St. Moses had asked of the Lord
a great request. He said, Lord, show me thy glory. That is, manifest to me your
glory. The Lord said, I'm going to make
all my goodness pass before you, and I'm going to be gracious
to whom I'll be gracious. I'll be merciful to whom I'll
be merciful. As we get into the 34th chapter,
the Lord set forth Himself to Moses. He said, the Lord, the
Lord God, gracious, merciful. I'm so thankful God is gracious
and merciful to folks like us. The Lord said, longsuffering. Peter said that the Lord is long-suffering
to us-ward, that is, to the elect of God, not willing that any
should perish, but that all of God's people come to repentance. And then he said concerning the
long-suffering of the Lord, he said that is salvation. He waits
to be gracious. He waits to be merciful. What's he wait for? Wait for
us? No, he's not waiting for us. He waits for that ordained
time when he will reveal the gospel of his grace to our hearts,
and he will reveal to us the Lord Jesus, the only hope we
have of life, righteousness, and salvation. And as we get
into chapter 34, Moses has a real, well, we could call it a mountaintop
experience. Because the Lord said, get ready,
come up on the mountain. And Moses did that. It was a
wonderful revelation to Moses of the person and attributes
of God. And we all love to speak of God's
grace and God's mercy. And the Lord said, I'm going
to make all my goodness pass before you. And I've already
quoted it. He said, I'll be gracious to whom I'll be gracious. I'll
be merciful to whom I'll be merciful. And then as we get into the 34th
chapter, He goes into that in more detail. He doesn't speak of that grace
and mercy as though isolated from His justice and His law. And this is what we've got to
remember. It's delightful to think of the
grace of God and the mercy of God, but there is such a thing
as God's justice that's got to be honored. God never shows his
mercy in a manner inconsistent with his holy law. Therefore, before he reveals
himself to Moses, he has something to say to Moses about his law. You'll remember the children
of Israel had worshipped a golden calf, God's law was violated. When
Moses came down from the mountain, he saw the people of God playing
religion. And in anger, he threw those
two tables of the law on the ground and broke them, because
that's what they did. But there has to be honor, honor
given to God's law. There has to be a restoration
of his justice. So the Lord isn't going to speak
to Moses about that graciousness and about his being merciful
until he says something to Moses about his law. That law written
in stone. Look at the first four verses
of chapter 34. And the Lord said unto Moses,
now this is before the Lord reveals Himself to Moses up on the mountain. The Lord said unto Moses, He
says, Hew thee two tables of stone, likened to the first. And I will write on these tables
the words that were in the first tables, which thou breakest. And be ready in the morning,
and come up in the morning unto Mount Sinai, and present thyself
there to me in the top of the mountain. And no man shall come
with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount,
Neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount. And so
Moses, verse four, he hewed two tables of stone like unto the
first. And Moses rose up early in the
morning and he went up unto Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded
him and he took in his hand the two tables of stone. There will be no revelation to
Moses of the grace of God and the mercy of God unless Moses
is made to understand first the honor, the honor that must be
shown to God's law. You see, God is not going to
show grace and mercy at the expense of his law. He will never disregard
justice. He's not going to set it aside.
