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Amazing love, how can it be that you, my King, would die for me? Amazing love, I know it's true. It's my joy to honor you in all I do. I honor you. I'm forgiven because you were forsaken. I'm accepted You were condemned, but I'm alive and well. Your Spirit is within me because you died and rose again. Amazing love, how can it be? That you, my King, would die for me. Amazing love, I know it's true. It's my joy to honor you. In all I do, I honor you. You are my King. You are my King. Jesus, you are my King. You are my King. Amazing love, how can it be that you, my King, would die for me? Amazing love, I know it's true. It's my joy to honor you in all I do. I honor you. Man of Sorrows. Man of Sorrows, Lamb of God, by his own betray. The sin of man and wrath of God has been on Jesus' day. Simon, as he stood accused Beaten, mocked, and scorned, bowing to the Father's will, he took a crown of thorns. Oh, that rugged cross, my salvation, where your love bore out over me. Now my soul cries out, Alleluia! Praise and honor unto thee. Santa Fe, God's own son. To purchase and redeem and reconcile the very ones who nailed him to that tree. Oh, that rugged cross, my salvation. Where your love poured out over me. Now my soul cries out, hallelujah! Praise and honor unto thee. Now my debt is paid. It is paid in full by the precious blood that my Jesus spilled. Now the curse of sin has no hold on me. Whom the Son sets free, oh, is free indeed. —now the debt is paid, it is paid in full by the precious blood that my Jesus spilled. Now the curse of sin has no hold on me, whom the Son sets free Oh, it's free indeed. Oh, that rugged cross, my salvation, where your love poured out over me. Now my soul cries out, hallelujah. Praise and honor unto thee. See, the stone is rolled away. Behold the empty tomb. Hallelujah! God be praised! He's risen from the grave. Oh, that rugged cross, my salvation, where your love poured out over me. Now my soul cries out, Alleluia! Praise and honor unto thee. Praise and honor unto thee. <LYRICS>All I once held dear, built my life upon. All this world reveres and wars to run. All I once thought gain</LYRICS> I have counted lost, spent, and worthless now compared to this. Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you, there is no a greater thing. You're my all, you're the best, you're my joy, my righteousness, and I love you, Lord. Now my heart's desire is to know you more. To be found in you and known as yours, to possess by faith what I could not earn, a surpassing gift of righteousness. Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you, there is no greater thing. You're my all, you're the best, you're my joy, my righteousness, and I love you, Lord. Oh, to know the power of your risen life and to know you in your sufferings, to become like you in your death, my Lord, so with you to live. And never die. Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you, there is no greater thing. You're my all, you're the best, you're my joy, my righteousness. And I love you, Lord. Let's pray. Uh, though we just stand here forgiven, um, and we just give that praise to you, and the honor belongs to you for You offered your Son to us to be, um, to be the sacrifice for our sin. And that's why we stand here forgiven. And we just love you because of that, because we did nothing. It was all because of what you've done for us. And that's why we want to know you even more, even deeper, and love you even deeper, because you love us first. Thank you for this amazing love, and we just offer our glory and honor to you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Take the moment to greet each other.

Morning, morning. All right. Good morning, everybody.

Good morning.

