Amen. Amen. Amen. What a cool story. Well, hey, good morning, guys.
Hey, at our campuses as well. Excited we're all here and have a chance to dive into God's Word today. Let me say one thing about this awesome testimony video. I can't do a better commercial than that, okay?
Well, what a life change story. But what I can do is try to call you to make a decision about the weekender, about your involvement at Mercy Hill. And I really mean that. Like say yes or say no. I don't know if you've noticed, but we live in a culture now that cannot say just yes or no. I mean, you ask somebody if they're coming to do something and what they're going to say is, oh, yeah, I hope that'll work. What does that mean? Or they'll say, oh, yeah, yeah, that should hopefully work out.
Yeah, that sounds great. We really hope that's going to be. And people won't just say yes. They won't just say no. It's a constant fear of missing out. Man, we want to make sure that we leave everything so open ended. We said FOMO for a while.
Now people say FOBO, fear of better options, okay? And what we want is to not get locked in. I want to tell you, that's not really honorable.
I mean, it's putting us at the center of our world. I hope that we'll just say yes or no. Like Jesus said, let your yes be yes, let your no be no. Make a decision. And I hope you'll say yes to the weekender, all right?
I hope you'll just say, hey, you know what? We're going to do that. We're going to jump into the life of the church. This is how we go from connected to the crowd to committed to the family, get on the team here at Mercy Hill.
And we believe this. If you will jump in the stream, you will move in the current. If you'll get in the stream of discipleship, the current will take you into maturity. So I hope you guys will jump into that.
All right, the next one's coming up. Man, a great opportunity to jump in. All right, we're going to be in Exodus 8 today.
And I want to start by setting up a scenario here that all of us have maybe been in before. I want you to think it's 2 o'clock in the morning. Man, it's super late. You're rolling around. You're groggy.
Everything's dark, all right? And you're right in that space where you're thirsty and you're trying to figure out, am I thirsty enough that it's worth getting up, right? Or am I going to be able to just go back to sleep like this?
Maybe you got a scratchy throat or something like that. And finally you decide, man, I got to get up. It's not worth it.
I'm going to have to do this. So you get up. It's 2 in the morning, man. You're sort of stumbling around. You get out of your room. You go in the kitchen.
It's super dark. And as soon as you step on that hard, cold tile floor with one foot, your next step happens to be right on top of splat, squash, a massive frog, okay? Slimy. And you're barefoot, all right? You feel like you just stepped into a pecan pie, okay? That's what it feels like.
It's all coming up between your toes. You pretty grossed out? That is actually, that revulsion, this is my third time telling that story.
It's so fun, okay? I just see everybody's kind of, that revulsion that you just felt is a major point of our story that we talk about today. Because the story today is the second plague that came upon the Egyptians. And you know what that plague was? It was frogs. They were everywhere. They came swarming out of the Nile River. And they were everywhere. You roll over in the bed, they're there. You get up to go, they're there.
You're trying to cook something, they're there, okay? And it's like, on one hand, you're like, well, that's not the worst thing in the world. I could see there being, you know, worse things than that. Certainly, as the plagues progress, they do get worse all the way to people dying. And it's not that bad.
But honestly, it's pretty terrible. And what we're going to see is that God's judgment and his consequences for sin, listen, they're not just consequences. They are always a call. They were a call for us to come back. They are a consequence, but they're a call. They're a judgment, but they're also an invitation. And what we see in the plagues is that each one is going to get worse than the one before.
And at each point, it is God giving a consequence, but also calling and telling the Egyptians, telling Pharaoh, man, turn from this. Relent from this. You can turn back from this. Do what I'm telling you to do.
All right? But of course, Pharaoh hardens his heart. God hardens Pharaoh's heart as well. And what we see is this progression, this descent down into, you know, into eventually into all the way into death. I hope that's not us today. I hope what we end up with today is a people that decide the pain points in my life, the frogs, if you want to put it like that, the frogs in my life.
I'm going to allow the Lord to turn my heart back to him when I am facing things that are hard and painful. Many of us are. Man, maybe you're facing a financial thing, a broken relationship. Maybe you're facing a heartache that comes from an ungodly relationship. Maybe something is consequential for you.
Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just a circumstance. It's like, man, it wasn't your sin. It was somebody else's sin, or it wasn't anybody's sin. It was just a bad circumstance in life. Either way, when there's a pain point in our life, can we allow God to gently turn us back to his purposes and his plan?
