Matthew 7:1-6

¹ “Judge not, that you be not judged. ² For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. ³ Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? ⁴ Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? ⁵ You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. ⁶ “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.

History is full of bad, uninformed, and downright silly judgments.  Consider:

• In 1737, Johann Adolf Scheibe described Johann Sebastian Bach’s compositions as being “deprived of beauty, of harmony, and of clarity of method.”
• Louis Spohr described Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as “an orgy of vulgar noise.”
• In 1833, Ludwig Rellstab said that Chopin was so talentless that, had he had a teacher, his teacher would have torn his music up and thrown it at his feet…or, said Rellstab, he would at least like to imagine that would have happened.
• Emile Zola said that Paul Cezanne did not have the persistence to become a great painter.
• In 1849, James Lorimer took consolation in the fact that, as he saw it, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights would never be generally read.
• In 1855, The London Critic opined that Walt Whitman was “as unacquainted with art as a hog is with mathematics.”
• One critic said of George Orwell’s Animal Farm that, “it is impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.”
• A critic said of Anne Frank, after reading The Diary of Anne Frank, “This girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.”
• Edouard Manet said to Claude Monet that Renoir “has no talent at all, that boy.”
• MGM’s Irving Thalberg suggested that the studio not buy the film rights to Gone With the Wind by saying, “No Civil War picture ever made a nickel.”
• Gary Cooper, after he turned down the role of Rhett Butler, said, “I’m just glad it’ll be Clarke Gable who’s falling flat on his face and not Gary Cooper.”
• An MGM executive wrote this after Fred Astaire’s 1928 screen test:  “Can’t act.  Can’t sing.  Balding.  Can dance a little.”[1]

These are all charming and silly simply because they are so manifestly wrongheaded, but what about judgments of a more serious nature, judgments about other people, their motives, their characters, their worth, their value?  It is one thing to think that Fred Astair could not dance.  That’s silly.  It is another thing to judge a man or woman’s character without all of the facts.  That is careless and harmful.  It is yet another thing to judge a person when you yourself are doing what that person is doing.  That is a gross sin.  It is even yet another thing to judge a child of God as worthless and meaningless.  That is demonic.

Of course, in our country we may face the opposite extreme more often:  the refusal to make necessary judgments.  To be sure, being judgmental is a sin, but so is, unfortunately, the inability to make a judgment when needed.  Gene Fant said this about an experience he had on jury duty.

Recently I opened a jury duty summons for one of our local courts. My report date hasn’t arrived quite yet, but I’m looking forward to the possibility of serving. I’ve only been empanelled once and it was a nightmare; I’m hoping for a better experience this time. The accused was clearly guilty; everyone identified him as the culprit (it was a robbery and stabbing), there were multiple witnesses, and the case was solid from start to finish. The accused even admitted that he had done it, but he claimed, with a straight face, to have stabbed the guy “accidentally” four, count ‘em, four times: once in the chest and three times in the back after he flipped the victim over. He threw the icepick (he claimed it was a meat thermometer) into a river, he said, while fleeing to another state because he was afraid that he would be charged with a crime.

Incredibly, we ended with a hung jury because one of my fellow jurors kept saying, “Who am I to judge this man?” It was a case of eleven angry men and women and one owner of a half-baked hermeneutical approach to Scripture, in this case Matthew 7:1-3, which she had denuded over and over in a refrain of its first two words: “Judge not.”[2]

Yes, here we see the opposite extreme.  Here we see a human being who honestly believed that literally all judgment was sin and that human beings have no right whatsoever under any circumstance at all to judge.

I say that we may encounter this extreme more frequently than the other (though, to be sure, the church, in many quarters, is brimming over with sinful judgmentalism), because our national mood is one in which judgments are not desired.  In short, we now have trouble saying of anything or anybody that it or he or she is wrong.  Ed Stetzer put it like this:

The reality is that sometimes we forget the worldview of the era in which we live. The world is not filled with people who are aware they are spiritually dead and looking for Jesus. Today, people think they are spiritually alive and are finding their own path to God. God is fine with however they wish to live because the only thing they know is that Jesus said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”[3]

That is true.  Matthew 7:1 may be the favorite verse of modern Americans because, twisted just a bit, it can be made to sound like we should never make moral judgments at all.  Theologian Roger Olson noted,

Even people who know very little about the Bible are usually familiar with Jesus’ saying “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7:1, KJV). This command is part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount; it is Jesus’ most popular saying because our culture values tolerance so highly.[4]

Perceptively, Jean Bethke Elshtain described judging as a modern phobia!

Judging has been in bad odor for quite some time in American culture. It is equated with being punitive, or with insensitivity, or with various “phobias” and “isms.” It is the mark of antiquated ways of thinking, feeling, and willing…Why is judging—what Arendt called the preeminent political faculty—at a nadir among us? Surely much of the explanation lies in the triumph of the ideology of victimization coupled with self-esteem mania.[5]

Maybe there is something to that:  the ideology of victimization and self-esteem mania.  We are a people that do not know how to approach judgment.  We either tend to judge haughtily, hypocritically, and arrogantly, or we do not judge at all, even when certain judgments are needed.

What are we to make, then of our text this morning?

¹ “Judge not, that you be not judged. ² For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. ³ Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? ⁴ Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? ⁵ You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. ⁶ “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.

Yes, what are to make of this…or, more importantly, what is it to make of us?  After all, these are the words of Jesus.  We bow before them.  We do not make them bow before us.

Does Jesus mean that we should actually and literally never judge?  Is that what He is saying?  Or can we whittle this down to make it mean that we can judge freely and with impunity?  Certainly not!  Or could it be that there is a kind of judgment that is a sin and another kind that is not?  I would like to show you this morning that this is, in fact, the case.

I.  Followers of Jesus Must Not Indulge in Sinful Judgment:  Haughty, Arrogant, and Hypocritical (v.1-5)

Clearly, the focus of our text this morning is to reject a kind of judgment that is sinful and wrong and unbecoming for the children of God.

¹ “Judge not, that you be not judged.

Here are the words that our culture knows so well.  These seven words have become a kind of modern mantra against moral judgments.  Regardless, even though these words have been abused, this is clearly a prohibition from Jesus against sinful judgment.  As disciples of Jesus, we must listen to the whole counsel of God, taking into account what else God has said on the matter (and we will do that today).  It is clear that there is a kind of judgment that is evil and wicked and should not be indulged in.

² For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.

This is a chilling word!  Would you like for God to judge you in the same way and with the same standard that you judge others?  I ask you:  are you hard on people?  Are you brutal on people?  Are you quick to see the faults of others, condemning them for their mistakes while giving your own a pass?  Do you forgive others as readily as you forgive yourself?  Would you like to stand before your own standard of judgment?

Furthermore, Jesus tells us that it is often the case that we judge hypocritically.

³ Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? ⁴ Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? ⁵ You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

There is a simple logic to this, and one that shames us.  A man with a board in his eye should not condemn the speck in his brother’s.  That, friends, is hypocrisy.  That is the kind of absurd judgment that makes fools of us.  We Southern Baptists are particularly good at this:  condemning the sins of others when we have massive sins of our own.

There is a weird kind of blindness that comes with judgment.  Caught in the fervor of condemning another’s sin, we miss our own.  It is a strange and tragic state of affairs.  Paul put it like this in Romans 2:

¹ Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. ² We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. ³ Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?

If you judge the sins of others while you yourself are in a state of sin, you will be judged by God.  The Lord will not tolerate such hypocrisy.  Thomas Merton has passed on the following story from the desert fathers.

Time and again we read of Abbots who refuse to join in a communal reproof of this or that delinquent, like Abbot Moses…who walked into the severe assembly with a basket of sand, letting the sand run our through many holes.  “My own sins are running out like this sand,” he said, “and yet I come to judge the sins of another.”[6]

Do you relish in finding out that your brother or sister has sinned?  Do you take perverse joy in the failings of others?  What of your own sins?  What of your failings?  Do you consider those?  That old adage about those who live in glass houses not throwing rocks is really quite wise.  Do you fear God so little that you would judge another while you yourself are in sin?

Furthermore, we should avoid sinful judgment because only God sees the full picture.  This is why only the judgment of God can be perfect and without error.  There is an interesting text in 1 Corinthians 4 in which Paul responded to the fact that he was being judged by his detractors in the church.

³ But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. ⁴ For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. ⁵ Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.

God alone possesses the needed light by which to see situations clearly enough for pure judgment.  You are not God.  Neither am I.  At best we are operating on merely a part of the story.  We do not see all.  We must accept the limitations of our own knowledge.  James put it like this in James 4:

¹² There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?

Yes, who are we to judge our neighbor?  I know who we are not:  we are not God.

William Barclay told the story of Collie Knox and what happened to him and a friend of his in a London restaurant.  It beautifully illustrates the limitations of our own knowledge and how these limitations cloud our ability to judge.

Collie Knox tells of what happened to himself and a friend.  Collie Knox himself had been badly smashed up in a flying accident while he was serving in the Royal Flying Corps.  The friend had that very day been decorated for gallantry at Buckingham Palace.  They had changed from their service dress into civilian clothes, and they were lunching together at a famous London restaurant, when a girl came up to them and handed to each of them a white feather – the badge of cowardice.[7]

This ignorant girl called two men who bore wounds from their patriotic service cowards.  How embarrassing for her!  But she was operating on the limited knowledge she had.  The two men appeared to be living the high life when they should have been serving their country.  But that was a faulty appearance.  Her judgment was hindered by her ignorance.  Ours usually is too.

Brothers, beware of sinful judgment.  Sisters, beware of sinful judgment.  But that phrase, “sinful judgment,” raises an interesting question:  is all judgment sinful?  Was Jesus saying that there is never a situation in which we are to judge?

II. Followers of Jesus Must Carefully Practice Godly Judgment:  Loving, Reciprocal, Clear, and Careful (v.5-6)

Verses 5 and 6 are very interesting.  Jesus condemns the hypocrite who would scoff at his neighbor’s speck while giving his own plank a pass.  That is absurd!  That is hypocritical!  We dare not do that.  What He says afterward is telling.  Listen closely.

⁵ You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

Now, it is not my intention to try to water down what Jesus is saying.  Not at all.  My intention is simply to listen to what Jesus, in fact, said.  In verse 5, He says that removing the plank from your eye will enable you to see clearly enough to help your brother.  Hear it again.

⁵ You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

This is not a hall pass for judgment.  Not at all.  On the contrary, the man who has removed a plank from his own eye is going to be a very different kind of judge for having done so, is he not?  He is now humbled.  He is now broken.  He now knows the reality of his own sin.  He has been to the throne of grace.  Indeed, it is a very different thing when that man goes to his brother and says, “Friend, I need to talk to you as one sinner to another.”  He will not do so haughtily.  He will not do so hypocritically.  He will not do so in order to condemn.  He takes no perverse delight in doing so.  His own plank is fresh in his mind.  He comes now, after having removed the plank from his own eye, as a sinner to a sinner.

This is godly, careful, humble, loving judgment.  It is also reciprocal.  It acknowledges that we all stand under judgment for sin and that judgment cuts both ways.  The man who has removed, by God’s grace, the plank from his own eye understands that his life must be open to scrutiny as well.

Clearly this is a different kind of judgment than that which Jesus condemns.  Indeed, Jesus cannot mean that all judgments are sinful or that all judging is sinful, for the Word of God stands without contradiction.  In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul called upon the church to respond to a situation of grievous, open sin in their midst.  The words sound hard, but, again, they are addressing a flagrant instance of open rebellion that was known and unaddressed by the congregation; namely, a man was having a relationship with his own father’s wife.  Here is what Paul writes:

¹¹ But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. ¹² For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? ¹³ God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

This is a helpful text, and a provocative one.  First, v.12 draws a distinction between judging the world (which Paul says he does not do) and judging fellow Christians (which Paul says we should do).  Now, clearly this does not mean the kind of judgment that Jesus forbids.  Paul and Jesus are not in conflict on this point.  Instead, they are talking about two very different things.  Jesus is condemning haughty, hypocritical, arrogant judgment.  Paul is commending careful, necessary, heart-broken judgment, born of love and seeking the restoration of one who has rebelled.  In point of fact, it is most unloving to stand idly by when an individual or a church destroys itself and make no judgment in situations that demand it.

There is a judgment to be avoided and a judgment that must carefully be taken up.  It is a dangerous business even then, and it is most telling that Scripture gives many more warnings against judgment than it does instances in which it is allowed, but sometimes it is allowed.

Furthermore, please take note of the last verse in our text this morning, Matthew 7:6.  It is a strange sounding verse, but a crucial one.

⁶ “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.

Well!  That is fascinating, especially where Jesus says this.  He says it immediately after condemning sinful judgment.  But what is most intriguing is that verse 6 involves divine judgment and also calls upon us to make a judgment.  “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs.”

The meaning seems clear enough.  There are people who are so full of hatred, rancor, wickedness, and hostility, that you cannot reason with them about the gospel.  They are like wild dogs or ravenous pigs.  Paul used the same image in Philippians 3.

² Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh.

What is evident in this text is that there are people who have so hardened their hearts against God that they will not hear the gospel.  All they desire is the death and destruction of God’s people.  These people, Jesus says, act like dogs and pigs, and the people of God must guard themselves against them.  These people would be analogous to those mentioned in Matthew 10:14.  In that verse, Jesus instructs His disciples concerning what to do when people reject them and the gospel:  “if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.”  Those before whom you would shake off the dust from your feet are like dogs and pigs.  They will not hear.  They do not want to hear.  They only desire the triumph of evil.

Why does Jesus insert this strange reference about dogs and pigs here?  Why does He say this immediately after warning against judgment?  Is it not because He understands the human penchant for extremes?  Is He not saying in our text this morning that there is a kind of judgment that is sinful and a kind is not?

Knowing that somebody is acting like a dog or a pig requires a kind of judgment.  Even here, though, extreme caution must be used.  We are not to go around assuming that people are pigs and dogs.  Jesus is addressing a very specific situation in verse 6 that He will make abundantly clear to His people at the appropriate time.

In our text this morning are six verses.  Five are cautioning us against hypocritical and arrogant judgment.  Only one allows for a kind of judgment.  That should tell us something.  It tells me that most times our judgments are flawed and possibly even sinful.  We are more apt to sinful judgment than non-sinful judgment.  We are more apt to fall in this area than to soar.

Let our dispositions toward one another be dispositions of love.  Let us assume the best about one another.  Let us refrain from judging unless and until we can go to a brother or sister carefully, in love, fully aware of our own sinfulness, having rejected that sin ourselves, and gently pleading for a wayward brother or sister to come home.

Above all, let us put on love towards one another.  It is a shame that 1 Corinthians 13 has been relegated primarily to weddings.  We need these words as a living presence in our midst today.

⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Amen, and amen.

Exodus 12:1-28

¹ The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ² “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. ³ Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. ⁴ And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. ⁵ Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, ⁶ and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. ⁷ “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. ⁸ They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. ⁹ Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. ¹⁰ And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. ¹¹ In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover. ¹² For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. ¹³ The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt. ¹⁴ “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast. ¹⁵ Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. ¹⁶ On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. ¹⁷ And you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute forever. ¹⁸ In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. ¹⁹ For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land. ²⁰ You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread.” ²¹ Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. ²² Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. ²³ For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. ²⁴ You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. ²⁵ And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. ²⁶ And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ ²⁷ you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped. ²⁸ Then the people of Israel went and did so; as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.

C.S. Lewis once asked his readers to imagine with him a woman who has been lowered into a deep pit.  The woman is expecting a child.  She gives birth to the child in the pit, and the child grows without ever having seen the outside world.  In the pit is paper and a pile of pencils.  As the child grows, the mother tries her best to draw pictures of the outside world so that her child can have some sense of what life outside of the pit looks like.  However, her drawings are very basic:  stick figures, simple trees, puffy clouds, a circle for the sun, etc.  These images are all the child knows of the world.