It's not as though God says, well, I know the people are sinful
and so I will lessen my demands. That law, Moses, that you broke
when you came down from the mountain, we'll just set that aside. That
doesn't matter. I just want to talk to you about
how gracious I am and how merciful I am. That's not what God said. He said, before you come up on
the mountain and before I cause all my goodness to pass before
you, understand this, there is that matter, not a little matter,
not a little issue, There's the great issue of my law. God says, I'm not going to disregard
it. I'm not going to lessen its demands. And you need to understand this,
when God talks about His law, oft times He's talking about
all of the Old Testament. But when He's speaking about
that law that God gave to Israel, He is not only speaking of the
10 commandments. You will look in the Old Testament
in vain to see that the 10 commandments were ever separated from or isolated
from all of the other laws that God gave. Those would include
the dietary laws, the civil laws, and the economic laws. God has
all of these laws. He's given them to Moses already
when he was up on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights. And then
we're going to see that he gives them to him again. But when God says this is his
law, indeed, the Ten Commandments, they kind of summarize it. In
fact, it's even more summarized in the New Testament. Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind,
with all thy soul, with all thy strength, and love your neighbor
as yourself. That's God's law. And you can't
separate the Ten Commandments from all of the rest of the laws
that God gave. And if you're one of those foolish
people who say, I'm living by God's law, and I live by the
golden rule, and I endeavor to keep His commandments, you need
to understand this. If you're going to endeavor to
keep God's law in order to be accepted by God, you've got to
keep them all. And you've got to continue in
it. Because we read in Galatians chapter number 3, Cursed is everyone
that continueth not in all things that are written in the law of
God to do them. Don't forget this. Before grace
and mercy can ever be shown to guilty people like you and me,
God's holy law has got to be honored and it's got to be upheld. He is not gonna shove it to the
side. And it isn't something that you
must keep because you can't keep it. You cannot be perfect. This is
what God demands. Be ye perfect, for I am perfect. Are you perfect? We say, well,
no. Well, how in the world is a holy
God gonna accept you? He says, be ye holy, for I am
holy. Are you holy? Well, I do the
best I can, preacher. That's not what it says. God didn't say, do the best you
can and then I'll make up what's lacking. He says, be ye holy. Are you perfect in all your ways?
Are you perfect in all your words? Are you perfect in all your thoughts?
Are you perfect in all your motives? This is what God's law demands. And anything less than perfection
You must perish if that's what you're leaning on, if that's
what you're trusting in. No wonder one of the oldest questions
raised in the Bible is raised in the book of Job. How can God
be just and justify the ungodly? God's a just and a holy God. He set forth His righteous law,
which we can't keep. By the deeds of the law, you
read, shall no flesh be justified in God's sight. You may look pretty good before
the eyes of others. You may look good before my eyes,
but in the eyes of God, that only looks good, which is righteous
and perfect. That's all. And the scripture
says of you and me, that God looked down from heaven to see
if there were any that were good, to see if there were any that
did seek after God. And the Lord said, they've all
gone out of the way. They've all together become,
the word is, stinking. That's what we are to God. We're
obnoxious unto God in our sinfulness. Now hear me, there's only one
thing that is not obnoxious to God. There's only one thing that
is very pleasant and delightful to God. There's only one thing
that gives a sweet, sweet smelling fragrance to God. That's the
substitutionary death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Read Ephesians
chapter five, verse two. And you, and I'm warning you,
I wanna warn all of you, all of you who are watching, you
must not lean on anything, on any act of obedience, on any
tear that you've shed, on any faith that you think you've exercised,
on any repentance that you think you've had, on any prayer that
you've prayed, any reading in the Bible that you've done, you
must not put any stock in those things as far as your acceptance
with a holy God. You must not! Because if you're
doing that, even something little, you've nullified this idea of
grace. And you've made some contribution. That is, in your own mind, you've
made some contribution to your salvation. I'm telling you. God's not going to accept you.
Everything we are is obnoxious to God. Everything
that we are by nature. The scripture says we came forth
from the womb, speaking lies. We're filled with iniquity. Isaiah
says from the top of our heads to the bottom of our feet. There's
no soundness in us. He said, well, you know, preacher,
we all look like pretty good people to me. Well, to me, yeah,
so I have the same opinion. We all look like fine people,
but we don't see things like God sees things. You see, God's standard has always
been perfect righteousness. And anything that doesn't measure
up to that perfection is sin. And in your deepest thoughts
and in the secrets of your heart, surely you know, you are not
a perfect person. You're a sinful person. All have
sinned. You're at that. All have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. See, this is why my great
desire and the burden of my heart is that you know God through
Jesus Christ, crucified, buried, risen again, and exalted. That's
what I want for you. I want you to know Him whom to
know is life everlasting. And I want you to have a gospel
understanding of the things of the Lord. that the reason Jesus
Christ had to come to this world and obey God's law and then die
under the curse of the law is because before grace and mercy
can be given to us in a manner consistent with justice, God's
law, it's got to be honored. There is the legality of salvation
that very, very few preachers are preaching about today. What
does God demand? You see, today God is presented
as He's the great problem solver. You got problems with your family?
