The Eighth Plague

Well, this morning we continue on as we begin chapter 10.

We are working our way toward the 10th plague. This morning we look at the 8th plague.

Beginning in v. 1. We'll jump right into it. Now the

Lord said to Moses, Go into Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants, that I may show these signs of Mine before him, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and your son's son, the mighty things

I have done in Egypt, and My signs which I have done among them, that you may know that I am the

Lord. This is now the second time we've read that the Lord has hardened

Pharaoh's heart. Previously, we read that God foretold the hardening.

He said, I will harden Pharaoh's heart. But after that foretelling, we only saw

Pharaoh hardening his own heart until the last chapter, chapter 9, verse 12, was the first time we read that God actually fulfilled what

He foretold and hardened the heart of Pharaoh. As we've said all along, that is the judicial hardening of God.

He has now confirmed Pharaoh in this state where even if reason or his moral compass or some genuine desire for the good of his empire or for the security of his people were to well up, it would quickly be frozen in that hardened state of his own heart.

That is the judgment of God upon the unrepentant heart of this king. The expressed purpose of this hardening is given, and it's twofold.

First, notice, I've hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants that I may show these signs of mine before him.

That's something we've already seen, that Pharaoh would see the signs and know that Yahweh is

God. The second reason, however, is a new reason. That, this is a coordinate explanatory clause, that you may tell in the hearing of your son and your son's son the things that I have done in Egypt.

My signs which I have done among them. Now, it's not only Pharaoh who is to know the

Lord, but also the generations of God's people are to know the Lord in this very way by recounting the mighty things that God has done.

Through these signs, God is giving a testimony of the faith, a foundation for the faithful.

And we cannot miss the repetition here. God announces what He will do, and He does it.

Again, even in this eighth plague, eight times over, God announces what

He's going to do, and the next day, God does it. That is the foundation for the generations of God's people.

A foundation of trusting that what the Lord has promised is what will come to pass.

Therefore, whether it's tomorrow or many centuries from now, they must trust

Yahweh. They must have faith in the sovereign king. We have this phrase here, the mighty things

I have done in Egypt. It's interesting, this verb probably better translated the mockery or the disgrace or the humiliating things

I have done in Egypt. There's a lot of debate about how to translate this rare verb, but it's not the way that mighty things has been used elsewhere in Exodus.

Here is God signaling that He's now putting Egypt to an open shame. He's showing that the wisdom of the wise is now foolishness.

That the howdy and the arrogant among the servants of Pharaoh is in fact nothing but hardness and blindness unto ruin.

The Lord is laying not only the foundation for the faithful, but He's also laying forth

His judgment upon the wicked. All of this is to say these plagues are bigger than Pharaoh.

These plagues, these mighty signs are bigger than Egypt, bigger than the next few generations of the

Israelites. These are of course for all to behold, especially when we come to that climactic plague, the 10th plague, the loss of the firstborn son and with it the

Passover. So of course the plague narrative is much bigger than this particular showdown between Yahweh and Pharaoh.

It's much bigger than this generation of the Israelites, much bigger than this moment in ancient history.

This is something that God is showing forth as a mighty sign for the whole future of human history.

The Passover that portends the gospel, the giving of the perfect Lamb of God. But it doesn't have less to do with Pharaoh for that reason.

With the Passover, with the portent of the gospel, we also have the portent of the kingdom of Satan toppling under the mighty hand of God, the kingdom of God going forth triumphantly, victoriously over the evil empire that keeps

God's people in bondage. Pharaoh remains convinced that he is the divine center of the empire.

As I mentioned last week, I hear it every Sunday afternoon. Be still, Pharaoh speaks.

Imagine growing up with that kind of arrogance. No wonder he's a hardened man. Everyone must be still before Pharaoh.

Everything must bend before the will of Pharaoh. Whatever Pharaoh says is what must come to pass.

Pharaoh understands himself to be the very center of the empire, the greatest empire of the then world.

He thinks that he has the most major role to play in the unfolding of the world's history.

But we see here in this showdown, he's simply a two -bit player on the stage of God's decree.

And the very people that are under Pharaoh's thumb are in fact the major role.

They play the centerpiece of all that is unfolding within the history of the world.

And it's no different today. Tyrants and dictators see themselves as the very meaning of history as history unfolds.

And yet God's people under the thumb of their oppression, under the threat and breath of their persecution, are the actual center stage of this whole unfolding history of the world.

It's no different today. Verse three, Moses and Aaron came into Pharaoh and said this to him.

Thus says the Lord God of the Hebrews, how long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?

Notice again that God gives himself this title, the God of the

Hebrews. It's a showdown of course between the Lord and Pharaoh, but the showdown is for the sake of the people.

And so God is not ashamed to identify with them. Since the showdown is for the sake of the exodus, for the sake of deliverance,

God reminds Pharaoh that he is the God of the Hebrews. And yet this is not a mere theater.

This is a real, real decision on the part of a real flesh and blood man with a real will that God does not do violence to.

I say this as a full throttle Calvinist. I hope you know that by now. Pharaoh is not an erstwhile puppet, almost under the robotic hypnosis of the all controlling

God. No, what we see here is even as God is hardening Pharaoh's heart, there is a real dynamic of Pharaoh being responsible for his sin.

