The Fifth Plague

Well, this morning we begin chapter 9 and we work through the fifth plague, which means we're halfway through the plague narratives by count.

And, of course, there's some significance to seeing the ten plagues as not only a series of three, as we've said in weeks past, with the tenth being a standalone, but also as sort of two halves, with the fifth plague and the tenth plague having some resonance.

And so here all the livestock of Egypt is dead, and in the tenth plague all the firstborn sons of Egypt will be dead.

This, of course, follows with God intensifying plague after plague as Pharaoh continues to intensify the hardness of his own heart.

We've seen the dialing up of judgment step by step, blow by blow, and here at the fifth plague, unfortunately, there will still be no mark of repentance in the heart of Pharaoh, and therefore the judgment of God will not relent, even as Pharaoh will not repent.

With the fifth plague, we see two steps, two movements. First, in verses 1 through 3, we see a very severe pestilence, and then secondly, in verses 4 through 9, we see a very sovereign preservation.

So a very severe pestilence and a very sovereign preservation. Exodus chapter 9, beginning in verse 1.

Then the Lord said to Moses, Go into Pharaoh and tell him, Thus says the Lord God 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.

A very severe pestilence. So begin with the Lord commanding

Moses. Notice, Moses has not expressed any reservation or hesitation since we saw him in chapter 3.

In chapter 3, he was stuttering and mumbling his way through excuses and reasons that he could not obey the command of the

Lord. Here, and for several plagues now, we've seen that as soon as the command comes to Moses and Aaron, they immediately respond without question, without hesitation, with full zeal and fervency.

Moses has seen the power of the Lord and with it, his trust in the Lord has become absolute.

If the Lord commands it, I go. If the Lord says it will happen, it's going to happen. That same revelation and all of the same signs have been given not only to Moses, but also to Pharaoh.

Same revelation, same signs, completely different responses.

Does that surprise you? It does not surprise me. Same revelation, same acts of God, same living testimony, and yet completely different responses.

And that is the difference between the sovereign grace of God, which softens the heart, opens the eyes of the blind, unstops the ears of the deaf, and the hardening of man's heart against God.

The alienation that man is born into this world in. And also with that, the judicial hardening that God may bring upon his people.

The Lord identifies Himself here as the Lord God of the Hebrews.

That's something we haven't seen in a while. This phrase has not been used since chapter 7, verse 16.

It's a reminder to Pharaoh of who he's battling against. He wants to ignore the fact that the slave population under his thumb has this all -powerful

God who happens to be exercising His sovereignty over all creation. And with that, showing the bankruptcy and the fraudulence of all the strong gods of Egypt.

He is the Lord God of the Hebrews. God here identifying Him again, identifying

Himself with the oppressed, with the afflicted, with those in need and in bondage unable to plead or to help themselves.

We see that. That's who God is from the very beginning. The God of the afflicted, the God of the needy, the

God of the humble, the God of the broken, the God of the helpless, the God of the defenseless.

He's still that God today, and He's not ashamed to identify Himself in that way.

And the demand is unchanged, just like His nature is unchanged, the demand is unchanged. Let my people go that they may serve

Me. And this time, a conditional statement is added. If you refuse to let them go and you still hold them, behold, the hand of the

Lord will be on your cattle in the field, on the horses, the donkeys, the camels. It's been a while since we've seen camels.

On the oxen and on the sheep, a very severe pestilence. This is not the first time we've seen this condition.

If you refuse to let them go, we've heard this before, and every single time

Pharaoh has refused to let them go. And so the judgment has been intensifying, but it has not made a dent in Pharaoh's resolve.

The verb is quite literally, to send them. If you refuse to send them, to send them out, but rather, as we read, still hold them, still grasp them.

And this is a play on words. It's the same verb to speak of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. The idea is he has a strong hand upon them.

And God is saying, if you don't send them out, but you have a strong or hardened hand on them, then

I will bring this very severe pestilence. And so it's a reminder that Pharaoh's heavy hand is resulting on the

Lord's heavy hand. Pharaoh's hardening act is involving the Lord's hardening strike.

And the word pestilence in the in the Septuagint, this is not something that's just like a disease.

It's translated as the noun death. I will bring death upon them.

So the animals here are not just sick. We're beyond flies and frogs. Now the animals will die.

This is the first experience of death in corroboration with God's judgment. It will not be the last.

The warning is framed toward the possession of Pharaoh. Notice, behold, the hand of the Lord will be on your cattle.

Pharaoh, as head of the Egyptian Empire, by extension represents all within the bounds of his empire.

So though people may well have their own cattle in one sense or another, this is all Pharaoh's cattle.

Just like all the coins belong to Caesar, and this is very much economic wealth and prosperity.

In an agrarian culture like ancient Egypt, this would have devastated their national economy. What would the equivalent be for us today?

