Our first passage from Exodus is Exodus, Chapter 7, verses 14 through 25. Let’s give our attention now to the reading of God’s holy and inerrant word.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is hardened. He refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he is going out to the water. Stand on the bank of the Nile to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that turned into a serpent. And you shall say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you, saying, Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness. But so far you have not obeyed.’ Thus says the Lord, ‘By this you shall know that I am the Lord. Behold, with the staff that is in my hand, I will strike the water that is in the Nile and it shall turn into blood. The fish in the Nile shall die, and the Nile will stink. And the Egyptians will grow weary of drinking water from the Nile.'”

And the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, over their canals and their ponds and all their pools of water, so that they may become blood. And there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, even in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.'”

Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded. In the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants, he lifted up the staff and struck the water in the Nile. And all the water in the Nile turned into blood. And the fish in the Nile died, and the Nile stank, so that the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile. There was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. But the magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts. So Pharaoh’s heart remained hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said. Pharaoh turned and went into his house. And he did not take even this to heart. And all the Egyptians dug along the Nile for water to drink, for they could not drink the water of the Nile. Seven full days passed after the Lord had struck the Nile.

And now turn to chapter 11, verses 1 through 10. Chapter 11, verses 1 through 10. The Lord said to Moses, “Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward, he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely. Speak now in the hearing of the people, that they ask every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold jewelry.”

And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt and in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of his people. So Moses said, “Thus says the Lord, ‘About midnight, I will go out in the midst of Egypt. And every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. From the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill. And all the firstborn of the cattle. There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, and such as there has never been nor ever will be again. But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast. That you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, Get out, you and all the people who follow you.’ And after that I will go out.”

And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh will not listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.” Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh. And the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.

And now let’s turn to the New Testament for our New Testament reading. This is Second Thessalonians, chapter 1, verses 5 through 12. Second Thessalonians 1, 5, 12. As we’ll see, the ten plagues are a picture of the day of judgment that will take place when Jesus returns. It will be a day of judgment for those who have not repented and come to faith in Christ, but a day of salvation for those who belong to Christ. And our chapter or our passage from First Thessalonians describes that to us. So, First Thessalonians or Second, I’m sorry, Second Thessalonians, chapter 5. Second Thessalonians, chapter 1, verses 5 through 12. Second Thessalonians, Chapter 1, verses 5 through 12.

“This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering. Since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted, as well as to us. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed. Because our testimony to you was believed to this end. We always pray for you that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” Let’s turn back to Exodus, Exodus, chapter seven. This will be the main passage that we’ll focus on this morning.

When I was a kid, one of the constant jokes that I heard, a joke that I got tired of really fast, was that some kid would come up to me and he would say, “Beam me up, Scotty.” And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, probably you’re under the age of 40 or so. But “beam me up, Scotty” was a phrase from the old TV show Star Trek. When somebody from the crew of the spaceship USS Enterprise was out visiting a planet or some other place and he needed to get back to the spaceship, he would open up his little radio transmitter and he would say to the spaceship’s engineer, whose name was Scotty, he would say, “Beam me up, Scotty.” And that person would be instantly transported from wherever he was back to the spaceship.

Now, God is all powerful and he can do anything that he wills. And we might wonder why, instead of these ten plagues, God simply didn’t beam up his people or beam them away into the wilderness, or perhaps even beam them straight into the promised land. That certainly would have caused or would have saved the Israelites a lot of trouble. It would have saved the Egyptians a lot of misery. And God certainly could have done that. God is omnipotent. That would have been no problem for him at all.

But the Lord has an infinitely wise and a holy and good purpose for all that he does and for the way he does what he does. And we know what his purpose was in delivering his people from the land of Egypt through this means, through these 10 terrible plagues that he inflicted on the Egyptians. We know what God’s purpose was in doing this. Because throughout this passage, or throughout the account of the ten plagues, the Lord declares over and over again what his purpose is. And that is that the Egyptians would come to know that he is the Lord, that He will make Himself known in this way.

For example, in chapter 7, verse 5, the Lord says this: “The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel, Israel among them, that they will know that he is the Lord.” Back in chapter five, verse two, Pharaoh said to Moses and Aaron, he said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord. And moreover, I will not let him go.”