God's sovereignty does not preclude man's responsibility. Even though Pharaoh is dead in trespass and sin, though fallen men can be unresponsive in hardened, blinded, willful sin, that does not excuse them from their responsibility before God.

They are brought unto judgment by their own actions, by their own will, rather than God being charged with their own hardness, with their own judgment.

And so we see that here in a very genuine question. How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?

Does that surprise you that the God who's hardening Pharaoh is asking this question of Pharaoh?

Doesn't that assume something of the responsibility of Pharaoh? That even now, you're hardening yourself in such a way that you must give answer?

This really is Pharaoh's refusal. His hardening is no excuse.

As we've seen from chapter 4 all the way forward, Pharaoh has hardened himself against the

Lord. I hope you see, I hope I've made this point clear over the weeks. The Lord's sovereignty does not take away man's responsibility.

In fact, the Lord's sovereignty establishes man's responsibility. And so this becomes a very important question, not only for Pharaoh, but for men and women and boys and girls this morning.

How long will you refuse to humble yourself before the Lord? That's not, mind you, just a statement for unbelievers to hear.

Oh yeah, I know a few Pharaohs that need to hear that question. God brings up the same question when

He's addressing His own people, for example, in Deuteronomy 8. In Deuteronomy 8, we read, you shall remember that the

Lord your God led you all this way, these 40 years in the wilderness to humble you, to test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep

His commandments or not. So He humbled you. Allowed you to hunger, but fed you with manna, which you did not know, not even your fathers knew, that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Your garments didn't wear out on you, nor did your feet swell all these 40 years that you should know in your heart as a man chastens his son, so the

Lord your God chastens you. So what is God essentially saying to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 8? How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?

Look at the provision, look at the deliverance, look even at the chastisement that shows us we belong to Him as sons, for if we were not sons of the

Lord God, we would not be chastised. A son is scourged by the father who loves him.

Well, Pharaoh certainly is chastised by God, and yet Pharaoh has no love for God.

And so God gives Pharaoh this condition. Let my people go that they may serve me. That's the constant refrain of all of these chapters.

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.

Same word for earth as land. Most likely land, I think, would be a better fit here. They will cover the land.

And they shall eat the residue of what is left, what remains to you from the hail. They shall eat of every tree which grows up for you out of the field.

So if any farmers among the Egyptians were wiping their foreheads and saying, phew, at least we have a few crops left after all of the hail and thunder and fire that fell from the sky, hey, now here will come the locusts to devour every last bit of green in the fields.

It's a very real threat, and this threat was not unknown to the ancient Egyptians. In fact, one of their main idols, their false god,

Serapis, was seen as a protector of the crops against locusts. Often, Serapis depicted with the head of a locust.

Pretty gnarly looking statue to fall down before and worship. Of course, locusts in the ancient world, especially coming up from the

South Sudan, would have been an existential threat to all of the agrarian wealth of the

Egyptian empire. That begs the question, what is a locust? Something we don't have here in North America.

What is a locust? Well, it's a grasshopper. Isn't it funny, there's a landscaping company in Hubbardston called

Grasshopper Landscaping. Good thing it's not locust landscaping. That wouldn't be a very good name for a landscaper.

What happened to my shrubs, my grass? You left nothing. What is a locust?

It's a specialized grasshopper. And it's specialized in that it has something zoologists call it, read a lot about locusts this week.

Something that zoologists call phenotypical plasticity. Which means that often, grasshoppers like to be left alone.

They emit a scent and they often kind of carve out their own little territory or area to eat.

And this is true of all grasshoppers including locusts. But when the conditions and particularly the moisture is just right, this phenomenon develops where all of a sudden they become attracted to each other and become a swarm.

A mature locust is about the length of a finger. You can hold out your index finger in front of you.

Two to three inches. Imagine now this room filled about three feet high with locusts all flying about and you can't move your knees or step without crunching on them.

A teeming swarm of green and brown and orange goo as you crunch your way toward the lunch table.

That's what the Egyptians experienced. Mature locust can eat its body weight and food daily which means this is an absolute decimation of the

Egyptian empire. It's still a great threat today especially in areas of Africa or the

Middle East where subsistence farming takes place. I was reading an article of all places on NPR, a 2020 article, the title caught my eye.

Locusts, a plague of biblical proportion. Of course they mean that tongue in cheek. They don't recognize that God is still the

God of the locusts. And this is something they quoted of an outbreak in Kenya from 2020.

The swarms are gargantuan masses of tens of billions of flying bugs.

They range anywhere from a square third of a mile to 100 square miles. With 40 million to 80 million locusts packed into each half square mile.

They bulldoze pasture lands in dark clouds the size of football fields and small cities.

In Northern Kenya one swarm was reported to be 25 miles long by 37 miles wide.

It would blanket the city of Paris 24 times over.

And that is a mild locust swarm compared to Exodus chapter 10.

They shall fill your houses, the houses of all your servants, the houses of all the

Egyptians which neither your fathers nor your father's fathers have ever seen. So you

Israelites go tell your sons and your sons' sons what God is doing because the Egyptians' fathers and their father's fathers have never seen anything like it.

