks. 4 But the LORD will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, so that nothing of all that belongs to the people of Israel shall die.”’” 5 And the LORD set a time, saying, “Tomorrow the LORD will do this thing in the land.” 6 And the next day the LORD did this thing. All the livestock of the Egyptians died, but not one of the livestock of the people of Israel died. 7 And Pharaoh sent, and behold, not one of the livestock of Israel was dead.” So in other words, Pharaoh sent people over to the, to Goshen to find out if that in fact was going to be the case, if that distinction was going to be made. And he found out that it was in fact true, but that wasn't enough. “But the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go. 8 And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Take handfuls of soot from the kiln, and let Moses throw them in the air in the sight of Pharaoh. 9 It shall become fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and become boils breaking out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt.” 10 So they took soot from the kiln and stood before Pharaoh. And Moses threw it in the air, and it became boils breaking out in sores on man and beast. 11 And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils came upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians. 12 But the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the LORD had spoken to Moses.” Now, at this particular point, you might be beginning to wonder, why is it the Lord is doing this? Why is the Lord allowing the heart of Pharaoh to be hardened like this? Why is He giving him over to this condition of hardness? Well, it's during this next and the seventh plague that the Lord is going to explain this. So let's read this. Verse 13. “Then the LORD said to Moses, “Rise up early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. 14 For this time I will send all my plagues on you yourself, and on your servants and your people, (here it is) so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth.” In other words, what God is saying to Pharaoh, you have worshiped a multiplicity of gods. You have even been so deluded that you have believed yourself to be a god. But I am going to show you that there is no one like Me in all the earth. Verse 15. And I want you to notice what the Lord says here to Pharaoh. “For by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth.” In other words, God is saying, I didn't have to go through all this. I didn't have to keep giving you opportunities. I didn't have to do this. I could have just said, that's it, you're done. That's it. Just one quick pestilence, one quick issue, and it's all done. It's all over. You're gone. Just like that. But He went on to say in verse 16, “But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth. And it still is being proclaimed in all of the earth today. Here we are reading the Book of Exodus. We're reading how this is what the Lord did in Egypt. And what's interesting is that we have biblical references throughout the old Testament where people recalled these events, the plagues and the judgments that fell upon the nation of Egypt hundreds of years later. These things were remembered by the people and God's name was proclaimed and is proclaimed in all the earth, as I said, even to this day. But I want you to notice what the Lord says to Pharaoh here in verse 17.

And I want you to notice verse 20. It says,

Interesting statement, isn't it? Who “feared the word of the LORD…” You can see here, can't you, that phrase, “feared the word of the LORD…” is basically synonymous with, reverently believed. Okay? Reverently believed the word. God speaks and if there is a reverent belief, then we go, yeah that's true. What was just said right there, that's true. And I know that it's true and I am absolutely positive that it's true. Now here's the interesting thing about that. Here we are, now I'm assuming that most of us in this room are Christians and what they mean by that is that we've put our faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. And so we're born again. We're children of God. We still struggle with this. We still struggle with reverently believing the Word, we still do. I mean there are times when, I mean, it's happened in my life, it happens with other people's lives. They're going through a situation, and I'll remind them of something from the Word, which they know it's in the Bible, but they've just let go of any kind of a reverent belief that, that statement is in fact true. It happens all the time. Sometimes it happens because we're so discouraged because of what's happening in our lives. Sometimes it happens because we've listened to the whisperings of the evil one who has come to whisper and say, that's not true. And we believed it. And isn’t that funny, we believe Satan over God sometimes. Yes, believers will believe Satan over God from time to time. When I have a born again believer come to me and say, I don't think God loves me anymore, I know what I'm dealing with. I'm dealing with someone who's believed a lie over the truth. They've let go of a reverent belief and faith in God's Word, and they've embraced the opposite. And it's crazy. But here are the Egyptians who have watched these plagues come and go over the course of, we're not even sure how long. And it says, “…whoever feared the word of the LORD...” There's another passage in the Old Testament where, I didn't look it up ahead of time, it just popped into my head. It's in one of the prophets, I know. But there's a statement that talks about, he “who trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66:2) And I I've always loved that statement, and whenever I come across it in the Word, I'm always convicted of my occasional unwillingness to tremble at His Word. And I usually pause when I read that passage and I say, Lord, this is a good reminder. Help me, help me to always tremble at your Word. To fear the Word of the Lord. Not in a sense that I'm afraid to read it, but I believe it. I have a reverent belief and faith in the word of God. Here you got these pagans who are reverently believing what God is saying related to hurrying and getting their servants and livestock undercover, because it says in verse 21,