And so Moses at first, or rather Pharaoh at first, he declares that he does not know the Lord. But by the end of the 10 plagues, Pharaoh receives quite an education in the knowledge of God. And he comes to know the Lord. Sadly for him, not in a way that brings salvation, but in a way that forced him to acknowledge that the Lord, that he is the true God of heaven and earth, and he is the true king and ruler over the Egyptians and over all people. The Israelites as well would come to know the Lord better as a result of the 10 plagues. They would come to know the Lord as their powerful and gracious savior. And God’s will in the 10 plagues was not just that the Pharaoh and the Egyptians then, and the Israelites then, that they would come to know the Lord, but his purpose was that all people at all times and all places would know that the Lord, the God of Israel, that he is the true God. He is the maker of, and ruler and judge of heaven and earth.

And so God was making himself known to all people through these 10 plagues. And you see that purpose of God in the words that the Lord spoke to Moses in chapter nine, verse 16. I’ll read that verse. The Lord says, “But for this purpose, I’ve raised you up.” He’s speaking to Pharaoh. “But for this purpose, I’ve raised you up to show you my power so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.”

In other words, the Lord is declaring, here, I have raised up Pharaoh. I have hardened his heart so that I would bring all of these terrible plagues upon him and his people. So that, so that all the earth from this time forth and forevermore may know my name, that I am the Lord. And so these plagues are recorded for us here in Scripture. That you and I today may know better the character, the purposes, who God is.

And in particular, there are three truths concerning God that are revealed to us in these ten plagues. One, the Lord alone is God of heaven and earth. Secondly, two, the Lord will judge sin and unbelief. And three, the Lord will save his people. So we’ll consider those three truths about God, how he reveals those to us in these 10 plagues. But before we get to these three truths, let’s summarize what happens during the 10 plagues. Let’s just look at what happens here as an overview to see, to understand the context of these truths that the Lord reveals to us.

So let’s first set the stage. We’ve been going through Exodus, so you’re familiar with what’s happening here. But at this point in the history of God’s people, the people of Israel, they have been in Egypt about 400 years. They are in abject slavery to the Egyptians. They are suffering intensely. And the current king of Egypt, Pharaoh, he has made their life even more miserable because he was afraid that the people of Israel would continue to multiply and that they would even become a threat to the Egyptians. Probably his main concern, that they would become a threat to his own rule. For that reason, Pharaoh decided to institute a policy that by which he would decrease the number of the Israelites, and that would be by murdering the baby boys that were born to the Hebrews. Of course, this proved to be a vain effort. The people kept multiplying.

Later, Pharaoh laid on the Israelites an impossible burden. He would no longer give them straw to make bricks, but they had to continue to make the same number of bricks as they were always forced to make. But now they had to go out and get their own straw. And inevitably, when they failed to meet their daily quota of bricks, Pharaoh’s taskmasters would mercilessly beat the Israelite foreman. And so the suffering of the Israelites was extremely severe under this Pharaoh.

In the meantime, God had spoken to Moses. He had commissioned Moses and his brother Aaron to be the leaders who would bring the people of Israel out of Egypt. They were to lead God’s people out of Egypt, and ultimately they would be led into the promised land, into Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. And there they would worship and serve the Lord as a free people. And at the time that Moses or that God first spoke to Moses at the burning bush about this deliverance, that he would work for his people. The Lord declared to Moses that he would force Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go only after he had done his wonders in the land of Egypt. And so the Lord said to Moses in Exodus 3:20, “I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it. After that, he will let you go.” And so these wonders are what we call the ten plagues. And so it had been God’s purpose. It had been his will this whole time to bring his people Israel out of Egypt as a result of these 10 plagues or these wonders that he would inflict upon the Egyptians.