The bottom of it is this. When we're going through something hard, do we just want God to be a genie that helps us get out of a jam, or do we actually want God to deepen our relationship with him through it, and we become different people on the other side? Big difference.
Big difference. Here's the big idea. God uses painful circumstances to wake us up for his purposes. Do I just want to avoid pain, or do I want the Lord to allow me to be aligned with him, aligning of purpose? That's what I hope we're going to get to today. We don't just need respite.
We need a relationship. That's what Pharaoh misses, and many of us miss it as well. Here's what it says in Chapter 8. Then the Lord said to Moses, go into Pharaoh and say to him, thus says the Lord, let my people go that they may serve me. But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague your country with frogs. The Nile shall swarm with frogs, and they shall come up into your house and into your bedroom and on your bed and into the houses of your servants and your people and into your ovens. That is so gross.
Okay. I mean, into the kneading bowls, the frog shall come upon you and on your people and on all your servants. Now, Pharaoh is given a second option here to let the people go. And we're going to see today, and you probably already, maybe if you know this story, you already know sort of the end of it with a hard heart like Pharaoh has. But this is actually not the first plague. The first plague came seven days earlier. I imagine Pharaoh being the guy who had heard about the half Egyptian half Hebrew, you know, that the guy that was sort of both foot in both worlds, Moses and his brother.
And I bet he had heard about the things that they were saying that God was saying. And and and all of a sudden, seven days earlier than this story, they show up and Aaron takes his staff and smacks the Nile River. And guess what happens?
It turns to blood, the whole Nile to the point where everything is dying. And here's the thing about Pharaoh. I you know, I'm sure that he was a guy that showed zero emotion. I can just imagine him. I mean, he's the preeminent ruler of everything and God on earth and all this kind of stuff. But I bet you there was a little flicker of fear in his heart when he saw that Nile turned to blood.
But you know what he turns to his music, musicians, he turns to his magicians, and they do the same thing. They're able to sort of take some water and turn it to blood to now I get the impression that it was probably a fairly feeble attempt. I mean, they had just smacked the Nile River, y'all. Okay, but here's the thing.
They were able to turn some water into blood. And so Pharaoh is like, No, okay, I'll get my service to go out and dig me new wells or whatever. I'm not I'm not letting the people go over this. And now seven days later, the boys are back. And now they're coming back with another message from God.
And here's what it said. Say to him, thus says the Lord, let my people go. This is very important. I want you to remember this, that they will serve me. They serve me.
That's God telling that to Pharaoh. But if you refuse to let them go, I will plague all your country with frogs. Now, here's the deal. I want you to think about this for a moment.
All right. You see somebody come out of nowhere, say they have a message from God about freeing these people that worship, you know, they've probably forgotten some things, whatever, but generally that, you know, they claim them as their God. And then they take out a staff and smack the Nile River and it turns to blood.
But your little magician boys, they're able to turn a little bit to blood. And what you decide is Oh, no, no, no, I'll believe the magicians instead of believing what I just saw with my own eyes. You know why this is very important? Because many times we believe what we want to believe.
We let our heart lead our mind. What do you think about Pharaoh? Pharaoh doesn't want to believe the message that is from God. He doesn't want to believe I'm going to let this entire people that are serving me that are a force of slave labor for me.
I'm not just going to let them go. And I want to say this, we have to understand that Pharaoh did see them as enslaved people. Pharaoh thought that he owned God's people.
Pharaoh thought that they were his. You know, sometimes I think in America, especially our teenagers and college students, they get a bad rap, a bad deal here when it comes historically, what you guys are told, what we're told so much is that slavery in the United States was uniquely evil in the world, almost as if slavery started with our country. Now here, I want to be very clear about this. Slavery in the United States was horrifically evil and brutal.
Okay. But it was not unique. There have been slave societies since the beginning of man, that brutality. Look at the Arab slave trade. Look at slaves in Rome. Look at slaves in ancient Greece. Look at slaves right here in Egypt.
And here's why I say that. I want you to know why I'm saying it's important because if we try to water this down and we try to say, well, this is some type of indentured servitude or this is some other kind of, we're going to miss the point. No, they were slaves in Egypt and Pharaoh thought they are mine. Now, why am I bringing that up?
Because think about this. God says, let the people go so that they can serve me. What is Pharaoh's reaction going to be to that?
He's going to say, no, no, no. They don't go serve you. They serve me.
