Exodus 8:1–19Scripture
Today you can write in your notes: "True Worship." That's what I'm calling this. I read it three or four different times looking for what I believe to be a god-given theme through this text, and I wrote down, actually changed it like three or four different times, but what I ended up with was just simply "True worship." So let's read this together. It is a little bit of a lengthy text, so read this with me. It says, "Then the LORD said to Moses, 'Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, "Thus says the LORD, 'Let my people go, that they may serve me. But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with frogs. The Nile shall swarm with frogs that shall come up into your house and into your bedroom and on your bed and into the houses of your servants and your people, and into your ovens and your kneading bowls. The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your servants.'"'" And the LORD said to Moses, "Say to Aaron, 'Stretch out your hand with your staff over the rivers, over the canals and over the pools, and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt!'" So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt.
But the magicians did the same by their secret arts and made frogs come up on the land of Egypt. Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, "Plead with the LORD." Interesting, I just picked this out as I was reading this text: he doesn't say, "Plead with your Lord." Pharaoh's heart may be in a hardened state because of God's choosing, but I believe his mind is starting to change. "Go plead." I lost my spot. Oh, man. "Plead with the LORD to take
Introduction
Away the frogs from me and from my people, and I will let the people go to sacrifice to the LORD." Moses said to Pharaoh, "Be pleased to command me when I am to plead for you and for your servants and for your people, that the frogs be cut off from you and your houses and be left only in the nile." And he said, "Tomorrow." Moses said, "Be it as you say, so that you may know that there is no one like the LORD our God. The frogs shall go away from you and your houses and your servants and your people. They shall be left only in the Nile." So Moses and Aaron went out from Pharaoh, and Moses cried to the LORD about the frogs, as he had agreed with Pharaoh. And the LORD did according to the word of Moses. The frogs died out in the houses, the courtyards, and the fields. And they gathered them together in heaps, and the land stank. But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite (I forget how to pronounce that word), he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the LORD had said. Then the LORD said to Moses, "Say to aaron, 'Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats in all the land of Egypt.'" And they did so. Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and there were gnats on man and beast. All the dust of the earth became gnats in all the land of Egypt.
The magicians tried by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they could not. So there were gnats on man and beast. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, "This is the finger of God." But Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the LORD had said. This morning we're looking at the next two plagues, plague two and three of God, because of Pharaoh's hardened heart, Pharaoh's refusal to obey God, to release the Hebrew people from slavery. I've entitled this message "True Worship." True worship. And this morning I want to extrapolate six factors. Six. Like I said, i've got a lot to cover. Six factors that determine the truthfulness of our worship. There's six of them that I've pulled out of this text. Maybe you could find eight; I only found six, and I'm the one with the microphone. But there's six this morning that we're going to talk about to
Point 1We are freed from slavery to slavery
Determine the truthfulness of our worship. Number one is: we are freed from slavery to slavery. There's this idea that being freed in Christ means that you can just go on doing what you want, all willy-nilly. Downstairs in Rock City this morning, they're learning a lesson from this same text, and the key point that they are learning is that true repentance is required for freedom from sin. Getting forgiveness from sin, being set free from the bondage, from the slavery of sin, is not just acknowledging God and then going on your merry way.
Repentance is required, and repentance is an about-face. It's a 180-degree turn from self to pursuing the Lord.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 5:41
It's a denial of oneself. We're set free. God says this at the beginning of our text this morning: "Let my people go, that they may worship me." Pharaoh is the king at this point. Egypt is the United States, or the China, or the Russia, if we want to include them, of the world today. Egypt was the governing dynasty, and Pharaoh as the leader, the governing leader of Egypt (not elected; he was born into it), but as the governing leader, viewed himself, and the Egyptians viewed him, as God. And what God, through Moses and Aaron, is instructing this man who believes himself to be a deity is, "Let my people go so that they can worship me. They're not going to worship you anymore. You don't get to have claims over my people anymore. Turn them loose so that they can come worship me." We've discussed this point thoroughly over the last three years of going through the book of Romans, that we're set free from slavery to sin and we're brought into, adopted into God's family, where in the book of Romans Paul uses the terminology that we are now slaves to Christ.
