![]() And the struggle, my beloved, was not to be just between two men, Pharaoh and Moses. Pharaoh’s refusal would open the struggle. Moses was to assemble the elders of Israel, and all together they were to go to Pharaoh. After forty years’ absence from Egypt, Moses appeared back in the land. He remembered His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.Īnd the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters for I know their sorrows and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians…. But at the appointed time God returned to them. Seemingly He had put them down there, then went off and left them. For 430 years they were down there in the land of Egypt. The Egyptians saw the people of Israel (who had become a multitude in the land of Egypt, probably 1 ½ million) as potential enemies, and they reduced them to slavery. Afterward that dynasty was overthrown, and the Egyptians came back into power. They were welcome in Egypt because there was a friendly Pharaoh on the throne, probably one of the Hyksos kings (bedouins who had come from the desert, of the same background as old Jacob). The family of Jacob, numbering seventy, went down into the land of Egypt. The deliverance of Israel from the land and from the hand of Pharaoh is one of the great episodes recorded in the Word of God. It had to do with the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage. One of the outstanding examples of this conflict was between Moses and Pharaoh. Paul again mentions it in telling of the great things that were happening in Ephesus:įor a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries. It is that of which Paul wrote:įor the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other…. You see it in the temptation of the Lord Jesus yonder in the wilderness. You see it joined yonder on the top of Mount Carmel when Elijah met the prophets of Baal. You see it in the conflict between Saul and David and between David and Goliath. There would be no peace there would have to be a surrender. You see it when God said, “…the LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” ( Exodus 17:16). You see it again taking place in the soul of that man Job as he fought his battle. Then you see it in the lives of two men who were twins, Jacob and Esau. You can see it in the Garden of Eden when the conflict was first joined there as far as man is concerned. It comes into sharp focus in the Word of God, and you can see it plainly. In the Scriptures, every now and then, it surfaces. It is titanic, gigantic, and volcanic, if you please. It’s super-colossal it is hyper-cosmic it’s extra-mundane. It is more far-reaching than man can comprehend it is deeper and wider than this earth. ![]() It began before man was ever created it will continue here on this earth even after the church is removed. And this spiritual conflict is between light and darkness, between good and evil, between heaven and hell. There is a spiritual conflict behind every physical conflict today. It is responsible for that which is now labeled race riots in America, in England, in South Africa, and in many other countries of the world - which, actually, are not a conflict between black and white or between civil rights and civil wrongs. And it has been the cause for every war from the day that Abraham went down to deliver his nephew Lot from the cities of the plain. It was responsible for the conflict in Vietnam. It was responsible for the Korean conflict. It is that which was actually responsible for World War II. ( 2 Corinthians 10:3)Ī spiritual struggle is going on today, a struggle that is behind every physical struggle. ( Ephesians 6:12)Īnd he expressed it in his second letter to the Corinthians:įor though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. I was not speaking at all of a physical conflict but of a spiritual conflict, a conflict about which Paul writes:įor we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. However, I was not speaking of a conflict between two armies wearing two different uniforms. I was then a pastor, and I chose for my subject “The War Is Not Over.” The message was truer than I possibly could have dreamed it would be. It was the Sunday after V-J Day (the day, you will recall, that was supposed to have ended World War II). For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.
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