You want to turn to the book
of Exodus chapter 19. I was reading at the outset of
the message in rescue this one verse in 1 Corinthians and I'm
going to read that to you now. 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and
verse 11 says this, now all things which, I'm sorry, now all things
happened to them for in samples. And the word means not an example,
but so much as a figure or a type. In other words, a shadow of what
was going to happen later. He says, things happen to them
in samples and they are written for our admonition upon whom
the ends of the world are come. And then he adds this, wherefore
let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. So when
we read the Old Testament, especially in the book of Exodus, which
the word Exodus means a departing. It says in the New Testament,
when they were on the Mount of Transfiguration, there appeared
with Christ, Moses and Elijah, and there was Peter, James and
John, and they spoke to him of his Decease, and the word means
departing, exodus. The Lord Jesus Christ made an
exodus out of this world on his death. And that exodus was our
redemption. And so in Exodus chapter 19,
with the explanation from 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 11, that what
happened to them was given by God not just for them, but particularly
for us, as an admonition to us, as an example, as a type of our
experience in this life as believers. And so if you just consider that,
the whole exodus out of Egypt teaches us of our redemption
out of sin and the kingdom of Satan by the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul, I mean, The Lord Jesus
sent Paul in Acts 26.18 to the Gentiles to preach to them the
gospel. And he said there, when he spoke
to Paul about that commission, he said, I'm sending you to the
Gentiles and you're going to preach to them and they're going
to be sanctified through faith that is in me. They were delivered
from the kingdom of Satan, they would be delivered from the kingdom
of Satan and sanctified by faith that is in me. And that's an
explanation of the Old Testament right there. We're taken, we're
translated out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of
God's dear Son. We're taken from the kingdom
of Satan, we're delivered from it because Christ, our Passover,
was sacrificed for us. Sin has been put away. The consequences
of sin are released. And this gives me an opportunity
to say something about redemption. And this is a very important
thing about redemption and something that I just read the other day
that Charles Spurgeon wrote. He says redemption is not, what
is redemption? Well, we think of it as a purchase,
a ransom paid for a lawfully indebted and imprisoned person. But redemption is the redeemer
and the ransom the redeemer paid and the redeemed and their release. All of those things together.
There's no redemption if there's just a redeemer who never pays,
and there's no redemption if there's a payment but no release,
and there's no redemption unless those who have been given release
are actually let go. And so redemption is all those
things. So when we look at how those
who were redeemed from Egypt, we understand in our Lord Jesus
Christ, we were redeemed. He's the redeemer, he paid the
ransom of himself to God for us, and he actually released
us when he sends his spirit through the gospel to sprinkle that blood
upon our hearts that God looked upon that was sprinkled by Christ
on the mercy seat in heaven. He obtained for us our eternal
redemption when He entered heaven and offered His own blood. And
that redemption that He offered there, that He obtained there,
He gives to us. He gives to us. He gives us that
release. And so we see this in the exodus out of Egypt. But
not only that, we saw in the Red Sea our baptism into Christ. our death, our burial, and our
resurrection. So that Israel stood on the banks
of the other side of the Red Sea, and Egypt on that side,
them on this side, and they looked, the seas closed them off from
their enemies. They're completely delivered.
And how? Because, as the New Testament
reveals, we were baptized into Jesus Christ in His death, in
His burial, and in His resurrection. Our body of sins was put to death.
Our sins are no more remembered because they were buried. They
were buried in the sea of God's forgetfulness. in Micah 7.18,
our sins and iniquities have been subdued, God has cast them
into the depths of the sea, just like the Egyptians. And that,
according to Micah 7.20, is according to that covenant God made with
Abraham. So now all these things fit together and we begin to
see emerging from them the pattern of our redemption and our life
as believers. We were redeemed from Egypt,
We were brought out by the blood of the Passover lamb, our Lord
Jesus Christ. We were brought through the Red
Sea in Christ's death, burial, and our resurrection with Him.
And we stand on the other side of the shore now, completely
delivered. Our enemies can't touch us. And
yet we're in a wilderness. And so three days into the wilderness,
the people were out of water. God leads them through by Moses,
and here they come to this water, but it's bitter. And God tells
Moses, cut down a tree and throw it in there. So he cut down the
tree God showed him, he threw it into the water, and the water
was made sweet. And that teaches us again, Christ,
not only our Passover, but the one who bore our sins in his
own body on the tree was cut down. He was cut off for the
sins of his people. And he was cast in to what we
had made dinner. God reconciled us to Himself.