So there were people that said, ah, it's a bunch of hooey, even after all this, people thought this was still not going to happen. Verse 22.

Guys, this is deafening thunder, crushing hail, but it's mingled with fire. I've never seen hail with fire. I hope I never do. But this is what's going on. This is incredible. And it says in verse 24,

Have you ever heard thunder that didn't stop? Usually, and I've been living here in this part of the world for about 33 years. And we get occasional thunder here in eastern Oregon, western Idaho. But it I've never once heard it just go continually here. It does in the Midwest where Sue and I were born and raised, and it usually does when there are tornadoes, but it is really interesting. We were back for something in Minnesota. I can't remember what we were there for. Anyway, there were tornadoes while we were there, and the thunder was constant, did not let up. And I got to tell you, it's eerie. It just keeps going, doesn't pause, just keeps going. And it was even quite a ways away. We could hear it well, but can you imagine if it's like right over top of you? It’s deafening, and it won't stop. I had to just been emotionally draining. Let alone everything else that was going along with it. Verse 25 says,

So this wasn't happening there. “27 Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, “This time I have sinned;…”” Don't you like that? I didn't sin the other times. But this time, okay, I'm willing to admit it. I've sinned. “…the LORD is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong. 28 Plead with the LORD, for there has been enough of God's thunder and hail. I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer.” 29 Moses said to him, “As soon as I have gone out of the city, I will stretch out my hands to the LORD. The thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail, so that you may know that the earth is the LORD's. 30 But as for you and your servants, I know that you do not yet fear the LORD God.”” So Moses isn't being taken by any of these words that Pharaoh was saying. Now, I want you to notice verse 31 and verse 32. They're given in the ESV parenthetically. I don't know if you have a different translation, I'm not sure if yours appears that way. But it simply says,

Now, this is a notation that is given to you and me so that we will understand that Pharaoh would see this situation for what it was. And he would say, well, all of the crops that had begun to come up and bud, they're ruined, but there's other crops that haven't yet and so we're still going to be okay. Okay, that's why this comment is being given to us. It's going to be the excuse essentially. We're still going to be okay. Verse 33.

Chapter 10.

You guys have heard me talk about this in the past, this biblical exhortation to tell our children. Tell our children what the Lord has done in our lives that our kids will hear. If the Lord has brought healing, if the Lord has brought restoration, if the Lord has answered prayer, your kids need to hear it. Your grandkids need to hear about it. They need to hear that you prayed and God was faithful. Why? So that they may know that He is the Lord. So they might hear it from you. It's your testimony for heaven's sake, and it's an important thing to share. God says it right here.

(in other words, this is going to be the mother of all locust infestations, and) Then he turned and went out from Pharaoh.

