LifeLink Devotions for Monday, February 26, 2024

Four hundred years have passed since Friday’s devotional. No, you were not a victim of cryogenics. I’m referring to the timeline between the life of Joseph and the coming of Moses to deliver the nation of Israel from slavery to the Egyptians in the book of Exodus. The current Pharaoh, or ruler of Egypt, is a cruel dictator who abuses the Jewish people for his own purposes. God has heard the cries of the people and has appointed Moses and Aaron to bring His message of deliverance to Pharaoh.

Everything about Pharaoh is self-centered and self-serving. His heart has become hardened to any form of compassion for people. When presented with the opportunity to let the people of Israel leave his land, he refuses. He even challenges the power of God with his own demonic miracles. So, God began a series of plagues that would eventually force Pharaoh to submit to God’s authority. God turned the Nile River into blood. Pharaoh simply went into his house and ignored the problem. The plagues continued. God sent frogs and gnats and flies, but Pharaoh refused to listen to God. God sent more plagues. All the livestock of the Egyptians died. God covered all the Egyptians with boils. When Pharaoh refused to comply with God’s command to release His people, God made an important statement to Pharaoh. He said, “You are still exalting yourself.”  Here we discover the root of the problem that keeps us from experiencing true forgiveness from God – we exalt self over God. Remember that because it will be important in a moment.

When Pharaoh again rejects God’s direction, God sends a plague of hail that destroys everything that was outside. Pharaoh finally admits he has sinned.

But Moses is given insight into the true condition of his heart and says to Pharaoh, “I know that you do not yet fear the Lord God.” Pharaoh’s admission of sin was still short of God’s forgiveness because it was only an admission of wanting relief from the consequences. He had not yet seen God for who He was and come into agreement with God about his nature of sin. Pharaoh models what far too many of us live each day – false repentance based solely on the hope of relief from pain and suffering. The proof is in the fact that as soon as the hail stopped, Pharaoh sinned again and turned his back on God. His intentions were clear. He would say whatever was necessary to accomplish his own desired outcomes.

So God sends yet another plague – locusts that covered the face of the land. That’s when Pharaoh again admits sin, but this time in a more personal seemingly sincere way.

Exodus 10:16-17 “Then Pharaoh hastily called Moses and Aaron and said, ‘I have sinned against the LORD your God, and against you. Now therefore, forgive my sin, please, only this once, and plead with the LORD your God only to remove this death from me.’” 

But he is not sincere. Look closely. Pharaoh admits he has sinned, but he is asking for forgiveness for that sin only, and for God to remove from him the consequences of that plague only. His statement of confession and repentance is nothing more than an act of self-preservation. It will not be honored by God with forgiveness.

Pharaoh was not forgiven because he refused to repent of his sin nature. He may have admitted individual sins, but he only did so to avoid consequences or to be relieved from the pain and suffering that resulted from his choices. He never admitted to God that his very nature and character was sinful and needed to be forgiven and transformed. He wanted mercy only for his actions but he wanted to keep on being who he was. He was still exalting himself. God does not forgive anyone on those terms.

What about you? Do you believe you are a Christian because you have asked God to forgive your sins so that you can avoid the fire of hell, and yet you have never repented of who you are as a person? If you have never come face to face with the holiness of God and seen your own deserved doom, then you are not saved. If you have never confessed your sin nature, not just individual sins, then you are not saved. If you have never come into agreement with God about the true condition of your heart, which is deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), then you are not saved. If you have only come to God so that you can learn to behave like a Christian and hopefully somehow earn the favor of God, then you are not saved. God forgives only those who agree with Him about the corruption of their very nature and character by sin and who reject that nature and accept the nature of Jesus Christ in its place.

We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and there is no other way. But grace cannot save if we have faith in ourselves rather than faith in God alone. Grace is the undeserved gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. It is not grace if we believe in any way that we deserve it. That requires us to see ourselves exactly the way God sees us in our sin – absolutely guilty. It is at that point of humility that God will forgive you, save you, and exalt you to the glorious position of His child. There is no other way. Pharaoh tried to appease God but still had his own agenda. It didn’t work. God wanted Pharaoh and the Egyptians to know that He alone is God and to humble themselves before Him. If they had, they would have been forgiven. Salvation comes only to the humble, and being truly humble means leaving everything of worth from your life on the altar of repentance, and receiving only the worth of God into your life. Please make sure you have done that.

Pastor John