I don't have to go around and greet everybody because I can do it from here. Can I have that first picture up? Thank you, Paul, for giving me the opportunity to share. These are people we hung out with in China. We actually lived with some of them. These people, the cast of characters change, but this is a good representation of them. Some Chinese people, some Westerners, some from Tajikistan, some from New Zealand, all over the place. And I show them to you not because they're cooler than you, just because I have the experience of living with them and having like a surrogate family. And I think the church is a surrogate family, and this was our surrogate family, and we were surrogate family to each other. And we did a lot of really fun stuff together. Can you show the next slide? Oops, can you pass to the next slide? One day, someone showed up with Chewbacca onesies for all the kids. My oldest son, Eber, is holding a baby. The baby had one too. You can't quite see hers. But he was the oldest kid, so he got to hold The baby with the Chewbacca onesie. And sometimes we— so most of the time we did silly— sometimes we did silly things. We had a lot of laughter. But we were also sad. Can you go back, Henry? So we were sad. We're actually not sad. We were just making faces. And you notice the one woman on the right-hand side, she was unable to not smile. You want to live with her because she was always smiling. Even when told to make a ugly face, she was unable to. That's Mae Ransom. So if you ever run into her, give her a big hug and take all of her sunshine in. So as we lived together, we prayed together, we ate together, spent a lot of time together. And I think the essence of what we needed was the time together in order to become close to each other. And as that happened organically, things happened, things changed in all of our lives. There's some simple things. My children, one of my youngest child learned, perfected his guitar skills. He would be in our living room and people would walk by and there's a bunch of guitar players and they would give him a little tip and then go on. And my other, my older son learned a strategy game that he really loves. It's been impactful for his whole life and will be, I think, for his whole life ahead of him. He's the one in the front that looks really, really sad. In the brown shirt. That's my oldest son, Eber. He's good at being sad, I guess, in pictures. He's also good at being happy. So we also did— I think there was a lot of important work that was done in each of our lives, and I think it's called spiritual formation. This has to be spiritual, so I'll use the word spiritual. I think it's called spiritual formation. It's seeing yourself in your own behavior and realizing you have ways you you need to improve in a group. You can't really see that all alone because your behavior all alone is perfectly fine, but your behavior in a group is not always perfectly fine. It's a reflection, and you feel how you feel. You're like, I don't really want to do that, and you kind of go, okay, I've got to do that. And that whole process of seeing yourself through the mirror of the people around you is really valuable for all of us. Um, and it's, um, I think it's, I think it's something that Jesus talked about in the Gospels, and he He modeled it, I think, as well in the Gospels. And I think that in the beginning when we first lived with a bunch of people together, it was hard. It felt like I was missing out. I felt like I had less time for myself. I felt like I was kind of pulled in different directions and people were kind of too much. And in perspective, that wasn't the case at all. I received and my family received so much more than we we were— we gave out. And we gave out a lot, but we received so much more. I received things I couldn't have for myself, like the friendships that my children had with other people and the things that those other Christians said to my children. I don't have the experience to say that. So I got things that I couldn't get. Even though I feel like I can do things pretty well, there's a whole lot of other perspectives out there that are really helpful. So we are now— this was our surrogate family that changed membership over the years. And now we're going to start a different sort of adventure. Two slides, Henry? So we have almost all of our family coming to live in Delaware. And so we're going to have a surrogate family of our own family. And my mother and father are with my youngest son Abraham, and they're already here. And then on the other side are Paul's mother and her second husband. You can tell who they are, and then my older son and his wife, Caitlin, and their two children. And so we're going to get the same opportunity again and together with them to see the ways that we kind of fall short and to make up for that and to learn from each other. And so we're looking forward to it, but it's also really intimidating because there's obviously everything kind of hangs out when you're when you're dealing with your family. I don't know if it's easier with strangers or with family, but we'll let you know. We'll let you know which is better. They're not all Christians, so that'll be a little different, but most of them are. The majority are. So the majority rules, right? And I was thinking this morning about talking about this, and I was thinking of the verses that they commonly share at weddings. From 1 Corinthians 13. Next slide. You guys know this. It's probably too small. Now you can see it. Good. And I was thinking, I've always wondered about this interplay between the Holy Spirit and my own ability. So sometimes I think, oh, you know, we pray and have the Holy Spirit like come and change me. And I think to myself, really? You know, I'm the one that's being a jerk. The Holy Spirit can't like he can totally get me to not be a jerk, right? So there's this interplay between what I do and what the Holy Spirit does. And I think that what I was just trying to express was that there's another part, which is each other. So with each other and working with each other, we also have this ability to kind of adjust our behavior and see our behavior. And then the Holy Spirit and we make the determination to change or not. But I was thinking this morning that I felt this was— I always felt this was like some sort of aspirational thing. It's like, let's be patient, let's be kind, like the Holy Spirit and we can do this together. And this morning I was thinking that actually shows me what I don't do. I was like, wait a minute, you know, I'm like, okay, I need to be patient in this circumstance? You got to be kidding me. So I was thinking it was more of a like a this, you know. Hey, remember, love is patient. So I thought that it was a good good kind of mind perspective change for me to see the scripture as something that can speak directly to me in the heat of the moment. So thank you.

