Gooding, David: 4 - Vessels of Wrath and of Mercy

We begin our study this evening by reading from the book of Exodus and chapter four. The book of Exodus and chapter four. Banking on the hope that you have, as we have been exhorted, done your homework and read somewhat from the text of these chapters, I shall now proceed to read certain selections from several of them. While you are finding the place, let me just say that if you wish to do further homework, then for our coming study on Saturday, God willing, you should perhaps try to read chapter twelve of this book. But now let's begin to read in chapter four and verse eighteen. And Moses went and returned to Jethro, his father-in-law, and said unto him, Let me go, I pray thee, and return unto my brethren which are in Egypt, and see whether they be yet alive. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace. And the Lord said unto Moses in Midian, Go, return into Egypt, for all the men are dead which sought thy life. And Moses took his wife and his sons and set them upon an ass, and he returned to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the rod of God in his hand. And the Lord said unto Moses, When thou goest back into Egypt, see that thou do before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in thy hand. And I will harden his heart, and he will not let the people go. And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, my firstborn. And I have said unto thee, let my son go that he may serve me. And thou hast refused to let him go. Behold, I will slay thy son, thy firstborn. Chapter eight and verse ten. And he said, be it according to thy word, that thou mayest know that there is none like unto the Lord our God. Verse twenty two: And I will sever in that day the land of Goshen in which my people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there, to the end that thou mayest know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth. Chapter nine and verse thirteen: And the Lord said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning and stand before Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, Let my people go that they may serve me. For I will this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth. For now I had put forth my hand and smitten thee and thy people with pestilence, and thou hadst been cut off from the earth. But in very deed, for this cause have I made thee to stand, for to show thee my power, and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth. Verse twenty nine: And Moses said unto him, as soon as I am gone out of the city, I will spread abroad my hands unto the Lord. The thunders shall cease, neither shall there be any more hail, that thou mayest know that the earth is the Lord's. And finally, for the moment, let us read the New Testament commentary on this particular passage of scripture, the Epistle to the Romans and chapter nine. Epistle to the Romans, chapter nine and verse fourteen: What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy. For the scripture says unto Pharaoh, for this very purpose did I raise thee up, that I might show in thee my power, and that my name might be published abroad in all the earth. So then he hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt then say unto me, why doth he still find fault? For who withstandeth his will? Nay, but O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why didst thou make me thus? Or hath not the potter a right over the clay from the same lump to make one part a vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor? What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which herefor prepared unto glory even us whom he called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles. God give us good understanding of his holy word. On our last two occasions, we have lingered long with Moses, standing at the burning bush, there to behold the glory of God and to hear God proclaim before us his name. And the hearing of the recital of that glorious and gracious name has provoked our hearts to worship. We were watching God, after all, in a thorn bush. And I remind you that among the Israelites, thorns became metaphors for iniquitous and difficult men. In Jotham's parable, pro- recorded for us in Judges chapter nine, Jotham, you remember, speaks of the trees going to make themselves a king. They invited the vine, and they invited the olive tree to come and be king over them, and both those lovely trees. And then they invited the thornbush, the bramble, to come and be king, and with alacrity the thornbush consented and laid down his terms. Let them all submit to me, and if they do not submit to me, then let fire come out of the thornbush and devour the cedars of Lebanon. That was always the thornbush's, uh, evaluation of itself. Nasty, tearing, cribbed, tortured thornbush. It would lovely, gladly destroy, it would gladly destroy the majestic cedars of Lebanon and take a pride in destroying all that is noble, all that is high, all that is gracious, in expression of its own nasty, gnarled and tearing character. I have to add, for honesty's sake, be my popularity what it will, that when, uh, Josam was talking about thorn bushes, he was in fact describing certain of his own politicians. And then you will remember King David, coming to the end of his long life of attempted