I invite you to turn in the Bible this morning to the second book of the Bible. This is the book of Exodus. If you're a visitor this morning, we are working through this book and we start the plagues. So we're looking at, as I prayed, the first plague of the water turned to blood. This is Exodus chapter 7, Exodus chapter 7, beginning at verse 14. And we'll read to the end of the chapter. This is the word of the Lord. Then the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh's heart is hardened. He refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he is going out to the water, stand on the bank of the Nile to meet him and take in your hand the staff that turned into a serpent. And you shall say to him, the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you, saying, Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness. But so far, you have not obeyed. Thus says the Lord, By this you shall know that I am the Lord. Behold, with the staff that is in my hand, I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall turn into blood. The fish in the Nile shall die, and the Nile will stink, and the Egyptians will grow weary of drinking water from the Nile. And the Lord said to Moses, say to Aaron, take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, their canals and their ponds and their pools of water so that they may become blood. And there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, even in the vessels of wood and in the vessels of stone. Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded in the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants, he lifted up the staff and struck the water in the Nile. And all the water in the Nile turned into blood. And the fish in the Nile died, and the Nile stank so that the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile. There was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. But the magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts. So Pharaoh's heart remained hardened, and he would not listen to them as the Lord had said. Pharaoh turned and went into his house, and he did not take even this to heart. And all the Egyptians dug along the Nile for water to drink, for they could not drink the water of the Nile. Seven full days passed after the Lord had struck the Nile. May the Lord bless the hearing of his word. Well, last week, God sent Moses into Pharaoh's palace we looked at with that initial event with the rod and the snakes. And he takes that giant rod that the Lord had sent him with and he casts it on the ground and it became a snake. And you remember what happened. It swallowed up all of Pharaoh's snakes, which we saw was a direct assault, not just on Pharaoh, But it was a direct assault on all the gods of Egypt, the false gods of Egypt. What a distressing situation the people were in, Israel, under Pharaoh's dominion. And I somewhat introduced the big theme again last week so that we would see it. Who came slithering into the garden sanctuary of God where God had his king reigning? Satan. in the form of a serpent and when he took down Adam and swallowed him in his whole posterity if you will the whole human race was taken captive to do his will Paul says that that people are often taken captive to do the will of the serpent or Satan but in the midst of that remember God gave a gospel promise he announced the gospel right in Genesis chapter 3 that a champion would come and that this serpent would strike at this champion's heel but he ultimately would crush the serpent's head well what just happened in egypt god now sends the rod of his strength out of zion it's christ sends the rod of his strength out of zion and what does he do he cast down in satan's garden a snake think about that he cast down a snake in satan's garden and it was a message to pharaoh as the lord of the snakes the lord swallows up all of satan's snakes and this was a message to pharaoh of the prophetic it was a prophetic forecast of his defeat. That's what the scene was. That was the big picture that we looked at. His head would be crushed so that as soon as they were brought out of Egypt, the first thing that Moses would sing in Exodus 15 as they sang the song of deliverance, he would say, you swallowed up all your enemies. That's the gospel. That's his deliverance. God would have to come down here. God would have to come down off his throne. He would have to come down and plunder Satan's kingdom. He would have to bind up Satan and free us. And that message was so clear. He would do it by sending his son, Jesus, who would become the accursed one into this sad world, be lifted up like a snake on that pole, the cursed one, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. That's what we proclaim. That's our gospel. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We've got something else to look at for a moment. In showing us deliverance of Israel from Egypt, he's teaching us a lot about how deep-rooted the problem of idolatry is. That is a big focus here in these plagues. And he's demonstrating that for every generation after that would follow, the Lord was demonstrating, as they always looked back at the plagues, his power to shatter the dominion and the bondage to idolatry. I love this. Codd had just declared victory in the first opening scene here the battle the fight was already over before it started he had just declared victory over the serpent he swallowed up their snakes it was the announcement the lord is the only true god and he has come to free his people from idolatry to bring them out and worship him it's the message of exodus that was the intent so not only is he teaching us that he alone is god and there is no other he's teaching us that to deliver us he's got to give deep blows to the kingdom of darkness and the deepest blow came that day at Golgotha when he struck his son to set us free all of the plagues in Egypt are directed at specific gods. That is emphatic. That is, you'll see right here today in the text. All of the plagues and blows are given to strike at specific gods in Egypt. You had something like 80 different, they claim, deities in Egypt. And it's important to say that God is specifically and intentionally taking them down. He's, it's as if he's picked them up and smashes them in front of the Egyptians, the smithereens. He's like a bowling ball coming into Egypt hitting the pins. And the reason theologically that's important is because the last book of the Bible picks up on all of this and it says that what we learn from this is that these plagues ultimately are targeting Satan and his kingdom of darkness and that's what's unfolding to the end of the world. It's a giant teaching for how God's going to deliver and how God plunders and how God strikes. Now, I wondered about the structure of these plagues for a moment. A plague means to give a blow, as I said. These are blows. God is giving blows to this nation. And all of these blows are given in the areas of Egypt's confidence and strength. The first two plagues are directed against the Nile. The following four are against the land gods. And the final four, leaving a great final four, is given against the gods of the sky. This is a really important point to make because essentially what we saw with Noah, when God flooded the world that then was and God judged the world that then was, he reversed creation and he brought the waters back together. That was part of the judgment, the undoing of creation. And you see this particularly happen when Romans 1, when a society starts worshiping the creature rather than the creator who is forever blessed. God is turning back creation on them and their gods. To give you a practical comparison, if you want to worship the delta smelt, I'll take your water. Does that make sense? You want to worship a little fish, strike your water. Fitting judgment for idolatry is what's given here. This morning, God hits Egypt and their greatest confidence in Egypt. Do you know what their greatest confidence in Egypt was? The Nile. Look at verse 14. So the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh's heart is hard. He refuses to let the people go. He refuses to do that. God had said, of course, I will harden Pharaoh's heart, but it didn't take much because we read at the end of the last section, Pharaoh hardened his own heart. You've got a doubly hard heart here, a real problem, a doubly hard heart. God tells Moses his heart's hard. Go into Pharaoh in the morning when he goes out to the water, and you shall stand by the river's bank to meet him, and the rod which was turned to a serpent you shall take in your hand. Now I want you to picture the scene with me just for a moment. It's really important. Moses is following the commands of the Lord just to a T. We've worked through that. We finally got there. He's doing what the Lord tells him to do. It's so important because he's representing the Lord as a servant. Why does the Lord say, I want you to go out early and stand by the river bank to meet Pharaoh? Well, scholars have debated that and the really boring ones say he went out to take a bath. But those who have some kind of theological insight will recognize this was one of Pharaoh's most important acts of the day. You know what he was doing? Morning devotions. He's doing morning devotions. No elders of Egypt had to come and ask whether Pharaoh was doing his devotions, by the way. all egypt knew this is what pharaoh did every morning he would gather his entire royal entourage his whole cabinet he would go stand at the mouth of the river and what was going on well here's where you have to look at a little bit of archaeology and you have to know a little bit about egyptian beliefs this was the nile river maybe boys and girls you know from your study Egypt was called the gift of the Nile. The Nile was actually known as the lifeblood of Egypt. It was known to the Egyptians as the river of life. It's one of the longest rivers in the world, 4,184 miles. To give you some kind of perspective from top to bottom of California, Can you imagine if a giant river ran from top to bottom of California? That's 800 miles. 4,000. Every year, the Nile would overflow, and it would overflow, and it would heap over the banks, and this is what they loved. It created rich topsoil. It did wonderful things for Egypt. Crops came because of this. Egypt depended on it. Without the Nile, it was just a desert. Everything about the Nile, sustained Egypt. They used it for all their transportation, all their ships. They developed throughout the land. Everything was kept green and beautiful and lush by the Nile. Some of you liked to fish. It had the best fishing. And you didn't even need a license. You could take as many as you wanted out of there. We actually have a hymn that was written that the Egyptians would sing. It was called the hymn to the Nile. Listen to this. O all men who uphold thee in need, fear ye the majesty which his Son, the All-Lord, has made by making verdant the two banks. So it is, verdant art thou. So it is, verdant art thou. So it is, verdant art thou. Sounds like a modern praise song, by