A decade goes by and finally the lady and her son are released.  They are raised, blinking, into the midday sun.  As their eyes adjust, the child sees around him real trees, real grass, real people, real birds, and a real sun.  Confused, the child looks up to his mother and asks, “Mommy, where are the lines?”

It is a fascinating little story that communicates a compelling truth:  human beings oftentimes have to learn profound truths in piecemeal and elementary fashions.  This is usually done through pictures and images.  If you think about it, we all spend a good bit of time drawing simple lines on paper for our children, preparing them for the raw truth to come.  We know that their minds and hearts must be prepared first.

So it is with God and us:  to prepare the world for Jesus, God first drew images, sometimes simple, sometimes complex, oftentimes startling, and always preparatory.  Here on the threshold of the Exodus, the Lord does precisely this with Israel, drawing images for them.  These images were codified in sacred religious observances, primarily in the observance of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread.  He did this to prepare them for the Exodus, but more so to prepare them and the generations to come for Christ Himself.

Let us consider the establishment in the life of Israel of these preparatory and heart-preparing images.

I. Passover: Sacrifice, Judgment, Salvation, and the Proto-Evangelium (v.1-13, 21-28)

Our text has three sections, the first and last dealing with Passover and the middle with the Feast of Unleavened Bread.  Consider, first, Passover.

¹ The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ² “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you.

The Passover marks the beginning of a new era for Israel.  G. Henton Davies writes, “12.2 marks ‘this month,’ i.e. the month of the Passover…our March-April, the beginning of the year.[1]”  The great Baptist educator and exegete, B.H. Carroll, explained it like this:

In chapter 13 it says, “This day you go forth in the month of Abib,” and in other passages it is called the month of Nisan.  The two names correspond.  The time of the year was in the spring, when the firstfruits of the harvest were gathered.  This month now becomes an era.  In 12:2, it is said, “This month shall be the beginning of months unto you; it shall be the first month of the year to you.”  That means the ecclesiastical year.  They had a civil year, which commenced in the fall, but their ecclesiastical year commenced with that Passover…The time was then spring, Abib or Nisan, answering to our March or April, the lamb selected on the tenth day, to be slain on the fourteenth, at the going down of the sun.[2]

Carroll’s distinction between Israel’s civil year and ecclesiastical year is helpful.  “This month now becomes an era.”  Indeed.  It is intriguing to note that the truly great, epochal moments in salvation history tend to redefine time itself.  I am thinking of Passover, the birth of Christ, and the advent of the Lord’s Day at the Resurrection.  The Passover marks the deliverance of God’s people from bondage in Egypt.  That is, the Passover marks the survival of God’s people, the people through whom Christ Jesus would, in time, come.

The birth of Christ, likewise, changed time.  We now operate on a calendar that hinges on the startling events of Christmas.  Jesus split time itself into B.C. and A.D.  Even modern attempts to circumvent the Christological division of the Western calendar by using B.C.E. and C.E. still cannot change the fundamental division of human history into two facets:  time before the birth of Christ and time after.

And, of course, every Sunday we acknowledge another great shift in the way we see time.  The Christian shift from the Sabbath to the Lord’s Day, Sunday, is a direct result of the high water mark of salvation history:  the resurrection of Jesus.  We gather on Sunday’s because Christ rose on a Sunday.  We are here, now, today, because He came forth on this day.  Every Sunday, then, is Easter.  Every Sunday is resurrection day!

The Passover altered the way the Jews viewed time.  It was the beginning of their ecclesiastical year.  Even here, it was preparing them for even greater things to come.

³ Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. ⁴ And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. ⁵ Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, ⁶ and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. ⁷ “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. ⁸ They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. ⁹ Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts.

The preparation of the Passover lamb was critical.  It was to be an unblemished lamb, thoroughly roasted, with none of the blood consumed.  A.H. McNeile observes that the blood of the animal was not to be consumed because the blood was “regarded as the seat of the vital principle or the soul (nephesh), it was too sacred and mysterious to be used as human food; it must be offered to God before the flesh could be eaten.”  He then passed on three reasons why the meat had to be roasted and not boiled.

• “to bring the flesh into contact with a foreign substance such as water, might be considered a defilement”
• “it would be difficult to boil a whole lamb in any ordinary utensil, without cutting it into parts, or breaking its bones (cv. v.46)”
• “it was prohibited, in the case of animals offered by fire, to eat the intestinal fat (xxix 13,22, Lev. iii. 3-5, iv. 8 ff., vii. 22-25; see RS² 379 f.); so in the present case the inwards are to be roasted, in order that the intestinal fat may drip down and be burnt in the fire.  The flesh is evidently to be roasted on a spit and not in an oven.”[3]

The purity of the lamb was critical, as we shall see.

¹⁰ And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. ¹¹ In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover. ¹² For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. ¹³ The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.

These are startling and unsettling words, to be sure.  They are repeated by Moses to the elders, beginning in verse 21.

²¹ Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. ²² Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. ²³ For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.

I began this sermon with a story about a mother in a pit trying to communicate the reality of the world outside through simple lines on a page.  I made the point that God, like that mother, prepared Israel and the world for the eventual coming of Christ through ceremonies and rituals that communicated the truths of Christ in simple, preparatory, rudimentary forms.

That is what is happening here.  We simply cannot read of the blood on the doorposts without realizing, on this side of the cross, what God was doing.  He was even now beginning to draw their minds and hearts toward certain images and concepts:  judgment, wrath, blood, blood covering, protection for those covered by the blood, etc.  Here is the gospel in signs and images and symbols.  Here is Christ writ in primal and basic ways.  Here, in the institution of the Passover, God is sowing seeds in the minds and hearts of His people.  They are seeds that He will confirm time and again through the tabernacle, then through Temple worship.  And all of these were leading and pointing to Jesus.

They needed the lines before they could see the reality.  That is why the Lord tells His people to use the Passover as a tool for teaching the generations to come the great truths inherent in this act.

²⁴ You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. ²⁵ And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. ²⁶ And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ ²⁷ you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped. ²⁸ Then the people of Israel went and did so; as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.

Do you see what is happening?  The Lord has established in the Passover a means for current obedience as well as for future transference of the faith.  This is why the symbols we have been given are so very important, and why the too-frequent abandonment of these symbols by modern Christians is a great tragedy.  One of the beautiful things that happens when, for instance, we share the Lord’s Supper, is that our children observe what we are doing and ask, “Mommy, Daddy, why did you eat that bread and drink that juice?”  Likewise, with baptism, “Mommy, Daddy, why did the preacher put that man under the water and then bring him back up again?”

What beautiful teaching moments the sacred symbols of our faith present!  Israel was being introduced to the great themes that would prepare them to understand Jesus.  Imagine:  year after year after year, the people of God would kill a lamb and prepare it for the Passover feast.  Year after year after year, they turned to this act of remembrance, celebrating the power of God and recalling the deliverance of Israel from Egypt.  Then one day, after so many years of practicing the symbols, a strange man stands in the Jordan River and points to an even stranger young man.  He points to Him and shouts to the stunned onlookers:  ““Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

The observance of Passover was preparing Israel for that moment!  As such, it is the preface to the gospel, explaining in shadows what would soon happen in the broad light of day.

II. Unleavened Bread:  Purity, Haste, and Deliverance (v.14-20)

In the middle of our text we find another observance established by the Lord for His people, the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

¹⁴ “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast. ¹⁵ Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. ¹⁶ On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. ¹⁷ And you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute forever. ¹⁸ In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. ¹⁹ For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land. ²⁰ You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread.”

The Lord commands that His people eat unleavened bread for seven days, beginning at the conclusion of Passover.  Leaven is yeast, causing bread to rise and ferment.  Notably, it also causes bread to decay.  It is therefore significant that the Lord so stridently stresses the need for unleavened bread.  That is, it is significant that the Lord wants His people to remember their deliverance from bondage through the consumption of bread lacking decaying elements.

He is asking them for purity:  a pure remembrance symbolizing a pure people.  Because of this, leaven came to be a kind of bad word among the Jews, a word referring to godlessness and decay.  Thus, in Matthew 16:6, Jesus tells His disciples, “Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”  By “leaven” He meant their false and dangerous teachings (16:12).

In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul exhorted the Corinthians believers to bring discipline against a member of the church who is living a scandalous, open lifestyle of sin.  Furthermore, he scolded the church for their arrogant acceptance of this man’s lifestyle.  This is what he says to that congregation:

⁶ Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? ⁷ Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. ⁸ Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Paul is repeating to the church what God said to Israel:  “Cleanse out the old leaven.”  For Israel in the Exodus, this meant literally removing all leaven from their houses in preparation for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, but the intent had less to do with what kind of bread they were eating than with what kind of people God wanted them to be.  The intent was the symbolic affirmation of purity that was to give way to an actualized purity.

In the body of Christ, the challenge of unleavened bread is a personal one.  Yes, to be sure, there are times when it is corporate, as in 1 Corinthians 5.  There are tragically times when the body of Christ must remove harmful leaven.  I hasten to add that this does not mean the church is devoid of sinners.  We are all sinners.  But the church must respond to flagrant sin, to embraced leaven, that threatens the very identity of the followers of Jesus.

Personally, though, the challenge to be unleavened is a daily challenge, a moment-by-moment challenge.  Every day, every moment, I must ask myself whether or not there is leaven in my life.  I must daily ask the Lord to search my heart, to hold a candle up to the dark corners of my heart, making evident any agents of decay that threaten my relationship with Jesus.  That is what we must all daily do.

Brothers, sisters, I ask you:  is there leaven in your life of which you need to be rid?  Is there anything hindering you on this journey toward glory?

Fasten your belts.  Grab your walking sticks.  Make sure you are covered by the blood of the Lamb.  Reject the world’s leaven.  And let us follow our King.

Matthew 6:25-34

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷ And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? ²⁸ And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹ yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ³⁰ But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹ Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. ³⁴ “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Peter J. Gomes, the late minister of Harvard University once told of a sermon he preached on our text this morning and a very surprising reaction he received to it.

Some years ago I gave the commencement address at a very posh girls’ day school in Manhattan.  Many of the brightest and the best of the girls went on to Radcliffe and to other elite colleges, and soon thereafter would make their way into the expanding stratosphere of the establishment once reserved for their brothers.  They were able, aggressive, and entitled young women on the threshold of conquering the world, and I rejoiced in their achievement, was happy to celebrate with them, and wished them well.  I took as my text on that bright sunny morning in midtown that wonderful passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6, where he asks, “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”  Neither for Jesus nor for me was this a hostile question, and he goes on to invite his listeners, as I did, to “consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin, yet their heavenly father provides for them.  Are you not of more worth than these?”

All were not pleased…and at the reception the father of one of the girls came up to me with fire in his eyes and ice in his voice, and told me that what I had said was a lot of nonsense.  I replied that I hadn’t said it, but that Jesus had.  “It’s still nonsense,” he said, not easily dissuaded by an appeal to scripture.  “It was anxiety that got my daughter into this school, it was anxiety that kept her here, and it was anxiety that got her into Yale, it will be anxiety that will keep her there, and it will be anxiety that will get her a good job.  You are selling nonsense.”[1]

One would not expect such a reaction to a sermon against anxiety, yet, when we stop and look closely at what we have made of modern life, we realize just how much anxiety is bound up with our daily lives.  We are ostensibly working hard so as to remove anxiety from our lives, yet, ironically, what we are doing seems only to increase it.

This business of casting off anxiety and worry and studying the lilies works well for poets and dreamers.  After all, it was Emily Dickenson who once said that the only commandment she did not break was Jesus’ commandment, “Consider the lilies of the field.”[2]  But we’re not Emily Dickenson, right?  We have things to do, and they must be done well to maintain what we have and, if we are fortunate, to have even more.

In January of this year, the Barna group released their findings on a new survey on “Temptation and America’s Favorite Sins.”  Under the grouping, “Particularly Western Temptations,” Barna discovered that 60% of Americans say they are tempted to worry and anxiety.[3]  I would suggest that the kind of anxiety we have fostered in our culture is, indeed, a particularly Western phenomenon.  Travel to what used to be called the Third World and, while you will say perhaps different kinds of anxiety, you will see a startling lack of the soul-destroying worry and angst that we have invited into our lives.

Jesus addressed the reality of worry, of anxiety, because He knew what the presence of such corrosive forces can do in and to the lives of His people.  Remember, the Sermon on the Mount is a depiction of life in the Kingdom of God.  It is utterly fascinating that, in this brief discourse, Jesus thought worry to be sufficiently dangerous so as to warrant careful consideration.

Let us consider today the dangers of worry and anxiety.

I. Worry is an Insult to the Love of God. (v.25-26)

Let us first define what the biblical idea of anxiety or worry is.  The Greek word for “anxious” is merimnao.  It refers to “apprehension, anxiety, or worry.”  It is interesting that the word is used two times in the Apocrypha for the idea of insomnia.[4]  This is worry that keeps you up at night.  This is life-shortening, relationship-destroying, ulcer-producing, sleep-depriving, soul-debilitating worry.  This is what Jesus is condemning.

What He clearly is not condemning is careful, reasonable planning, or a healthy sense of work and production.  In 2 Thessalonians 3, Paul is apparently addressing a church situation in which some believers were so convinced that the return of Christ was imminent that they had stopped working.  To them, Paul said this:

¹⁰ For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. ¹¹ For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. ¹² Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

Work is not worry.  Planning is not worry.  But worry can creep in and pervert both work and planning.  J.C. Ryle put it nicely when he said, “Prudent provision for the future is right; wearing, corroding, self-tormenting anxiety is wrong.”[5]

What Jesus is condemning is a mindset of anxiety and fear and worry in which we are held captive by a kind of physical, mental, spiritual, vocational, and relational hypochondria.bbIn Catch-22, Joseph Heller writes about the anxiety that had gripped the characters Yossarian and Hungry Joe:

There were lymph glands that might do [Yossarian] in.  There were kidneys, nerve sheaths and corpuscles.  There were tumors of the brain.  There was Hodgkin’s disease, leukemia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.  There were fertile red meadows of epithelial tissue to catch and coddle a cancer cell.  There were diseases of the skin, diseases of the bone, diseases of the lung, diseases of the stomach, diseases of the heart, blood and arteries.  There were diseases of the head, diseases of the neck, diseases of the chest, diseases of the intestines…There even were diseases of the feet.  There were billions of conscientious body cells oxidating away day and night like dumb animals at their complicated job of keeping him alive and healthy, and every one was a potential traitor or foe.  There were so many diseases that it took a truly diseased mind to even think about them as often as he and Hungry Joe did.[6]

There are people who live their lives gripped by this kind of suffocating fear, and that is a tragedy.  It is interesting to note that the first reason Jesus gives us for rejecting worry is that worry is an insult to the love of God.  Listen to what He says.

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

He warns against worry in the area of food, health, and clothing.  He then makes the fascinating observation that life is “more than food, and the body more than clothing.”  That may strike us as odd.  As a matter of fact, without food, we will lose our lives.  Without food, we will die.  Just some verses back we were cautioned to pray for “daily bread.”

But this misses the point.  For citizens of the Kingdom of God, the absence of food does not threaten our lives at all.  It may threaten our bodies, our health, and our physical lives, but citizens of the Kingdom of God have a different view of life:  it is unending.  To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:8.  Our life is more than food.

But what is really striking is verse 26.

²⁶ Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

“Are you not of more value than they?”  You are!  God likes His little birds, but God loves His people!  There is something unique about you, something that sets you apart from the animals.  Do you realize that you are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God?  Do you realize that He loves you?