Remember what we have talked about with these plagues. God brings forth judgment in the form of decreation.

In creation all is brought into proportion and order with man exercising dominion over all of the animal life.

In judgment God reverses that. Rather than man exercising dominion over creation, creation now begins to pressure and press upon man's dominion.

By having one creature out of place, out of proportion, it brings creation into a state of collapse.

Proverbs 3, 9, and 10. Honor the Lord with your possessions, with the first fruits of all your increase so that your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats overflow with new wine.

The ancient Egyptians do not honor the Lord God and so rather than their barns being filled with harvests, their barns and their houses are being filled with locusts.

Verse six, Moses turned and went out from Pharaoh. I love that.

Sort of a mic drop moment. Picture Moses sort of smirking as he's writing that line about himself.

Moses turned and went out from Pharaoh. What happened to the man who said, I can't speak.

I stutter. Send someone else to speak for me. I can't go into Pharaoh. Look at him now.

Look at him walk in, say this is what God is doing if you don't let the people go and then completely turn around and disregard him.

No more curtsy before the French king with all the grace. Have you ever seen that miniseries

John Adams when he goes before George III and there's all of this protocol about how he must appear before the king.

You can never turn your back to the king. He has to make several attempts to take steps back and then continue to bow until he's finally let out of the presence of the

English king. Not so with Moses. He said what the Lord God has said and he turns his back to the divine ruler of the

Egyptian empire. Pharaoh's heart had been hardening all along, but you know what was happening to Moses' heart?

It was softening. It was softening as it was yielding to the Word of God, growing in trust, in confidence that whatever

God has said will come to pass and therefore, whatever threats or troubles may appear on the horizon,

God rules over the storms yet. Verse seven,

Pharaoh's servants said to him, how long shall this man be a snare to us?

Let the men go that they may serve the Lord their God. Do you not yet know that Egypt is destroyed?

The servants of Pharaoh are in a unfortunate position. They're trying to reason with a man who's bent on destroying his own empire and himself along with it, but we shouldn't feel too bad for them.

As we read at the beginning of chapter 10, God was hardening Pharaoh's heart as well as his servants.

We saw the same thing in chapter nine. When Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned again and hardened his heart and his servants did also.

So the servants hardened their hearts and here God confirms them judicially.

He also hardens their heart. This privy council wants to blame everything on Moses.

How long shall this man be a snare to us? They'd like to blame it all on Moses.

What they have yet to grasp is that it's not the man Moses, but the God of the man

Moses. It's the Lord Yahweh. In fact, the question of Pharaoh's servants is echoing the very question of Moses.

Moses had asked, how long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? And here the servants say, how long will this man be a snare to us?

The solution they provide, which Pharaoh puts to use, is let the men go. Egypt is being destroyed already.

Fulfilling Psalm 107 .34, fruitful land becomes a salt waste because of the wickedness of those who dwell within it.

I wonder if the United States of America will fulfill Psalm 107, verse 34. A fruitful land becoming a salt waste because of the wickedness of those who dwell within it.

Moses and Aaron are brought again to Pharaoh and he says to them, go, serve the Lord your God.

And then he asks this rhetorical question. You think we just finally broke his will? Go, get out of my land, but before you can even react to that, who are the ones that are going?

He can't let go of the control. He must have the final exertion of his will. Moses says, we will go.

Our young, our old, with our sons and our daughters, with our flocks and our herds. If there's anything that's ever belonged to an

Israelite that's coming with us, there will be not even a piece of cloth or a crumb of bread that had anything to do with my people that will be left behind.

That's who's going. Why? We must hold a feast to the

Lord. The Lord takes all precedence. The Lord's honor and glory, the

Lord's worship takes all precedence from all of God's people. Notice it's not, well, that's fair enough.

The men are really directly responsible. They're the most active, engaged participants when it comes to the worship of Yahweh, so fair trade.

The ladies would probably be bored just sitting in their chairs, twiddling their thumbs, thinking about the rest of the day.

You might as well just let the men go. No, no, no. Men and women have different roles to play in corporate worship, but all are called to bring worship to God.

The concession is given and it's immediately withheld, and with it we have this anti -blessing, this pseudo -blessing.

Verse 10, he says to them, the Lord had better be with you when

I let you and your little ones go. Beware, for evil is ahead of you. Not so.

Go now, you who are men, and serve the Lord, for that is what you desired. And they were driven out from Pharaoh's presence.

Now the sense of what he means is debated. Some would paraphrase it this way. The Lord will certainly need to be with you if I let you take your little ones.

I can see through your evil, so the trouble or the evil is that which

Moses is devising. That seems unlikely. That doesn't seem something that Pharaoh would say, beware.

Rather, this seems to be a threat. Notice how it begins.

This is a good translation. The Lord had better be with you. Does that sound like some, you know,

I can see through your plan? No, it sounds like a threat. The Lord had better be with you. Evil is ahead of you.

And what's the evil? The evil that I will do if you don't obey me. He's essentially pressing

Moses into a position for compromise. But Moses refuses. It seems he wants to keep the women and the children because he recognizes this would require the men to return.

