The God Who Is Sovereign - Exodus 7
Notes
Transcript
Introduction:
Illustration of the super hero movie scene where theres a chaotic situation caused by some villain and tragedy, and then theres a calmness that comes when someone is finally in control. “It’s a bird, its a plane, its superman” When the hero appears everyone now knows how this is going to end because the hero is now in control.
Tonight we are going to deal with the most comforting attributes of God. Because in a life where there is much chaos, confusion, grief, and disappointment, to know that it isn’t all an accident or worse, some evil force that is in control, but rather the God who loves us in fact the one that is in control of it all, gives meaning to the chaos, confusion and grief.
Sovereign Over Hearts
Sovereign Over Hearts
v.3, 9, 13
Exodus 7:5
The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.”
The God of Creation is going to prove who is truly in control, in other words He is going show that He alone is sovereign.
In verse 3-4 God makes the claim that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and that Pharoah will not listen to Moses and Aaron. This claim by God directs us to two truths about God. First that...
God is the only one who knows the heart & mind of man
Only God knows what is in the hearts of people.
What do I mean when I talk about the heart? I’m talking about the core of what makes us who we are, its our mind, will, emotions, and desires.
Listen to what scripture has to say about the heart
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
“I the Lord search the heart
and test the mind,
to give every man according to his ways,
according to the fruit of his deeds.”
We are often deceived by our own hearts convincing ourselves something is not an idol when it is. “I’m not an angry person, most people just get on my nerves”. And we can hide the true intentions of our hearts from others. The poin
Every way of a man is right in his own eyes,
but the Lord weighs the heart.
For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
Not only does he know the heart but he is sovereign (or ultimately in control of the heart)
The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord;
he turns it wherever he will.
Many are the plans in the mind of a man,
but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.
It’s a misunderstanding to think that people refuse to believe in and trust God because there isn’t enough proof, and pharoah is the clearest example because after all none of us will have witnessed what he witnesses and yet he still refuses to believe and submit.
Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”
Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,
“He has blinded their eyes
and hardened their heart,
lest they see with their eyes,
and understand with their heart, and turn,
and I would heal them.”
Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.
It is never simply an intelectual issue keeping people from God, it is always a heart issue.
Unless God does the work of changing the heart of a sinner as he promises in Ezekiel 36:26 “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” We will remain hardened in heart and refuse to believe.
Because God is sovereign over the hearts of men, we can cry out to God to change our hearts and to change the hearts of those we desire to see come to faith in Jesus
It’s the reason David can pray in Psalm 51:10
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Or Jesus will say in John 6:44
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.
Or Paul will say in Romans 2:29
But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.
God’s sovereignty does not excuse us from our sinful hearts, we still are to blame for hearts that resist God’s law and oppose God’s glory. In fact, you’ll actually see over the next few chapters, the text recounts Pharoah hardening his own heart. So it is not God giving us the wicked desires that produce the fruit of our lives, but it is God whom we must cry out to, to fix our wayward hearts. It’s why we need Christ!
Sovereign Over Creation
Sovereign Over Creation
(In the Heavens and on Earth)
Earth (v.3, 9-10)
Earth (v.3, 9-10)
Simply put God flexes his power and authority over creation by again turning a stick into a crocodile (Exodus 4:3-4). He turned an in animate object into a living breathing animal.
Our science today is the most advance we have ever been in understanding biology and how life works, but there is no way we have the ability with the best of science to turn a stick into a crocodile.
Heavens (v.11-12)
Heavens (v.11-12)
The magicians mimick the acts of God by also turning a stick into a crocodile. By magician we are talking about guys who literally used or claimed to use evil forces or powers of other God’s to perform supernatural acts. Interestingly in this narrative it is not even suggest that this was a false or faked supernatural act.
Let me be clear... there is a reality of spiritual warfare that exists in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12 “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
There are real forces that we can not see, and they are evil, and they are by definition supernatural. We see throughout scripture that they can even cause supernatural or strange things to happen, just as in this instance.
But God, demonstrating His power even over wicked powers in heavenly places, causes the crocodile produced out of the staff of Aaron to swallow up the crocodile produced out of the staff of the magicians.
Because God is Sovereign, his plans can not be stopped!
“Remember this and stand firm,
recall it to mind, you transgressors,
remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
calling a bird of prey from the east,
the man of my counsel from a far country.
I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass;
I have purposed, and I will do it.
God always accomplishes His purposes!
When God send the Messiah (Jesus) to be the saviour of all people and the people kill the Messiah, it appeared that God had failed because the savior died! And yet that was in God’s good plan from the beginning all the way back in Genesis 3 that the child of Eve will stomp the head of the serpent and the serpent would bruise his heel, that was God telling of how he was going to defeat the accusations of Satan and the bondage of sin & death for his people. Satan and wicked men thought they won, but they simply were instruments in the hands of the sovereign God!
So whether it is Pharoah’s hard heart refusing to let the people of God free, or whether it is the chaos and suffering of life. None of those things are preventing God’s good purposes from coming to pass, but all of those things fit within God’s means of doing that which brings glory to His name and that which is best for us.
Trust the God who is in control of the outcome!