Jesus can solve it. You got money problems? Jesus
can solve it. Got problems with your children?
Jesus can solve that problem. But here's what you're not hearing.
God's got a problem with your sin. And they're not talking about
how that problem was dealt with, nor the reason it was dealt with.
All that we hear is, come to Jesus, come to Jesus, come to
Jesus. Why do I need Jesus? That's a
good question. Why do I need Jesus? I need the Lord Jesus because
I'm a sinful rebel and I have no goodness nor soundness or
righteousness of my own. I need him who is altogether
God and man. God to know the demands of God,
the perfections of God, all of the requirements of God. God who can stand, as it were,
toe-to-toe with the Father and know what is required for the
salvation of sinners. He's got to be God. He's got
to be God to give value, infinite value and worth to his substitutionary
death. And he's got to be man. I want
you to know him as God and I want you to know him as man, the perfect
man. That man who is not in any way
ashamed to call us brethren, That man who stood before God
and labored before God on the behalf of us and who went to
the cross of Calvary to establish righteousness for all of the
people that he represented. I want you to know him as God
and man. I want you to know him as the satisfier of God's law
and of God's justice. You've got to know him. And you won't know him unless
he reveals himself to you. And I've said many times, and
I'll say it again and again, I'm not asking you to do something
for God. You say, preacher, what's the
difference between what you're saying and what other preachers
around here are saying? Well, what is the difference?
They're asking people to do something for God. They're begging people
to do something for Christ. Won't you let Him? You won't
hear those words coming out of the mouth of one of God's preachers.
God's preachers say, it's not what you've got to do for God,
it's what God's got to do for you. And see, it's like this
right here. Before God causes all of His
goodness to pass before Moses, before He unveils His graciousness
and His mercy, God reminds Moses there is the issue of God's law. Don't you forget that. There's
the issue of justice. You see, God's broken law demands
satisfaction. Satisfaction. And so we read,
the soul that sins shall die. That's what the Bible said. The soul that sins shall die.
Somebody's gonna die. And not just physical death,
though that will happen, but there is that death of the soul. There's that separation from
God. There is what the Bible calls eternal death, everlasting
death. The death that God's law demands
because it's been broken. And here's the thing, if you
die in your sinfulness, if you die a rebel against God, If you
die laden down with all of your iniquities, indeed, God is gonna
send you away into hell. His justice demands it, but His
justice will never be satisfied with your death. Therefore, there's no escape
from that prison. There's no getting out. Well,
God's merciful, Jim. I believe in after a few thousand
years, he'll say, well, y'all suffered enough. You've got the
wrong idea of God. You don't know who you're dealing
with. If you knew, you who are still
in your sinfulness, if you knew the God, if you had some true
concept of the God before whom you must stand someday, the God
you'll meet when you leave this world, if you had any idea, you'd
say, oh God, how can I, a rebel, how can I be right with you? Nothing in my hands I bring. And may we say like Toplady,
only in Christ are we accepted. Simply to His cross we cling. I'm naked. I'm naked before God. I don't
have any righteousness of my own. My righteousness is as filthy
rags. I'm naked before God. Naked,
Lord, I come to you for dress, for righteousness. And I'm helpless,
I'm helpless. I come to you for rest. I'm foul, I'm foul. I'm a stench in your nostrils,
I know God, foul. Out to the fountain fly. What
is that fountain? The blood of Christ Jesus. Wash
me, Savior! Or I die. Or I die. My desire is for each of you
to know the Lord Jesus, because He was manifested to take away
sin. That's the reason He comes in
this world. He came to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Preacher, what's our problem?
