One More Night With The Frogs

One More Night With The Frogs

Scripture: Exodus 8:1-10; Genesis 19:15-16; Second Peter 2:7-8

Good morning Strangers Rest. I am going to begin the message this morning with the first ten verses from Exodus chapter eight. It says, “(1) And the LORD spoke to Moses, ‘Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the LORD: ‘Let My people go, that they may serve Me. (2) But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all your territory with frogs. (3) So the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into your house, into your bedroom, on your bed, into the houses of your servants, on your people, into your ovens, and into your kneading bowls. (4) And the frogs shall come up on you, on your people, and on all your servants.’’ (5) Then the LORD spoke to Moses, ‘Say to Aaron, ‘Stretch out your hand with your rod over the streams, over the rivers, and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up on the land of Egypt.’’ (6) So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. (7) And the magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs on the land of Egypt. (8) Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron, and said, ‘Entreat the LORD that He may take away the frogs from me and from my people; and I will let the people go, that they may sacrifice to the LORD.’ (9) And Moses said to Pharaoh, ‘Accept the honor of saying when I shall intercede for you, for your servants, and for your people, to destroy the frogs from you and your houses, that they may remain in the river only.’ (10) So he said, ‘Tomorrow.’ And he said, ‘Let it be according to your word, that you may know that there is no one like the LORD our God.’” (Exodus 8:1-10)

The title of my message this morning is “One More Night with the Frogs.” I first preached this message thirty-two years ago in Arkansas. God placed this message in my spirit two weeks ago and I had been meditating on it, but with everything going on, I sat it aside for later. Then last Sunday, my daughter called me and asked if I had the original message that I had delivered all those years ago because she wanted to read it. I told her that she would have to wait for this revised message as I had no copies of the original. This message is about putting things off that need to be dealt with. In other words, it is about procrastination. I want you to keep this in mind, Pharaoh had an immediate problem and when the answer to the problem was immediately available to him, he delayed it by one additional night. I will come back to this story shortly.

People often delay doing things or acting on a situation because they do not want to address something or are not sure how to address it or sometimes they are just too lazy to do it. When it comes to the things of God, we often delay what we are supposed to do because of the difficulty of the task, the time it will require to complete it, lack of support, fear, or the belief that I know what I am doing and so on and so forth. We have a lot of reasons why we do not act when God tells us to, and it causes us unforeseen issues in the long run. Many people will tell you that they do not act because they cannot tell when God is speaking to them or if it is just something within them. Others will tell you that they know what they should be doing, but life happens. What you are going to hear this morning is that even though life happens, it is not an excuse to leave our work undone. God expects us to must finish what is started!

I want to share some quotes with you from some famous people about procrastination before I get into the heart of the message. Here are just a few that I picked out of many:

• “It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.” (J. R. R. Tolkien)

• “Someday is not a day of the week.” (Janet Dailey)

• “You may delay, but time will not.” (Benjamin Franklin)

• “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” (Pablo Picasso)

• “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” (Abraham Lincoln)

• “How soon ‘not now’ becomes ‘never’.” (Attributed to Martin Luther)

• “In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do. The worst thing you can do is nothing.” (Theodore Roosevelt)