Legitimacy of God

We're going to preach from Exodus this morning. Exodus chapter seven, and I'm going to read from verses eight to 13. Exodus chapter seven verses eight to 13. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, when Pharaoh says to you perform a miracle, then say to Aaron, take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh and it will become a snake. So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded.

Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts. Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs, yet Pharaoh's heart became hard, and he would not listen to them just as the Lord had said. In addition to that, can I just read to us Ephesians chapter six verse 12, just one verse?

Paul writes, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. I've alluded to this already before, and I'm just going to make this my starting point. This verse that we read in Ephesians. Now, you're a Christian here this morning, you may be well familiar with it. You understand that in some sense, everything we encounter in life, certainly everything you encounter in your spiritual life, has this spiritual dimension to it where you have an opponent whose name is Satan. If you're not a Christian here, what this says to us very basically is that there is a) a spiritual realm, we believe that we are created to have spiritual fellowship, communion with a holy loving God who loves us, but in opposition to Him stands one who is called, scripturally, Satan, the adversary.

And we think, I guess living in a Christian era, that a lot of this only pans out in the New Testament, sort of in Ephesians' time, the spiritual warfare, it seems to be a thing about times. And yet, it's not. We go to Exodus, we read through the entire Exodus, the journey that we get there of God's people, Israel, and we see that Satan is there. This cosmic spiritual conflict that we're involved in and will continue to be involved in till the end of time is so real, so intense and acute throughout the Exodus. And what I want to do this morning is just work through these few verses that we read in this strange little encounter of these snakes that take place in front of Pharaoh.

Now just the backdrop to this is the first few chapters of Exodus was God's people who got enslaved in Egypt. God raises up a priest, prophet type in the likes of Moses. He calls him and eventually sends him back to Egypt from Midian where he was hiding. You know the Prince of Egypt story quite well if you're a Christian, and eventually Moses gets brought to the point where he's happy to go to Pharaoh and state God's claim on his people. And so the 10 plagues are about to follow, but just before then we have this little episode of these staffs and snakes as a little prologue almost to what's going to happen in the 10 plagues and that's what I want us to just work through.

We read in verse eight that the Lord said to Moses and Aaron keep your Bibles open if you have them it'll be helpful just to keep track. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron when Pharaoh says to you, perform a miracle. Okay, let's stop there. This assumes that when Moses and Aaron go to Pharaoh, he's going to ask for a miracle. He's going to seek proof of God's legitimacy.

Is this a legit authority that's coming to me demanding that I release my entire workforce. And let's jump straight to application here. How often have you sought proof of legitimacy of God in your own life? How often do you come across people who would say, well, I could believe in God, I could take him seriously, if there is some sort of proof that he's legit, that he's real, that this is not a made up fantasy thing that you're putting to me and calling me to submit to, essentially. It's quite tempting for us to do this.

I mean, if you read the Bible, you see that it's full of this. You go through the prophets and the many times where we read miraculous signs accompanying the words of the prophets to back up and prove the legitimacy of their word. We go to the New Testament, go to Jesus. I mean, think, while it was not primary to His mission, let me be clear about that, nonetheless, how many miracles, how many signs, how many wonders to say that this is legit, what I'm saying and what I'm doing, the Word that I'm delivering. Early church, Apostles.

How many times did we see this and that we read of this in the New Testament as you follow through Paul and in Acts in particular? We get to see it. And yet, it seems not so much that way for us. I mean, I can't speak of every person here, but I assume that if your encounter or your experience of the Christian faith is perhaps what's considered the norm in Western culture like ours anyway, these signs, completely supernatural signs in physical way, you know, staffs becoming snakes type stuff, not the norm, and we don't see it, and the question is why? Why don't we?

There's two answers to this that I want to give. The first and most important answer is that the ultimate proof and sign of God's legitimacy was given in Jesus Christ. Most notably and decisively and emphatically in His death and His resurrection. He said, hang on, that's not good enough. How are we meant to stake our faith on that being passed down for thousands of years, two thousand years, and supposed to be enough for us?