When you give in to fear, to anxiety, to crippling worry, you insult the love of God.  Do terrible things happen?  Yes.  Do terrible things happen to the people of God?  Yes.  Why?  I do not pretend to know.  But even here the believer rests in the hands of a good God.  The believer lives free from anxiety, even as tragedy befalls them.

It is not wrong to grieve.  It is not wrong to ask God, “Why?”  It is not wrong to struggle.  The Lord God is not demanding inhuman stoicism.  But what He is doing is reminding us that even in the struggle, we need not despair, even in the pain, we need not resign ourselves to fear.  Our God reigns and our reigning God loves us!  This is why time and again, God’s Word comforts us.  Joseph Tson once said from the pulpit of Westminster Chapel that there are 366 verses in the Bible exhorting us not to worry.  He noted, “We have one for every day of the year and one for Leap Year!”[7]

II. Worry is Fruitless…It Helps Nothing. (v.27)

On a practical note, worry is fruitless as well.  Here is how Jesus put it.

²⁷ And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

It is interesting that there is a long debate over the last phrase of v.27.  Is it a reference to length of life (“add a single hour to his span of life” ((ESV))) or to height (“add one cubit unto his stature” ((KJV))).  That is interesting, but not critical, for neither translation affects the central point:  worry is fruitless and helps nothing.  All the worry in the world cannot make you taller or live longer, Jesus says.  It is wasted energy.

Kevin DeYoung writes that “anxiety, after all, is simply living out the future before it gets here.”[8]  You will immediately understand the absurdity of living out the future before it gets here:  we do not know the future.

Honestly, how often have you spent mental and spiritual and physical capital on things that never happened?  How often, after the fact, have you looked back on your worry and anxiety with embarrassment and shame?

III. Worry is an Insult to the Demonstrable Providence of God (v.28-30)

Worry also insults the demonstrable providence of God.  By demonstrable I mean observable.  By providence, I mean God’s hand of care and provision.  In other words, we can see God’s provision all around us!  Once again, Jesus points us to nature.

²⁸ And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹ yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ³⁰ But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

If God provides for throw-away flowers and grass, will He not provide for you?  Stop and study a flower, Jesus says.  See the intricate care and provision He has shrouded it in.  Observe its delicate and baffling beauty.  See how poets and song writers have waxed eloquent on the flowers.  And that’s God’s window dressing for the world!  If God lavishes the earth’s window dressing such, will He not care for you?

Peter Burn’s “Consider the Lilies” says:

Consider the lilies,

Ye sons of despair;

Consider the lilies,

Ye daughters of care.

And from them instruction receive:

Though fragile and feeble,

Yet, see how they grow,

“They toil not, they spin not,”

Nor care do they know,

But, kept by their Maker, they live.

Consider the lilies!

To them ever give

Attention and study –

They’ll teach you to live,

The secret of peace they will show;

Then, ye from distresses

And cares shall be free,

Like them ye shall flourish,

Though lowly you be,

Like them, ye in vigour shall grow.[9]

All around you is evidence of God’s care.  He is not cruel.  He is not forgetful.  He is for us, and we are safe in His hand, even if evils befall us.

IV. Worry is a Mark of Spiritual Lostness and is Therefore Unbecoming for Citizens of the Kingdom of God (v.31-34)

Finally, worry is the mark of an unregenerate heart, a lost heart.  It is not becoming for a citizen of the Kingdom of God to act as if God is not present and caring for His people.

³¹ Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. ³⁴ “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Yes, “the Gentiles seek after these things.”  Gentiles worry.  Gentiles are bound in fear.  Gentiles are suffocated by anxiety.  Why?  Because they do not know the Lord.  They are blind to the truth.  Thus, for lost people, anxiety is a natural disposition.  Kevin DeYoung writes that, “Worry about the future is not simply a character tic, it is the sin of unbelief, an indication that our hearts are not resting in the promises of God.”[10]

The people of God dare not act like people who are hopeless without God.  The people of God dare not act as if there is no God.  Our Savior has called upon us not to worry.  Our Savior has called upon us to trust and rest in God.

And that fact is key:  our Savior has called upon us not to worry.  That fact alone is what makes His instructions to consider the lilies of the field imminently practical.  I suspect some of you have been listening to this and thinking, “Fine and good, but that is not practical and that is not real life.  I simply cannot live life in the modern world without anxiety.”  But that thought assumes that we know greater burdens than the Lord Jesus Himself knew.  That is demonstrably false.  The One who gave us this teaching knew a burden we will never know, yet He gave it nonetheless!

John Stott relays how the German Protestant pastor, Helmut Thielicke, who had opposed Hitler, faced the difficult task of preaching to his German congregation in from 1946-1948, in the years immediately after World War 2.  The Germans were a devastated people, broken and hopeless.  Dr. Thielicke chose for his preaching plan in those years the Sermon on the Mount.  As he came to our text this morning, he reflected from the pulpit on how odd and seemingly impractical these words about considering the lilies and the birds must seem to a people who only recently tasted the anxiety or war and defeat.  “We know the sight and the sound of homes collapsing in flames,” Dr. Thielicke said, “Our own eyes have seen the red blaze and our own ears have heard the sound of crashing, falling and shrieking.”

Could such a people who had experienced such horrors really take seriously these words about considering the birds and lilies, these words against anxiety.  Here is how Thielicke concluded.  He drew the attention of his people to Jesus and said:

Nevertheless, I think we must stop and listen when this man, whose life on earth was anything but birdlike and lilylike, points us to the carefreeness of the birds and lilies. Were not the somber shadows of the Cross already looming over this hour of the Sermon on the Mount?[11]

Yes!  The shadow of the cross was already on Jesus when He taught us not to be anxious, not to worry.  This Jesus who teaches this carried a burden while teaching it that we will never know!  The man of sorrows knew what burdens were.  He would soon kneel in a garden and sweat drops of blood.  He was anguished.  He knew the temptation to anxiety and despair.  But He said, “Not My will but Thy will be done!”

There is comfort in that.  Brothers and sisters, there is no sin in feeling the weight of a burden.  There is no sin in sweating blood, even, over that with which we are confronted.  But citizens of the Kingdom of God do not stay there.  We do not let the struggle become anxiety then worry then despair then the abandonment of God.  We must say, “Not my will, by Thy will be done.”  And as we say that, we will look to our side and realize that we say it with the Lord Jesus, the One who told us not to worry, not to be anxious, not to despair.

Friends, consider the lilies.

Do not worry.

Exodus 11

¹ 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. ² 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.” ³ 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, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants and in the sight of the people. ⁴ So Moses said, “Thus says the Lord: ‘About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, ⁵ 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. ⁶ There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. ⁷ 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.’ ⁸ 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. ⁹ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh will not listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.” ¹⁰ 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.

Solzhenitsyn wrote a sentence in The Gulag Archipelago that I have always found chilling.  In this sentence, Solzhenitsyn is reflecting on his time in the Russian prison camps and he is trying to describe the trains, boats, and trucks on which countless Russians were hauled to the Gulag.  After speaking of this mass movement of prisoners into these terrible concentration camps, Solzhenitsyn writes:

Shut your eyes, reader.  Do you hear the thundering of wheels?[1]

There is something poignant and devastating about that sentence:  “Shut your eyes, reader.  Do you hear the thundering of wheels?”  I am tempted to ask us to do the same as we approach this introduction to this last and most horrifying plague.  Shut your eyes, church member!  Do you hear the shrieks and cries of the parents of Egypt’s firstborn sons?  Do you hear the lamentation of a nation that turned time and again away from God?  Do you hear the thundering of wheels?

Chapter 11 sets the stage for the execution of the final plague.  Terence Fretheim put it nicely when he wrote this:

Yet one more plague.  The end is near.  An impasse has been reached.  There is no more room to maneuver.  The stream of negotiation has reached the narrows, and the waters are shortly going to go crashing through the gorge.  There is no stopping things now.  A final judgment will fall upon Pharaoh and Egypt.[2]

It is to the announcement of that judgment that we turn tonight.

I. God Provides for His People (v.1-3)

We have already seen how the plagues increased in intensity, each being worse than the one before.  Here is the final plague, the final blow from the just hand of a mighty God.  The Lord first turns to Moses to tell him to prepare the people and to announce judgment over Egypt.

¹ 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. ² 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.” ³ 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, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants and in the sight of the people.

It is interesting to note that verse 1 is the only use of the actual Hebrew word for “plague” in the book of Exodus.  The Lord is truly foretelling the plague of all plagues.  But first he speaks of provisions for His people.  He says that the Israelites should ask their Egyptian neighbors for silver and gold and that the Egyptians will be favorably disposed to give them these things.  It has been noted that the Lord does to the opposite to the hearts of the Egyptian people that He did to Pharaoh’s heart:  He softens the hearts of the people.

The question is why?  Why does God command His people to request such from the Egyptians and why does He move the Egyptians to give?  There are perhaps many reasons why this might be, but a providential meting out of divine justice is surely among them.  The Egyptians had lived off of the toil of the Hebrew slaves for four hundred years.  It was only just, then, that that the Hebrews receive payment for their labors.  In doing this, God allowed the Hebrews to plunder peacefully their Egyptian captors.

Gregory of Nazianzus said this about the collection of Egyptian gold and silver:

What then?  Do you come out for nothing and without wages?  But why will you leave to the Egyptians and to the powers of your adversaries that which they have gained by wickedness and will spend with yet greater wickedness?  It does not belong to them.  They have ravished it and have sacrilegiously taken it as plunder form him who says, “The silver is mine and the gold is mind, and I give to whom I will.”  Yesterday it was theirs, for it was permitted to be so.  Today the master takes it and gives it to you that you may make a good and saving use of it.[3]

Here we see the generous provision of God!  It should also be understood that, apparently, some of the Egyptians went with the Israelites when they left.  We do not often think about that, but Exodus 12:38 informs us that “a mixed multitude also went up with them.”  Thus, while it is clear that this was a supernatural turning of the dispositions of the Egyptians towards magnanimity, it is also the case that some of the Egyptians had become God-fearers and likely willingly gave what they had as offerings of worship and repentance.

II. God Foretells Devastating Judgment (v.4-8)

The liberation of the Hebrews came at great cost to the Egyptians.

⁴ So Moses said, “Thus says the Lord: ‘About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, ⁵ 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. ⁶ There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. ⁷ 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.’ ⁸ 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.

The ESV says that “every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die,” but the NIV, NLT, HCSB make it clear that this is referring to the “firstborn son” or “firstborn male.”  Truly, this is a terrifying and devastating plague.  The horrific progression has reached its culmination.

This plague can be jarring for modern readers.  How could God kill the firstborn sons of Egypt?  I certainly have no intention of defending God’s actions, as God’s actions do not need defense, but I would like for us to remember a few things.  First, the coming of Jesus, the Son of David, depended upon the survival of the Jews.  Jesus was Jew.  It was necessary that He come in Israel’s line.  This is not simply a people.  This is God’s people.

Secondly, let us realize that Egypt has been trying to destroy God’s “firstborn son.”  What do I mean?  In Exodus 4:22, God tells Moses to tell Pharaoh, “Israel is my firstborn son…If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.”  This does not mean that Israel is God’s “only begotten son.”  That title is for Christ and Christ alone.  The Father has no other Son but Jesus.  But, metaphorically, Israel is the apple of God’s eye, His firstborn son.

Furthermore, how many literal firstborn sons of Israel had died on Egyptian soil these 400 years?  How much blood had the Egyptians shed?  It is not as if God was striking out haphazardly or in an arbitrary manner.  He is defending and delivering His people from cruel tyranny.

The firstborn of the mighty Egyptians would die and the firstborn of the lowly Egyptians would die.  The firstborn of their cattle would likewise die.  The Lord God will reveal to Egypt the dastardly wickedness of their deeds against His firstborn son.  Their reaction would be one of despair.

⁶ There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again.

Here we are back to Solzhenitsyn:  “Shut your eyes, reader.  Do you hear the thundering of wheels?”  Do you hear the cry of Egypt?  Do you hear their wailing howls of terror and grief?  God will put His hand on Egypt.

It is likely the case that every church age has a kind of theological temperament.  Meaning, every church age, in general, tends to lean this way or that in terms of what they emphasize.  The Puritans, for instance, are often depicted as leaning inordinately towards the wrath of God in terms of what they emphasized.  That is likely a caricature to some extent, but there can be no doubt that many ages of the church have inordinately stressed God’s wrath.  In William Faulkner’s novel, Intruder in the Dust, Lucas Beauchamp reflects on the church steeples he has seen:

…and he remembered the tall slender spires which said Peace and the squatter utilitarian belfries which said Repent and he remembered one which even said Beware but this one said simply:  Burn…[4]

There have been times in Christian history where the gospel was eclipsed by an overemphasis on the wrath of God, when the church seemed to reduce its message to one word:  burn.  That is a great tragedy.

Our age, of course, has taken the opposite approach and has stressed God’s love almost to the exclusion of His wrath.  We do not know what to do with the wrath of God.  We modern Americans have almost been conditioned instinctively to side with the guilty and to mistrust authority.  Again, that is a generalization, but as a national temperament, that’s likely true.  And our pulpits and worship services have probably come to reflect that fact.

For instance, the Presbyterian Committee on Congregational Song recently voted to exclude Keith Getty and Stuart Townsend’s song, “In Christ alone,” from their new hymnal after Getty and Townsend refused to let them change the line, “Till on that cross as Jesus died/the wrath of God was satisfied,” to, “Till on that cross as Jesus died/the love of God was magnified.”  Here is a committee that did not like the notion of Christ bearing the wrath of the Father on Calvary.

Let me simply say, however, that God is holy and God is perfect.  This means that God is perfect in His love and perfect in His wrath.  Jerry Bridges once referred to holiness as the perfection of the attributes of God.[5]  I agree with that.  We must resist the temptation to whittle God down so that His attributes fit our template for what is appropriate and right.  If the actions of God seem odd to us, it is because we are off base, not God.

Observe, again, however, that as fierce as the wrath of God is when He pours it out, He protects His people from it.

⁷ 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.’

It has been observed that dogs were not domesticated pets in Egypt but instead “were considered undesirable and a general nuisance, perhaps as a rat would be viewed today.”  Thus, the observation that “not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either or man or beast” “suggests unusual calm, for these roaming curs were easily antagonized by the slightest irregularity.”[6]  Not even the stray animals will dare growl at the people of God when He has covered them in His mantle of protection.

Brothers and sisters, we have been covered by the mantle of the blood of Christ.  It protects us.  It is over us.  We are not the objects of God’s wrath, but of His love.  And we extend this love to the world when we proclaim Christ, calling all people to come to Him.

III. God Works Sovereignly to Further His Own Glory (v.9-10)

Once again, we see that the purpose of the Exodus is theological rather than geographical.  He is not merely wanting to move a people from there to here.  No, He is primarily wanting to assert His own glory and power.

⁹ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh will not listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.” ¹⁰ 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.

Why are you doing this, Lord?  “That my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.”  The salvation of the world does not depend upon the migration or even the liberation of a people.  It depends upon the rock solid fact that God is able to do all that He intends to do.  He is strong.  He is mighty.  He is powerful.  He is God on high.  He is able to save.

We may feel many things as we work through the Exodus, but surely wonder is one of them.  We wonder at the wonders of God!  This is the God we worship.  This God…the One who can lay low the mighty kings of the earth, the One who laughs to scorn all Pharaohs and kings and potentates and despots and dictators and Prime Ministers and Presidents and rulers and lords and conquerors who dare to think that they are gods.  He can also lay us low when we presume to think the same thing of ourselves.

