Exodus 9 - 10

Exodus — Steve Gregg

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Exodus 11 - 12

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Exodus 9 - 10

ExodusSteve Gregg

Exodus chapters 9-10 describe the nine plagues that Yahweh inflicts on Egypt in response to Pharaoh's stubborn refusal to let the Israelites go. Despite the devastating consequences on the Egyptian people, Pharaoh continues to harden his heart against God. The plagues serve as symbolic acts that demonstrate Yahweh's power over Egyptian gods and rulers and emphasize the importance of following God's commandments. Ultimately, the Israelites are freed after the final and most significant plague, the death of the firstborn. The events in these chapters also remind Christians to resist compromising with the world and surrender everything to God.

Transcript

Alright, we'll pick up the story again of the 10 plagues that God brought upon Egypt in order to deliver Israel from their bondage there. In chapter 9 of Exodus, we have seen that God has brought four plagues prior to this upon the Egyptians. Devastating plagues, loathsome plagues, and they are going to get more devastating both economically and frankly to the well-being, the health of the people of Egypt as the Pharaoh's heart is continually hardened and he does not respond to the demand that Moses communicates from Yahweh that Pharaoh must let the people go to worship Yahweh and to release them from their slavery.

There was first of all, the Nile turning to blood and apparently not only the Nile River, but also the ponds and the lakes and the other bodies of water. It would appear that it was possible to get fresh water by digging. So it's possible that well water was not affected, but standing water and apparently running water were.

Turn to blood and blood is loathsome to the Egyptians. It's an abomination to the Egyptians. So the river Nile, which was a god to the Egyptians, was made to be disgusting and loathsome to them.

And the second plague was frogs that came out of the river and filled the houses and filled the living areas of the people and even their ovens and their beds were filled with frogs. And this, no doubt, was intended to make them feel a certain disgust for the deity of the Egyptians, which was represented by a fraud, which was the the deity of fertility. I think it was called Hiccup.

But because of this frog deity, it was unlawful in Egypt to kill a frog. And so when you got frogs everywhere and you can't kill them, you just have to live with them. That puts you kind of in a very unpleasant and unfortunate situation.

And so even Pharaoh begged Moses to take the frogs away. Some of these plagues, we don't have so much asking that they be taken away, but they seem to run their course and then they're done. But some of them, it would appear, either would have continued endlessly or else would have run their course much slower than Pharaoh wished.

And so he did ask Moses to take them away. And sometimes he made a promise that he would let the people go if this would happen. And and yet he didn't keep his promises.

The third plague was that of some kind of little insect biting insect gnats or lice. And those plagued man and beast until they were taken away. And then there were these flies, probably biting dogflies in all likelihood that swarmed everywhere in the Egyptian houses, but not in Israel.

That is not in Goshen where the Israelites were. This fourth plague of flies was the first time that God said he was going to make a distinction between Israel and the Egyptians and the Egyptians would be plagued, but the people of Israel would be exempt. And that continued to be the case with the remaining plagues that God did not allow the Israelites to suffer, although they were still in the land of Egypt and the land of Egypt was under judgment.

God said he makes a distinction, makes a difference between Israel and the Egyptians. And it's important to note that God does do that. God does make a distinction between those who are his people and those who are not.

I believe God loves all people, even those who are not Christian, but he does not treat all people the same. And he does treat his children with deference. And certainly he has not appointed us to wrath.

And therefore, when he sends wrath on the earth, the if it is truly his wrath, we are not the recipients of his judgments. Now, in chapter eight, which we covered, there were a couple of offers that the Pharaoh made, which could not be accepted. They were like compromise offers.

Moses was requiring that the people be simply let go. And in chapter eight and verse twenty five, Pharaoh called for Moses and said, Go sacrifice your God in the land that is in the land of Egypt. Don't leave Egypt, but if you must sacrifice your God, sacrifice him, but don't leave Egypt.

And Moses said, No, we're going to sacrifice will be an abomination to the Egyptians. We're going to sacrifice blood sacrifices. The Egyptians will be so offended by this.

They'll stone us to death if we do this in their presence. So we have to go elsewhere. And then in verse twenty eight, the Pharaoh said, I will let you go that you may sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness.

Only you should not go very far away. Intercede for me now, not very far away is rather a big suggestion. They had asked for three days journey, and if you travel night and day, you can get pretty far across the border in three days and three nights.

But they didn't want them to get far enough away to get away. He didn't want them to really escape. And Moses did not turn that offer down.

But, of course, Moses would not have accepted it, either. Moses simply didn't respond directly. Yes or no to that offer.

But he did intercede and took away the fly. Chapter nine. The fifth plague is to come.

Then Lord said to Moses, going to Pharaoh and tell him that says Yahweh Elohim of the Hebrews. Let my people go that they may serve me for. If you refuse to let them go.

And still hold them. Behold, the hand of the Lord will be on your cattle in the field, on the horses, on the donkeys, on the camels, on the oxen and on the sheep. There will be very severe pestilence.

And Yahweh will make the difference between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt. So nothing shall die of all that belongs to the children of Israel. Then Yahweh appointed a set time saying tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land.

So the Lord did this thing on the next day and all the livestock of Egypt died. But of the livestock of the children of Israel, not one died. Then Pharaoh sent and indeed not even one of the livestock of the Israelites was dead.

But the heart of Pharaoh became hard and he did not let the people go. Now it is not specified exactly what the what this particular disease was that it was the animals. Scholars sometimes think it might have been anthrax.

The King James Version, I think, refers to as moraine, sort of a cattle plague. And it affected not only the cows, but the sheep and the camels and the donkeys and essentially all the animals. Now, when it says they all died.

In verse six, all the livestock of Egypt died. This is either a hyperbole, which it could well be because there are such hyperbole is not every last one died. Perhaps there was a sweeping loss of all the different species of animals.

All donkeys, camels, horses, death occurred among them all. All of those kinds of animals died. That's a possible way of looking at it.

Or if in fact, every last animal died, which it could be taken to mean. Then we have to explain how it was that when there was a later plague of hail. That which was the seventh plague.

That there were more Egyptian cattle to bring in out of the field to protect the hail. There were other cattle that were killed by the hail in the seventh plague. Now, it's not likely that the Egyptians, you know, lost every last animal and then somehow generated more animals from nothing.