You know, why didn't a lot of other people, the Pharaoh in this instance, get the advantage and the benefit of a sign, and I don't. Again, I guess I want to caution us a little bit this way, thinking this way as well. There's a place in the New Testament where Jesus tells a parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and you may remember it, where there's a rich man who lived on earth, was an ungodly man, he didn't believe, he was unrepentant, and outside his gates there was this poor beggar who never got a scrap of his food and yet was a believer, and then the parable goes that they enter into eternity and the rich man goes to hell essentially, in the place with his weeping gnashing of teeth, and the beggar is with Father Abraham in heaven. The rich man begs across the. Just realised it's right there, and I'm in the middle, so I don't know what that does for me. Rich man begs for Lazarus, the poor beggar, can you just take a cloth, if I remember correctly, dip it in the water, just wet my mouth here.

Father Abraham says, no, well I can't, you've made your choices, really, when you had the chance to. And then the rich man goes, well can you just send him to my brothers, I have five brothers, and just warn them that they need to make their choices correctly here, like Pharaoh had to make his choice there. And then, Abraham in this parable says something striking to this man about his brothers. Do you remember what he said? He said they have Moses and the prophets.

Moses and the prophets. Jesus, or Father Abraham rather, and Jesus, by implication of this parable, appeals that people who lived roughly four thousand years before this rich man's brothers had Moses. They had the sign of the Exodus and Jesus expects that to be enough. Enough proof. Enough legitimacy.

Rich man says, no, no, if someone from the dead goes to tell them they'll repent. And Father Abraham responds again, he says, if they don't listen to Moses and the prophets, they won't be convinced even if someone rises from the dead. And sometimes, signs just won't cut it, is what Jesus is saying. There's no willingness on our part to say that we don't have to have it all figured out. We don't have to have our rational scientific consciences and criteria met.

We don't have to have that met to believe in Jesus Christ. Even if we do, Jesus says, it may not be enough for us. Now don't get me wrong. I don't want to toe the line that says there's no room for us to seek a legit experience of God and of Jesus in our lives. In fact, I actually believe it's necessary.

I think it's necessary for God's presence to be known, to be experienced. I'm even going to say to be felt at times in our lives. It's impossible for us to go throughout our entire lives and the Holy Spirit lives in us and it's completely inconspicuous. We don't even know that it's there in our experience. There are experiences, there are signs if you like, and things that each of our testimonies can bear that say these are the ways in which we believe God has revealed Himself to us uniquely, intimately.

And we're allowed, I think in fact, to look out for this, but it's dangerous for us to stake our faith on a continual run of God needing to prove Himself in miraculous and supernatural ways. He doesn't have to and he won't because he already has. And whatever he does, whatever he gives us, will always, always be something that points us to that greatest sign of all, Christ. Died, buried, and raised again on the third day for us. The first point, one of the longer ones in this verse is God's legitimacy is proven in Christ.

He's given us a sign. Sure, fair, and reliable. Then we read on back to our text. God saying to Moses and Aaron, then say to Aaron, take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh, and it will become a snake. I guess the obvious thing here that we the elephant in the room question, in the eyes of an unbelieving secular world, is did this really happen?

You were if you were to tell this story to someone with whom you shared the gospel, you would understandably be met with a great sense of doubt and mistrust and say, yeah, mythological, no way this could really happen. Now, okay, how do we answer that? I'm not going to go into that answer at length, but I had a little clip that I hope to show us, but that's corrupted as well. I'm going to try and draw the bottom line of that out and give it to you. It all, whether this is possible or not, all hangs on whether or if at a philosophical level God exists or not.

If God exists, if God could create the world, everything we see, everything we have here, out of nothing. Turning a staff into a snake is a walk in the park. It's nothing. If God's own Son died and was raised from the dead, this is nothing. This is as far as the scale of miracles and signs and God's ability to intervene and override the natural laws of nature is concerned, it's nothing.

It's a piece of cake. When you say, well, okay, assumes that God exists. Philosophically speaking in terms of apologetics here, I think most people are coming to realise, even in the scientific world, that the door is open on that question of if. Recognise that whatever you hold as absolute truth rests ultimately on something you assume to be true. In other words, something you believe is true and you have no proof for.

So is it possible? It's possible. Is it normal? No. Is it ordinary in our experience?

No. But possible indeed. If there is a God who created, for which philosophically we know there is at least the possibility, not at a biblical level, a philosophical level, a possibility. So addressing sceptics here, supernatural could be real and we have to allow for that in your assessment of spirituality and God and so forth.