I don't get to just go do whatever I want. And there is this thinking in the world today (this is false, by the way, just to preface) that because I'm a Christian, because I'm indwelled with the Holy Spirit, whatever I do isn't counted to me as sin, because there's no condemnation for those who are in Jesus. And I've heard from the mouths of men who profess to be Christians, "It's okay that I look at pornography, because I'm a Christian. It's not sin for me because I'm indwelled with the Holy Spirit." This is how some people think. What God's telling Pharaoh is, "Let my people go so they can come worship me,"
Not so they can go worship themselves, not so they can go on about their merry way. Did God leave them wandering in the desert for a little while? You bet you. But we're set free from slavery to slavery. From the very beginning of the Word, a little bit further from where we are right now, but in Exodus chapter 20, God makes this point very clear: "You shall have no other gods before me." No other gods. Not Pharaoh, not some golden calf, not King Nebuchadnezzar, not caesar, no one. God's demand was for Pharaoh to release the slaves that he had forced to serve him so that they could freely worship their true God. But this time not only was there a demand, but also a consequence, a threat, for when Pharaoh disobeyed God's demand. Number one: we're freed from
Point 2Flee idols and beware of cheap imitations
Slavery to slavery. The next factor to determine the truthfulness of our worship is the danger of idolatry. In our Scripture today, in verses 2 through 4, it says, "If you refuse to let them go, I will send a plague of frogs on your whole country. The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. The frogs will come up on you and your people and all your officials." There's a danger in idolatry. What's interesting is there's more to this text. I haven't studied out all of the ten plagues, because, I mean, we're moving through this, and I'm not an Exodus scholar by any means. But last week Pastor Shawn looked at the Nile becoming blood, and he drew out the truth of the significance of the Nile and what the Egyptians believed spiritually about the Nile River. This week we're looking at frogs and we're looking at gnats. What's interesting is, to the unstudied eye, this plague of frogs may just seem like a huge nuisance, but there's more to the plague of frogs than just being annoyed with frogs all over the place. The Egyptians (I didn't know this prior to studying this as we're going through Exodus), the Egyptians worshiped frogs. They had lots of crazy things that they worshiped. They worshiped a multitude of gods, one of which was a frog goddess. Her name, I'm probably not going to pronounce it correctly, was Heqet, Heket, something like that. H-E-Q. And I love this, because God has used this imagery, a frog, to plague the land of Egypt with frogs that they couldn't get away from, right? And as I've been studying this text to prepare for this morning, all I could think about was my friend Kirk up here in the front row, who doesn't even let his children in his bed because he don't like germs. He don't like filth. Which is hilarious, because he's an auto mechanic. He's regularly covered in grease, but it's his filth, right? And I was thinking to myself, I would have been significantly annoyed and displaced, and I would have been with all of the rest of Egypt in my frustration with this plague of frogs. But a man or a woman like Kirk would have been exceptionally annoyed. There were frogs everywhere. Everywhere. I mean, he's talking about ovens, troughs. You know, if we wanted to look at this text in a 2024 context, we're talking about: open the toilet seat to do your business, frogs. They're everywhere. And this goddess, Heket, Heqet, however you... We're going to go with Heket because that sounds better than Heckit. She's the goddess (are you listening to me?) of fertility, rebirth, and regeneration. And this is the goddess that the Egyptians worship, that God's like, "I'm using frogs." I mean, one at a time. This isn't extrapolated from the text, right? But lots of historians and Bible scholars that know Egyptian mythology, that know the false gods that they worshiped, have looked at Egyptian mythology and have looked at the Bible and gone, "whoa, this is more than coincidence," that God would use frogs that symbolized rebirth and regeneration and fertility in the Egyptian beliefs. She was often depicted as a frog or with a frog's head. Many scholars also consider the plague of gnats, or mosquitoes (there's different word usage depending on what translation you're using), to be a possible judgment against the Egyptian god Set, or some refer to him as Seth, who was their god of chaos, storms, disorder, war, deserts, and the sky. So here are two different plagues that many scholars are looking at and going, any Egyptian with any spiritual understanding in their mythology and their belief and their worship of false gods would have easily gone, "What's going on here? Why is there a bunch of frogs? Why did the Nile turn to blood? Why