Although it is possible that the Egyptians restock their livestock. And possibly even stealing or buying livestock from the Israelites, because the Israelite cattle were not dead. And there might have been breeding stock brought in from outside, possibly from Goshen.

Might have been, you know, commandeered by the government from the Israelites. We don't really know. We do know that not all the cattle in the world nor all the cattle, even in Egypt, since Goshen was in Egypt.

Not all the cattle were dead, but all the cattle of the Egyptians is said to have died. But again, this could possibly be a hyperbole. One thing I would point out is that Moses predicts these things usually a day in advance.

Not always, but in this case, for example, he said in verse five, the Lord appointed a set time saying tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land. Now, this adds to the miraculous element of it. It means that Moses not only could call upon the plague, but he could actually predict when they would come.

It's not as if Moses had been walking toward the Pharaoh's place and saw some sick cattle there and thought, oh, there's a plague coming. I'm going to announce that all the cattle are going to die. It hadn't started yet.

The cattle were healthy. It is tomorrow. This is going to happen.

So, in other words, it's more than just the bringing of a plague. It's also a prediction of something that was not predictable and therefore showing Moses to be a prophet of God. And so the Israelite cattle was preserved.

But in this case, Pharaoh actually sent messengers to Goshen to find out if it was true that the Israelite cattle were untouched. We don't read that he sent messengers to find out if there were flies in Goshen on the previous plague. But this time he wanted to check and see if what Moses said was true and found out that it was so.

So it was confirmed that God did treat the Israelites differently. Certainly, Pharaoh, if he was not insane, would have recognized that he's up against a God, a God who is on Israel's side and would certainly have changed his tune. But his heart was hardened just as his heart became hard.

It doesn't say he hardened it or God hardened it here. Verse eight, it says, So the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, take for yourselves handfuls of ashes from a furnace and let Moses scatter it toward the heavens in the sight of Pharaoh. And it will become fine dust in all the land of Egypt and it will cause boils that break out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt.

Then they took ashes from the furnace and stood before Pharaoh and Moses scattered them toward heaven and they caused boils that break out in sores on man and beast. And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils for the boils were on the magicians and on all the Egyptians. But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh and he did not heed them just as the Lord had spoken to Moses.

Now, remember, there's these cycles of plagues were like cycles of three. There were three such cycles. And in the first of each cycle, Pharaoh was more was warned early in the morning about the plague.

The second day cycle, he was warned, but not necessarily in the morning. And the third of each cycle is without warning. And this is the third in the second cycle.

This is the sixth plague. And God doesn't go to Pharaoh and say, Now, if you don't let the people go, I'm going to bring these boils. He's already said it enough times.

He doesn't have to keep saying it. The cattle plague comes. We don't read that Pharaoh ever said to Moses, please take away the cattle plague.

I just was apparently a plague that ran its course. Once all the cattle are dead, there's not much more for the plague to do. It's gone.

It's passed through. But it wasn't it wasn't the last thing that happened before the next warning. There was going to be another plague that would come without warning.

And it was this one, although there was something of a warning in the sense that Moses did this action in front of Pharaoh. He took he and Aaron took ashes from a furnace. Probably the furnace was one of the furnaces that the Israelites had used for making bricks, a lime kilner or a brick furnace.

That is to say, these ashes were there is something of a memorial of the work that the Israelites had been forced to do of their slavery, and they spread them toward heaven as if to say this is presented to the side of God for God to judge the matter. You know, we present this evidence of Israel's affliction to the heavens. And what happened after that was these boils broke out on people.

And it's interesting to see that it doesn't say specifically that Pharaoh had boils on him, and he may not have, although it does say all the Egyptians. And if that's taken literally, it would include Pharaoh. We are told that the magicians were not exempt.

And this is an important thing, too, because we've seen in the earlier plagues, the first three anyway. That the Egyptians seem to be able, the magicians seem to be able to participate in a contest with Moses, trying to duplicate what Moses did. They had been able to produce blood from water.

They had been able to produce frogs, although when it came to the life, it seems they were unable to do that. Which I'm not sure why. I'm not sure they could produce fraud, why they could produce fraud, but not life.

I don't really know the means by which they were doing their act, but it would seem perhaps that this would argue against them having any real supernatural ability, which is one possible theory is that they did have supernatural ability, but limited demonic. They could have had demonic abilities or they could have just been tricksters. The fact that they so quickly reached an end to their repertoire may suggest that they were simply tricksters and they didn't have any supernatural power, because I'm not sure why a demon would be able to produce a frog, but not produce a gnat.

And so anyway, this producing frogs may have been like pulling rabbits out of hats or something like that, but producing gnats out of the dust, I don't know, I'd be a little maybe a little more challenging for them, but we have not seen them mentioned in the fourth plague or the fifth plague, but in the sixth plague, we do see the mentioned again. Now, when they were interacting with Moses, the best they could do was seemingly duplicate what Moses had done, but what Moses had done was bring disaster. And so the Egyptians were only able to increase the disaster.

They could turn more water into blood. They could turn more fraud, bring more frogs into the world, but that was not really something that needed to be done. There were enough frogs already, and there was certainly enough water had turned to blood.

What would have been impressive is if they could have counteracted, turn the bloody water back into water so people could drink it and get rid of some frogs. They not only were not able to counteract it, they were not able to be immune to the plagues. We see that they were covered with boils to have been impressive if they could have used their enchantments to at least exempt themselves from the power of this plague, but they were not able to.

And so the Egyptians magicians were simply made to look ridiculous through this series. Remember, Paul said that they were named Janice and Jambres and in second Peter, he said that false teachers in the end, what Paul calls the last days. Will be like Janice and Jambres who opposed Moses, but he says they will get no further, but their folly should be seen by all.

Well, that was true of these magicians. Their folly certainly was seen by the fact that, you know, apparently try to call them in, but they couldn't come. There are too many boils on and a person covered with boils with obviously having what appears to be an infectious sickness could not be could not have an audience with Pharaoh.

Pharaoh could not allow such contamination into his presence. And so they couldn't come stand before Pharaoh. But he had his heart anyway, and I'm sorry, it says in verse 12, the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and this is actually the first time that says the Lord hardened his heart earlier in chapter four and chapter seven.

