If you have your Bibles, if you would, please turn to the book of Exodus, chapter 9. We continue our survey, our study of the book of Exodus, and the plagues in particular. And I got the yucky one. I got the boils. They probably were all bad, but we, beloved in 2015, there was an author whose name you would probably know, Tom Doyle, with a book that we've talked about here before called Killing Christians. He wrote this book. Killing Christians. There are eight true stories of believers in the East. Believers who are or were gravely persecuted. Let me read just a short excerpt from the introduction. Forty Egyptian churches burned to the ground. House church leaders sentenced to Iran's infamous Evan Prison. 80 Christians murdered in North Korea for merely owning a Bible. There's nailed to crosses in Syria. And that's the news from one month in 2014. He goes on to tell us that this was even before ISIS. These are horrific, stunning, relentless victories of evil over God's people. If you read that book, Killing Christians, and I would recommend that you do for some perspective, if you're like me, in the end you'll find yourself pleading with God for vindication. Our brothers and sisters out there are the recipients of tremendous wrongdoing. Oh Lord, would you not vindicate your name? Well we don't have to yet deal with the kind of affliction we see in Syria or North Korea. Close to home ours is a milder version of the success of the wicked, perhaps things like a coworker who is a favorite of your boss, or you are mocked by professors at school or scorned by unbelieving family. Now these are very different than an AK-47 pointed at your head, but only by degrees. They are all the success of wrongdoing. As an example, years ago I worked in a manufacturing plant and I had at this time worked very hard on a scrap reduction project. We made disc breaks at this plant and we had a lot of scrap. So I spent months gathering data, talking to folks on the plant floor and eventually I proposed a program that would have saved the company upwards of a quarter million dollars a year. On Thursday of the week that I made that proposal, I was called into the office of the plant manager and he fired me. So the course of many years I had worked there and I had participated in bringing a lot of profit to that plant and now the prospect of saving more money and it didn't make sense to me and it did make sense to me. Just before I signed my severance package, I looked him in the eye and I said, you are firing me because you don't like me and he said, I am. So I said, okay, I signed the paperwork and I left. That work environment wasn't great. If you had been a fly on the wall in my home, you might have heard me complain once or twice about it. About me wanting to be rescued from it. Well here I was fired. Some would have a rescue. Was that enough? No. No. It wasn't enough. At that moment afterwards, I was rightly or wrongly eager for vindication. I did nothing wrong and yet something unjust had happened to me and it needed to be set straight. We see this, we feel this all the time. Actions that are flat wrong, actions that are unjust. Actions when you know the good guy is getting the wrong end of the deal, we want vindication. We want someone to set things right and this impulse we have is God given. God is a just God, God is a vindicating God and we are made in His image. What do you think the Israelites would have wanted when they heard Pharaoh say this to the taskmasters? You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks as in the past. Let them go and gather straw for themselves. But the number of bricks that they made in the past, you shall impose on them. You shall by no means reduce it for their idol. What would they want? Rescue from this? Yes, probably, but it's wrong and so more is needed than simply rescue. You see, if you're in a car accident and you're trapped and the jaws of life open up and you are rescued, nothing more is needed. You're rescued, but rescue sometimes leaves evil and injustice intact and powerful. In fact, when the people left Egypt, you know what happened. Pharaoh just didn't say, bye-bye. He chased them. He chased them with chariots. And over turns the evil so it is powerless. In righteous vindication, justice is served. Our text, Exodus 9, 8 through 12, the sixth plague, God begins this process of vindication. You might say that he began it when he called Moses, but up to this point in the story, evil was still powerful. It hadn't been rendered powerless yet. It hadn't been overturned just yet. In order for vindication to happen, we need three things and we'll see them on our text. We need a God who truly sees and you can write these in your notes, you've got plenty of room. We need a God who truly sees. We need a God who justly acts and we need a God who properly concludes. Let me put this in a more familiar metaphor of sowing and reaping. So here's the big idea. God truly sees, he justly acts and he properly concludes all that is ever sown. So let's read, Exodus 9, beginning in verse 8, this is the word of the Lord. 