Watch Pharaoh, sitting there on his throne.  Now watch him fall as he dares to raise a hand against God and His people.  Our God is indeed an awesome God.  He is strong and mighty to save!  I conclude with the majestic words of Psalm 2.

1 Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?

2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,

3 “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”

4 He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.

5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,

6 “As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”

7 I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.

8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.

9 You shall break them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.

11 Serve the Lord with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.

12 Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
 for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

Our God reigns!  Let us praise Him.  Let us follow Him.

Matthew 6:19-24

¹⁹ “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, ²⁰ but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. ²² “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, ²³ but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! ²⁴ “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

That great preach from yesteryear, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, passed on an interesting story he once heard about a farmer who had two calves.

It is the story of a farmer who one day went happily and with great joy in his heart to report to his wife and family that their best cow had given birth to twin calves, one red and one white.  And he said, ‘You know I have suddenly had a feeling and impulse that we must dedicate one of these calves to the Lord.  We will bring them up together, and when the time comes we will sell one and keep the proceeds, and we will sell the other and give the proceeds to the Lord’s work.’  His wife asked him which he was going to dedicate to the Lord.  ‘There is no need to bother about that now,’ he replied, ‘we will treat them both in the same way and when the time comes we will do as I say.’  And off he went.  In a few months the man entered his kitchen looking very miserable and unhappy.  When his wife asked him what was troubling him, he answered, ‘I have bad news to give you.  The Lord’s calf is dead.’[1]

We know exactly what has happened here, do we not?  Greed is a powerful motivator and an ever-present temptation in our consumer culture.  I find it intriguing that we are looking at this text on this morning when we gather for the Lord’s Supper.  At the Lord’s Supper, we consume…but it is a consuming that puts all other consuming in proper perspective.  Today we come to the table to take, but in taking we are reminded of what really matters.

My points this morning are simple and I commend them to your careful consideration.  As we consider these verses, let us look at the second half (v.21-14) first and the first half (v.19-20) second.

I. Your life will inevitably be driven in the direction of the treasures that have captured your heart and eyes. (v.21-24)

Your life will inevitably be driven in the direction of the treasures that have captured your heart and eyes.  That is a simple fact.  History has demonstrated the truthfulness of this fact and personal experience has verified it.  We are driven by the things that capture our souls’ attention.  Jesus put it like this:

²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. ²² “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, ²³ but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! ²⁴ “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

Your treasure will drive your heart.  What your heart wants will dictate your life’s trajectory.  And your eye will do likewise, for the fixation of your eyes will pour either light or darkness into your body.  If the eye looks on good things, it will pull your heart towards those good things.  If your eye is fixed on wicked things, it will pull your heart towards wicked things.

Just think how what your eyes are enamored with compel you in the direction of that with which you are enamored.  If you keep your eye from lingering too long over a thing, then you break the power of that thing.  We should strive to be blind to wickedness and evil, including greed.  John Chrysostom asked, “If your eyes were completely blind, would you choose to wear gold and silk?”[2]

This connection between the fixation of the eyes and the condition of the heart is what is behind Jesus’ statement about lust from chapter 5.

²⁷ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ ²⁸ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ²⁹ If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. ³⁰ And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

It is better to rip your eye from your body than to let your eye lead you to hell.  Which is simply to say that it is quite possible for us to be possessed by what we stare at the longest.  If a man or woman spends his or her days staring at wealth, staring at goods, staring at a bigger house, staring at a nicer car, staring at her, staring at him, staring at status, staring at success, or staring at fame, he or she will likely become possessed by that at which he or she is staring.

This is why Jesus says such a startling thing:  “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away!”  In using this unsettling image, Jesus was simply acknowledging that our eyes can steer us to hell.  Therefore we should do whatever we need to do to wrench ourselves free from soul-destroying idols that captivate us.

I am struck by one particularly odd episode in the life of St. Francis and his followers.  Francis had his followers wear rope belts around their simple robes.  The ropes had three knots in them representing the three Franciscan virtues of poverty, chastity, and obedience.  The Franciscan commitment to poverty meant that they did not touch money, if at all possible.  Mark Galli relays  an account of the strange episode involving one of the Franciscans touching some money.

According to The Assisi Compilation, one day a layman happened to enter St. Mary of the Angels to pray and, as an offering, he laid some money near the cross.  After he left, a brother unthinkingly picked the money up and placed it on a window ledge.  When the brother heard that Francis had learned of the incident, he immediately rushed to Francis and implored forgiveness.  He even offered his body, saying Francis should whip him for penance.  Francis, however, was not so easily placated; he had a better idea.  After rebuking the brother sternly, he ordered him to go the windowsill, pick up the money with his mouth and carry it outside.  Then, again with his mouth, he was to deposit in on a heap of ass’s dung.  The brother obeyed gladly.[3]

This is shocking behavior indeed!  To be sure, money, in and of itself, is morally neutral, it is neither inherently good nor inherently bad.  But it is dangerous, as this episode from the early Franciscans demonstrates.  Did Francis go too far in this?  I do not know.  You tell me.  I know this:  it is better to put our idols on the dung heap than to allow them sway over our hearts.

We must be free of those things that enslave the human heart.  These are the things on which our hearts fixate and on which our eyes are locked.  How do we do this?  How do we break free?  Simply put, we must let our hearts and eyes become fixated on more beautiful things than mere money or mammon.

Stanley Hauerwas writes:

Possessed by possessions, we discover that we cannot will our way free of our possessions.  But if we can be freed our attention may be grasped by that which is so true, so beautiful, we discover we have been dispossessed.[4]

But what is this that is “so true, so beautiful” that it has the power to dispossess us of that which has possessed us?  Truly, it is Christ.  Our hearts and eyes should be fixed on Christ.  When Christ is situated in the center of the human heart, our eyes are now free to see clearly and to attach themselves to more beautiful things.

II. Choose, then, treasures that are eternal and that steer you Godward. (v.19-20)

We must choose to look upon Christ, and, with Him, upon all things that steer us Godward.  Jesus says this in v.19-20:

¹⁹ “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, ²⁰ but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

The word that many of our translations translate as “rust” is brosis.  That word actually means “eating” and it refers to something that devours, something more like locusts than rust. We are a people obsessed with the accumulation of things that will not last.  This is true even of Christians in America today.  Clarence Jordan has asked some poignant questions.

Why has the Western world, and America in particular, which measures most of its values on this materialistic scale, been attracted to the religion of Jesus Christ inasmuch as Jesus ruthlessly condemns materialism?  What trick of the mind has made it possible for us and him to dwell together in apparent unity?[5]

It is, indeed, a strange union:  materialistic Christians and Jesus Christ.  Yes, Christ loves and calls materialists too, but He calls us to set aside our materialism.  He does so by warning us.  In our text this morning, he warns us against moths, devourers, and thieves.  The problem with staking your life on temporal things is that they are just that, temporal.  This is why great wealth so often brings great anxiety:  we must expend so much energy to keep it!  We must guard against the moths and the devourers and the thieves.  And, on top of that, we must constantly plot new ways to accumulate more, for a little wealth never seems to satisfy.  We must not only protect but increase.  Calvin Miller has captured this truth well in this little poem from his The Divine Symphony:

A beggar asked a millionaire,

“How many more dollars

Would it take to

Make you truly happy?”

The millionaire,

Reaching his gnarled hands

Into the beggar’s cup, replied,

“Only one more!”[6]

It is never enough, and it never lasts.  Jesus warns of the inevitable disintegration of our treasures.  He also warns of the foolishness of wealth-obsession in light of the inevitable conclusion of our earthly lives.  He did this most memorably in Luke 12.

¹³ Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” ¹⁴ But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” ¹⁵ And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” ¹⁶ And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, ¹⁷ and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ ¹⁸ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹ And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ ²⁰ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ ²¹ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Jesus calls the man a fool.  He was a fool because he forgot the temporal nature of his life.  He was a fool because he spent the few years allotted to him in the accumulation of goods that would not last, just as his life on earth would not last.

What, then, is the answer?  If wealth is bound to decay and disintegrate before moths, devourers, thieves, and death, what then should we do?  We should do two things.  First, we should see earthly wealth for what it is:  temporal.  Secondly, we should choose treasures that are eternal and that steer us Godward.

We must choose – really and practically choose – to have our hearts and eyes captured by the beauty of Jesus and His gospel.  This means the practical devaluing of temporal things.  Devaluing does not mean utter abandonment.  The temporal things of life are good in their appropriate measures.  Devaluing means no longer allowing these temporal things to hold our hearts and our eyes captive.

It means the devaluing of temporal things and the revaluing of eternal things.  It means looking again upon Christ so as to love Him.  It means marveling at Christ.

This is what makes our consideration of this passage on Communion Sunday so fascinating to me.  Here, on the table, the Lord has given us something to look at, to hold, to touch, to smell, and to taste.  It is a memorial feast pointing our hearts and minds to Christ.  The beauty of this moment is not in the bread but in the Jesus to whom the bread points.  The beauty of this moment is not in the juice but in the Christ to whom the juice points.

Here, friends, is a treasure that lasts, for here we are assisted in coming again before Jesus Christ.  Here we are reminded that the Lamb of God has willingly laid down His life for His sheep…for us…for you and for me.  Here we see an eternal treasure than no moth, no devourer, and no thief can steal.

The devil cannot steal this!  The devil cannot steal the good news that Christ has come, that Christ has walked among us, that Christ has laid down His life, that Christ has risen, and that Christ is coming again!  Hallelujah!

Jesus is a treasure indeed, and He is yours this morning if you will but come to Him.

Matthew 6:16-18

¹⁶ “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. ¹⁷ But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, ¹⁸ that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

The Romanian pastor Richard Wurmbrand spent numerous years in prison for preaching the gospel and for saying that communism and Christianity were incompatible.  He spent a very long time in solitary confinement, either being tortured psychologically through complete and utter silence (even the guards put felt on their feet so that he could not hear them) or through having to listen to audio of crude denunciations of Christianity and praises of communism.  His physical torture was also nearly unbearable.  His feet were beaten to the bone and pieces of flesh were ripped from his body.  He bore the scars of that torture for the rest of his life.

Somehow, however, he remained joyful.  He preached sermons to himself and to the air around him.  He trained his mind to think on Christ.  He even forced himself to stand on his bloodied, broken feet and kind of dance around the cell for joy, believing that the angels were dancing with him.

            He was released from prison unexpectedly, and as he left the prison dressed like a scarecrow, with his teeth rotted and in terrible shape, he met a peasant woman on the road carrying a basket of beautiful strawberries.  When she offered him one, he started to take it but then said, “No thanks.  I am going to fast.”  He went home to his wife, and they prayed and fasted as a memorial to the joy he had experienced in prison, asking God for the same kind of joy outside of prison.”[1]

What is this strange thing, fasting, that could compel a just-released prisoner to turn down fresh strawberries?  What can this be?  It must be a powerful thing indeed, for Christian history is filled with God-fearing men and women turning to the practice.  Most importantly, Jesus spoke of it as an accepted and possibly even assumed part of discipleship.

¹⁶ “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. ¹⁷ But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, ¹⁸ that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

I. What is Fasting? (v.16a)

Let us first try to define fasting.  In verse 16a, Jesus says, “And when you fast.”  At the least that is an acknowledgment from Jesus that this practice of fasting is valid and helpful for His followers.  At the most, it can be read as an assumption that His followers will, indeed, fast.

But what is it?  I would like to offer you two definitions of fasting, both of which I personally find very helpful.  The first is from theologian Scot McKnight.

Fasting is the natural, inevitable response of a person to a grievous sacred moment in life.[2]

That is a very carefully worded statement, and one we should consider:  “Fasting is the natural, inevitable response of a person to a grievous sacred moment in life.”  Have you ever experienced “a grievous sacred moment in life”?  That refers to those moments when our souls are heavily burdened, agitated, or troubled.  Perhaps we stand at a major intersection in life and we see the need for greater wisdom.  Perhaps we are caught in the throes of some besetting sin or habit that is tormenting us and keeping us from walking closely with the Lord God.  Perhaps it is simply a slowly dawning awareness that you are not where you need to be spiritually.  Perhaps it is a crisis in life.  Perhaps it is too much success, and you are being tempted to distort your priorities.

These are grievous sacred moments, and McKnight suggests that fasting is “the natural, inevitable response of a person” to these kinds of moments.  Meaning, when we are thus agitated, troubled, burdened, distracted, in danger, or out of balance, fasting is something that the people of God should naturally consider.  It is therefore a response.  It is something we take up in reaction to something that is happening to or within or around us.

I like McKnight’s definition because it highlights our need.  We fast because we need something:  peace in our minds, hearts, and souls.  I also like John Piper’s definition because he highlights exactly what it is that we need.

As an act of faith, Christian fasting is an expression of dissatisfied contentment in the all-sufficiency of Christ.  It is an expression of secure and happy longing for the all-satisfying fullness of Christ…It is a hunger for God awakened by the taste of God freely given in the gospel.[3]

Fasting, then, is an effort to have more of Christ so that the spiritual crises we face may be met head on by greater union with Christ.  Fasting is a desire to be fed by Christ.  This is how I would define it:  Fasting is an act of self-deprivation undertaken so that the wounded, distracted, or dulled human heart can be cleared and focused, and thereby enabled to receive the greater gifts of God.

Normally and traditionally, what this self-deprivation looks like is going without food.  To be sure, there are many ways we can fast, and we ought not limit it to food, but I must say that there is something about deciding not to eat for a time that grips and focuses the soul in powerful ways.  In this sermon, I am going primarily to speak of fasting in this traditional way (going without food), though, again, you can fast from anything that might have an disproportionate hold on you.

Let us first understand, however, that fasting is profoundly biblical.  Kent Berghuis points out that fasting from food is mentioned in the Bible “in about fifty-nine contexts,” forty-six of which “are totally favorable toward fasting.”[4]  In Matthew 4:2, we see Jesus fasting.  In Matthew 9:14, we see that John and his disciples fasted.  In Matthew 9:15, we see Jesus saying that after His ascension into Heaven His disciples will fast.  In Acts 13:2, we see the believers in Antioch fasting.  In Acts 14:23, we see Paul and Barnabas fasting.

II. Why Do We Fast? (v.17-18)

Having explored what this fascinating act is, let us ask the next obvious question:  “Why do we fast?”  There are a number of reasons, but the first must be the one implied by Jesus in our text this morning.

¹⁷ But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, ¹⁸ that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

That final statement in v.18 is intriguing, to say the least:  “And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”  In some sense, then, it is appropriate to say that we fast to receive the secret reward of our Father.  That seems clear enough, though immediately we see the need to qualify what this means.  We do indeed fast for a reward, but the reward is (a) from the Father and (b) given in secret.  Which is to say, the reward is spiritual medicine, spiritual rest.  The reward is God meeting you in that moment of crisis that gave rise to the fast in the first place.  In other words, the reward is the secret gift of God Himself!

This is why this qualification is important:  many see fasting as a means of manipulating God for personal gain.  But surely this is a grotesque perversion of a beautiful act of discipleship.  We do fast for reward…and God is the reward.  In a general sense, I believe that Lynne Baab is correct when she says this about fasting:

Fasting from food demands – and facilitates – an integration of mind, body and spirit that connects with deep spiritual reality…Fasting, at its core, is not a discipline of withholding.  Fasting is a discipline of making space for God.[5]

To put it simply, then, we fast for God.  But this fast for God, biblically, has taken various forms.  In studying the fifty-nine contexts in scripture in which fasting is mentioned, Berghuis concluded that there are six biblical reasons for fasting.

