Would you please take your bibles and turn to the book of Exodus to chapter 8 We will find this morning. I hope by the time we And I study this passage that God does everything he does in the world For the sake of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ And that includes how he treats the nations of the earth When we read these stories in the Old Testament We often do so, I think, without a proper regard For the people that are being talked about in the stories Whether they're the Canaanites or the Egyptians or the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Persians or the Greeks and even the Romans We tend to see them only as evil and although they were evil and debased as we are in many ways In other ways they were lovely people People like us It's our tendency to do that with history we tend to focus on kings and presidents and wars and victories and cataclysmic events But that's really not how history is made History is made by average people like you and like me who go about Our daily lives shaping the course of Where we are and who we are and where we're going in the future John Davis says that one of the fallacies of studying Egyptian history From the standpoint of political movements and developments is the dehumanization of The people who participated in that history Historians, he says are notorious For their lack of concern for the average man and they really don't see Egypt in its fullest sense What were these average Egyptians like? Well, I mentioned last week that we would like them. I think we would racially They were a mixed people as we are in America The people on the northern end of that country up by the Delta Would have been Caucasian kind of submitting looking people like the people of Israel or the people of Egypt today Towards the southern end Which is now Ethiopian sedan they would have been the Africans in the Negroid race Many foreigners lived there canonites and Jews and Babylonians and Assyrians and Sudanese and Ethiopians and even people from was later to be called Europe Found their way to the great cities in the Delta in this wonderful Rich country of Egypt they had a population somewhere between four and five million It's estimated at the time of Moses and the people of Israel They were busy people Their principal occupation was farming and they were masters at it They lived in a desert land but because of the flooding of the Nile They had devised an intricate and a very efficient system of canals and holding ponds and lakes and pools that they used to irrigate the land so that they could Produce enough food for all of the people of Egypt and exports for other countries while freeing a great many of people from the burden of farming and To employ them and other things and indeed they did They loved to build temples and monuments and things like the pyramids They devoted themselves to artwork and literature to education and were quite formidable in war They were far advanced beyond all the surrounding nations. They excelled in things like mathematics and Geometry physics and engineering astronomy and medicine Architecture agriculture fishing and in the building and use of shipping The largest library in the ancient world Was in Egypt They were generally optimistic people now they did have a preoccupation with death because they were profoundly spiritual people But they also believed that while was one was alive. He should live life to the fullest Here's one of their Songs that they used to say Be glad that thou mayest caused thy heart to forget that men will one day honor you in your grave Follow your desire so long as you live put mur on your head and Find closing of yourself Annoy yourself with the genuine marbles of the things of the gods Spend the day merrily Put engine and find oils together in your nostrils and Put garlands and lotus flowers on the body of your sister whom you favor as she sits beside you Set singing music before their face cast all evil behind yourself and Think only of joy They were impeccably clean people they bathed daily They used oils and lotions to scent themselves Both men and women used eyeliner to highlight their big brown eyes They were clean shaven. They had no sideburns or beards or mustaches They dress modestly and simply Answer comfort in a hot environment They were attractive people Men were about five foot five inches Women were about five foot tall. They were slim and fit Petite and shapely. There was no obesity They were healthy people the men shaved their heads and when they were young They had a ponytail. They came out the side of the head women where their head cut in the In bangs and long they braided it They wore amulets and jewelry and even wigs this Pharaoh that Moses was in conflict with in this story Aman Hotep the second was considered Exceptionally tall because he was six feet tall. He was a giant Most of the linden small square houses made of out of mud bricks having about four rooms and a patio or or Deck on the top where they would go in the cool of the evening of course those who were wealthier had palatial homes and Pharaoh had five palaces all of them were studying studying Pieces of architectural artwork. They lived in a layered society with the divine royal family at the top other royalty beneath them than the professional class of priests and bureaucrats and generals the working class were merchants and farmers and fishermen and at the very bottom where the people who did the hard labor the slaves and the Shepherds You and I would have liked them They would have been good neighbors and good friends and good workers But what we would not have liked was their religion and They were deeply religious people One commentator in a book called Monarchs of the Nile said that their religion was like