Who is the Lord?

Now that I got your attention, you wouldn't want to hear me play guitar. Thank you, Josh. We're gonna be in Exodus chapter five today. There is an outline in the bulletin just to for you to see where I'm going today with it. Exodus chapter five.

Exodus chapter five. Read a couple verses here and then we'll look in Hebrews chapter 11. Exodus five:one-two And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.

And then Hebrews chapter 11 verse 24 says, By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for He hath respect unto the recompense of the reward. By faith He forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the King, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible Let's pray Father, we do thank you for this day and as we prayed, we pray for our pastor and Kate to come back safely give them a special time away, refresh them, encourage them, and I pray as we look into Your word this morning, You might have Your way in each and one of our hearts. I pray, Father, for our visitors today, that they might feel loved and welcomed. We appreciate them coming and pray that You might give them a special blessing today. And Lord, again, we just commit this time to You.

I pray You'll be the one exalted in our midst today. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. I've been having a little bit of trouble with my voice. I got some lung issues, so I hope I can make it through here today. I might sound a little bit raspy, but we'll see what we can do here.

Let me take a drink of water. Now when we talk about Pharaoh back in Exodus, that was not a personal name, that was a title. It was a ruler of Egypt who was called Pharaoh in the Bible, Old Testament. He's mentioned a number of times, not always the same one. There was a Pharaoh of the Exodus, a Pharaoh of the oppression.

Actually, some people think the woman that fished Moses out of the water was probably Queen Hatshepsut, who seized the throne for about twenty two years when Thutmose II died. The idea that I read, and I've read in a number of sources that Moses and Thutmose III, that's their names, personal names, they grew up together and more than likely one one of them was going to get the throne and it seems like Moses, it was his throne to lose, but that was all solved when Moses resigned all such ambition and he joined his own people in their suffering. And another pharaoh came into power and Acts chapter seven verse eight says, A new king which knew not Joseph. And under his leadership, Egypt began to decline in power. He began to worry about the vast number of Hebrews in his kingdom.

He was afraid they would join the enemy, so he oppressed them. And he wanted to keep them under his thumb as a weak people, and God raised up Moses to lead them out. And as far as Moses' life goes, his first years, many of his first years, his first forty years, was raised in Egypt in the palace, in the courts, and he knew the palace and the courts like his backhand. He'd been educated in Egypt's finest schools. He knew all the wisdom of the Egyptians.

He had a keen and a fertile mind. He understood the art of government and politics and ruling. He rubbed shoulders with princes and diplomats. That was forty years. Then he left for forty years, And he had been learning about leading sheep in the wilderness.

And then he has this dramatic return to the splendor of Egypt. I mean, you can just picture Egypt, pillars of the palace, royal guards all around, people in rich apparel, and and around the imperial throne, there were slave girls that would serve Pharaoh, and Pharaoh would be perched on his royal throne with a crown on his brow, and I'm told he even had lions up there around him, real lions perched. And here comes Moses, stands before him now as a shepherd. Now shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians, but Moses wasted no time getting down to business in chapter five verses one and two. He wasted no time saying, I want you to let our people go.

And Pharaoh wasted no time in rejecting his people. He says, Who is the Lord? You know, that's kind of the same reaction we get a lot today. It's worse today than it was twenty or thirty years ago. You know, you talk to people and it's pretty obvious.

They don't know anything about the Bible. They haven't heard about God much, and they've been kind of educated without God. And so this is Pharaoh. He who is the Lord? See, his life is much different than Moses.

He was a rebel. He defied God, and he's an example of a person that would shake their fist and defy God as though he did not exist. Like Paul in Romans chapter nine verse 17 uses him as an example. I want to look just a few moments here in the result of rejecting God's word and how it affected Pharaoh because this is true today in the lives of many people He defied the person of God He did not know the Lord God of Israel He knew nothing of God's revelation of himself to Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob He knew nothing of Moses God Moses is just a dirty lousy shepherd to him He knew nothing of Elohim, the God of creation Jehovah, the great covenant God Adonai, the great God of commandment And again, mentioned we have an increasing number of people today that have the same mindset. It seems to be universities very hard to find a person that acknowledges God, doesn't mock God, doesn't laugh at God.