God had told Moses, I will harden Pharaoh's heart. That was he predicted that in some time in the course of the plagues, God would end up hurting Pharaoh's heart. But in the plagues thus far, the first five plagues were not read that we have not read that God hardened his heart.

We read that Pharaoh hardened his heart three times and we read other times that his heart simply was hardened. But now for the first time, we read in verse 11 or verse 12, the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh and he did not heed them. This is the beginning of exactly the second half of the plagues.

You've had five plagues before. This is the sixth one, the beginning of the next five. So the first half of the plagues, apparently, Pharaoh's heart was hardened without God having to harden it.

There were 10 plagues and for the first five, his heart was hardened without it ever being said it was God's doing. But from this point on, God is involved. When a person hardens themself against the light, when a person sets himself against the light, God sometimes gets involved and says, Oh, you don't like the light, then I'll blind you more.

He will send strong delusion on those who do not receive the love of the truth so that they should believe a lie. It says in 2 Thessalonians chapter two or in Romans chapter one, it says, because they did not like to retain God in their hearts, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. So when people have made a decision and confirm that decision, become established in that decision to be rebellious against God, the time comes when God says, OK, I'll accept that from you.

In fact, I'll accept nothing else from you. You've set your heart in this position. I'm going to then seal it in that position.

And then the rest of the time, I'll just be taking out my judgment upon you. Verse 13, then the Lord said to Moses, rise early in the morning. So this is the beginning of the third cycle, the seventh plague and stand before Pharaoh and say to him, Thus says Yahweh Elohim of the Hebrews, let my people go that they may serve me.

For at this time, I will send all my plagues to your very heart and on your servants and on your people that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth. Now, if I had stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, then you would have been cut off from the earth. But indeed, for this purpose, I have raised you up that I may show my power in you and that my name may be declared in all the earth.

Now, he basically says, you know, God has not yet put a pestilence on you and all your people, which he could have done, which would have killed you all off. He's saying God is kind of giving you a chance in a sense. God's playing with you because he could have just smitten you and all your people.

It's obvious from the things that God has done so far that there's no limits to what he can do. Moses is speaking to Pharaoh saying, listen, you should take your you should get a clue. God's been kind of giving you a chance here.

He's been firing warning shots over your head. If he'd fired right at you, you'd be dead now. And he says the reason that God raised you up actually would raise you up can mean has caused him to stand.

The reason I've got the reason I've caused you to stand as opposed to succumbing and giving in. The reason that God has made God Pharaoh stronger to stand in his position of obstinance and rebellion is so that all the plagues of Egypt could be brought upon him. Without him spoiling things by repenting and of course, giving God no excuse then to send those plagues.

But he says in verse 17, as yet you exalt yourself against my people and that you will not let them go. Behold, tomorrow about this time I will cause very heavy hail to rain down, such as has not been in Egypt since its founding until now. Therefore, send now and gather your livestock and all that you have in the field for the hail should come down on every man and beast which is found in the field and is not brought home.

They shall all die. He who feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his livestock flee to the houses. But he who did not regard the word of the Lord left his servants and his livestock in the field.

So by this time, some of the Egyptians are starting to be smarter than their ruler. Not all of them, but some of them. There's been six plagues so far.

They've been very devastating. And now there's a warning about another one. And the hail is coming and they're given an early morning forecast of bad weather and told specifically take your cattle indoors.

Why? Because this plague was not intended to be a plague directly against cattle. There was one of those already. The fifth plague was directed against cattle.

This one is directed against the barley crops. Which were just starting to grow at this time. Now, the wheat and some of the other later crops wouldn't come up for another couple of months.

So this this this hail would only destroy the early grain crops. But if Pharaoh would repent after this, they wouldn't starve because a couple of months later, they'd have the wheat and and the rye coming up. But the barley was coming up about this time, as we as we will read about.

And that means it was early February in Egypt. The growing season was such that late January, early February would be the time when the barley was just at the stage that's described in this play. So the this plague was really directed against the grain crops, not against the animals and the people directly.

However, the animals and the people could get hurt if they got in the line of fire. And so Moses is warning, you know, this is not about your animals. This is not about your people.

Get them indoors. God's being merciful by giving you this warning and telling you how to keep your animals safe. And there were people, Egyptians, who listened to Moses.

Now, later in the Exodus, when Israel left Egypt on foot, we read that a mixed multitude went with them. A very great company and a mixed multitude would mean mixed racial. The people who left Egypt were not only Israelites.

There were apparently people of other races, possibly Egyptians as well. There may have been slaves of other races that had come and been purchased or captured by Egyptians earlier. And they took the opportunity to leave when Israel left, too.

Just kind of got in on the jumped into the river and flowed on out with the crowd. But it may be even that some of these Egyptians were starting to believe in the word of Yahweh. And maybe some of them went with Israel.

There were possibly were converts to the religion of Yahweh among the Egyptians. Which shows that when God judges a nation, even as He judged Egypt, there are still a remnant within them. Not only in Israel.

There's always a remnant in Israel that were faithful. But even among the Gentiles, there's a remnant. The Bible makes it very clear that in Babylon, in Egypt, in Edom, in Moab, even in Canaan, God found a very small remnant of those that would follow Him.

And although God was against those nations and judged them, He spared the remnant of them. So, you know, there's never a... God is not a racist. When God judges a nation, it's not because of the race that they are.

Because if anyone of that race would be faithful to Him, He'd spare them. It's not about race. It's not about nationality.

It's about their religious orientation, of course. And so even some of the Egyptians regarded and feared the word of Yahweh and did what Moses said. What became of these particular Egyptians who did so, we don't know.

But it's not unreasonable to assume that many of them left Egypt when Israel did as well, realizing that the God of Israel was the real God. Now, there were Egyptians who were as stupid as their Pharaoh. They did not regard the word of the Lord, and they just left their servants and their livestock in the field.

Then the Lord said to Moses, stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be hail in all the land of Egypt, on man, on beast, and on every herb of the field throughout all the land of Egypt. And Moses stretched out his rod toward heaven. Now, here Moses is doing the stretching.