islam it permeated Everything public and private in their lives. There were two facets of the Egyptian religion first their personal piety Their own devotion and the devotion of their family to certain gods or goddesses and then their public religion that brought them together on Certain feast days and sacred occasions where they would hear the oracles of the gods supposedly from the priests that would give them public and Future direction. They were polytheists They didn't have a whole lot of gods compared to those who surrounded them But about 80 different gods and goddesses made up the pantheon of their worship Their chief god was the sun god named the raw And he was a man with a falcon's head depicted that way in art literature They practiced henotheism where they were devoted to one god But not exclusively they didn't ignore other gods They believed in Anemism the belief that the spirit of the gods filled all living things from inanimate objects to especially animals They believed in fetishism that spirits could inhabit certain things that were talismans or Instruments of power like the rods or staffs of kings and their crowns and thrones They believed in totemism that the spirits wanted of the gods wanted to inhabit certain tokens and symbols It could be used by mankind to communicate with the gods and to channel their power and they were animists They believed that the spirit of the gods was in all living things especially frogs crocodiles Falcons and rams Papadamai cranes hawks eagles lions leopards and even the scarab beetle They saw the gods In animals these animals were theophonies or appearances of the gods through which they communicated to mankind. They were rank idolaters But you and I would say They were nice people And because of that they were dangerous for Israel The Israelites give no indication even in their time of slavery That they were unhappy with or at odds with their neighbors around them. It was the the royal bureaucratic Structure that imposed the slavery upon them in fact when they would leave Egypt they would leave with great favor Even blessings given them by their Egyptian loved ones and friends who were their neighbors and family members But these people who were Believers in one God these Jews had lost confidence in that God His magic his power Did not seem as strong as pharaohs and his gods They lost confidence that God would deliver them and fulfill the promise of taking them back to a promised lamb and set them free for good And they were beginning to think In many of their ways of private reasoning and relating to God, Jehovah, they were beginning to think and act like the Egyptians And so God says this is not a good situation And if I'm going to bring a Messiah into the world, I can't bring him into the world in Egypt So I'm going to raise up a deliverer a man who's both Egyptian and Jew And I'm going to have him lead the people out to a holy mountain where I will make a covenant with them and I will write Through Moses books that tell them the truth the truth about the beginning of the world and The fall of mankind and its judgment in the flood and my covenant of grace with them and why I sent Joseph down to Egypt to Preserve this race of people known as the Hebrews and what I have intended for them to the ends of the earth and to the ends of the age And that's what God is in the process of doing Pharaoh will not agree to let them go Pharaoh draws a line in the sand and so God decides to send a series of ten plays upon these Egyptian people He said to Moses in chapter 7 you see I Have made you God to Pharaoh and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet You shall speak all that I command you and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of this land But I will harden Pharaoh's heart And though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt Pharaoh will not listen to you Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my host my people the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them He's in the process of doing that as we picked up the storyline in chapter 8 He's already shown that the rod of God Through Moses his staff Is more powerful than the magic of the sorcerers of Egypt He has struck the river Nile the source of life the river of life they called it or the lifeblood of Egypt and Turned it into blood And now he works a second plague He brings a plague of frogs out of the Nile to afflict the people of Egypt and he judges one of their chief goddesses a goddess named Hacquette Who they called the frog princess? Pick up the story in chapter 8 verse 1 Then the Lord said to Moses Go into Pharaoh and say to him Thus says the Lord Let my people go that they may serve me But if you refuse to let them go behold I will plague all your country with frogs The Nile shall swarm with frogs. They shall come up into your house and into your bedroom and on your bed and into the houses of your servants and your people and Into your ovens and your netting bowls the frog shall come up upon you and on your people and on all your servants and The Lord said to Moses say to Aaron stretch out your hand with your staff over the rivers over the canals and over the pools and Make frogs come up out of the land of Egypt So when stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt But the magicians did the same by their secret arts and made frogs come up on the land of Egypt Moses waits one week According to chapter 7 25 one week Since he struck the Nile and turned it to blood and Then he sends God sends Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh one more time a third time now and says Let my people go that they may worship me But this time he adds a warning if you refuse to let them go I'm going to cover Your land with frogs There's