government of the nation of Israel. And from bitter experience, he tells us that there are some men in this world, they are like thorns, destined to be pushed away and to be burned. And David adds from experience some advice. If you go near them, pray handle them with a rod of iron and keep your distance. For if you don't handle them with some implement of iron, they will tear you and hurt you. Be careful how you come near them. David, as he spoke, was thinking back over many trying and difficult years to characters like Joab, who had torn David and left indelible wounds. And here we have seen God himself entered into a thorn bush. And we found it a symbol, a prototype of what happened at Calvary, and read therein the indescribable grace and tolerance and forbearance of God. That when man's sin had turned God's world into a desert of thorn bushes, then God did not proceed to consume this world in his judgment, but himself came down amongst men, came down amongst the thorns, and Caiaphas tore him and Annas scratched him with their malevolent envy and power love. Judas wounded him with his unfaithfulness, and Peter with his fickleness. Once more, God was found in a thorn bush with a literal crown of thorns upon his head, emblem of the human heart, and all that curse that God must pronounce upon sin. And instead of destroying men, he suffered to save them and bore their curse that they might be delivered from the curse and bring them to that glorious land where there shall be no more curse. I say we lingered long as was fitting at this first vision of the glory of God as it confronts us in the book of Exodus. It is not the last vision that we shall see of God's glory, but it is the first, and it bespeaks the name of God, the name of grace and mercy. But tonight we must move on to hear once more the name of God proclaimed in our ears. To see the glory of God pass before us. But this time, oh, how different. Not now the glory of God's grace. This time, the glory of God's wrath. And I use that phrase advisedly. Judgment may be God's strange work, but even in God's wrath and in his judgment, we shall perceive God's glory. And if our hearts are in tune with God, the wrath of God will in the end provoke within us worship and praise, as does also his grace. We must not fall to thinking that there is something unworthy in the wrath of God. In the wrath and anger of our fellow humans, yes, there is often, shall we not say always, some trace of the unworthy, so that frequently we are given to apologizing, even for the best of our friends. You know that friend of yours, what a pleasant man he is, but occasionally he does blow his top. And, uh, on one of these days, in somebody's drawing room, something was said that somehow got under his skin, and also irrationally, you thought, he suddenly blew his top and went to excess, and everybody was embarrassed. And when he had stormed out of the room, you were moved to apologize for him as one of his friends, and you say to the others, well, he is a good old boy, you know, and he's not often like that. Uh, that was rather untypical of him, and you know, well, he does, don't we all? He loses his temper sometimes, but the wonderful thing about him is that it's soon over, and then it's all forgotten. And so we apologize for the wrath of our friends, but please let none of us be betrayed into apologizing for the wrath of God. The wrath of God is an essential part of his activity and demonstrates to us his holy character. We are to worship him for it. It shows us what God himself is like. A God that could look upon sin with equanimity and tolerance. A God that could face sin and say that sin did not matter... would be a God convicted of sin himself, and a God who would straightway lose the reverence and the respect of any moral being. Sin matters, and God will never say it does not matter. In God's wrath, we see God's values. We see God's love. Why, madam, you have a piece of jade, I suspect, in that corner cupboard in your lounge that sometimes men folks find difficult to know why people have them at all. They seem to serve little purpose. There are the beautiful cups that never seem to get used, and there are the pieces of jade who can put a value on them. And madam, you have warned your sixteen-year-old son not to practice his golf strokes in the sitting room. You perceive the potential danger to the aforesaid jade. But one day nothing will do. It's a wet day, and he doesn't know how to amuse himself. Perhaps he can't read, who knows? And he's practicing his golf to amuse himself in the lounge, and whack through the window of the glass case goes the golf ball and breaks the jade. And you say what? Ah, poor boy. No, it doesn't matter. Don't get upset. You do? Oh, it was only an old piece of jade. Oh, I see. I thought you said before that you liked it and that you valued it. Oh, I see now, you didn't really value it at all, did you? It's only an old piece of jade. It's broken, so what? Oh, but you say I did value it. Then, madam, you'll be upset. You can't possibly stand there and say you didn't value it, you you did value it, and then turn around and say it didn't matter whether it was broken or not. Yes, you may eventually forgive the young gentleman. I suspect with a mother's heart you will. Yes, it may be that you will never ask him to pay for the repair