What's man's problem? Well, I think it's kind of fourfold. I'll give you four things. Number
one, we have a natural ignorance of God. That's our first problem. I'm not trying to be cruel and
I'm not saying that those who know God are in themselves wiser
or more intelligent or smarter than those who don't know God.
I'm not saying that at all. The Word of God says there in
Romans 3, there's none that understand it, there's none that seeketh
after God. None of us can grasp the greatness
or the grandeur or the majesty of God. Unfallen Adam had a sense of
the greatness and the grandeur and the majesty of God, but then he fell. And when he fell, he lost that
beauty in which He was created. And He became a sinful man. And
here's the thing, He wasn't a private individual when He fell. He represented
all of us. When He sinned, He lost three
things. He lost the way to God, He lost
the truth of God, and He lost the life of God. He lost the
way to God. You know, before Adam fell, he
could come to God anytime he wanted to. But after the fall, the way was
cut off. You remember the story in the
book of Luke of the rich man and Lazarus. Rich man lived for this world. Lazarus, he didn't go to paradise
because he was a poor man. He went to paradise because God
showed him he was poor spiritually. And God revealed to him his salvation
in Christ Jesus. That passage of scripture doesn't
teach that the rich all go to hell and the poor people all
go to heaven. It doesn't teach that at all. Lazarus, he knew God in Christ
Jesus. But the scripture says of the
rich man in hell, he lifted up his eyes being in torment. And he saw Abraham and Lazarus
in his bosom. To the Jews, Abraham's bosom,
that was paradise. So he saw Lazarus in paradise.
And he says to Abraham, would you send Lazarus here? Dip the tip of his finger in
water and cool my tongue. I'm tormented in this flame.
Let me tell you something. I don't believe that that is
only speaking in a literal way. I believe he suddenly had some
knowledge of his hopeless situation. He said, if I could just have
a drop of the water of life, just a drop of the grace of God,
just a drop of the mercy of God. Abraham said, it's not going
to happen. Because between where you are and where we are, There's
a great gulf that's fixed. There's a great chasm. It's like the bridge is out. That's what happened when Adam
fell. That openness to God was cut
off. The bridge is out. And nobody
can bridge the distance. between a sinful wretch and a
holy God, nobody can bridge that chasm by anything that they can
say, think, or do. The only one who could bridge
the chasm is Christ Jesus, who is the way to God. How'd he do
it? By his obedience unto death,
even the death of the cross. I don't know how I can make the
way any simpler. Don't get bogged down with laws
and rules and regulations and obedience and all those sorts
of things. The bridge is out. Christ came
to make the way. But not only make the way, He
is the way. He didn't come to say, I'm going
to show you the way, or right there is the way. He said, I'm
the way. He is the bridge. He is our salvation. He is our righteousness. He is
the grace of God manifested in the flesh. He is the mercy of
God made known to us. Christ came down. He obeyed God's
law that we could not possibly keep. And then He said, I'm going
to die under the curse of the law to satisfy justice. And mercy and grace flows freely
in a way consistent with law and justice. We lost
the way to God. We lost the truth of God. We
don't know who God is. You listen to preachers on television
or on the radio, maybe there's one in a thousand that knows
who God is, has some idea of the true identity of God. Get
in the book and find out what God has to say about himself. Stop listening to these religious
quacks out there. They're just false prophets.