Can we have the scripture reading up, please? If not, I have it in my phone also. Okay, great. All right, so it's coming from several chapters, I think two chapters, but different sections of verses. So let's rise and read it together. If you have been coming to this church for a while, you know you never get tired of sitting because we don't have you getting up and then, you know, Alright, so let's read together. Moses and Aaron went and spoke to Pharaoh. They told him, "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: 'Let my people go so they may hold a festival in my honor in the wilderness.'" "Is that so?" retorted the Pharaoh. "And who is the Lord? Why should I listen to him and let Israel go? I don't know the Lord and I will not let Israel go." That same day, Pharaoh sent his order to the Egyptian slave drivers: Load them down with more work. Make them sweat. That will teach them to listen to lies. Later, as Pharaoh and all of his officials watched, Aaron raised his staff and struck the water of the Nile. Suddenly the whole river turned to blood. The fish in the river died and the water became was so foul that the Egyptians couldn't drink it. There was blood everywhere throughout the land of Egypt. The magicians of Egypt used their magic, and they too turned water into blood. So Pharaoh's heart remained hard. He refused to listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had predicted. That's it. All right, you may be seated. Thank you.

Good morning. Now you're going to think this is on purpose as an illustration, but I have left my notebook somewhere in this room. It's a black notebook with all of my notes for the sermon. So your job is to look around the seat and under the seat around you. Where did I leave it in my absent-mindedness this morning? It surely is in this room. I went straight from my car to here. I didn't go to the bathroom. I didn't go to my office. Surely you can turn it up somewhere, right? No, I'm not joking, unfortunately. Is that it? Kevin, do you have it? It looks like that, but that's not it. Could it be in the car? Oh, it might be. It could be in my bag. Is there a black backpack laying around somewhere? Yours? Yeah, why don't you go to the car? Is that all the audience is doing? Yeah, Stace, go to the car. It must be in the car. No, no, not the office. It must be in the car. Okay, so everyone plays the fool, right? Even me. Yes, Lord, even me. So this is the message today. As I was looking into these chapters, The Plagues is the topic. And I kept reading and thinking, what am I going to teach about the plagues? I mean, there's a lot you could say. But I kept going back to the story of Pharaoh and what he's doing. And I was thinking, that sounds so much like me. So in this big story of the people of God changing from slaves at the beginning of Exodus to citizens of a new nation at the end of Exodus, there's this— major stumbling block or key battle, this battle of wits or wills between the will of Moses, "Let my people go," and the will of Pharaoh, who is saying, "I will not let you go." And so it's set up right there at the beginning of chapter 5, diametrically opposed. But in these 6 chapters or so that we cover, when you look at the end of those 6 chapters, there's a complete reversal. So Pharaoh, who started out at chapter 5 saying, "I will not let you go," at the end or middle of chapter 12, he says— not only says, "Yes, you may," but he says, "Get out." And so you historians of ancient Egyptology, what happened in between Pharaoh saying, "No, I will not let you go," into when he said, "Get out"? Do you remember? Well, a lot happens and it's summarized in the, the 10 plagues. And we're not going to go through them ad nauseam, but I'm going to pick out some little highlights during the 10 plagues and you, and you can see which ones are relevant. One thing that if you read about this topic, they'll say that some of these plagues are directly focused on the gods of Egypt at the time. So for example, they worship the River Nile. That was their source of water, their source of life, their source of pride. And when it turned to blood, that was like a direct attack on their god. Or later, this plague of darkness. You heard of the sun god, right? They worship the sun god Ra or something. And that, in showing darkness, God is showing that He's more powerful. Was it there? No. Oh, is that it right there? Is that your bag, Annabel? See? Okay, bring it to me, please. Annabelle, why didn't you tell me there was a bag there? See? I could blame all my problems on her. Yes? Okay, please put out your hand. I'm going to whack you too. So you see, I was looking for the black notebook. I was not looking for my black bag. Now my wife Stacy knows very well I can have tunnel vision at times. And so this is sitting right there, but I'm looking for this, so I'm not noticing that. And I'll say, "It's gone!" And she's saying, "It's not gone!" And she'll just reach right in and pull it out, whatever it is that we're looking for at the time. So you are saved from rambling. So these plagues brought about this big difference or this big switch from saying, "Yes, you may not go," to, "Yes, you should go. In fact, I want you to go." But it wasn't until Pharaoh lost his own firstborn son in this last