Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Sermon Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/Sermons/zz20090614.htm

THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION
Exodus: God's Forming The Nation Israel For His Abrahamic Covenant
Part I: God's Deliverance Of Israel From Egypt, Exodus 1:1-15:21
H. God's Glorifying Himself By Egypt's Plagues, Exodus 7:14-12:36
3. God's Exalting Himself As Creator Opposite False Teaching
(Exodus 8:16-19)
    Introduction: (To show the need . . . )

    Discerning God's truth in today's world is not easy, and it can lead to unsettling confusion, a fact we can readily illustrate as follows:

    (1) Stephen Prothero, chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University, wrote the article, "In Egypt, a theologian in chief" in the June 8, 2009 USA TODAY, p. 11A supporting President Barak Obama's June 4, 2009 speech to the Muslim world in which he "dreamed of Jerusalem becoming 'a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as . . . when Moses, Jesus and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.'"

    Though we believers at Nepaug Church can see the ecumenical error in this statement, it can lead any thinking reader to an unsettling conclusion: (a) if he assumes the President is theologically correct, he is left believing he can heed either Islam or Orthodox Judaism or Biblical Christianity to gain God's truth. However, doing so leaves him unable to justify why the adherents of each of these faiths have so strongly opposed the views of the other faiths, a conflict that has left the President feeling he needed to speak on their need for harmony!

    (b) An alternative for the conscientious reader is to presume the President is in error. However, if that be so, the reader is left wondering how such an influential, educated man could be so very wrong!

    (c) Such concerns are not easily dismissed, so the conscientious reader can conclude that no one can really know God's saving truth!

    (2) Not only many folk of the world, but even believers in Christ struggle over spiritual discernment issues relative to teachers:

    (a) Last Sunday after our morning service, one of our members spoke with me about his concern over an errant statement in a commentary by a nationally known Christian teacher!

    (b) Later this same last week, I read another troubling errant view penned by another nationally known Christian teacher!

    (c) Earlier this month, I received an e-mail message from believers on the other side of the world from us who came into contact with us through our Church web site, and their comments revealed they had adopted a major theological error that is common in our country! I was amazed at the degree to which error has permeated theological thinking throughout the world!

    We may then ask, "In view of the unsettling confusion that many face on discerning what IS God's truth, how can I know it?"

    Need: "With the unsettling confusion existing in our world over just what IS God's TRUTH, how may I OBTAIN and KNOW it?!"

  1. The plague of "lice" EXPOSED Egypt's GODS of the EARTH AND Egypt's RELIGIOUS TEACHERS to be FALSE:
    1. God directed Moses to tell Aaron to strike the dust of the ground with his rod to produce some kind of insect to afflict Egypt, Exodus 8:16. [The Hebrew word for "lice" (KJV) or "gnats" (NIV) is kinnim, a noun with an uncertain meaning that refers to bothersome insects like gnats, mosquitoes or lice, Ryrie Study Bible, KJV, ftn. to Exodus 8:16; Bible Knowledge Commentary, Old Testament, p. 122.]
    2. When Aaron struck the ground, the insects came up from the ground and afflicted man and beast all throughout Egypt, Exodus 8:17.
    3. This plague exposed Egypt's gods of the ground to be false:
      1. Since the first two plagues dealt with the Nile River and its animal life (frogs), this third plague focused on the land and its animal life to show Moses' God was Creator on WATER AND LAND!
      2. God then critiqued Egypt's false gods of the land just as He had before critiqued the false god(s) of the Nile: these included Akhor (Russell Grigg, "The Ten Plagues of Egypt," Creation (vol. 27, no. 1), Dec.-Feb. 2005, p. 36) and Khepri, the scarab (dung beetle) god whose job it was to bury dung to stop the breeding of destructive insects in the ground (Ibid.) and to roll the sun across the sky like dung beetles roll balls of dung along the ground, Ibid.
    4. Pharaoh's magicians tried to duplicate this miracle, but for the first time in the plagues, they could not do so, exposing them to be false, so they told Pharaoh the plague was a miracle of God, Ex. 8:18-19a.
    5. However, Pharaoh's heart was already disposed to be hardened as in the first two plagues, and he refused to let Israel go, Exodus 8:19b.
  2. [Greta Hort's view that many evangelicals have adopted (Ibid., p. 34) gives a naturalistic explanation of this plague that counters the belief that it was a divine miracle, but Scripture counters her view:
    1. Ms. Hort claimed the "third miracle was mosquitoes, which had bred in the floodwaters" of the Nile, Russell Grigg, "The Ten Plagues Of Egypt," Creation (vol. 27, no. 1), Dec.-Feb. 2005, p. 34.
    2. However, Scripture itself reveals this explanation to be erroneous:
      1. Nowhere in Exodus 7:14-12:36 is there any reference to the Nile River ever flooding in an unusual way to produce such a swarm.
      2. Rather, Moses met Pharaoh on the Nile's regular banks in Exodus 7:15 and the Egyptians dug in search of water on the river's regularly saturated banks; Exodus 7:24; Ibid., p. 36.]
  3. The WAY God's plague of insects EXPOSED Egypt's TEACHERS as FALSE instructs US for OUR DISCERNMENT needs TODAY:
    1. This third plague of insects was the first one in which Pharaoh's magicians were unable to duplicate God's miracle, meaning that over time , they were exposed to be false, Exodus 7:22; 8:7, 18-19a.
    2. Then, in failing in trying to duplicate God's miracle, the magicians were logically exposed to be false, Ex. 8:18-19a; 2 Timothy 3:8-9.
    3. Also, the insects were associated with unclean dung in the failure of Egypt's dung beetle god to bury the dung to stop the breeding of the pests, so they experientially polluted Egypt's priests, a group that was proud of "their purity with their frequent washings and shavings, and their wearing of linen robes," Ibid., Bible Know. Com., O. T.
    4. Thus, this plague instructs us on FOUR TESTS of EXPOSING FALSE TEACHERS for OUR BENEFIT TODAY (as follows):
      1. Pharaoh's men were seen as false in the third plague, so we discern errant teachers over TIME, 2 Tim. 3:8-9; Ibid., Ryrie, ftn. to 3:8.
      2. The magicians were logically seen as false in failing to achieve what they tried to do, so we discern errant teachers via LOGIC .
      3. The magicians were exposed as false by their works, so we discern true from false teachers by their "FRUITS", Matthew 7:15-20.
      4. The efforts of the priests to be pure from the pests were exposed to be futile in their experience, so we discern false teachers by the hypocrisy in their LIFESTYLES, cf. Galatians 6:12-13.
Application: If concerned about gaining and knowing God's truth, (1) may we trust in Christ as Savior (John 3:16) to be guided to the truth, John 8:32! (2) Then, (a) may we rely on the indwelling Holy Spirit of truth (Gal. 5:16; John 16:13) and test teachers and teachings by the tests of (b) TIME, (c) LOGIC, (c) WORK and (d) LIFESTYLES to DISCERN if they are true or false! (3) May we use SCRIPTURE as our OBJECTIVE GUIDE in all our tests!

