CONFRONTING THE ENEMY! (Ex. 8:1-32)

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1 CONFRONTING THE ENEMY! (Ex. 8:1-32) Some people think the Bible is full of fairy stories and difficult-to-believe accounts that are wrapped in some kind of fancy allegory. Even some Christians speak as if the people of the Bible were a different make-up to how we are today. However, the beauty about reading the Bible and being helped so-to-do by the Holy Spirit is that you meet real people in real situations. So far, in our study of the life of Moses, there have been no thoughts that have touched his mind that would not have touched our minds too; the fears he had, we would also have had. The Moses of the Bible is a very, down-to-earth and real man. We have come from seeing him shiver in fear as the Lord set out before him the task of leading the children of Israel from Egypt. We have seen him in despondency after his previous meeting with Pharaoh and the subsequent encounter with the elders of the Hebrew people. In each of the experiences, - and also in between them, - God has been teaching and preparing him to confront the enemy. Pharaoh was not only the enemy of the people of God, but Pharaoh was also the enemy of God. In the song of victory, Moses made this clear, Ex. 15:6 Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. Moses was at battle when he entered into the court of the king of Egypt, - he was not there to pass pleasantries or to work out what they had in common or to sup tea; he was there on the Lord s business and he dare not have forgotten it! HE STUCK TO THE SAME MESSAGE v.1 the LORD spake unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Let my people go, that they may serve me. This was the message God instructed Moses to bring to Pharaoh back in 5:1 and 7:16. The same instruction is given here in 8:1, and again in 8:20, 8:21, 9:1, 9:13, 10:3, and 10:4. The message never changed, - he stuck to the same message! When he saw it wasn t working he didn t change it for it was not his message to change!

2 2 It is so obvious that Pharaoh was not interested in what he had to say, he didn t want to hear Moses message. In our day and age many would have come home, seen how we can make the message more acceptable, changed it, tweaked it, made it more sinner friendly and religiously palatable and then bring it to the people for them to tell us whether it is acceptable or not. But Moses did not do that because it wasn t Moses prerogative to change the message he was told simply to bring it to Pharaoh! Equally simple is this, the message is not ours to change either; we have no right to adapt it. When God in His Word says that all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23) it means very clearly and plainly There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God (Rom. 3:10,11). We have no right to change it in any way. It is plain and simple; it says that the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 6:23). It says that all those without Christ shall eternally endure the everlasting fires of torment in Hell. Now, we cannot change that either, - God s Word is very definite. If you leave it out, you are changing the message and failing to be straight in your presentation of the Gospel. Moses was confronting the enemy with the message God had given him. I am not saying that we see the unsaved as the enemy, neither am I saying that when you open your mouth around the doors you immediately lambast the person with a charade of hellfire preaching but, should you get the opportunity, the wrath of God is equally as necessary for them to know as the love of God. The Bible says the unsaved are at enmity with God (James 4:4), as we used to be also and here was Moses, - surrounded by the Pharaoh s magicians and all the influential people of the land and he stuck to the same message that the Lord originally spoke to him. HE STAYED THE COURSE vv.7,18 the magicians I find it so encouraging with the tactics the magicians used here. The devil is not as clever as he thinks he is and I also think too that sometimes we give him more credit than we ought. (I would not take him for granted, but he is a weakling compared to our God!) Look at the strange thing the devil motivated these magicians under his power to do.