The offenses that we, by our sins, were against God, God took
them away in the death of His Son. And He sweetened us, too,
because we removed the bitterness of our heart by sprinkling the
blood of Christ on us to see that all of the waters of salvation,
the blessings of God, through the Spirit of God, are given
to us when He shows us Christ crucified. And so the object
of all of our hope and faith and confidence to God is what
the Lord Jesus Christ did, making the bitter waters sweet for us
because he drank the bitter cup that was full for us. He took
it away. And then we can go through these
accounts. In Exodus 16, we see the manna sent down by God from
heaven. The Lord Jesus Christ, the bread
of life. Jesus said, I am the bread that
came down from heaven. Whoever eats of me shall live
forever. And he goes on to say, whoever
comes to me, whoever believes on me. So our believing Christ
is eating. We live the first time when we
look to Him and we continue to live in this wilderness by taking
of Christ by faith and continually consuming Him. in our conscience,
applying the merits of His broken body and shed blood to our hearts
by the Spirit of God, through the Word of God, applying it
to us, and that sustains us every day. We need fresh supplies of
the Spirit of God, giving us a new, fresh taste of Christ,
don't we? So we long for this. And so then
after that, if you remember, they came to a place where there
was no water again. And God said to Moses, you go
up on the rock, and I'll stand on the rock, and you hit the
rock, you smite the rock with your rod, and water will come
out. God did that. The rock was smitten. The rock of our salvation, the
Lord Jesus Christ, 1 Corinthians 10, verse 4, that rock which
followed them is Christ. All through the wilderness, the
water from that rock flowed through the wilderness and they drank
from it their whole 40 years. Amazing. because the Christ once
smitten for us is our life. The wells of salvation have been
opened up. He dug deep and he brought out
that water like he told the woman in Samaria. And now we've come
to chapter 19, in their departing. And so God has done all these
things with them and they're in this wilderness and we're
gonna see something here. We're gonna see three things
in chapter 19. I wanna focus on these today. First of all, we're gonna see
what God reminds them of what he did. how he delivered them. And then he's going to lay down
for them a schoolmaster. He's going to put them under
a tutor, a harsh person who holds them to account. And they're
going to promise to do everything, but they're going to utterly
fail, and God's going to give them his law. And then God is
going to open up to them the gospel. So in this sermon, we're
going to see a lie, our lie. And we're going to see God's
law, which is going to expose our lie and our condition, and
we're going to see God's gospel. Let's read it in Exodus chapter
19, verse 1. In the third month, when the
children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt,
the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai. That's where
God gave the law. For they were departed from Rephidim
and were come to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the
wilderness, and there Israel camped before the mount. So they're
close to Mount Sinai. They're not on the mountain,
they're close to it. And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord
called unto him out of the mountain, saying, thus shalt thou say to
the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel. You have
seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bear you on eagles'
wings, and brought you to myself. I heard someone once say that
when a mother eagle teaches her babies to fly, She pushes them
off. I don't know if this is true
or not, but she pushes them off a high cliff or out of the nest
and they fall. And then she dives down and swoops
down under them and lifts them up on her back on eagles' wings. I don't know if that's true or
not, but the Lord says that that's what he did for Israel. He swooped
down, scooped them up on eagles' wings and lifted them up. Eagles
are incredibly strong birds. They can carry away things that
are much bigger than them. You have seen what I did unto
the Egyptians and how I bear you on eagles' wings and brought
you unto myself. Now, therefore, if you will obey
my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar
treasure to me above all people, for all the earth is mine." Out
of all the earth, you're going to be a special treasure to me.
You've seen what I've done to you. Now, this statement at this
point in time, what would you think if you were a child, one
of these people of Israel? Wow. We're pretty special, aren't
we? God has saved us from Egypt. He scooped us up as an eagle,
carrying us up on the wings of an eagle. So we've been lifted
up above our enemies, exalted as a special people to God. And
he says, now, if you will, if you will obey my voice indeed
and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar. They want
to be a peculiar treasure, don't they? They certainly do. but
they have a problem and they don't realize the problem they
have and all of us have this problem. It's part of us. We can't think outside of this
boundary. We view life, we view God and
our relation to him in this way naturally and it comes out. Remember,
the things that were written of them were written for our
learning, our admonition. And so he says, In verse seven,
and Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and
he laid before their faces all these words which the Lord commanded
him. In verse eight, and all the people
answered together, who wouldn't want to be part of that special
people? And they said, all that the Lord has spoken, we will
do. And Moses returned the words of the people unto the Lord.