--- 7 Then Pharaoh's servants said to him, “How long shall this man be a snare to us? Let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God. Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?” 8 So Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh. And he said to them, “Go, serve the LORD your God. But which ones are to go?” 9 Moses said, “We will go with our young and our old. We will go with our sons and daughters and with our flocks and herds, for we must hold a feast to the LORD.” 10 But he said to them, “The LORD be with you, if ever I let you and your little ones go! Look, you have some evil purpose in mind. 11 No! Go, the men among you, and serve the LORD, for that is what you are asking.” And they were driven out from Pharaoh's presence. 12 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt for the locusts, so that they may come upon the land of Egypt and eat every plant in the land, all that the hail has left.” 13 So Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt, and the LORD brought an east wind upon the land all that day and all that night. When it was morning, the east wind had brought the locusts.” Now you might be thinking, well, what's the big deal? They're just grasshoppers, and essentially they are. But what you may not know is that an adult desert locust can consume its own body weight in food in a day. And if you bring that into focus, when you think about a swarm of locusts, that means that just one swarm of locusts has the potential to eat the same amount of crops in one day as 35,000 people. I looked it up. 35,000 people in a day. So these little critters can really munch it down. Let me tell you and these boogers are mobile, too. Let me tell you. For instance, I read a fact that in, back in 1988, a swarm of locusts set out from West Africa and made it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean islands in 10 days. Isn't that incredible? They went across the ocean and that's 3,000 miles, over 3,000 miles, in 10 days. And so they can move it's not like you can say, well, they have locust problems over there. Oh, they could just easily come over here and do their stuff. By the way, I found that out of the National Geographic website so I'm pretty sure it's factual. Anyway, so these are nasty creatures. And it says in verse 14, “The locusts came up over all the land of Egypt and settled on the whole country of Egypt, such a dense swarm of locusts as had never been before, nor ever will be again. 15 They covered the face of the whole land, so that the land was darkened,…” And that's what I've heard about locusts. When they're flying over an area, they literally can block out the sun. The swarms can be large. And it says “… they ate all the plants in the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left. Not a green thing remained, neither tree nor plant of the field, through all the land of Egypt.” Verse 16, “Then Pharaoh hastily called Moses and Aaron and said, “I have sinned against the LORD your God, and against you. 17 Now therefore, forgive my sin, please, only this once, and plead with the LORD your God only to remove this death from me.”” It almost sounds like he's repenting, doesn't it? I mean, he says, I've sinned. I have sinned against the Lord. You know who else said I have sinned against the Lord? Judas. I guess we know there's such a thing as false repentance, isn't there? If a person can recognize their sin and not turn from it. It's very possible. Just because somebody cries and says, I'm sorry, and this is terrible, and whatever, that doesn't mean they've repented. Not at all. They were sorrowful, yes. But Paul tells us in the New Testament there's such a thing as worldly sorrow and he says it leads to death. (2 Corinthians 7:10) And worldly sorrow is basically sorry I got caught. Sorry that I'm not able to sin as freely as I used to. Sorry that the party's over, as they say. And then there's such a thing as godly sorrow, which leads to repentance and brings life. And as you know, repentance is turning away. It's having a change of heart, a change of mind, which perpetuates a change of direction. And that's what brings life. And when we hear Pharaoh saying, I've sinned. Forgive my sin, plead with the Lord, remove this death from me. Doesn't mean that there's a concerned heart here. Verse 18, “So he went out from Pharaoh and pleaded with the LORD. 19 And the LORD turned the wind into a very strong west wind, which lifted the locusts and drove them into the Red Sea. Not a single locust was left in all the country of Egypt. 20 But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go.” ---

Verse 21, “Then the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, (now I want you to notice how God describes this darkness. He says) a darkness to be felt.”” Isn't that fascinating? You have to believe that there is a spiritual element to this darkness. This is not just the sun being blackened or covered. This is not an eclipse. This is a spiritual darkness that is felt. You can feel the darkness. Crazy. I mean, it just makes your skin crawl just thinking about it. Verse 22.

Can you imagine? I mean, just, of course this is what's this to God? He can make it dark in one place and light in another, but we read this and we're I would have loved to have seen that. It’s like you walk across the border and it's just light, pretty crazy. And

What's Pharaoh doing here? He's trying to get Moses to compromise, isn't he? And that's one of the reasons, you see, we don't just consider Pharaoh a type of Satan simply because he wanted to keep them in bondage. It's because he also acts like the enemy in the sense that when we begin to come toward the Lord and we begin to make our way to the Lord, the enemy will always try to bring compromises somewhere in the equation. Well that's fine, you can go to church, but you don't want to start turning into one of those fanatics. You don't want to be going to church every week for heaven's sakes. And some people go more than once a week. Let me tell you something, you don't want to turn into one of those people. Right? Compromise. You can be a Christian and you can still just carry on the way you always did. I want you to, I want you to see here how Moses responds,

And so what you see there is Moses saying, I will not budge. You can throw out all the compromises that you can think of, but I'm not going to budge.

