Announcements
- Community Youth Fundraiser- Selling Eaton's Pizza coupons between services
- Community Kids Volunteers needed for Easter services- sign up on the Nursery door or reach out to Amanda or Kimberly
- Membership Class is April 6 at 4:00 pm- sign up at ccfdl.org/events
- Baptism Class is April 8 at 6:30 pm- sign up at ccfdl.org/events
- Youth Baptism Class is April 13 at 10:45 am- sign up at ccfdl.org/events
- Night of Prayer and Worship is March 30 at 6:00 pm in the Multi Purpose Room
Sermon Slides
- View sermon slides here
Sermon Notes
I. _________________ (8:20-32)
A. Against the _________________ (v. 20-24)
B. Pharaoh’s _________________ (v. 25-32)
II. _________________ of Livestock (9:1-7)
III. _________________ (9:8-12)
Going Deeper
- R. Alan Cole says: “God does not always deliver his people from suffering (Heb. 11:35), but through suffering.” How have you seen this in your life?
- Charles Spurgeon: “When it pleases God by his judgments to humble men, he is never at a loss for means: he can use lions or lice, famines or flies. In the armory of God there are weapons of every kind, from the stars in their courses down to caterpillars in their hosts.”
- Look at Ex. 8:28 Desmond Alexander: “Pharaoh’s words cannot be trusted, unlike those of the LORD.”
- R. Kent Hughes says: “If Pharaoh would not let go of God’s property, then he would suffer the loss of his own. And his losses were mounting as his punishment became more intense.”
- Read Ex. 9:12 God once again hardened Pharaoh’s heart R. Kent Hughes provides food for thought: “Some scholars argue that God did not harden Pharaoh’s heart until after Pharaoh hardened it himself. When God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, he was simply confirming the decision that Pharaoh had already
made. Thus the moral of the story is that “God hardens those who harden themselves.” This is often true. As a matter of justice, God sometimes hardens the hearts of those who have hardened themselves against him. However, in this case that explanation is less than fully adequate because
even before Pharaoh hardened his heart, God promised to harden it for him. The Lord had told Moses, “I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go” (Exod. 4:21b). While it is true that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, the deeper truth is that even this was part of God’s sovereign plan. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart was not God’s response to Pharaoh, but his purpose for
Pharaoh. God did this to demonstrate his justice. He also did it to demonstrate his power, as we will discover when we get to the seventh plague (Exod. 9:16). And he did it to display his mercy. As God said to Moses, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites” (Exod. 7:3, 4). God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to multiply the plagues, which magnified the power of both his justice and his mercy.” - John Calvin: “Man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God.” Charles Spurgeon: “God’s demand is not that his people should have some little liberty, some little rest in their sin, no, but that they should go right out of Egypt.” What unreality do you find yourself worshiping? What idols do you need to put to death this week?
- Alec Motyer tells us the result of Pharaoh’s refusal to obey God: “Plagues now followed in a crescendo of destruction and horror until at last the hardened heart was broken.” In the final cycle of plagues and in the tenth plague, we will see Pharaoh’s heart broken. Has God ever broken you? What did you learn?
- “Disaster comes when we worship God on Sunday and feed our lives with the influences of our past life during the rest of the week.” -Jeanette Howard, Out of Egypt. How does this apply to your life? Be specific.