or the replacement of the aforesaid jade because he couldn't afford it. You'll forgive him, but even forgiving him, it will cost you something. Cost you suffering in terms that cannot be quantified or explained. The broken, valuable thing. The sense of the folly and unreasonableness of disobedience. In getting lost with the sin that so foolishly broke the jade, you will sow your sense of values. Pharaoh had his sense of values, indeed he did. Why he had treasure cities, and he filled them with wealth, and his values were of the thought that if the building of those cities meant the hard lash of the taskmaster on the back of these unfortunate slaves, well, they were only slaves, weren't they? What matter if they did get crippled in the course of their work? What matter if the old block of stone fell off its rollers and crushed to death a half a dozen of the old Israelites? What were they? Like slaves. Yes, Pharaoh had his values. And would you have God stand by and say it didn't matter? Then I am to presume, am I, that God doesn't care for human beings, that the odd half dozen perishing under those blocks of stone don't really matter? No, indeed, the God of heaven that created them, in getting wroth with Pharaoh, shows us beyond all manner of doubt the value he places upon his people, upon the individual human being. Let all systems of economics hold it in mind that God values one human beyond all the material wealth of the world. And while I speak thus in general of the wrath of God, I am provoked to say, if I may say it with reverence, that far from God's wrath being something to be apologized for, the fact that God get- gets wrath with human beings is the biggest compliment that was ever paid to human beings. I think of God and his infinity. I think of his greatness and his might and his splendor. I think how tiny man is. And I say to myself, why should God bother with him? That God counts man significant enough. That God will take seriously what a man does. This is an indescribable compliment paid by the Almighty Creator to his creatures. Now then, follow me, if you will, in the text of scripture, in considering for a moment what was the nature of Pharaoh's sin that thus on this occasion provoked the wrath of God. Chapter four, in its introductory paragraph, tells us explicitly the nature of Pharaoh's sin, in summary, was this: he defied the living God. Not all men have in that same sense defied God as Pharaoh did. God indeed took exception to the way they behaved in Sodom and Gomorrah and overwhelmed them with a catastrophe. But then that was because of their exceeding and exceedingly wretched immorality. God took exception to the cities of Canaan and had Israel go in eventually and destroy them. But that was because of their idolatry and their indescribable cruelties and viciousness. You will not read of immorality in the story of Exodus. I am not saying that Egyptians weren't on times immoral, but nothing is said about it. The great issue between God and Pharaoh was this, was not Pharaoh's homosexuality, his immorality. It was this that Pharaoh, being a man, defied the living God. God as creator and redeemer, came to Pharaoh and said, Pharaoh, Israel is my property. Israel is my son and my firstborn. Let my firstborn go. And Pharaoh stood up in the face of Almighty God and refused, and defied him, and defied him again. Now it is a thing to stop the beatings of the heart. To stand and watch a human being, six feet of clay, rise up from his dust and decide the living God to his face. I say it is a thing to chill the heart. Yet it speaks volumes for the character of God to observe that it was God himself that gave man the ability to do it. I hasten to add, not permission to do it, of course not, but the ability to do it. How comes it that Pharaoh can get up on his legs and say no to God? There are many creatures in this world that have no such power. The humble bumblebee and the brilliant butterfly, and even the elephant with his enormous strength have no ability to stand up and say no to God. He made them to work by their unalterable instincts. They have no choice. They merely work as he made them to work. It was God's inestimable gift, his majestic, if I dare use the term of God, courageous gift, that he gave to man, he gave even to Pharaoh the ability, if he so decided, to stand up and say no to God. When you perceive what saying no to God must bring upon Pharaoh, perhaps your heart trembles within and fails you, and you say, but if that were the danger involved in giving Pharaoh that gift, why ever did God give it to him? It is not ours to ask omnipotence why it has done anything in that challenging sense. We can at least perceive what God has obtained by giving man that ability. He has obtained and made possible a relationship with God that is infinitely higher than that which the animals know. Giving man a heart and a will that can say yes to God's love or no to God's love. For whom then, love to God is a matter of choice, and therefore, and by that token, the more significant than if it had been merely an instinctive reaction. To create a creature with that potential. That's rather a staggeringly dangerous thing to do, as you might say. I pray consider how poverty-stricken heaven must have been, had God not decided to give man that ability of choice. But he gave