• Fasting as a sign of sorrow
• Fasting as a sign of repentance and seeking forgiveness
• Fasting as an aid in prayer
• Fasting as an aid in experiencing God’s presence
• Fasting as an act of ceremonial public worship
• Fasting as related to ministry[6]

These are all very good reasons, and there may be others.  To my knowledge, I have never quoted Dolly Parton in a sermon, but I am going to change that today.  Dolly Parton was once interviewed by People magazine.  The interviewer was asking her how she stayed sane in show business.  Her answer was very surprising!

The question was, “Where do you ever get such a strong character?”  And Dolly told about her family and her Christian faith.  “I quote the Bible real good!” she said.

            “What about psychiatry?” asked the interviewer.  “So many people find the need to get counseling, especially in the stresses of show business.”

            “No,” said Dolly, “I don’t see a psychiatrist.  I fast instead.”

            “You what?!”

            “I fast!”

            Is that like a diet?!

            “No!” said Dolly.  “I do it to get in touch with God!  Sometimes I’ll…fast 7,14, or 21 days…I don’t drink nothing but water and I don’t ever say when I’m on a fast – Scripture says you’re not supposed to.”  She went on to say that she’s never made a major decision without fasting and prayer.  The interviewer was astounded.[7]

Here is another reason for fasting:  seeking the will of God when facing a major life decision.  I would propose that fasting for God’s will is a more-than-valid reason for embarking on this journey.  Dallas Willard passes on these words from a pastor who embraced the discipline of fasting:

Surprisingly, after the fast is when I began to realize something from the fast.  I came back from the fast with a clearer sense of purpose and a renewed sense of power in my ministry.  The anger which I unleashed at my wife and children was less frequent and the materialism that was squeezing the life out of my spirituality had loosened its grip.[8]

Truly, God often does a mighty work in fasting.  Unfortunately, I suspect that many of us miss the benefits of fasting because we are simply unwilling to do it.

Scott McKnight says that he routinely has students coming to him to discuss their efforts to discover God’s will for their lives.  He had one student come to him who was really struggling to find God’s will.  McKnight recommended to the student that he fast for a couple of days, going without food and training his mind solely on God…to which the young man responded that, believe it or not, he thought he might have just figured it out after all.  Then he left.[9]

Do you see?  We want the favor and blessing of God, but we want it on our terms.  To say that we want spiritual growth and Christlikeness but we will not alter the routines that often come to dictate our daily existence is to tell God, in essence, that we expect Him to meet us on our terms.  But what if what is really needed is a willingness among His disciples to set apart what we think we need most so that we can truly hear him.

Tony Evans likens fasting to the man who has a moisture problem in his basement.  He checks all the seals and exhausts all the possible reasons why his basement could be getting wet.  Finally, he calls in a professional.  After assessing the situation, the professional informs him that the problem is, in fact, beneath the foundation.  He tells the homeowner that if he wants to fix the problem, he’ll have to bust up the foundation.

Fasting is a way in which we bust up the foundation, the concrete of our own numbing habits. So often we want to fix the crises we face without busting up the foundation.  We all know that sometimes more than surface work is needed.

III. What are the Dangers of Fasting? (v.16b-c)

The great gifts of God are always open to great perversion and distortion.  That has certainly been the case with fasting throughout Christian history.  As we discuss the dangers of fasting, it will be helpful to see that the Lord Himself acknowledges the fact that it can be done poorly or wrongly.  The key text in this regard is Isaiah 58, in which the people of God ask God why He has not seen and blessed their fasting.

³ ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not?
Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’
Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,
and oppress all your workers.

⁴ Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to hit with a wicked fist.
Fasting like yours this day
will not make your voice to be heard on high.

⁵ Is such the fast that I choose,
a day for a person to humble himself?
Is it to bow down his head like a reed,
and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?
Will you call this a fast,
and a day acceptable to the Lord?

⁶ “Is not this the fast that I choose:
 to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

⁸ Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you;
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

⁹ Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’
If you take away the yoke from your midst,
the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,

¹⁰ if you pour yourself out for the hungry
and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then shall your light rise in the darkness
and your gloom be as the noonday.

¹¹ And the Lord will guide you continually
and satisfy your desire in scorched places
 and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters do not fail.

¹² And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to dwell in.

¹³ “If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath,
from doing your pleasure on my holy day,
and call the Sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;

¹⁴ then you shall take delight in the Lord,
and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

In short, God condemns empty fasting in this passage, fasting that does not penetrate the heart, fasting that can be carried on while godlessness is being in engaged in at the same time.  This passage warns us against any woodenly mechanical approach to fasting whereby the fast itself is seen as the main thing.  But the fast is never the main thing.  The glory of God manifested in and through His people is the main thing.  To fast while sinning against His glory is a great perversion indeed.

Let us consider some of the ways we fall into this trap.

The Danger of Religiosity

Those who fast are particularly prone to the danger of empty religiosity, of trying to put on an outward display of holiness, usually through a façade of feigned suffering.  Jesus addresses this in our text this morning.

¹⁶ “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.

It is evident that we should not fast to be seen, but does this mean that there are literally no reasons why we might tell another we are fasting?  We have seen with the Lord’s earlier cautions in the Sermon on the Mount that doing something to be seen is not the same as being seen doing something.  The main problem with the idea that literally under no circumstance should anybody know you are fasting or should you share with anybody that you are is the presence of corporate fasting in Scripture.  In fact, there are twenty-seven corporate fasts mentioned in the Bible.[10]  Obviously, in a corporate fast, everybody knows that everybody is fasting.  Furthermore, there might be situations in which discreetly informing the host of a gathering that you will not be eating tonight, or, of course, informing your spouse of what you are doing, might be helpful.  But the key here is discretion, the kind that undercuts showiness.

What is certain is that we should never fast to be seen!  Such empty religiosity has its own reward.

Physical Danger

There is also a very obvious physical danger to fasting if done wrongly or recklessly.  The very first letter printed in John Wesley’s Journal is written to the father of a friend of his and is dated October 18, 1732.  Here is how it begins:

Sir,

The occasion of my giving you this trouble is of a very extraordinary nature.  On Sunday last I was informed (as no doubt you will be ere long) that my brother and I had killed your son:  That the rigorous fasting which he had imposed upon himself, by our advice, had increased his illness and hastened his death.[11]

Wesley goes on to show that he cannot be responsible for such, but the accusation itself rests on the very true fact that you may, indeed, fast too much and die.  Research suggests that numbers of Christians, perhaps particularly women, fasted to death from the 13^th century to the 18^th.  An example would be Margaret of Cortona who was encouraged by her confessor to eat something, but who responded:

Dear Father, I have no intention of making a peace pact between my body and my soul, and neither do I intend to hold back.  Therefore allow me to tame my body by not altering my diet; I will not stop for the rest of my life until there is no life left.[12]

It is said that St. Veronica would only eat meals of five orange seeds, which represented, to her, the five wounds of Christ.  It is said of St. Anthony that he ate one meal a day, after sunset, but often only ate every second or fourth day.  Catherine of Siena may have fasted to death.  Apparently some of her family thought this was more a victory of Satan than a display of devotion to God.

Let us just be clear:  fasting to death does not bring glory to God.  This is suicide, not discipleship.  The point of fasting is not self-induced suffering.  It is seeking God through intentional abstinence from something that has a hold on you.

Be aware of the physical danger of excessive fasting.  Furthermore, I agree with the view that Christians should consult their doctors before embarking on a fast.

The Danger of a Manipulative Theology

Perhaps one of the greatest dangers of fasting is the temptation it can sometimes bring towards a manipulative theology.  I am referring to the books we sometimes see in bookstores entitled, Fasting For…  Again, we fast for God.  True, we might fast so that we might hear God in crisis moments when we feel far from him, and those crisis moments may be linked to individual issues of vocation or finance, but this does not mean that we fast for vocation or finance.  That is, we do not fast to manipulate God to do anything.  We fast because we need God desperately.

It is very important, then, that you not fast for wealth, or for a relationship, or for a promotion, or for a purchase, though, of course, situations surrounding any of these might give rise to crises calling for fasting.  Do you see the difference?  Whatever you are doing in fasting, you must not see yourself as fasting to get God to jump through your hoops.

The Danger of Seeing Fasting as an End and Not a Means

There is also a danger that we might fast because we are fixated on fasting.  In this scenario, fasting becomes an end in and of itself, instead of a means by which our hearts are opened to God.  I am not accusing Adalbert de Vogue of this mistake per se, but I will suggest that this statement of his might be a dangerous statement:

Fasting was no longer a constraint and penance for me, but a joy and need of body and soul.  I practiced it spontaneously because I loved it.[13]

Read charitably, I think I understand what this Benedictine monk was saying:  he loved how fasting opened his heart to God.  Read critically, it almost sounds as if he had come to love fasting as fasting.  If that is the case, he was greatly mistaken.  We fast not because we love fasting.  We fast because we love God.

I rather like how Edna St. Vincent Millay put it when she wrote this about fasting:

I drank at every vine. The last was like the first.

I came upon no wine, So wonderful as thirst.

I gnawed at every root, I ate of every plant.

I came upon no fruit, So wonderful as want.

Feed the grape and the bean, To the vinter and the monger;

I will lie down lean, With my thirst and my hunger.[14]

Consider the possibility that the Lord may be calling you to seek Him through fasting.  Fast for God, and you will meet Him in that holy hunger.

Exodus 10

¹ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them, ² and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them, that you may know that I am the Lord.” ³ So Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh and said to him, “Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, that they may serve me. ⁴ For if you refuse to let my people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your country, ⁵ and they shall cover the face of the land, so that no one can see the land. And they shall eat what is left to you after the hail, and they shall eat every tree of yours that grows in the field, ⁶ and they shall fill your houses and the houses of all your servants and of all the Egyptians, as neither your fathers nor your grandfathers have seen, from the day they came on earth to this day.’” 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. 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 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. 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.” 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. ²¹ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to be felt.” ²² So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was pitch darkness in all the land of Egypt three days. ²³ They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days, but all the people of Israel had light where they lived. ²⁴ Then Pharaoh called Moses and said, “Go, serve the Lord; your little ones also may go with you; only let your flocks and your herds remain behind.” ²⁵ But Moses said, “You must also let us have sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God. ²⁶ Our livestock also must go with us; not a hoof shall be left behind, for we must take of them to serve the Lord our God, and we do not know with what we must serve the Lord until we arrive there.” ²⁷ But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let them go. ²⁸ Then Pharaoh said to him, “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.”

The first church I ever pastored was just above the Red River, the border between Texas and Oklahoma.  It was a little white church and used to serve the area as the old one-room schoolhouse.  It was a beautiful church sitting in the middle of rural, southern Oklahoma.  The members were farmers, primarily.  My wife and I think back on that seminary pastorate with very fond memories.

I recall, on one occasion, leaving the church after morning services and driving to the Hicks’ family farm.  As we turned up the dirt drive leading through their fields to their home, something hit our windshield.  Then something else.  Then many something elses!  I thought for a moment that it might be hail, but the sky was clear above us.  Finally, one of the objects got stuck in our windshield wiper and I was able to get a look at it.  It was a large grasshopper, bigger than the ones I had ever seen before.  They were jumping out of the grass as we drove, pelting our windshield and car in wave after wave.  It was all very unnerving.  I had never seen so many grasshoppers! When we got to the house, we cautiously stepped out, only to find farmer Hicks chuckling at the alarm of the pastor and pastor’s wife.  He picked one of them up and showed it to me.  What was surreal and frightening to me was of no concern to him at all.  It was just a way of life to him, something that happened at certain points throughout the year.  It certainly was not a plague, but to my city boy eyes it seemed like one.

I think I may have felt like Laura Ingalls Wilder once felt, though she had real reason to feel so!  Listen as she describes a strange and terrifying event that occurred around their prairie home in Minnesota.

Plunk!  Something hit Laura’s head and fell to the ground.  She looked down and saw the largest grasshopper she had ever seen.  Then huge brown grasshoppers were hitting the ground all around her, hitting her head and her face and her arms.  They came thudding down like hail.

            The cloud was hailing grasshoppers.  The cloud was grasshoppers.  Their bodies hid the sun and made darkness.  Their thin, large wings gleamed and glittered.  The rasping whirring of their wings filled the whole air and they hit the ground and the house with the noise of a hailstorm.

            Laura tried to beat them off.  Their claws clung to her skin and her dress.  They looked at her with bulging eyes, turning their heads this way and that.  Mary ran screaming into the house.  Grasshoppers covered the ground, there was not one bare bit to step on.  Laura had to step on grasshoppers and they smashed squirming and slimy under her feet…

            Grasshoppers beat down from the sky and swarmed thick over the ground.  Their long wings were folded and their strong legs took them hopping everywhere.  The air whirred and the roof went on sounding like a roof in a hailstorm.

            Then Laura heard another sound, one big sound made of tiny nips and snips and gnawings…The grasshoppers were eating…You could hear the millions of jaws biting and chewing…Day after day the grasshoppers kept on eating.  They ate all the wheat and the oats.  They ate every green thing – all the garden and all the prairie grass…The whole prairie was bare and brown.  Millions of brown grasshoppers whirred low over it.  Not a green things was in sight anywhere.[1]

That is a chilling image, and one that many people throughout history have experienced.  It is safe to say, however, that no people experienced such to quite the extent that the Egyptians did.  Their tragedy was their sin, and the plagues were the escalating punishments that should have driven them into the arms of God.

I. Sin Blinds Us So Badly That We Mistake Our Savior For Our Enemy (v.1-11)

Pharaoh’s blindness is a recurring theme in Exodus.  He was blind and his heart was hard because he had sinned against God and rejected the truth of God.  Also, in ways that we do not fully understand, there was a divine hardening of his heart as well.  Regardless, the sin was Pharaoh’s and the rebellion was Pharaoh’s.  It took him to tragic extremes.

¹ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them, ² and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them, that you may know that I am the Lord.”

We saw last week that the primary intent of the events of the Exodus was God’s glorification of Himself through the dethroning of a self-proclaimed god and the deliverance of His people.  Here He speaks of the trans-generational transmission of this great theological truth:  God alone is God and He is worthy to be praised.  The people of Israel will have a story to tell their children and grandchildren.  I would simply point out that this passing on of the story reaches us as well and must continue through us.  It is our privilege to speak to those who come after us of the mighty works of God.

³ So Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh and said to him, “Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, that they may serve me. ⁴ For if you refuse to let my people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your country, ⁵ and they shall cover the face of the land, so that no one can see the land. And they shall eat what is left to you after the hail, and they shall eat every tree of yours that grows in the field, ⁶ and they shall fill your houses and the houses of all your servants and of all the Egyptians, as neither your fathers nor your grandfathers have seen, from the day they came on earth to this day.’” 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.”

Pharaoh’s servants have long since grown tired of this exhausting and dangerous cycle.  They see that the God of the Hebrews has power and strength, and that standing against Him is not a good idea!  Yet, even now, Pharaoh is parsing words and negotiating:  “But which ones are to go?”  Even now, Pharaoh hesitates at the threshold of true and complete repentance.  Moses says that they must all go to hold a feast to the Lord.  In other words, there will be no compromises.  Pharaoh must relent before the will of God.  In Exodus 8, Moses had already said that such a feast would necessitate them leaving Egypt:

²⁵ Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, “Go, sacrifice to your God within the land.” ²⁶ But Moses said, “It would not be right to do so, for the offerings we shall sacrifice to the Lord our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice offerings abominable to the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not stone us? ²⁷ We must go three days’ journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord our God as he tells us.” 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.”

Thus, to tell Pharaoh they needed to have a feast was to tell Pharaoh that they needed to leave Egypt.  Pharaoh, however, will have none of it.  He responds with indignation and scorn.

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.