Probably not camels and donkeys, but probably something equally devastating to our national economy.

And as we'll see, even this will not turn Pharaoh back. It shows you, as we've said in weeks past, how prideful he was.

Though all of the animal life that marked the prosperity of his empire, the provision and wealth and security of his people, though all of that would be struck down in the field in a day, he will not submit to the

Word of God. What does Proverbs 16, 18 say? Pride goes before destruction.

And you see it very clearly here. Pride goes before destruction. I've seen that in my own life.

Have you seen co -workers or friends or relatives that are living testimony of the truth of that proverb?

Pride goes before destruction. And notice here, a hardened heart does not think rationally.

In Hebrew, the word heart is more than just affection or emotion. It's the center of all sort of life.

From it, all the issues of life flow. It's the center of not only life, but intellectual reason.

It's not only the center of emotive activity, but discernment and wisdom, understanding, morality, the whole ethical impulse.

All of this is different ways of speaking about the heart. And a hardened heart, to speak of the intellectual faculties of the heart, a hardened heart does not operate by reason.

This is very important for us to understand when we're engaging people. I was talking about this with my brother

Hogan on Thursday night after prayer. People that are blind and deaf to the will and purpose of God, to the way they have been made in the image of God, to the purpose of their being, to the purpose of the world and the flow of history, such people cannot think rationally.

They're standing on a foundation of sand. As the great thinker Cornelius van

Til would always point out, they can only criticize Christianity when they borrow capital from it.

In other words, they can only use what Christianity provides to try to weaponize it as a claim or skeptic against Christianity.

Hardened hearts do not think rationally. You can see that very clearly with Pharaoh. This is now irrational.

Maybe with the river turning to blood we could cut him some slack, but when all of the animals of the

Egyptians lie dead in the field in a day and not one of the cattle of the Israelites has been harmed and he refuses to turn to Yahweh, he is beyond reason.

He is not thinking clearly. He is not thinking rationally, nor indeed can he, as Ephesians 4 18 says.

Such as were us, Christians, when we were living like Gentiles, to use

Paul's terminology, we had our understanding darkened. We were alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that was in us, because of the blindness of their heart.

Do you see that causal change, that sort of causal link in relationship? Having their understanding darkened, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.

So let's actually follow the the order of causation, which means we go from the end to the beginning.

Beginning with the blindness of the heart that leads to a profound ignorance within, which alienates from the life of God and results in your understanding being darkened.

Where does the darkened understanding begin? With the blindness of the heart. With the proud, stubborn refusal of the heart.

You don't begin alienated from the life of God. There's a reason that children don't find it very hard to embrace thoughts of creation and their being a creator.

It seems to scream at them as the most logical rationale. And then the assumption of a secular worldview is, well, you can get them to believe anything at that age.

They don't have critical thinking. Their prefrontal cortex hasn't been fully developed yet. Well, even when they're 12, it hasn't been developed.

But when hormones come and sex begins to allure and other sins begin to show forth and grow in the flesh, all of a sudden it becomes very convenient to question the being of God and to question the authority of God.

Is that a coincidence? No. Their understanding is darkened because of the blindness of their own heart.

That's the issue. Of course, we've also seen that this judgment on Pharaoh is a judgment on the gods of Pharaoh, on the gods of Egypt.

Here, it's no different. Egyptians would have viewed certain cattle as having relative properties to the gods they worshipped.

They made images using animal parts or wholesale animals themselves, particularly the bull.

The sort of chief representative of cattle, not only for the Egyptians, but even for the Israelites. If you follow the logic of the way

God is designing the tabernacle, the bull or the cow is sort of the chief representative of all land grazing or domesticated animals.

It was seen by the Egyptians as a figure of fertility imbued with potency and virility.

Interestingly, still the case in Spanish culture. We go to Portugal or Spain and the bull still has something of that sense, of that portrayal, vitality, potency, fertility.

Bull cults are known to have flourished throughout Egypt, even up to the days of the Romans. Bulls were worshipped.

They were part of the Mithraic cults and other ancient Near -Eastern religions that were still part of cults followed in Rome in the days of the

New Testament. At this time, the god Apis would have been seen as the sacred bull, representative again of domesticated animal life, embodying the gods.

Also, Ptah and Ra, these were bull -like gods. Isis. If you look at portrayals of Isis, she has a sort of cow -like head, not very flattering for the poor old gal, but that's what she had.

So this plague is continuing to demonstrate that these gods are imposters. Man's imagination turning what

God has made into gods or goddesses and God showing how fickle and useless and profane that really is.

There's one God, one Creator. Now, we may not walk by Main Street and say see statues of cows and donkeys, but man is still in the business of creating a god out of his own imagination, out of his own image.