plague that he finally gave in. And I want to ask you the question, do you feel sorry for Pharaoh when he loses his firstborn son, we don't real— if we've read through all the plagues, we don't really feel sorry for him because he had so many opportunities. But then, surprise, even after he loses his firstborn son and after he lets them go, he changes his mind again and says, "What have we done?" And he decides they're going to chase them down. And he chases them right to the edge of the Red Sea. As you know the story, God opens the sea, the Israelites pass through, and what does Pharaoh do? Onward through the water. And we know what happens next. Pharaoh pays the ultimate price, his own life and the life of his country. His whole army is ruined in this moment. When the waters close back in and drown Pharaoh. And I ask you again, do you feel sorry for him? No! You would say, "That man deserved it. He deserves death. He had these 10 plagues of opportunities. He had Moses communicating directly to him, and these plagues were getting more and more dramatic." Like the Chinese acrobats. Have you ever watched Chinese acrobats? They start out with a little trick, you know, "Oh, that's pretty good." And then the trick is even more, I mean, "Whoa, that's really—" And then they bring more and more amazing acts to keep you on the edge of your seat. And that's what happens with the 12— the 12— the 10 plagues until you think, "This guy is a fool." And even his own countrymen, all the Egyptians recognized that he was a fool. And so when they drown, —like that. All you can say is, "That man deserved it." Well, this morning I have some bad news. You are the man. Do you remember those words? This comes straight out of the Bible. Who spoke, "You are the man"? Yes, these are the words that Nathan the prophet spoke to David after he had committed committed the sin with Bathsheba and getting her husband Uriah murdered. You are the man. After David recognized that that man deserves death, and he recognized it, he was pointing the finger at himself. So this story of Pharaoh suddenly takes on a lot more meaning if we recognize that these bad habits of Pharaoh are things that we too can fall into. And so we're going to be looking at some of the highlights of the story of Pharaoh through this lens, that Pharaoh is to Moses as our flesh is to our spirit. It's like these two characters are within us. If you ever watch The Flintstones, it's like the two little guys arguing in the little bubbles over his head. And it's— God's Spirit is telling us what he intends for us, but our flesh is telling us what we want for ourselves and it's holding us back. And Moses, or our spirit, wants us to be set free. As the scripture says, when we know him, we will be set free and we will be free indeed. So this is the structure of how this spiritual battle is going to take place between our flesh and our spirit, between these two characters that are both inside us. So it starts up at the top. We get a command and a warning from Moses and Aaron, and it starts around the clock there where Pharaoh says, "No!" But then when the plague comes and he feels the pain, then he says, "Oh, okay, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute," and he asks for help and he offers to change. But then when God has mercy and relief on Pharaoh and takes away the pain, he goes back to where he was before. There's pressure, then he's released from the pressure, and in his relief he decides, well, I'm not going to change after all. So it's a little bit like he's repenting and then there's no fruit because he's just going back to where he was before. In short, he's hard-hearted. There's no change, there's no growth. Now we're going to go through, like I said, these highlights, but the sum and substance is don't be like Pharaoh, right? That's what we're looking for. So I'm gonna ask you in some of these details, what do you see is the application? Now, the Lord hardened his heart. Some of you are going to say it's not really our fault. Because the Lord— or it's not really Pharaoh's fault because the Lord hardened his heart. And so we can't— so this is like on the wrong track. But I don't want to go down that road. I want us to recognize, first of all, if you read the first 5 plagues, it doesn't say anything about the Lord hardened his heart. It says his own. He was naturally stubborn. He was naturally stubborn. Also, one thing you should know about Pharaoh, he's a brand new Pharaoh. He had just stepped up. He was newly elevated. So maybe he was a little bit, a little arrogant. And so that came naturally to him. It wasn't until later in the last 5 plagues that it says the Lord hardened his heart, and He did that for a special purpose. And so it wasn't— we can't just say blame God. And I think a lot of people who will get into this, or a lot of times unbelievers will just blame God for everything that's wrong. And that's not very constructive. We knew that. All right, so let's go back to— this is what we read earlier where Moses and Aaron told Pharaoh, "The Lord God of Israel says, 'Let my people go.'" And Pharaoh retorts, "Is that so? Who is the Lord and why should I listen to him and let Israel go? I don't know the Lord and I will not let Israel go." And they persisted, "If we