Perhaps some of you have memorized the 10 plagues. I don’t know if anyone here has ever done that. Perhaps you still remember what they are, but if not, I’ll refresh your memory. First of all, there was the first plague. The Nile was turned to blood, and we’ll consider that a little bit this morning. Secondly, the second plague. Frogs covered the land. They were in the houses, the bedrooms, even the beds of the people. If I was an Egyptian, that’s about the time I would have started to pack my bags after that plague. But there was more. The third plague was gnats. The fourth was flies. The fifth plague was death upon the livestock of the Egyptians. God sent a plague upon them so that they died. With the sixth plague, the Lord now touches the bodies of the Egyptians. They are afflicted with painful boils that break out on their bodies. And also they also afflict the remaining livestock in Egypt. The seventh plague was hail. I suppose if you’ve ever lived in Texas or Oklahoma, the thought of a plague of hail would cause you to tremble. The eighth plague were locusts. And here is a plague that we’ve seen, in a sense, repeated throughout history at different times. Sometimes you hear about in some place in Africa or somewhere where massive numbers of locusts will descend upon some area. They’ll eat every green thing in sight, then they’ll fly away. And almost invariably, the word that’s used to describe that is biblical because it conjures up this image of this plague of locusts that destroyed Egypt. The tenth plague, or the ninth plague rather, was three days of absolute darkness, a darkness that can be felt. The Bible describes it to us. And then finally, the 10th plague, the worst plague. This is when the Lord brings death to the people of Egypt. Every firstborn and every family of Egypt, every firstborn of all the animals of Egypt is struck down when the Lord or the angel of the Lord passes over Egypt.

Now, the Bible uses different words to describe these plagues. In fact, the word plague is just one of the words that it uses. But the most important thing about these plagues is that they are referred to as wonders, as we’ve seen, or signs and wonders. And that indicates that these were plagues that were brought about directly by the hand of God upon the people of Egypt. So some people have denied that. Some people have read the 10 plagues in the Bible, and they have attempted to come up with natural explanations for the 10 plagues, natural events that they say were interpreted by the Israelites as a supernatural work of God. For example, with the first plague, the Nile turning into blood, they say there was sediment in the Nile river. And the Israelites, when it turned red, the Israelites mistook that for blood. But the only way that a person could believe that sort of naturalistic explanation is to deny what the scriptures plainly declare to us about each one of these plagues. And that is this, that it is God who brings them. It is God who caused them to come to the land of Egypt. He did it by his supernatural, by his divine power.

And really that’s the whole point, that’s the message, or at least one of the points, that the Lord is communicating through these plagues. And that is this, that he is God. He is the one who contains the power, the might to inflict these plagues upon the Egyptians. He can do whatever he wills with his creation because he is the Creator and the Lord of all. And that truth leads us, or that leads us to the first truth that the Lord reveals concerning himself through these plagues. And that is this, that the Lord alone, God alone, is the God of heaven and earth.

One of the most important things to understand about the 10 plagues, to really understand what is going on here, is this, that these were not just disasters that God inflicted upon the people of Egypt in order to cause them suffering and misery, which they did, of course. But these plagues were specifically designed by God to impress upon the Israelites and the Egyptians that the God of Israel, that he was infinitely superior to and more powerful than the so called various gods of the Egyptians. In other words, God was not just defeating the Egyptians through these 10 plagues, but he was bringing to nothing the gods of Egypt, the gods who truly were nothing because they were false gods.

This is the Bible’s own interpretation of the ten plagues. In Numbers 33, 4 we read this, “The Egyptians were burying all their firstborn whom the Lord had struck down among them on their gods. Also the Lord executed judgments.” So this was a judgment not only against the people of Egypt, but against their gods. And he was demonstrating through these plagues just how empty, how powerless, how vain were all the gods of the Egyptian pantheon. And at the same time, just how powerful, how almighty was the one true God, the God of Israel, the Lord.

It appears that even the magicians of Egypt came to recognize this truth despite themselves. After the third plague, the plague of gnats, the Egyptians were not able to reproduce that plague with their secret demonic arts. And they said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” We recognize. This is the work of the true God.

Now, in this first plague, this plague that the Lord turned, where he turned the waters of the Nile into blood. The fish died, the water became undrinkable. The water stank because of the rotting corpses of the fish. In this plague, God was declaring his superiority over the gods of the Nile that the Egyptians worshiped. The Egyptians, of course, depended upon the Nile for their livelihood, for their existence. And so they ascribed the powers of the Nile river to give them life. They ascribed that to certain gods of the Nile. And one God in particular was the God Hapi. And they considered him to be the one who somehow produced the Nile river for them. And of course, when God made the Nile river turn into blood, he was demonstrating, not Hapi, but I, the Lord and the true God of the Nile.