That's the way it is. Even through history, we think of some famous people like Darwin. He rejected God. You might recognize some of these names, maybe not, but they're famous. T.

H. Huxley, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Voltaire, Ingersoll, Marx, Lenin, Richard Dawkins, he's more recent. And this is one you would know, Mark Zuckerberg.

You know who Mark Zuckerberg is? He's a Facebook man. Mark Zuckerberg. He rejects God. They shake their fist in God's face.

They laugh and they mock. And the sad thing is many times, the thoughtless world applauds them and agrees with them. And they they hold them up and esteem them highly because of that position. But the fact the fact is these ones in history and even today, they lead many followers into an eternal hell. The fact is they have no hope and they will suffer for all eternity in a place called hell.

So Pharaoh rejects the person of God. Another thing about Pharaoh is he disliked the people of God. This is often the case today. The Egyptians generally hated the Hebrew people. And why is that?

Well, they were a people of one and only one living God. They would not bow to Pharaoh's gods. They would not teach their children Egypt's religious philosophies. They kept themselves set apart in the land of Goshen. They refused to assimilate into culture, the culture, creeds, codes, and conduct of Egypt In fact, their very presence was a rebuke and a threat to Pharaoh's system I think you can if you thought a little bit, you can see the parallels that we have today God's people living by God's Word are always a problem for the world's people We live or we should live in separation from the world system We're to be in the world but not of the world The unfortunate thing is many Christians are in the world and of the world.

We often are misunderstood and maligned and mistreated. They do not like the way we worship. They do not like the way we raise our children. They even try to make laws to prevent us from doing things God's way. Outlaw spanking.

Outlaw prayer, bible in our school systems. The United Nations has plans to empower children and remove parental rights. They have God given rights. They want to erase biblical values. They tried that with Moses, and it didn't work.

He was raised as an Egyptian, you know, with the Egyptian way. And I think what his mother taught him in his first few years stuck. Another thing Pharaoh did, and this is pretty serious, he disregarded God's punishments. He did not get away with God his God defying, God denying lifestyle. It might look like he is at first as you read through the story, and no one ever gets away with it.

The fact of the matter is Moses and God's people were not defenseless as it seemed. Oh, yeah, they were groaning under taskmasters and they were poor, but the real picture comes out in the long run. They had a Redeemer, and their redeemer was the mighty God of the universe. He had a he had a he has thousands of weapons in his arsenal, but he only needs a few to bring pharaoh down. He used 10.

Remember the plagues? You know, the blood and the boils and the flies, the frogs, the lice, the locusts, livestock were hit, thunder and hail, darkness, and then finally the death of the firstborn. And slowly, the land of the land's crops and livestock were destroyed. But Pharaoh stubbornly digs his heels in like an insane idiot. You know, there's a danger when a person turns away from God and his word.

God will God will allow us to do that for a while, but not forever. Eventually, a final final warning comes and then blindness and then hardness sets in. And the spirit of grace is withdrawn and he no longer strives with a man. And that's you if you're not saved today. God wants you.

He wants to be your savior and Lord. He wants you to acknowledge him because you're kinda right on the fence there. You're you're not in or you're not out. But there's no middle ground when it comes to God. You're either in or out.

So you got to make a choice in this life. Pharaoh made his choice and then judgment does come. That's all that's left. He rejected God's word and one of the reasons he rejected God's word is because he had a self deluding religion. You know a lot of people like this today.

They have a religion, but it's not the religion of the Bible. Pharaoh believed that he was the incarnation of the sun God Ra. The sun manifested in the flesh and everything revolved around him. And again, like I said, there are many people like this today. They see themselves as the center of everything.

