[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the preaching ministry of the Agopic Baptist Church in George South Africa.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to see you two on here today, glad you made it, it's like we have a few that didn't quite make it today, it's got different bugs going around and people away and we're glad you're here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to ask you to open your Bibles, we're going to be an Exodus chapter eight this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exodus chapter 8.
[SPEAKER_00]: This morning we're looking at the second plague that the Lord brought upon Egypt and the Egyptians and Pharaoh and beginning in chapter 8 and we're going to read
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we think about a plague of frogs at the Lord brought you might as the question why frogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you could think of a lot worse things than frogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're slimy and cold and irritating.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes you're the croaking when you're trying to sleep or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a lot worse that a Lord could have brought.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you were here last in the last sermon, we looked at the first plague.
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about some of the reasons for the plagues and what got brought upon the Egyptians.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the reasons was that to discredit the so-called gods of Egypt.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then a second reason was to humble Pharaoh.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then thirdly, that all might know that Yahweh alone is God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's read together, you follow with me, Exodus chapter 8, and we'll look at these reasons, and I think you'll be able to see them as we read them, we'll look at those a bit in the sermon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the Lord said to Moses, go in to Pharaoh and say to him, thus says the Lord, let
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with frogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Nile shall swarm with frogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: That shall come up into your house and into your bedroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on your bed and into your houses of your servants and your people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And into your ovens and your needing bowls.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the frogs shall come up,
[SPEAKER_00]: and own all of your servants.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Lord said to Moses, and to say to Aaron, stretch out your hand with your staff over the rivers and the canals and over the pools and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the Magicians did the same by their secret arts and made frogs to come up on the land of Egypt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron said, plead with the Lord to take away the frogs from me and from the people, and I will let the people go to sacrifice to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Moses said to Pharaoh,
[SPEAKER_00]: I am to plead for you and for your servants and for your people, that the frogs may be cut off from you and from your houses and be left only in denial."
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he said, tomorrow, and Moses said, be it, as you say, so that you may know that there
[SPEAKER_00]: The Frogs shall go away from you from your houses and your servants and your people and they shall be left only in the Nile.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Moses and Aaron went out from Pharaoh and Moses cried to the Lord about the Frogs and he had agreed with Pharaoh and the Lord did according to the Word of Moses for the Frogs to die out in the houses and the court yards and the fields and they gathered them together in heaps and the land stank.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them as the Lord had said.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's look first of all this morning at this first reason that I'd listed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is to discredit the Egyptians belief in heck it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heck, it was a goddess, one of the major, or I would say the most prominent or one of the most prominent gods and goddesses of Egypt at that time, and the Lord is striking a blow against their belief and their superstition.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see that and read from history that the Egyptians believe that this God is personified the regeneration, birth, and fertility.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heck it was depicted as a frog or as a woman with a frog head in their art and their
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they really impacted all of their life from birth to death and their expectation of life after death, and also related to their crops and their life-giving power of this so-called goddess.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they believe that having that this goddess having power over birth, they
[SPEAKER_00]: believe that heck it protected the mother and in birth and in pregnancy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the women would wear a little small omelette of this goddess to protect them and protect their babies through the whole process and their birth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you can imagine that for the Egyptians in this time
[SPEAKER_00]: much like the cow in Hinduism is sacred in India and so the Lord used the very thing that they held to be sacred to become loathsome to them and notice that the frogs didn't just
[SPEAKER_00]: versus three says, the Nile Shell swarm with frogs, and they shall come up into your house and into your bedroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on your bed and into the house of your servants, and on your people and into your ovens and your needing bowls, and this account skips over some of the details of what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we don't know exactly how long
[SPEAKER_00]: that the people and Pharaoh lived with the frogs before Pharaoh came and spoke to Moses and Aaron asked them to take them away.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it could have been a few days or several weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just don't know how long it took before it became such a bother, such an irritation.
[SPEAKER_00]: that Pharaoh would humble himself to come and ask for help.
[SPEAKER_00]: But can you imagine what that would be like?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you might like frogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you, you know, some of them are colorful and pretty.