In the second plague, when the Lord brings millions of frogs into the land and then he takes them away, he was demonstrating his power over a particular goddess that the Egyptians worshiped, the goddess Heqet. H. E. Q. E. T. She was a fertility goddess. She was portrayed in the form of a frog. And so with the second plague, the Lord was showing his power over this goddess. The plague of darkness was a defeat of the Egyptian sun God, Ra or Re. And more examples could be given of all of the various gods that the Egyptians worshiped. That each one of these plagues, plagues, one way or the other, was showing the Egyptians that these gods are powerless to do what you claim that they can do.

After the Exodus, when the Lord gave his ten commandments to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai in the wilderness, the very first commandment that he declared to the people was, “You shall have no other gods before me.” And all of the people that heard the voice of the Lord say that from the mountain, they could have said amen. Because they saw with their very eyes that the gods of the Egyptians, the idols, that they were no gods, that only God the Lord was worthy to be worshiped, that there should be no other gods before him. And so the God not only brought destruction to the Egyptians, but he, humiliated, he brought to nothing their gods when he brought his people out of Egypt.

And one lesson that the 10 plagues has for us today, with all of that in view, is that the one true God who had made himself known in these plagues to the Egyptians and Israelites, that he has made himself known in one way today, that is, through his son, Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ, he as the Son of God, as God himself, He is the Lord. He is the true God. And a day will come when Christ will openly bring to nothing all the false gods of the various religions and worldviews of our world today.

The 10 plagues, they show just how false the notion is that every religion or every worldview is equally valid. And that there is no particular religion or God or worldview that can claim an absolute, that can claim to be absolute and true for all people. That’s a popular idea today. But that notion should have been put to rest forever in Egypt with the 10 plagues, because the Lord showed that he was the one who was truly God, not the gods of the Egyptians. And today, Jesus Christ, he is the one true and living God. He may not be confessed and acknowledged by atheists or Muslims or Jews or Hindus, but just as the Lord was the God who ruled over Egypt despite all of their gods that they worshiped and served, just as it was the Lord who was the true God over Egypt, so Christ is the Lord. He is the true God who rules over all people, whether they are atheists or Muslims or Jews or Hindus. He is truly God. And this will be acknowledged to all one day when the the Lord Jesus Christ returns from heaven to be the judge of all people, he will make it known that he is truly the Lord.

But there’s a way in which he makes this known to us even today. A way that is very different from the judgment that is to come. And that is that Christ, he alone gives life and peace and joy to all who come to him in faith. And only Christ can do this. There is no God, the God of our own making, the God of a false religion. There is no idol. There is no worldview. There is no philosophy that can bring us everlasting joy, peace in life. There is no other way that our sins can be forgiven except through Christ. There is no other way for us to attain eternal life except through Christ. And only Jesus can do this, because only Jesus is the true God. Only he is the Lord.

And so the same Lord who revealed himself to the Egyptians through these 10 plagues as the one who is God over all. We see him now, today, by faith in Jesus Christ. He is the true God of all. And he is the only God who can forgive our sins and give us eternal life. And so the Lord reveals himself as the true God of heaven and earth in these plagues. And the next truth that the Lord shows himself in these, that the Lord reveals in these plagues is that He Will judge sin and unbelief.

One of the themes that runs throughout these 10 plagues is the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart. And we, we considered that Last Lord’s Day. So we won’t spend a lot of time on that this morning. I’ll just say a few words about it. You’ll remember from Last Lord’s day that it was the Lord who hardened Pharaoh’s hearts. But at the same time, when we read through the account of the ten plagues, the Lord hardened his own hearts. And the plagues were an increasingly severe judgment against Pharaoh and against the Egyptians for their continued hardness of heart. In other words, Pharaoh and the Egyptians, they, they were guilty for hardening their own hearts. And as they responded in unbelief to these plagues, their hearts became hardened. They became more guilty of their unbelief. And so the Lord, through Moses and Aaron, he would demonstrate his power. He would testify to the truth of who he was through each successive plague. But without fail, Pharaoh would refuse to let the people go. He would not bend, he would not soften his heart. He would not accept the truth.