the way. Verdant art thou, verdant art thou. Oh, Nile, that makes man and cattle to live. Oh, makes man and cattle to live? Egypt had a few different gods of the Nile. Nu was the god of the river. I put him down for the boys and girls again. Nu was the god of the river and they claimed that he existed as part of every body of water from the Nile to the temple pools. They thought he was the water and the subsoil beneath the earth's surface for the annual flooding and caused the annual flooding of the Nile River. He was responsible for the flooding. He would be considered in the Central Valley where I'm from, they're now digging deeper and deeper and deeper. Deeper, yes, I'm sorry. Deeper. And the water under the earth would be considered new. That's who they worship. He looked like a frog, by the way, which kind of fits the next plague out of the Nile where all these armies of frogs come out. Osiris was the god of the underworld. The Nile was said to be his bloodstream. Then you had the big one, Hapai. Literally the god of the Nile. He was a fat bearded man with large breasts and a pregnant stomach because he was thought to cause the Nile to overflow. Here's the scene. Moses, you go out and meet him when he's doing morning devotions and singing those praise songs. When his royal cabinet is standing there, I want you to confront him. Hail to thee, O Nile. Everything that comes to being is through your power, they said. The Lord says to Moses, when he's standing out there doing that, I want you to go to where he stands, right at the edge of the water. When he's doing that idolatry, here's what I want you to do. I want you to hold up that rod. And I want you to use my name. The Lord God of the Hebrews has sent me to you, Pharaoh. Now, last time I never understood why Pharaoh put up with that. For years I struggled why Pharaoh put up with that, if he was all powerful. And it's important that I say what we learned last week, that Egyptians believed that they could appropriate the power of a god by possessing his name. Moses comes using the holy name Yahweh. Egyptians believed that if you claim to have a revelation of the sacred name of a god, you had his power. Moses, you go in my name. We'll strike some fear into him. You speak for my name and you hold up that rod which swallowed up all his snakes. He's not going to like seeing that. You demand that he let my people go, that they may come and worship me. You say to Pharaoh, the Lord God of the Hebrews has sent me to you saying, let my people go that they may worship. I was reflecting on this last week and I thought, look at the zeal of the Lord. Look at his intention to deliver. Think about gospel freedom. Think of somebody stuck this morning who was one of his children in an addiction. Alcoholism. Whatever it might be. Some kind of addiction. Who leads a life of rebellion. They're one of God's children and the Lord comes after them. But what does he do? He's looking at what's behind it. And he sees that what's behind that is idolatry. And what's behind an idol? A demon. He sees the whole dark realm holding one of his children. It was like the man in the tombs cutting himself day and night who had the legion of demons. And Jesus walks up to him and frees him and shatters the dominion. He was doing this everywhere of people who were taken captive by the devil to do his will. Jesus was shattering the dominion in his gospel ministry. And this was his concern from the beginning for his people, that he would come and he would confront the realm of darkness and he would have a message, let them go. What a God we serve. Christ everywhere. Shattering people's misery. Freeing them up. People weary and heavy laden. Let them go. The blind, the lepers, the sick, all pointing to the spiritual condition of the heart. Let them go. They're mine to worship me. You realize you and your children would never get out if God had not come with those words? Let them go. You'd never get out. You see the bondage that people are held in and can't even see past? You go right to the heart of the river, right to the mouth of the river when he's bowing down to the Nile, and I want you to say, let them go. But until now, you've not listened. Oh, you're gonna listen. Thus says the Lord, by this you shall know that I am the Lord. I will strike the waters which are in the river with the rod that's in my hand, and they shall be turned to blood. And the fish that are in the river shall die, and the river shall stink, and the Egyptians will loathe to drink the water of the river. So there they are, all gathered, singing praise songs. Moses comes in full bowing of the knee to Yahweh. I'm going to strike your idol, thus says the Lord. Now, boys and girls, he doesn't just touch the water. The imagery you have is he grabs that rod and he lifts it up and he wham, strikes it right in front of Pharaoh. It is a big strike right on the Nile. The word means to batter. The Nile got a spanking. Now we need to know how radical that is. I can only imagine what the Egyptians did when they saw that. He just struck the Nile. He took that giant rod and he bashed the Nile. Well, God tells Moses to do just that. Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded in the sight of Pharaoh, in the sight of the servants. He lifted up the staff. He held it high above his head, right? And he struck the water of the Nile and all the water in the Nile turned into blood. And the fish in the Nile died and the Nile stank. So the Egyptians could not drink the water from the Nile. There was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. For seven days, there was no water. And they didn't have backup. There was no water. Everything was turned to blood in the ponds, in the pools. This is their life source. This is what kept the economy going. Every wet substance was turned into blood. Can you imagine in Egypt heat what that smelled like? Blood and fish are being heaped up everywhere. Crocodiles lying all over the shore. We're starting to panic right now in California, aren't we? It's drying up. They say we have less than a year. And lo and behold, towns are stinking because of it. They say Porterville's out. Imagine if you woke up tomorrow morning and you had no water to turn on. We can't even imagine. Imagine if you had nothing to bathe with but blood. Imagine if you had nothing to drink. All blood. You see what God just did? He smashed their idol, telling them he's the God that is provided at the whole time. I think we're provided a helpful hint in something that's said in verse 19. There shall be blood in the land of Egypt and the pitchers of wood and the pitchers of stone. The translators tried to figure that out. Really, pitchers is not there or vessels in some of the older translation. It just says, in the wood and the stone. Well, all the prophets warned about the wood and the stone. Leviticus, don't serve the wood and the stone. Don't serve the gods of the wood and the stone. Isaiah said the gods of the people are works of men's hands, wood and stone. They're idols. You know what the Egyptians did every morning to their idols? They washed them. Every morning, they would take water, and we have this documented, they would scrub their idols. Their idols are bleeding. Blood is on their idols. Their images of the Nile frog gods and the snake gods, All 80 of these deities in their homes have blood all over them. They've actually found records of this, by the way. They found a tablet they date to around 1300 B.C. This is what it says. The river is blood. If anyone drinks it, one rejects it as human and thirsts for water. I read an article last week that all the Californians are driving around with dirty cars, by the way. Don't we wash and wax those all the time? Imagine washing them and they are blood. In a moment, he struck. He kicked over Dagon. Everything's blood. Back to the praise song. If the Nile is sluggish, the nostrils are stopped up and everybody is poor. The entire land is in a fury. Great and small are on the execution block. But people are different when the Nile approaches. When he arises, the land is in jubilation. Then every belly is in joy. Backbone takes on laughter and every tooth is exposed. Hail to thee, O Nile that issues forth from the earth that comes to keep Egypt alive. They were totally thrown into economic upheaval. Their whole economy stopped. Vegetation, seven days, no water in that heat. Shores on the crops, the fish, the crocks. With one strike, the whole thing dies. The strange irony here is that their magicians say, well, we can do that. Which all of us should pause and say, if they could really do something, wouldn't they turn the blood back into water? Chicanery. Seven days of blood. What do we take from this? Well, if you flip to the last book of the Bible, this is what you get. Then the second angel poured out his bowl. This is Revelation 16. Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea and it became blood as of a dead. And every living creature in the sea died. This is Revelation 16. Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the river and on the springs of water, and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters saying, You are righteous, O Lord, the one who is and who was and who was to be, because you have judged these things. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. For it is their just due. And I heard another from the altar saying, even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments. Did you hear that? They shed your people's blood. They persecuted them. You gave it back. Men have all sorts of idols. We used to say the Titanic was unsinkable and today it's at the bottom of the ocean. We used to say the Hindenburg was the pride of the skies, it fell. We say that America is the savior of the world. It'll stumble. At night, in our news, we sit and we watch these little arrows. And if it's green, the Nile's overflowing. If it's red and pointed down, everything's dying. It's called the stock market. We have our Nile. The worst part here is that Pharaoh will have none of it. You ever look at leaders and say, are they just that blinded and hardened? Yes. Yes. His heart grew hard. And he turned and he went into his house. The Lord's coming back in there. Neither was his heart moved by this. You wonder, does the things that happened, does anyone, are their hearts moved by it? Don't they see? What an opportune time to bow. What an opportune time to bow the knee and repent and say, Lord, you're Lord over all. Be a Nebuchadnezzar, right? Do you see who is Lord? Do you see who is God? That's the intention of this. The imagery at the end of this is, so all the Egyptians dug around the river for water to drink. They're digging for new. They're digging for their God to get water. They're going down and down and down and down, and they're not calling out to the one who gave water. All their gods were failing them. And they resorted to digging. Jesus said, there will be blows to this world. There will be famines. There will be pestilences. There will be earthquakes in various places. You just read about