[SPEAKER_00]: With the most part, I don't, you know, they're okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have a purpose, but I don't want them in my house.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if the whole land is covered with frogs, and they're in your house and in your bed, and in your kitchen, I think you would change your mind and love the existence of frogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe that is exactly what the Lord intended.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, can you imagine,
[SPEAKER_00]: You're trying to sleep at night in the noise of thousands and thousands of frogs croaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: And only that, they're jumping on you, right here, trying to sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: God struck a blow against their belief and heck it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think the Egyptians or even Israelites would have ever looked at a frog in the same way after that.
[SPEAKER_00]: something that they revered and held a sacred became something they despised.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wonder, is there something in your life that the Lord wants to discredit?
[SPEAKER_00]: Something that maybe it's become like an idol.
[SPEAKER_00]: to you, something that keeps you from the Lord, or a full devotion to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a little less than three months, the channel of Israel would be at Mount Sinai, in their God would give them the Ten Commandments and Exodus 20.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you'll remember how He begins that communication.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, I am y'all way, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt
[SPEAKER_00]: You shall have no other gods before me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is in heaven above or that is in earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: You shall not bow down to them or serve them.
[SPEAKER_00]: For I, Yahweh, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the nickname of the fathers
[SPEAKER_00]: to those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
[SPEAKER_00]: That last part there speaks to the consequences of our sin, the consequences of putting other things before y'all wait and our devotion to him and serving him.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is an impact not only to us, but to our children.
[SPEAKER_00]: and into our grandchildren and to others around us that we impact.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I want you to notice the reason why we're not to have any other gobs or images of gods.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the other idols is because that Yahweh is a jealous God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, jealous is not a
[SPEAKER_00]: is not in the sense that a sinful jealousy that we might have, because somebody has something more than we do, but jealous in the sense that God does not tolerate any rivals for our affection and our devotion and worship of Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Egypt had hundreds of idols, but we also have a problem with idols in our day and in
[SPEAKER_00]: And our idols are usually not something we put on the mantle, but something that's in our heart, something that we have placed on the mantle in our heart, that we go to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we value more than our devotion to God and our love for Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we must be asking ourselves regularly, is there anything that's competing with our love and devotion to God?
[SPEAKER_00]: We might say, no, there's nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But sometimes our actions say otherwise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is a seat and remind you of James chapter 4 in verse 4.
[SPEAKER_00]: And those, especially the Jews would understand why he would use that word in the Old Testament, God often referred to Israel in their adultery of their heart as adulteruses or harlots.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, they as an imagery referred to as an unfaithful wife, an unfaithful woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: because they had not been faithful to God and gone after other gods of the pagans around Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so James calls these people, he's addressed an adult or says, as the bride of Christ and part of the bride of Christ, we are to have a complete devotion and faithfulness to our God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: So James says, you adulterous is do you not know that friendship with the world is immati towards God?
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world sets himself as an enemy of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's what the Lord means by saying that he is a jealous
[SPEAKER_00]: devotion, our faithfulness to Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as James talks about the world, he's talking about this world's system, this way of thinking, the values of the world that is in opposition to God, in what God's will is, or us, and oftentimes we find ourselves drifting
[SPEAKER_00]: in the thinking of the world, in the imaginations of the world, in the values of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we must be constantly fighting against that pool of the world, what Paul says in Romans 12, that we are not to be conformed to the image of the world in the thinking of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we see that this second plague also had the purpose
[SPEAKER_00]: As with the first plague, God sends Moses and Aaron to speak to Pharaoh and to warn him of what he is about to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not told in text what Pharaoh's reaction was, but we can assume that he didn't listen.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just ignored them.
[SPEAKER_00]: or rejected outright, their claim, or their desire that the children of Israel would go and worship the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we see in verse six that Moses directs Aaron, and Aaron stretches out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see again the magicians or the sorcerers of Egypt did the same with their secret arts and they caused the frogs to come up on the land of Egypt.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so again they are able to at least to some degree copy the miracle of these frogs and their multiplication from coming up out of the water.
[SPEAKER_00]: which was a normal thing, especially in the flood season for frogs to be more than normal.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what God has done is on a scale that that is not normal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was such that everyone knew that this was the work of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But these magicians are not able to do what Pharaoh would want them to do, and that is to reverse the plague, to send the frogs back to the waters, and not come into their dwellings and be all over the land.