They are mine. It's almost like a battle over the bride. It's a battle over who's the people of God are going to be. Are they going to be God's people or are they going to be Pharaoh's people?
And Pharaoh's saying, man, they're going to be mine. And here's the thing. Many of us think to ourselves, well, that's crazy, man. I don't have anything in common with that.
Really? Have you ever had something that God gave you that you started viewing it as if you were an owner? What do we have that was not given by the Lord? I mean, have you ever thought about that?
Where you started grabbing for something that was mine, mine, but actually, man, it ain't yours. You know, maybe a better way to say it is like this. Hey, we have nothing in common with Pharaoh, right? Well, do we tithe? Do we tithe our money? Do we tithe our time?
Man, do we serve? Like, are we looking at time, talent, and treasure as if it's mine? Or do we have this idea of, no, it's God's. It's all the Lord's. Well, Pharaoh, of course, says, this is mine.
You're not going to challenge me for it. And so he's going to make his feeble attempt. Now here's what it says. And the Lord said to Moses, say to Aaron, stretch out your hand with your staff over the rivers, over the canals and over the pools and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt. So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt and the frogs came up and they covered the land of Egypt. But the magicians did the same thing by their secret arts and made frogs come up out of the land of Egypt.
Quick note. Well, why didn't he just believe them? Because look, Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, plead with the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people and I will let them go sacrifice.
Now, apparently what has gone on is the magicians were able to convince him we can turn water into blood. So then they get their little rabbit and they pull it out of a hat, except it ain't a rabbit. They pull a frog out of a hat.
Okay. And they say, Hey, we can make frogs too. But at this point, Pharaoh is a little bit like, eh, I'm looking at millions of frogs, millions of them. Guys, do you think you can maybe tell them to go away? You think you can kill them all?
Can you get them to read? No, we can't do that. Okay.
All right. We'll get Moses back in here then, because now I'm going to have to actually talk to Moses about what, I need him to do. Now, what we see in this story, I think is very important. And I mentioned this earlier and that's that we have warning shots that are being fired by God.
And this is, this is very important. Okay. The, the, the plagues are sequential in the way that they come down. If you look at them, the one that comes next is always worse than the one you're presently experiencing. But frogs are terrible. I want to make sure you understand.
Okay. I mean, if we just woke up tomorrow and this was our reality, we would want God to stop it. And I would be, you know, we would not like this, but man, if you keep going this rebellious heart, the Pharaoh has, it's going to get worse and worse and worse and worse until finally what you end up with.
And I know I'm getting ahead of the story here. Many of us probably already know this, but, but what you come up, what you end up with is the first born of, of every family in the land dying. Now I don't want frogs, but I'd rather have frogs than that. Right? I mean, the rebellious heart of Pharaoh is going to end up having him dead and buried, drowned in the bottom of the red sea.
I don't want frogs, but I'd rather have frogs than that. Now here's the point. We're going through pain today. We're going through something hard today. Maybe it's a consequence. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just a circumstance.
I don't know. But in any event, will we allow the Lord to use what is going on in our life to turn us back to him, to turn our heart back to aligning with his purposes? Or do we just want to get out of a jam? See, God is warning Pharaoh here. It's a warning shot.
You can say it like this. The plagues are both a consequence and they are a call, a wake up call. Man, wake up. Maybe God's doing this with you today. There's something hard that's going on.
There's something painful that's going on. And maybe God is using that to, to, you're like, man, God's just trying to shake me up. Maybe he's trying to wake you up. Maybe he's trying to get you to see that there's something else that he has for you. Align with his purposes instead of just trying to use him as a genie in a bottle to avoid pain in our life. I don't know if you've ever been warned, but this is a big giant warning for, for Pharaoh.
Hey man, this thing's going to keep getting worse. I've been warned many times in my life. And you know, a lot of times I have a hard head. Okay.
I don't like to take the warning. I got to go figure it out for myself. Maybe some of you guys are that way.
Maybe you're seated next to somebody who's that way. Okay. I don't know. But it's like, man, I, you know, sometimes you just, I don't know, you got to go figure it out.
You don't, you don't want to take the warning. I, a couple of years ago, and I get to go, we've done this every year since, but it was my first time a couple of years ago, I had a chance to go catfish noodling. Anybody know what catfish noodling is? Have you guys seen this?