do we have these gnats? What? The dust? Something spooky is going on, because this is messing with our gods." Oh, goodness. We have clear evidence of God's disdain not just for false gods but for his people worshiping false gods. In Joshua 24:20 it says, "If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you." God will be good to you, but if you turn and worship a false god, he may just smite you. In Psalm 20:7, King David says, "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. They are brought to their knees and fall, but we rise up and stand firm." God has a very clear disdain for his people turning to worship false gods and idols. It's very clear. And Jesus really makes it relevant for us in Matthew chapter 6. I love that as you go through the Gospels and Jesus is preaching, he takes these old, ancient concepts from the Old Testament and he modernizes them. This is even a couple thousand years ago from today, but he modernizes them in a way that even our culture can get a better grasp on the relevancy of God's approach to worshiping idols or having idols in our lives. Jesus says this in Matthew 6:24: "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." He's talking about money right now, but all throughout Jesus's teaching, at one point he even goes after, "If anyone will follow me, he must first hate his own father and mother." Now we know that Jesus isn't actually condoning hatred in your heart towards your mom and dad. He's drawing a line: you cannot bow your head, you cannot have any other love in your heart over God. Not your finances, whether that's an earned finance or an assisted finance. Not your career path, not climbing up that ladder that you're trying so hard to climb up. Not your family, not power, not putting your trust or faith in the government. And this is tricky in the world that we live in. And this is becoming... Like, I have preached points like this for years, and I'm just now getting to the point that I'm realizing myself, in my own life, how easy it is to do the very thing that I warn people not to do, because your finances can become an idol very easily. Very easily.
The number in your savings account can be of higher treasure value to you than your walk with the Lord.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 17:58
Your family can become an idol. Your kids' progress and success in their extracurricular activities can very easily become of higher importance and higher treasure value in your heart than their own spiritual maturity. And this is where I'm getting to: I'm starting a season of life where I'm realizing how easy it is to slip into this. We were a little foolish. I think we would all agree in my house at this point that we were a little foolish, my wife and myself and my oldest daughter, who just started her freshman year. And we signed that girl up for like three different activities, and I'm tired. We've had like two busy weekends in a row, and I'm talking about like two and three things every day throughout the weekend. And then I have friends with older teenagers, and when I'm like, "Oh, maybe next weekend it'll be better," they're like, "You're dumb." It's very easy. Very easy. And there's mixed opinions in my own personal situation. I have some voices in my life saying, "Man, you better pace yourself, because this is a marathon, it's not a sprint." And then I got other people that are like, "Do everything! It's awesome!" And I am a do-everything kind of person. My wife's not. And so I'm regularly running out the door, and she has this smile on her face. She kisses me, and she's like, "You did this to yourself. Bye." But I like to be involved. But it's very easy. It's a very thin line from being a supportive parent to a young adult child with extracurricular activities and things that they want to achieve and aspire to in high school. It's a very thin line from allowing that to become an idol, not only in her life but in my life, because I want her to succeed. I cheer on the sidelines. I yell to the point that I'm a little hoarse while I'm supposed to be preaching on Sunday. I sign up for all the stuff and exhaust myself. Jesus says very cleanly, you can't serve two masters. You may have one God. Not that God doesn't want your teenagers to be involved in sports and extracurricular activities and all of those things, but when that takes value, treasure value, in your heart over your daughter's spiritual maturity, over your son's spiritual maturity, when the level of exhaustion that you're facing prohibits you from even saying the word "exhaustion" the first time you try... But if that begins to take priority in your life, friends, family, you have an idol in your life. We are coming up... Oh, man. I was in a store, or I was at a garage sale yesterday. I love garage saleing. And I was at a garage sale, and they had the news on a TV in their garage, and it was rambling on about political stuff. And I'm like, "Oh." I just sighed really loud, and the lady looked at me like, "Are you okay?" Apparently I make really loud noises. This is where a rabbit sign needs to come up.