If you take the Bible seriously, if you're a Christian, if you believe in God, if He's proved Himself to yourself and revealed Himself to yourself by the grace of Christ, yep, this is easy, easy for Him to do, and we can accept and rest that this could well have been true. Okay. That's the second thing we get. Back to the text. Verse 10.

So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron threw his staff in front of Pharaoh and his officials and it became a snake. Why a snake? Why not a lion? The sign given later on, one of the images or symbolically portrayed in the Old Testament, the Lion of the tribe of Judah Christ coming.

Why not that? I want to suggest that it's not per chance. It's not just by accident or coincidental that it's a snake that God gets this staff to become. Philip Reichen is a scholar. He comments.

He says, well, okay. Why is this particularly a snake? Why? This is a direct assault on Pharaoh's sovereignty. Indeed, it was an attack on Egypt's entire belief system.

What belief system? Well, when any Pharaoh first ascended the throne, you know, had this in colossus we have as a sworn in ceremony, or a or a or yeah, whatever it is that they had. He would go into the throne, and one the things that he would say, one of the things he used to commit to, sign essentially, is he would say these words. We have this from an ancient Egyptian manuscript. O great one, O magician, O fiery snake, let there be terror of me like terror of thee.

Let there be fear of me like fear of thee. Let there be awe of me like awe of thee. Let me rule, a leader of the living. Let me be powerful, a leader of the spirits. Now there's this belief in Egypt that serpents symbolised all the power, all the sovereignty, all the magic with which the gods, the idols, endowed the king, the Pharaoh.

He himself stands as in his own view, and in the Egyptian view, as an ultimate god and authority over the people. And there's a bit of a side note. Curiously, where else do we meet a snake and a serpent in Scripture? If you're a Christian here, you know it's Genesis. What does it represent in Scripture?

Satan. Again, we see here in this whole thing, in this whole Egyptian cult, if you like, what is going on is Satan is prime. Satan is at work. Satan is influencing, directing, commanding the worship of this entire Egyptian nation. But here's the actual lesson of the point that I think we can get out of this.

It's interesting to see how God proceeds to challenge Pharaoh through Moses and Aaron. Right? He doesn't beat around the bush with Pharaoh and say, can I gently encourage you to think about this or that? What does he do? He challenges them head on.

A snake. You know, we should not lose the significance of this, there's no question that when Pharaoh saw a snake right in front of him, he knew what was happening. He knew that this was a direct assault, as that quote said, a challenge to his very authority, straight to the heart, straight to the idol, straight to where it matters most. And I believe, church, that this is how God works with us too in many ways. God's Spirit goes straight to the root, straight to the cause of whatever it is that is throwing us away from God, our idols.

If we want to be popular or powerful, He's going to show us how weak we are head on. If we're in a relationship where we start to love a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a spouse or some friends or any other human being more than Him, He's going to challenge that. He's going to show it to us. And may even in His sovereignty and love allow things to go wrong in those relationships to point that out to us. If we pursue pleasure, and it will make us so miserable that the more we get, the more we realise how unhappy we are and the unhappier we become.

Straight to the source. If our lives' ambition is to make money, He may take away our financial security, whatever our idol is, just like that serpent was Pharaoh's, God will challenge it head on. He doesn't, in our interest, go soft on that. I think to some extent, this also instructs how we do evangelism. And we do this sensitively and wisely, but ultimately the Gospel brings us to this point where it points out our idols, and He challenges them, and He calls us to repent, calls us to give it up and look only to Him.

Where are we? Here. Okay, point three God's strategy. God goes straight for the heart, every time. And then we read, we're going to go back to the text now, verse 11.

Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts. Each one threw down his staff, and it became a snake. I have here a hundred dollar bill. It's not even the right size, is it? It's a pretty poor fake.

I realised that after I printed it. But my question, nonetheless, let's yeah. I'll try taking petrol on the way back with this and see what happens. The question that I ask is is this a real hundred dollar bill? Well, sure, it's real.

It's a real fake. That's what it is. What I'm holding in my hand is real. This thing, I can touch it, you can see it, it's here, it's not imagined, but it's completely fake. It's not real.