Remember, in the first three plagues, Aaron was using the rod. And then the next three plagues, the fourth, fifth, and sixth, there was actually no rod mentioned at all. But in the last three plagues, Moses is using the rod.

So the rod has switched hands from Aaron to Moses. And I suggested earlier, this might be because Moses had shown such fear and reticence and so forth early on that God had said, OK, your brother Aaron can be your spokesman. But by the time that these plagues had come, Moses, having seen the mighty works of God and being stronger in faith and less fearful, less intimidated, he felt like, OK, I can take over now.

And so he takes the rod and now he's doing the stretching. He stretched out his rod toward heaven and the Lord sent thunder and hail and fire darted to the ground. And the Lord rained hail on the land of Egypt, so there was hail and fire mingled with the hail so very heavy that there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.

Now, there's a couple of references here to the fire that was not mentioned in the warning. Moses warned there'd be hail, and since it is said to be hail of an unprecedented severity, I think it'd be fair to assume it's probably as bad as any hail that any of us have heard or seen about or heard about or seen. And there has been hail, I mean, documented hail the size of softballs, like in Texas and stuff.

It has some real serious hail there. And you can imagine a chunk of ice the size of a softball. In fact, not just a chunk of ice, but like thousands, millions of chunks of ice.

It's like being stoned with rocks. And probably the hail was at least as bad as that, if not worse. In the book of Revelation, we read of hail falling, which each stone is, it says, the weight of a talent, which is like 100 pounds.

I personally suspect that that's not talking about literal hail there, but if it was, it would certainly be an amazing thing. A hundred pound hailstone, how big would that be? At least as big as one of those inflatable exercise balls that people use for their Pilates. You know, imagine hailstone that big coming down solid chunks of ice.

That would be killer hail for sure. In fact, even the large hail that I mentioned in Texas, it just destroys roofs. I mean, it just is extremely destructive, you know, dense cars up.

And so if someone is out in the field and that hail was coming down, it would just be like being stoned to death and the cattle and the people would die out there. But mostly important was it just crushed the crops that were coming up. But not only was there hail, there was fire.

It says fire mingled with the hail, and it even says in verse 23, the new King James is fire darted to the ground. I think the King, I think the King James says fire ran along the ground. And there's other ways that I've looked at some other translations and they don't all translate the same.

Apparently, the literal Hebrew says fire taking hold of itself. And I don't know how that's pictured. Maybe it's like the fire is like a person holding on to his own ankle, making a ball roll like an acrobat, but fire taking hold of itself.

But most translators have seen this as perhaps a reference to a phenomenon called ball lightning. The fact is, and Jeremiah mentioned this to me this morning, I confirmed it today on the Internet that no one has really documented that there is such a thing as ball lightning. It has not been scientifically verified, but it's reported so so widely that most scientists believe there is a phenomenon called ball lightning.

It's just so unpredictable and so rare they've never been able to catch it on film or, you know, study it. But according to reports, ball lightning is a phenomenon that happens when lightning somehow is made into a spherical shape and it actually runs along fences, runs along the ground and hit something and explode. And so it's sort of like God's bowling with fiery bowling balls that explode when they hit something.

I mean, imagine being out in that weather. You've got this horrible hail coming down, then you have to dodge these fiery balls that are rolling around. Now, there's also another phenomenon called St. Elmo's fire, which is not the same thing as ball lightning, but is equally mysterious.

St. Elmo's fire is something that they, I think, usually have seen on ships, you know, running sort of a similar thing. It's a luminous something that runs along the deck of the ship or seen especially on tall things like massive ships and lightning rods, towers, chimneys and so forth. And I don't know very much about it.

I'm not sure anyone knows very much about it, because, again, this is the kind of thing that appears unpredictably. It's not like the scientists can sit around and say, OK, tonight at so and so, we're going to watch this happen and we're going to analyze it. You never know when it's going to happen.

But generally speaking, it is believed that this phenomenon exists because there are reports of it so much. I suppose one could say that you could believe that Loch Ness Monster exists on the same basis. But for some reason, scientists tend to take the ball lightning phenomenon probably a little more seriously than they take Bigfoot or Loch Ness or some of those things.

UFOs. I suppose because there's no reason to assume that there couldn't be a natural explanation for these things. Anyway, we don't know what it is, but it looks like something along those lines is described as taking place here.

So, verse 25, the hail struck throughout all the whole land of Egypt, all that was in the field, both man and beast, and the hail struck every herb of the field and broke every tree of the field. The hail stones were so large, they broke the branches off the trees. Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail.

Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, I have sinned this time. Yahweh is righteous and my people and I are my people and I are wicked and treat Yahweh that there may be no more mighty hail or thundering and hail for it is enough. I will let you go and you shall stay no longer.

Now, Moses is not convinced. He says, OK, I'll go ahead and call up the hail, but I don't believe you're going to do this thing. But it's interesting that Pharaoh for the first time says I have sinned, but this isn't true repentance.

He kind of still hedges a little bit saying I've sinned this time. OK, this time I've gone a little far. I'll admit I did the wrong thing this time.

He's not admitting they've been sinning all along. There's been rebellion all along that the devastation that's come on his nation through all these plagues is entirely his fault because of his wickedness that he's willing to take some measure of responsibility right now. He says Yahweh is righteous and I have been wicked in my people.

So is that what you want me to say? OK, I said it now. Would you please call up the hail? And Moses said to him, as soon as I've gone out of the city, I will spread out my hands to Yahweh. The thunder will cease and there will be no more hail that you may know that the earth is Yahweh's.

But as for you and your servants, I know that you will not fear, not yet fear Yahweh Elohim. Now, the flax and the barley were struck. For the barley was in the head and the flax was in the bud.

And that's where we deduce that it was February, because that's the point in the agricultural year of Egypt where the barley is in the head and the flax is in the bud. But it'd be a couple more months before the wheat was up. So the wheat and the spelt were not struck for they are late crops.

So Moses went out of the city. Those were reserved for the locusts. So Moses went out of the city and Pharaoh and spread out from Pharaoh and spread out his hands to Yahweh.

Then the thunder and the hail ceased and the rain was not poured on the earth. So apparently there was not only hail, but also rain. And when Pharaoh saw that the rain, hail and thunder had ceased, he sinned yet more and he hardened his heart, he and his servants.