I grunted the other day, and some stranger looked at me and she's like, "Did you just growl at me?" And I was like, "No, ma'am. No, ma'am, I did not. Just a little indigestion." Apparently I make very loud noises. But I grunted, and this lady at this garage sale says, "Are you okay?"
And I'm like, "Yeah, I'm just ready for this election to be over with." Like, it's mind-numbing, and it turns brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor and friend against friend, because our political affiliation and our personal beliefs for where the future of our country should go have higher treasure value in our hearts than the Lord does. That's an idol.
You can try to spin it any way you want to; it's an idol.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 22:48
And you cannot have true worship and worship idols at the same time. You cannot serve both. You cannot worship both. That's all right, baby. Number three is: beware of cheap imitations. Number one, we're freed from slavery to slavery. Number two, the danger of idolatry. Number three, beware of cheap imitations. Over and over again, as we have been going through Exodus, we read things like this, Exodus 8:7: "But the magicians did the same by their secret arts and made frogs come up on the land of Egypt." Now, I believe that this is the point in this narrative, in this story, as Pharaoh has been resistant against Moses's instruction from a God that he doesn't even acknowledge, because he himself is God. Every time up until this point, as Moses and Pharaoh and Aaron have all interacted, he's turned to these magicians and he's been like, "Show them what's up. My boys can do it too." God releases a plague of frogs on Egypt, Pharaoh turns to his magicians, they bring some more frogs, and Pharaoh's like, "Are you kidding me? We got more frogs now." That's how I see it. There is no way that these magicians created more frogs and Pharaoh was like, "Oh, yeah, that was cool. Really excited about that one." But it's a cheap imitation. Now, there's lots...
Pastor Shawn's referenced it a little bit; we've talked about it a lot in our small groups. There's lots of different opinions, and theologians who have dedicated their lives to the study of God's Word, who are good men of God, who love the Word, disagree on this point that I'm about to talk about. But either way, whether they're doing some sort of illusion or some sort of trickery, or there is a demonic spirit at play (that's my personal position, that there's a demonic spirit at play that is empowering these magicians to do what God had just done), it is a cheap imitation. They didn't fill the Nile with blood; they turned a little water vase into blood. They didn't plague all of Egypt with frogs; they just threw a couple more handfuls of frogs into the mix. We don't know for sure how many, but the plague didn't come from their doing. The plague came from God, and then they imitated it, until the next one. Which then leads me to the question: well, if they couldn't imitate the gnats, because it says they didn't, then why imitate? I don't understand all of it. We're not given all of the details. But up until this point, with the frogs, they've been able to imitate what God had done. There's a straightforward warning. Listen to this morning. You've heard this Scripture; Pastor Shawn, I'm pretty positive, used this Scripture a couple weeks ago. But there's a clear, straightforward warning given to us by the apostle John on this issue. 1 John 4:1 says, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit." This is deep here. This is not elementary-level biblical teaching. "Don't believe every spirit." Lost my place. There we go. "But test the spirits." Test the what? "Test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world." What John's telling us right now is that everything that looks godly isn't necessarily godly.
Just because it looks holy, spiritual, doesn't mean that it's holy, spiritual.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 27:13
"Don't believe every spirit." He's not saying, "Don't believe every prophet." He's not saying, "Don't believe every preacher." He's saying, "Don't believe every spirit" that appears to be at play in any given moment as you walk this earth, because there have been many false prophets released into the world. Not everything that looks godly is necessarily godly. 1 Peter 5:8, Peter says, "Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like..."
There's that imitation word. He prowls around "like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." The King James and the New King James Version both say "seeking whom he may devour." So there's a factor here in the enemy's ability to eat your lunch, or to devour. Only those whom he may. There's a permission factor here. The enemy can't just come at anybody and devour them.
