Hey this is Pastor John Ryan Cantu from PNEUMA Church in Houston, Texas.

Thank you for listening to the message today.

I hope that it blesses you and all those you share it with.

God bless you.

Alright, let's get into the word Exodus Chapter 7, if you would stand with me.

Exodus chapter 7, verses 1 through 5.

Exodus is after Genesis If you have it, say I have it.

Amen.

Praise the Lord.

The word of God says this in Exodus 7, 1 through 5.

And the Lord said to Moses, See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh.

And your brother Aaron shall be your prophet, and you shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of this land.

But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I will multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, ph Pharaoh will not listen to you.

Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment.

The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.

Let's pray, Heavenly Father.

We thank you for this word, my God, that you have uh spoken over your servant.

I pray that as I have received it, Lord, um our your people would receive it this morning, my God.

I pray.

That you would speak, my God, edify, my God, convict, my God.

Do whatever you have to do, Lord.

And I pray, Father God, that you would be on my lips.

And nothing that is said today would be from me, my God, but only of your wisdom.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

You can take your seat.

I titled the sermon this morning, Heart of Heart.

Heart of Heart.

I gave a class on Wednesday. on Romans chapter 9.

And if you read Romans chapter 9, it's uh it's it's it's kind of a challenging chapter.

Um In so many ways.

And it's all about the sovereignty of God, the full control of God.

And it tells us in Romans 9 that God has mercy on whom he wills and he hardens whom he wills.

It says that that for this very purpose God raised up Pharaoh for this purpose.

It talks about God choosing Jacob over Esau. before any of them did anything right or wrong.

And so when you read uh about God in this light, sometimes it raises some questions that that come up that we in the church Um need to deal with.

And so I want to I want to kind of deal with that today.

But more than just that, I want to use this word to speak against a sin that is probably the most destructive of all sins.

That's the sin of pride.

Any prideful people in here?

Amen.

That was a trick question.

Pride is If you read the Bible, pride is one of the most talked-about sins in the Bible.

It's the first sin ever committed.

It is what made the devil the devil.

Pride is one of the seven abominations spoken about in Proverbs.

Proverbs says that pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Pride goes before destruction, haughty spirit goes before a fall.

I kind of relate that to um what what Isaac Newton said about gravity For the very first time he was observing gravity and he was like, you know what?

What goes up must come down.

And so in in in Hebrew the word for pride is gaion.

And gaion literally means to be highly elevated.

Another Hebrew word for pride or hottie is goba.

Goba means the same thing, it means to be highly elevated.

In fact, when the Bible speaks of Goliath 's height, the word that's used is goba.

And so to have a haughty spirit or a prideful heart means a person has elevated themselves, their feelings.

Their identity, their character, their position, their ministry, their church, they've exalted something about themselves, but what goes up must come down every time.

As the verse says, pride goes before the fall.

The Lord will humble the proud.

It is a biblical promise.

And so if you deal with pride this morning, you know, be careful.

Because the Lord will humble the pride, the proud.

And pride manifests itself in so many different ways.

It's got many different faces.

But it's all it's all from the same root.

You know, pride in some people looks like they can't admit when they're wrong.

Some of y'all looking at your spouses like, hey, that's you.

You can't admit when you're wrong.

A person who can't admit when they're wrong is essentially protecting their elevated position, right?

They they they they have a they have a position to protect, so It instead of having that be tampered with, they blame everybody else, they make excuses, and they can't apologize because apologizing to anybody puts them in an inferior position to the person they're apologizing to.

That's pride.

That's pride.

Or another manifestation of pride is when you don't want to listen to anybody's counsel.

When you think you know it all.

Or maybe you don't know it all, but you know a lot.

This is first manifested with kids and their parents.

Mom don't know what she's talking about.

Dad's too old.

His advice is irrelevant to my generation.

And today it's your parents, tomorrow it's your boss, your leaders, your pastors, even the Bible.

When something is done to give you counsel on a personal level, no one knows me better than me.

Another manifestation of pride, and this one's personal for me because this is the type of pride that I dealt with for many years.

I've talked about the Lord working in the pride that I had for a long time.

The pride that I had was not being able to take off the mask.