That has not changed. The mechanics have changed, but the idolatry has not.

And speaking of idolatry and speaking of these unchanging mechanics and dynamics of the fall, we are drawn back to Genesis here with the fifth plague.

All of God's creation, as Victor Hamilton points out, whether human or non -human, is caught up with the disastrous consequences of the refusal to obey by this one human being.

Does that sound familiar to you? All of creation, literally all of human life and non -human life, even animal life, is bound up in the consequences of this one man's rebellion.

Does that sound familiar? It sounds a lot like Genesis 3 to me. The guilt of Adam was not just put in consequence against Adam, but disrupted all subsequent posterity to Adam and also affected the rest of the cosmos.

As far as the curse is found is the hymn that we sing. And as Paul alludes to in Romans 8, the whole world has been groaning, awaiting redemption.

Animal life included within that. The disorder of the fall affected not only humanity, but even animal life.

And therefore animal life factors into the designation of the tabernacle and the temple. And redemption is understood to be as wide as the cosmos.

Again, not just mere human redemption, but look at the ways the New Covenant and the glory of God's everlasting hope is secured.

We almost always see it in terms of animal imagery, especially the way animals relate to humans.

The child playing by the serpent's den. The lion laying down with the lamb.

So we have this animal imagery. It's not for nothing that when Jesus overcomes the serpent's temptation, not in paradise, but in the wilderness, as Mark records, he was there with the angels and the animals.

So there in Christ you see Adam having failed, but the last Adam having been victorious.

And what is the result of that? The initial glimpse of the overturning of the consequences. If Adam was cast out by angels and now animals are against him, rather than him having right dominion over them, what is the last

Adam secure? Now he's with the angels and with the animals. You see, even here in the fifth plague, we're connecting

Genesis to Mark chapter 2 to Revelation. Like Adam after the fall, the

Egyptians were dependent upon animals. This was their wealth. This was their sustenance. This was their economic security.

And now, like Adam, they would have to watch these animals suffer the consequences of their representative's sin and be helpless to relieve them of that suffering.

Like Adam after the fall, these animals were made subject to suffering, therefore the prosperity, the security, the sustenance of the people was in jeopardy.

Jeremiah 12, chapter 12, verse 4 says, for the wickedness of the land, the beasts are consumed.

For the wickedness of the land, the beasts are consumed. So that is a very severe pestilence.

But with it, we see a very sovereign preservation, beginning in verse 4.

And the Lord will make a 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 the Lord 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.

So we begin something we saw last week, the Lord making a difference for his people. The Lord will make a difference.

He says that here as he said it with the fourth plague. He has the power to secure his people.

He has the power to make them different. And indeed, that is part of the outflow of Exodus as a story.

God calling this people to himself, making them different, setting them apart from all other nations on the earth for the sake of all other nations on the earth.

Something that they stumbled at, a stumbling stone that they stumbled at. And yet it's secured through Christ in us.

He has the power as the sovereign creator to bring about judgment in this way, such that all the animals of one people die and not one of the animals of another people is dead.

Nothing shall die of all that belongs to the children of Israel. That's the claim.

That's the kind of power that Pharaoh wants to have. The kind of power that Pharaoh pretends to have.

Look what I've secured for my people, the Egyptians. And look, these Hebrews are under my thumb.

I can do with them as I please. And God is showing him in this judgment. It's exactly the opposite of that.

Tomorrow, the Lord will do this thing in the land, we read. So the Lord did this thing.

Don't you love that construction? The Lord says tomorrow I'm going to do this thing. And the next day the

Lord did that thing. That's how sure his word is. That's how secure his promises.

This is the second time now we've seen Pharaoh told what will take place tomorrow. There'll be two more times he's told tomorrow.

Jesus tells his followers, don't worry about tomorrow. Pharaoh needs to start worrying about tomorrow.

Because he's not turning to the Lord, he does not have that comfort of the Lord. Believers are those who don't have to worry about tomorrow.

Unbelievers are those who have definitely to worry about tomorrow, whether they'll even see tomorrow in their present state of unbelief.

If a person is not right with God, they better be concerned about tomorrow. But if a person is right with the

Lord, whatever tomorrow may bring, they need not worry about it. The Lord will do and the

Lord did. That is always true. What the Lord says will come to pass, however long the delay may be.

It may be 400 years of silence, but what the Lord will do, he will do. It may be 2000 years of waiting for the promise yet to come.

And yet what the Lord will do, he will do. And not one died.

It's repeated for us three times. Not one died. Not even one was dead.

Now, the term all here is troubling. We could say at first glance, is this a generalization?

Is this hyperbole? All because it's such a massive amount. It's practically all.