don't, he will kill us with a plague." plague or with the sword. So what is the application from this particular slip that Pharaoh makes? He says he doesn't know the Lord. Well, the application is don't, don't be ignorant of the Lord. That was his beginning of his problems, was he didn't know anything about God. He didn't show much curiosity either. So we don't want to be ignorant of the Lord. That is the first step. Now, I see all of you here today, so you're probably not suffering from that, or at least you're showing enough curiosity to be here. So good for you. Pharaoh replied, Moses and Aaron, why are you distracting the people from their tasks? Get back to work! You're just lazy. That's why you're saying, let us go and offer sacrifices to the Lord. So what's going on here? If you see, Pharaoh is the flesh. And Moses is the spirit. There's this battle between the flesh and spirit over what? What are we going to do with our time? What are we going to do with our energy? And so I'd say the application is we don't want to neglect the spirit in favor of the flesh. We don't want to prioritize the flesh. But you can't not eat, right? You can't not earn a living. You can't not build shelter or live in shelter or put on clothes in the morning or wash yourself. There's work that we have to do. We live in the flesh, don't we? But there's a balance. And we know, of course, from other services that you— we have a balance of how much energy we put into work and how much we rest, which is one day a week. God says cease from all of our work on the Sabbath day. Now, in these day and age, we get two days off, most of us, right? That's even better, isn't it? Two days off. That's a good balance, work-life balance they call it, and this is a work-spirit balance. So that is also with our income, we have a balance. We spend a lot of our income on ourselves and a little bit we have left, not we have left, we honor the Lord with it. So that is another application. Now as Pharaoh watched, this then is the first plague, Aaron raised his staff, struck the water of the Nile, and the whole river turned to blood. Into blood. And we read this just now, but the magicians of Egypt used their magic and they too turned water into blood. So Pharaoh's heart remained hard. Did you ever see that movie Prince of Egypt? Was that the right one? Where after the whole river turns red, Pharaoh's on one of his boats and with his magicians and one of the magicians takes a bowl of water. And another magician like, you know, waves his hands like this and he throws some like red dye into it. And he says like, with sleight of hand, the water turns red. And Pharaoh is like, "Oh, that's nothing." Like turning water into red is just the sort of thing that all magicians can do. So he like overlooks this huge amount of water turning into blood and he is tricked or he's willingly fooling himself by looking at this tiny little example. So you could say what the psychologists call this confirmation bias. He's not looking for— it's like I wasn't looking for my bag, I was looking for the folder, so I missed it. And so Pharaoh isn't looking for evidence of God. He's not looking to change or learn anything. He's only looking to hold on to what he already had in the first place. Now it says in this end of the first plague, all the other Egyptians are out there digging wells because they can't drink from the Nile. But Pharaoh returned to his palace and he just put the whole thing out of his mind. What a luxury. I don't know how he could have done that. He might have had some wine or something to help him. And so what is the application? We just can't just go numb. Just numbing ourselves isn't much of a good response when we are under this pain or plague. That is the wrong lesson to learn. So that is what Pharaoh did, put his head in the sand. Now Aaron raised over— his hand over the waters of Egypt. This is the second plague. And frogs came up and covered the whole land. Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and begged, "Plead with the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people. I will let your people go so they can offer sacrifices to the Lord." He said it, but he lied it. Because what happened? When Pharaoh saw that relief had come, he became stubborn. So when he's under pressure, he feels one way, but when he sees the relief, no more pressure, No more change. And therefore, he was blind to what God had been merciful to him. So we don't want to be blind to mercy. Now we're going to hit a lot of little points, but this is the one biggest point I want you to get today, because we see this cycle over and over. There's pressure, relief from pressure, no change. And what happens to us when we pray, or we get, you know, we get sick, we get hurt, We ask— get in a bad situation, we get in financial pressure, we pray to God, and sure enough, we get over it. And then what do we do? We relax. And that's normal. That's— maybe that's what we should do. But the question I have to you is, how can we retain our attitude with God, relationship with God, even when things aren't so bad? So we don't live in a poor country. We have less problems than some people have. I mean, some of you maybe you think, "I have a lot of problems." Sometimes we don't have problems. So