him no permission to defy God, for that way is lies ruin, and disobedience of God must spell destruction. For man may be able to decide, but man remains the creature of God, and if God be the source of all good and the source of all life, for man, his creature to defy God must in the end spell death. And God is not willing that any should perish, but rather that all should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. God gave man the ability to sin, but no permission to sin. But you protest at me, perhaps, and you say, but my good sir, that very chapter four tells you that God informed Moses from the very beginning that he was going to harden Pharaoh's heart. Surely then, if God hardened Pharaoh's heart, he had no choice. But come, let us be fair to the text. In chapter four, God is informing Moses of what he will eventually do. He is telling him his, his commission in its bare basic detail. He is to go in the name of God and tell Pharaoh to let Israel, God's firstborn, go. Moses is told beforehand that Pharaoh will eventually and finally refuse. Because by the end, God will have hardened his heart. That is perfectly true. And God's judgment will come down upon Pharaoh, and God will slay his firstborn. But if we then pro- proceed to read the text, we shall find that God did not at once harden Pharaoh's heart. God proceeded first to plead with Pharaoh and to argue with him. There came first a sign of God's creatorhood, and the sign was followed by nine plagues. And the sign and the nine plagues came first as a warning to Pharaoh before eventually the final judgment came. Yes, God indeed entered at last to harden Pharaoh's heart. But if you will follow the text, God did not harden his heart until the end of the sixth plague. You will read of it first in chapter nine and verse twelve. And many times before you read of God hardening Pharaoh's heart, you will read how Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Now let us rather listen to what the New Testament has to say on this score. God pleaded with Pharaoh. God argued with Pharaoh. Patiently did God present the evidence to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh hardened and hardened and hardened his heart. What would you have done, had you been Almighty God? Sir, if I've watched you in your behavior oftentimes with your mere human enemies and what you do to them when they become unreasonable, I'm not persuaded that you would have treated Pharaoh as God treated him. For hear how he treated him. What if God, willing to show his wrath and power, endured, endured that vessel of wrath. Oh, what a word to use of Almighty God. When a mere six foot of human clay stood up to defy him. And argued with God. And when God pleaded with him, argued back at God. And then made a mock repentance and went back on that repentance and lied to God. Holy Scripture bids us observe how Almighty God, who could have snuffed Pharaoh out with the tip of his divine finger, instead of hastening to execute Pharaoh, endued Pharaoh. Oh, let it be written in large letters across our sky that Almighty God endured Pharaoh. Why should he? Men shall perish, some of them. Ah, but when I look at Calvary, I say to myself, but men shall not perish without first Calvary was offered. And I read there how God's Son incarnate endured the cross. Oh, that God should put up with me. In my perversity, in my disobedience, in my rebellion. How many a heart now here before God this evening looks back with a certain trembling to days when they were still rebellious and still unbelieving? It staggers you to think now that God endured you. See how patiently, if you will, that God endured him. See, as we begin that lesson, first of all, that when God eventually judged Pharaoh. It wasn't because God has favorites and judged Pharaoh when he wouldn't have thought of judging Israel or Moses. God would judge Israel as soon as he would judge Pharaoh. So that before we launch into God's argument with Pharaoh, we must perforce, perforce, because the text obliges us. We must first stand listen to the argument that God had with Moses. Say, what kind of God is this? He has just commissioned Moses to go with his divine message to Pharaoh. See in Moses' very hand the rod of judgment put there by Almighty God in solemn trust to Moses to execute his wrath upon Egypt. See, presently God meet Moses in the inn and begin proceedings against Moses himself. Why so? Why, there is no favoritism with God. Moses may be the God-given, God-given law giver, but Moses had neglected to circumcise his firstborn son, and God took great exception to it. Why so? Well, let us pause to think what circumcision signified. Circumcision among the Jews was given, first of all, to their father Abraham. It was given as a seal of the righteousness which he had by faith. It didn't procure or produce that faith. It was merely given as a sign that Abraham had believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. Abraham was right with God. Pray, how was Abraham right with God, and on what ground was Abraham right with God? Not on the ground of his mere existence as a creature of God, for Abraham, in common with all, had sinned. And Abraham too stood guilty before God and under the wrath of God. But God in his mercy had appeared to Abraham and shown him how a man who is a sinner and ungodly