What is truly amazing at this point is that Pharaoh accuses Moses of having “some evil purpose in mind.”  Pharaoh, whose mind was firmly in the grip of Satan’s power, calls gods plan “evil.”  So blinded was he that he mistook his savior for his enemy.  What cruel irony.

This has been the case throughout human history:  men calling evil what God calls good and men calling good what God calls evil.  In John 8, for instance, Jesus is accused of being demon possessed.

⁴⁸ The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” ⁴⁹ Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. ⁵⁰ Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. ⁵¹ Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” ⁵² The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon!

Furthermore, in Matthew 12, Jesus speaks in no uncertain terms against the sin of ascribing demonic power to the things of God.

²² Then a demon-oppressed man who was blind and mute was brought to him, and he healed him, so that the man spoke and saw. ²³ And all the people were amazed, and said, “Can this be the Son of David?” ²⁴ But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons.” ²⁵ Knowing their thoughts, he said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. ²⁶ And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? ²⁷ And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. ²⁸ But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. ²⁹ Or how can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house. ³⁰ Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. ³¹ Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. ³² And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

Yes, it is a grievous thing indeed to look at the work of God and ascribe it to the devil.  It is the ultimate sign of complete spiritual self-delusion.  It is a wicked blasphemy revealing that the person committing it no longer knows up from down.  Pharaoh’s great tragedy was that he reached the point where he mistook his savior for his enemy.  When we reach this point, disastrous results are sure to follow.

Let me tell you about Edmond Safra.

Edmon Safra was a Lebanese-born billionaire banker who founded the Republic National Bank of New York.  In 1999, Mr. Safra was 67 years old and sealed a multi-billion-dollar deal to sell his banking empire in preparation for his retirement.  He was going to receive almost three billion dollars from the British bank HSBC.

Safra had homes in Paris, Geneva and New York, but in December of 1999 he was in the penthouse of his favorite residence overlooking Monaco’s yacht-filled harbor in the Mediterranean.

Safra felt safe in this home and even sent his bodyguards home at night.  On one particular night in early December 1999, however, something happened that frightened Safra.  There might have been a couple of burglars somewhere in the house, nobody knows.  Regardless, Safra fled with a nurse into the bathroom where he locked the door.  Also, somewhere along the line, the penthouse was set on fire.

When the police and the firefighters arrived, the floor was on fire and Safra was locked in the bathroom.  The firefighters were making a great noise trying to put out the flames.  In a state of fear, he heard the noise and took it to be the burglars trying to get in to kill him.  The bathroom was slowly filling up with smoke.  Safra refused to open the door.  He made some cell phone calls to his wife, who begged him to come out, but he refused.  She told him that there were no burglars.  She told him that it was the police and the firefighters.  She told him that the ones he feared were the ones who were there to save him.  Still, in fear, he refused to come out.

And there, in a smoke-filled bathroom, as the blaze spread through the ceiling and reached the bathroom, billionaire Edmond Safra and his nurse, Vivienne Torrent, died a horrible death. 

All he had to do was open the door and come out.  The sound that frightened him so badly was only his salvation:  firefighters fighting the blaze that threatened his life.  He refused to open the door, and so he died.  The article from which this story came was entitled, “Banker hid too long, paid with his life.”

How often have we feared the sound of the One who wants to save us?  How often have we too refused to open the door for fear of what we might lose?  This was the mistake of Edmond Safra.  This was the mistake of Pharaoh.  This, too, is oftentimes our mistake.[2]

II. True Repentance Worships God In Pleasant Times as Well as in Painful Times (v.12-20)

If mistaking your savior for your enemy is a sign of a sin-blinded heart, so is fair-weather repentance.  By that I mean “repentance” when it is expedient to repent.  One of the signs of true repentance is that it worships God in pleasant times as well as in painful times.  This degree of repentance was certainly absent from Pharaoh’s heart.

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. 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 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.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization notes that locusts can travel up to sixty miles per day, reaching densities of two hundred thousand insects per acre.  It further states that they can move in swarms comprised of billions of locusts and that locusts can eat their own body weight (0.07 oz.) each day.[3]  Locusts have also been known to cover up to four hundred square miles in some severe plagues.[4]  This gives us a bit of a picture of what Egypt was experiencing in this plague, though it was even worse than this!

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.” 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.

This plague of locusts is interesting in the ways that it foreshadows the coming final plagues.  Peter Enns notes that it anticipates the final plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea in four ways:

(1) The locusts come on the land by an east wind (v.13), an east wind also causes the Red Sea to part (14:21)…(2) The fact that the locusts meet their demise in the Red Sea clearly alludes to the drowning of the Egyptian army in 14:28.  Even the language of 10:19 and 14:28 is similar, for both include the phrase “not one survived.” (3) The “deadly plague” from which Pharaoh asks Moses for relief (v.17) foreshadows the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn.  (4) The blackness…caused by the locusts in verse 15 anticipates the plague of darkness that soon follows.[5]

Also, we once again see the vacillating “repentance” of Pharaoh.  The truth is, if repentance vacillates it is not really repentance.  True repentance worships God and gives mind and soul to God.  True repentance does not simply turn to God when the locusts are present, only to recant when they are absent.  True repentance turns to God daily, always, with no wavering.

Let me offer you an example of what real repentance looks like.  While a bit lengthy, St. Francis of Sales’ (1567-1622) “hearty Protest made with the object of confirming the Soul’s resolution to serve God, as a conclusion to its acts of Penitence” (in Chapter XX of his Introduction to the Devout Life) is a stunning and beautiful statement of repentance.

I, THE undersigned ______ —in the Presence of God and of all the company of Heaven, having considered the Infinite Mercy of His Heavenly Goodness towards me, a most miserable, unworthy creature, whom He has created, preserved, sustained, delivered from so many dangers, and filled with so many blessings: having above all considered the incomprehensible mercy and loving-kindness with which this most Good God has borne with me in my sinfulness, leading me so tenderly to repentance, and waiting so patiently for me till this—(present) year of my life, notwithstanding all my ingratitude, disloyalty and faithlessness, by which I have delayed turning to Him, and despising His Grace, have offended Him anew: and further, remembering that in my Baptism I was solemnly and happily dedicated to God as His child, and that in defiance of the profession then made in my name, I have so often miserably profaned my gifts, turning them against God’s Divine Majesty:—I, now coming to myself prostrate in heart and soul before the Throne of His Justice, acknowledge and confess that I am duly accused and convicted of treason against His Majesty, and guilty of the Death and Passion of Jesus Christ, by reason of the sins I have committed, for which He died, bearing the reproach of the Cross; so that I deserve nothing else save eternal damnation.

But turning to the Throne of Infinite Mercy of this Eternal God, detesting the sins of my past life with all my heart and all my strength, I humbly desire and ask grace, pardon, and mercy, with entire absolution from my sin, in virtue of the Death and Passion of that same Lord and Redeemer, on Whom I lean as the only ground of my hope. I renew the sacred promise of faithfulness to God made in my name at my Baptism; renouncing the devil, the world, and the flesh, abhorring their accursed suggestions, vanities and lusts, now and for all eternity. And turning to a Loving and Pitiful God, I desire, intend, and deliberately resolve to serve and love Him now and eternally, devoting my mind and all its faculties, my soul and all its powers, my heart and all its affections, my body and all its senses, to His Will. I resolve never to misuse any part of my being by opposing His Divine Will and Sovereign Majesty, to which I wholly immolate myself in intention, vowing ever to be His loyal, obedient and faithful servant without any change or recall. But if unhappily, through the promptings of the enemy, or human infirmity, I should in anywise fail in this my resolution and dedication, I do most earnestly resolve by the grace of the Holy Spirit to rise up again so soon as I shall perceive my fall, and turn anew, without any delay, to seek His Divine Mercy. This is my firm will and intention,—my inviolable, irrevocable resolution, which I make and confirm without any reserve, in the Holy Presence of God, in the sight of the Church triumphant, and before the Church militant, which is my mother, who accepts this my declaration, in the person of him who, as her representative, hears me make it. Be pleased, O Eternal, All-Powerful, and All-Loving God,—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to confirm me in this my resolution, and accept my hearty and willing offering. And inasmuch as Thou hast been pleased to inspire me with the will to make it, give me also the needful strength and grace to keep it. O God, Thou art my God, the God of my heart, my soul, and spirit, and as such I acknowledge and adore Thee, now and for all eternity. Glory be to Jesus. Amen.[6]

This is one example of what true repentance looks like.  Pharaoh was far from this kind of humility, however.  Thus, hard times were coming.  Terrifying times were coming.  But first, darkness.

III. True Repentance is Complete Repentance. (v.21-29)

The plague of darkness reveals once again the sham repentance and degenerate heart of Pharaoh.

²¹ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to be felt.”

This image of “a darkness to be felt” is a frightening image.  Who has never “felt” the darkness around them?  Robert Alter called it “the claustrophobic palpability of absolute darkness.”[7]  Even so, Douglas Stuart suggests that “a darkness to be felt” is mistranslation, and that a better translation might be, “a darkness that will require groping around.”[8]  Some have even proposed that the image of “a darkness to be felt” suggests a Khamsin, a massive sandstorm.  Such sandstorms were regular features in Egypt in the spring.  Regardless, the image is intended to communicate complete, devastating darkness.[9]

There is also an unmistakable theological point to this darkness as well.  The dominant god of Egyptian theology was Ra (or Re).  To the Egyptian mind, he was understood as having three main qualities:  he is “the creator god, he is the divine king, and he is the paradigm for the cycle of birth-life-death-rebirth.”  The Egyptians understood him to be the king of the gods.  It is also telling that “almost every pharaoh from Dynasty 4 through Dynasty 30, the last native Egyptian dynasty, selected a royal name which was a compound using Re; for example Khafre, Menkaure, Sahure, Meryre, Kheperkare, Menkheperre, and Usermaatre.” The link between the Pharaoh and Ra was great.  Pharaoh was seen as the son of Ra, or even the incarnation of Ra.  Thus, the blotting out of the sun was a final, devastating blow to the Egyptian spiritual worldview.  It revealed that there was literally no God above the one true God.  Indeed, there is not God but the one true God.

²² So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was pitch darkness in all the land of Egypt three days. ²³ They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days, but all the people of Israel had light where they lived. ²⁴ Then Pharaoh called Moses and said, “Go, serve the Lord; your little ones also may go with you; only let your flocks and your herds remain behind.”

Amazingly, even now, after suffering all that he has suffered, Pharaoh does not offer complete repentance.  He tells Moses that the Hebrews can go worship, but their flocks and herds must stay.  Victor Hamilton summarized Pharaoh’s position in this chapter in these terms:

Worship God, but keep a lid on it.  Worship God, but leave your children out of it.  Worship God, but keep your possessions out of it.[10]

Here we see the dodges of a man who has yet to reach the end of himself.  True repentance is complete repentance and Pharaoh is exhibiting nothing like true repentance.  He continues to wrangle with God.

²⁵ But Moses said, “You must also let us have sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God. ²⁶ Our livestock also must go with us; not a hoof shall be left behind, for we must take of them to serve the Lord our God, and we do not know with what we must serve the Lord until we arrive there.” ²⁷ But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let them go. ²

Moses’ exchange with Pharaoh ends on a chilling note, dripping with irony.

⁸ Then Pharaoh said to him, “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.”

Yes.  Hard times are coming for Pharaoh and Egypt, harder times than Pharaoh can imagine.  The final plague will break the backs of the apostate nation.  When looking at Pharaoh, I am reminded of what Solzhenitsyn said about human evil and crossing the line of no return.

Evidently evildoing also has a threshold magnitude.  Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life.  He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents, things begin to darken again.  But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach of our hope.  But when, through the density of evil actions, the result either of their own extreme degree or of the absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of return.[11]

Church, may we beware of delaying genuine repentance.  May we beware of hardening our hearts through the stubborn, prideful refusal to fall on our faces before a holy God and say, “You win.”

Exodus 9

¹ 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. 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. 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, so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth. ¹⁵ 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. 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. ¹⁷ You are still exalting yourself against my people and will not let them go. ¹⁸ Behold, about this time tomorrow I will cause very heavy hail to fall, such as never has been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now. ¹⁹ Now therefore send, get your livestock and all that you have in the field into safe shelter, for every man and beast that is in the field and is not brought home will die when the hail falls on them.”’” ²⁰ Then whoever feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses, ²¹ but whoever did not pay attention to the word of the Lord left his slaves and his livestock in the field. ²² Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward heaven, so that there may be hail in all the land of Egypt, on man and beast and every plant of the field, in the land of Egypt.” ²³ Then Moses stretched out his staff toward heaven, and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire ran down to the earth. And the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt. ²⁴ There was hail and fire flashing continually in the midst of the hail, very heavy hail, such as had never been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation. ²⁵ The hail struck down everything that was in the field in all the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And the hail struck down every plant of the field and broke every tree of the field. ²⁶ Only in the land of Goshen, where the people of Israel were, was there no hail. ²⁷ Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, “This time I have 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.” ³¹ (The flax and the barley were struck down, for the barley was in the ear and the flax was in bud. ³² But the wheat and the emmer were not struck down, for they are late in coming up.) ³³ So Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh and stretched out his hands to the Lord, and the thunder and the hail ceased, and the rain no longer poured upon the earth. ³⁴ But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants. ³⁵ So the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people of Israel go, just as the Lord had spoken through Moses.

In 1962, Bob Dylan recorded the song, “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.”  It is a fascinating and enigmatic work, hailed by many as the quintessential protest song.  It is, in fact, a warning song couched in prophetic terms and images and symbols, cautioning America and the world about the evils of greed, unchecked militarism, racism, injustice, and other social ills.  In the song, a man’s “blue-eyed son” has been walking throughout the world observing what is happening.  In response to his father’s questions concerning what he has seen, he reports his alarming findings and repeats a haunting refrain about the judgment that is coming if the world doesn’t change.

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son ?

And where have you been my darling young one ?

I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains

I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways

I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests

I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans

I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue eyed son?

And what did you see, my darling young one?

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it

I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it

I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’

I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’

I saw a white ladder all covered with water

I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken

I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?

And what did you hear, my darling young one?

I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’

I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world

I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’

I heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’

I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’

Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter

Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard

And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet my blue-eyed son?

Who did you meet, my darling young one?

I met a young child beside a dead pony

I met a white man who walked a black dog

I met a young woman whose body was burning

I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow

I met one man who was wounded in love

I met another man who was wounded in hatred

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard

And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

And what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?

And what’ll you do now my darling young one?

I’m a-goin’ back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’

I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest

Where the people are a many and their hands are all empty

Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters

Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison

Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden

Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten

Where black is the color, where none is the number

And I’ll tell and think it and speak it and breathe it

And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it

Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’

But I’ll know my songs well before I start singin’

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

What a chilling refrain!  “A hard rain’s a-gonna fall.”  I cannot help but think of this song and that refrain when reading about the plagues of Egypt.  The Lord had warned Pharaoh time and again through the witness of Moses and Aaron.  And time and again Pharaoh rejected their warnings.  As a result, the hard rain of God’s judgment fell, with disastrous results for Pharaoh and Egypt, but with salvation for the people of God.

I. The Primary Reason for the Plagues:  The Glorification of God Throughout the Earth (v.1-17)

I have mentioned more than once that the primary impulse behind the events surrounding the Exodus was theological.  God was proclaiming His sovereignty and exclusive majesty, reminding Pharaoh, the Egyptians, the Hebrews, and the entire world that there is only one true King, and that His throne is eternal.  That is, God was revealing His majesty and His glory.  This is abundantly clear in our chapter this evening.

¹ 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.