my question to you is, when there's in-between plagues, when there's no pain, how do we maintain? And it's a very simple answer, and it's in the Bible where it says, "We weep with those who weep." So even if my family is doing okay this week, but how about your family? And how's your family? And how's your family? In a room this size, we have other families that are suffering a little bit of plague right now. And I won't ask you to show your hands, but I know that there's some in, in this room that are under pressure right now. Well, there's others that don't have a care in the the world. And so this is one of the things, like Stacy was saying, we do in a family. We notice when the other is in trouble or has needs, and therefore we stay in that proper relationship with God. So I appreciate your hearing that message. Now Aaron— this is on to the next plague— struck the ground with his staff and gnats infested the entire land. Covering the Egyptians and their animals. Pharaoh's magicians tried to do the same thing, but this time they failed. "This is the finger of God," the magicians exclaimed to Pharaoh. Yet Pharaoh's heart remained hard. So what is the application? We don't want to miss it or underestimate the spiritual. God is not dead. Right? God is real, but here's— He's invisible. So just because something is invisible doesn't mean it's not real, right? And that is a mistake that Pharaoh made. Even confronted with the words of his own magicians, "This is the finger of God," he still didn't quite give that its full weight. Then the Lord told Moses, "Say to Pharaoh, 'Let my people go. If you refuse, I will send swarms of flies.'" the next plague. The Egyptian homes will be filled with flies, but this time I will spare the region of Goshen where my people live. No flies will be found there. Then you will know that I am the Lord. I will make a clear distinction between my people and your people. And, and so he— and so he did. And the application here is we shouldn't fail to recognize God's people. And it's very subtle. In Romans chapter 2, Paul criticizes the Jews because they used to think all Jews are God's people and all non-Jews are not God's people. But he was saying, no, that's not true. There's even some Jews aren't really followers, and even some non-Jews have a conscience and they do a lot of the right things based on their conscience alone. And I think even in the church, just because— we can't just say our church is always God's people and the church across the road isn't. So we have to recognize God's people when they do the right thing. Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron. "All right, go ahead, offer sacrifices to your God," he said, "but do it in this land, within Egypt. Don't go out." And Moses said, "No, no, we've got to go in the wilderness." "Okay, in the wilderness, but not too far." So Moses asked and caused the swarms of flies to disappear. Not a single fly remained. But Pharaoh again became stubborn and refused to let the people go. Why not? He still It's like when you're in a negotiation and you think you hold all the cards, but actually you don't hold them. He's overplaying his hand by a lot, and he's bound to fail in the negotiations. Now, we're going to cover a bunch of applications. Some will apply to you directly and some less so, but don't worry, we'll get some that are relevant to you, I'm sure. The next morning, all the livestock of the Egyptians died. Pharaoh sent his officials to investigate, and they discovered that indeed the Israelites had not lost a single animal. But even so, Pharaoh's heart remained stubborn, and he still refused to let the people go. He even had the wisdom to get more information, to send out this team of investigators, but he didn't listen to his own— to his own report. And so what's the application? We shouldn't ignore facts. Maybe God is trying to tell us something. I don't know how this will apply in your life, but I know it has in mine before. Now God got into the conversation here and he says, "I could have wiped you off the face of the earth, but I spared you for a purpose, to show you my power." Tomorrow I will send a devastating hailstorm. Order your livestock and servants into shelter. Any person or animal left outside will die. Now, this is really interesting because this time the plague, he's giving a warning how to protect yourself. So he's showing this plague but also showing a way out. He's showing grace, in other words. He's giving you an opportunity. And indeed, some of Pharaoh's officials were afraid. They quickly, according to the word, they brought their servants and livestock in from the fields. They put them in shelter. But others were like, "Pfft, that's silliness. That's not going to happen. That's not real." They didn't believe it, and so they didn't bring their animals in from— they left them out in the open. And guess what happened? They ignored the grace and they got the consequences. But those who were in shelter were projected— protected, even the Egyptians and the officials. So here the distinction is not whether you're Egyptian or Hebrew. It's not if you're living with Egyptians or with Hebrews. It's whether you pay attention to what God is saying. You're accepting the offer of grace or you're ignoring the offer of grace. We all need grace. That's like a fact of life. Then Pharaoh quickly summoned Moses and Aaron. 