Because if you listen to them, you're like the blind who's following
the blind. And you're going to fall into
the ditch right along with those blind prophets. Christ is the truth. He tells
us the truth about God, tells the truth about ourselves. He
tells the truth about his own identity. Philip said, well,
if you'd show us the Father, it'd satisfy us. He said, Philip,
have I been with you so long? Don't you understand? He that
had seen me has seen the Father. Oh, the ignorance. Even among the people of God
that's still within us, but it's not a total ignorance. Because
through Christ Jesus, we've come to know God. And then Adam lost
the way to God, lost the truth of God, lost the life of God. And Christ is our life. He's
our life and he gives us life. And you hath he quickened who
were dead in trespasses and sin. My friend, you who still don't
know the Christ of the gospel, it's not about you making a decision. It's about you being raised from
the dead. Are you saying I'm dead spiritually? Yes, ma'am. Yes, sir. That's
exactly what I'm saying, and I'm just quoting the Word of
God. And just as surely as Lazarus
was in that grave, Lazarus in John chapter 11, he had died,
he's in the tomb, just as surely as nobody else could help him. And just as surely as the Lord
Jesus spoke and said, Lazarus, come forth. That's what's got
to happen to you. He knows his sheep by name. And
when He calls you, you'll be made alive. There's a natural
ignorance of God. That's just a fact. And only
God can overcome that. And then there's a natural ignorance
of self. You know what's very hard to
find? Somebody who's really lost. It's hard to find a genuine sinner. One songwriter said, a sinner
is a sacred thing. The Holy Ghost hath made him
so. I've been in the ministry for
47 years. I've met very few people that
are truly lost. Oh, they'll say I've made some
mistakes. But who hasn't preacher? You know, nobody's perfect. Oh
yeah, there is somebody who's perfect. Christ is perfect. And anything
less than His righteousness will doom you to hell forever. You've
got to have His righteousness. That's just a fact. Well, how does that righteousness
come to me? God imputes it to you. God reckons
it to your account. For God hath made Him Christ
to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made in
order that we would be made the righteousness of God in Him. And for all of you who look to
the Savior for salvation, God looks at you and He sees perfect
righteousness. That is grace there. That is
mercy there. You see, Christ satisfied the
law. He died under the wrath of God. That satisfied God's
law, satisfied God's justice. But we're ignorant of self, and
we're ignorant of law and grace. Boy, law and grace, they just
can't mix. I've got to teach the absolute
impossibility of salvation by law works and teach the only
way of salvation by grace only. You cannot lift one single finger
in your salvation. You understand that? not a finger. Preacher, you're taking all responsibility
away from men. No, I'm not taking responsibility
away. We have a responsibility to believe
Christ Jesus, but faith with us is impossible, because we
don't have it. Well, I thought everybody had
a little bit of faith. We just had fanned it a little bit and
whoo, then burst out into a roaring flame. Well, you thought wrong. Faith has to be given. It's a
gift from God and as is repentance. Not law, but grace. Not your obedience. Oh, God,
the Spirit's got to drive that into our hearts because we're
always looking for something we've done. And I tell you, there's
that temptation, even after conversion, to look within and say, am I
doing enough? Maybe I'm not a child of God.
I'm not praying enough. I'm not doing enough. I'm not
working enough. Tim James says he's a recovering
Pharisee. We all are. And you have to keep
on putting that down. It's nothing we do, it's all
Christ, you understand? Surely you do. By grace he is saved. And the last obstacle is, and
God's got to convince us to rest in Christ for everything. To
look to Him for salvation. to see him as the one who honored
God's law. Listen again. God's law is written
in stone. It's there forever. The Jews said, we love the writings
of Moses. We love the law of Moses. And
the Lord said to them in John 5, I'm not going to judge him
that day. The words of Moses, which you
say you love, they'll rise up in judgment against you. That
perfection that God's law demands. Where am I going to find that
perfection preacher? Well, I'll tell you again. And
I'm delighted to tell you, in Christ's own, Christ crucified,
he satisfied law and justice. Surely you comprehend that, you
see that. That's as simple as I can make
it. But even after we present the message with as much simplicity
as we can, God's got to do something about your blindness. Got to
do something about your deafness. Got to do something about that
spiritual death. Oh, God caused these dead bones
to live. And if you're made to live, you'll
find out how sweet it is to trust in Jesus, the only Savior of
sinners. Let's just sing that as our closing
song, number 257.