no indication in the story that Pharaoh says the thing We can anticipate then that he simply crossed his arms Locked his jaw and the defiant contempt that men have for God and Said nothing So in his presence Moses said to Aaron Stretch out the rod of God over the Nile and Bring forth their sacred frogs In abundance Why frogs Because it was an insult and a striking Judgment upon the goddess Hattatt H.E.K.E.T She was one of the chief deities of the pantheon of the Egyptians a Major God in Egypt Osiris the God of the underworld Married his sister Isis who was also his wife and they had a son Horus In their mythology Horus fought with his uncle Seth for 80 years to gain control of Egypt and therefore of the world He was finally victorious Changed his name to the name of victory harbour and he took as his wife Hattatt Who was a princess Who was incarnate in a frog she's pictured as a woman with the head of a frog She's also said to be the wife of canoom the God of the River Nile's tides And it's believed by the Egyptians that canoom would take mud from the Nile and he would shape human beings and Hattatt would breathe into them the spirit of life and then place them in a human womb and Superintendents the safety of that birth She became a theophany of life of Resurrection of children She was the helper and protector of all pregnant women the housewives would call the servants of Hattatt She has a long history In their darkened religion she was one of the eight primordial gods and goddesses four gods with the frogs head and Four goddesses with the serpent heads. They were couples that together manifested the four forces of life water time darkness and air She was collectively known along with the others as part of the eight and She was one who had great sympathy over women and great love for the family. You can see why she was so immensely popular She was the goddess of resurrection and women who wore Amulets on their wrist around their neck often times had a frog with the words in Egyptian. I am the resurrection and the life Isn't it amazing How Lucifer can mimic the things of God and so God strikes her Not that he kills the frogs but he makes the frogs obnoxious Remember that these people were impeccably clean They were by their sheer number of the frogs they became Not a blessing but a nuisance and their desperation for water was made all the worse So that after a week when the blood turned back to water it was now Insested and infected with frogs But Pharaoh hardens his heart He says to Moses and Aaron My magicians can do the same and so they bring forth more frogs which is hardly a Solution to the problem but it tells us the Pharaoh did not Trust his magicians to reverse the plague He only rode on the power of God already in operation, but then we read that he buckles Pharaoh flinches for the first time Chapter 8 verse 8 Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said Plead with the Lord to take away the France from me and from my people and I will let the people go to sacrifice to the Lord Moses said to Aaron be pleased to command me when I am to plead for you and for your servants and for your people that the frogs Be cut off from you and your houses and be left only in the lion and he said tomorrow Moses said be it as you say So that you may know that there was no one like the Lord our God The frog shall go away from you and your houses and your servants and your people That shall be left only in the Nile So Moses and Aaron went out from Pharaoh and Moses cried to the Lord about the frogs as he had agreed with Pharaoh and the Lord did According to the word of Moses the frogs died out in the houses the courtyard the fields and They and that is the Egyptians gathered them together in heaps and the land stink But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite He hardened his heart It would not listen to them. That is to Aaron and Moses as the Lord had said Pharaoh does the typical thing that human beings do when they get in a jam old Lord if you'll just do this if you just do this one thing I'll serve you. I'll do what you want And of course when God does that one thing he changes his mind He comes and he says please Ask your God To take away these frogs and I will let you go to sacrifice Probably not permanently But let your people take a trip And they can sacrifice to the Lord and then come back to me Moses treats him with great respect look what he says be pleased to command me When I am to plead for you and for your servants and for your people literally it reads this way in the Hebrew glorify yourself over me as to when I will pray for you He gives the advantage To Pharaoh he says no you choose When These frogs will let it it will honor your position in the eyes of your people But it will also show you that this is not some freak of nature if the frogs eventually died out then Pharaoh would say you see this just happens every so many years But when Pharaoh said I wanted to happen tomorrow It all happened in one day And what was left was a reminder Of how stinky their religion was the stench The piles of rotting frogs The slimy filthy aftermath The horror of finding dead frogs in your closet and in your drinking cups and the Children's instruments of eating it was nauseating to an impeccably clean people Harry Rimmer has written a book called dead men tell tales and he describes how this might have been Like a blanket of filth the slimy wet monstrosities covered the land Until men sickened if the continued squashing crunch of the ghastly pavement they were walking upon If a man's feet slipped on the greasy mass of Their crushed body he fell into an indescribably offensive mass of putrified Uncleaness and when he sought water to cleanse himself the water was so solid with frogs That he