He ultimately wants to possess them. He will not let God's people go. That's the one demand that he continues to resist.

But Moses will not bend. He will not compromise. That doesn't say, well, the men, that's enough. He says, no, even the flocks and the herds must come.

God's worship is unqualified and all -consuming. Of course, what

Pharaoh wants is what many of us want. We want to give in to God without fully submitting to him.

We find some way to bargain. We think somehow we're offering something that God needs or requires, though the cattle of a thousand hills belong to him.

Do I drink the blood of bulls and goats? Why do you come give offerings to me as though I needed them?

But often we do that. Lord, I promise I'll clean up my act. I know you really need me to.

If you just work this out in my life, if you just grant this to me. We essentially are like Pharaoh and we think in these ways or pray in these ways,

God forbid. And so the plague comes. What of Pharaoh's threat?

No response. Moses is unconcerned. He raises his hands to the heaven and the plague begins to fall.

Verse 13, Moses stretched out his rod over the land of Egypt and the Lord brought an east wind. We'll see the east wind again in chapter 14.

When it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts and the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, rested on all the territory of Egypt.

And they were very severe. The whole land we read is darkened by them. You picture that?

So many bugs, but the land is darkened. Pharaoh is speaking now to his privy council and they're crawling through his tunic, crawling in and out of all the cupboards and crevices of the palace halls and throughout the entire land of Egypt.

This is a foreshadowing of the next plague, which is darkness. And it's also likely a foreshadowing of when the west wind sends the locusts into the sea.

Well, how is locusts used elsewhere in the Old Testament? It's used to describe an invading army. Soldiers.

So here we have a foreshadowing of the plague of darkness and a foreshadowing of God delivering His people by sending the

Egyptian army into the sea. The devastation is immense.

Psalm 105 .33 says, He struck their vines, their fig trees, splintered the trees of their territory, that was the hail.

He spoke and locusts came, young locusts. That means hungry locusts. Some of you have young locusts at home, you can relate.

Therefore, we read, He spoke and locusts came, young locusts without number, ate all the vegetation in their land and devoured the fruits of their ground.

There must have been some Egyptians that had toiled for many months to get the seeds sown and the irrigation systems working, the canals dug out.

They had made room in their barns. They were anticipating a good harvest and all of it is entirely lost.

Psalm 78 says, He gave their labor to the locusts. All those months of sweat and toil, where does it go?

To the locusts. That's the judgment of God. Everything you work for amounts to nothing.

So Pharaoh finds the judgment so severe, the effect is immediate.

He calls for Moses and Aaron in haste. He screams for them to come. I have sinned against the

Lord your God and against you. For someone who refuses to humble himself, this is a foot in the right direction.

He sinned against the Lord and against Moses and Aaron. This sounds a lot like David in Psalm 51.

Against you and you only have I sinned, O Lord my God. Now therefore, please, he says, forgive my sin.

Even better, this is a new development in Pharaoh's repentance. Entreat the Lord your

God, he says, that he may take away from me this death only. Now the repentance is falling apart.

Now we see that it's actually a way of averting the consequence of his sin. He doesn't even feel bad about the previous seven times he was hard -hearted toward the

Lord and refused to bend. He only wants this consequence to be taken away. Forgive this death only.

We've seen feigned repentance before, but now we see shallow repentance and it springs only from a desire to have the mess cleaned up.

And as we find so often, Moses immediately entreats the

Lord and the Lord immediately removes the plague all so that Pharaoh returns to the hardness of his own heart.

We read the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart and he did not let the children of Israel go. I love what the

Scottish commentator John Urquhart has to say about this tragic outcome in verse 20.

He says, as Christians without the outward blessing, we need inward grace.

If we wait upon the Lord, he will increase fear and zeal and tenderness of heart.

But if we keep far from him, we are reserving ourselves only for a heavy punishment.

What does it look like to keep far from the Lord? Urquhart goes on to say, instead of forsaking evil, we build upon God's readiness to forgive and repentance itself becomes impossible because of our insincerity.

And so he asks rhetorically, have we received no warnings which we've forgotten? Have we made no vows yet to be fulfilled?

May the Lord keep us near to him. So that's the passage.

What about application? I'd like to draw our attention back to verse seven. Verse seven stood out to me as something that's worth elaborating by way of application.

We read, Pharaoh's servants said to him, how long shall this man be a snare to us?

Let the men go that they may serve the Lord their God. So notice the contrast we have.

We have the servants of Pharaoh and the servants of God. Those who serve

Pharaoh say, these men of God, these servants of God are a snare to us.

When in fact, the servants of Pharaoh are the ones who are snaring the servants of God.

They literally have trapped God's people in the land of Egypt in the brutality of slavery.

So three points of application I would draw from verse seven in the time we have left. We'll take it as a one long sentence in three points.

So first, serving the Lord will make us a snare. Serving the

Lord will make us a snare. Secondly, therefore we must serve the

Lord as a snare. We must serve the Lord as a snare.

Third, but ultimately we shall never be put to shame. We shall never be put to shame.

So serving the Lord will make us a snare. And so we must serve the Lord as a snare, but ultimately we will never be put to shame.

