in Manhattan, New York City.
Other tapes are available by writing to World
Challenge, P.O. Box 260, Lindale, TX 75771
or calling 214-963-8626.
None of these messages are copyrighted and you
are welcome to make copies for free distribution
to your friends.
Psalms 135 and Psalms 136 this morning, particularly
136, but let's read.
I'll read a few verses from 135.
I'm reading from the New American Standard.
It says, Praise the Lord, praise the name
of the Lord, praise Him, O servants of
the Lord, you who stand in the house
of the Lord, in the courts of the
house of our God.
Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good.
Sing praises to His name, for He is
lovely.
Psalms 136 says, Give thanks to the Lord,
for the Lord is good, for His loving
kindness is everlasting.
Give thanks to the God of gods, for
His loving kindness is everlasting.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for
His loving kindness is everlasting.
And to Him, who alone does great wonders,
for His loving kindness is everlasting.
To Him, who made the heavens with skill,
for His loving kindness is everlasting.
To Him, who spread out the earth upon
the waters, for His loving kindness is everlasting.
To Him, who made the great lights, for
His loving kindness is everlasting.
The sun to rule by day, for his
loving kindness is everlasting.
The moon and the stars to rule by
night for his loving kindness is everlasting.
Are you getting the picture?
And then I read verse 10 and stop
there because verse 10 is very unusual.
I didn't understand this.
I searched and searched for the meaning of
this.
To him who smote the Egyptians in their
firstborn for his loving kindness is everlasting.
Now it may be obvious to you but
it wasn't so obvious to me.
Everlasting kindness.
Now I have a confession to make to
you this morning.
I stand before you guilty and I must
confess that I am in debt.
Heavy, heavy debt.
So far in debt I don't see how
I could ever possibly get out of it.
The particular debt that I'm in has to
do with how far behind I am in
giving God my praise and my thanksgiving for
his mercies towards me.
And the Lord has taken me through something
lately that I've gone through at particular times
before and I'm referring to the fact of
getting convicted about my lack of ability to
adequately and fully praise the Lord for who
he is and for what he has done
and continues to do for me.
And when I say I'm in debt I
don't say this as a gimmick to get
your attention or just as a way to
introduce this message.
I'm serious.
I stand before you convicted and buked by
the Holy Spirit and this message is born
out of that conviction.
I am in debt, a debt of praise.
How will I ever be able to show
and to tell the Lord how grateful I
am for his everlasting kindness to me.
The Bible says render unto Caesar the things
that are Caesar's and unto God the things
that are God's.
Now as far as I know I don't
owe Caesar a penny.
My taxes are paid.
I'm glad to say I'm not in debt
to Caesar or Bush or Bloomingdale's but God's
another story.
Him I'll never be able to pay.
You say well that's strange the way you're
describing this.
No it isn't.
Psalms 116 12 and 13 says what shall
I render to the Lord for all his
benefits toward me.
I shall lift up the cup of salvation
and call upon the name of the Lord
and yes I do lift up my cup
but it seems so inadequate.
One of the reasons that I'm glad that
I have the ability to speak in other
tongues is not only when I want to
intercede before the Lord and lay out my
burdens before him but also when I want
to praise him and I grope for words,
I grope for language.
I'm glad that I can go into another
dimension and I can speak to him in
a heavenly tongue and I can give praise
to him and though my intellect doesn't understand
it in my spirit I know that I've
entered into a realm of praise unto the
Lord.
Hallelujah.
Well I haven't even got to heaven yet
and Jesus has not heard the last of
our praise.
Psalms 148 2 says that praise is pleasant
and it's becoming.
It's becoming to us.
The church of Jesus Christ, the body of
Christ is never more beautiful than it wears
the garments of praise.
Ever have anybody say to you when you're
dressed up nice and spiffy and Sunday best
on you got a new outfit and they
said you know that's very becoming to you.
Well you see the garment of praise is
very becoming to the church of Jesus Christ.
Now to help us better understand why we
need to praise the Lord I call your
attention to Psalms 135 and 136.