And I believe the point we need to get from Satan's agents, representatives, in the way of these magicians of Pharaoh throwing down their staffs, becoming snakes, gives us the same point about Satan's power. It's real, but it's fake. It's real, but it's fake. There's two things to notice. I already said the first one.

Satan's power is real. Some people say that in this text, maybe this was sleight of hand, maybe this was trickery, maybe they just did the old Egyptian trick and slid those snakes in and it didn't really happen. I'm not convinced of that. I think we've got to allow for a real power that operated here, that had authority, God-controlled authority, might I add, to be able to do this. Right?

Which means that if this is true, if this was true, genuine, legit power of Satan operating, real power here, that'll be true in your life as well. There would be some stuff in your thoughts, in your relationships, in your world, look at Paris, that Satan has put here. It is real. It's not imagined. Real power to mess with us, to hurt us, to make us feel the acute pain.

Certainly not imagined. I think Exodus wants us to be aware of that, wants us to see that. At the very least, be vigilant for how we are tempted to be thrown away from the pursuit of loving God. In terms of being thrown away from whatever is true, whatever is noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy as Paul tells us. Satan works against that.

You as a church will know that. You as an individual, if you're a Christian, know that. But the second point is, while this stuff is real, it's also fake. Do you know there's another story that Satan's magicians, Pharaoh's magicians, couldn't produce anything original there? It could at best repeat.

It could at best have taken what was already there made by the sovereign God, and it could have in some way corrupted, copied and twisted it. In the first three plagues, you see the same thing. God sends the plagues, and then the magicians of Pharaoh can somehow copy it and corrupt it and just match it or not even quite match it at best. Which says to us, Church, that this is Satan for us. He can at best only ever corrupt, not create.

He's a con artist. And so the comfort we need to take from this is that whatever Satan is doing to you and however he is affecting you is not ultimate, is not real, has no real creative authority in your life. At best, only to corrupt and destroy, not to own control or do with what he pleases. Second Thessalonians two verse nine, the work of Satan is displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders.

I actually think a good example of this is a movement that started in the UK. You may have heard of it, calling themselves the atheist church, which is according to the ABC, I quote, a church without religion, a congregation that celebrates life rather than any god, Sunday assembly or church for atheists is a gathering of the godless and is on its way to Australia, which I believe has already started. You see? This is real. This is a real gathering of people, a real assembly, a real hunger and yearning for the true depth of fellowship and meaning in coming together.

And yet it's a counterfeit. Yet it just misses out on the thing that actually makes church the best. The depth of knowing God to come before that throne of mercy with confidence. Real but fake. And we can add to this list of stuff that's real but fake, counterfeit experiences that's held out to us and dangled before us as the right experiences of marriage, of sexual intimacy, of beauty and self worth, of true friendship, of what makes us truly happy.

And in each of these areas, many, countless more, you'll find Satan's ripped off version of the real thing that God gave us. Satan's power? Real, but fake. Last lesson to learn, let's get to our text again. Just a one liner really, in the next bit after verse 11.

But Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs. You don't have to be a genius to figure out the message that this really sent, okay? But I'll tell you one thing, we can't underestimate exactly what this meant to the Egyptians, when the obvious implication is God's authority here is absolute. He dominates this scene. To the Egyptians though, this was especially acute because they believed that if you wanted to acquire something's powers, you swallowed it.

That's how they worked. No doubt for Pharaoh seeing this that my snakes are being swallowed up. My power, my authority, my counterfeit, fake, delusional authority that I have over the world and the earth, which I seem to think I control, is being swallowed up right in front of my very eyes, by the very symbol by which I uphold my authority. This, for him and for any Egyptian who saw this, was bad news. Wow.

It was actually really good news. But in their sinfulness and in our own human sinfulness, it was a clear threat. God said to Pharaoh, I have triumphed over you, and I have ultimately triumphed over Satan. And the story of Exodus goes ahead and it proves that to us. The plagues do, the crossing of the Red Sea, the destruction of the Egyptian army, all that sort of stuff, the whole point of the Exodus to show just this, I have triumphed over you.

Cool as that is, and special as it is, it's my joy to point out as well that it's not God's greatest triumph over Satan. You know the most decisive demonstration of God's power over Satan was in the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. The day Jesus was born, Satan opposed Him. How did he level that power, real power? Power of government sending soldiers to kill Him as a baby.