So first, serving the Lord will make us a snare. To serve the Lord is to refuse to go along with the ways and the will of the world.

That is essentially what's taking place every time Moses and Aaron stand before Pharaoh.

They refuse to bend to the will of Pharaoh. They refuse to capitulate to the ways of the

Egyptian empire. They remain true to the revelation of God. That is what it looks like to serve the

Lord. And yet serving the Lord makes us a snare. When we refuse to follow the ways of the world, when we refuse to carry out the will of the world, we will be vilified.

And that's what we see in verse seven. How much longer will this man be a snare to us?

Why is he a snare in the eyes of Pharaoh's servants? Because he refuses to follow the will of Pharaoh.

He only follows the will of God. By the way, I mentioned this to some people on Wednesday.

Best definition I've ever heard of what the Bible means by the world. We use that so often.

It's part of our inherited Christianese. Say, oh brother, walk not according to the world. Or, you know,

I used to be a very worldly man before the Lord found me. I still am very worldly. Well, what does it mean to be worldly?

David Wells has a great definition. He says, the Bible defines the world as that which makes righteousness look strange.

That's a great definition. The Bible defines the world as that which makes righteousness look strange.

When you live in such a way that you make God's will, God's righteous ways look strange, you will be at first held in suspicion and at last vilified.

In 1987, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen co -wrote The Overhauling of Straight America.

And they laid out within that seminal article, which became a book, a multi -phase strategy.

First, they said, talk about homosexuality as loudly and as often as possible because almost any behavior begins to look normal if you're exposed to enough of it.

The way to benumb raw sensitivity about homosexuality is to have a lot of people talk a great deal about this subject in a neutral or at least supportive way.

Second, portray homosexuals as victims, not as aggressive challengers.

Third, give their protectors a righteous cause. They clarify, our campaign should instead take anti -discrimination as its theme.

Fourth, make them look good. That is, the campaign should paint them as superior pillars of our society.

Fifth, make those who go against them look bad. It will be time to get tough with any remaining opponents.

To be blunt, they must be vilified. We intend to make anti -homosexuals look so nasty that average

Americans will want to dissociate themselves from such types. The public should be shown images of ranting homophobes whose secondary traits and beliefs disgust middle

America. Show them as bigoted southern ministers drooling with hysterical hatred.

1987, how successful has that strategy been in 2023? Now it's even transcended homosexuality, hasn't it?

I think we're on our way to normalizing pedophilia and God knows what else. But notice that fifth and final move, vilification.

Enforcing to people who say it's not for me the classic Seinfeld bit, not that there's anything wrong with that.

I'm just a middle American. Conservative family values, you see. But the bedroom is other people's business.

It's not for me to decide. And so I want to dissociate from any of that awful, tyrannical rhetoric that comes out from the

Christian right. You know those often awful Christian nationalists. Vilification is nothing new.

Daniel 6 .4, the governors in Satrap sought to find some charge against Daniel concerning the kingdom.

John 15, 18 and following. If the world hates you, Jesus says, you know that it hated me before it hated you.

If you were of the world, the world would love its own. The world loves its own. Yet, because you are not of the world, because you do not do those things which make righteousness look strange,

I chose you out of the world. Therefore, the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you.

No servant is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, so they will persecute you. Jesus' words, they come as a shock, a disappointment to us.

More than likely, if you're sitting here this morning, deep down in the secret recess of your heart, you hope there's some way by which you exclusively can somehow be loved by God and love

God and also be loved by the world. Can't you have the best of both? Why can't we all be friends?

Isn't it possible for me to love God and stand on my face and still be accepted and embraced by the world?

Who wants to be Ned Flanders? Who wants to be the butt of every joke? Who wants to be the pariah in the break room?

The holy roller that can't relate to anyone? The dark cloud in a bright sky?

The one who weeps instead of parties? Who wants to adopt that way of life?

Well, to think or act otherwise is essentially saying we want the servant to be greater than the master.

In fact, we want the servant to be nothing like the master. Jesus is using the language of servant -master to saying if you're actually serving me, this will be the outcome.

Moses used to be respected in the court of Pharaoh. Moses used to hold his head up high.

He was dignified. He had the glory of a position within the palace. But once he started following the will of God, he became persona non grata, unwanted, hated, vilified.

Why is this man a snare to us? And if you follow the master as his servant, you also will become a snare.

Now, of course, you don't go out of your way to be a snare. Let what is obnoxious about you be

Christian virtue rather than your own shortcomings, your own flaws. Someone can't rage about and break things and steal and undermine and cheat and say, yeah, they're all against me because I'm a

Christian. No, they're against you because you're just a miserable, terrible person.

If they're against us, let it be because we're like our master. Of course, we also seek to have peace among all.

We want to be well regarded by those outside. 1 Timothy 3, 7. That means people should see a life of integrity and a moral compass.

And at least for some, by God's common grace, they will approve of it, but not in such a way that these words will never come to pass.

You will be hated by all for my name's sake. We think that somehow there's something new in our own day as Western civilization is beginning to decline and eclipse.

And we think, well, if only we could go back to the days of the Puritans when they were held high in regard by society.

My friends, read more about history. Read any of the centuries of church history.