They are called identical twins.
In fact they might be called the twin
towers of praise and thanksgiving because they rise
up to glorious heights of worship.
Now these two psalms represent a duet of
praise and thanksgiving and they sound like two
fathers trying to pay their debt of praise
to the Lord and basically both psalms say
the same thing but in different ways.
In 136 it says praise the Lord.
135 says praise the Lord.
136 says give thanks to the Lord.
135.3 says for the Lord is the
Lord.
Verse 5 for I know that the Lord
is great and that our God is above
all gods.
In 36 it says give thanks to the
God of gods.
Verse 3 give thanks to the Lord of
Lords for his loving kindness is everlasting and
there are many other similarities but I want
to look primarily at Psalms 136 which mentions
this phrase that we read over and over
again.
His kindness is everlasting.
The King James says his mercy endureth forever
and the message might be entitled that his
mercy endureth forever and the terms loving kindness
and mercy have the same meaning.
They can be used interchangeably and it was
while reading Psalms 136 that I was moved,
moved to tears as the Holy Spirit swept
over me and overwhelmed me with the thoughts
of the Lord's personal loving kindness to me
and to my family and I realized then
how much I am in debt, in debt
of praise and so far behind in expressing
my gratitude to God for his mercy that
I'll never be able to in this lifetime
ever be able to offer enough sacrifices of
praise to compensate for the amount of blessings
and mercies that have been stowed upon me.
King James says in the first verse give,
oh give thanks to the Lord for his
good for his mercy endureth forever and the
theme of this psalm is mercy's vast unfathomed
sea.
Twenty-six times the psalmist lowers his sounding
line into the ocean of God's mercy and
twenty-six times he finds that his line
is too short.
There's no bottom here he says, he excludes.
As an old gospel chorus says, wide, wide
as the ocean, high as the heavens above,
deep, deep as the deepest sea is my
Savior's love.
God's loving kindness outshines the sun and outlives
the stars and how thankful we can be
for his inspired revelation of the character of
God.
Ecclesiastes says mercy is as beautiful in times
of trouble as rain clouds in a time
of drought.
Now there are several things about the enduring
mercy and everlasting kindness of the Lord that
is brought out.
There's numbers of things but I want to
bring out just several.
First of all it tells us that creation
and nature shows forth the everlasting kindness of
the Lord.
Now I've always been intrigued and yet I
didn't fully understand, I've always been intrigued by
the number or the numerous times God's creative
work in creation and in the natural world
is mentioned in the scripture.
And Psalms 135 and 136 is typical of
this.
Now it might be obvious to you, you
might be smarter than me, but I would
read all of those never fully understanding it
until the Holy Spirit opened to me as
I studied this message.
I don't think I ever fully understood or
appreciated why the frequent references to God's creative
power and the specific mention of the functions
and parts of the universe.
I just read over them and say amen,
amen, I know that, that's fine.
But for example, Psalms 146 and 6 says
who made heaven and earth, the sea and
all that is in them, who keeps faith
forever.
Look at Psalms 147, Psalms 147 verses 7,
8, and 9.
It says sing to the Lord with thanksgiving,
give praises to our God on the lyre,
who covers the heavens with clouds, who provides
rain for the earth, who makes grass to
grow on the mountains, he gives to the
beast its food and to the young ravens
which cry.
Look at verse 16, it says he gives
snow like wool, he scatters the frost like
ashes, he casts forth his ice as fragments,
who can stand before his cold.
He sends forth his word and melts them,
he causes his wind to blow and the
waters to flow.
Look at chapter 148 verse 7, praise the
Lord from the earth, sea monsters and all
deeps, fire and hail, snow and clouds, stormy
wind fulfilling his word, mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars, beast and all
cattle creeping things and winged fowl and winged
fowl.
I'll stop there.
Now what I missed in reading these at
various times is how the psalmist draws the
relationship between God's creative work in nature and
creation and his loving kindness towards his people.
