Exodus: A Great Salvation -- The LORD is Sovereign

One of my favorite annual periodicals is the Darwin Awards. If you haven’t heard of those, sometime you should look them up. The subtitle for this prestigious set of awards is “Chlorinating the Gene Pool: Commemorating Those Who Improve Our Gene Pool by Removing Themselves from It,” if that gives you any idea of what’s coming. They are morbid (but generally quite amusing) stories from the previous year of people who died, or rather brought about their own deaths, in, shall we say, unintelligent ways. While preparing for this sermon of this post, one story from the 1999 Awards kept coming back to my mind. It’s the story of a lawyer and two of his friends on a fishing trip, and it goes like this:

A lawyer and two of his buddies were fishing on Caddo Lake in Texas. A lightning storm hit the lake and most of the fisherman immediately headed for the shore. But not our friend the lawyer. He was alone on the rear of his aluminum bass boat and his buddies were in the front. This gentleman stood up, spread his arms wide (crucifixion style) and shouted:  “Here I am Lord! Show yourself to me!” Needless to say, God delivered. The other two passengers on the boat survived the lightning strike and are reported to have joined the Ministry immediately.

I couldn’t help but keep thinking of that story as I was preparing for this sermon because as silly as that story is, that is essentially what Pharaoh did ch. 5, which we talked about last sermon. Remember, Pharaoh has refused to let God’s people go and impertinently asked, “Who is the LORD that I should obey His voice?” He, like the lawyer in our story, thinks that YHWH is no threat at all to him, so he challenges YHWH, basically declaring war Him. And, the plagues--which we talked about from a historical perspective in the last post--are God’s response. As God says 7:4-5, “I will lay my hand on Egypt… by great acts of judgment. The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD,” and Pharaoh will learn this too, though it takes a lot of righteous judgment and a long time because of his stubborn hardness of heart. And, essentially God answers Pharaoh’s question and judges Egypt by manifesting His sovereignty over everything in existence. In fact, His sovereignty is more clearly displayed in this story than almost anywhere else in Scripture.

If you want to find out more of how the plagues display God's sovereignty, you can listen to the sermon here or read the transcript here. I pray that the Holy Spirit will use it to magnify Christ in your heart and mind to the glory of God.

By His Grace,
Taylor