It's incredible. So you, you, you swim down to the bottom of the lake. Okay. Or the river and you lay right on the bottom of the lake.
Okay. Six or seven feet of water. And then you stick your arm way up in like a crevice in the bank or like a box or a, you know, whatever, like a, like a broken dock or something. You get your arm way up in there.
That catfish likes to sit and then you start wiggling. Okay. And what do they do? They come out and want to bite your hand. They want to eat you. All right.
Well, when they bite you, you grab them. And so now you got them. Okay. And now the fight is on baby. Okay. It's like, who's the man going to be here?
Me or the catfish. It's awesome. Okay. And so I, I had seen this, I had seen this a few years ago and I'd wanted to do it ever since. So we get to the, we get to the place and go with a couple of guys. We jump out of the boat and they all are putting gloves on and they got a pair of gloves for me. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm not wearing any gloves. And they were like, why?
I said, man, I've wanted to do this for years. And I'm, I'm scared that if I grab the thing, you know, cause they can be big. I'm like, if I grab the thing with these gloves on, he's going to slip out of my hand and I don't, I'm not going to take that chance. And, uh, and they're like, you really are not going to take the gloves. I said, no, man, listen, if I'm going down to do battle with the beast, okay, I'm going with jean shorts and Jesus. All right. That's it.
Those are the two things that I'm going down to the bottom with. So I get down there, I'll reach my hand way up in there and this joker bigger than I thought he grabs my hand and in one fell swoop he just takes the whole layer of skin right off my hand like that because it's because their mouth is just sandpaper and uh, and I mean just right off. And so I politely swam up to the top and asked if they had a pair of gloves I could use. Okay. So, you know, I know I tell these stories, y'all wonder, I want to show you a picture.
This is the catfish that about took my hand off. Okay. And those are my jean shorts. Okay. So, um, but, and you can't see it in that picture. Okay. But in all seriousness, I had another picture, but honestly you couldn't really see it.
It was a couple of days later. But in that, you know, in that picture, I mean that whole side of my hand was just, was just skinned up real bad bleeding, all that kind of stuff. Now here I'm trying to be funny obviously, but here's the deal. You know, you get a little warning. Sometimes the consequence of that warning is you get a bloody hand.
Sometimes the consequence of that warning is you drown at the bottom of the Red Sea. God is being gracious here to Pharaoh and he is telling Pharaoh, hey, I'm firing some warning shots into your life and it's not for no reason. Is God using circumstances right now?
Maybe their consequences, I don't know. Is he using them right now to wake you up? You think he's trying to shake you up? He's trying to wake you up. And I pray that today would be the day that you begin to turn that, that pain in your life.
It doesn't harden you to get cynical about God. Instead, it's used gently like a prod to get you to turn back to him. Maybe you're experiencing the heartbreak of an ungodly relationship. Maybe you put yourself there. It's like, man, I've, I've put myself in these ungodly situations and, and now I'm reaping the benefit of that. Okay. And the consequence of that, okay, that hurts. I understand.
Would you allow God to use it to turn your heart back to him? You know, I want you to know right now, if you're part of Mercy Hill, this is so cool. We've been seeing, you know, you guys have been seeing probably for a couple of years now, these different revivals that are breaking out in, in different college campuses all over the country.
Maybe you guys have seen some of this stuff, kids getting baptized and just crazy things God's doing. I want you to understand that is happening in Greensboro, North Carolina right now. And you may not realize it, but it's happening. And I want you guys to see, I mean, this is every Tuesday night, hundreds of kids packed in at our Clifton Road campus from UNCG, High Point, North Carolina A&T, Guilford College, others.
Okay, man, hundreds of them. They're baptizing people. It feels like every month there's another baptism round of kids that are getting saved and baptizing and praying and jumping on board for the nations.
And man, it's just incredible. Yeah, we can praise God for that, to see what he's doing. Now, a lot of these kids that are coming are athletes.
It's like God's doing something and you might be right here right now at Clifton or High Point or maybe you're here at the Ridge. It's like, man, a lot of these kids are athletes. And I'm telling you something, if you're an athlete, and you know this, if you've ever been there, I would play football in high school and college, played all sports, all that kind of stuff.
Here's the deal. Injuries happen. Okay, when they happen, does God become the genie in a bottle to get me out of the pain of this? Or can God use that injury in my life to tell me to slow down and stop idolizing sports?