But of course, there was a smattering. We we have to say somehow between here and the next two plagues, the

Egyptians get animals again because the next two plagues fall upon animals as well as the

Egyptians. But it could be that they had them imported. They traded for them. When you're the top dog in global supremacy, you have those kinds of options at your disposal.

Pharaoh sends, we read, as a response to all of the livestock in Egypt dropping dead.

Pharaoh now sends. That's what the Lord had commanded him. If you don't send out my people and here

Pharaoh sends. But what is he sending? Not the Israelites out of his land. He's sending a reconnaissance team to see if it's really true that none of the

Israelites livestock were harmed. You almost wonder if he really expected anything to be different.

This is the fifth time he's seen what the Lord has said be fulfilled down to the details.

Even when he chose the time frame, so it was done. And when it came, when he begged for Moses to intercede and Moses went to the

Lord, it was immediately removed. He's seen it on both sides. And yet even still, he doubts the word of God.

So he sends a team to say, let's just really see. OK, everything that God said, he said the next day, it was the next day.

He said, all my livestock, it's all my livestock. But let's see if maybe some of the

Israelites livestock died, too. Like he would have been happy or relieved to find that out.

That's irrational. You shouldn't rejoice that. OK, exactly the judgment that God said took place.

But let's see if there's some detail further up in Goshen that means he was a little off and then, ha ha, now

I have a reason to resist him. And of course, he goes, it's a fool's errand. Exactly what the

Lord had said took place. Not one of them was harmed. He would have been happy to see not only his own people affected, but as long as the

Hebrews were disaffected, too, he could have some comfort in that. How tragic and yet true.

It's a it's a banner of his arrogance. And this arrogance is not only costing him personally, but it's costing the people of his kingdom.

A political leader in rebellion against God affects the people that are under the right authority of that leader.

There's really no way around this. Whatever systems of leadership we devise, there is no way around this.

It's the just judgment of God taking place in history. One political leader in rebellion against God affects the people under his authority.

One political leader who is righteous before God also affects the people under his authority.

Proverbs 29, too, says when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice. But when a wicked man rules, the people groan.

Have you heard much rejoicing lately? And the wicked man here continues to rule.

The heart affair we read became hard. He did not let the people go. So Moses told

Pharaoh the Israelites livestock would be spared, and Pharaoh believed it enough to send and confirm.

But even when it was confirmed, even when it was clear that God's words were absolutely true, once again,

Pharaoh refused to repent. If we go to Proverbs 29 and just go back a verse, it says, he who is often rebuked, but hardens his neck, stiffens his neck, will suddenly be destroyed in that without remedy.

A very sovereign preservation. That's our focus. A very severe pestilence upon Pharaoh and his people, but a very sovereign preservation of God's own.

And that's the great truth. I want to keep putting before us an application this morning. God is able to preserve his people.

God is able to preserve his own. It's a recurring theme we see throughout Scripture.

God's people constantly being under threat, constantly finding their way in danger, in trouble, whether by external threats or internal corruption.

God's people often being on the very brink of ruin. If it had not been for the Lord's preservation,

God's people would have been ruined. That's a constant theme, whether old or new.

That's a constant theme, a thread that runs the gamut from Genesis to Revelation. If it had not been for the

Lord's preservation, God's people would have been lost and ruined.

When the people come out of Egypt and make their way into the land,

Joshua reminds them in Joshua 24, verse 17, the Lord, our God, is he who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage, who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us all the way that we went among all the people that we passed.

He's rightly understanding. It's the Lord who preserved us, the Lord who took us up, brought us out and the

Lord who preserved us on our way. God is able to preserve his people. Trouble springs upward, as we'll see.

Trouble is going to spring upward for the Israelites when we get to chapters 14 and 15.

And there the imagery is the water springing up. As Pharaoh presses, remember,

Egypt is the watery grave, the abode of death bordered by waters. And so water becomes more emblematic of trouble, of devastation, of death and threat.

It had already been that in the ancient Near Eastern mind, but the Hebrew scriptures only reinforce it.

Psalm 69, save me, O God, the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire.

There is no standing. I've come into deep waters where the floods overflow me. You see the image of water filling up.

There was a deleted scene from, you know, all the Ocean Gate stuff from last week with the

Titanic exploration vessel that imploded. And unfortunately, those those lives were lost.

And so people have been talking about the irony of that, you know, this sort of tragedy at the very tragedy of Titanic.

And there was some clips being put out of recreations of what it would have been like to be in some of the rooms of the

Titanic as was filling up with water and just how fast that water was bursting through the doors and the corridors and filling up the rooms.

You would have perhaps 20, 30 seconds to react. Try to figure out how you're going to make your way past floating furniture.

Try to figure out what orientation is up or down or left or right. How are you going to escape this ship as it sinks into the deep?