I believe Satan has pulled up... I'm going to read a little bit here. I had to write this out. I believe Satan has pulled up to a spiritual Golden Corral with American evangelical churches.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 28:36
There's a fast-growing movement within the church for an ungodly desire of spiritual, emotionally driven experiences that has trumped a pursuit of biblical understanding and real spiritual maturity. In that desire, you can find, with little research, many accounts of things that look spiritual or supernatural. Now, I'm going to stop here, because Pastor Shawn did a really great job on this topic a few weeks ago. If you weren't here, you need to go back on our website and you need to watch the sermon "Discerning Spirits." I'm not going to dive into this any further than that, because i'm only on number three. I still got three more. Not everything that looks godly in the church and our culture is godly. It's that simple. But it is so easy. It's so easy to get distracted and to become attracted and allured by highly emotionally driven situations. Very similar, but in the flesh, in the simple, practical way that, you know, Lacy and I, we have a minivan now, because we just keep having kids. But before we had our minivan, we had this Lincoln Navigator that we bought, and it was like the bougiest vehicle I've ever owned. And we were in the market again when we went to look for the Navigator, because we'd had a Yukon. I had wrecked it (long story there), and then we just drove a little four-door car for a couple years. And we're like, "All right, we're going on a road trip. We're going to buy a family vehicle again, because we can't keep traveling in this car. There's no room." And I was like, "Okay, we're going to be disciplined about this. We're going to write down the number of how much money we're willing to spend as a whole. We're going to write down the number of what we're willing for our car payment to be. And we're going to look for something practical that checks the boxes, the things that our family needs. And we're not going to get distracted by all of the fancy, bougie stuff out there that we don't really need." And she's like, "Okay." And so we start looking, and I'm looking at Tahoes and Yukons, because at that point we were still swearing off minivans. Mostly me; I think she had already started to turn at that point, but I was still avidly against a minivan. So we started looking at these SUVs, and I was on my way to Harrisonville to look at a Tahoe, and the salesman calls me and he says, "Hey, somebody just bought it. I'm sorry," because they don't hold vehicles for people. He's like, "But I got another vehicle I want you to look at." I said, "what's that?" And he said, "It's a Lincoln Navigator." And I was like, "Okay." And so I got in this Navigator, and I was like, "Ooh, this thing has heaters and air conditioners for your tushy. What?" This thing was nice. Now, we didn't buy that one, because it wasn't four-wheel drive, and that was one of my stipulations at the time. Lost that too when we got the minivan. But whatever, Lacy's happy, because the doors come open with a click of a button. It is really nice. It is really nice. I carry those babies around all the time, and I'm like, I'm driving the van. But so we ended up buying a Lincoln Navigator, because I test-drove this thing and I was like, "That's fancy." The seats in that thing were more comfortable than my recliner in my living room. And I was thinking about how easily we are distracted by emotional and what looks like spiritually driven moments in different churches, or if you're watching videos on YouTube and you're seeing, "Oh, look how the Holy Spirit's moving in that room. How come the Holy Spirit doesn't move
Point 3Knowing God is not submitting to him
Like that at my church?"
Not everything that looks godly is godly.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 33:03
That's all I'm going to say about that. Number four: knowing is not submitting. Knowing is not submitting. Exodus 8:9 and 10: "Moses said to Pharaoh, 'I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those that remain in the Nile.'" Pharaoh's answer: "tomorrow." "'Tomorrow,' Pharaoh said. Moses replied, 'It will be as you say, so that you may know there is no one like the LORD our God.'" Now, we had some conversation in our small group, maybe you guys did this week too: why in the world would Moses say, "You know what, Pharaoh, be pleased to command me when I shall ask the Lord. I'll leave it up to you. When do you want him gone?" And Pharaoh says, "Tomorrow." He doesn't say, "Right now." And I've watched some sermons where pastors tried to come at that at an angle where they completely took the text out of context and went on some weird rant about the frog in your life, and I'm like, "No, that's not... You're not talking about the Bible anymore. You're just trying to preach a cool sermon." But scholars who are actually looking at the words written here, the Hebrew words... Moses is giving his account. Moses is writing this account, don't forget, after the fact, after all of this has happened. Moses, in the wisdom God has given him, says, "We ought to write this down so that Israel can have an account of all of this happening." And in the context of what's happening here, if you were to go look at the Hebrew, when he says "tomorrow," the indication there is as soon as possible. "Let's make this happen." Many believe it could have been towards the end of the day, so "tomorrow" was right away. In our translation to English, we read the word "tomorrow" and not "ASAP." But in no rational realm of thinking is Pharaoh saying, "Maybe we could hang out with these frogs for another day. That'd be okay." Pharaoh's telling Moses, "Tomorrow, please, get them out of here. Go talk with your God tonight.