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 side of Pharaoh and it shall become fine dust over all the land of Egypt and become boils breaking out on soar in soars on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt. 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 soars on man and beast. And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils came upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians, but the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh and he did not listen to them as the Lord had spoken to Moses. So we pray, our Father, it is your word and we are your people and we pray that you would open our hearts to be recipients of your word. Fill us that you might change us and receive glory in Christ's name. Amen. Well, as I said in order for vindication to happen, God must truly see what is sown and these first two verses we're going to see how this plays out. So verse 8 reads, 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. It's a simple command, a simple command that he collects soot from a kiln and toss it in the air in front of Pharaoh. Well, Aaron and Moses would have known all about soot and kilns. These weren't the places where bread was baked. These were smelting furnaces for metal or hardening furnaces for bricks. These kilns were the places where the glory of Egypt was built on the backs of the slaves of Israel. In fact, the phrase iron furnace is how Moses summarizes life in Egypt for them. He says, the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt to be a people of his own inheritance as you are this day. The kilns symbolize the strength, stealing, and back breaking abusive oppression upon the Israelites. One commentator says this, he says, as Pharaoh and his people owed their prosperity and wealth and abundance of earthly goods to the fertilizing waters of the Nile and the fruitful soil. So it was from the kilns, so to speak, that those splendid cities and pyramids proceeded by which the early pharaohs worked to immortalize the power and glory of their reigns. The kiln and the soot would have illustrated the bondage and the oppression that the Hebrews endured. So God instructs Moses, not Aaron, which we'll see in a minute, to take handfuls as much as he could and throw it in the air in the side of Pharaoh. Verse 9, it shall become, find dust over all the land of Egypt and become boils breaking out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt. This was the first plague to afflict the men, up to this point we'd seen a number of plagues all I'm having to do with the earth and the water and so forth, but this is the first one to affect the men, boils all over their skin breaking out in sores. And these boils ran rampant among the Egyptians, all Egypt, it says, all the land of Egypt and became boils breaking out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt. It would have resembled the oppression of the Egyptians upon the Hebrews. There were no Hebrews that were spared oppression. There were no Egyptians spared the boils. Ironically, this would be debilitating and they would not be able to continue to work for the glory of Egypt. So we see here the detail with which God truly saw the affliction of his people. He made Moses and Aaron return to the symbols and the sources of their oppression. What does this tell us? What does it mean that God truly sees two things, two points of application here, the hope, because God truly sees what is so against us will be reaped by the sower. The Hebrews, they lacked hope. They lacked hope that there would be a rescue. They certainly lacked hope that anyone was watching such that the oppression could be overturned. And then Moses goes to the kiln, the kiln where the Hebrews were loaded down with burdens. The kiln where some died of exposure and heat. The kiln where others were maimed, the deaths of the people who were killed. The kiln where others were maimed. The desperate, unstoppable, unanswerable kiln of slavery. God sent Moses there. God did that. Why? Why did Moses go to the kiln because God truly sees? You think that he might have wanted Moses and Aaron to see that. Remember this is what the Lord had said to Moses in the beginning. I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings. And I have come down to deliver them out of the land, out of the hand of the Egyptians. Beloved, the hope of vindication starts with a God who truly sees the injustices that are sewn against his people. Do you believe that your burdens go unnoticed by God that he doesn't see the coworker who got gossip against you or the teacher that's harsh with you or the financial burdens imposed by a selfish employer? Do you believe he doesn't see that? Do you believe that there's no end to the success of those who oppose you? They just keep winning and winning and winning and going and going. The unethical business competitor. The one who uses sex or flattery to outrun you to promotion. Do you believe that God does not see you or is not interested in what afflicts you? That he will not undo or overturn shame or shame the oppressors. Do you believe that? Well, you know Moses and Aaron probably like the rest of the Israelites probably did to until they went to the kiln and then