can be made right with God. Coming back to take that place that only a creature should take. Of humble and utter dependence upon God. Of entire surrender to God and faith in God. Abraham believed God. On that grounds, God pronounced him to be right with God. Accepted then as a guilty sinner and justified by faith, Abraham received the sign of circumcision that should remind him, on the one hand, that his confidence should not be in the flesh, as Saint Paul would put it, but on the ground of God's grace. Should remind him in its symbolic language that now justified, he must walk before God and be perfect. It was a pledge on Abraham's part that he was willing now to live for God. Here goes Moses to proclaim the wrath of God on Egypt, and God confronts him. And Moses, my man, you mustn't think just because you have that rod in your hand, uh, and you call yourself a believer in God and that I am your God, that you can get away with sin and carelessness. That is a something we do sometimes, isn't it? You should hear us in our self-righteous moods. We condemn this one and that one, from the Lord Mayor upwards or downwards, to the farmer in his cottage. And we somehow imagine that because we've agreed with God that other people's sins are wrong, that, well, we're on God's side, and of course God is pretty decent, and he wouldn't round on us because we're on his side. We may cheat, we may tell a few white lies. Well, after all, we're the people of God, aren't we? Here we are storming away at the sins of the ungodly, as though we had some special favorite license ourselves to sin because somehow we call ourselves the people of God. But there is no respect of persons with God. Be it Moses, be it anyone else, there can be only one ground of acceptance before God, that is the humble confession of our sinership, the putting of our faith in God, the humbling of our pride, our dependence upon him, and a life that follows. Submitted to God, and by his grace and spirit, seeking to walk after the spirit and not after the flesh. Then why must God judge Pharaoh? Why must he do it? God must judge Pharaoh, I submit to you, three reasons you will find among many others in our text. Because Pharaoh was himself crushing and destroying one of the most beautiful things in life. Let my people go that they may worship me, said God. No, said Pharaoh. That's all pant, that's humbug. Get back to your factory, get back to your brick kiln. All this talk about worship. It's a mere form of idleness and escapism and daydream. How do you think the eco- economics of this land are going to progress if we allow such reactionary ideas? Pharaoh was for making the economics govern everything, for not allowing that there is a bigger dimension, the worship of God. Or would you think the man who told us a tulip is to be regarded as nothing other than chemicals? And for that us to see that when you've gone through the chemistry of it, and when you've gone through the economics of producing a lot of, a a a lot of tulips at the cheapest possible price, there remains the whole final cause why you should have tulips at all, that people might enjoy their beauty. What do we say of the man who, confronted with life and this planet, shall say that it exists merely for the sake of the stuff, or merely for the sake of the aesthetics, if you will, and that there is no higher significance. The enjoyment of life in company with God. Not only the appreciation of the beauty of the chemical tulip, but when you have arisen to the aesthetic and have enjoyed the beauty, to turn to that higher thing that is sharing that beauty with God who made it, and being induced to worship God. Say, is it not life's fairest thing, the worship of God and his servants? Aye, when many tulips are forever perished, the worship of God that we have learned here shall abide as an eternal value, and Pharaoh was for destroying it, root and branch. Should God stand by and let him destroy it? Why must God judge Pharaoh? Because Pharaoh was ruining people's faith. That's why he must judge him. God, through Moses, came to Israel and painted a picture of a land flowing with milk and honey and provoked their face. Unsophisticated they may be, but with that natural instinct of the human heart that we may be sure was planted by God. Their heart went out to that glorious gospel that there was an inheritance, that life wasn't made to be a mere slavery, and their faith began to grow, their faith in God. Pharaoh tried to smash it and nearly succeeded, so that when at last Moses came to them, they believed him not, for the bitterness of their hearts. For when they tried to believe God's word and that there was a fair inheritance, Pharaoh had piled on the agony until the people scarce could believe that God was or that his gospel was true. Art it easy for us sitting here to believe in a heaven and a paradise. But there are some of our dear brethren in other lands, and if they dare to believe there is a mansion for them, an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fades not away, and the authorities know that they believe it, then their daily lot will be increased a hundredfold, and they'll find themselves in the slave labor camps on short rations, till it nearly breaks their faith. Why must God deal with Pharaoh? Because if he didn't deal with him, it would break the