That's the image. It's a sudden life threatening overflowing of water. You remember many years ago, the

Japanese tsunami, and they had the footage of the water rolling over the streets in the cityscape, the sudden flood, symbolic of hopeless, desperate despair.

And that's what trouble feels like. That's what pressure and trial feels like. Such a great image.

Your life becomes flooded. Panicked, pressured. It's not so much the gradual submersion, but it's like getting slammed by some unexpected flood in the middle of the night.

And of course, David in Psalm 29, in a very different psalm, he expresses the Lord's power over such trouble, over such trials.

He expresses in these words how God is able to preserve his own. Give unto the Lord, you mighty ones.

Give unto the Lord glory and strength. Worship the Lord in the beauty of his holiness. The voice of the

Lord is over the waters. This is not a sweet hymn over flowing streams.

This is saying God is more powerful than the trials and troubles and difficulties of life.

God's voice is over the waters. Is the roar of the flood filling your heart with dread and terror?

Lord, we drown. Don't you care? And what does David say? The Lord's voice is over the roaring of the water.

The God of glory thunders. The Lord is over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful.

The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. David was someone who knew many floods in his life.

Many waves of threat, of devastation and despair. And he found as a truth in his own life, in his walk with the

Lord, that the Lord's voice was over many waters. That was a voice that kept

David walking closely to the Lord. Whether those troubles came externally from enemies like the

Philistines or enemies within his own household like Absalom or enemies like his own flesh when he killed

Uriah the Hittite and went into Bathsheba or when he took the census and God's anger rose against him, whether the enemy was without or within, he had found as a truth throughout his whole long life, the voice of the

Lord is over the waters. That is to say, God is able to preserve his own.

We need to be reminded of this, especially in these days where waters begin to sop up our feet and we wonder, are the days coming when they'll rush up to our necks?

We need to be reminded the Lord is able to preserve his own. His voice is over many waters. God not only keeps us from drowning in our trials or being devoured by our enemies, but also from the ultimate enemy, that lion that prowls about seeking whom he may devour from the world, exercise under his influence, instruments of his many snares and by our own flesh, which are excited and drawn astray by the world, exercise through the agency of the devil.

We're likened in scripture to being little birds that are so easily trapped. And when they are trapped, what are they?

What happens to these little birds? Taken out of the snare, taken out of that rope -like cage, they're thrown into the marketplace.

You'd have to cut a penny into pieces. That's how worthless they are, easily caught, worthless, kept in cages, bound up, not even worth a penny, not worth a farthing, not worth a drachma.

But what does God say of the little sparrows that are so easily trapped, so easily ensnared, put in the marketplace of the world as worthless things?

What does God say? My eye is on the sparrow. My eye is on the sparrow.

I'm able to preserve my own. Not one of them, he says, falls to the ground apart from my father.

Not one. Where have we seen that language? Not one. Exodus 9.

Not one. Not one was harmed. Not one was found lost.

Not one was utterly ruined. God able to preserve His own. And how does

God do this? Paul says in the beginning of Ephesians in verse 13, in Him you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also having believed, you were sealed with the

Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of His glory.

So how is God able to preserve His own? Well, we have it without using the word preserve. We have it described here.

And notice that it's a Trinitarian act. It's from the father's will through the accomplishment of the son by the sealing or the presence of the

Holy Spirit. And that word seal, preachers often make a lousy mistake of using our concept of seal.

So you'll get a southern Tennessee preacher saying something like, you know what I did just two weeks ago?

I sealed my back deck. And let me tell you, that's the sealing of the Holy Spirit. No water is getting into that. That's not the seal that Paul is talking about.

When would you use a seal in antiquity? You would use it on a on a will. On something of great significance or importance, and the seal showed that the one who had sent it is true.

It's guaranteed because this has my seal. It has all of my authority, all of all of my integrity backing it.

Here's my own seal, my own name upon it. And God has sealed us in the Holy Spirit.

And we have that word inheritance there. It's already speaking of a will or of a testament being sealed, not with our own efforts, not with our own hopes, but sealed with the

Holy Spirit of promise. That is the description of our salvation. And notice all we do is trust.

All we do is hear the word of truth. And because that grace of God is within us, we respond to that gospel.

And so we believe not of ourselves, but of him. And we're therefore sealed by him in the promise of the

Holy Spirit, awaiting the purchased possession. We're as captive, as passive in this respect of our salvation as the

Israelites were when they were brought up out of the land of Egypt into the land that awaited them. Now, there's all sorts of activity that must attain.

But we begin with what the Lord has done. When God undertakes his work in our lives, he does not begin and then abandon.

He does not preserve us at the gate and then abdicate us once we're through.

He does not preserve us halfway and then say, I've given you more than a fair start, and now you must finish the last 30 years on your own.

The work that he begins is the work that he continues, and it's the work that he continues until the very end.