they were reminded the Lord, God, comes with might and his arm rules for him, behold his reward is with him and his recompense before him. He will tend his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arms. We can have hope because God will vindicate because he truly sees. Secondly is an encouragement because God truly sees we will reap what we sow. Now we usually think of reaping and sowing. It's kind of a stick to keep us in line, right? You don't want to reap that. That's bad for you. You don't want to reap that. That's bad for you. But it's it's more than that. It's just as important to recognize that what you sow for God for his kingdom, for his church, you will also reap. Ruth and Naomi are a perfect example. Ruth abandoned her people. She abandoned her gods. She left all that she knew to serve Naomi, her mother-in-law. Ruth in fact said this to Naomi as Naomi was trying to convince her not to come. She says, do not urge me to leave you, or to return from following you, where you go, I will go, where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, your God, my God, where you die, I will die, and then I will be buried. And so Naomi says this to Ruth, the Lord will pay you for what you've done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you've come to take refuge. Ruth was sowing in the kingdom. She was sowing in her relationship to Naomi and her people and her God. And do you remember Ruth's reward? It started with Obed, a son, and then a grandson, David, and then a far descendant, the Lord Jesus himself. That's a pretty serious reward. So you've signed up on every sign-up genius for meals. You've disciplined your children faithfully, regularly. You pray for your husband. You tithe. You give. You empty trash or clean bathrooms at Jackson Park. You've picked someone up whose homebound so you could bring her to a doctor's appointment. You've donated pills for Haiti, pill bottles. You've gone to the funeral. Yes, there is no glory here, but God truly sees. And the only thing separating your service from your reward is time, only time. But if God only saw injustice and oppression and he did not act, that would be injustice. So our second point is that he does. He doesn't just truly see. He justly acts. Look at verse 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. You might imagine the conversation, right? Moses. What's that? Soot, Pharaoh. From where? The kilns where my people are enslaved, Pharaoh. As before, Moses did what God commanded and the results were just as God promised. Soot became dust. The dust settled on all the Egyptians, men and beasts, breaking out in boils. And debilitating sores. This is very different than the first time Moses came before Pharaoh. Back in chapter 5, we read this exchange. Moses and Aaron went into Pharaoh and said, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let my people go that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness. But Pharaoh said, who is the Lord that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord. And moreover, I will not let Israel go. What happened next and that portion of the story is precisely what God is undoing with this plague. Here's what Pharaoh said. He commanded the task masters of the people and said, you shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks as in the past. Let them go and gather straw for themselves. But the number of bricks that they made in the past, you shall impose on them. You shall by no means reduce it. Let the heavier work be laid on the men that they may labor and pay no regard to lying words. Effectively, Pharaoh said, the soot and the kiln will increase. So Moses took soot from the kiln and stood before Pharaoh and threw it in the air. And it became boils breaking out and soars. God exchanged the places of Moses and Pharaoh. The oppressor was now the oppressed. And the oppressed was now the oppressor. You see this, Pharaoh rejected God and afflicted the Israelites and God was watching. Moses rejects Pharaoh's gods and afflicts all of Egypt because God justly acts. In the simple act, God vindicated his people. He didn't just give them rescue from oppressive labor. He neutered the oppressive power using the very implements of the oppression. The wonder is the vindication of God. And this is just how God works. We know it from Paul's writings to the Corinthian church. God considered it just to repay with affliction, those who afflict you, and the grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel. God is always watching what is so. So that at the appropriate time, God might cause the sower to justly reap. So consider this application. Last time I said sowing and reaping was a source of great reward, and indeed it is, but it is more. It is a warning that what we will sow, we will reap. This is precisely what Moses inflicts on Pharaoh. Beloved, it is not true that those who are in Christ will escape reaping what we've sowed. In general terms, this principle is what Paul writes in Galatians, do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. Paul makes no distinction between believer and unbeliever. All people sow, and therefore all people will reap. So