[SPEAKER_00]: After some time, we don't know how long it took for it to be the point of desperation that Pharaoh is forced to acknowledge that Yahweh alone has the power to remove the frogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to be a natural occurrence, in the flood season, there would be an increase of frogs, and eventually they would return back to the water, the waters would begin
[SPEAKER_00]: But after some time, there's no hope of that happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: The magicians can't do anything about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in great frustration, Pharaoh is forced to go and call upon these pagans in his view, Moses and Aaron, and plead
[SPEAKER_00]: I have them pleat to their God to get rid of the frogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's again verse 8.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they were called for Moses and Aaron said, in treat Yahweh is interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: In treat is a word that's used as you call upon and plead with your God.
[SPEAKER_00]: In treat Yahweh that he may cause the frogs to depart from me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And from the people and I will let the people go.
[SPEAKER_00]: that they may sacrifice to y'all way.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we see, this desperation of Pharaoh, he's like people today often do.
[SPEAKER_00]: They make empty promises to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: If God would just help them, or just take away their problem, or just do something for them, then they will obey God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then they will do this or that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the Scripture warns us about these kinds of empty promises and not fulfilling what we vile to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: The right and biblical attitude towards God is to commit our lives to obey Him and serve Him regardless of the outcome of our circumstances.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's not interested in our dealmaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: in our bartering, he wants a commitment, full devotion to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if they wrote, he's now had to come with a second play.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's now come to the point that he acknowledges Yahweh.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first encounter, he said, I don't know who this Yahweh is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not going to obey.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now he's acknowledged y'all way and he also is acknowledged that Moses is a priest and a prophet of this God.
[SPEAKER_00]: He speaks for y'all way and he speaks to y'all way on behalf of others.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we see Pharaoh being humbled.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we see that confidence that Moses has noticed what Moses does when Pharaoh comes and makes this request.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of telling Pharaoh, when God would remove the frogs, he gives Pharaoh the honor of setting the timing.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, tell me when you want me to pray for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, when you want to get rid of the frogs,
[SPEAKER_00]: Those of us nine in Moses said to Pharaoh may the honor be yours to tell me when shall I and treat for you and for your servants and for your people that the frogs would be cut off from the land, cut off from you and your houses that they may be remain only in the Nile.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pharaoh's answer is surprising, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: When given the opportunity to say when do you want me to pray to my God?
[SPEAKER_00]: and remove the frogs, he says tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Give me one more day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my, well, I'll wait one more day.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've already come to the point of desperation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then give me one more day.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't be sure what his reason was.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it seems that Pharaoh is so vexed, but the fact that he has to go and humble himself
[SPEAKER_00]: from these worshipers of Yahweh that he's willing to spend one more night with the frogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really speaks to his pride, doesn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: And his arrogance, his hard-heartedness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pride can cause any of us to be very stupid.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can cause us to be blinded to the obvious truth, the obvious thing that we should do.
[SPEAKER_00]: right can keep us from that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can cause a man to think that he can be right with God by his own righteousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see that all the time, don't we?
[SPEAKER_00]: People who think that they can earn God's favor.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can keep a person from the grace of God in his life.
[SPEAKER_00]: not only for the unbeliever, but also for us as believers, those who put our faith and trust in the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: We must also also be on guard against pride in our hearts and our minds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pride will lead us to think that it's by our own power or by our own wisdom or virtue that we
[SPEAKER_00]: It can happen without even thinking of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just seems natural to us that we can take credit for the good that is in us or the virtuous virtue that is in us or some good thing that we have done.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can remember years ago when we were in Cape Town that we had elders meeting some of us together.
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of a normal thing that we would meet together and talk about ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the pastors asked me about a marriage counseling case that I was engaged in and how asked me specifically, what did you do?
[SPEAKER_00]: because there was an element of success with this couple that hadn't been there before.
[SPEAKER_00]: Others had tried to meet with them and talk with them and there just was no progress whatsoever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so one of them asked me, what did you do?
[SPEAKER_00]: And really without thinking, I began talking about how I proceeded, talked about my methodology just briefly.