So the heart of Pharaoh was hard. Neither would he let the children of Israel go as Yahweh had spoken by Moses. Chapter 10.

Now the Lord said to Moses, go into Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart. And here again, God is in the business of hardening Pharaoh's heart at this point. And the hearts of his servants that I may show these signs of mine before him.

We're hearing more nowadays about his servants, Pharaoh's servants. We saw that some of his servants stood with Pharaoh against God, and we see now that their hearts have been hardened by the Lord because they have taken sides with the Pharaoh against Yahweh. And it says, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and your son's son, the mighty things that I have done in Egypt and my signs, which I have done among them, that you may know that I am Yahweh.

Now, God did these miraculous signs, among other things, to give a witness to not this generation only of Israelites, but all future generations, their sons and their sons' sons and presumably their sons' sons' sons and so forth. The Passover, which was later instituted, was that for that purpose. Throughout all the generations of Israel, God said they should keep this Passover annually.

And when your son says, why are we doing this? Then you say, well, because we were slaves in Egypt and God with a mighty hand delivered us with great plagues and so forth and smoke the firstborn of Egypt, which, by the way, is not the plague we're about to read about. But the point here is that God is doing all these things so that there will be something phenomenal to tell your children about so that they will have occasion to fear Yahweh to by implication, your sons and sons' sons might live in an age where they don't see the works of Yahweh the same as you do. And this is important to know, because a lot of times Christians just feel like, well, we read about a lot of miracles, the Book of Acts, so we should be seeing all those miracles right now.

Well, maybe we should. Maybe we shouldn't. There are times there certainly are seasons where God does abundant miracles.

I believe there have been many such seasons and revivals since the time of the Book of Acts. But I don't believe that the Bible indicates that every generation sees them. God has his times where he comes and he does a lot of miracles and other times where he doesn't seem to do very many.

This is true in the Old Testament. The time of Moses was a time of concentrated supernatural manifestations of God's power. Hundreds of years after Moses time, there were a similar season in the ministries of Elijah and Elisha, lots of miracles.

But there were hundreds of years in between where there weren't a lot of miracles. In fact, probably many generations where there wasn't a single miracle. And then, of course, the next really miraculous time was when Jesus came and the apostles.

And since that time, the past 2000 years, there have been there have been revivals all over the world in different places that that have been characterized by God doing the miraculous. But if we would say that we should expect to see the miraculous at all times, then we're expecting to see what God has not characteristically done in biblical history. You see, God did miracles when there was a reason to be doing them.

It wasn't just because, as I've said about the healings of Jesus, it wasn't just because Jesus couldn't tolerate the idea of some being sick, that he healed people. His healings were there to communicate something. If he couldn't tolerate sickness, he would have cured everybody.

But he didn't. And there are many people today who have extreme faith that God will heal them. And he doesn't.

I mean, he could. I mean, it'd be hard to say it's for the lack of faith. I mean, truly, there are people who have little faith, but there's lots of people have a lot of faith and don't see a miracle when they would love to have one.

It's clear that God is not simply doing miracles because people want them, because people think they could use them or because people have a strong faith that they'll get them. God does miracles when it suits his purposes to do miracles. And there are times when it suits his purpose to do them.

And other times, apparently, it does not so much so that in the generations that don't see the miracles God intended that the children of those generations would would be told about the miracles God had done earlier so that although they're not seeing the great works of Yahweh, they might nonetheless know of them. They might know that Yahweh is a great God and a true God, even if he is not in their time doing the same kinds of things. And in the Psalms, the psalmist sometimes says, Lord, we have heard about the great things you did in days of old when you deliver our people from Egypt and when you deliver them from their oppressors and so forth.

But then the psalmist goes, but where are you now? Now we're being overrun by our oppressors and we cry out to you and you don't do anything like that. In other words, the psalmist himself, the Bible itself acknowledges that there were generations of Israelites who had to simply their faith had to subsist on the reports of earlier supernatural things that God had done. And that seems to be implied here, too.

God says, I'm going to do all these wonders so that you can tell your sons and your sons, sons. Which implies your sons and your sons, sons are not going to see similar activities from me, so they're going to just have to hear about it from you. And so every year we know Israel still celebrates the Passover, which is something we'll come to in Chapter 12.

But but the point is, the purpose of the Passover is to so that the younger generation of Jews will be reminded of things that God did miraculously in the founding of their nation and the establishment of their people, because it is assumed they won't be seeing those things necessarily themselves, their own eyes. They are to believe them because they are told of them by reliable parents and grandparents. Remember, Thomas said, I will not believe that Jesus has risen unless I put my finger in the holes of his hands and put my hand in his side where the spear went in.

And when Jesus appeared to him eight days later, he said, OK, Thomas, put your finger in my hands and put your hand in my side. And Thomas said, my Lord and my God. And Jesus said, you believe because you've seen.

Blessed are those who, having not seen yet, believe. Thomas was one of those who got to see the proof of the miracle. But Jesus, there's a greater blessing on those who haven't had the opportunity to see it, but they believe it anyway.

Now, that doesn't mean that God's looking for people to be gullible far from it. The Bible warns very strongly not to believe every prophet, not to believe every report and to test the prophets and to reject false prophets. Being gullible and believing something just because someone tells you is not is not right.

However, it is assumed that, you know, the Israelites living under the law of God will be honest people whose reputations for honesty gives reason to trust their reports. And so there will be a faithful community transmitting this historical information reliably and credibly to future generations. That's why we read the Old Testament, because we believe that there was a faithful community of Jews who did preserve this history faithfully and they weren't lying.

And so anyway, God indicates this principle, apparently, that he's not going to be doing these kind of miracles all the time. So you watch what I do and you tell your sons and your sons' sons and make sure that they are not ignorant of these things, since by implication, they're not going to be seeing them with their own eyes. Verse three.

So Moses and Aaron came into Pharaoh and said to him, Thus says Yahweh, God of the Hebrews, How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go that they may serve me. Or else, if you refuse to let my people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your territory and they shall cover the face of the earth so that no one will be able to see the earth and they shall eat the residue of what is left, which remains for you from the hail, and they shall eat every tree which grows up for you out of the field. It shall fill your houses, the houses of all your servants and the houses of all the Egyptians, which neither your fathers nor your father's fathers have seen since the day that they were on the earth to this day.