That is why he has sealed us with the promised spirit. And I am sure of this.

We sang it already. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus.

I'm sure of this, Paul says. Are you sure of this, believer? Are you sure that the work that God has begun in you is the work that God will complete in you?

Paul is saying, because God is the one who has begun it, God is the one who seals it.

God is the one who gives us the spirit of promise. The inheritance is sure. It's a purchased possession and you didn't purchase it.

The price wasn't paid by you. It was paid in blood by the blood of his son. It's already been purchased, paid in full, sealed.

Now we simply await. God has begun, therefore, God will bring it, he says.

Exodus nine. God says what he will do and he will do it. This is how he preserves his own.

We ask the question, if God is able to preserve his own, who who can take us from him?

If God is for us, what could be against us? Who could be against us? What could possibly take us from this preserving grasp of the

God of our grace? And yet we see throughout

Scripture constantly these cascades of assurance. Whether as an exhortation.

Or as a comfort, whether as a take heart, draw near, am

I not like a mother to my people? Could a nursing mother forget her child?

But even I will not forget my child, the Lord says. Or maybe as a rebuke.

Why did you not have faith? Why did you doubt? We often despair like Elijah, we say,

I alone am left. I felt like that at times in my life. All I was recounting this,

Alicia and I just a few days ago on a long drive, we were just talking about when we first met and how different life is because we met and how different it is, you know, 14 years later.

And thinking about the circle of friends and there was a time where I didn't have enough fingers to count how many friends

I had that seemed to love the Lord. And to walk with him and to trust him, to desire him.

And now I can't raise a single finger for those same friends. 14 years later, not one.

And I'm tempted to despair and say, I alone am left. Or like the anxious father, we cry,

Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief. That's really where I'm at. If I'm being honest,

I don't believe. Or like the terrorized 12, we yell, you don't care.

You don't care that we're drowning. How many Israelites would have said the Lord doesn't care that we're in bondage before the very spectacle of judgment was being unleashed on the land of Egypt?

As William Plummer points out, we must be very unbelieving if the

Lord so often gives us assurance of his protection and preservation.

Throughout scripture, we have the constant entreaties to take heart and take up courage and trust the

Lord. We all know the right answer. We all know that God preserves his people, but that doesn't often filter down in a practical way into our daily lives.

So when we encounter trouble, our first thought is not God will preserve us.

Our first thought is I'm ruined. I'm lost. How could this be happening?

I can't believe this is happening. What are we going to do? I thought we just got in the clear. I can't of all times for this to happen or I'm at the end of my rope.

I'm at my wit's end. I can't go a step further. I'm hollowed out, I'm dried up,

I'm empty, I'm weak, I'm through. That's more our daily experience rather than the

Lord is preserving me. The Lord is my help. What shall I fear? Why would

I doubt? Why would I fear? Where does my help come from?

It's the constant question that scripture is putting before God's people. Puts it before the

Israelites and reminds the Israelites after the fact. It puts it before Christians. Where does our help come from?

The answer for those outside of Christ is a cloud of confusing alternatives. Not one of them offers any real help, albeit temporarily.

But nevertheless, they have a thousand and one ways that they try to find help or cope through trials and difficulties, try to make sense of their life experience, try to justify the things that they have done, are doing or hope to do.

Where does our help come from in Christ? There's only one answer if you're a believer. The Lord. Though it may take many ways, many days and many trials to bring us to that conclusion, in the end,

God's people will always say, my help comes from the Lord. If you went to 16th century

Geneva and you were in exile from, say, France, as most of those piling into Switzerland were, and you made it to the big wood doors of St.

Pierre's Cathedral and you opened them in time for the service of worship to begin on the

Lord's Day, you would have heard every service begin with these words. From where does my help come from?

And the people would respond, my help comes from the Lord. Huddled together as families, having been chased out of their homes, out of their provisions, out of their securities, out of their ambitions, huddled as refugees in this cathedral, gathering under a man who, if caught by the

Holy Roman Empire, would be burnt at the stake. Huddled together and they're all saying together in solidarity, our help comes from the

Lord. The Maker of heaven and earth. Our sufficiency is in God alone.

Some trust in chariots, some in horses. Most trust in chariots. Most trust in horses.

Most trust in Bitcoin. Most trust in the hopes of a 2024 election. Most trust in everything but the

Lord. God's people must be those who trust in the Lord. That has actual, practical, concrete transformations to your daily life.

It means you'll react differently to the news feed, differently to what comes across your phone when it buzzes with some new update about the latest abomination in our land.

You ought to develop as a reflex, maybe make this your alert sound instead of a ping, make it my help comes from the

Lord. God alone is able and willing to preserve

His people. Spurgeon says, He that made the world out of nothing can make a joyful Christian even out of you.