Not that you're a two-faced person, but you don't want people to see you weak.

You don't want people to see you vulnerable.

You don't want people to know that you're broke.

You don't want them to know that you're broken.

You don't want them to know that you're struggling.

And so you hide everything that you're dealing with so nobody can see.

What you're doing is you're protecting that elevated position that you want others to perceive of you.

That's pride.

Pride also manifests itself as arrogance.

When you genuinely believe other people are beneath you, you're stronger than others, you're more successful than others, you make more money than others.

You you you're more anointed, you got more wisdom, more experience, more knowledge.

All of that could be true, but it's puffing you up, elevating you above others.

What what what's your pride today?

What's your pride?

I can't tell you how many people say, Pastor, not me.

I can admit when I'm wrong.

And I'm like, mm-hmm.

You can admit like when it's like small stuff, like when you thought they drove a Toyota and it was actually a Lexus.

Like, oh yeah, my bad.

I was wrong.

Pride goes a lot deeper than that Because pride wants to attach itself to your identity.

That's what pride does.

And so whenever you feel like your identity is being threatened, Or your character is being called into question, or the wisdom, the knowledge that you like to think that you have, or the strength and the success that you're trying to carry, that's when pride comes in to protect you.

That's what it's about.

Is this making sense?

Pride is there to protect you.

I can't tell somebody today that it's not about you.

It's not about you.

Pride wants to make you think that it is.

And so that's why it wants to protect you.

That's why when you know you probably should apologize, you got pride saying, nah, it wasn't your fault, Barkley Well, your fault.

It's her fault.

It's pride trying to protect you.

But it's not about you.

It's not about you being right.

It's not about you protecting your image.

It's not about you never failing.

It's not about your strength.

And great men in the Bible have fallen because of pride.

King Saul he felt the need to protect his image.

He was so insecure when David was anointed king and Saul was cast out.

He didn't know what to do.

He couldn't apologize for his wrongdoing.

He never repented.

Adam and Eve failed to take accountability for their actions.

The Bible even says that Hezekiah, Hezekiah was the most righteous king in Judah.

He became proud.

Pride is a cancer to your soul because what pride does is it hardens your heart.

That's what pride does.

Little by little, pride is hardening your heart.

This is why friends, you know, when they have a falling out, they can go years never speaking to each other again because you've already made up your mind not to apologize.

You've already determined you're not gonna reach out.

If anybody's gonna reach out, you're gonna let them do it.

You're not gonna make amends.

And as time goes by, that pride is hardening your heart so much that it becomes easier for you never to restore that relationship.

It's hardening you.

Or when you have protected that image for so long that you've built up, you've built up a reputation based off of an image that is not pr 100% accurate.

And so when you're really and I'm telling you, I'm I've I I speak from experience, and when you really need to confide in somebody and you really need to ask for prayer because you're really going through it, but you protected this false Image, this false identity that you want people to perceive you as, you have to settle for a less healthy way of coping with what you're going through.

Because you're trying to protect yourself.

So I want you to know that it's pride that hardens the heart, but God signs off on it.

God looks at the pride and he says, Let him go.

Let him go.

Let him do it.

Go ahead.

But Pastor, doesn't Jesus go after the one?

Doesn't he leave the 99 to go after the one?

Yeah, but not when the heart is a heart of stone.

He lets you go.

You'll notice in the Bible that Jesus never went after Judas.

Now we're not talking about 1 in 99.

We're talking about 1 in 12 This was Jesus' inner circle.

Judas was a disciple.

Judas was a friend.

Judas spent every waking moment with Jesus.

And the Bible says that Judas, Satan entered Judas, and what did Jesus tell him?

He said, what you are about to do, go and do quickly.

That's the type of hardening that God did to Pharaoh.

Now, before we talk about Pharaoh, I want you to know why this is serious.

I want you to know why pride needs to be dealt with like it's a cockroach that just walked into your bedroom.

You gotta kill it.

Amen?

I hate them cockroaches, man.

No, there's no There's there's no mercy for them.

Like there's no place in heaven, there's no place in the kingdom of God for a cockroach.

They are they're the devil.

And and and pride is like that.

Like seriously, like every time pride creeps up, you gotta squash it.