It is worthy of note that the Hebrew word used for “severe” in the ESV, kabed, can also mean “hard” and is often used in Exodus to describe the condition of Pharaoh’s heart.[1]  The Lord proclaims that a hard rain is a-gonna’ fall, a hard plague is coming.  In saying this, He was likening the severity of the plague to the stony condition of Pharaoh’s heart.  In a strange way it reminds me of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey, except that whereas the true condition of Dorian Grey’s heart manifested itself in his decaying portrait, the true condition of Pharaoh’s heart manifested itself throughout the plague-cursed land of Egypt.

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.”’

Once again, we see God’s beautiful protection of His people.  There are two aspects to the introduction of this plague that mark it as more severe than all the preceding plagues.  First, it is the first time that God Himself speaks to Pharaoh of a plague coming by and through “the hand of the Lord.”  Second, it is the first time that God says something will die as a result of the plague.

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.

Many see these verses as creating a problem.  They seem to say that literally all the livestock of the Egyptians died, yet, as we will see in the next plague, clearly some of the Egyptian livestock survived (v.9-10,19).  Stuart Murray offers a helpful explanation of an important translation note concerning the word “all.”

This apparent contradiction is not due to inconsistency among the plague accounts, multiple contradictory sources for them, or any similar cause.  It is due simply to the fact that the Hebrew word kol, usually translated “all,” can mean “all sorts of” or “from all over” or “all over the place.”  In this verse the better translation of the full expression would be “all sorts of Egyptian livestock died” or “Egyptian livestock died all over the place.”[2]

Philip Ryken notes that that the clue to this dilemma might also be found in the precise wording of verse 3.

One possible explanation is that the plague only affected animals out in the field, not animals kept back at the barn.  On a careful reading, verse 3 limits the plague to “livestock in the field.”  This explanation is confirmed by our knowledge of Egyptian agriculture.  Late in the year, as the floodwaters receded, farmers put their livestock out to pasture.  However, since the recession was gradual, during the month of January the animals were divided between field and stable.[3]

Regardless, it is clear that not all of the Egyptian livestock died.  Even so, this was a truly devastating plague with catastrophic results for the animals and people of Egypt.  There was, of course, the economic impact, but there was also a jarring spiritual lesson in this for the Egyptians as well.  As it turns out, cows and bulls held a sacred place in Egyptian spirituality.  Ryken lists many of these:

…Buchis, the sacred bull of Hermonthis, and Mnevis, who is worshiped at Heliopolis.  Sometimes bulls were considered to embody the gods Ptah and Ra.  But the chief bull was Apis.  At the temple in Memphis, priests maintained a sacred enclosure where they kept a live bull considered to be the incarnation of Apis.  When the venerable bull died, he was given an elaborate burial…Isis, the queen of the gods, was generally depicted with cow horns on her head…the goddess Hathor was represented with the head of a cow, sometimes with the sun between her two horns.  Hathor was a goddess of love and beauty, motherhood and fertility.  One of her sacred functions was to protect Pharaoh, and on occasion she was depicted as a cow suckling the king for nourishment.[4]

The significance of this frequent association of cows and bulls with deities rests in the fact that the slaughter of so much cattle undoubtedly presented the Egyptians with a tremendous psychological and spiritual blow.  The striking of the livestock made the statement that the sacred things of Egypt were likewise under the sovereign hand of God.  The gods of Egypt quaked and trembled before His wrath.  They quite simply could not compete.

⁷ And Pharaoh sent, and behold, not one of the livestock of Israel was dead. 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.

Here is a truly terrifying image.  Moses threw handfuls of soot into the air and it is transformed into a covering dust and then into boils as it settled on “man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt.”

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.

You may be interested to know that this verse marks the last appearance of the Egyptian magicians.  They are ultimately defeated by the boils and we hear of them no more.

¹² But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had spoken to Moses. 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, so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth. ¹⁵ 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. 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. ¹⁷ You are still exalting yourself against my people and will not let them go.

Here we see the primary purpose of the plagues stated plainly:  “…so that you man know that there is none like me in all the earth…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.”  The Lord desires that His glory and sovereignty and power and wonder be known by all in all the earth.  Why?  Is God vain?  No.  What is vanity in us is not vanity in the Lord.  We seek our glorification to our own demise.  We are not God!  But God seeks His glorification for our salvation, for our salvation rests in God being sovereign to deliver and to save.

It is interesting to see that Paul, in Romans 9, pointed to these verses to buttress his argument concerning God’s sovereign power.

¹⁴ What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! ¹⁵ For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” ¹⁶ So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. ¹⁷ For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” ¹⁸ So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

Our greatest desire should be defined by God’s greatest desire, and God’s greatest desire is that His name be known and worshiped throughout the earth.  That was the primary reason for the deliverance of Egypt.

II. The Grace of Divine Warning (v.18-26)

God’s sovereignty is clearly seen in the plagues, but here, in the plague of hail, we also see His grace.

¹⁸ Behold, about this time tomorrow I will cause very heavy hail to fall, such as never has been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now. ¹⁹ Now therefore send, get your livestock and all that you have in the field into safe shelter, for every man and beast that is in the field and is not brought home will die when the hail falls on them.”’” ²⁰ Then whoever feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses, ²¹ but whoever did not pay attention to the word of the Lord left his slaves and his livestock in the field. ²² Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward heaven, so that there may be hail in all the land of Egypt, on man and beast and every plant of the field, in the land of Egypt.” ²³ Then Moses stretched out his staff toward heaven, and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire ran down to the earth. And the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt. ²⁴ There was hail and fire flashing continually in the midst of the hail, very heavy hail, such as had never been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.

In the 4^th century, Ephrem the Syrian envisioned this hail and fire in terrifying terms.

“Hail and fire fell” together; neither did the hail extinguish the fire, nor did the fire melt the hail.  Rather, it burst into flames in the hail as in a thicket and turned [the hail] as red as iron in the fire, blazing in the hail, and careful of the trees.[5]

Yes, terrifying, and also destructive.

²⁵ The hail struck down everything that was in the field in all the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And the hail struck down every plant of the field and broke every tree of the field. ²⁶ Only in the land of Goshen, where the people of Israel were, was there no hail.

Let us note that the fury of God’s wrath goes hand in hand with the tenderness of His grace.  He warns the Egyptians to take shelter.  It is interesting to note that at least some of the Egyptians now feared God enough to listen to His warning.  This may not have been fear leading to true repentance and salvation, but, at the least, some of the Egyptians now recognized that the God to whom Moses and Aaron called was somehow greater and stronger than the many gods of Egypt.

This divine warning is an act of grace.  Many lives were spared as a result of it.  And it is no less an act of grace today.  Today, as in ancient Egypt, the Lord warns lost humanity of the wrath to come.  Primarily, He warns lost humanity through His disciples, the church.  As we proclaim the gospel, we warn people to flee from the wrath to come, to flee into the open arms of Jesus.  Indeed, the Lord is currently showing patience to the world so that we might have more time to call people to Jesus.  In 2 Peter 3, Peter put it like this:

⁸ But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. ⁹ The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. ¹⁰ But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

III.  The Sheer, Audacious Stubbornness of Sin (v.27-35)

It is tragic that, given God’s mercy and grace, Pharaoh’ heart remained mired in stubborn sin.  Yes, the Lord hardened His heart, but Pharaoh’s sin was his own, not God’s.  We can see his sin in his continued, half-hearted repentance.

²⁷ Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, “This time I have sinned; the Lord is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong.

It is important to note that the word for “sinned” used here can also mean “to miss,” “to err,” “to offend,” “to rebel,” “to abuse/mistreat,” or “to be unjust.”  In other words, it is extremely likely that Pharaoh is simply acknowledging, under the extreme discomfort of punishment, that he messed up.  But there is a big difference between, “I messed up,” and, “I sinned against a holy God!”  Moses’ words in verse 29 will reveal that he saw through this charade repentance.  Nonetheless, Pharaoh pretends to be contrite.

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.” ³¹ (The flax and the barley were struck down, for the barley was in the ear and the flax was in bud. ³² But the wheat and the emmer were not struck down, for they are late in coming up.) ³³ So Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh and stretched out his hands to the Lord, and the thunder and the hail ceased, and the rain no longer poured upon the earth. ³⁴ But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants. ³⁵ So the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people of Israel go, just as the Lord had spoken through Moses.[6]

This is almost unbelievable!  When things get hard, Pharaoh is sorry.  When they get easier, he wants to be a god again.

Does that sound familiar?  The fact of the matter is that we see ourselves in Pharaoh.  We know what it is to run to God when things are difficult and to proclaim ourselves gods when things are easy.  We know what it is to vacillate between repentance and self-deification.  We know what it is to say, “Sorry,” with our fingers crossed behind our backs.

Let us marvel at the grace and majesty or our great God!  And let us reject the demonic suggestion that we should turn from Him, seeking to be gods ourselves.

Matthew 6:13

¹³ And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

R. Kent Hughes tells an interesting story about two men who were condemned to die for their faith:

            History records the fate of two men who were condemned to die under Queen Mary.  One of them boasted very loudly to his companions that he would be a man at the stake.  He was so grounded in the gospel that he knew he would never deny Christ.  He even said he longed for the fatal morning like a bride for her wedding.  His prison companion was a poor trembling soul who, though determined not to deny his Master, was much afraid of the fire.  He said he had always been very sensitive to suffering, and he was in great dread that when he began to burn, the pain might cause him to deny the truth.  He urged his friend to pray for him and spent his time weeping over his weakness and crying out to God for strength.  The other man continually rebuked him and chided him for being so unbelieving and weak.  When they both came to the stake, he who had been so bold recanted at the sight of the fire and went back ignominiously to an apostate’s life, while the poor trembling man whose prayer had been “Lead me not into temptation” stood firm as a rock, praising and magnifying God as he died a cruel death.

How very interesting that is, and how very like life as we know it.  Our braggadocio normally turns to whimpering, does it not?

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

However, we often find, in our weakest moments, when we throw ourselves on the mercy of God (an action, I note, that we should not wait to do only in our weakest moments), that the strength of our King is more than sufficient to see us through the test.  In commenting on the story of these two men, Hughes beautifully notes,

The proper prayer for protection is soaked with the awareness that we are profoundly weak and liable to fall.  There is a danger in pious bravado that assumes we are too strong to stumble of fall.[1]

Eugene Peterson put it like this:

We need help. And we need help even when we don’t know we need help. Especially when we don’t know we need help.[2]

That, too, is well said.  We do, indeed, need help.  It is no wonder, then, that the Lord Jesus concludes His model prayer with a cry for help:  “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

I. “Lead us not into temptation”:  A Cry for Endurance and Preservation in Trial

What can this mean?  Let us begin with the first petition, “Lead us not into temptation.”  This is a frequently discussed and debated statement, as we shall see.  Many interpretations have been proposed, some of which we can rule out immediately.  For instance, we can rule out the rendering of one Liberian translation of the New Testament that translated, “Lead us not into temptation,” as, “Do not catch us when we sin.”[3]  It is hard not to laugh at such an absurd rendering, though, if we are honest, we have probably secretly prayed that before:  “Do not catch us when we sin.”

No, it does not mean, “Do not catch us when we sin.”  Furthermore, “Lead us not into temptation” cannot mean, “Do not entice us to sin.”  Whatever is meant by “temptation,” it cannot mean that.  Why?  Because God’s Word says He never does such a thing.  In James 1, James put it like this:

¹³ Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

As we seek the meaning of this petition, the rejection of this idea is most helpful.  When you pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” you must not think, “Lord, do not tempt me to do evil.”  God is good, He does not tempt us to do evil.

When, then, does “temptation” mean in this context?  It is important to realize that the Greek word we render “temptation” actually has more than one meaning, and, in fact, it is most often not used in the sense of, “tempt to evil.”  Most often it refers to “testing” somebody.  In  this passage, that is the better rendering.  “Temptation” is better rendered as “test” or “trial.”  And God certainly does test us, does He not?  For instance, in Genesis 22:1 we read, “After these things God tested Abraham…”

This is very helpful.  It means that, “Lead us not into temptation,” cannot mean, “God, do not tempt us to do evil,” but can mean, “Lead us not into tests and trials.”  That seems clear enough.  We are praying, as we will see, that the Lord will spare us certain kinds of tests and trials at certain times.  But first let us note that although God’s testing of His people does not mean God actively tempting His people to evil, there is, in fact, a connection between divine testing and temptation in the sense that God sometimes tests us by allowing the devil to tempt us.  Conceptually, this is a crucial distinction to make.  God tests His people.  The devil tempts God’s people.  But God may test us by allowing the devil to tempt us.  For instance, we find this idea in the startling beginning of the book of Job.  In Job 1, we read,

⁶ Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. ⁷ The Lord said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” ⁸ And the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” ⁹ Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? ¹⁰ Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. ¹¹ But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” ¹² And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.” So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.

Here we see the distinction between testing and tempting.  Satan wants to tempt Job to curse God to His face.  So He asks the Lord if He can do so (interestingly, after God brings Job to Satan’s attention).  The Lord agrees to this, but, in the divine economy, this is a test.  God agrees to test Job’s faith by allowing Satan to tempt Job to evil.  But God does not tempt Job to evil, for God tempts no man to evil.

So God tests us, to be sure.  Sometimes He tests us directly with trials and sometimes He tests us by giving Satan permission to tempt us.  But that is interesting because in the prayer we are asking that God not do so:  “Lead us not into temptation.”  In fact, as Jesus is the one instructing us in the prayer, it is interesting to think that God is instructing us to pray that God would not test us.  What is fascinating about that, however, is the fact that, as we saw in Job, God does test us at times.  So the prayer, “Lead us not into temptation,” also cannot mean that God never wants us to be tested.  For one thing, He tested His own Son.  In Matthew 4, we find this introduction to Jesus’ wilderness temptation:

¹ Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

In Mark 1, Mark puts it even more dramatically.

¹² The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

So God tests His own Son by allowing Him to be tempted.  Jesus was tested throughout His entire incarnation, and it was crucial that He be so.  It was crucial for us that Jesus pass the test…and Jesus passed the test!  So the Father’s testing of the Son means that this petition cannot mean, “God, never test us.”  Furthermore, we find this amazing statement in James 1:

² Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, ³ for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. ⁴ And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Here we are told to “count it all joy” when we are tested because these tests have a good result in that they produce steadfastness which leads to maturity.  And here we begin to see the meaning of this petition.  Tests can produce good fruit, but only when we pass them.  To be sure, a failed test can be a good teacher as well, but it can also cause much damage and pain.  But a passed test is a good thing, bearing good fruit.

Our problem, though, is that we are weak and we oftentimes do not pass the test.  Oftentimes we fail.  Oftentimes we face tests we are not ready to handle.  And these kinds of tests that hit us when we are unprepared can wreak havoc in our lives.  So, “Lead us not into temptation,” must mean something like this:  “Lord, do not allow us to be tried beyond our capacities.  Do not allow us to be tempted to the extent that we fall.  Do not let tests hit us for which we are unprepared.  Lead us not into these!”