This was never the case. George Whitefield was not applauded. They threw garbage and pieces of dead animals at him when he preached in some places.

God's servants have always been hated and vilified. Unbelievers will alienate us.

Unbelievers will make straw men, make false, baseless accusations. They will vilify us all at times because we're seeking to follow the

Master. And in these ways, we become a snare to them. A snare to their own sense of what is right and good.

A snare to their own guilty conscience. A snare to their vision of how to put the world to right. That the

Babelian spirit is alive and well. The Bible says that this is the state of affairs in which we live.

And so we seek to be at peace with all. And yet in seeking to be at peace with all, we do not desire, we ought not to desire to be friends with the world.

What does James 4 .4 says? To be friends with the world is to be an enemy of God. I read this week, found a post on Quora and the title was a question.

Why are Christians hated? Why are Christians hated? Let me read you a few of the responses.

People don't hate Christians. People hate the hypocrisy of the people that profess to be

Christian, but who act in very unchristlike ways. Another response.

Are you one of those annoying Christians who constantly forces the fact of your

Christianity on people? I'm a Christian and even I find those people annoying.

And you're also so homophobic and that gets on people's nerves too. There's nothing wrong about spreading the gospel, but if you do it in a way that makes people want to hate you, then you need to change your approach.

I'm British and as such, I probably know more Christians than I'm aware of because religion here is pretty low key and it's never brought up in general conversation.

I do not hate Christians from the UK or even from Europe in general because they don't scream their nonsense at me, but the

USA is out of step with the rest of the civilized world. Christians are okay, but in the

USA, most so -called Christians are dangerous, horrible freaks. And then last.

In particular, most modern Christianity in the US and to some extent in areas influenced by the

US has been taken over by some insane Victorian sect which promotes biblical literalism.

That's very much a modern idea, by the way. People in the past always knew that the Bible was metaphor. They deny science and they have a vitriolic hatred for any group that doesn't conform.

Ooh, pot calling the kettle black. In its most extreme form, it is violently opposed to everything that Jesus himself stood for.

But unfortunately, they have presence and they've managed to convince the non -Christian world that it is they and not the gentle vicars who run soup kitchens who are the authentic face of Christianity.

So you get the picture, don't you? We don't hate Christians. We just hate

Christians. We don't mind you as long as you don't spread the gospel.

You don't try to point out to people the ways that they're living in defiance against God. You just run soup kitchens and stay out of our way, out of our project, out of our vision, out of our religion.

But we don't hate Christians. There's nothing new under the sun. This is what

Christians have faced from the very beginning. I was reading this week a book by Christopher Hall called Living Wisely with the

Church Fathers, recounting major emphases from the early church.

And he said this, the Christian community was not only a threat to Roman social order and economic stability,

Christians were also guilty of the crime of contumacia, that is obstinacy.

They were stubborn, unwilling to yield, unwilling to be reasonable. Pliny, the

Roman senator writes to the emperor Trajan, whatever the nature of their admission, I'm convinced that their stubbornness, their obstinacy ought not to go unpunished.

And so we find this charge, not only applied to the early Christians, but even to the martyrs who were put to death.

This is what Pliny writes, since they remained unbending, obstinate, I have condemned them.

What does it take for Christians to be embraced by the world?

For as Jesus says, the world to love its own. What does it take for Moses to no longer be a snare to the court of Pharaoh?

Just a little compromise. Can't you bend just a little? Can't you just stay silent and just go in a corner, just keep your religion to yourself?

Why can't you bend? Don't you see you're threatening the very progress of our society? Sacrificing a pinch of incense on a pagan altar wasn't just a religious act, it was a political act.

And it was only the Christians that refused to perform it. This is what

Hall writes, it was their stubborn exclusivity that endangered the others. If only they could show some tolerance, there's the key word, they might well be able to keep their faith without persecution.

Just show some tolerance, you bigots, and then we'll let you have your faith in your private quarters.

Not only, however, did Christians bring the offense by refusing to sacrifice, they also, in a very open way, broke with society, repudiating any religious obligations in the public square because of their baptismal pledge to renounce

Satan. Therefore, Christians were hated by all because they were the scapegoat when anything went wrong.

Brian Litvin, in a different book, describes how the Romans would have viewed the ancient Christians.

Such individuals were like cancer cells on the face of a religious society. Christianity was a superstition in the true

Roman sense of the term, not just something to mock as ignorant, but a set of beliefs so antisocial it could only lead to deadly repercussions.

Serving the Lord will make us a snare. So, we must serve the

Lord as that snare. We must serve the Lord in this way.

We must not serve the Lord in the compromised ways that the enemies of the

Lord convince us are right, true, and good. We must serve the Lord as He has called us to serve

Him, remembering no servant is greater than his master. It is therefore to be expected that we will be mocked and rejected by a world of unbelievers because Jesus Christ was mocked and rejected and crucified by a world of unbelievers.

Now, often people can hate you and seek to undermine you just because you're living by principles. People often find men and women of integrity to be obnoxious, to be odious.

Strong beliefs, strong commitments that usually brings a strong response. Sit down, you think you're so high and mighty, you think you're so much better than everyone else.