Power of demons, even personally tempting Him in the desert. Power of religion, sending priests to accuse, twist, defame, eventually convict Him. Well, through Pilate. Finally, God allowed Satan to put Jesus to death. And from there, greatest twist of all, that what seemed to be a victory turned out to be Satan's biggest mistake of all.

God's greatest triumph of all. Because He was dying for our sin, Jesus delivered us from Satan's right to us. Forever. Finally. That in order to prove that He Himself who died, Jesus, was not under Satan's power, Jesus was raised from the dead.

So that now He can say, and we can say with Paul, and I want you to listen to these words, knowing what happened there in those courts of Pharaoh's palace. First Corinthians fifteen fifty four, death has been swallowed up in victory. Who has the authority, power over death? Death has been swallowed up in victory. And Paul goes on to say, thanks be to God.

He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't it marvellous to see how God's word sort of in this little weird, strange encounter in this court of Pharaoh in many forms tells us everything that Scripture is about. The whole gospel is there as God's triumph over Satan is demonstrated. Let me wrap this up. You know, we read in the final verse of our passage that it's verse 13.

You know, despite seeing all this, Pharaoh's heart became hard, and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had said. You know, it's really interesting because only a few verses later in Exodus chapter eight verse 19, after the third plague and an unsuccessful attempt for the magicians to match what God did in the plague, these magicians say to Pharaoh, this is the finger of God. We're not so convinced anymore that we can match this. They ironically start to realise that something's going on here that is out of our league. Perhaps, I don't know, and we're not told the stories and the destinies of these magicians or any of the Egyptians really going forward, but how dearly should we hope that these magicians and the entire Egyptian nation, together with us, in the course of time realised that signs were given.

Supernatural could happen. Their challenge was straight to the heart, straight to the source of their strength and their power. Satan's power in them and through them was real, but at best, fake, and God's authority was absolute. I don't know what they realised and what became of them, but today, again, we have the call, I guess the right word, and the responsibility to bring each of us before that same choice. And I encourage you today, if you doubt that God exists or that any of the spiritual realm could be true, will you go over the facts again.

Perhaps you never have. Perhaps it's worth your while to think through philosophically whether or not God, the church, faith could be real. And who knows where that journey may lead you. I can certainly say talk to KJ about this if you have doubts and you struggle. Talk to your elders.

To why this church exists is to help you through that. If you know that God exists and His power is absolute and ultimate, but you're loving other things more than Him. There are idols in your life. I pray and I hope that He may challenge you straight to the heart, softly, gently, yet uncompromisingly, where it matters. I pray dearly that, like it is for all of us, at so many times in our lives, we will repent again and again, say, let's turn our eyes on Jesus, look full in His wonderful face.

And that all the air, the things of earth may grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and His grace. May that become true for you again this morning, whatever it is that may distract you from God and lead you away. And lastly, if you're a Christian and you're faithful, but you're suffering under this real work of Satan, which I know many of you will be. Whether He's piling guilt on you, whether it is shame, whether it is addictions, whether it is circumstances that are completely out of your control, I pray today that you'll walk out of here with comfort. You just know that whatever it is, the God whom you worship and the God to whom you will return, and the God who watches over you is sovereign and absolute and nothing that is happening to you is outside of His control.

So hold on. Hold on and trust. Even if you do not understand why He's allowed it, we trust that everything works for His glory and our good somehow. I pray that every Christian, all of us here today certainly, may long for the day where our life everlasting will become full when Christ in whom death has been swallowed up will return and there will be no more death or crying or tears or pain. And we know, Exodus shows us, that that is still ours to come and we long for it.

Let's pray together. Father we thank you for the words of Scripture. Sometimes they are just so strange and weird to our ears and takes a bit, a lot actually, of your Holy Spirit to just open it up to us and break it open. And then we discover, Father, the things that we did this morning, and I pray that each of us may walk away from this encounter with your word, either challenged or encouraged, but Lord, certainly that it would have been worthwhile. Thank you that you love us.

Thank you for Christ. Thank you that you've swallowed up death in Christ. I thank you that we all have to look and can look forward to the ultimate fulfilment of that. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.