Every single time.

Because it it it it still happens to me, it still happens to the best of us There's prideful moments that come.

The Bible talks about John the Baptist.

If you read John, I think it's John chapter 3.

Um, the disciples of John the Baptist are looking over at Jesus and his disciples, and they're like, hey John, look at what Jesus is doing.

Look at what their disciples are doing.

They're baptizing people and what you're John the Baptist, bro You don't think that for a real quick moment John the Baptist had a little bit of pride in him?

Like, man, that's that's what I do.

That's what I was raised to do.

God called me to do that.

I'm John the Baptist.

There is there there goes pride protecting the identity.

So he had to check himself.

He said, I must decrease.

He must increase.

That's what you have to do.

You have to squash it like it's a cockroach.

He must increase and I must decrease.

A lot of us have become too comfortable with free will theology.

Now, I believe we all have free will.

I'm not speaking against it.

But we're comfortable thinking that we have full control.

And so we struggle with pride today and we think, okay, well.

I'm going to hold on one more day and tomorrow I'm going to let it go.

My sister Leah kind of spoke to this earlier in the Spanish service.

How many times have you said tomorrow?

I'm a caller tomorrow.

I'm apologize tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna forgive him tomorrow.

Let me be angry today.

Yeah.

I'm gonna let go of this sin, and the sin might not even be directly pride, but you say I'm gonna let go of the sin tomorrow.

The fact that you think that you can do that is prideful.

The fact that you you think you've got the power to let go of it tomorrow and that you actually will is prideful because what happens?

Tomorrow comes and then it's like, okay, some I meant tomorrow.

And then tomorrow comes and then you know what?

Monday, right?

It's all you're always pushing it back because we've convinced ourselves that we've got Full control.

And so we walk more in the confidence of our free will than we walk in the fear of the Lord.

Not realizing that at any moment the God who set the sun and stars in the motion, the same God who is holding back the seas, the same God who raised the mountains and crumbles mountains, can say in a single moment.

Go and do what you're gonna do.

I'm done.

I'm turning my back on you.

I'm gonna finish the process of your hardened heart.

That doesn't make God mean, doesn't make him evil, it doesn't make him less gracious, it doesn't make him less good, it makes him just It makes him God.

He is a God who commands honor.

He is a God who commands reverence and fear.

We should walk in the fear.

Listen of Hebrews 10:29.

That says, For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of truth, there no longer remains sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and fury of fire that will consume.

The adversaries.

That's a scary verse.

And it should, it should put the fear of God in us that if we continue to do the things we know we shouldn't be doing.

At any single moment, God can sign off on that pride.

I better deal with it.

I better not let that cockroach produce more cockroaches I better not not let that that bug uh lay some eggs in my home so that there is an infestation.

I better take care of it today.

But no, we walk more in our confidence of our own free will than we walk in the fear of the Lord.

That's why I say we we become too comfortable with free will theology.

And we have to know that God is still sovereign.

I never want the Holy Spirit to be so fed up with me.

That he says, go ahead and just do it again.

Go ahead and struggle again.

Go ahead and think that thing again Go ahead and deal with it the same way you've always dealt with it.

You said you're gonna do something different.

You said this was a year.

New me.

You said it.

But it's always the same process.

Go and do what you're gonna do.

No, I I fear the Lord too much, man.

As we should.

We should fear our God.

Last week we talked about loving God.

We should also fear Him.

You can love God without fearing God.

Pride needs to be killed before it kills you.

The thing is I'm very passionate about this sermon, man, because I dealt with pride.

And it almost killed me.

Drove me insane.

Like pride, it's it's just it's a voice that taunts you.

But I I I I think, and I'm I'm usually a pretty positive person, so and I usually give people the benefit of the doubt, but I think that people are gonna hear this message message today and still go home and still struggle with pride.

Because a lot of us think it's not that bad.

My pride's not that bad, it's it's kind of cute, you know.

It's it's innocent.

And we're like, I still love Jesus.

The thing is, pride blinds you.

Pride blinds people.

And the longer you walk blind, the longer you walk without seeing, the less you realize how much is grown that shouldn't be growing because you can't see it.