To examine the physical and material and natural
world is to see a mighty display of
God's perpetual love and kindness.
And so few who read this understand it.
Let's go back over a few of the
verses we just read.
Psalms 146 and 6 I read to you.
But look at verse 5, 146 and 6
I read, who made heaven and earth, the
sea and all that is in them, who
keeps faith forever.
But look at verse 5, how blessed is
he whose help is in the God of
Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his
God, who made heaven and earth, the sea
and all that is in them, who keeps
faith forever.
Now what I believe God is saying in
this, he is saying I made the earth
upon which you stand and see and feel
and smell and can depend on for the
sun to rise every morning and the stars
to shine at night and the God who
has a power to create what is so
evident around you that functions every day without
you even thinking about it, that that same
God is our faithful helper.
We serve a God who keeps faith forever.
Now you tell me if God does not
keep faith and faithfulness, have you ever known
him not to provide rain for the earth
or give the beast his food or cause
his wind to blow and the waters to
flow?
Now let's go over some of the verses
I just read to you.
Psalms 147.
I read to you, or was it?
Yes, Psalms 147, it says sing to the
Lord with thanksgiving.
He provides rain for the earth, he gives
to the beast his food.
And then verse 10, he does not delight
in the strength of the horse, he does
not take pleasure in the legs of a
man.
The Lord favors those who fear him.
Look at verse 6, the Lord supports the
afflicted and brings down the wicked to the
earth.
Go back verse 3, he heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
He counts the number of the stars, he
gives names to all of them.
Great is our Lord and abundant in strength,
his everlasting is infinite.
Look at verses 16 to 18 again.
It goes over and mentions these things and
then it says he declares his words to
Jacob, his statutes and his ordinance to Israel.
Verse 15, he sends forth his command to
the earth, his word runs very swiftly.
And then in Psalms 148, it goes, I've
read to you verses 7 to 10.
And then it goes down to verse 13,
it says, let them praise the name of
the Lord for his name alone is exalted,
his glory is above the earth and heaven.
He has lifted up a horn to his
people.
And now and also go back to Psalms
135, Psalms 135, it
says, whatever the Lord pleases, he does.
In heaven and in earth, in the seas
and the deeps, he causes the vapors to
ascend from the ends of the earth, who
makes lightnings for the rain, who brings forth
the wind from his treasuries.
Now listen to me, God's mercy and kindness
begins, he is saying, with his creative works.
We are surrounded by them.
We do not worship nature or the things
that God has created, but we worship him
who has created all of this for our
good.
And his creation, now I'm not a woodsman,
I'm not an outdoors person.
I remember one time I was going to
buy one of these little travel trailers and
to go out, you know, and go out
in the parks and so forth.
And a friend of mine said, what are
you doing that for?
He said, your idea of camping is to
go to the Holiday Inn.
Well, he was right, I didn't buy that
camper.
But as I travel down the highway, I
like to look from the view of my
car and I like to see the handiwork
of God.
But the psalmist is saying that when you
look at God's creation, his creation shows that
he is a God of faithfulness, dependability, and
law and order.
Psalms 19.1 says, The heavens are telling
of the glory of God, and their expanse
is declaring the work of his hands.
Day unto day poureth forth speech, and night
to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are their words,
their voice is not heard.
And you see, the voice of God is
all around us, and it is one of
his loving kindness.
And you know what's blowing the minds of
scientists now?
Because they suddenly discovered a new planet, a
new galaxy, and they're all excited about it.
Well, bless their heart, if they'll look a
little bit further, they'll see something even more
that'll blow their minds.
And it's God, I think, God's allowing them
to discover something else up there, to see
it operating up there, to give them another
chance to see his mighty faithfulness in his
creative works.
No one who stands before God will ever
be able to say to God, why did
you not show me your mercy?
God says, do you want to know what
I am like?
Look at creation as I made it.
Psalms 135 and 136, as well as in
numerous other places, we are pointed towards the
natural world as a lesson in spiritual principle.