To slow down and start to refocus my heart on him. I'm not saying we don't pray for healing. I mean, if you need to be healed of something, maybe an injury or maybe it's just a sickness, man, we'll pray for you today.
Okay? We'll anoint you, pray for you. We love to do that.
That's what our elder teams love to do. And we believe God can heal. All right? So I'm not saying we don't pray for healing. But for Christians, we understand there is a warning that God can give us in circumstances and pain that can kind of help wake us up to turn back to him and align our hearts with his purpose. And maybe God is trying to get a hold of some of us today.
Well, what do you guys think? You think Pharaoh is going to turn his heart? You think Pharaoh is going to turn around?
And unfortunately, he's not. Moses said to Pharaoh, be pleased to command me when I am to plead for you, and for your servants and for your people, that the frogs be cut off from you and your houses and be left only in the Nile. And he said tomorrow, now that's a little clunky. But all he's saying is, Moses has said, What time do you want them gone? And Pharaoh says, I want them gone tomorrow.
Okay. Be it as you say, here's the reason why he asked him such a question. So that you may know that there is no one like the Lord our God, the frog shall go away from you and your houses and your servants and your people, they shall be left only in the Nile. So Moses and Aaron went out from Pharaoh. And Moses cried out to the Lord about the frogs as he had agreed with Pharaoh. And the Lord did according to the word of Moses, the frogs died out in the houses, the courtyards in the fields, and they gathered them together in heaps and the land stink, I bet it did. But when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, this is the whole point I'm trying to get out today. When Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the Lord had said. Now, isn't it interesting here that Moses wants Pharaoh to tell him when the frogs are all supposed to die?
That's odd, isn't it? Like, why didn't he just go out and do it? I'm going to tell you why. Well, he told us why the Bible told us why.
Because he wanted to make sure that Pharaoh had no plausible way of trying to explain this miracle away. Oh, the frogs came out of nowhere. Well, you turn the river into blood. Boom, all these frogs are here. Okay, all right. Well, how about this? How about you tell me the exact moment you want them to all drop dead, all be gone out of your life. All right, we want that to happen tomorrow.
Okay, boom, it happens. They pray God answers, it happens. There is respite. And the second the frogs are gone, we understand what all this was about for Pharaoh.
Because when the frogs are gone, we see it clear as day. Man, this wasn't about a relationship with God. This is about respite from pain. Pharaoh's angle all along was avoiding pain. It was not aligning with God and his purposes.
God's purpose was they are mine, they serve me, you send them out so that they can go do that. And Pharaoh's like, nope, not interested. Now, are we pretty sure that Pharaoh knew this is from God now?
How could you not? I mean, you smack denial, it turns to blood. Now there's frogs everywhere. And then they say, when do you want them gone?
And then they all drop dead. How could any reasonable person not be able to say, okay, I understand that there is a God who is tinkering with the laws of nature here and showing off what he can do. I don't know how you come to any other conclusion.
But here's what we know. Pharaoh knows the will of God. He understands what God wants him to do.
The problem is he just doesn't want it. And that's where some of us are today. Andrew, why would I turn back to the Lord and accept his plan for my life? God's firing warning shot after warning shot.
There's pain points, pain points. He's trying to wake you up. But you think to yourself, nah, man, I don't want that life. I want the life that I have chosen.
I want the life that I desire that I plan. Don't you understand for Pharaoh? He did not say, Moses, go pray, I'll send them out so that he could align with God's purposes. All he wanted was a genie in the bottle to help him get back to the fast track of rebellion. He just wanted God to help him get to the fastest way possible, back to the life that he wanted. So it says in verse 15, when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them.
He wanted the avoiding pain, not the aligning of purpose. And this is what I'm trying to get us to see today. That doesn't have to be you.
It doesn't have to be me. I was thinking on the way here today, I mean, as I'm driving to the ridge and maybe you guys driving to the different campuses today, you're just thinking about stuff, radio, whatever. I'm really thinking about the different things in my life that have hurt me in the last couple of months. Relational things, maybe stuff related to Mercy Hill, maybe some things related to family or sickness or whatever. I'm just starting to think about those things. Maybe some of them are consequences for my actions.
Maybe some of them are just circumstances or whatever, but I'm beginning to have this heart posture and the one I want to try to get us to see today. God, how do you want to use that in my life to turn me back to you, or do I just want you in all of these situations to get me out of a jam? You know, when you pastor a church like Mercy Hill, growing church, all that, praise God, you have all these stories that happen. And some of them are awesome. And some of them are gut wrenching and will break your heart, you know? And man, as pastors, we carry that. We carry all of them, you know?