And then 20 years go by and then you gotta go to therapy because you think you've got all this trauma and you don't know where it comes from.

Maybe maybe you're just prideful.

Maybe in order to heal, you just you really need to be honest with yourself because you said I forgive him, but you haven't really forgiven him.

Every single day you still you still get the ick with him Every single day you see you you see him celebrating something on Facebook and and and you scroll right past.

You can't even give him a like.

You can't even give a single little measly thumbs up.

You're like, nah, I refuse.

But you forgave them.

Why are you still letting it affect you?

Because you haven't really forgiven them.

You're not, but but but you're lying to yourself.

That's the pride trying to protect you.

Maybe, maybe you're in therapy and you're like, I don't know what's going on.

And I'm not against therapy.

My wife is a counselor.

I'm not against it.

But sometimes maybe you just need to apologize because you've been carrying weight and guilt for so long and for like 20 years you've been telling yourself a different story, like ah, it wasn't my fault, it was because of this.

And they did that and they kind of deserved it.

And I wasn't the only one.

And you just never stop to take accountability.

And maybe if you just do that and lay down your pride, you can be healed again.

Maybe, maybe you just need to take off the mask and take off the makeup and let people see the real you Maybe you need to let somebody know that you're not okay, that you got some issues, and you need some prayer.

You need to take off the mask in order to heal.

All of that comes from pride.

You still with me?

So Pharaoh's pride was that arrogant self-exaltation pride that we talked about.

So when we read that God hardened his heart, his heart was already hard.

God wasn't dealing with a humble heart.

He wasn't dealing with a compassionate person.

He was not a good person.

Pharaoh thought he was all that.

Pharaohs were believed to be divine humans.

He believed that he was the representation of the pantheon of Egyptian gods on earth.

That's what pharaohs were believed to be.

They were man gods.

God kings on earth.

In Egyptian culture and writings, we see the the mighty hand of Pharaoh.

It was prolific.

You would see it written on stones and tablets and in caves, and you would see drawings of Pharaoh with an outstretched arm defeating his enemies.

And so Pharaoh was haughty in spirit.

He was also dealing with the pride of not being able to admit that he was wrong.

Because so many times in the Bible, Pharaoh was confronted with signs and wonders, uh wonders uh by by Yahweh.

But But he never admitted that he wasn't the true God.

He could never repent.

He had so many opportunities to surrender and admit that maybe he and his gods were nothing compared to him.

Pharaoh already had pride deeply rooted in him, and God decided to use that pride against him.

And so God tells Moses, I have made you like God to Pharaoh.

It's kind of a weird verse, right?

I made you like God to Pharaoh.

Now this is not like little g God.

This is like full g God.

This is big leagues.

What's more interesting is that the Hebrew text doesn't even say I have made you like God or I have made you as God.

The Hebrew text says I have made you God to Pharaoh.

Now, Moses is not God, and God isn't saying that he's God.

What he's saying is that to Pharaoh, you will be God.

Moses, every time Pharaoh sees you, you're going to be God to him.

In other words, to Pharaoh, this is a challenge.

Pharaoh is making this personal.

This is like when Goliath goes out into the battlefield and he's taunting the people of God.

It's not David that he's going up against, it's the God of Israel that he's going up against.

So you're gonna be like God to Pharaoh.

And you know what?

Pharaoh's about to get to know the God of Israel Because to him, he is God.

And so this is just a battle of the gods.

And so uh during the Ten Plagues narrative, this there's this back and forth competition.

First God sends uh frogs to cover the whole land of the of of Egypt.

And then the Bible says that through the dark arts, the magicians of Pharaoh um produce uh frogs as well.

They're like, you got frogs, we got frogs.

And then God sends gnats.

It's like the second plague.

God sends gnats to Egypt, and Pharaoh's like, watch this, and the magicians got nothing.

They fail.

And this goes on for like a total of 10 plagues.

And after every single plague, you know what the Bible says?

It says, Pharaoh would not let his people go because of his hardened heart.

Every single time.

Like God would do something, He would manifest His power, and it would make Pharaoh's heart grow even colder.

And this proud, you know, self-exalted elevated God King could not stand to see this man Moses Who had a stutter proved to have a stronger, better, more capable, able, powerful God in his corner.