I love that. He can turn your mourning into dancing, your despair into confidence.

Therefore, Peter writes, let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to Him in doing good as to a faithful Creator.

How is he faithful? Isn't it interesting that he gives that adjective there? We don't have much of a difference in the main point of 1

Peter 4, 19 if we simply read it this way. Let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to Him in doing good as to their

Creator. That doesn't change the theology of why you should commit your souls to Him in doing good.

He made you. He's the ruler of heaven and earth. You owe Him your life just by virtue of creation.

How much more so by virtue of redemption? Commit your soul to Him in doing good. But what does Peter say as to a faithful Creator?

And faithfulness always in the Old Testament jargon is a comment on God preserving

His covenant promise. What is God's faithfulness? It is His covenantal faithfulness.

It is His loving kindness. It's that word hesed in Hebrew. Loving kindness, covenant faithfulness.

It's His ability to preserve His people according to His promise. And Peter's reminding in not so many words.

He has not changed. He is that God able to preserve His people, able to save them to the uttermost if they've come to Him through Christ.

Psalm 121, verse 7. The Lord shall preserve you from all evil. He shall preserve your soul.

Soul, Hebrew nefesh, meaning more than just some vague, mystical disembodiment.

It's speaking of your whole life, the very center of your life, the most essential, the most utter core being of yourself.

He's able to preserve your soul. That means He's concerned about your whole life, the very core of your being.

He numbers the hair upon your head. Do you approach Him that way devotionally?

Do you come to Him as someone who's trying to be more loyal, trying to be more obedient?

You doubt His care for you, but you try to trust in His promises. And you just hope you're sort of scraping by.

Lord, I know there's a lot of hay, rubble, and straw that's going to be burnt up. I hope there's just that little bit of gold, like when you break out the catalytic converter, and you melt it down, and you get that little splinter of platinum.

I hope there's something of that for me, Lord. I just want to know that you find some value in me. And He's numbering the very hair on your head because He's preserving every fiber of your being according to His faithful purpose.

He's concerned for my whole life. He's concerned for my being, my walk, the things that I face, the effect they'll have on me, the choices

I will make, the way I'll use the resources He's given, the way I'll think about my time and my relationships.

He has utmost concern for every aspect of my life. It's why

He made me. It's why He set me apart. It's why He called me. It's why He sent His Son to shed that blood for my soul.

And so, I will never be abandoned if I've trusted in Christ, my

Savior. I was watching this week a video of, do you remember some years ago, there was a video from ISIS on a beach, and there were 21

Christians in orange jumpsuits with dark cloths over their head, and all of the

ISIS henchmen there with swords at their ready, and as they were making this sort of propaganda video of what happens to these

Christians, these who refuse to turn to Allah, refuse to deny

Christ. And then, at a moment's notice, how all of them were beheaded on the beach.

And it's funny, that was years ago, but I only saw the video this week of interviews with the wives, some of the wives of these men, who found out about their husband's martyrdom in the same way and at the same time almost everyone else did through that video.

In the interview, some of them happened within a week, two weeks, some months, some even years after. And the thing that struck me, there was one that I watched, and the whole time,

I think it was a secular reporter, and they were trying to get some reaction, anger, or maybe even just an overwhelming sorrow.

Maybe even implying, you know, there's just endless violence, was this really worth it?

What did this amount to? You know, here you are, a widow, and your children, was this worth it? And so, in the course of the interview, and again,

I don't know if that's the pretext, but it just, her response was so bold. I had to imagine she was somehow insulted at the questions.

The questions were assuming that she was broken and that she couldn't go on, and that Christ, you know, if this is

Christianity, it's not worth it. Because she said, I'm very proud of my faith. I'm a Christian, you know.

And I rejoice. My husband did not deny Christ. I rejoice. And I will be with him.

And we are proud of our faith. We will never deny Christ. God will never abandon us, she said. And I listened to three or four more interviews, and at some point in the interview, they always said that almost as a tag phrase.

God will never abandon us. And I imagine they developed it as a response, maybe to some people, just saying,

God has abandoned you. And it's a defiant confession of faith. God will never abandon us.

Our Lord, our Lord preserves us. And maybe even as a way of comforting one another, as they gathered and shared meals across all these now orphaned children, gathered without their husbands, praying to the

Lord Jesus they had died for. And they were saying to one another as an exhortation, God will never abandon us.

God will never abandon us. And there was this one young wife. She couldn't have been more than 22.

Miriam was her name, Miriam Farhat. She says, we were so sad for the first two days, but then we saw the video.

Think about this. We were devastated for two days, but then we saw the video, and what do you think's coming?

Then we were shattered. Then we couldn't sleep, we couldn't eat. We became paralyzed with grief.