I don't know how many people you know in your life where there's like massive, huge, crazy problems going on in their life. Pastors carry that for hundreds and hundreds of people. And so I know all these stories, and I remember this one story from early on. So we've been at Mercy Hill for like a year, and then we're pouring into everybody we could. I mean, people were coming around, people were getting saved, we're jumping in with them, we're putting them in groups, we're trying to disciple them. We're doing, I mean, at that time when the church was being smaller, a lot of us, it was a lot of, man, we're jumping in with people one-on-one and doing everything we can do, man, just trying to catch up, trying to keep up with what God's doing. And there was a young man that came into our church, and it seemingly, he jumped all the way in, man. He came in, he was coming out of a drug addiction background, and he came, he jumped in, he was there every single week, he was listening to sermons multiple times, sat on my back porch and we talked, and you know, and man, he had some friends that were coming and bringing him. He had a pretty rough economic situation. He didn't have money, he didn't have a car, but he was, man, he was here, he was faithful, he was helping set up, tear down, just all the stuff. And man, we started praying that we could get him a car because he needed to get this car so that he could work more, you know, and just kind of getting his life going. And like I've seen Mercy Hill do hundreds of times in my life, man, somebody comes in and leans in, and what the church does is leans right back in a way that, I mean, just overwhelmingly generous, you know, just try to help so much.
People got to lean in to do that. You can't, I've learned this in my life, you cannot help somebody who don't want to help. They'll say they want help, but you can't help if they don't really want it. But people do want help, man, the church is here to help them in any way we can. I mean, I mean, just, I can tell you, I mean, hundreds of stories like that. So this guy needed a car, we started putting the word out a little bit, and one of the guys in our church, an elder in our church, he bought his wife a new car, and the car that she had, instead of trading it in, thousands of dollars, it was a nice car, it wasn't like a junker or something, a nice car, instead of trading it in, getting the money for it or selling it or whatever, man, he comes and he gives that car to this young man so that he can work, so that he can get to church, so that he can do all that. And I'm gonna tell you right now, I never saw him again.
Never saw him one time after that. Was it about aligning with God's purpose, or was it about avoiding pain? Was it about a relationship, or was it about respite from bad circumstances? This is where we have to get today. Man, God is waking us up because of the pain in our life. Okay, what do we do with that? Will we turn to him, or will we just continue to, the second, we're out of the hot seat, the second the jam is kind of fixed, or are we just going on about our life?
Here's the big application point for this weekend. Let us allow painful seasons to soften our heart toward God, not to harden our heart, not to become cynical about God because of the things that we walk through, but we're walking through something hard. Can we allow that to soften our heart toward God and to allow us to want his plan for our life? You know, we want our plan, we want to get out of the pain, this jam that we're in right now, we don't like it because it's knocked us off of our plan for our life and all of that.
What about if God is doing something in our life to get our heart to turn back to him? Will we take that? Will we accept that? My question for us today is this, do we understand God's plan and desire it?
There's two parts to that. Do we know it, and do we want it? It's like Pharaoh. He knew what God wanted him to do.
He just didn't want to do what God wanted him to do. I think that might be true for us today. Do we want it? Do we got it? Okay, it's two different things. I was thinking about, I walked into Costco a couple of years ago and they tried to sell me like a credit card for Costco.
It's like the idea is you pay a bunch of money for the card and then you use it and you get discounts, right? The woman was doing her job. She did a great job. She gives me the whole sales pitch. I'm like, hey, thank you so much. I don't want this today or ever.
Okay, but I don't really want it, but hey, thank you. You're doing a great job, whatever. She keeps trying to sell me, which is fine. That's her job, right?
She's doing a good job with that. Until she said, sir, clearly you don't understand. I was like, no, I got it.
No, I got it. I can say it back to you. Let me say it back to you. Okay, well, here's the deal. I pay money for the card. Every time I use the card, I get a discount. You're hoping and I'm hoping, I guess that I would eventually outweigh the money I paid you with the savings I get on the card. If I don't, you have a guarantee that I can come back to you at this desk and at the end of the year, you will reimburse me, okay, for the difference, but the problem of course is I'll never remember to do that.
Okay, I'm the type of guy. I take my kid to the doctor. They say, what's their birthday? I'm like, they're this tall.