got no cleansing at all. I remember once when I was a kid My brother and I were playing around in this little creek We found a bunch of tent poles and so we got some jars and we scooped them up hundreds of them And I went and got a 50 gallon galvanized, you know I'm not praying about 50 gallon but one of these big Ten washtubs and I filled with water in the basement put them in there My mother said what are you gonna do with those is I'm gonna wait till they become frogs She said what are you gonna do with them then I said I'm gonna let them go So I got a screen and a framed wood, you know from the window and I put it over the things and sure enough in a few weeks There were hundreds of these little green frogs in this water and then Somehow in the night the dog got down there and knocked the screen off I Went down in the morning to the well of my mother Michael get down here now There were frogs all over the basement. They were up the steps. They were into the kitchen I tried to catch them all but I'm telling you for months. We'd open the door or Get in the cabinet or I Open the refrigerator once and there was a dry dead one in there. I don't know how I got in there And I think about that every time I think of this story You can multiply that by the millions and these weren't tiny things these were things the size of a human fist and They infected the land as an object lesson That their gods were vulnerable that they were dead that they were disgusting but Pharaoh Hardens his heart and That means Plague number three is on the way How do we apply this This story this morning to our lives? I mentioned last week and I think this is true That it's a danger for pastors to try to apply every plague of Egypt to something That's current in the American social life today. I didn't do that when we went through the The judgments of the book of Revelation and not going to do that through the judgments of Egypt To do so I think would result in moralism I'd be stretching to make some point of Do good is in on our behalf that would make these bad things go away and miss the whole entire Redemptive gospel focus of the passage But I do believe that's fascinating that the plagues of Egypt are repeated in part in the book of Revelation and What happens in these plagues is that even though God sends playing after playing after playing first the seal judgments and then the trumpet judgments and then the bold judgments The people hard in their hearts and return again and again the book of Revelation says to their idols Revelation 9 the rest of mankind who are not killed by these plagues Did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshipping demons and the idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood Which cannot see or hear or walk Nor did they repent of their murders of their sorceries of their sexual immorality or their thefts Their hearts were hardened Frongs are only mentioned in four Stories in the Bible four places actually Three of them have to do with the Exodus here in chapter eight and In Psalm 105 that talks about the Exodus and in Psalm 78 He sent among them swarms of flies which devoured them and frogs which destroyed them He let loose on them his burning anger Wrath and did nation distress a company of destroying angels Psalm 78 says that these Frogs were the result of an act of angels striking the country of Egypt The fourth and the other place they're mentioned is in the book of Revelation chapter 16 The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great rivers the Euphrates and Its water was dried up to prepare the way for the king of the east and I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon and Out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet three unglin spirits like frogs For they are demonic spirits Performing signs who go broad to the kings of the whole world to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty Bring them to this place called Harma get on Revelation says the frogs are unclean spirits Psalm 78 says That they are the result of angelic powers Striking the land here's this cosmic conflict again between the forces of God And the forces of the evil one What do we imply then Paul says is an idle anything no? But those who worship idols worship demons Behind these frogs were demons that God was judging If you're like me or you get to this point in the story and it's time to stop and answer a difficult question if these Egyptian people were so nice so lovely and The only thing wrong with them is that they didn't know the true God yet because no one had preached Christ to them yet Then why would God judge them? Why would he wipe out a Whole village of Canaanites men, women, and children? Why would he send his people into a land called Palestine Deforcibly take what belonged to other people their vineyards and their farms and their cities Well, this is the question of the Odyssey the justification of God Why would a good and loving God allow or command or even do? Violence and evil to his world and even uses Old Testament Church to do these things Well, I would suggest you that there's Four things we need to respond to in that question and the first one is this we don't know That's the honest answer to the Odyssey There's no answer that we know of that Will truly make sense of why God allows or does what appears to us to be Hard or difficult or mean things to people unless God tells us in the Bible We're simply guessing and I convinced he doesn't tell us not directly Secondly We need to ask the question is How how nice were these people? See we we overestimate the innocence of people and we underestimate the depravity of mankind And we ignore the holiness of God of course these people were nice they were just like us But I wonder if God thinks