And he turned and went from the presence of Pharaoh. Now, Pharaoh's servants said to him, How long shall this man be a snare to us? Let them in go that they may serve Yahweh, their God. Do you not yet know that Egypt is destroyed? Now, this is the first time we hear that the servants of Pharaoh, although their hearts have been hardened to maybe not all of them had been, they're starting to get afraid.

They say, Listen, we've lost almost everything. If we have a plague of locusts, we'll lose everything that's left. People in those days knew what a plague of locusts was.

We don't see very many plagues of locusts in our country. I think that in some parts of the world, isn't there like a seven year cycle of locust plagues in certain countries? And that'd be an awful frequency. There have been locust plagues in this country before.

The Mormons have a story in their history about when they first came to the Salt Lake region. They had come and they had very little provisions left as a desert area. They started cultivating it.

They started farming it. They started having crops ready. They're almost starving to death when it came time to harvest the crops.

But before the harvest, there came a locust plague and locusts eat everything that is not animal meat. I mean, they'll even eat leather, which is animal, but they'll eat anything green. They'll eat the bark of trees.

They'll eat cloth. They'll eat leather bags, shoes. I mean, they won't bite people unless they're the locusts in the Book of Revelation that have teeth like lions and they torment people for five months.

But those aren't actual locusts. But the reason even that the Book of Revelation likens what it is describing to locusts is because of the overwhelming nature of locust plagues. When people have actually seen these, the sky is truly darkened with them.

It's like it's like thick, dark clouds of locusts. Now, we're told that this plague is unusually severe. Just ordinary locust plagues strike terror into people when they're coming because there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop them.

You can't fight them off with swords. You know, there's too many of them. They say that in a very severe locust plague, there can be as many as 130 million locusts per square mile.

And and in this case, we're told that they're going to cover the ground so you can't even see the ground. It's going to be just a carpet of locusts. Now, locust plagues, when they come in, it's it absolutely strikes fear into people's lives because it's like this huge, dark, foreboding cloud coming and darkening the sky.

It really darkens the sun. And then they just come and they eat everything and they go on through. And when they're gone, you know what was a farmland, what was a forest, what was had what was a pasture, what was once green is no longer green.

There's nothing there. Just dirt and twigs. And it's one of the most devastating things.

I mean, if people knew how to make these things happen and could use them for warfare against their enemies, it would be among the most powerful and irresistible weapons that man could come up with. It's a weapon only God controls. That's one of the things in God's arsenal.

He just sends gazillions of locusts and they're too small to fight off. There's too many of them. All you can do is just stand there and watch them destroy everything.

Now, the Egyptians knew what a locust plague looked like. They've seen locust plagues before. Oh, by the way, the Mormon story.

They were about to starve and their crops were about ready to harvest. And then this locust plague came and the Mormons actually prayed. And according to their story, miraculously, a huge flock of seagulls appeared in the middle of the country.

Seagulls are usually at sea, you know, but Utah is in the middle of the country. And this apparently thousands, if not millions of seagulls came and they ate the locusts and the crops were spared. Obviously, the Mormons use that as a story to prove that God is on their side.

I would use it to prove that God is on their side, too, because God's on the side of people. He's not on the side of Mormonism, but Mormons are people, too. Remember, God causes his son to rise on the evil and on the good.

And and God is merciful, even even to people who don't have good doctrine. And I consider it to be a tremendous story of God's grace to people whose whose beliefs are. I believe quite skewed, but nonetheless, God is gracious and he apparently answered their prayers and came for them.

By the way, Jews and Englishmen and Americans have stories like that, too, about how they prayed in times of war and saw angels and things like that. The Mormons, if they think that somehow that story proves Mormonism to be true, they're not really paying attention to the fact that other religions and other nationalities have similar stories. God has been graciously and graciously intervened in the affairs of men when they called out to him, even when they weren't Christians.

Anyway, Pharaoh's servants, suddenly they're terrified. A locust plague. I mean, frogs were bad, but they didn't eat the food.

But they've lost their cattle to the cattle plague. They've lost their barley and. And flax to the hail, and now anything else is green is going to go because and so Pharaoh's servants actually try to persuade him to comply with Moses demand, and he listens them initially.

So Moses and were brought again to Pharaoh. And he said to them, go serve the Lord your God. But who are the ones who are going with you? Moses said, we will go with our young and our old, with our sons and our daughters.

With our flocks and our herds, we will go for we must hold a feast to Yahweh. Then he said to them, Yahweh had better be with you when I let you when I let you and your little ones go. Beware, for evil is ahead of you.

Not so go now for you are men and serve Yahweh, for that is what you desire. I'm sorry now you who are men, forgive me, I read that wrong and they were driven out of Pharaoh's presence. So Pharaoh was willing to let the men go if they left the women and children behind.

Why? Well, obviously, the women, children would like hostages. The men would have to come back. No men are not going to run off as a group of men.

I mean, maybe for a weekend, but not not for life. They're not going to leave their women and children and never come back for them. So Pharaoh was going to kind of hold the children and women as anchor anchors to require the Israelites to come back.

And when he said, well, who all do you want to take with you? And I said, every last one of us, all our livestock, all our children, all of our wives. And Pharaoh said, I see your your your plan to escape. And he said, the Lord better be with you if I do that.

And that's apparently a way of saying, you know, I mean, I'm not sure what exactly how those words tie into it, but he's essentially saying you'd better have a God on your side if you're expecting me to do something like that. No, he says you who are men go, not the women and children, you who are men only. Then Yahweh said to Moses, stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt for the locusts that they may come upon the land of Egypt and eat every herb of the land.

All the hail has left. So Moses stretched out his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind on the land all that day and all that night. And when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts and the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt and rested on all the territory of Egypt.

They were very severe. Previously, there had been no such locusts as they nor shall there be such after them. For they covered the face of the whole earth so that the land was darkened and they ate every herb of the land and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left.

So there remained nothing green on the trees or on the plants of the field throughout all the land of Egypt. Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron in haste and said, I have sinned against Yahweh, your God and against you. Now, therefore, please forgive my sin only this once and entreat Yahweh, your God, that he may take away from me this death only.