I want the frogs gone by tomorrow." There's an urgency here, even though we don't really read it that way in our English language. It's important to understand that. But Moses acknowledges in this text that Pharaoh knows. He knows. Pharaoh even mentions the Lord. I didn't pick that out until just this morning, but Pharaoh even says, "Go speak with the Lord." Pharaoh knows who God is at this point. He has seen enough. But he doesn't bow his head. He doesn't submit to the God of the Hebrew people that he has enslaved. Exodus 8:18 says, "But when the magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, they could not. Since the gnats were on people and animals everywhere, the magicians said to Pharaoh, 'this is the finger of God.'" And then they turned and bowed their heads to the Hebrew God and followed Moses and Aaron out of... Nope. They didn't do that. They didn't do that. Knowing is not submitting. The magicians and Pharaoh knew of the existence and the power of the almighty God of the Hebrews, yet they did not budge.
You may know (listen to me, church), you may know a lot about God. You may know a lot, but that doesn't mean that you've submitted to him.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 37:13
It's as clear as the text is black and white. You may know all of the gospel story, all of the gospel accounts of Jesus giving up his life for the forgiveness of sin. You may know that all who call on the name of the Lord, all who profess Jesus as Lord, will be saved. You may know all of those verses. But if you've never professed Jesus as Lord, if you've never submitted your life to God and made Jesus your Lord, submitted your life to his Word, had that repentance about-face that I was talking about earlier, you will stand before the Lord, and like many... Jesus didn't say a few, a handful. Many, Jesus warns, will stand before me and cry out, "Lord, didn't we do a bunch of these cool spiritual things?" And Jesus will turn them away and say, "Away from me, you evildoers." "But now, wait a minute, Jesus. We baptized people. We cast out demons. We performed many signs and wonders." And Jesus said, "You people of wickedness, because I never knew you. You never submitted to me." There is a difference between knowing and submitting. And if you are sitting here this morning and there is not a point in your life where you have, with your mouth, professed Jesus as your Lord to any number of people... It doesn't say, if you bow your heads and close your eyes and, with your inward thoughts, think to yourself... That's not what it says. You have to make a profession of your faith. You have to stand before man and acknowledge Christ if you want Christ to stand before his Father and acknowledge you. There is a difference between knowing and submitting. The Egyptians clearly knew of the truth of God at this point, yet they chose not to submit. If the Egyptians can do it, so can you. If the Egyptians can stand and look at miraculous things happening, you can hear the truth and it be in your brain and you still not submit to it. What are you waiting on?
Being raised in the church, that doesn't make you a Christian.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 40:14
Deciding to go to church and do lots of churchy Christian things, that doesn't make you a Christian. The profession from your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead, that he's the Son of God, that profession, that belief makes you a Christian. That indwells you with the Holy Spirit and removes the old dead man's spirit. Knowing is not submitting. Oh, goodness. James 2:19 says, "You believe that God is one; you do well." That's good. I'm glad you believe. I'm glad you believe that. "Even the demons believe, and shudder!" And there ain't no demons becoming Christians. But the truthfulness of God is made known to every creature in and under
Point 4Worship-fueled prayer seeks God's will
Heaven. You may know a lot about God, but that doesn't mean you've submitted to him. Number five is: worship-fueled prayer. Exodus 8:12 and 13 says, "After Moses and Aaron had left pharaoh, Moses cried out to the LORD about the frogs he had brought on Pharaoh. And the LORD did what Moses asked." Plain and simple. Moses cried out to God; God did as Moses had asked. There is power in your prayer. There is power in your prayer. This is another point that Pastor Shawn has hit on recently. I just want to ask this question this morning. I'm not going to really get into the power that we have in our prayer; just go back a couple weeks and watch Pastor Shawn's sermon. What I want to ask this morning is: whose name are you praying in? Is "in Jesus' name" just the ending of your prayer, or are you really praying in Jesus's name? And there's a significance to that. There's an importance to that, because oftentimes we pray and we end our prayer with the recited "in Jesus' name, amen," and we don't see any clear answer to our prayer. My question is: whose name are you really praying in? John 14:12–14, John says this (this is Jesus talking, just so we're clear): "Truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father." Listen very closely here.
"Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it." Now, these are the words that Jesus used as they're translated into English, but I think an even greater Scripture to look at (this won't be on the screens), an even greater Scripture to look at, is the one that Pastor Shawn mentioned in his sermon a couple weeks ago, and that is Jesus's own prayer before he goes to the cross, when anxiety was so rich in his body the Bible says that he sweated blood. In Jesus's own prayer: "dad, is there any other way that we can do this? Is there any way that this cup can pass from me? But not my will, but yours be done."
Brothers and sisters, that's what it looks like to pray in Jesus' name: we're praying, "Jesus, your will be done. Your will be done."
Often we slap "in Jesus' name" onto the end of our ransom demands.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 44:28
Our prayers look a lot like, "God, please, me. In Jesus' name, amen."
"Amen. Well, gee, I wonder why God's not doing what I asked him to do. Maybe prayer just doesn't work, because I prayed and it didn't happen." Whose name are you praying in? Whose will are you seeking? Moses goes to God and he prays for God's will. Remember, God's already lined all this out, right? Moses is walking it out in obedience. He's praying in God's will, and God does what he asks, because Moses is standing and walking in obedience to the will of God, doing something truly terrifying: walking into Pharaoh's court. You can go back a few chapters ago, when Moses said, "I am not the right man for this job." But he walked out in obedience to God's will. So when he prays, God moves in accordance.
God doesn't move in accordance to Moses's will; God's moving in accordance to his own will.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 45:54
Moses is just standing in alignment with it. There's a difference between standing in alignment with God's will and praying
Point 5Worship even when it stinks
"Me" all the time. Number six (I'm finishing it up; I'm only five minutes late, that's pretty cool), finishing up with this is the fun one: worship even when it stinks. Y'all know where I'm going. Worship even when it stinks. Exodus 8:13 and 14: "The LORD did what Moses asked." Moses asked God, "Could you get rid of these frogs, please? I went to Pharaoh, we talked, here I am. Can you get rid of the frogs?" Moses...
Excuse me, God did. "The LORD did what Moses asked. The frogs died in the houses, in the courtyards and in the fields. They were piled into heaps, and the land reeked of them." Now, Scripture doesn't specify how long it took for the frogs to decompose and for the smell to go away, but I got to think (listen to me this morning), I got to think that at the moment that God moved and all the frogs died, the moment that they were left with these huge heaps of dead frogs, that Moses had to, in some way, shape, or form, look up into the heavens and think to himself, "This is not what I had in mind. Not what I meant." But God did. The Lord did as Moses had asked. Moses asked for the frogs to go away; the frogs went away. It brings to mind... I think we've talked about this at small group or something. I'm not condoning all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. There's some inappropriate stuff and some mythological stuff in there, and there's a lot of sword fighting and ickiness. But I love the Pirates of the caribbean movies. One of my favorite parts of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies is when Will Turner comes to Barbossa on the Black Pearl, and they're getting ready to throw what's-her-face overboard, and he says, "You swore that she'd go free." And Barbossa looks at the plank that they're getting ready to throw her off of, and he says, "She is going free. It was you who failed to specify when or where." But I'm doing what you asked. Now, is God a creepy, sadistic pirate? No, obviously. But many times we go to the Lord thinking that we have an understanding of exactly how something should play out.
And just because God may answer your prayer doesn't mean that it's going to play out exactly the way you envisioned.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 48:51
It's as simple as that. You don't get to give God your list of demands and give him your detailed list of how you want everything to play out, because we're walking in accordance to his will. Sometimes our good God doesn't move in the way we'd like. Sometimes he doesn't answer our prayer... Excuse me, sometimes he answers our prayer differently than what we had in mind. Sometimes even after God has moved (are you ready for this?), we're still left with a stinky situation. I'm bringing dad jokes into my sermon. It's fantastic.