we're nice in our fallen state I wonder if he thinks we're nice in our Christian state Or we just redeemed or unredeemed Thirdly God is consistently brought Judgment upon people again and again, but only after repeated warnings Like the flood of mankind No approach to the world around there. Are you ready for this for one hundred years a Century to turn back to God and they would not God sent prophets Wave after wave after wave of prophets to his own people and Warned them that if they did not repent he would send them into exile and captivity He sent Daniel To the country and the king of Babylon. You sent the apostles to Rome God is always asking us to repent or else The judgment is coming It's not as if People should be surprised But all those things still may not satisfy us until we come to the person of Jesus Christ Do you know why God was judging Egypt? He was doing it for Jesus It chosen the people He was going to make them an incubator in which one little boy would be born Who'd be the savior of all mankind and so he Took that people Israel out of Egypt in order to take Egypt out of Israel He wanted to do away with all of the influence of heckette and their fellow gods and goddesses He wanted to take these people to a place and say I'm making new cover of you I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery. You will have No other God but me He surrounded them with a bunch of quite frankly very strict over the top kind of rules. They were extreme About diets and dress and cleanliness Because he was putting a huge hedge around Israel To keep all I draw it here out and when I thought we crept in he took them back to a pagan land it purged them again And again and again and to finally they arrived at a state where the last thing they were going to do was worship a false god Why because of a little boy to be born in Nazareth? Think with me my friends What would have happened had God not done this? When Mary was Miraculously made pregnant by the Holy Spirit. She would have said oh This is the goddess heckette who's put a child in me She's breathed into me this new life of resurrection She will put amulets on her saying I am the resurrection and the life to protect her Joseph would have brought frogs into the house and sacrificed them In fact, you would have called for a priest or rabbi to open the entrails of a frog to find out how well the pregnancy was going to be named the boys name Would have been Jesus which means Jehovah saved it would have been some word hyphenated with a name of a god or a goddess And when Jesus was a little boy Even though he may have gone to the synagogue on Sunday and heard about one true God He would have had a favorite god or goddess that he wore an amulet for and that he kissed and prayed to in times of destruction And as soon as he did that he was no longer qualified To be the sinless Savior of the human race How could Jesus Christ save us from our false gods if he had his own pet gods himself? Aren't you glad? That God did what he did so that our Lord Jesus Christ when he was a little boy Would not have kissed the frog Princess That's why he does all he does Whatever he does in the world. It's always for the purpose of Christ in his kingdom Because he was determined to make him who knew no sin No, I don't Become sin on our behalf so that through Christ we might become the righteousness of God in him He was determined To eliminate sin he was determined In his jealous love for mankind to bring them back from false gods to love him alone Determined to warn us of coming judgments if we did not repent Determined to protect his beloved church And especially His son who one day would stand before people and say and this is eternal life That they might know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent I don't know what The frog princess has to do with America But I know what Jesus does He's still our sinless savior calling you and I back to God and away from our idols So that we might bless the Lord Psalm 106 Never let us he looked upon their distress when he heard their cry And for their sake he remembered his covenant with him And relented according to the abundant love of his steadfast mercy He caused them to be pitted by all those who held them captive Save us O Lord our God And gathers from all the nations of the earth That we may give thanks to your holy name And glory in your praise Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel From everlasting to everlasting And let all the people say Amen Praise the Lord. That's pray Father, we are amazed that in the details of this Story of an ancient people We have these power encounters with you that you will already always thinking about Jesus Christ and us Who would be saved in him We do not understand everything you do in the world We don't understand what happens to our country the way it is headed or What's going on in our communities or in our families? We don't even Oftentimes understand what's going on in our own souls, but we know this That you are causing all these things to work together for good According to the plan you have for those who love you and you've called Into the purpose of eternal life We thank you that you do love the world Enough to discipline even judge it So that you might save it And that you've so loved the world that you sent your only begotten son that All of us might believe in him and through him have eternal life You sent Jesus who is The heavenly prince who is The resurrection and the life And you're sending him to the whole world Deliver us from evil we pray and bring us to Christ save us we ask you So that we might join our voices to that of the whole creation And say at the end of time Amen Praise the Lord Praise the name Of Jesus Christ as we pray this In his name