The Scripture takes us from the physical to
the spiritual, and we see that the same
God who brought us planet Earth as a
demonstration of his loving kindness, he is saying
that when you look at the dependability of
the universe, he said, I'm the same God
who will come down and invade your little
world, and I will be just as dependable
to demonstrate myself to you in your world
as I do in the world that is
around you.
Now, verse 10 begins another thought.
Look at Psalms 136 and verse 10, and
then it begins to talk about Israel.
Another thought is talked about of Israel coming
out of Egypt and how God cares for
them, and how he loved them, and how
he brought them out, and how he led
them, and he protected them, and he fed
them.
And so here we see God going from
the great expanse of the universe, and then
he brings, he gives us a larger picture,
and then he begins to bring it down
to where we live, and he says, look
what I did for Israel.
Jesus said the same thing when he said,
but if God so will raise the grass
of the field which is alive today and
tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will he
not much more do so for you?
Now listen to me.
If you doubt the loving kindness of the
Lord, if you doubt that his mercy endureth
forever, then I tell you check the record.
Have you ever known it that day did
not follow night?
That the sun did not rule.
He said the sun rules by day.
His kindness is everlasting.
The great lights of heaven to rule by
night.
Go to the beach, if you will, and
lay on the beach for 24 hours.
If the tide doesn't go out, and if
it doesn't come back in, then you can
come back to me and say God isn't
faithful.
But if it goes out and it comes
back in, then I say to you, God
is faithful.
You want to witness of somebody, take out
of the New York Times on the weather
page.
It says right in the New York Times.
It'll tell you sunrise 649, sunset 629.
Have you ever known it that the sun
said I'm tired, I want to sleep in
this morning.
I think I'll get up about 10 o
'clock.
You want to witness to somebody, take that
out of the New York Times and write
over it, his mercy endureth forever.
And they'll look at you and say, what
are you talking about?
I said, well there it is.
It says a sunrise, were you up this
morning to see it?
Or did you see the sunset?
That's a demonstration of the faithfulness of the
Lord.
Now I told you folks that you've been
missing all this.
You've been reading all the scripture.
I know you're missing it because it's not
thrilling you very much, but it's nevertheless, it's
there in the scripture, hallelujah.
I'm getting, I'm having a good time preaching
about it.
Psalms 146 verse 6, who made heaven and
earth, the sea and all that is in
them, who keeps faith forever.
Yes, God keeps his word and his faithfulness
in the way his natural creation performs, and
will he do any less with you and
I?
Jesus said it in Matthew 6, are we
not worth much more than they?
Think for a moment of the orderliness, or
how orderly the sun and the moon and
the stars are.
The way they obey the laws of God
as they undertake their journeys through space.
Think of the mathematical precision of their movement.
If there was no such order, what a
chaotic universe it would be.
We would never know for sure the length
of the day or be assured of the
coming season.
Our lives would be in uncertainty and we
would live in disorder and confusion.
The set rule of the sun and moon
and stars is another proof that God's mercy
endures forever, and I would hate it if
the sun was able to rebel and moved
a little bit closer to the earth.
That would not be the loving kindness of
the Lord.
The world suffers because scientists and our educational
system and the majority of people do not
believe in a divine creation.
Belief in Darwinism or evolution blinds men to
the mercy of God.
Now first of all, if you think that
man, if anybody thinks that man evolved from
a fish or a toad or a monkey,
then he's going to live a very fishy
life and a very animalistic lifestyle.
But worse, you're not going to know a
loving, caring God who not only made the
universe, but mercifully maintains it each and every
single day and hour.
I'm convinced that one of the reasons man
does not know the everlasting kindness of God
is because he does not believe in the
creation theory and account in Genesis.
This is very foundational of not only understanding
how the world was created, but when you
examine the laws by which this world continues
to function each and every single day of
our lives by God's power, you cannot help
but give thanks to him who alone does
great wonders for his loving kindness is everlasting.
You see, because God is a creator, every
aspect of the universe and of man is
structured by God's creative act and universal decree,
and therefore it reflects his law and his
order.