Sometimes he would say in the midst of the plague that yes, he will let the people go. At one point at least, and maybe more, he even admits that he had sinned. But then, as soon as the plague stops, he changes his mind and he continues in his stubborn ways. And so each plague was a judgment against Pharaoh for his hardness of heart, for continuing in his unbelief, despite the testimony that he was receiving from God of the truth of God.

And what is so tragic today is that you see this very same thing repeated. You see it on a national level. A nation, a people, will be struck with a great calamity or tragedy. And rather than turning to God with repentance and belief and father faith in Christ, they will continue in their sin, they continue in their unbelief. And until God in his mercy brings true repentance, that sin and unbelief will only increase until the final judgment comes. This dynamic is true on an individual level as well. An unbeliever, one who has not embrace the truth of the gospel. He is struck with a terrible sickness or personal tragedy, and yet he refuses to turn to Christ. In humility and repentance he hardens his heart.

Some of you will remember the atheist Christopher Hitchens. He died of cancer. But he said in the course of that cancer, he said that if he became a Christian, then we would know for sure that the cancer had spread to his brain. At that point he, as far as we know, he never repented, softened his heart toward the gospel. But sadly, that is the attitude of many who suffer. They will not allow their suffering to bring them to a place where they acknowledge that they are but creatures, God, that they are accountable to him, that they must repent of their sin and come to Christ in faith. But rather they harden their hearts, they become proud. Some who have faced death have rallied their hearts with a poem by William Ernest Henley, a poem called Invictus. Part of how the poem goes is, “It matters not how straight the gates, how charged the punishments, the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.”

At the final judgments when there is no more possibility of repentance, when the day has passed for someone to turn to Christ, they will discover to their horror, as Pharaoh did, that they are not the master of their faith, they are not the captain of their souls. And that is one of the key lessons that we must learn from the ten plagues. And this is the truth that we must communicate to the world. Speaking the truth in love, but speaking the truth that God will bring unrepentant sinners into judgment. There is truly a terrifying and awful and an eternal consequence for sin and unbelief, and that is that the one who dies in his sin will suffer God’s wrath forever, what Second Thessalonians calls the punishments of eternal destruction. That is a truth that we as Christians, as the Church, have come to believe. And that is a truth that as the Church, we must communicate to a world perishing apart from Christ.

One of the hallmarks of unbelief is to deny that reality, to deny the reality of a coming judgment that God will bring into judgment every person who has ever lived, and that the outcome of that judgment will be heaven or hell. And I believe that one reason why biblical Christianity is not real popular in our day and age, in our cultural time, is because we have convinced ourselves as a people that there is no coming judgment. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that that is just a fiction, that there is no judgment to come. Or perhaps we have simply distracted ourselves sufficiently so that we do not think about it or reckon with it. But whatever the reason, we are not moved by the prospect that one day there will be a judgment for each one of us. And for someone who has denied that reality, for someone who refuses to accept that truth, their thinking is, if there is no judgment, then why do I need a savior? And sadly for many people, that is the way that they think.

But the 10 plagues are a reminder to us that there is a judgment to come. And as the church with that in view, our message to the world is not just that sin is wrong. Of course that is true. Sin is wrong. It disbelieves pleases God. But our message is not just that this particular activity or that particular activity is sinful. Of course we communicate that. But the whole message is this, that our sin is not just wrong, but it brings upon us the judgment of a holy and righteous God. That our sin will bring down upon us the wrath of God if we do not repent and turn to Christ. In other words, the problem of sin is not just that it is immoral, it is but sin is self destructive because the result of sin is judgment, eternal death. And we have to view the gospel terms of that reality as well.

The Gospel is not the good news that God has given up on judging sinners, because God cannot do that. The Gospel is not good news that God now simply looks the other way and does not consider our sin to be worthy of condemnation. But the Gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that He took upon himself this judgment that you and I deserve because of our sin. In the 10 plagues we get this unforgettable picture of the wrath of God. The wrath of God poured out upon a people because of their sin and wickedness and unbelief. And it is that wrath that Jesus himself bore upon the cross. He died the cursed death of the cross. He received in himself that judgment of God, not because of his sin, because he was sinless, but for the sin of all who come to him in faith and put their trust in him. And this is the good news for you as a Christian, that if your trust is in Jesus Christ, it is not that your sin has not been dealt with, but the good news is that your sin has been dealt with. Your guilt has been judged and condemned. But Jesus took it for you. And that God gives you the righteousness, the innocence, the purity of Jesus as your very own.

