Ex 5:2, But Pharaoh said, "Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and besides, I will not let Israel go." 
	This morning, we continue our deliberation of the reality of what this statement by Pharaoh entails within the minds and hearts of men who choose not to acknowledge God’s rightful place in His own creation. We have looked at it from the vantage point of those in power who choose to see themselves as the focal point of all that they feel they have accomplished. We have also seen how God rules and overrules despite man’s every intention to insulate himself from the operation of God’s Omnipotence and Omniscience and Omnipresence. Man can never find any place where God does not reign, and reign supremely. No matter what men may try to do, they will never be successful in their utterly feeble attempts to deny God and thwart His mighty hand in the fulfillment of His plan and purpose in Jesus Christ. 
	The Lord pointed out to His disciples and to us that mankind will do all kinds of horrible and wretched things in every vain attempt to avoid recognizing that there is, in fact, a God Who rules from heaven. Those efforts will especially result in the persecution of the very Children of God and we should not be surprised at this.
John 15:18-23, "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. "Remember the word that I said to you, 'A slave is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. "But all these things they will do to you for My name's sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me. "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. "He who hates Me hates My Father also. 
	It should not shock us that those who refuse to accept the truth of God also refuse to accept the reality of the life that we have in Jesus Christ. This world hates the fact that Christ showed the absolute need for a Savior. We are included in that hatred by those who think that they need nothing other than their own wits and efforts to maintain some semblance of personal power and accomplishment in this realm. If we truly live the life of Christ, by the power of and in obedience to the Holy Spirit, we will face the same hatred and violent forces that nailed Our Lord and Savior to the cross. 
	What may be less expected, in terms of our walk in Christ on this earth, is that we will also be subjected to the taunts and the ridicules and the persecution of those who call themselves Christians. There are those within the organized church realm who will find us equally repugnant in terms of how we live forth in the light of the inspiration of the Word of God. There have been many many examples throughout history of supposed Christian countries forcibly going to war with other Christian nations or religious orders. Sadly, this has left a tremendously rancid and disgustingly horrendous stench upon how the world views Christianity. 
	Again, Our Lord told His disciples that this would happen, and it would happen because of a complete lack of knowledge of Who God truly is. Within the various churches at assorted times, there have been those religious leaders who have used the name of the Lord to solidify their own ends after riches and domination and the submission of others unto what they held as right and true. Remember that even Christ was subjected to this in His crucifixion as He was handed over to the Romans by the High Priest and the religious council in Jerusalem. 
	As we read in John 16:1-3, "These things I have spoken to you, that you may be kept from stumbling. "They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God. "And these things they will do, because they have not known the Father, or Me. While these religious persecutors may think they are doing the work of God, they are mistaken because they truly do not know God. 
	Consider how Saul, later to become the Apostle Paul, thought that he was doing a tremendous work of God in the persecution of the sect who were following Jesus of Nazareth. He was fervent in his desire to do the work of God by wiping out the name of Jesus from the face of the earth. He was not thinking of his own glory or his own elevation. He was sincerely trying to do the very best that he could in service to God as he knew the law and the commandments and the doctrinal ordinances which he felt that this Jesus of Nazareth had flaunted and blasphemed. This was the case because Saul did not really know God. It wasn’t until he came face-to-face with Jesus on the road to Damascus that this man was brought to the truth of Who God was and what God was doing in the giving of His Only Begotten Son. Saul became Paul when he was brought into that living relationship with Jesus Christ. 
	Here again, we have the comfort given by Our Lord as to why we should not dread the powers of this age, whether they refuse to acknowledge God or are so severe and violent in their own misguided interpretation of trying to serve God. Regarding this maltreatment by the society in which we sojourn, Christ gave us His encouragement and His grace as we read in John 16:33, "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world." 
	Because we do know God, through Our Lord Jesus Christ by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, as revealed throughout His Holy Word, we do not fear what this world, lost in its ignorance and disobedience will do to us. Our security is not found in the things and the pleasures and the approval of this realm. It is found in the power and the delight and the knowledge of Who God is and what He has done through Jesus Christ. 