faith of thousands of people and smash that link that alone can spell a right relationship with God, blessing here on earth and a paradise to come. Alas, for the tyrants that come, our Lord warned us, saying, when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? Yes, indeed, some. But God shall not allow wickedness to go forever unchecked. But God will have mercy on his elect, though he is long suffering over them, and will intervene at last to smash not only Pharaoh, but his coming great future, the man of sin himself. And why must God intervene to judge... Pharaoh? Because God himself had made a covenant with Abraham, that's why. God himself had a purpose for this earth. Do you count it strange? Do you count it unreasonable in God that God, having made this earth, should have a purpose for it? Do you suppose that the creator, having made the whole thing, should then of necessity stand aside and men, let men make what they will of it? Nay, God had a purpose for it, and long before Pharaoh was thought of, God had a reason for creating and a plan in history, and he had chosen Abraham. And God had made a covenant with Abraham that to Abraham and to his seed God would give the earth, and in Abraham and his seed will all the nations of the world be blessed. And God is not to be moved from his purpose. And if God has interposed with an oath and a covenant, and the very character of God is at stake, and he will not break that covenant. Thus are we reminded in the New Testament, in the book of the Revelation, chapters eight and eleven, When before those judgments come at that particular time, we are introduced behind the scenes in heaven to have explained to us why those judgments must come. And we are given to see in heaven the ark of God's covenant. We are given to see the incense altar and hear the prayers of saints, prayers founded on the covenant promise of God. And because of that covenant, and because of those prayers, God must intervene to judge the wicked who destroy the earth. They have got rid of God's son and Abraham's seed on a cross. They think to possess earth and hold it forever. But the Lord shall laugh at them. He shall have them in derision. He set his king upon the holy hill of Zion. He will be true to his covenant, though it will mean he must intervene in judgment against Pharaoh and his hosts. Thus, God moved to judgment. But I ask you again to observe, oh, please observe it. The judgment God had warned Pharaoh of was this, that if Pharaoh didn't let Israel go, God would take Pharaoh's firstborn. That was the judgment. All those plagues that came before, you should scarce read them as judgments. They were arguments. They were pressures put on Pharaoh, that had he heeded them, might have led him to repentance, leading to then to the possibility that judgment would not needed to have come. How long God spent traveling to argue with Pharaoh, to plead with Pharaoh. How well could God have said to Pharaoh, how often? How many times as a chicken would gather her brood under her wings? You would not. Read even in these dark chapters, the mercy and the incredible forbearance of God. What was Pharaoh's sin? That he defied God. That he laid hold of Egypt as though Egypt were Pharaoh's own possession. God would judge him for it, but first, God would make the man's sin clear to him. And if God would make the man's sin clear to him, then God must prove even to Pharaoh that the earth is the Lord's. And God will prove it to Pharaoh. And God will take time to prove it to Pharaoh. It might be that Pharaoh didn't know it. Then before God judges him for sinning against this great fundamental principle, then God will himself, in fairness, demonstrate to Pharaoh that the earth is the Lord's. Moreover, God will, uh, demonstrate to Pharaoh that not only is the earth the Lord's, but there is none like God in the earth. And furthermore, that God is not some absentee landlord way up in his heaven who never visits Ireland, not some absentee landlord like the English who owned Ireland but never lived in it. But the Lord is God in the midst of the earth. God will demonstrate to Pharaoh that God doesn't merely create the world and then let it go. But God is a God who, from time to time, reserves the right to stick his finger right in the mechanism. And thus demonstrate that the earth is the Lord's, he made it, and can do as he pleased with it. But having said that, you will perceive, will you not, and doubtless in your conversation with your unconverted friends you have learned by experience, that proving this is not such an easy matter as you might think. Why, you say, of course it would be easy to prove that there's a God. Let God himself appear, and it shall be done. But have you thought what that would mean? If God were to appear personally before Pharaoh, there'd be no more Pharaoh. Why, when the lovely Apostle John was visited by an holy angel, the presence of that own holy angel appearing manifestly to John reduced John to a gibbering corpse. And when those superhuman beings, and perhaps the angel of God himself, appeared to the prophet Daniel, then Daniel describes how he was left with no strength and couldn't put one thought in front of another. If God Almighty appeared direct to us, it would so reduce us to indescribable weakness and confusion of wits. We couldn't make a choice