Lesson: In the third plague, God showed He is the Creator of earth and its life just as He created waters and their life forms versus the beliefs of Egypt's teachers. He thus timelessly exposes false teachers and their errors by the tests of (1) time, (2) logic, (3)"fruits" and (4) lifestyles!

Conclusion:

 The Lord led me to apply the test of time in our sermon last week to the USA TODAY Stephen Prothero article on the President's speech to the Muslim world that we cited in our sermon introduction:

(1) After reading Prothero's article on Monday, I felt uneasy for days that he wrote the President had said Moses, Jesus and Mohammed had prayed together! President Obama claimed to be a Christian, but such a statement was foreign to the Bible, so I searched the Internet to find the text of his speech, and learned that his exact words had been: "a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra when Moses, Jesus and Mohammed, peace be upon them, joined in prayer." ("Obama's Speech to Muslim World: A New Beginning," politicsdaily.com, 6/9/09, emphases ours)

(2) That led me to look up "the story of Isra" on wikipedia.org where I found it is a story in Islam's Quran, and it claims Muhammed "leads" the "other prophets in prayer"! That implies Muhammed was superior to Jesus, a heresy in Christianity that holds Jesus is God!

(3) Bothered that the President as an alleged Christian had referred to an event in Islam's Quran that counters such a core Christian belief, I recalled from Prothero's article that the President had been very influenced by "Reinhold Niebuhr", a "neo-orthodox" leader. (search.time.com, "Neo-orthodoxy: Round Two") This theological view "puts the authority of Scripture on the basis of sheer unverifiable faith" versus relying on the Bible's written statements. A neo-orthodox cannot be sure God has not spoken in any religious writing, be it the Quran or the Egyptian Book of the Dead or the Hindu Vedas! (Gleason L. Archer, Jr., A Survey of Old Testament Introduction , 1972, p. 23)

(4) However, in Matthew 5:18 KJV, Jesus said, "For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." A "jot" is the smallest Hebrew letter, the yodh, and a "tittle" "is a very small extension or protrusion on several Hebrew letters which distinguish these letters from similar ones" and so affect the meaning of a written word (Ryrie Study Bible, KJV, 1978 ed., ftn. to Matthew 5:18). Jesus viewed God's TRUTH as known by WRITTEN Bible statements, meaning that Neo-orthodoxy ERRS, and those who submit to its views err!

May we discern God's truths by WRITTEN SCRIPTURE, and test all teachers and teachings as God's Word instructs!