	Please be very clear on this point. We do not claim to know the totality of what God has done and is doing. The mystery of Christ in us, the hope of glory, is being revealed in a living manner, moment by moment and day by day. It will take all of eternity to even begin to grasp some of the vast depth of the Love of God poured out to such as us through the death and resurrection of Christ. All our lives, we will be seeing the hand of God working to establish and to accomplish the perfection of Christ in us. Therefore we make no claims to having arrived at any final point or perfection. We walk in newness of life each day as it is ongoing into the greater and greater truths of Who God is and what He has done. 
	With this ahead of us, we need to hold with the following passage in Proverbs, Prov 30:7-9. Two things I asked of Thee, Do not refuse me before I die: Keep deception and lies far from me, Give me neither poverty nor riches; Feed me with the food that is my portion, Lest I be full and deny Thee and say, "Who is the Lord?" Or lest I be in want and steal, And profane the name of my God. We ask the Lord to do His good work in us, neither seeking wealth nor poverty, but only to know Him all the more. Note that this is an utter reliance on God to supply exactly what we need when we need it so that we do not succumb to the attitude that we have all that we require and no longer need to wait for God’s supply. 
This is where many find that we have our hearts pulled away from the focal point of knowing God and begin rather seeking to know more and more of ourselves and our own capabilities. We succumb to the lies of this realm which whisper in our ears, over and over again, that we do not really need God. All we need is our own independence and self-reliance. 
It is when things become easy and routine and comfortable that we lose our interest in keeping a close relationship with the Lord and rather turn our hearts and our minds toward those comforts and worldly elements that offer distractions and amusements and a vast array of sensual delights, thus causing apostasy. 
This was true of the wisest man that has ever ruled, King Solomon. It is very sad that at the end of his life, after all that he had accomplished in service to the Lord, scripture records the following in 1 Kings 11:4, For it came about when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away after other gods; and his heart was not wholly devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. 
Solomon had all that mankind could ever hope to achieve, and yet it turned him away from God and away from the complete knowledge of what it meant to honor God with all his heart and with all his mind and with all his being. As wise as Solomon was, it is a sad reminder for us that man’s wisdom is not sufficient to meet the requirements of what it means to serve God in fullness and in truth.
In 1 Cor 1:19-31, the Lord makes it very clear that the wisdom of man cannot serve to build a living knowledge of the reality of God in the heart of humanity. If you would please turn to 1 Cor 1:19-31 and follow along as we read it together. 1 Cor 1:19-31, For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And the cleverness of the clever I will set aside." Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, "Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord." 
	When we look at the arena in which mankind places his trust and his hope and his sense of security, we find it centered in the idea that man can think and reason and use his mental capabilities to create and to build and to design the world in which he lives. At least that is the conventional wisdom and thought process. Man puts so much stock and hope into the thinking that we can make a way out of our problems through the excellent use of brain-storming and mental capacities that will see us eventually deter if not eliminate death or disease or starvation altogether. 
	We are absolutely brainwashed into the thinking that we can do anything we want to do if we put our minds to it. The fact is that there is a point to which this is true. God will allow us to go only so far, but then no further! 
Consider what was man’s greatest achievement toward reaching into the heavens in the Old Testament, what we call the Tower of Babel. Gen 11:4-8, And they said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name; lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth." And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. 
	Man’s effort to be as God, then, and man’s efforts to be as God today will always meet the same end. God will put a stop to it when He chooses to do so. … but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God. 
	No matter what man may scheme in order to replace his need for God, God will frustrate it and bring it to naught! Because God created us, He knows precisely who we are and exactly what we need for a fulfilled life. He supplies it all for us in Jesus Christ, His Son. Again quoting the Apostle, But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, "Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord."
	Next time, Lord willing, we will draw this to a final place of absolutely seeing that we can only find real purpose and satisfaction in the lives that we live as we completely surrender our hearts and minds and beings to the Lord. He is our life, now and evermore. So be it!
But Pharaoh said, "Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and besides, I will not let Israel go." Amen.

	This morning’s benediction is Dan 4:2+3. "It has seemed good to me to declare the signs and wonders which the Most High God has done for me. "How great are His signs, And how mighty are His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And His dominion is from generation to generation. Amen.