'This time I have sinned,' he confessed. 'Please beg the Lord to end this terrifying thunder and hail. I will let you go. You don't need to stay any longer.' But when Pharaoh saw that the rain, hail, and thunder had stopped, he again became stubborn. The cycle of pressure and no pressure. And one other application is that he's obviously not thankful in the least. He's like, oh, it stopped. He didn't ascribe to God any of that. He didn't see that as an answer to prayer. It's like those lepers. Remember when Jesus healed the 10 lepers and only one turned around to thank him? Moses said Tomorrow I will bring a swarm of locusts on your country. They will devour what little is left of your crops after the hailstorm.' Pharaoh's officials now came to Pharaoh and appealed to him, 'Let the man go to worship the Lord their God! Don't you see? Don't you realize Egypt lies in ruins?' And what's the application? He didn't take their advice. So what should we do? We shouldn't ignore advice, especially from our wives, right, Sais? Or our mother-in-law, right, Norma? Now, obviously, some advice is bad advice, okay? So I'm not saying we always take it. But this was egregious, and Pharaoh is ignoring it. "Go and worship the Lord your God," Pharaoh does respond. So he says, "Yes, go, but only the men may go and worship the Lord, since that is what you requested." And Pharaoh threw them out of the palace. Is that what they requested? Moses only wanted the men to go and leave everybody else behind? No, it's not at all what he requested. But Pharaoh, what did he do? He twisted the words. He took it out of context. He chose the part he wanted and left the part that he didn't want, still in mind that they're going to— he's going to have these like hostages left behind, right? So the men can go. So he's still into his own purposes. So don't miscontrue, misinterpret We're just lying to ourselves if we do, and the only one that loses is us. Now, just a moment, we saw that Pharaoh threw them out of the palace. If you look at the context, he got angry. He was very angry. And is anger a good idea? Sometimes it will also lead us to misunderstand or get it wrong. So Moses raised his staff over Egypt, and the Lord caused an east wind to blow over the land all that day and through the night. When morning arrived, the east wind had brought the locusts. The locusts covered the whole country. Pharaoh quickly summoned Moses and Aaron. "I have sinned," he confessed. "Please plead with the Lord to take away this death from me." So Moses pleaded with the Lord. The Lord responded by shifting the wind. And the strong west wind blew the locusts into the Red Sea, and not a single locust remained. But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart again, so he refused to let the people go. So God in this case is exercising the wind to blow the locusts into Egypt. Then after the prayer, he uses the wind to blow the locusts out of Egypt. What does Pharaoh see? Pharaoh sees locusts and he sees wind, but he doesn't see the power behind the wind. I mean, he's just really like me and my notebook. I didn't see the bag for the notebook. I honestly didn't do that on purpose. So, you see, you could see how that would happen, right? So the wind is what brought the locusts. Oh, okay. The wind changed. Oh, well, that was lucky. Pharaoh's thinking, after Moses prayed for God to change the wind, Moses— Pharaoh's thinking, oh, the wind changed. Had nothing to do with God. It was just good luck. It was a coincidence. And how often have we done that? And so we can't be blind to what's happening spiritually. Now, obviously, it takes a while for us to learn that. And there are times when— there is such thing as coincidence, I suppose. I remember a Christian friend of ours in Guangzhou. He's wanting to buy a suitcase or something. And we went to one store to buy a suitcase. He almost bought that one. It was like 1,000 renminbi. He didn't buy it. He said he had a bad feeling. So he went to the next store. And he found one on sale. And that was just exactly what he wanted. And it only cost 600. And he was like, hallelujah. And he felt like God had sent him to the place with the sale. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know about that one. But don't be blind to spiritual reality. We can have this debate at adult Sunday school afterward. So Moses lifted his hand to the sky, and a deep darkness covered the entire land of Egypt for 3 days. But there was light as usual where the people of Israel lived. Finally, Pharaoh called for Moses, "Go and worship the Lord. You may even take your little ones with you, but leave your flocks and herds here." What's he doing? What? Still bargaining? Application, anyone? Don't just repeat the same mistakes you made over and over.

Right?

You're a big boy, a big girl. You've learned those lessons already. Why are we repeating them? Just like Pharaoh, we're only wasting ourselves. "No," Moses said. "All our livestock must go with us too. Not a hoof can be left behind." But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart once more, and he would not let them go. "Get out of here!" Pharaoh shouted at Moses.

Application.