or come to any moral judgment. So must we be overwhelmed by the immediate glory of God. It is a thing of God's great mercy that he remains behind the scenes and doesn't appear immediately to any of us. A thing of surpassing mercy that he has found a way that we may look upon him in Jesus Christ, his son. But it remains God no man hath seen, nor can see. Then how will you prove that God is the God of this earth and made it. Well, it depends, uh, to whom you are talking. Is he a reasonable man, or is he determined not to believe and push his inadequate logic perversely beyond its limits? It depends, I say, what kind of a man it is that plague, but a sign. And Moses came before Pharaoh and threw down his rod, and it became a serpent. And Pharaoh maintained his calm, and with an affected, uh, amazement, he said, but so what, Moses? What, what am I supposed to take out of that, Moses? You've thrown down a rod, Moses. It has become a serpent, Moses. And what am I supposed to draw from that, Moses? That there's a God? Oh, nonsense, Moses. And he pushed the button beside his throne, and in came the boffin boys all dressed up in their white cloaks, as boffin boys generally do. It helps them to look important. Wah, said Moses, as the magicians cast down their rods, and they turned into serpents. You see, but we can explain it scientifically, Moses. We can do it in the laboratory ourselves. Exit your evidence for the existence of God, a creator. You see, we know how the whole thing ticks. And therefore, it's no evidence to us that there's a creator. Isn't it curious how men latch onto that argument? They think if only they can understand how the universe works, that proves that there was no creator. They tell us, you see, in days gone by, man believed in a creator because the workings of the universe were all mysterious to him. But now man has found out how it all ticks, so now he needn't believe in a creator. It's like me. Imagine me a savage in the rainforests of Peru. That shouldn't be too difficult. And as a savage in the rainforests of Peru, of Peru, I suddenly come across a double-decker bus, the like of which I'd never seen before. It's some university students on some safari, but they've left the bus and gone off somewhere else. And I and the rest of my clan, we get inside the bus and on top of it, and we poke it here and we poke it there, give us, uh, a few million centuries, and it's got to be a long-lived bus, and we found out how it works. Uh, first, of course, we found out how those pedals go in the floor in the driver's cabin. You push this thing here and something happens inside. You push that thing and something else happens. And how it happened, who knows? There was a kind of a god, we thought, in the bonnet. But then as the centuries rolled by, we grew, uh, more brave, and one day we found the knob that opened the bonnet, and we looked inside, and we could then see what happened when you pressed the accelerator and what happened when you pressed the clutch. And we understand it all now, how it works. And here come these white sahibs from the Queen's University, and they say that's our bus. And I say, nonsense, nonsense, who are you? We don't believe in you. We understand how this bus goes, we'll have you know. We don't believe that anybody made it. And still less do we believe anybody brought it here. There's no God in the bonnet or outside either. We can explain how it works. Well, if you think that's clever and you want to hold on to that kind of logic, all right. And we shall not be able to prove to you at that level that this world is God. And if you are as perverse as that, what will God do? Abandon you? No, my friend, he'll keep after you. That's what God will do. He's sorry that you have been led astray in your intellect to give heed to such absurd arguments. But just in case you are honest, then he will, uh, he will keep on with you and give you more evidence. Three lots of demonstrations came, demonstrating by this means and that, that God not only made this world, but owns it, can do what he will with it, that there is none to stay his hand. He is the God in the middle of the earth. There is none like him. He brought such exceptional phenomena to pass that it became utterly perverse to say that, uh, this wasn't unusual or indeed unique. He made differences between the Israelites and the Egyptians that it might become evident to all except the perverse that God isn't away in his heaven, but is here on earth, producing the difference. Till there came a time, even at that level, that Pharaoh's own scientists said, but sire, we can't explain it. This must be the intervention of Almighty God. But it wasn't only physical evidence at the realm of science that God offered this man, for in the last analysis that would be inconclusive. So God offered him two other things. He offered him the prophetic word through Moses. That the word of God coming to him and working on his moral judgment, bringing with it the self-evident truth that is inherent in the word of God. God brought to Pharaoh the evidence of answered prayer. Not only when Moses, when Pharaoh cried to Moses, pray for us, and God answered those prayers, but when Pharaoh himself was allowed to pray and tell God, God, take this particular plague away by tomorrow at such and such a time, and God listened to