3 3 Moses told Aaron, v.5 Stretch forth thine hand with thy rod over the streams, over the rivers, and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up upon the land of Egypt. The consequence was that the frogs came out of all these places and invaded the land, - they got everywhere! (v.6) Now, what would have been the wisest thing for those magicians to have done? Easy if they had the power, make some way of ridding the land of those frogs. Simple! What did they actually do? Instead of getting rid of the frogs they magicked up some more! (v.7) Daft! The second plague Moses brought was the plague of the lice and once again, the lice were everywhere! (vv.16,17) Again, what did the magicians do but magick up some more lice! (v.18) Despite being the magicians of the king these men don t seem to be all that bright! If first of all frogs take over your land why make more?! If lice are swarming everywhere, why create more?! This was the calibre of the people God called Moses to confront! Sin makes people stupid! We see it also in our own day. In P7 they are talking about teaching children about contraceptives and safe-sex instead of teaching them abstinence. They are talking about further downgrading cocaine and marijuana and yet they have special clinics and programmes to get people off drugs. For those whom they cannot get off drugs they provide heroin substitutes in pharmacies and the likes thus keeping the form of addiction rather than dealing with it. Instead of dealing appropriately with alcohol they make it more exciting and available for our young ones. Sin does indeed make people stupid! And Moses was surrounded by stupid people. Surely if these magicians had any common sense at all, they would have been using their magic to get rid of the frogs and to get rid of the lice not to create more! The shenanigans of the enemy are often quite something else! What would Moses have thought of these people? Surely he thought as much of them and their tactics as we would think of them today. The message he spoke was the message God gave to him to speak and he stuck to the same message, he never changed it.

4 4 He stayed the course because he was beginning to see more and more the power and authority of God in his ministry. These magicians of Pharaoh had nothing to say, they had nothing worthwhile to contribute they simply copied; he, on the other hand, had a clear message with the authority of the King of kings behind it! Yes, we are old-fashioned because we stick to the same message the Bible has always taught. The doctrines and the Word of God as taught and preached from this church is the same old message Jude tells us to earnestly contend for and I will by God s help seek to maintain that. Yes, the only way to stay the course in these days is to rely on and trust in the same God Who saw faithful old Moses through the tirades of his day. He stuck to the same message. He stayed the course, and HE STOOD BEFORE PHARAOH. The Bible puts it across in a way that, - if you only read it lightly, - you would think anyone could walk in off the streets of Egypt and confront the Pharaoh. That was not the case, the Holy Spirit opened up these opportunities for Moses and Aaron to be in the royal court. Pharaoh was a tough man, he was powerful. His nation was successful and he was looked up to. Picture the scene: Pharaoh on his throne, surrounded by all his emissaries and standing in front of him two old Hebrew men. Who would you think was going to win? If you didn t know the story, you would definitely plump for Pharaoh. Once again, let s apply it to the Church in our day and measure out one or two comparisons. Like Pharaoh, our society is strong and powerful. We are very self-sufficient and able to manage well for ourselves. We tell ourselves we can clone products from nothing; we are more brilliant today than ever we were before. We can do things our ancestors would never even have imagined. And then what about Moses and Aaron? Two old has-been s harping on about some imaginary God wanting something that is impossible to have. The Church today is talking about a God no-one needs any longer. It is preaching an old message that has no relevance to anything. The Church, - the old-fashioned ideals of the Church, - are completely out-of-touch and irrelevant.

5 5 I believe the lesson God taught Moses and Aaron is so tremendously applicable for God s people today. We have never been in fashion, our old message has never caught the imagination of society, God has never called His people to mix and match with sinful society but as Moses stood before Pharaoh he stood with the confidence that his God was still able in the situation no matter what it looked like! I genuinely and truly believe that is the lesson for today. Many churches sadly have succumbed and have thrown out pure and sound Biblical doctrine, they have exchanged it for the old devil s doctrine that God is like the genie and all you need to do is rub the bottle and He comes and answers your needs! They have turned God into nothing but a figment of their soiled imagination. But the message of the Word of God is that our God is not changed, His message is not changed, and His message needs no change! The heart of this man Pharaoh was no harder than the hearts of men and women, boys and girls around us today are. Hearts are hard against God and we must stand in the same way Moses stood before Pharaoh. Conclusion I praise the Lord for the great truth that He shows us that He is sovereign and that He, - and He alone, - has drawn up the plans for how this world would develop. He wasn t taken unawares because Pharaoh s heart was hard in fact, it was the Lord Who hardened it to the point where Pharaoh would never give in (and we shall look at the hardening of Pharaoh s heart next week). But here, very simply, is what we need to remind ourselves this evening looking at the example of Moses: as he stood before Pharaoh he stuck to the same message, and he stayed the course, May God find us equally faithful in our calling.