Okay, and when they were born, it was really cold. Does that work? How am I going to remember to bring this card back up to this desk? Here's my point. I got it. I just didn't want it, and that might be where we are today. God's plan for you, man, is laid out in the scripture. He's got unique work for you to do. He wants you to serve him. You understand that, but do you want that? Maybe if you don't want it, I would pray that today would be a day that God could awaken that in you and give you a deeper relationship with him where you start walking through things and when you're walking through things that are hard, your biggest desire is not that you would get out of the jam. Your biggest desire is that you would grow in a deeper relationship with him.
Your biggest desire becomes, I don't want to be the same person on the other side of this. All right, so how do we get there? How do we get to that place? Well, we got to ask the question, do we trust God's plan over our own desires? I'm here to tell you today, I told you, we talked about this last week, gospel centrality, okay?
There is only one way to begin to desire what God desires for you and that is you have got to see his overwhelming and far reaching love for you. So how do you, how do we see that? How do we see that in this story? Well, the way that we're going to see that today is by seeing our greater Moses, seeing our greater intercessor, our greater entreater. Okay.
I don't even think that's a word, but here's the deal. Moses entreated God. He begged God.
He interceded for Pharaoh. Okay. That, that, that, that imagery, that picture, man, I need God. I need God to move.
Okay. Somebody steps in on your behalf. Clearly it wasn't enough for Pharaoh, you know, because he chased his heart right off a cliff into the bottom of the red sea. That doesn't have to be our story today. I want you guys to see that there is somebody who has gone in on your behalf.
There has gone in someone who has gone into intercede for you. So let me tell you the gospel message. The gospel message is you and I, because of our sin, we're all Pharaoh.
Okay. We have the hardest heart. Ezekiel 11 tells us our heart is like stone because of that sin. We don't just deserve the plagues. We deserve the hell that they point to. We deserve all the darkness. We deserve all the death.
That's what we deserve because of our sin. But unlike Moses who steps in for Pharaoh and asks God, please stop the plagues. We have a greater intercessor.
We have a greater entreater. See our Moses, Jesus Christ, he stepped in on our behalf by going to the cross and listen, he didn't ask God to stop the plagues. He took the plagues for us. Our sin results in plagues all the way to hell. And Jesus stepped in and took them all.
What do you think God's doing on the cross when all the lights, Jesus hanging on the cross and what happens? Darkness over the land. What do you think that points back to? That was one of the plagues. I told you the last plague was what? That the firstborn son would die and there Jesus is, the son of God dying on the cross for us. He didn't just ask for the plagues to stop.
He took the consequences and punishment for us. Listen, a God who loves you enough to do that, you can trust his plan. Pharaoh, man, I'm losing something here. I don't like this. I don't want to send them away. If you see God's love for you, you can trust his plan. You know how this applies to us as we close here.
Here it is. You're going through something hard. You go into a pain point.
It's not just about getting out of a jam. God, I want you to change me. I want to be a different person. My biggest fear sometimes when I go through things that are hard, I don't want to be the same person on the other side of this. I want to be a deeper, more compassionate, more loving, more worshiping person.
Don't you want that in your life? Okay. You're going through a financial thing.
You're going through a hardship. Here's what we do today. Let us pray today. God, now let's God, I want you to heal this.
I have no problem with that, man. I want you to heal this. Nobody wants frogs. Okay.
I don't want to go through frogs either. Man, heal it. But here's the deal. While you're healing this, make me a generous person. Make me realize the value of this money in your kingdom.
See the difference? Don't just get me out of a jam. Change me.
Align me with your purposes. You're going through a health thing. You're going through something that's hard with your body.
Okay. Man, let's pray that God will heal you. I told you, we'll pray today that you'll be healed.
But here's the deal. Let's also pray this. God, going through this health thing, I pray you heal me. God, I pray you make me more grateful than I've ever been in my life for breath and for life. God, you make me the type of person who takes my energy and my health and leverages every day for your glory and stewards it well for your kingdom. Does that make sense? I don't know what's going on in your life.
I don't know what the pain points are. Let's ask God today, man, to deepen us through them and align us to his purposes. Let's pray. Father, we come before you and God, we ask right now across our entire church as we are all dealing with different things and there is nobody here that is not touched by frogs in some way today. Lord, I pray that those things would be a wake up call for us and you would align us to your purposes in greater ways. In Christ's name, amen.