[SPEAKER_00]: and later the Lord convicted me for that answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not that the answer was bad or wrong, but I failed to point them to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the Lord who gave success.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I had a good procedure or methodology, it was only because God had graced me with the wisdom to understand what to do, what to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is God, the Spirit of God who had worked in their hearts and used His Word to bring about change.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we are always in danger of robbing God of His glory by accepting praise without at least in our own heart and mind acknowledging it wasn't me, it was God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we are constantly, as we think about Pharaoh, we can easily condemn him for his hard hardness, for his pride, for his arrogance.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we must always be looking at our own heart, our own mind, our own actions, so that we do not fall into the same scene.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thirdly, I want you to see,
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, God's plan that all might know.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Egyptians might know the Israelites might know and to a degree, all the inhabitants in that whole region would come to know that Yahweh alone is God.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Pharaoh says tomorrow, he says, give me, give me one more day.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't know, he may have been thinking, well, maybe by chance, it'll just leave.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one more day, he'll be enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he says tomorrow, Moses and verse 10 says, may it be according to your word, that you may know that there's no one like Yahweh, our God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, by allowing Pharaoh to set the time when the frogs would be removed, no one would be able to say, well, it was just by chance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or they wouldn't be able to say that, well, Moses somehow manipulated the situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: The frogs were leaving, and so Moses says, you know, God calls them to leave.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the Creator God.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the one who gives life and birth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heck, it was only a figment of their vain imaginations.
[SPEAKER_00]: So God answers Moses' prayer according to what Pharaoh had requested.
[SPEAKER_00]: But even in the answer that God gave, there was a judgment.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems that Pharaoh wasn't specific enough in his request.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just wanted to get rid of the frogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: He probably assumed that the frogs would just return or go back to the waters, but instead they died everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: They died in the homes and their courts, their places, their worship, their fields, everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: The verse 13 and 14 says, so Yahweh did according to the word of Moses and the frogs died out of the houses and the courts and the fields, so they piled them in heaps and the land became foul and the previous plague, the land was thinking because of the dying fish, the dead fish and now they're thinking because of the decay of frogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we see, again, as Pharaoh got relief from the frogs, he hardened his heart, and he did not do what he had said he would do to let the Israelites go, but even this God had predicted.
[SPEAKER_00]: He only wants us to know that He is the sovereign of the universe.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants us to live like He is the sovereign of our life, and that we would submit our cells unto Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: We who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, we know that He is the true and the living God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so let us put away everything else that is false.
[SPEAKER_00]: with Him, every lie of the devil, every deception, everything that would rob us of our devotion to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: After the children of Israel had gone into the land of promise and towards the end of Joshua's life, God had given them rest and God had given them
[SPEAKER_00]: the promise that he had made concerning the land.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we see the end of Joshua, the Book of Joshua, his last words of admonition to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And from that we have a very familiar quote from Joshua, Joshua, Joshua 24 of her 14 says,
[SPEAKER_00]: and put away the God-switch your father's serve beyond the river.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about the, you're afraid he's going away back to Abraham before God called him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in Egypt, and serve Yahweh, if it is evil in your sight to serve Yahweh, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve, whether the God-switch your father's served,
[SPEAKER_00]: But as for me and my house, we will serve Yahweh.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is an admonition for the people of Israel, and it's an admonition for us as his children today, and you covenant, promises of God, and we love Him and serve Him, but that requires a commitment.
[SPEAKER_00]: That requires a daily commitment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Joshua is saying that I'm committed and he's coming to the end of his life, but he's lived that.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's lived that before they got there and he's lived that through the some seven years of the conquest and the battles.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's demonstrated to them that this statement is true and has been true in his life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is something that God would challenge us this morning to commit to in our own life, and to the degree that we have leadership in our own homes, that this would be true, that Yahweh
[SPEAKER_00]: is our God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to serve Him and Him alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Father, may that be true in our lives today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those of us who know you and have called upon you for salvation, Lord help us to be men and women that love you with the devotion that is evident to everyone around us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord may we be people who like Joshua would say we will serve the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: The world can go after this God and that God and that desire and that pleasure, but we will commit ourselves to you because you are worthy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are our God, our Father, our Savior, our Redeemer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you have placed your spirit within our hearts.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Father help us to commit, to following after you, with a pure devotion that you might be honored by that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you get glory from that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.