Sylvanus Stall

Suggestion:—Objects: Some paper frogs, which can be purchased at any Japanese store for about five cents each. They are often found also in toy stores.

You all remember how Joseph was sold by his brethren into bondage in Egypt, how he was cast into prison and afterward taken out and made prime minister over all that land; how during the seven years of plenty he laid up corn for the seven years of famine which followed, and afterward his father and his brethren—in all the seventy persons who constituted Jacob's family—came down into Egypt to be fed. After two hundred and fifty years this family had increased until it numbered nearly two millions of people. Pharaoh had made slaves of them, and compelled them to work in the brickyards of Egypt. The task-masters were very cruel. They beat them with whips, and demanded excessive labor from them. These people were the chosen people of God, and their voice was lifted to God their Father for deliverance from all the wrongs which they suffered. God heard their prayer, and raised up Moses to deliver them out of Egyptian bondage.

When Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh to request him to let the Children of Israel go from Egypt to the land of Canaan, which God had promised to Abraham and to his seed after him, Pharaoh would not consent to let them go. He was a proud, wicked king, and God sent ten great plagues upon him and his country, to humble him and cause him to do as God desired that he should do.

In the first plague the rivers were turned into blood. This plague lasted seven days, and at the end of that time Moses stretched forth his rod, and all the rivers and ponds and lakes of water brought forth great frogs throughout all the land. They came, not by hundreds, but by thousands and millions, until the frogs covered all that land. They were in the houses of all the people. The king's servants were busy sweeping and carrying them out of the palace, and yet they stole into the rooms, and at night when the king would go to lie down he would find these frogs in his bed-chamber and upon his bed. When his bakers went to make bread for the king, they would find them in the bread-troughs in which they kneaded or mixed the bread, and in the ovens where they baked the bread. The frogs were everywhere in the palace and in the huts of the common people; upon the streets and in the roads; wherever the people walked they stepped upon them, and the king's carriage could not be driven through the streets without crushing thousands of them. The plague was so great that Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron, and entreated them to call upon their God that He would remove the frogs; and when God heard the prayer of Moses and Aaron He caused the frogs to die. The people gathered them up in great heaps and these dead and putrefying frogs in the streets and the water of the river caused the air to be loaded with a great stench that filled the nostrils of all the people.

After this plague of frogs came the plague of lice, when all the dust of the country was turned into lice, and after that the plague of the flies; and so on through to the last plague, which was the slaying of the first-born, of which I will tell you in another sermon.

I wish you would at your earliest opportunity turn to the second book in the Old Testament, the Book of Exodus, and in the early chapters read about these various plagues of Egypt. When you read the account of the various plagues, you will see how after each affliction Pharaoh's heart seemed to relent. He would consent for a time that the Children of Israel might be liberated from their bondage, and depart from Egypt and start on their journey to the land of Canaan. When he was in affliction he would make good promises, but as soon as God had removed the plague, and the sorrow of his people seemed to be ended for a time he again hardened his heart against God, and refused to do what he had promised. Again and again the king refused to do that which he had agreed, and caused the unhappy Children of Israel to continue in their bondage.

We may think that we are not wicked like Pharaoh was. We may not be wicked in the same degree, but we are wicked after the same nature and kind; and so God brings upon us various providences, some of which are not very pleasant. God is seeking to educate us by the trials and sorrows and disappointments and afflictions which He permits to come upon us, so that we will be more obedient, and more faithful, and more Christlike. But I suppose you have seen people who were just like Pharaoh. When they were sick they would promise to become Christians, and live good and right lives, and join the Church and be faithful followers of Christ all the rest of their lives. And yet when God would raise them up from their beds of sickness they would forget all their promises, and generally, as it always was in the case of Pharaoh, their hearts became harder and harder. Instead of being better after God had raised them up and made them strong and well, or removed some trial or affliction, they became worse than before.

Have you not found something of this also in your own experience? When you have desired something which you have asked your father or mother to secure for you, you have promised that you would run all the errands they asked, or that you would go to school and study your lessons very faithfully, or that you would go to bed cheerfully at night without complaining, or you have made your parents some other promises; and yet, after you have received the object you asked for, you have failed to keep your promise.

Or, to go a step further, has it not been so with what you have promised God that you would do? You may have entered into covenant with Him, made certain promises, and then afterward forgot to fulfill those promises. Let us always remember when we make promises to God, or to our parents, that we are not to be like Pharaoh. After God has answered our prayers we should not forget to be obedient to Him and to keep our promises.

Pharaoh was a great covenant-breaker, but when at last he gave the Children of Israel permission to leave Egypt, and then broke his promise and followed them with his army that he might destroy them, God opened up the waters of the Red Sea and the Children of Israel fled from before Pharaoh. When this wicked king and covenant-breaker saw them, he pursued after them with his horses, his chariots and his army; and when they were all in the midst of the sea, God took away His restraining power from the water which stood piled up on both sides of the way along which the Children of Israel had marched safely, and the water came down in great torrents and buried this wicked king and all his horses and his chariots and his men. So God destroyed this great covenant-breaking king, because after all of the judgments and wonderful miracles which He had wrought before Pharaoh, in order to teach him that Jehovah was God, Pharaoh's repentances were all mere shams.

This was a great object sermon which God did before the eyes of all these thousands of the Children of Israel, and it should teach you and me that we are to be honest in all our covenants with God, and be obedient to the will of God in all that we do and say.