What Won't Let You Go?

There's something in your life that just won't move. You've prayed, you've obeyed, you've gone back again, and it's still there. The addiction. The fear. The system that won't yield. The relationship that keeps pulling you back. A strong stronghold. The stronghold that's been in your family so long, nobody even questions it anymore. You started to wonder if does God see it? You've started to wonder if he even cares about it. You started to wonder if he's going to do anything about it at all. Well, if that's you, Exodus 7 has the answer for you. But the answer isn't gentle. When God moves against what has held his people captive, he doesn't send a suggestion, picks a fight. And he picks fights he intends to win. Welcome and shalom. Welcome to True Word, Faith for Life. I'm Dr. Sean. This is day 60 in our journey, our chronological journey through the scripture. Today we move into one of the most dramatic sequences in the entire Bible. The plagues of Egypt. Before we go in, my book, True Word, Faith for Life, available on the links, in the show description, all that stuff. True WordFaithforLife.com up in the store. If this ministry has given you solid ground to stand on, the book goes deep. Get a copy. Get one for somebody you love. Are you ready? Today's question ain't an easy one. That's not really a question. When God picks a fight, he intends to win. Are you ready? Let's go in. Moses is eighty years old. Aaron is eighty-three. God looks at these two old men and says, I have made you like God to Pharaoh. Not a servant. Not a messenger boy. Like God to Pharaoh. Moses will speak what God commands. Aaron will be his prophet. And when Pharaoh refuses, which God already knows he will, Egypt knows one thing. I am the Lord. So they go to Pharaoh. Aaron throws down the staff and it becomes a serpent. Pharaoh calls in his magicians and they throw down their staffs. Their staffs also become serpents. Then something happens that the text almost passes over. If you read too fast, if you're trying to tick boxes, you might miss it. Text almost passes over it without any sort of comment at all. Aaron's serpent swallowed their serpent. Allah. Anybody hear that? Aaron's serpent, you know, he threw down his staff, his staff became a serpent. His serpent swallowed all the others. Oh, y'all gonna throw down and have serpents too? Well, mm-hmm. And messed around and lost their serpents and their staffs. Now they got no staffs, they got no serpent. Pharaoh didn't yield. Nope. Saw what he saw, but he didn't yield. His heart was hardened. Has your heart ever been hardened? He turned and he went back into his house. Then God sends Moses to meet Pharaoh at the Nile in the morning. And the first plague falls. The Nile turns to blood. Every body of water in Egypt is blood. All the fish die. The river stinks. The Egyptians can't drink anything because that's where they got their water. Pharaoh's musicians replicate the plague by their secret arts. Pharaoh turns and goes back into the house. Unmoved. Now, let's slow down a minute. Let's slow down a minute. Let's look at what's actually happening here. Because the plagues aren't random. They're not just gross and inconvenient. They're a systematic, targeted demolition of everything Egypt worshiped. Egypt had a god for everything. Habi was the god of the Nile, the source of all Egyptian life. Whom was the guardian of the Nile's waters. Nile wasn't just a river, it was worship. It was the lifeblood of the entire civilization. You might say it was their interstate, their food supply. Their transport, everything. And God turned it to blood. This this isn't just a. This isn't just a. This isn't just a plague on the people. This is a direct confrontation with a false God. God saying, Your Nile can't protect itself. Your God of the waters can't keep his own river clean. I turned it to blood with a wooden staff, and your best men can't turn it back. Pharaoh claimed he didn't know the Lord in Exodus 5. The plagues are God's answer to that claim. Oh, you don't know me? Mm-hmm. You're gonna know me now, bruh. By the time this sequence is finished, by the way, good morning to all of you. Um, it's great to have you. It's an honor to have you, it's a blessing to have you. So by the time this sequence is finished, every person in Egypt, they'll know who the Lord is. The Lord. And the magician is replicating the sign. Pay attention to that. They didn't undo the plague. They added to it. More blood, more death, more snitch. The enemy's best counter move made things worse, not better. That's always what counterfeit power does. It can imitate, it absolutely can replicate, but it can't redeem. Well, there's a personal weight of Exodus 7. Every Pharaoh in your life is a false god. Whatever has held you captive, whatever is whatever you've bowed to out of fear or habit, addiction, or even necessity, whatever's demanded your labor and giving you nothing lasting value, nothing of lasting value in return, that's your Egypt. That's your Pharaoh. And God doesn't negotiate with it, He doesn't meet it halfway, He picks a fight with it. On purpose, with full knowledge of how hard it's gonna resist. The staff swallows the stats. When God moves against what has held you, his power doesn't compete with the counterfeit, it consumes it. He whispers to us in our pleasures and he shouts to us in our pain. So here's the thing. Here's the thing about Pharaoh turning and going back into his house. Unmoved. Pharaoh's hardness, it did his hardness didn't stop the play. It escalated. The thing in your life that won't yield to God's first move isn't winning. It's setting itself up for a more complete unravel. God picks fights he intends to win. Not because he needs to prove something, because he doesn't. Because his people are on the other side of the fight. They're waiting to be free. Well, there's a little bit of Yeshua in the text. This points directly to Yeshua. Yeshua came into a world owned and operated by a different Pharaoh. The enemy had claimed authority over every life, every sister, every family line, and Yeshua didn't arrive to negotiate. He arrived to pick a fight with death itself. He went to the cross not because the death was winning, but because that was the battlefield where God was going to swallow the serpent whole. The resurrection