him. God spoke to Moses finally, not merely through the physical sciences, not merely through the prophetic word, and not merely through answered prayer, but spoke to him at length by the workings of his own conscience, till Pharaoh himself was constrained to cry, I have sinned and I know it. And in spite of it, Pharaoh refused to obey God. Said our blessed Lord of his own contemporaries, if I had not come and done among them signs that no other had done, they had not had sin. For you can't blame a man for not believing what he never heard or saw. But I have come, says Christ, and I've done signs altogether unique. Now they have no excuse for their sin. You will say God, uh, nevertheless hardened his heart? Yes, he did. And we come finally to the most solemn thing of all. God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Oh, pray, read carefully and discern what it means. Not at the start did God harden his heart, but when one sign and six plagues had passed, then God hardened his heart. And when God began to harden that man's heart, then God explains to us carefully and explicitly why and what he was doing. Tell Pharaoh this. Pharaoh, I'm going to harden you, and I'm going to make you stand now. You see, you disobeyed me before, and I could have wiped you out. Not only could have done it physically, I could have done it morally. Sinner demonstrated to be sinner and deliberate rebel against God, shutting your eyes to the evidence and refusing God's truth. Pharaoh, I could righteously have wiped you out at this juncture. I'm not going to do that at this juncture. I'm now going to make you stand, and I'm going to do it to make you an example, Pharaoh. I'm going to do it that my name be known. I'm going to do it that when men now look upon you, a man who has deliberately defied God and refused his message and his gospel, what God thinks of him, what God will do with him. What did God do with him? He continued the evidence of his demonstrations until those demonstrations came into Pharaoh's conscience, and Pharaoh said, I have sinned, and God is righteous, and I am wicked. Pray. Pray take away, pray take away this death from me. Oh God, give me your forgiveness. Take away this death. All right, says God. You know you've sinned. You know sin must lead to death. You ask for forgiveness. You ask for the removal of the consequences and the penalty of sin. All right, Pharaoh, I'll take them away. Pharaoh said yes. And went on sinning. And found he couldn't break the power of sin. Why couldn't he break it? Our times were when if Pharaoh had cast himself under mercy of God, God would have intervened in Pharaoh's life to smash that hideous thing that held him such a slave. But he wouldn't have it. And God hardened his heart, gave the man his own choice. Pharaoh went past the point where it is possible for a man to repent or give up his sin. And the hell of it was this, that even as he went back to his sinning, he knew it was sin. And he knew God was righteous. And he knew he himself was wicked. And he knew it would lead to death. And he couldn't give up the sinning. For he couldn't bring himself to repent. Oh, how hideous will perdition be? When men at last see the emptiness of their pseudo logic and their defiance and unbelief in God. When they know the things they do are sin and that God is holy and they are wicked. When they know it is nothing but death to continue in it. For all eternity they find themselves unable to repent or to break off their sinning. That is perdition. You say, but why did God do it? What would you have God do? The man had deserved it. God, instead of consigning him at once to perdition, made him stand here on this earth, that this side of eternity men might see the beginnings of a lost soul and be warned. Oh, to have my own choice, if my own choice is rebellion against God, to resist his Holy Spirit and to resist his word and refuse to repent and to allow myself to be saved. Or if I must do it, then God in his infinite mercy has set up Pharaoh to tell me that God is willing to wait a long, long while and plead with men, but that he won't wait forever. And this is what happens when a man goes beyond the point of no return. Ah, there is salvation. There came at last the judgment. Pharaoh's firstborn was slain. Yes, and all the firstborn were slain, except there was made for those that would have it a way of escape, warned by what God did to Pharaoh, they came in their thousands to the sacrifice that God appointed. They sheltered behind its blood, and God saved them from his wrath and brought them to freedom. Let us in our day follow their example. And now let us pray. O God, this is a solemn part of thy holy word. Now we would go from it quietly. We thank thee for the glory of thy wrath, for the reasonableness of thy wrath, but it leaves our hearts subdued. We might so easily have continued in our rebellion. Now we thank thee for the riches of thy mercy. And pray thy grace that we may so live by thy spirit's power as to vindicate to all around the reality of thy salvation and the effectiveness of thy. O God, if there is one among us tonight unsaved and unrepentant, use thy word, we beseech thee, this very night to bring them to repentance, lest they too pass beyond the point of no return and are lost forever. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.