Man cannot escape him, nor can they shut
him out.
Romans 1.20 says, For since the creation
of the world, his invisible attributes and his
eternal power and divine nature have been clearly
seen, being understood through that which has been
made, so they are without excuse.
The first five most important words in the
Bible are these, in the beginning God created.
And men have fought against the truth of
Genesis, the Genesis account of creation for centuries,
and they've endorsed Darwinism for one simple reason,
that if God is our creator, then I
am accountable to him.
Man rejects God as the one who has
established the laws of the universe because he
rejects God's moral laws as well.
If you accept God as ruler over the
physical realm, you have to accept him as
ruler over your spiritual realm as well.
But the further tragedy of man's rejection of
God as the architect of the universe, that
it shuts him out from knowing that God
is our provider, he is our protector, he
is the one who maintains the world by
his word, and just as he does that,
he will be faithful to us, his creatures
as well.
Hallelujah.
Now I know why the scripture makes such
frequent mention of the physical creation.
It is a resounding message of God's everlasting
loving-kindness.
Listen to it.
The earth is full of the loving-kindness
of the Lord.
By the word of the Lord the heavens
were made, and by the breath of his
mouth all their host.
He gathers the waters of the sea together
as a heap.
He lays up the deeps in storehouses.
Let all the earth fear the Lord.
Let all the inhabitants of the Lord stand
in all of him.
For he spoke, and it was done.
He commanded, and it stood fast.
You can trust a man like that.
Hallelujah.
Nature never breaks her own laws, and you
must be convinced that God will not change
his character in his dealings with you.
That's what it's all about.
I believe that no one, no one can
have a good healthy spiritual life unless they
are convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt
of God's mercy.
Now you may go through troubles.
You may question as to why certain things
happen to you, but if you believe that
no matter what happens in your life the
steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, that
his mercy come to an end, if you
believe that you can withstand anything that comes
into your life, any attack of the devil,
anything that happens to you, you stand on
that and say his mercies endureth forever.
Hallelujah.
That's why Paul could say, all things work
together for good to them that love the
Lord.
Now he didn't mean that all things are
good, but he said all things work for
our good.
They're ultimately for our good.
God is so powerful, he's so full of
mercy that he can cause anything that happens
to us to so work that in the
end it comes out for our good.
Hallelujah.
That's why his mercies endure forever.
This is the end of side one.
You may now...
I got to take my watch off, and
it's like we often explain to you it
doesn't mean anything.
Next I want to show you, I want
you to note verse 10.
Go back to Psalms 135 and verse 10,
excuse me, 136 and verse 10.
The psalmist moves from creation and the natural
world to show us a difficult, what I
consider a difficult to be understood loving-kindness.
And this is what stopped me in my
tracks.
To him who smote the Egyptians in their
firstborn, for his loving-kindness is everlasting.
How can it be, from the Egyptian standpoint,
how can it be loving-kindness?
Smiting the firstborn?
Where is the mercy in this for the
families of Egypt?
I studied this, I came to this message,
I came to a dead end.
I went to bed one night not fully
comprehending the relationship between judgment and mercy in
this verse.
I awoke in the night with the Holy
Spirit showing me another whole aspect of the
Lord's loving-kindness, and my eyes watered up
in tears as it was revealed to me.
The next morning I tried to explain it
to my wife.
I have felt all excited about it, and
I tried to explain it to her, and
she wasn't very impressed, and I hope I
do a better job with you than I
did with her.
Now think of what happened the night in
Egypt that verse 10 is describing.
The death angel comes down, and the baby
in the crib is killed.
The little boy who was school age is
killed.
The young man who can work in the
field, the firstborn of every family is killed,
taken from their family.
Now if you're a Christian or Jew you
know the significance of this as being the
beginning of the end of Israel's bondage, but
it's the linking of the death angel smiting
the firstborn to God's loving-kindness that to
me is still unusual.
Yes, we must say that this was an
act of mercy, but for who might we
ask?