One of the great things about the biblical account of the 10 plagues is the that even as God was bringing down his judgment upon Pharaoh in Egypt with these disasters, that along the way he tempered his judgments. He tempered his judgments with mercy and patience. And you see this in the way that the plagues gradually increase in intensity. The first plague, to be sure, it would not have been a picnic. The Nile river is turned to blood. All the water in Egypt has turned to blood. But you’ll notice that the people did find water by digging into the ground near the Nile. So God showed his mercy in that it was not an absolute plague that destroyed them. But gradually the plagues became worse. The first plague we might consider to be a major inconvenience, but it’s followed by plagues that are much worse. Misery of having frogs crawl all over the land, and then gnats and flies. The fifth plague, the livestock is killed. The sixth plague, the Egyptians are struck with boils. And then finally, worst of all, the 10th plague. Every single family experiences the death of the firstborn.

And after every plague, there was a pause. There was a pause in which Pharaoh could have repented. The Egyptians could have repented. And because God is just and righteous, had Pharaoh repented and turned from his evil ways, he would have relented, the plagues would have stopped. But there’s a lesson here for us in this, and that is when God in his providence, when he brings about a great tragedy in the world, a tragedy such as a tsunami or an earthquake that brings death and destruction, the thousands of people, that is a picture in time of the coming judgment of God. But at the very same time, it is God graciously sending a message to the world. And that is this. Be warned, world, be warned by this that a greater judgment is coming. You haven’t perished. And while you live and have breath, there is still time for you to repent, to come to God by faith in Christ. Jesus taught this. He taught about the tower of Siloam that fell on 18 people and killed them. And Jesus said, “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” And so, even in a horrific calamity that the Lord in his providence brings into the world, there is still a stream of mercy and grace that goes alongside of that. For those who are not destroyed by it, God has a purpose, a message in it. And it is this. There is still time. Repent. A greater judgment is coming. You yet one more plague is coming. But there is still time to come to me. And so the 10 plagues teach us that the Lord will judge sin and unbelief.

And the third truth that the Lord reveals here in these plagues is that the Lord will save his people. And so we have been focusing on the judgment, the plagues that the Lord brought upon the people of Egypt. But that’s only part of the story. The other part of the story is a story of redemption that the Lord worked through these plagues to Bring the people out of Egypt, his people, and ultimately into the promised land. About halfway through the plague, starting with the fourth plague, the plague of flies, the Lord begins doing something different. He makes a distinction between the Israelites and the Egyptians. And so that only the Egyptians are afflicted with the plague, and the Israelites are not afflicted at all. They’re untouched. And by doing that, the Lord was declaring that his people were different, that the people of Israel were His beloved people, his chosen people, and that his purposes for Israel were not destruction, but salvation. And so the very plagues that destroyed Pharaoh and the Egyptians would be the means by which God would bring deliverance to his people.

And the remarkable thing about that is this, that the Israelites in themselves, inherently, they were no more righteous, they were no more morally pure or holy than the Egyptians. They were sinners, too. Joshua, later on in the Scripture, he would say to the Israelites, “Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.” So it wasn’t just the Egyptians who were serving idols in Egypt. It was the Israelites as well. But God set them apart. He was merciful to them. He set them apart to be his beloved, beloved people. And therefore he saved them from his judgments. And so the Lord made Himself known to the Israelites as their gracious Savior. And in the gospel of Jesus Christ, God has made Himself known to you and me as our gracious savior from sin and death.

As much as the Lord is glorified in these works of judgment, the ten plagues, his righteousness is glorified, his power is glorified, and all of that is true. But the works that God has done in salvation, his works of mercy, his grace, his compassion, this brings God all the more glory because it reveals God to be a God of love, of grace, a God who saves. And he has shown you his love and grace in Christ, not only that you may know him and in knowing him, have life, but that you may give to him both in this life and the life that is to come, the adoration, the worship that belongs to him. Because he is the true God who is worthy of your worship and your praise. Let’s pray.

The post The Ten Plagues appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.