No, what did they say? We were very sad for the first two days. Then we saw the video. And on the video, we saw our husbands calling out to Jesus.

And we immediately felt joy. Don't be sad or cry, she said.

God will preserve us all. He will fulfill His promise even to us. He is the

Father of the orphans and the widows. God will never abandon us. God is able to preserve

His own. The Lord is the Lord who never lets one hair fall from our heads unnoticed, one sparrow fall from the branches apart from His will.

And therefore, not one of His people can be taken from His hand. You might feel utterly alone, utterly devastated by some difficulty or trial or pain or baggage in your life.

And God knows, and God sees. And even still, God will preserve you. There's 99 sheep that gather and confess the name of Jesus.

And there's one that's so disloyal and so backsliding and slow of heart to believe and has so many stains of failure that that one goes astray.

And God doesn't say, well, at least I'm saving most of my people. I'll at least preserve the 90, okay, 93 now.

No, what does He do? He leaves the 99. He goes as far, as wide, as long, at any cost it takes to take back the one that had been straying because He is a

God who preserves His own. Of all that you have given to me,

He says, I will lose none. Though me being a shepherd in that way may cost me my blood, may be the cry of agony at Golgotha, I will not lose one.

Christ does not think of us as a mere, generic, vague flock. He thinks of you as a believer.

He died for you as a believer. You have every right as a child of God to say He loved me and He died for me.

And to live your life in a way that you're testifying He loves you and He died for you.

Why? So that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked world, a perverse generation in whom, among whom, you shine as lights in the world.

I don't always appreciate things that Eugene Peterson has said, but I love from his book a very long obedience in the same direction.

He says this, we speak our words of praise in a world that is hellish.

We sing our songs of victory in a world where things get messy. We live our joy among people who neither understand nor encourage us.

Amen to that? We live our joy among people who neither understand nor encourage us.

They don't understand us and they certainly discourage us. But the content of our lives is

God, not man. We're not scavenging in the dark alleys of the world, poking in its garbage cans for a bare subsistence.

We're traveling in the light toward God who is rich in mercy and strong to save.

It is Christ that defines our lives. It is the help of Christ that we experience, not the hazards that we risk, which shapes our days.

Is that true of you this morning? Would you define your

Christian experience, your walk of faith as traveling in the light toward a

God who is rich in mercy? Or would you say, being honest, it's more like scavenging in dark alleys and poking the garbage cans of the world to try to put together a bare subsistence?

We are begotten again, Peter writes, to a living hope, reserved in heaven for you. We're being reserved even as our inheritance is being reserved.

Why? We are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation.

God is able to save his own. What shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword? No, to him who is able to keep you from stumbling, to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,

Jude says. This is what he is doing. This is what he said he will do, and this is what he will do.

God is able to preserve his own. So as we close, take these thoughts to heart.

God is able to preserve his own. The first question you have to ask is, am

I his? He won't preserve me if I don't belong to him. I need to know that I belong to him.

I have to have come to him and put my faith in him, turned away from whatever is keeping me from him, surrendered my life to him.

I have to give myself to him. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. Pray to him with the prayer of faith.

Confess my sins to him and confess that he is Lord and Savior. He then will preserve me, preserve my soul.

I will know, not hope, but know he has delivered me from bondage, brought me up out of the house of bondage, saved me from my own sins and corruption, brought me into the kingdom of life, the kingdom of the son of his love.

Are you his? That's the first thing. If you're his, know

God is able to preserve his own. And if you doubt that, remember everything we've looked at up to this point.

Look at the whole story of Exodus. See the gospel shining through it. It's not just that God is able. God is willing.

God is more willing to preserve you than you are desirous to be preserved. God is more consistent and more concrete in his preservation of you than you even desire to be preserved.

God is able to preserve you despite you. So don't doubt his preservation. If you belong to him.

And therefore, praise God, that every step of the way, irrevocably, he will never leave, never abandon, never, no, never, no, never forsake.

God will never abandon you. Let's pray. Father, thank you that you change not, and therefore we are not consumed.

Lord, we would have been consumed long ago. We would have been consumed thousands of times since then if you had not undertaken to preserve us.

If you had not first begun a work in our lives and therefore continued that work even to this day with every hope, sure hope, that you will continue the work you've begun even unto that day.

This is all of our hope and stay, Lord. This is our foundation. This is our anchor. It's your unchanging love for us in Christ extended to us and sealed to us by the

Spirit. And so we praise you. We glorify your name.

We pray you'd give us the faith of these widows and orphans. A faith,

Lord, that is defiant to the world's accusations and implications. A faith that is bold to say that you have never abandoned your people and you never will.

A faith that will never deny you, but deny ourselves and deny the world in which we live and deny anything that would hinder us from the calling you've placed on our lives.

Preserve your people, we pray, for our help comes in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.