Sometimes even after God moves, it still stinks a little bit.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 49:39
You know, I remember back to when I caused this pretty significant car wreck several years ago now, and I had gobs of good, professing Christians, people that I loved, coming to me saying ridiculous things like, "Just don't worry. Just keep the faith. God's going to work it all out. I really don't believe anything bad's going to happen." And then I lost my driver's license for a year, because I caused a car wreck, and then it turns out I'd forgotten to pay my insurance payment, and if you do that, you get in trouble. So I lost my driver's license for a year. And there were moments within that year that I thought to myself, "I just need to go to Price Chopper." Like, lacy's at work, I just need to go to the store, because we need something for the kids or whatever it may be. It's just literally right there. Is it going to be that big of a deal? And I would just get so convicted, because I was praying and asking God for favor, because my situation could have been so much worse. Y'all got no idea. Got no idea. I paid a really good lawyer to represent me in court and make sure that you didn't have to come bring me some carrot cake cupcakes while I was in jail, because they could have put me in jail. I mean, if somebody would have been hurt in that accident... Which I believe God was all over, sparing people in that situation. Did God, in his sovereignty, lift my Yukon up out of the air and place it gently down in the field and not let me get in a car wreck? No, he didn't. Did he make sure I didn't kill anybody? Absolutely he did. Did he make sure that me and my daughter weren't injured? Absolutely he did. And my lawyer told me, "J.R., if somebody would have been injured, if there would have been an injury, or, God forbid, a death involved, you'd be imprisoned, because you didn't have insurance." It could have been horrible, right? But that year of not having a driver's license, and being on probation for two years, because there was that too... I was pretty quiet about it. You know how embarrassing it is, asking people from your church to give you a ride to Independence so you can meet with your probation officer? How many of you remember Sandy Bronson? That good woman drove me to Independence a few times. Ebony drove me to Independence a few times, because I had to go meet with a probation officer. I've talked about this before. Brook always got probation and parole mixed up, and I'd be gone, and she'd be like, "Oh, you got to meet with your parole officer." I'm like, "Stop saying parole officer. I haven't actually served any time in prison. It's not a parole officer." But that year stank. It was not fun. It was humiliating, sitting in probation meetings with people who had actually committed serious crimes. It was embarrassing. I had a lady from Price Chopper... I'm going to say this, and then I'm going to be done. I had a lady from Price Chopper come up to me one day. Lacy and I, we rarely ever go to the grocery store together, and this is a sweet old lady. She used to come to church here years ago. And Lacy and I were at Price Chopper. We literally hardly ever go to the store together, because we got four kids, but we went into the store together, and this lady comes up and she's just like, "Lacy, it is so good to see you." And Lacy's like, "It's good to see you too." And she's like, "Oh, I thought you guys were divorced." And I was like, "What? Why would you think we were divorced?" Ebony took me to the grocery store a lot, because I needed a ride. Liz drove me to the grocery store a lot, because I needed a ride. And she looks at me and she says, "Well, you're always coming in here with other women." And I'm just sitting there thinking to myself, "This is not... This is a small town. This is not good." It was humiliating. It stank. It stank. I'm sure Moses and all of the Hebrews are looking around at all these heaps of dead frogs going, "Moses, this is not what we talked about. This is disgusting. They're still everywhere. They're just now in big, huge piles, and they're dead and they're rotting."
Sometimes even after God has moved, we're still left with a stinky situation.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 54:33
James chapter 1, verses 2 through 4, says this: "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." Church, my question for us this morning is: are we true worshipers? Jesus talks in the Gospels about how the Father is seeking out true worshipers who will worship him in spirit and in truth. Is our worship true? Are we... I lost my place. Are we worshiping in the understanding that though we are freed from sin, we are slaves to Christ? Are we worshiping in a way to remove and flee from idols in our lives? Are we worshiping true movements of the Spirit, or are we following cheap imitations? Do we just have a head knowledge, a head understanding of God, or have we submitted our lives to him? Is our worship fueled by prayer that's in submission to God's will and not our own?
And what does your worship look like even when it stinks?
Pastor J.R. Brown · 56:26
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