And because pride was already so rooted in Pharaoh, those roots just kept getting deeper and deeper.

That's what pride does.

It's a cancer.

It wants to keep growing to protect itself.

Sometimes you gotta know when to call it.

Sometimes you gotta know when to submit.

Sometimes you gotta know when to quit.

Sometimes you gotta know when to say, I'm sorry.

But that pride won't let go.

In fact, I don't think it's too far-fetched to say that Israel was the pride that Pharaoh didn't want to let go of.

So every time Moses said, let my people go, Pharaoh grabbed on tighter because Israel was attached to his pride and his pride was attached to his identity.

This is why pride looks so silly sometimes.

You know what I mean?

Like you don't go to that coffee shop anymore because the lady was rude And you love the coffee.

You love the vibes, you love the people, you love the ambiance.

It was close to your house, but you drive an extra 10 minutes to the coffee shop that sucks and you don't even like it.

But you just you're never going back there.

Why?

Because of pride.

Man, let it go.

Let it go.

It's silly sometimes.

How many times has God told you let it go?

How many times have you heard the same sermon and you're like, all right, this week, God, this week, God.

I got you, God.

Oh, yes.

And you come and you pour out your heart at the altar, and you're like, here, here you go, God.

But no, you haven't let it go.

Because we actually see that in Pharaoh.

There's a point, I think it's after like plague seven, where Pharaoh's like, you know what?

You know, Yahweh, he's he's he's pretty up there.

I think he's the top, he's the top dog.

He's he's gone.

Go ahead, y'all can leave.

And then he changes his mind.

That's how we do it with God.

God, here, take my pride.

And then we come back.

Wait, hold on.

Give it back to me.

That's how we do it.

Pride has its roots so embedded so deeply in our hearts we have to cut them at the roots.

Because if not, it's gonna cripple us and kill us.

And God is saying, let it go.

Let it go.

How many times, man?

How many times have you wanted to call up that old friend and just say, you know what, man?

Let's just squash the beef.

You don't even remember what the beef was.

Can I tell you that the beef is spoiled?

It ain't even good anymore.

Just squash it.

Let it go.

Pride goes before the fall.

God tells Pharaoh in Exodus 9, he says, But for this purpose I have raised you up to show you my power so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.

And you are still exalting yourself against my people and will not let them go.

God is telling them, I raise you up for this.

Like you're you're you're you don't even realize how much your pride is is going to show my glory and yet you're still not letting my people go.

And I want to tell you today, if anybody's walked in with pride, God's gonna humble you.

It's a biblical promise.

And I'm here as your pastor exhorting you to soften your heart.

Can I tell you that's a prayer that I pray every single Sunday over here in the back with the prayer team?

God, soften hearts.

Soften hearts this morning.

Soften the hearts of those who don't want to get to know you.

Soften the hearts of those who know they need prayer, but have refused to come to the altar.

Soften the hearts of anybody who's got hardened hearts.

God will.

If you don't soften your own heart, God's gonna break it.

It's gonna get so hard that God's just gonna break it.

So I don't know who needs to humble themselves before the Lord today, but But God is saying, let it go, let the pride go.

Somebody needs to let that pride go between you and another person.

Humble yourself between you and that person.

Humbling ourselves before God is kind of easy because we know that He's God and we're human.

It's when you gotta humble yourself to another human.

That's where humility shines.

There are there are people who have pride so deeply rooted in them that they've burned so many bridges.

Can I just speak to you?

Because there's a lot of them.

Hopefully you're not in here.

But every time, every time a relationship goes south, you burn that bridge.

You wouldn't follow them.

You block them, you avoid them, you never talk to them, you talk about them, you become bitter, resentful, and then you walk around like you got the joy of the Lord in you.

Let it go.

Let it go.

James says God opposes the proud.

But he gives grace to the humble.

Maybe this is why Moses was so favored.

Moses wanted nothing.

You realize that Moses wanted nothing to do with this call over his life.

He was minding his own business one day.

He was you know shepherding the flock and then God calls him and God and Moses says, God, just send somebody else.

I'm not the one.

Uh other people are far more capable.