For the children of Israel for sure we
do know that that was his mercy, but
was this only an act of mercy for
Israel?
No, this was mercy both for Israel and
towards Egypt.
For one thing, God was merciful in that
his judgment fell only, only on the firstborn.
It could have been everyone.
And this stroke of doom came only after
God had demonstrated his pity and his patience
and his judgments nine different times.
It was only until Moses and God had
been lied to, had been played with, had
been resisted by Pharaoh and his servants nine
different times, only then did God say enough
and he smote the firstborn.
I don't know if you or I would
have had such patience in that situation.
You read the account of the plagues again.
Look at it from the Egyptians' viewpoint.
Was it judgment when God smote the firstborn?
Yes, but was there mercy as well?
Yes, yes, yes, nine times yes.
Can it be any clearer that in times
of God's dealing with men and nations that
in wrath God remembers his mercy?
Now what an encouragement this ought to be
to us.
Behind God's severity there is always his loving
-kindness.
In wrath God always has mercy as his
primary object in our lives.
Hebrews 12, 6 says, for whom the Lord
loveth he chasteneth.
Now there are some, there are some who
attend here who do not believe really in
their hearts, really down inside.
They don't believe in God's judgment or the
chastising of the Lord.
They've been raised spiritually on a teaching or
a theology of all grace and they do
not believe that God would ever allow anyone
to suffer as a means of obtaining grace.
Some of you went to churches where rarely
if ever you heard a message on sin
or ever heard warnings that if you live
in sin or disobedience that God would deal
in severity with you.
As a mercy
is always the motive of God's chastisement and
his wrath.
Egypt never would have had to suffer an
evasion of frogs or swarms of flies or
the darkness on the land.
In fact it was not until there were
six plagues that it was the seventh and
eighth and ninth that life was taken.
First plant life and then animal life.
That would came as a prior warning till
before number 10 came.
And with each plague God was trying to
show Pharaoh his power.
He had acted in accordance, if he had
acted into accordance with God's will, after any
one of the plagues or at any one
point God's judgments would have stopped.
But Pharaoh missed the opportunity and turned God's
goodness into an occasion of ever increasing resistance.
And the result was that instead of him
being a sign of mercy, instead of having
a hearing ear and an understanding heart, he
became a warning to show all generations that
a man who will not bend must be
broken and that the soul may turn to
poison what God intended should be for his
nourishment and his enlightenment.
Let it never be forgotten that we are
told that God hardened Pharaoh's heart and the
heart of his servants, but we are also
told again and again that he hardened his
own heart.
Now what does that mean to you?
Listen, you may experience, excuse me, you may
experience a chastisement, the judgment, and the severity
of God's dealing in your life at this
very time.
You may be going through it, but if
so, you must know that what is behind
it is the loving kindness of our Lord.
Listen to Isaiah, this is what I was
looking for, Isaiah 54.
It says, for your husband is your maker,
whose name is the Lord of hosts, and
your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel,
who called the God of all the earth.
For the Lord has called you like a
wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even like
a wife of one's youth when she is
rejected, says the Lord.
For a brief moment I forsook you, but
with great compassion I will gather you.
In an outburst of anger I hid my
face from you for a moment, but with
everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,
says the Lord your Redeemer.
Are you being inflicted by what you might
consider a plague?
If so, I tell you this morning, it's
God's mercy to you.
It's God's mercy trying to get your attention.
If there's an error in your life or
something is wrong, through his chastising, the Lord
is calling you like a wife forsaken and
grieved in spirit, and he says I'll turn
my face from you but for a moment,
but the purpose of it is that I
might draw you unto myself.
You got you got some frogs jumping up
in your life?
They're sent with tender loving care from the
Lord.
He's calling you unto himself.
Maybe there's some swarms of flies all around
you, little things that are bugging you.
What I want to tell you something, that's
God's, that's God maybe doing that to show
you a sin, an error of your life,
of compromise.
Maybe you're experiencing the darkness of confusion, a
lack of direction in your life.