That's usually the very least of what we'll get as Christians. You're just not honest, you're a hypocrite.

Where you show confidence, they feel more insecure and therefore more angry. Your contentment makes them feel jealous, maybe even confused.

Sometimes people will lash out at you just because they don't like the reflection that you bring upon them.

But if we never expect to have such enemies and we spend our entire lives trying to dance on eggshells in such a way that we never gain any opposition, we'll never be able to accept it for what it is and do good to them anyway.

And that's really the key here. Don't align yourself, as my brother was reminding me yesterday, with political conservatives that have a one millimeter thin glaze of Christianity over their politics.

Because the one thing they cannot do is do the very thing that Christians must do, which is pray for those who persecute them, be merciful and gracious to those who spitefully use them, do good to those who do evil.

Jesus knows the world's hostility. He experiences the mockery and the rejection and He gives this command.

Love your enemies and do good. Lend without expecting anything in return and your reward will be great.

You will be sons of the Most High for He is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful as your

Father in heaven is merciful. Do you want to be like God? Do you want to be like the Lord Christ?

Do good to those who hate you. Be kind to those who mock you.

Go out of your way to bless those who revile you. As Charles Spurgeon quipped, kindness is our revenge.

Kindness is our revenge. We cannot say we're being persecuted like our

Master, seeking to serve Him and follow His will if there's anything that comes from hate or returning an eye for an eye in our demeanor.

Jesus never came full of hate. Jesus came full of grace and truth. What does Philippians 2 say?

Who when reviled, reviled not. Did not return the hatred and the rejection and scorn as hatred, rejection and scorn.

At times, often just being reduced to being silent in the face of outlandish blasphemy.

And that's how we are to walk. It makes us lean more on each other.

Just like the ancient church, these little holy huddles have greater significance than we can imagine.

Of course, living in God's ways and not the ways of the world makes righteousness look strange.

So you must be integrated into a community that normalizes righteousness and makes sinful, godless ways of living look strange.

You must be a part of a body. You must have close relationships with believers which often becomes the flip side, the sort of teeter -totter of losing close relationships with unbelievers.

It's sad to say, but it's a truism. One indication that you are maturing in your

Christian walk is you slowly but surely lose close relationships with unbelievers.

It's not intentional. It's not something you purpose to do. It's even something you ought to lament, but it's something that must happen.

If your values and the things you hold in common are parallel and equal to those who have no regard for Christ, you are not a mature

Christian. You are not growing in grace. Paul says it so plainly.

Bad company corrupts good morals. I was in a seminary classroom some years ago and made some small talk with a young,

I want to say brother, but I don't know, friend from South Korea. And as we were talking about some things related to this, he was recoiling.

And he said, you know, I have many friends in South Korea. They're atheists. You know, one of them is bisexual and so on.

And we just, we hang out and we really understand each other and we just, I think we'd be a real model to people of how we can just get along and have great friendship and so on.

It kind of struck me as odd that he was more excited about that and didn't have much to say about concern for their souls.

And so I asked him questions about him. You feel called to ministry? Why are you coming to seminary?

He said, well, my father's a megachurch pastor, you know, and he basically sent me here, you know, and so I have to kind of go through the training because he wants me to be on staff.

And it was very clear that this young man had nothing of an influence of grace in his life. It was simply following in the path laid out for him by the pressure of his parents.

And he felt more intact with a group of unbelievers than anything related to the kingdom of Christ.

It's quite common for followers of Jesus to lose their friends for what

Jesus describes as the sword coming down through the household. Mother against daughter, father against son, sibling against sibling, so often that is the effect of the gospel.

To a certain measure, therefore, the New Testament always presumes one of the ways you develop a witness to the gospel is by doing the one another's with fellow believers.

Everything is oriented first and foremost to the body of Christ because there's so little contact to those outside.

You cannot be best friends with someone who does not love the Lord Christ, not for any length of time. And so it's the selfless love for each other that becomes the salt, the light, the witness, the testimony, the attractant, the perfume of life to those who are perishing.

Can I, I'll be quick with this, but I want to read this very quickly. It's an excerpt from a prayer letter that the

Western China Presbytery sent on behalf of the early reign church. You mentioned months ago

Wang Yi, who's still under arrest and in confinement in China as a result of preaching the gospel in the kingdom of Christ.

And the presbytery of which his church was a founding church, sent this circular letter to all the member churches.

I'm just gonna read a few excerpts. We appeal to the churches of God to join in the spiritual battle.

This was in 2018 after the church had been raided and almost all of the elders had been dragged away.

Some under house arrest, others confined and not heard of. And there was already a plan into place about who among the remnant of the church would continue on.

And they stipulated seven or eight things that would not happen. They would not scatter into small groups.

They would continue to meet outside in the middle of nowhere if necessary. They would fight to stay in their church building and so forth.

They had categorized all the way down to, all right, the only brother that's left, come give us a word and pray for us.

They would not bend or break. And so this is a circular letter that's going out. We appeal to the churches of God to join in the spiritual battle through your prayers, your encouragement, your comfort, your support, to hold with love the members in distress, to crush

Satan's neck with your knees and your tears. Please remember the practical needs.