I don't speak correctly, they're not gonna listen to me.

I don't have inspiring words, I don't have influence, I don't have power, I've got no talent.

Moses was so lowly that God decided to use him To go up against a man who actually believed he was God.

Isn't that crazy?

Do you see the contrast there?

Do you see what God is doing there?

He's raising up the lowly.

To expose the wickedness of the proud.

He's raised so for his purpose, he raises up the proud to bring them down.

But he brings up the humble to anoint them and to give them his spirit and to give them his power and to give them authority and to give them a voice.

God opposes the proud, he gives grace, gifts to the humble.

I don't want to be the proud that God opposes.

I want to be the humble that God uses.

I want to be the humble that God uses to glorify Himself.

I don't need my pride protecting me from anything.

I'm not owed any glory.

Can I tell somebody today you're not owed any glory?

You're not owed a good uh pat on the back, man.

You're not owed it.

And so when somebody says, Pastor Ryan, man, great sermon.

Glory to God.

Glory to God.

It was his words.

I'm just preaching it.

When somebody says good job, good job leading, good job, pastor, go glory to God.

I don't need any of that going to my head because God gets the glory.

I've got to stay lowly so that God can use me.

Because if I puff up, then I'm taking the glory.

From God.

I don't want to go up against God.

So we have to lay down our crowns.

All you men, women of God who are anointed, and you know things, and you're smart and you're capable.

And people run to you because you're an influence, you're a voice, you're a leader, you're a maker of men and women.

Lay down those crowns before the feet of Jesus.

Don't let it go to your head.

It's not your ministry.

It's not your church.

It belongs to the Lord.

Anytime we forgive, anytime we apologize, anytime we humble ourselves before God and others, God gets the glory.

The humble will rise and the proud will fall.

I'm about to close.

You still with me?

I I I really I w I like to end these sermons like on a banger, you know?

But um I don't think uh we we might not get there um because I I want to give you I want to give you some kind of like nerdy theology stuff real quick.

But I think it's really important.

A really big theme in Exodus that we often miss in modern times.

Is what's called polemical literature.

Don't fall asleep.

Polemical literature.

A polemic in literature is an attack against someone or something.

Polemics often attack something controversial, something sacred, something powerful, all within the culture.

Exodus is a polemic.

It was written as polemic literature.

These are all historical events, but Exodus wasn't written as history, it was written as a polemic.

It was intensely written against the culture that believed Egypt.

Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen.

Don't fall asleep.

Exodus was written against a culture that believed was the most powerful, had the most powerful gods, had the greatest rulers.

It was so powerfully embedded in that culture that even the Israelites who had been enslaved for 400 years believed the same to be true about Egypt.

They they they were immersed in this in this culture that said Pharaoh is supreme, Pharaoh is sovereign And we see it for the next four or five hundred years under uh under uh the the influence of idolatry in in in Israel They were so immersed in this culture of idolatry that it affected them even when they were in the promised land.

And so Exodus is written intentionally as an attack towards that culture.

It was written to position Yahweh over Pharaoh so that all the world would know that Yahweh is the one true God.

And so what I love about Exodus, and we don't understand this unless we actually like really, really, really engage with the text and study it.

Exodus takes language, in fact, I won't even say takes, I'll say steals language from Egyptian culture that was assigned to Pharaoh.

Remember earlier I said that the outstretched arm of Pharaoh was prolific in Egypt.

It was ever everywhere.

Exodus takes that phrase, outstretched hand and outstretched arm, and he assigned he assigns it to Yahweh through Moses.

It's all over Exodus essentially mocking the idea that Pharaoh's Hand is mightier than Yahweh's.

And so anytime you read that in Exodus, just know that the author is taking jabs at the Egyptian culture.

So anytime God performs a miracle, you'll read it.

Moses is right there.

With this staff that's like, why do you have why do you have a stick in your hand, bro?

It's intentional.

Because I'm raising it up with my outstretched hand so that anytime my my my my arm is outstretched, the power.

God falls, and everybody around sees it.

And so every time that power fell, you realize what's happening.

Pharaoh couldn't take it.

He's watching the power of Yahweh.

Descend over the land that he is the so-called ruler of, and his heart is getting hard and it's growing colder.