Their demands must be met. Their thoughts are always right and most important. What they want is all that matters, and they see no need for God. I meet people like this all the time. I I work some part time work, so I'm out amongst the people of the world.

I'm out there with the working people all the time. When I bring up God, I mean, it's pretty clear. There's a big question mark. They have no knowledge. Most of them have no religion except they don't believe in the Lord.

They'll say, I believe there's a God. They don't have a personal relationship. They have nothing no knowledge based on Scripture. They don't read the Bible. May not even have a Bible in their home.

May may have never had a Bible. So I meet a lot of people like that. They're the center of everything. Everything in Egypt centered on Pharaoh. It did not matter what God said.

Who's the Lord? He says. Who is the Lord? He did not matter what God said and he did not understand what all people must understand. We are all lost children of Adam's ruined race.

We all need a personal savior, and that savior is Jesus Christ. We all must repent and accept Christ as savior at some point in our life. But like Pharaoh, there are many people. Maybe you're one of them. I hope not.

But many people today, they think that they're okay and always all that's important is themselves and them themselves being happy in life, having a good job, having some friends, who live for the weekends. And it goes on and on, week after week. But remember, one day the spirit of grace will be withdrawn and then comes blindness and hardness and judgment. He had a soul destroying religion. Egypt and Pharaoh worshipped Pharaoh.

He was set apart from all other mortals. He was braver, wiser, more manly than his subjects. No one could bend a bow or shoot straighter or further than him. The country's well-being depended upon him. The cosmic order would cease without him.

Denial would be affected without him. Famine and disaster would overtake the company, the country without him. See, he was a god to the nation. He expected to be treated like a god. He was the God of all gods.

You study Egypt a little bit, you'll find out they had countless gods. They had one called Sakhmet. He was a defender of divine order. He was a lion headed God who chastised people who did not honor the gods. There was one called Budo, a cobra goddess, a cobra insignia worn upon the pharaoh's brow.

There was one called Bast, that was a cat goddess. They worshiped cows. They worshiped cats. They worshiped crocodiles. They worshiped bats.

They worshiped beetles. There were gods for this. There were gods for that, and the other gods for everything. Unbelievably, Pharaoh rejected the word of God and bowed down and worshipped beasts and birds and creeping things. And all idolatrous religion is soul destroying And behind all idolatry works the evil one and his demon followers.

Egypt's government permitted one religion, and that was the worship of pharaoh and all these idols. That's the only thing they accepted. They rejected everything else. No civilization, no nation, no society ever rises higher than its gods. Know, The United States Of America has many problems.

But there's one thing good about America. We're one nation under God. Even though all the people, you don't believe that, there's a there's a lot to do. There's a lot of true believers in The United States Of America. And I do believe that's why we've been blessed.

Not because of our intelligence or our military or anything else. It's because of God's grace and mercy, holding off judgment. That's why we've been blessed, but we have the true and living God. Many of our people, even some of our leaders worship the Lord and honor him. We still have some good people in our government.

You see, the gods are false gods, they lead to the demoralization of the state itself. And God eventually steps in, he does battle and the plagues come upon Egypt. How many plagues were there? 10. He had a lot of other weapons he could have used.

He uses just 10. Blood, flies, frogs, boils, locusts, hail. An interesting study is, you might want to check this out, every plague targeted one of their gods. Something they worshipped. You study that out.

Every plague was an assault on one of their gods. You'd think Pharaoh would get the message. Some of the people maybe. But the land is destroyed bit by bit. In fact, his officers and people are dismayed.

They're eventually getting it, but Pharaoh's not. He says, they say in Exodus chapter 10 verse seven, Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed? But Pharaoh seems to have gone mad. He's full of pride. His pride his pride was entrenched in his thinking.

Remember, thinks he's a god, and his heart is hardened because of his rejection of the truth. And then Israel marches out of Egypt victoriously. It's a wonderful study. I've read it through many times, but I'm encouraged to see our God working on the behalf of His people. And I like the Old Testament.