Here's my question to you. Are you going to budge when it comes to the morality of this world and all the things that the world is trying to get you to compromise about? Because there's all kinds of things, everything. From the way you parent, to relationships, to homosexuality, to all these things, to whether or not using this word or this kind of language is… Yeah, it's like people are getting used to it. They don't even care much anymore. You drop the F bomb. Who cares? Yeah. People do it all the time. It just isn't… Yeah. And we start to compromise, even as Christians. I had a guy once tell me he was working out at the prison. He says, it's really tough to be out at the prison working as a believer. He said there's a lot of the guards and stuff use some pretty rough language. And he said, I found that I pretty much had to use the same language around the inmates or they just wouldn't listen. And we were quiet for a minute. We were driving in a car together and he knew that I wasn't saying anything. So he finally turned to me and he goes, what do you think of that? I said, I think that's a compromise. It's a compromise of who you are, pure and simple. This is the threat. This is what's happening. I see commercials. The world is so desperately trying to normalize immorality, sexual deviancy. They're trying very hard to normalize it. You live together and you're not married? Who cares? Everybody does that. That's not a sin. Yes, it is. That's called sexual immorality. If you're living together outside of wedlock, that's a sin. Deal with it. Don't compromise. Now that doesn't mean when we say don't compromise, it doesn't mean we go around talking to people out in the world, like and just shaking our fist in their face. But when it comes down to right and wrong, we need to speak the truth in love. We need to be willing to speak the truth in love, but you're never going to do that if you're always compromising. Speak it in love. Hey, that's wrong. That's wrong and I'm not going to compromise on it. I love here that Moses doesn't budge. He said, oh, we're not going to leave, we're not going to leave one goat behind. We're not going to leave one hoof of one goat behind it's all coming with us. He says

--- 28 Then Pharaoh said to him, “Get away from me;…” Notice Pharaoh's not willing to compromise on his side of things, so he says. “Get away from me; take care never to see my face again, for on the day you see my face you shall die.” 29 Moses said, “As you say! I will not see your face again.”” Well, this is going to set us up for plague number 10. And we're going to take an entire Wednesday to deal with the 10th plague, because the 10th plague is the plague of death that came upon Egypt through the Passover. But Passover has such powerful implications on our understanding of who we are as believers, how we're saved and how the Lord has rescued us, that we're going to take time to really look at that. We're going to look at some New Testament passages that connect the dots for us related to Passover, and I think you're going to find it a very interesting and important study. So we'll do that next time. So kids are going to be done in about 13 minutes. All right. So we're going to give you a little bit of time to fellowship so let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You so much for the Word that You've given to us. And Lord, we know that we're living here as Christians today in a really dark and broken time. The world in which we live is just literally given over to sexual immorality and duplicity and evil of every sort. But Lord, You've called us to simply be different. The problem Lord is that we can't do it in our own strength. We confess to You today that apart from the power of your Holy Spirit living within us. We cannot say no to the compromises. We cannot say no to the temptations. We cannot say no to the enemy. But Lord, through Your Holy Spirit, we confess today that You have given us everything we need for life and for godliness. And as we remind ourselves of that tonight, we just draw close to You. We draw near and we pray that You would strengthen us to live a life of no compromise. Not in a haughty or angry spirit, but in a spirit of love and devotion and truth. And we pray that you would fill us with your Holy Spirit and enable us through the power of Your Spirit to live for You in such a way that the world would see our lives and they would be drawn to the Savior.

We thank you and praise you for the opportunity to spend time tonight in the scriptures, and we ask You to fill our hearts with truth as we go forward. And we ask it in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Redeemer, our King, and all God's people said together, amen. God bless you. Have a good rest of your evening. ---