Ex 9:16, But, indeed, for this cause I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power, and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth. 
In this morning’s passage, we have a great reality before us of how God uses even those who will not acknowledge Him in order to show forth His glory and His majesty and His grace and His deliverance. God is not limited to only dealing with those who recognize Him as the Lord God Almighty, the Sovereign and Omnipotent Creator of all that exists. The Lord can use anyone and anything to show forth His glory, and that is a key stone in this account
God told Moses to inform Pharaoh that through God’s own installation of Pharaoh as head over Egypt, all the world would see the power of God in action and would be caused to declare that God rules and overrules over the entirety of His Creation. Cutting to the core of what eventually developed as the Lord brought the plagues upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians, God’s Chosen people were released with all the treasure of Egypt that they could carry. They were eventually brought into the Promised Land where they were feared by all the other nations. Those nations had heard about how the God of Israel had delivered His people from bondage to the great and powerful nation of Egypt.
Egypt was the preeminent national force of that day. It was militarily and economically the greatest nation state whose shadow, with its threat of war and destruction, ruled over the vast area of northern Africa and the middle eastern regions. It was the place where people would go during times of famine and war for safety and refuge. When one nation was attacked by a neighbor, it was often merely the threat of sending to Egypt for help that would end the conflict. For the people of God to be released from their slavery to this powerhouse was so amazing that the tribes and the cities of the Promised Land quaked in fear and trembling before the nation whose God was the Lord. 
This is one reason that the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh. The Lord wanted it to be manifestly evident to all that the deliverance of the people of Israel was singly because of the overwhelming might and power of God in action. We read this as it was explained by God to Moses in Ex 7:3-5, But I will harden Pharaoh's heart that I may multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. When Pharaoh will not listen to you, then I will lay My hand on Egypt, and bring out My hosts, My people the sons of Israel, from the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out My hand on Egypt and bring out the sons of Israel from their midst." 
	What God would do in order to establish freedom for His people would resound throughout the realms of their sojourning. God’s name would become permanently attached to this peculiar people and they would be recognized as those who belonged to God and worshipped The One True and Living God, Their Savior and Lord. This miraculous deliverance would be that singular event within the Old Testament that would make all the peoples, including the Egyptians, know that God was exactly Who God said that He was, the I Am, Yahweh, the Almighty and Living Lord God Omnipotent and Sovereign. From this time forward, His name would be linked to the course of the history of His Chosen People. No longer would He only be known to a person or a family or a tribe. He would be recognized as the God of Israel, the Supreme Lord, Who chose and guided and directed the path of a nation who would inhabit the Land of Promise and from which the Messiah, the Christ, the Eternal King of all would proceed. 
	As well, please note that even to this day, the story of the release of the Jews from their slavery in Egypt is told and recounted over and over again, even by those who have no use for God in their lives. It is now a part of the recorded history of mankind that establishes the religious and political relevance of the nation state of Israel. Other peoples, who know not God, still will discuss the manner of Israel’s release from captivity as a pivotal point of Judeo-Christian development. It is very evident that what God told Moses to proclaim unto Pharaoh has, in deed, become a fulcrum event of God’s declaration and revelation of Himself. But, indeed, for this cause I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power, and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth.
	From this point onward, we will not only be reading of the manner in which God worked, through the plagues, to show forth His power of deliverance and salvation, but we will also be seeing the manner in which He proves Himself over and over again through the mighty power of His Faithfulness and His Love and His Mercy and His Holiness and His Honor and His Grace and His Compassion. These are but a few of the attributes that begin to come into view in the manner in which He will deal with His Chosen People. What we will see is a mere glimpse into His heart that will take the entire limitless expanse of eternity to fully manifest. 
The Word of God, throughout the Old and the New Testament, serves to offer us a fractional view of the awesomeness and the glory and the splendor of the One Who has given us life in His Only Begotten Son. Please be aware, that we so often read the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, with the idea that we are reading the history of how man interacted with God. That is true to a point in our limited abilities of reason and intellectual capacities for understating. There is, however, this greater and over abiding truth at the heart of scripture in which it is a glimpse into the very essence of God that is held within each of the accounts of His Word. It is an autobiography of Who He is and what He has done and continues to do in the course of bringing forth a living relationship, heart to heart and Spirit to spirit, with those whom He has chosen to share Himself. 
Let it be very clearly realized at this point that we cannot have an intimate relationship with someone whom we do not know. It is as we spend time with and learn about one another that we begin to develop that closeness of being brought into a connection and a rapport with someone. Think of the marriage bond in this sense. When we are first married, we don’t really know our spouse. Not really. It is as we go through all the trials and the circumstances and the heartaches and the frustration and the successes and the joys and the victories and the triumphs that our marriage relationship is established and cemented. We learn about one another through all the details and the responses and the emotions and the mannerisms and the faithful regard for one another. We build a united history that we love to herald in our recounting of all that we have overcome together in order for our marriage union to survive. 