In fact, often when I speak, I usually pick an Old Testament message. New Testament is great too, but there's still a lot of good stuff in the Old Testament A lot of good principles and teachings that apply to us A lot of it applies only to Israel but it still teaches something about our God, our holy and righteous and almighty God. There's so much to learn, His holiness and things like that. We glean things like that in the Old Testament. But we see Israel marching out of Egypt victoriously.

And the reason being, same reason I think our country is blessed, same reason maybe you're blessed, they serve the true and the living God. We must we must do that. He's he's not going away. He's for real. He exists.

Jesus Christ is not just a name. It's just not a good story in the Bible. He exists. He lives. He came.

He died. He was buried and he rose again. He conquered death. He defeated the devil. He promises to come again.

It's gonna happen. There's no question about it. So Israel marches out of Egypt victoriously and they left behind a devastated nation that worshiped false gods. A devastated nation that said, who is this Lord? I never knew him.

I don't wanna know. An invading army could not have done so much damage. Their vegetations destroyed, their livestock destroyed, the people are are terrified, and they give the Hebrews all kinds of silver and gold and fine linen linen just great wealth. And this would account for the the years of accumulated wages for the many years of slavery. Behind them was a land ravaged and pillaged.

That's what Satan wants to do with your life. He wants to leave you devastated. He wants to leave your life ravaged and pillaged, and he will. That's how you end up if you're not on the word side, if you're not on the true and the living God side. See, Pharaoh was just reaping what he had sown, his hostility against God Almighty.

In Galatians six:seven, Paul says we're going to reap what we sow. That's what he says. Be not deceived, God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Do you think we will reap what we sow?

I see it over and over in the Bible. I see it over and over in the lives of people that I know, friends and relatives. I had a girl yesterday at work tell me, and actually I've witnessed to her and given her some literature, she's be making some progress for with her. Her name is Vicky. Her life's a mess.

And I'm talking to her a little bit, and she says to me, you know, I had a relative call me last night about midnight. They had an urn with their loved one's ashes in it, and it fell and broke. Well, thought that they were going be cursed. That was their thinking, so they called Vicky. And Vicky says to me, you know, I've had a little bit of background in witchcraft and all this kind of stuff.

And she said I did a cleansing over the phone. She said and then they called me back and said things kind of eased up. I said, Vicki, you know what? I wouldn't touch that with a 10 foot pole. She said, why is that?

I said, that's Satan. I said, Jesus warns us in the Bible not to play around with stuff like that. Satan is real. He wants you. Oh.

So, yeah, Vicky, if you want to follow Jesus, yeah, you follow him. You don't mess around with stuff like that. That's the way I left it with her. But I do, I really do think God's working on her heart. She's the one that told me, I gave her one of pastor Pollard's Bible tracts.

She told me she keeps it in her purse and she gets it out and reads it when she feels a little bit down and she told me, think, you know, God's working on me and she said, I was driving down the road the other day and I was thinking and I see this sign on a church that Jesus saves. I said, yeah, Vicky, it's probably God trying to, you know, tell you, you need to make a decision. Well, I won't see her again. We're my fam my wife and I are headed headed for Pennsylvania next week for our four month trip up there. But when I left, they they wanted me to come back for the job.

So if that's the only reason to go back as a witness to her, I I'll do it. It's a pretty nice setup anyway. I've been able to I mean, I'm not jumping up on the counter and preaching. But I am when I get a chance and I'm with somebody, I give them you know, I talk to them about the Lord. I look for opportunities.

One guy, about a week ago, he came up to me and he stutters. So he not everybody treats him very good there, but he he's a nice kid. I think he's pretty genuine. And he says to me, boy, I've got to get my life in order and I've to do this and I've got to do that. I said, Steven, I've got the answer.

He perked up and he said, What is it? I said, Jesus. I said, You need to have Jesus as your savior. That's the starting point. So then I gave him some stuff to read, and my shift ended, I left.