This is the last one before he was to lose his son. And the application is, don't miss the opportunity when you have it. Now, thankfully, God gives us so many opportunities that we can afford to lose a few. If we couldn't miss any, we'd be in bad shape. He uses some missed opportunities to teach us. But let's not miss them when they're important. And that night, the Lord struck down all the firstborn sons in the land of Egypt. And loud wailing was heard throughout the land of Egypt, and there was not a single house where someone had not died. Moses— Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron during the night. Get out, he ordered. Go and worship the Lord as you have requested. Take your flocks As you said, and be gone. Application: Don't wait until it's too late. The regret that Pharaoh must have felt, and he knew there was no one else to blame but himself. Pharaoh and his officials, as we just read, they changed their mind. Then all the Pharaoh's horses, chariots, and charioteers chased them into the middle of the sea. The waters, when they got in, returned and covered the entire army of Pharaoh, and not a single one survived. The lesson is Don't turn back like Lot's wife. Why perish? Why double down? Big mistake. In sum, don't harden your heart. Everybody plays the fool sometimes. And thank God we have enough mercy on us to give us more and more life, days, opportunities to learn, to repent, to change, and to show fruit. Pharaoh had his chances and he didn't respond. So let's not be like Pharaoh. Lord, we are thankful that you do have mercy You understand that we need grace and you show us in so many ways, day by day, hour by hour, month by month. Just pray, Father, that we will respond every opportunity that we have and when we miss it, that we will hastily recognize the mistake that we made. That when you show mercy, we will be thankful. And that when we're in stress, in pain physically, emotionally, financially, that we will call out to you. And that when you show mercy and respond to our prayers, we will show thankfulness. Pray, Father, for those of us that are feeling relaxed this morning, that you have answered our prayers, that we really can't complain. Amen. I pray that we will also be sensitive that around us are people that are in the middle of a plague, that are feeling the pain, that are— in the middle of calling out. They may not show it on their faces or may not tell us. But I pray, Father, that we are ready to pray with them, to weep with them, to support our brothers and sisters, knowing that you do answer our prayers and that when you do, that we can rejoice together. I pray these things in Jesus' name.

Oh, that's Stan. Held dear, built my life upon. All this world, revere's and wars to own. All I once thought gain, I have counted loss. Spend and worthless now. Compare to this, knowing you, Jesus, knowing you, there is no greater thing. You're my all, you're the best, you're my joy, my righteousness. And I love you, Lord. Now my heart's desire is to know you more, to be found in you and known as yours, to possess by faith, what I could not earn, all-surpassing gift of righteousness. Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you, there is a greater King. You're my all, you're the best, you're my joy, my righteousness, and I love you, Lord. Oh, to know the power of your risen life. And to know you in your sufferings, to become like you in your death, my Lord, so with you to live and never die. Knowing you Jesus, knowing you, there is no greater thing. You're my all, you're the best, you're my joy, my righteousness, and I love you, Lord. You can be seated.

If you'll raise your hand, we'll get that to you. And yep. So Henry or Dwight, could you grab that for Ephraim? A friend of Adaina's here today. And Adaina's back. Good to see you, Adaina. And also a few other people are here back again. Pearl is here with her fiancé John. So for those of you who don't know my daughter, she's back there. And anybody else? Ah, yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Welcome. If you'll keep your hand raised, Michael can get something to you. Do you see it, Michael? Yeah. There's also somebody right here. Okay. And if you could go to the next slide. The announcements are also online if you didn't catch what I say— if you don't catch what I'm saying. We have them posted at WCC— churchcenter.com, and if you'll go there to the top of the page, you can click on This Sunday and you'll see the bulletin. If you'll go to the next slide now, there's something new that we're introducing today. I've just tried to get clever. I called it linger and lecker. If you'll linger outside after the service, you might find something out there that's lecker. Lecker is originally a Dutch word that's made its way into the English language in some places meaning good or delicious. So Forrester is joking with his wife right now about this. But anyway, and then I'd like to also mention that this coming Wednesday, I usually am not thinking fast enough on Sunday morning to put this in the announcement. Sometimes I do, but on Wednesday night, The first and the third Wednesdays we have a prayer meeting, and so it's down in the lounge at 7 PM or online. And so keep that into your calendar and join us to pray. MomCo will be 10/7, the 7th of October. The rest of the announcements you can feed there, Salt and Light. And I'll just mention this because in case you're not keyed in on it, we're not going to be changing the time of the service in October. We may visit that later on, but we decided not to do that this year. And that's it for now. If you'd please stand for the doxology.

Passing slow.

Remain standing for the benediction from Matthew chapter 11. Jesus said, come to me, all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I'm humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. My yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light. Thank you for being here today. Amen and amen. Go in peace.