What God has given us, in His Word, is the detailed history that He has with us, His people. It is the recounting of all that He has done in order to make us realize a small portion of the reality of the manner in which He has shown His love for you and for me. Every detail of scripture relates how God has worked to make us part of His heart of love and grace and mercy. As we read His Word, we should be seeing that He has invested Himself into each book, each chapter, each verse, each word in order to reveal to us some measure of Who He is and How much He loves us. This is all in order that we will be brought into that place where we desire to know Him all the more, moment by moment and day by day in the every sense of what it means to live by Jesus Christ. 
As Moses so instructed the Chosen and Redeemed people of God in Deut 8:2+3, so are we to read and to remember and to cherish everything that we learn about the Lord God Almighty as His Word is made life in us. Deut 8:2+3, And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. And He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. 
	It is in the course of this on-going, living relationship with God in Jesus Christ that our hearts and minds resoundingly echo that which is written in praise and worship unto God in Ex 15:1-13. Please turn to it in your Bibles so we can rejoice even today with those who were released from their bondage to Egypt all those centuries ago. While they sang this song for the benefit of praising the Lord Who so magnificently worked to their freedom from physical bondage, we join in it with our hearts so thankfully being released from our bondage to sin and death through the crucifixion and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It details the Omnipotence and the Omniscience of God to so work to the deliverance of those whom He chooses to love unto Himself. It is truly the anthem of His grace and His mercy displayed through the might of His Sovereignty and Majesty. 
Ex 15:1-13, Then Moses and the sons of Israel sang this song to the Lord, and said, "I will sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted; The horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea. "The Lord is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; This is my God, and I will praise Him; My father's God, and I will extol Him. "The Lord is a warrior; The Lord is His name. "Pharaoh's chariots and his army He has cast into the sea; And the choicest of his officers are drowned in the Red Sea. "The deeps cover them; They went down into the depths like a stone. "Thy right hand, O Lord, is majestic in power, Thy right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy. "And in the greatness of Thine excellence Thou dost overthrow those who rise up against Thee; Thou dost send forth Thy burning anger, and it consumes them as chaff. "And at the blast of Thy nostrils the waters were piled up, The flowing waters stood up like a heap; The deeps were congealed in the heart of the sea. "The enemy said, 'I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; My desire shall be gratified against them; I will draw out my sword, my hand shall destroy them.' "Thou didst blow with Thy wind, the sea covered them; They sank like lead in the mighty waters. "Who is like Thee among the gods, O Lord? Who is like Thee, majestic in holiness, Awesome in praises, working wonders? "Thou didst stretch out Thy right hand, The earth swallowed them. "In Thy lovingkindness Thou hast led the people whom Thou hast redeemed; In Thy strength Thou hast guided them to Thy holy habitation. 
	It is the name of the Lord that we declare in the glorious detailing of His triumphant deliverance! Note that the Israelites had nothing of themselves in which to boast or to proclaim as even lending some measure of help to their deliverance. They were a powerless people, enslaved and without any weapons for their own release. Everything was done by God for His victorious name’s sake. This is absolutely the same truth with our salvation in Jesus Christ. Everything is only by His power and His grace and His mercy. We could do nothing to earn or to obtain our salvation. It is all by the Hand of God, through His effective work in Christ, Alone. On that reality, we declare "The Lord is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; This is my God, and I will praise Him; My father's God, and I will extol Him.
	We fully echo that which the shepherd boy, David, declared as he faced the giant, Goliath, in 1 Sam 17:45-47. Then David said to the Philistine, "You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted. This day the Lord will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down and remove your head from you. And I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not deliver by sword or by spear; for the battle is the Lord's and He will give you into our hands." …that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not deliver by sword or by spear; for the battle is the Lord's… Amen!
	It is in the name of the Lord that we gather together and celebrate and rejoice in His victory. This is the heart of our relationship which manifests the joy and the fellowship and the requisite awesomeness of Our Lord God Almighty, the Holy and Just Savior, the Creator of the heavens and the earth. 
Each of our lives is a canvas upon which He has painted His story of grace and mercy and He has made us a living part of the mural of His Majesty and Glorious Might to His Splendor and His Glory. We are to be more and more enthralled with the working and overruling and abiding Hand of God, revealing in us and through us, those further glimpses of Who He is and What He has done for His name’s sake. He is the focal point and He is the purpose of why we are on this earth, joined together in Christ. Our lives declare His glory now and forever! So be it!
But, indeed, for this cause I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power, and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth. Amen.

	This morning’s benediction is Ps 68:32-35. Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth; Sing praises to the Lord, Selah. To Him who rides upon the highest heavens, which are from ancient times; Behold, He speaks forth with His voice, a mighty voice. Ascribe strength to God; His majesty is over Israel, And His strength is in the skies. O God, Thou art awesome from Thy sanctuary. The God of Israel Himself gives strength and power to the people. Blessed be God! Amen.