Visit the families that are suffering. Take care of their children. Cook for them. Open up your home for those who are in need of refuge.

Pray for the members now behind bars. Pray that the Lord would grant them confidence and strength, that they would be bold like Paul and Peter to preach both to kings and to prisoners about the

Christ who died and is risen. Pray for the members who are now terrified, for those who have been released but are still being monitored.

May the Lord keep them, whether free or bound, from losing any heart so that they can testify to the true, the trustworthy, the glorious gospel before family, neighbors, law enforcement.

Pray for every church member of Early Rain Covenant Church and pray also for the police officers and all of the local leaders who have been involved in this attack.

Pray the Lord would give them mercy and reveal the mystery of the gospel to them through the sufferings of our brothers and sisters.

May the Lord call some from among them that they would know the true ruler, the Lord Jesus Christ, and pray through this storm that the

Lord's church would be set as a city on a hill, firmly built on the rock, a lamp on a stand, shining light into darkness.

Amen. What do you sense in that letter of friendship with the world?

What similarity, what camaraderie do you sense between these

Christians and unbelievers? That letter reads to me like, what hath

Belial to do with the Lord Jesus? What hath darkness to do with light? If you would not be unequally yoked in marriage, don't be unequally yoked in friendship either.

Of course, you maintain the relationships as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9. You do whatever you can for the sake of the gospel, but you ought to know every relationship is a two -way street.

And often the well -wishing, maybe I'll bring them to the Lord, runs in the opposite direction. Paul says there in 1

Corinthians 9, matter of fact, I do all things for the sake of the gospel so that I might be a partaker of it.

Paul's having to remind himself, I've been bought by this gospel. I'm secured in this gospel.

I owe everything to Christ because of the gospel. He's not using 1 Corinthians 9 as a way to just keep up with appearances on a

Sunday and then live like the world for the rest of the week. That might pass muster in the

United States of America. It might even pass muster here. If you were in early reign covenant church, they would never allow you into membership.

Serving the Lord will make us a snare. So we must serve the Lord as a snare. But ultimately, we will never be put to shame.

Ultimately, we will never be put to shame. Like our Savior, like Paul the apostle following in his path says, we're put to an open shame.

If we're following the will of our Master, if we're seeking to do His will, not being filled with any terror of the ways of the world around us, we will be put to an open shame as well.

The days are coming as we can see so clearly from the trajectory of our culture, where the things that were once embraced are now hated, where things that are good are evil and things that are evil are now declared good.

And we, as we're often told, are on the wrong side of history, get out of the way of the progress of the babble that we are building.

But we are those who fear the Word of the Lord. We are those, God help us, like Moses who refused to compromise even one jot or tittle of the

Word of the Lord. We will not stay in a corner. We will not just smile and run a soup kitchen. We will be those who live out and declare the

Gospel, clinging to one another as brothers and sisters of this Gospel, which is like a treasure hidden within our jars of clay.

That is what is attractive. That is what is winsome. Winsomeness is not watered down theology and speaking out of both sides of the mouth.

Winsomeness is being salt and light in the midst of spoil and darkness.

And that means we must be serving the Lord as a snare, trusting we will never be put to shame.

Charles Simeon says this of those who fear the Word of the Lord. Happy are you if you tremble at the

Word of God. You have no reason to tremble at anything else. So what, you're the pariah.

So what, you're isolated, alienated, mocked. You have nothing to tremble at.

Happy are you. You can look at death with complacency. You can look into hell itself without any terror.

You're screened under the shadow of the wings of your Redeemer, so don't envy their liberty. Don't envy their thoughtlessness.

Don't let their revilings ever deter you from your path because the time is coming when

God will appear to their shame and to your joy. The great reversal which corresponds to our eternal bliss, living a life in the shame and mockery of following after the way of our

Master leads to never experiencing shame again. But if we in any way are ashamed of Him now,

He will be ashamed of us when He returns. In Joel chapter two, which

Peter is preaching from at Pentecost, in the verses immediately preceding to that, and I close with this, he says, be glad, you children of Zion.

Rejoice in the Lord your God. He has given you the former reign faithfully, and He will cause the reign to come down for you.

That's the early reign, or like early reign covenant church. The early reign and the latter reign.

The threshing floors will be full of wheat. The vats will overflow with new wine and oil.

I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten. The crawling locust, the consuming locust, the chewing locust, the great army which

I sent among you. You shall now eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the

Lord your God. He has dealt wondrously with you, and my people shall never be put to shame. Then you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel.

I am the Lord your God, and there is no other. My people shall never be put to shame.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for the holy confidence we can have when our hearts are filled with a fear for you rather than a fear of man.

Lord, we do feel the pain of that sword running through family, so many other divided relationships as we continue to walk and grow in your grace.

And yet, Lord, we feel the sting and the conviction, the humiliation of that division often being the by -product of our own failures, our own hard -heartedness, our own lack of grace.

Let the divisions be of you and for you if they must come.

Let us not be afraid to be snares in the eyes of this world. Let us rather fear ever being ashamed of you who is light and truth, goodness, mercy, love, incarnate.

May we be worthy of the calling with which we've been called. For your glory and your name we pray, amen.