let's talk about that for just a second. If you have not become a Christian, if you continue to be content with standing on the outside of the household of God and faith in Jesus Christ, you think that you don't sin or don't need to repent for your sins, you're just really not that bad, you're bad, but not that bad. Then Paul says, you sow to the flesh, you will reap corruption. Corruption for you, unbeliever, is the least of your worries. Paul says, if you sow to the flesh, corruption would be good, no, for those who are outside of Christ, what you will sow, you will reap in hell, eternal condemnation. You will be lost because God truly sees and what you sown, like Pharaoh, is without regard to him, without regard to his kingdom, or without regard to his church. And so when it comes to that very important moment at judgment day, when you want him to know your name, he will say, I never knew you. This could not be more serious. You may medicate yourself away from death for a time, but it will find you. And on the other side of death isn't simply corruption. It is eternal for sakenness. From my friend, you are not without hope. Repent therefore and turn back that your sins may be blotted out. The times of refreshment may come from the presence of the Lord that he may send the Christ appointed for you. All who turn to the Lord Jesus Christ in faith will be saved. It doesn't matter what you've done. It doesn't matter where you've been. It doesn't matter what you've sown. If you turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, the blood of Christ will wash over you. Because if not, you will reap what you've sown. But Christian, why would Paul say that God is not mocked? Perhaps we do not believe that we will reap according to what we have sown. Perhaps we believe we will not reap what we've sown. Or that we'll reap something less extreme or less painful than what we've sown. Remember, God truly sees and he justly acts. So every amount of sowing that you would do in the soils of sin and unbelief will be reaped accordingly. Christian lives where rampant godlessness or anxiety, immorality, theft, impatience will be reaped accordingly. Are you following me? If you are content with acting like God doesn't exist, if that's okay with you, that your day-to-day life, once you rise up from your devotion if you have it, then it's just you. Paul says this, although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise, they became fools. Do you believe that if you live as if God doesn't matter that you will avoid being fool? If a little immorality now and then sits well with you, again, Paul says this, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. Beloved, do you think tolerating and practicing a little bit of sexual morality, a little bit of fornication, pornography, and modesty, adultery, that these things will keep you from dishonoring your bodies? If you believe you're doing well to avoid getting caught stealing, Proverbs tells us those who steal lie and wait for their own blood, they set an ambush for their own lives. Can you cheat and shave and steal and avoid having your own life repossessed? If you consider impatience or respectable sin, a struggle about what you want to bother, you will reap the frustration of never actually being able to control the outcomes in your life. If anxiety is something you hate but you excuse in yourself, you will reap the constant fear of the unknown and the nagging doubt of God's power and His goodness. Beloved, if you sow to these things, if you regularly live this way, Paul says that you will reap corruption from your flesh. So you might be saved. It would be as if through fire, he says, in another place, a life of pain and sorrow with little joy, little assurance, and a pitiful faith. What is sown, God truly sees, and so he will justly act in response. But he doesn't just finish with that. He properly concludes our sowing. He brings the process to an end, look at verse 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. We see the magicians again. And for the last time, the last time we saw them, we witnessed them testifying to the power of God, the finger of God. You remember? It was that plague of small annoying biting insects. Here they don't come before Pharaoh at all. They can't even stand before Moses because they are covered in boils like every other Egyptian. Not appearing before Moses is important for a couple of reasons. First Moses had replaced Pharaoh as the king of the circumstances. When Moses afflicted Pharaoh, according to the implements of their own oppression, you remember the kiln and the soot, Moses supplanted him. He replaced him. He became in charge, Moses and Moses' God were the power now. So the magicians had to defer to Moses. Perhaps this is why we read it the way we do. Not that they couldn't come before Pharaoh, but they couldn't come before Moses. Their dark magic and wicked occult practices couldn't overturn the plague. The magic failed because in the end it was worthless to begin with. Two points here. How can we be unmoved when we see the pathetic impotence of the magicians? Do you know what they represent? They represent all