Remember, you will be God to Pharaoh, and so it's just hardening his heart, he's going up against his.

God, but man, in his mind, Pharaoh's God, Pharaoh's Almighty.

This is my house.

Meanwhile, everybody else around Pharaoh is seeing the power of Yahweh.

Pharaoh's army seeing it.

If I'm a soldier in Pharaoh's army, I'm like, bro, are we really gonna go to battle with these guys?

The magicians of Pharaoh are seeing it, the people of Israel are seeing it, and then when they get to the final battle, and the people of Israel are escaping to Egypt, the Bible says that that that God intentionally leads them to a route that is a dead end.

Now why would you do that, God?

Have you ever told that to God?

Lord, why why why here?

I literally can't go anywhere.

What are you doing?

I followed you blindly, God.

I thought I had faith in you.

I quit my job.

I went into full-time ministry.

I did this.

I did that.

I was a stay-at-home mom.

And I did all these things in faith.

And now I am at my dead end.

And the Bible says. the people of Israel are complaining to Moses.

Moses, what's going on, bro?

Did you bring us over here just to die?

Because Pharaoh, he changed his mind again, bro.

He's coming after us with chariots and fire and horsemen and they're coming out after us.

Why couldn't you just leave us alone, man?

We're okay, we're eating okay.

And the Bible says that Moses stretched out his hand over the sea.

And the Lord drove the waters back by a strong wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters Waters were divided.

And the people started walking through it.

Now, if I if I'm in the camp of Israel, I see that, I'm like, all right, okay.

Maybe, maybe this Moses.

Is on to something.

Maybe maybe this God of Israel, maybe the the the God of my my father Jacob and Abraham, maybe, maybe He is the one true God.

Maybe what I had back there wasn't real, wasn't anything compared to what's in front of me.

And they're walking. through it and they're seeing the glory of Yahweh and now now they're walking through it and and and the army is walking through it because man at this point his heart is so so hard He's pursuing them.

And then the Lord says to Moses, stretch out your hand over the sea one more time.

And that the water may come back upon the Egyptians and their chariots and their horsemen.

So Moses stood there like that.

But then Stretched hand, and the Bible says the sea returned to its normal course, and as the Egyptians fled into it, the Lord threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea.

I don't know if Pharaoh saw Moses stretch out his hand one final time.

I like to think he did.

I like to think that they like locked eyes.

You know?

That'd be so cool.

I hope it happened like that.

We're gonna say it did.

Moses, they they they get to the other side and they're on the they're on the beach.

Pharaoh's still a long way off and he's coming fast.

One more time.

The outstretched hand of God.

You are nothing, Pharaoh.

Your arm is nothing.

Your chariots are nothing.

Your horse is nothing.

Your kingdom is nothing.

I serve a God who is bigger.

I serve a God who is greater.

I serve a God who is mighty.

And right there in that moment they locked eye and Pharaoh knew, man, I am nothing compared to the glory of Yahweh.

That is the power of God.

But it was also the last thing that happened to Pharaoh.

Before his pride.

Pride will always go before the fall.

It will always go before destruction.

It will always go before demise.

Now what I love absolutely most about this narrative is verse 31, it says, Israel saw the great power that the Lord Yahweh used against the Egyptians so that the people fear feared the Lord and they believed in the Lord and his servant.

That was the reason that the Lord raised up Pharaoh and used his pride against him.

Church pride will always go before destruction.

Always.

And so as you stand today, my call.

Is is very simple.

I'm gonna have the prayer team come forward and they'll pray for those that that need prayer.

If you're in need of prayer this morning, come and come and get it.

But the the altar call this morning, listen, it's for anybody who needs to lay down their pride.

I don't know what that looks like.

I don't know what manifestation it's in.

But God is saying let it go let it go today like for real for real and forever this is the moment let god humble you here at this altar have a moment with god a real moment with god where you lay it down where you begin to commit some things to him because I love you brothers I love you sisters I love my church my family and I don't want that pride to kill you So if that's you this morning, come forward and lay it at the feet of Jesus and let him begin to heal.

Come on.

Worship to you.

Thanks for listening.

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Thanks again and God bless.