But he came out to the door, he stopped me, and he said, thank you for listening to me. So I think, you know, God's working in little ways. As you know, we need to look for things like that. If somebody comes to you and they're saying, you know, things are terrible, the answer. I've got the answer.

Jesus. It just opens a door. And here's the last thing I want to look at here about Pharaoh, and this is an important one too. He had a sin denying religion. He had not the slightest conception about sin.

Look in Hebrews chapter 11, this is the difference in Pharaoh and Moses. I read this before, but let me remind you, by faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Choosing rather to suffer the affliction with the people of God rather than enjoy the pleasures of what? Sin a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward by faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. Pharaoh had not the slightest conception of sin.

He couldn't identify sin in his life. I mean, he was guilty of idolatry, of pride, self will, stubbornness, anger, deception, hate, murder, oppressing God's people, killing babies. Didn't faze him. He was a religious man. False as it was, it appealed to his flesh.

He had a priesthood of many men of great scholarship. That religion was sanctioned by centuries of history and tradition. Deep roots in Egypt, absolutely satanic, but it was religion. It involved magicians who did miracles by Satan's power and they would curse people. And sin, as defined in God's word, he did not comprehend.

How could anyone suggest that Pharaoh was a sinner in need of a savior? He was Pharaoh. He was a god in the Egyptian way of thinking. What's the first step to get saved? You've got to realize that you are a what?

A sinner. And Pharaoh never came to that point as far as we know in the scripture here. He never he never acknowledged that. It was all blank in his thinking. But the truth is, and actually this is the answer to pharaoh's question that we started out with, who is the Lord?

The truth is that everything did not center on pharaoh or anyone or anything. It's about God. Who is the Lord? God is powerful and terrible in His wrath. That's who He is.

God is great, good, gracious and compassionate in His mercy, that's who He is God is of great patience and for a long time His mercy will hold back His wrath But as with Pharaoh, God gives many opportunities for man to repent and accept Christ and change his ways. But there's a limit. There was a limit with pharaoh and judgment came, big time. Again, Paul puts it clearly here in Galatians six:seven, Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. You're not saved today.

If you just think you might be saved, you're probably not saved. A person that's born again knows it. His spirit bears witness with our spirit that we're his child. So I'm telling you this because we are either for the Lord or we're against him. There's no middle ground.

We're not gonna get to heaven because our husband and our wife's saved. We're not gonna get to heaven if our parents are saved just because our parents are saved. We're not going to get to heaven if we attend a good bible believing church like this and we haven't made a decision for him. There's no middle ground. There's no fence riding.

You're either for him or against him. It's that simple. And my question is this as I close. Who is the Lord to you? We can't just know about him.

I knew about him for twenty one years. It was till age 21, I bowed before him in my own apartment in North Versailles, Pennsylvania, and I called on called upon him. I had learned the gospel through some radio TV shows. I didn't even attend a church at that time. I know there's a lot of rackets on TV, but there are some still that give the gospel and are sincere They're not just after your money They want to spread the gospel So we just we can't just know about them We have to be born again We have to have a personal relationship with him I'm going to pray Brother David is going to come and lead in the closing hymn If you want to make a decision of some sort today, you can do it where you're at I'll come down here and talk with you if you'd like, pray with you But who is the Lord to you?

Let's pray. Father, I do thank you for these scriptures about Moses and Pharaoh and the big battle. A lot taking place there in those verses. And you make it very clear in your word that we're either going to end up where Pharaoh ended up or we're going to end up where Moses ended up. It all comes down to our decision.

Making this a decision, understanding we're a sinner like pharaoh did not understand. A sinner in need of a savior and that savior is the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, we know there's a limit. There'll be a day when we live our last day on this earth. There'll be a time where we take our last breath and we'll be in eternity.

We're going to be either with you or without you. I pray that our decision, every single one of us here today, is to be with you. And we ask you these things in Jesus' name, amen.