So he went out from Pharaoh and entreated the Lord and the Lord turned a very strong west wind, which took the locusts away and blew them into the Red Sea. And there remained not one locust in all the territory of Egypt. But the fish in the sea got very fat.

They had a feast, billions of locusts suddenly dropped into their feet, which would be great eating for them. Actually, great eating for someone like John the Baptist, too. He would have had a feast if he was around, but he wasn't there.

There remained not one locust in all the territory of Egypt, but Yahweh hardened Pharaoh's heart and he did not let the children of Israel go. Now, he didn't promise to. He just said, I've sinned.

Please entreat the Lord, take them away. And Moses did at this point. Pharaoh didn't say, and I'll let you go.

I think Pharaoh knows better than to make that promise. He knows that he can't be believed, so he doesn't make the promise. He just begs for mercy.

And God amazingly gives him mercy. God doesn't just say, these locusts will be munching here until you let my people go. As soon as I see my people outside your borders, I'm going to take the locusts away.

But that's not what God does. God says, OK, you're a pitiful case. I'll take the locusts away, even though you haven't promised to do the right thing.

Then we have the ninth plague, verse 21. Then the Lord said to Moses, stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, darkness which may even be felt. Now, the fact that the darkness may be felt if it literally means maybe felt on the skin and so forth.

Many believe that this is a result of some immense sandstorm or dust storm that was so thick that, of course, the air actually was thick with it. You could actually feel it in the air and it blacked out the sun. Now, of course, God could black out the sun supernaturally.

Something similar to that may have happened when Jesus was crucified. The sun went dark for a few hours, three hours. In this case, the sun went dark for three days.

Now, the sun was the chief god of the Egyptian pantheon, Ra, the sun god. And therefore, this last plague, short of the plague on the firstborn, was a judgment on the power of their chief deity, who is the sun. And it was more symbolic probably than anything, because I'm not really sure that the darkness did new damage.

There wasn't much left to damage. All the crops were destroyed. The cattle were essentially decimated.

It's not entirely destroyed. We don't know whether any people said boils on them at this point. And there might have even been still piles of frogs rotting and smelling up the place.

The place, I don't know. The place was, you know, destroyed. And there wasn't much more to destroy.

So this plague doesn't, as far as we know, doesn't do any particular harm. It's more its symbolic value to show that Yahweh can black out the light of the sun god and prevent the sun god from sending his light to the Egyptians, which would be a strong signal that the sun god is not powerful and Yahweh is. So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days.

They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days. But all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings. That's interesting.

Now it says in their dwellings. It sounds as if, you know, they had lamps inside in their dwellings, which would be the normal way of getting light inside a dwelling. But if that is said of Israel and not of Egypt, it would suggest that even if even if the Egyptians lit a lamp, it wouldn't give any light that there was actually something palpable, something physical that blocked the light, and it was filling the whole air.

They must have had their faces covered with cloth to avoid breathing in whatever it was. It would have been suffocating that if you write a letter, light a lamp in your house, it won't even give light in your house because whatever's in the air is in the house and outside the house. And it'd be a very unnerving thing.

And for this to go on for three days, by the way, if it goes on for a few hours and you don't know what's causing it or you don't know how long it will last, it's terrifying when it lasts day after day after day. I'm sure you begin to wonder, is this ever going to end, you know, 24 seven or at least 24 three. You can't see anything.

And imagine how crippling that would be, not just to all activity, but to your moral, to your morale, because. I mean, like I've been in storms where it rained ceaselessly for several days and you begin to think, you know, since you don't know how long it'll last, like, is this going to ever end in the foreseeable future? And if it's something extremely crippling, for example, one of the storms that we had in Santa Cruz back in the early 80s, it went on for weeks and there were floods and mountains were becoming highly oversaturated and falling down and covering houses and stuff. And people were dying in intersections because they go into an intersection and wouldn't realize it's low and their cars go underwater and they drown in them.

The river rose so high, it washed out a bridge that had a lot of the electrical cables that connected one side of the city to the other. So the whole the bridge went out, the power went out on one side of the city for days. As far as I remember, it might have been a week.

I remember we had to drive down to Castroville to get gas because the gas pumps weren't working in town. And, you know, this only lasted probably, I would say, a couple of weeks or so. But because we had no information about when it would stop and it was so crippling to our activities, it was really it made it worse just because even even every day that it continued, you know, well, this is another day.

Are there going to be another 100 days like this? When when's life going to be normal again? And when it's something where you can't even see you can't function indoors or outdoors and you have no idea if this is ever going to end, really, I mean, this is supernatural. Is it going to be dark forever now? Every single day is tormenting and it's extended for three days. It says in verse 23, they did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days, apparently in their houses.

They couldn't see each other. They just kind of live in isolation, visual isolation from everything else in the whole world, including everyone else. They might have been in a house with other people.

They can see him. It was blinding, but this was not true in the dwellings of the children of Israel. So we have Pharaoh making his fourth compromise offer in verse 24.

Pharaoh called Moses and said, Go serve Yahweh. Only let your flocks and your herds be kept back. Let your little ones also go with you.

So now he's saying, OK, take the women and children if you must. But leave your flocks behind, please. After all, we've lost all of our livestock.

Show some pity on us Egyptians. Leave your flocks and we'll let you go and your families. But Moses said, you must also give us sacrifices and burnt offerings that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.

Now, we need to take the livestock because we're going to have to offer our sacrifices to God. Lots of them. Our livestock also should go with us.

Not a hoof should be left behind, for we must take some of them and serve Yahweh, our God. And even we do not know with what we must serve the Lord until we arrive there, as we don't know how many sacrifices God's going to require of us. So we take all that we've got.

He might require it all for all we know. But Yahweh hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not let them go. Then Pharaoh said to him, Get away from me.

Take heed to yourself and see my face no more. For in the day that you see my face, you shall die. And Moses said, You have spoken well.

I will never see your face again. Now, this is a little bit difficult because they it sounds like they did see each other's faces again in the final announcement of the final play. We'll talk about that as a separate issue.

It may be that Pharaoh just spoke rashly and then changed his mind and Moses too and said, Well, maybe we should have one more interview. But what I want to focus on right now, just as we run out, we're running out of time here. Is these four compromise offers that Pharaoh made? The first two were back in Chapter eight, and then the other two are here in Chapter 10.