It's darkness, as darkness fell upon Egypt and
God may let you be in that darkness
in order for you to break through to
him.
Now do you recall what the last, very
first plague was in Egypt?
I want to talk to you about the
first and last.
This is what the Lord brought to my
attention in the middle of the night, and
when I thought about it, it just blessed
me as I thought God's loving kindness.
Let me read it to you, Exodus 719.
The Lord said to Moses, say to Aaron,
take your staff and stretch out your hand
over the waters of Egypt, over the rivers,
over the streams, and over their pools, and
over all their reservoirs of water, that they
may become blood, and there shall be blood
throughout all the land of Egypt, both in
vessels of wood and vessels of stone.
Now you see, blood is a type of
redemption.
The Lord gave a sign to Egypt.
He gave them a sign all over the
land, through the blood, intending to bring Pharaoh
and his people to repentance.
And if a people had such a visible
sign and warning, there's no people that had
such a visible sign as Egypt.
God filled the rivers, he filled the streams,
he filled their pools.
My goodness, the housewife could go into her
kitchen and pick up a vessel and look
inside, and instead of it being water, it
would be blood.
You talk about a warning.
You talk about loving kindness.
The Lord showed himself in every drop of
water.
And you see, that's the same thing that
the Lord will do for you.
You pick up this thing, you turn over
this, and everywhere you go, oh, you may
have trouble, you may have problems, but that's
God behind it all.
It's God's loving kindness trying to warn you
and show you, this is me, this is
me.
The Lord, you see, will do no less.
What a mighty demonstration.
The very first plague should have been enough
for them to say, oh my goodness, my
goodness, and bow down before God, because everywhere
they turned, there was a sign of God's
power.
And the Lord will do no less to
show his love, his compassion, and his mercy
to you and I.
Listen to Romans 9, 22 and 23.
What if God, though willing to demonstrate his
wrath and to make his power known, endured
with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for
destruction?
And he did so in order that he
might make known the riches of his glory
upon vessels of mercy which he prepared beforehand
for his glory.
You may see it one way, what you're
going through.
I want you to see the other side
of the coin.
It's his loving kindness, hallelujah.
It's his loving kindness.
There's one final lesson I want to leave
with you regarding the plagues.
I stated that they are evidence of the
loving kindness of the Lord both to Egypt
as well as to Israel, and this is
further seen by understanding the number nine in
its biblical meaning.
The number nine is the biblical number that
denotes completion, finality, and fullness.
There are nine fruit of the Spirit, there
are nine gifts of the Spirit.
Matthew 27, 25, it was a ninth hour
that Jesus cried out, it is finished, and
gave up the ghost and died.
The number ten is the biblical number for
law and order and government.
The Ten Commandments represent God's government and his
law.
It was not until God had demonstrated the
fullness of his judgments did he execute the
final penalty of the law upon Pharaoh.
Or looking at it another way, Pharaoh was
given advantage of grace and mercy to its
finality before law and order came down upon
his head.
And God will do no less with you
and I than he did in this instance.
Before number ten comes down on your head,
the Lord will show himself to you nine
different ways in order for you to turn
to him.
Before we ever experience the finality of judgment
or wrath, before we have the Supreme Court
of the law carry out its executive order
for our sins, before that happens the everlasting
kindness of the Lord is poured out upon
us.
He calls and he woos and he speaks
and he chastises, he does anything and everything
to bring us into conformity to his will.
The Lord will show you himself.
Those who are never dark in the church
door have to just get up in the
morning and God says, there's evidence of my
loving kindness.
And God will show himself to you in
what he does for you and what he
does to you.
But you can be sure that he will
never execute order number ten until the nine
opportunities of his grace have also been extended
to you.
That's what it means when it says in
Psalms 136, he smote the firstborn in Egypt.
His loving kindness endureth forever and his loving
kindness is being manifested before and to you
this morning as well.
May you give heed to the word of
the Lord.
Hallelujah.
Let's stand together.