the might of the prince, of the power, of the air, the devil. If there was strength to exert, they had it. If there was wisdom to be gained, it was in their hands. If there was beauty to be held, they unveiled it. All the strength and the wisdom and the beauty of the magicians was vanquished. It was defeated. All that was left was the vindication of God. And this is how life works. God chooses the foolish to shame the wise, the weak to shame the strong, the low and despised to bring to nothing the things that are. All of the powers that we would cling to, in the end or no, power at all. So again, I ask you, why does November 8th loom so large over us? Why does it strip us of joy and hope and faith in believing? It represents nothing more than the power that was vanquished, symbolized in the magicians. And what about our health? Why do we clamor so with this workout program and this healthcare program and all of these things, as if it is within our power and our strength to live this life? That too was vanquished when the magicians in their sickness could not become strong and appear before Moses. Why does where you go to school or whom you work for so important? Beloved, why do we strive after all of these things? When we see in our text, symbolized before me, they have been utterly and completely defeated by the one true in living God. With the victory of God, we have secured all who believe in Jesus Christ, the one thing that will truly not disappoint, that we would have as Paul says, an open door to eternal life, but in this life, everything, the magicians, they sowed all their hopes in their magic. They believed it would bring them power, and riches, and beauty, and glory, instead what did it bring them? Boils, and sores, and shame. Sowing to the flesh to use Paul's language demands of proper reaping. Because God truly sees and justly acts, He properly concluded their sewing. They reaped on their flesh before Moses was corruption, what they would soon reap upon their death and eternity away from the one true in living God. The magicians embody the just and proper conclusion of all who would put their hopes somewhere other than in Jesus Christ. Those magicians will lead a host of captives in their train, all who seek power and riches, health, and glory, outside of Jesus Christ, will walk the path with the magicians. The Lord hardens the heart of Pharaoh, and He did not listen to them as the Lord had spoken to Moses. It's hard to fathom, isn't it, Pharaoh's grim stubbornness in the face of such power. We know how the story ends, so we might be tempted to look past Pharaoh's response, but He and all who were like Him will be on the wrong side of God's vindication. To understand this story is about God coming down, seeing His people, and overturning all that would oppose them. There's only two sides to be on in the vindication. That is in God's side, or that is in the side of Pharaoh and the magicians and all who were like them. They will be the ones caught in their own traps and snared in their own plots. They will be the ones who will grieve and wail when they realize that all the power that they saw in this life, that they thought would carry them into the next, is overturned by the one true in living God. Beloved, do not envy them. Do not chase hard after them. Do not jump into the streams and swim with them. Do not hope in their powers to bring you comfort, to cheer you, or to save you. Process of vindication for the people of God, it began, it this plague, it will continue in the Exodus and the destruction of all of Egypt, but it's just a precursor to the final vindication of judgment day. Beloved, we can have hope because God is watching over all of the sowing and reaping. He's watching over the affairs of all His people. We can have hope because what is sown to the spirit of God will be reaped unto eternal life. Do not fret or despair or lose hope as you stand underneath what appears to be the strong arm of oppression. God will vindicate you because God vindicates His people for the glory of His name. He will overturn and render powerless all those who are against His people. It's only time, only time, my friends, until we see the recompense of God swiftly overcoming all of those who oppose Him and elevating all of those who belong to Him in the glory of the one true in living God in His Son, Jesus Christ. Only time. Let's pray.
Our Father, it is challenging when we are under the arm of oppression to believe that you see, to believe that you will justly act, to believe that you will conclude and overturn all that opposes us. But we know Lord from the Word that though they would oppose us, they are your enemies. You will vindicate your holy name. You will care for your children, all of whom, with labor under oppression and difficulty in affliction. So, our Father, we pray that this morning you would help us to see things rightly, help us to see that as Moses and Aaron and God stood victorious over Pharaoh and the magicians, that too symbolizes how we, one day, will stand next to and with the one who has overcome the world. Our Lord, Lord, seal this truth to our heart, we pray, in Christ's name, amen.