The Greek scholar A.T. Robertson explains:

“Bring” or “lead” bothers many people.  It seems to present God as an active agent in subjecting us to temptation, a thing specifically denied in James 1:13.  The word here translated “temptation” (peirasmon) means originally “trial” or “test”…But God does test or sift us, though he does not tempt us to evil.  No one understood temptation so well as Jesus for the devil tempted him by every avenue of approach to all kinds of sin, but without success.  In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus will say to Peter, James, and John:  “Pray that ye enter not into temptation” (Luke 22:40).  That is the idea here.  Here we have a “Permissive imperative” as grammarians term it.  The idea is then:  “Do not allow us to be led into temptation.”[4]

New Testament scholar Craig Keener points out that “possibly the Aramaic wording behind this verse suggest[s] that the first line means: ‘Let us not sin when we are tested’ – rather than ‘let us not be tested.’”[5]  F.F. Bruce offered the following as possible translations of this phrase:  “Grant that we not fail in the test,” or, “Grant that the test may not prove too severe for our faith to sustain,” or, “May our faith stand firm in the time of trial,” or, “Save us in the time of trial.”[6]

This is a prayer, then, that we not be crushed under trials and temptations that we find too difficult to handle and too severe to endure.  The prayer, “Lead us not into temptation,” is a prayer for timely protection against trials in which the allowed temptations may prove too much for us.  It is also a prayer for needed strength in the midst of trials and that we not fall when tempted.

In teaching us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” Jesus may, once again, have been working off of a traditional Jewish prayer that went like this:  “Do not bring us into the power of temptation.”[7]  Meaning, do not let us be overpowered by temptation.  N.T. Wright put it like this:

To say “lead us not into temptation” does not … mean that God himself causes people to be tempted. … First, it means “let us escape the great tribulation, the great testing, that is coming on all the world.” [Second], it means “do not let us be led into temptation that we will be unable to bear.” … Finally, it means “Enable us to pass safely through the testing of our faith.[8]

A very helpful, related passage is found in Luke 22, when Jesus says something frightening but also comforting to Peter.

³¹ “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, ³² but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

Here, again, we find the idea of testing and tempting.  Just as Satan asked the Lord for permission to tempt Job, so, too, did he ask the Lord for Peter.  Satan wanted to tempt Peter to deny Jesus, and the Lord God agreed to test Peter in this way.  What is most compelling is that Jesus tells Peter that He, Jesus, is praying for Peter, “that your faith may not fail.”

This is exactly what I think the petition, “Lead us not into temptation,” is driving out:  “Lord, keep us from trials in which our faith may fail.”  We know those trials will come, but it is good to ask the Lord for protection nonetheless.  And the significance of this passage in Luke 22 is that we know that Jesus is praying alongside us.  Meaning, as we pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” Jesus is praying, “and help his/her faith not to fail in the midst of it.”

Our King prays with us and for us!  This drives us to dependency on our great King!  We pray for protection against overpowering temptation, but we know that the King who was never overpowered by temptation is with us!  It is a beautiful and comforting truth.

II. “Deliver us from evil”:  A Cry for a Father’s Protection

The second petition, “deliver us from evil,” goes, of course, hand-in-hand with the first.  This is a prayer that God would keep us from experiencing the power of Satan in such a way that he gets a victory over us.  In many ways, the second petition is a commentary on the first:  “Lord, keep us from trials and temptations that may overpower us so that the devil does not get a victory!”

It is important to note that the second petition can be translated, “deliver us from evil,” or, “deliver us from the evil one,” meaning, Satan.  It is likely that the second translation, “deliver us from the evil one,” is the better translation.  Regardless, this is a prayer for divine protection against the devil and his demonic minions.  It is a prayer that God will keep us safe in the midst of the spiritual storms we face.

This is why the Luke 22 passage I just mentioned is so crucial.  Jesus tells Peter that Satan wants to sift him but that He is praying for Peter.  That means that Jesus is not only praying for Peter, He is standing with Peter.  If Jesus stands with Peter, He also stands with us.  And if Jesus stands with us, that means that, in Christ, there is never a trial or temptation that we cannot survive.  In Christ, there never is!

Brothers and sisters, when the devil knocks on your door, let Jesus answer.  Under His wing, we are safe.

This is why we must remember that it is Jesus who teaches us to pray and that we pray together in His name!  We pray in His name because it is only in and through His name that we can avoid being crushed the devil.  Listen very closely to me:  Jesus always offers us a way out of temptations and He always offers us to the strength to endure.

I will never forget when, as a little boy, my dad opened my Bible, pointed to 1 Corinthians 10:13, and told me to memorize it.  I did, and I have never forgotten it.  For some strange reason, my dad thought that I, his son, needed to set these words to memory.

¹³ No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

Now, he made me memorize that because, as a boy, I expressed my frustration that I was unable to be good and to do good.  “Why do you keep doing bad things,” he asked.  “I don’t know, dad,” I replied, “I just don’t think I’m able to do good things.  The devil tempts me and I do bad.”  So he made me memorize that verse.  It is a vital verse, and one I would challenge all of you to memorize.  Hear it again, will you?

¹³ No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

I believe this verse should stand alongside our text this morning, “Lead us not into temptation.”  Others have seen the connection too.  Interestingly, the fifth-century Easter Orthodox Liturgy of St. James actually combines the two verse, Matthew 6:13 and 1 Corinthians 10:13, when it offers this prayer:

Yes, O Lord our God, lead us not into temptation which we are not able to bear, but with the temptation grant also the way out, so that we may be able to remain steadfast; and deliver us from evil.[9]

Yes!  Yes, that’s it!

Oh God!  Keep us from those temptations that crush us, that we, in our weakness, are unprepared to face.  We are weak, God, but you are strong.  So give us Jesus, Lord, the One who never gave in to temptation, the One who never sinned!  May our strong Brother stand with us!  We cannot overcome Satanic attack…but He can.  We are not smart enough to outwit the devil…but He is.  We cannot come back from a full onslaught of Satan’s fury…but He did!  Oh God, lead us not into temptation.  Would you spare us those trials that threaten our weak, mustard-seed faith.  But, oh God, if they come, if You choose not to spare us such trials, may we feel the strong arm of our King around us in the midst of them, reminding us and comforting us with the thought that you do not lead your sheep to senseless slaughter.  We have a Shepherd, and the wolves of Satan dare not come against our Shepherd.  Deliver us from evil, Lord.  Would You grant us rest for our weary souls, healing and peace?

We love you, Lord.

We love you, Jesus.

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Come quickly.

Exodus 8:16-32

¹⁶ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats in all the land of Egypt.’” ¹⁷ And they did so. Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and there were gnats on man and beast. All the dust of the earth became gnats in all the land of Egypt. ¹⁸ The magicians tried by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they could not. So there were gnats on man and beast. ¹⁹ Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said. 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. And the houses of the Egyptians shall be filled with swarms of flies, and also the ground on which they stand. 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 between my people and your people. Tomorrow this sign shall happen.”’” ²⁴ And the Lord did so. There came great swarms of flies into the house of Pharaoh and into his servants’ houses. Throughout all the land of Egypt the land was ruined by the swarms of flies. ²⁵ Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, “Go, sacrifice to your God within the land.” ²⁶ But Moses said, “It would not be right to do so, for the offerings we shall sacrifice to the Lord our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice offerings abominable to the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not stone us? ²⁷ We must go three days’ journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord our God as he tells us.” 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 this time also, and did not let the people go.

The first church I pastored out of seminary was Stonecrest Baptist Church in Woodstock, GA, which is in North Georgia, above Atlanta.  When I left there I went to pastor First Baptist Church in Dawson, GA, which is in South Georgia.  I remember after telling our first church that we would be leaving to go to Dawson, GA, that a friend of mine said, “So, you’re going to pastor below the gnat line?”

“The gnat line,” I asked.  “What is that?”

“You’ll see,” he said.

Another friend of mine who pastored in another state cautioned me that I would encounter great swarms of gnats in the summer time in South Georgia, and to be prepared.  He told me that he used to pastor down there.  He said he had recently gone to South Georgia to visit and, on the way home, they had to leave the windows open on the interstate in an effort to get all the gnats out that had come in when they had briefly opened their doors.

I am happy to report that I personally found these reports greatly exaggerated.  Yes, the environment in South Georgia was conducive to gnats, and you did have to contend with them, but the visions of the plagues of Egypt I had before going there did not turn out to be true.  The gnats were bad enough, I should say, that you could judge how long a person had been in South Georgia by whether or not they used their hands to swat away the gnats, or whether they simply blew upward into their own faces to dispel them.  There were also numerous home remedies, including putting pickle juice behind your ears, but we never had to resort to such things.

Pickle juice would not have helped the Egyptians.  Nor would the skillful art of blowing upwards into their own faces.  What they faced in this plague was brutal indeed:  massive swarms on gnats that irritated and pestered the Egyptians.  They had nobody to blame but Pharaoh, who, amazingly, persisted in his stubbornness.  Let us consider the next two plagues, both of which deal with swarming insects, and what these rounds in the conflict between Moses and Aaron and Pharaoh reveal.

I. The Inability of the Devil to Keep Pace With God (v.16-19)

In the first two plagues, the devil is able to kind of keep pace with God, as it were, mimicking His power with his own displays of power.  Of course, we know that, in reality, the devil only has such power as the Lord allows Him, but, even so, the Egyptian magicians were able to display their diabolical power in the face of the first two plagues.  Not so with the third.

¹⁶ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats in all the land of Egypt.’”

The Hebrew word that most translations translate as “gnat” is used nowhere else.  Isidore of Seville described a gnat as an “animal that flies through the air suspended on wings.  But it is so subtle and minute that it escapes being seen by the eye unless one looks closely.  But when it lands on the body it drills in with a sharp sting.  If anyone cannot see it flying, he still feels its sting immediately.”[1]  The Hebrew word used here may refer to the gnat as we understand it (and that is how I will use it here), or it may refer to mosquitos or ticks.[2]  Whatever its precise meaning, it appears to refer to some kind of small, flying pest with the ability to harass human beings.

This reference to the “dust of the earth” is also interesting.  It brings to mind Genesis 2:7, in which we read that “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”  Is it possible that by having Aaron strike the dust the Lord is saying something to Egypt about His ultimate power over life itself?  I think so.  It may also be a sign of the coming, dreadful, final plague in which the firstborn sons of Egypt were killed.

¹⁷ And they did so. Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and there were gnats on man and beast. All the dust of the earth became gnats in all the land of Egypt. ¹⁸ The magicians tried by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they could not. So there were gnats on man and beast. ¹⁹ Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.

Have you ever had a small child ask you to run with her?  Unless you want to be extremely unpleasant and open yourself to the censure of all onlookers, you will slow your pace, allowing the child to make a race of it and probably to win as well.   Or have you ever had a little boy ask you to arm wrestle?  Unless you want to win the “Punk of the Year Award,” you’ll hold back your full strength and let the boy make a competition of it.

God need not do any of these things, and He is never open to censure when He displays His full power, but it is striking indeed how the Lord God allows Pharaoh’s magicians to keep pace for a while.  But here, in this plague, He pulls ahead, reminding Egypt that whatever powers the magicians might have, they do not possess power that rises to the level of God’s power.  In fact, the power of the magicians comes nowhere near!  “The magicians tried by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they could not.”  It’s  kind of pitiful really:  they could not even create a gnat!  They could not, because their powers, such as they were, were on loan anyway, and God had had enough of their petty displays.

Concerning their inability to replicate this miracle, Peter Enns makes an interesting observation:

The first two plagues concern the water, which is the life and power of Egypt, politically, economically, and religiously.  The gnats, however, come from the dust of the earth, which is not the Egyptian “power source.”  Their magic and secret arts are empowered by the Nile, but with the third plague, the magicians are out of their element.[3]

Perhaps there is something to this.  Perhaps their powers were linked to the (in their mind) powerful Nile.  Perhaps they were less confident in the face of this earth-bound plague.  Regardless, the Lord is demonstrating to them that He is the Lord of land and water.  His power is not greater in one place than in another.  He is all-powerful in all places, unlike these magicians.

II. God Protects His People in Trials and Difficulties (v.20-24)

Pharaoh persists in his diabolical hatred and stubbornness, refusing to repent, refusing to let the Hebrews go free.  In doing so, he invites the wrath of God in the fourth plague.

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. And the houses of the Egyptians shall be filled with swarms of flies, and also the ground on which they stand. 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 between my people and your people. Tomorrow this sign shall happen.”’” ²⁴ And the Lord did so. There came great swarms of flies into the house of Pharaoh and into his servants’ houses. Throughout all the land of Egypt the land was ruined by the swarms of flies.

What is truly telling about this plague is the fact that God protects His people in the midst of it.  The flies swarm over the Egyptians, but not over God’s people.  This is an amazing development!

Does this mean that the plague of flies was not, in its way, frightening to the Hebrews?  Yes, no doubt, as any raw display of the power of God would be.  But the point is that it was frightening as they observed it, not as they experienced it.  They did not experience it!  They were protected from it.  Perhaps, in a sense, they felt here what they would soon feel as they passed through the Red Sea and saw the towering walls of water quivering with power to their left and right:  fear and awe at their close proximity to such power.  But what they did not feel and experience was the wrath of God.  That was reserved for Egypt.  His own people He kept safe, shielding them from the plague itself.

This principle of God’s protection of His people is beautifully demonstrated by the Lord Jesus in His “High Priestly Prayer” in John 17:

¹¹ And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. ¹² While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. ¹³ But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. ¹⁴ I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. ¹⁵ I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. ¹⁶ They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. ¹⁷ Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸ As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹ And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

No, we are not promised an escape from the world, but we are promised the presence of God and His protecting hand among us as we live in it.  God’s love is constant, and no tribulation can separate us from it.  Paul put it like this in Romans 8:

³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ³⁶ As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” ³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The Hebrews were experiencing this unbreakable love in exile in Egypt.  We experience it through the indwelling presence of Christ.  God is faithful to protect His people, even, in ways we might not understand, in the midst of persecution.  The martyrs might tell us many things, but they would not tell us that God had failed them, or that He was absent from them.  Indeed, the martyrs’ joy reflects the fact that they experience the closeness of God in their moment of death in ways we can barely imagine.

III. Pharaoh’s Refusal to Make a True Commitment Reveals His Lost Heart (v.25-32)

In the midst of this plague of flies, Pharaoh does something shameful indeed:  he attempts to bargain with God and, once again, he offers half-hearted repentance.

²⁵ Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, “Go, sacrifice to your God within the land.” ²⁶ But Moses said, “It would not be right to do so, for the offerings we shall sacrifice to the Lord our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice offerings abominable to the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not stone us? ²⁷ We must go three days’ journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord our God as he tells us.” 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.”

How very shameful this is!  Do you see what Pharaoh is doing?  He attempts to meet God’s demands on his own terms:  he will let them worship, but only within the land of Egypt.  Moses (perhaps sarcastically), points out to him that this simply will not do as the Egyptians will be offended by their worship and will attack them.  So Pharaoh relents, but, here again, only in part:  “I will let you go to sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness, only you must not go very far away.”

What bluffing, half-hearted repentance this is.  True repentance does not bargain.  True repentance does not seek to meet God in the most minimalist of ways.  There is no such thing as a little bit of repentance.

Pharaoh agrees to let them go, but only a little ways away.  He still wants them within arm’s reach.  Why?  Because he wants his own rebellion within arm’s reach.  If he really wanted to be far from his sin, he would want to be far from Israel against whom he sinned.

It is not unlike the man who swears off drinking, but does not smash the liquor bottles.  He puts them away, but just over there.  It is not unlike the man who swears off pornography, but does not burn his collection of pornography.  It is like the man who swears off adultery, but keeps his flirtations close at hand.

The true quality of Pharaoh’s repentance can be seen in the fact that, once again, he goes back on his word.

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 this time also, and did not let the people go.

Pharaoh goes back on his word because he was only playing with words all along anyway.  He had not truly repented.  He had not truly let go of his own agenda, his own plans, his own lusts.

How about you?  Have you truly let go of that which plagues you?  Have you truly repented, or are you attempting to bargain with God?

Let us learn even from poor, deluded Pharaoh.  Let us learn from his stubborn refusal to bend his knee to the one true God.  Let us learn to tremble before his example of blindness and lostness.  And let us make sure that we have chosen the better path!