is the staff swallowing the staffs. The enemy threw everything it had, and Yeshua consumed. The same power that turned the Nile to blood and raised Yeshua from the dead is the power standing between you and whatever is holding you captive. Some of you, you are bound. You are bound hard. And it's maybe it's bound you for a long time. And you don't know what to do. You just know you can't let it go. You can't for whatever reason, it just it has power over you. And I don't know what the answer to that is. I don't. I wish I did. Just don't know. But you know. Then God knows. You say, how can I obey in a concrete way? Okay. I got the answer to that. Hang on to your hat. Number one. First, name the Pharaoh. What's the thing in your life that has demanded your labor and giving you it has given you nothing lasting in return? Name it specifically. Don't generalize it. God is specific. He hits specific gods with specific plague. Name what has held you. Second, stop trying to negotiate with it. Seriously. Stop trying to negotiate with it. Moses didn't offer Pharaoh a compromise. He delivered a message, a very clear message. Let my people go. Stop managing your captivity. Ask God to fight. Number three. Remember that the hardening of resistance isn't evidence that God has stopped moving. It may be evidence that the fight is escalating toward a more complete deliverance. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. You know. The old saying is an addiction is you don't change. You don't change until you hit rock bottom. Hold on. I have for you today a challenge and a choice. Is there something that you've been managing instead of asking God to break? Something you've made peace with that God has never made peace. Maybe it's a pharaoh you decided is too big, too embedded, too old, too complicated for God to confront. Well, here's the choice. Keep managing it or let God pick the fight. He already knows how hard it's. He already knows how hard it's going to resist. That's not a surprise to him. He's already counted the cost. He's picked the fight on purpose. And he doesn't enter fights, he intends to lose. Thank you that you aren't afraid of what is held. Thank you that you pick the fight with our pharaohs with full knowledge of how hard they'll resist. Thank you that the staff always swallows the staff. I pray for everyone listening who knows exactly which pharaoh I'm talking about in their life. They can picture it in their mind, whether they're listening live or on playback, they can they know exactly what I'm talking about. I pray that you move against it. Give them faith. Give them faith to stop managing it and start watching you fight it. For everyone who has watched the hardness escalate and wondered if you've stopped working, tell them clearly, I haven't stopped. I'm escalating toward deliverance. Father, I ask that you do this in Jesus' name, in Yeshua's name. Amen. Before I close, I want to speak to someone who realizes the deepest Pharaoh in their life isn't a habit or a fear or a relationship. It's the condition of their heart before God. The biggest fight God wants to pick on your behalf is the fight against sin, hurts habits and hangups and separation. He's already wanted at the cross. You just have to get on the right side of it. If you've never surrendered your life to Yeshua, today's the day. Pray this with me. Seriously, pray it with me. Whether you're listening live or on playback, doesn't matter. Pray it with me. I'm going to give you instructions at the at the end. Don't worry. You're not going to be left swinging, like, well, I don't know what to do next. It's all right. Just pray it with me. Yeshua, I need you. I believe you died for me and rose from the grave. I surrender my life to you today. Forgive me. Heal me. Lead me. I'm yours. In Jesus' name, in Yeshua's name. Amen. If you just pray that, welcome to the family. You're in the family. What I want you to do is go to truewordfaithforlife.com slash contact. Let us know. As soon as I receive the message, I will be in touch. I'll give you the next step. I'll tell you what to do. You're going to be alright. It ain't going to be easy. But you're going to love it. It'll be the happiest you've ever been in your life. At first, you're going to take a lot of slings and arrows. Your friends, your family, the ones that aren't believers, they're going to say, Man, you're crazy. And we have an answer for that. Go to true wordfaith for life.com slash contact or click on the little button on the top or the side. Top one says contact on the side, it has a little thing. It says, that'll you leave a voice message. It's only two minutes. You only get two minutes. I pay for it. You don't have to. Free of charge. Nobody steals your information. I'd love to talk to you. I'd love to help you. Give you next steps and walk you through it. Listen, if this is your first episode, don't stop here. Look, we've been doing this. I've been doing this for four years. And we're in day 60. Don't stop here. We've been walking through scripture together chronologically since Genesis. I'd love for you to subscribe. I'd love for you to follow. Click the little bell for all notifications. Start from day one. There's a full story being told, and you don't want to miss where it's going. Aaron's staff swallowed their staffs. God's power doesn't compete with the counterfeit, it consumes it. The Nile bled for seven days. Pharaoh went home unmoved, and God kept moving. Whatever's holding you isn't bigger than the one who turns rivers to blood with a wooden staff in the hand of an 80-year-old fugitive shepherd. He picks fights he intends to win. And you know what I know? You are worth fighting. You. You're worth fighting for. Listen, if you know someone is living under a Pharaoh right now, something that won't let them go, send them this episode. Just tell them God picks fights he intends to win, and you're worth fighting for. I can't imagine why you wouldn't send it today, but it's free to do it. I'm gonna pray a blessing. I'm first gonna pray it. I'm gonna pray it in Hebrew and then I'm gonna translate. Are you ready? May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Until tomorrow at 7 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, day 61. You do not want to miss it. Till then, shalom, shalom. Shalom anekhal.