it last night. They're all precursors to the final blow because of man's idolatry. But his great desire is to shatter that. You should remember the purpose of blows here. here it is. You're holding my people. Though we are the scorn of the earth and it's going to get worse. God's exceedingly jealous for his people. He's exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem. God has a message to this sad world. You know, I flip open the news and I see a little Christian baker who now is being fined $135,000 for not baking a cake. Are you serious? God has a message. God has a message for this world who wants to persecute His people and those who don't want to bow the knee. How about this? I was thinking of this. I called upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised and I'm saved from my enemies. The cords of death encompassed me. The torrents of destruction assailed me. The cords of Sheol entangled me. The snares of death confronted me. and my distress I called upon the Lord. To my God I cried for my help. From his temple he heard my voice and my cry to him reached his ears. Then the earth reeled and rocked. The foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked because he was angry. Smoke went out of his nostrils and devouring fire from out of his mouth, glowing coals flamed forth from him. He bowed the heavens and came down. Thick darkness was under his feet. he rode on a cherub and flew he came swiftly on the wings of the wind he made darkness his covering his canopy around him thick clouds dark with water out of the brightness before him hailstones and coals of fire broke through the clouds the lord thundered in the heavens the most high uttered his voice hailstones and coals of fire here it is he sent me from on high he took me and he drew me out of many waters. He rescued me from the strong enemy and from all those who hated me who were too strong for me. You're going to know that story. That is our story. I won't let my people be crushed. Do you see it? What are we fearing? And yet today he opens up his arms to the sad world still nobody ever dreamed we'd still be here doing this and he opens him up and he invites all to repent and turn and escape the blows that are coming what was christ's first miracle he didn't come turning everything into blood did he he walks in to the temple and He changes the water to wine. Do you know what that meant? He had every right at His first coming to judge. But instead, He turned the water to wine and said, I've got a different way for you. Instead of our blood, He shed His blood and gave us wine to drink. And you drink it every time you taste the supper. He offered his life so that we would have peace with God. Remember what happened at the cross? Barabbas was there and instead they asked for Jesus. When Pilate saw that he could not prevail, but rather a tumult was rising, he took water and he washes his hands. And he says, I'm innocent of the blood. of this just person. You see to it. Here's what all the people said. Astonishing. The people answered and said, His blood be upon us and our children. Think of the idols. What a terrible thing. Put His blood and cover it on us. They were idolaters. Here's my question. That blood that was shed will either cover you from all of your sins or will be required of you as guilty sinners. Jesus stood up one day and said, whoever believes in me, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. You don't need another Nile. I'm your Nile. The biblical writers were constantly saying, keep yourselves from idols. God will take down our paper palace, I assure you. If our trust is in any other God, he'll smash it in the course of your life. Be thankful. But when we come to Jesus, you can be assured you'll never be abandoned. When everything in life is taken from me, whether it's my health, whether it's my money, whether it's my family, Everything is stripped and I stand naked with nothing else that this world has. I am secure and safe because the Lord is my God and He's covered me with a rich garment of His righteousness by His shed blood. Since He's freed us, and I ask, have you all been freed today? Since He's freed us, let our whole existence then be to do what he set us apart to do. What does he keep telling you? When he says, let them go that they may serve me, you make sure you understand that means worship. Let them go to come and worship. That's what you're created for. Worship him. Enjoy him on this day and may your whole life be lived in thanksgiving that his blood and his righteousness has saved you from the destruction to come. Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, you teach us so much all over the Scriptures about Your love for us that we don't deserve. And we see how You continue to come and woo us back to You and knock down idols in our lives. And we're constantly jumping here and there. Our hearts are so restless until they find rest in You. But we know that You had to come and say, let them go. And we're overwhelmed that You're committed to this project and we'll see it to completion and won't lose one of Your people. Whatever happens in this sad world, you've told us ahead of time these things will occur. But that we should not lose heart and continue to preach your gospel to the ends of the earth because it's your answer for however long you keep us here so that people can escape the final blow to come because there was one who took the blow so that today we can have peace through His blood. We praise you today for your gospel. In Jesus' name, amen.