And remember that the New Testament uses the Exodus as a image of salvation. In this sense, as Moses delivered the children of Israel from bondage in Egypt, Jesus has delivered us from the bondage of sin. Egypt is like sin, like the bondage of sin.

Pharaoh, in this analogy, is like the devil. And so the confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh is like confrontation between Christ and the devil, or perhaps the Christian and the devil saying, Let my people go. We're not going to serve you anymore.

And it's interesting how the Pharaoh makes these offers of compromise, which some Christians seem to accept. The first compromise he gave was in Chapter eight, verse 25. Go and sacrifice your God in the land and stay in Egypt.

You can stay in your sins. You don't have to give up your life of sin. Just add religion to your life.

And that's what a lot of people do, of course, they don't they don't repent of their sins. They don't reform their lives. They continue to live in sin just as much as before they were called Christians.

It's just they've added religion. They worship the Lord. They go to church on Sunday.

They might even pay tithes, but they but their life is not reformed. And Moses would not accept that. So no, we're going to have to leave here because some of the things we do are going to be offensive to the Egyptians and God may call us to do things.

Well, certainly departing from sin offends the Egyptians. Peter said that in first Peter four, they think it's strange. Your old friends think it's strange that you don't run with them to the same excess of right.

Speaking evil of you. And so you can't just live in sin among the sinners and and participate with them in sin. You have to actually leave Egypt altogether.

If you're going to worship Yahweh, you have to. You can't do it within Egypt. Can't do it within the bondage to your sins that you had previously.

And then the second compromise offers verse 28 of chapter eight. He said, I'll let you go, but don't go very far. And, you know, it's like when Jesus calls us to follow him, he calls us to leave the things of the world, the life of the world, the sinful world behind and to go to a higher calling to something else.

But some Christians don't want to go very far because that's fanatical. You don't become too committed to some other world because then, as they say, you'll be too heavenly minded. You'll be no earthly good.

Well, no Christians who are heavenly minded are very much of earthly good because we don't leave the earth, but we leave the world system. We leave the values of the world system and we can't say, well, I won't go very far, though. I'll reform a little bit.

I'll change my views a little bit from my worldviews, but I'm going to still keep some of them. I don't want to be too different. I don't want to get too far removed from my friends.

I'm not going to go very far into this Christian thing, just far enough that I can feel that I basically obeyed God and left my life of sin. But I'm still going to think worldly thoughts. I'm not going to alienate myself too much.

I don't want too much distance between me and the people of the world. And then we have chapter 10, verse 11. Go, you who are men, but don't take your women and children.

That is, if you want to be religious, that's fine. But don't get your children all wrapped up in this. Don't impose your views on your family.

It's you know, your children have to have free choice, too. You shouldn't be trying to force your beliefs on them. Well, I agree.

We don't force our beliefs on children or anyone else. You can't. It's impossible to force someone to believe something.

But certainly when we go to follow God, it is our intention. And God is going to take our families with us into God. We don't just get converted and let the family stay lost.

We're to bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The devil might like to keep the children and let the parents be as religious as they wish. As long as the devil has the children, he'll have the grownups of the next generation.

And that's what Pharaoh wanted. Leave your kids here for one thing. Even if the men didn't come back, Pharaoh would have all the men of the next generation still in bondage.

But more than that, he knew that the men wouldn't go very far away from Egypt if their kids were in Egypt. If your family is in Egypt, you're not going to go very far from Egypt or stay away. They're going to draw you back in.

You need to have a godly family. And that has to be your commitment. You can't just say, well, I'm going to be godly by myself and not be concerned about my family's spiritual being.

And then verse 24 of chapter 10, he says, go ahead, but leave your possessions behind. That is, take your family to church if you want to. Have a Christian family, but your possessions should still really pretty much be in the same domain as before.

Don't give your possessions to God. Your financial life, your economic life should be pretty much the same as it would be if you're in the world. Leave your possessions in the realm of the world.

And Moses said, no, every last hoof of our cattle is going to go and be available to God. Our families, our cattle, all our possessions, everything is going to belong to God. And the Pharaoh, like the devil himself, is making concessions when he sees that you're not going to give up on your determination to worship God.

He's trying to get you to make certain concessions. Well, don't get too radical. Don't get too fanatical.

Don't get your kids involved. Don't go crazy with your possessions. Be responsible.

Be worldly, worldly wise. Now, again, I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't have some of what we would call worldly wisdom about possessions. We we are managers of God's stuff.

And there is such a thing as being wise stewards and not being foolish with them. On the other hand, some things that God may want us to do might seem foolish to the world's eyes, like giving it all away or something. You know, if that happens, many people say, well, no, that's one thing to be Christians.

Another thing to be crazy and just and offering everything to God. Well, most of we don't know what God might ask for. We got to have it all.

We need to take it all with us to worship God. And he'll ask for the parts he wants. And we have to have it all available to him, not some of it left, you know, committed in the world or in Egypt.

So we have these compromise offers made. Moses turns them all down because he knows that God wants everything. God wants not only the head of the household.

He wants the whole family. He wants the possessions. He wants everything to be devoted to him.

And he knows that he doesn't have to compromise with her because God is going to give them that deliverance on God's terms, not Pharaoh's. And so he holds out all these times when Pharaoh made these compromise offers. Moses or the Israelites could have attempted to say, well, you know, we should just take this off.

This is the best offer we're going to get from this guy, Pharaoh. Let's just take it. It's better than nothing.

But Moses wasn't interested in better than nothing. Moses was making an ultimatum to Pharaoh. Pharaoh was not the one in the position to make ultimatums.

It was God that was making the ultimatums. And Pharaoh was trying to negotiate his way out of a situation where he was, in fact, powerless. But Moses is on God's side and knew that God was going to win this without negotiation, without compromise.

And so also these lessons, I believe, are intended for our learning. They are a type for us, according to First Corinthians 10. And we do see ways in which through through worldly messages that the devil brings to all forms of compromise are suggested.

Anything but total surrender of everything to God, the devil will accept. He'll accept anything less, but God will not accept anything less than a total surrender. And so that's what Moses is standing out for.

Not going to give in. All right. We're going to stop there.

Take a break.