The Fifth Plague

The Fifth Plague and the Intensifying Judgment on Pharaoh

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.

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 one through three we see a very severe pestilence, and then secondly in verses four through nine we see a very sovereign preservation.

Moses, Pharaoh, and the Threat of Pestilence

So a very severe pestilence and a very sovereign preservation. Exodus chapter nine beginning in verse one. And 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 three. In chapter three 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 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 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 world view 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 twelve 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 impostors.

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 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 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? 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. So 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.

The Lord Makes a Difference for His People

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 promise is.

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 2 ,000 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 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 auctions 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, okay, 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, okay, 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 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, 2 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 and that without remedy. A very sovereign preservation.

The Sovereign Preservation of God's People

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 in 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 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 it 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 and 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. It's 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 the 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 there 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, exercised under his influence, instruments of his many snares, and by our own flesh, which are excited and drawn astray by the world, exercised 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 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 found 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's 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 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 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 9, 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 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 in the womb? 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 and 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 I, 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 and 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. It 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.