That was a lie, wasn't it? They wanted to. I suspect that
they did. I mean, you know, they wanted
to in the way that we say, we say, Lord, you know I want to
do your will. But even in saying that, don't you always wonder,
I know I do this. Lord, why do you need me to tell
you what I want to do? You know what I want to do. The
fact of the matter is, is most of me is opposed to your will
and I don't yet realize it, right? So the gospel teaches us to be
honest with God. There's no point in trying not
to be honest, is there? This is a hard lesson for us.
I remember, I tell my wife this all the time, my dad had a little
shed. I was about four or five years
old. And it was short enough that
I could climb up on something, I can't remember what it was,
a box or a step or something, and I could get on top of this
little shed. But my dad told me, don't you get up there on
that shed. And probably because he didn't want me to fall through
the roof, it wasn't strong, it was probably fiberglass or something,
corrugated fiberglass. But, you know, being a knucklehead,
four or five years old, I was up there getting up on the shed
when my dad drove down the driveway coming home from work. And I
remember thinking, what am I going to say? I can't
jump down right away. He'll think, well, obviously,
he got down. It's kind of like when you're
speeding, you see a policeman. Oh, he's off. So what did I do? Well, he gets out of the car
and he comes up to me and goes, what are you doing? I'm scratching my leg, Dad. That shows you the mindset of,
that shows you my mind. That's the way my mind works.
I'm just gonna make an excuse. I won't admit I was doing what
you told me not to do. That would have been the truth,
wouldn't it? Scratching my leg had nothing to do with it. I
was just pulling a wild excuse out of there, hoping for some,
you think you're gonna fool your dad? My dad was a lot smarter than
that. The Lord's a lot wiser than we are. He knows exactly
what we are. So he says to them, you'll be special to me if you
do all I tell you to do. And they say, we will do it.
We'll do everything you said. And so Moses returned the words
of the people to the Lord. Verse nine, and the Lord said
to Moses, notice, as soon as the people said, we'll do everything
you say in order to be your people. Verse 9, And the Lord said to
Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people
may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee forever. And
Moses told the words of the people to the Lord. And the Lord said
to Moses, Go to the people and sanctify them today and tomorrow,
and let them wash their clothes, and be ready against the third
day. For the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of
all the people upon Mount Sinai. Now God's gonna appear on this
mountain. And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round
about saying, take heed to yourselves that you go not up into the mount.
Don't come near. Don't come on the mountain. And
he says further, or touch the border of it. Don't touch. Whoever
touches the mount shall be surely put to death. There shall not
a hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned or shot through.
Whether it be beast or man, it shall not live. When the trumpet
sounds long, then shall they come up to the mount. And Moses
went down from the mount to the people and sanctified the people.
And they washed their clothes. And he said to the people, be
ready against the third day. Come not at your wives. Don't
come near your wives. And it came to pass on the third
day in the morning that there were thunders. Have you ever,
we have a train that passes by our house sometimes at night
and it stops, and when the train stops, all the couplings between
each car loosen, and then when it takes off again, they tighten,
and it's this synchronous connection of the whole line of cars, and
it makes such a rumble that you think, What's happening? There's a bomb going off out
there. And that's the way thunder is. And we had a dog that every
time there were lightning and thunders, it would just shake
and go find a place under a chair or something. It'd just sit there
and shaking. That's what it's like when God thundered at Sinai. The people didn't just hear it,
they felt the reverberation in their bodies. Everything is vibrating
because of the thunder. And not only did they feel it
and see it, or feel it and hear it, but they saw the lightning.
lightning striking in the Midwest, when the lightning hits, it lights
everything up. I was in a house when I was four
or five years old, in my grandparents' house, we were completely inside
and it was dark and lightning in Kansas, and the interior of
the house was completely lit up. That's how bright it was. So you can imagine the brightness,
the fire coming down on the mountain and lightning and the thunder,
and then it goes on here. He says, thunder and lightnings
and a thick cloud upon the mountain and the voice of the trumpet
exceeding loud. Trumpets are loud, but exceeding
loud. Where did this trumpet come from?
It was the voice that they heard so that all the people that was
in the camp tremble. Everybody was trembling. Now
what was this? This was the revelation of God
right after the people said, everything you said we need to
do in order to be your people, we will do and we will keep that.
And what is God showing them here? This is the consequence
of believing that you can do what's required in order for
you to be God's people. He says in verse 17, and Moses
brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God
and they stood at the nether part of the mount, that means
a foot, at the lowest part, not on the mountain, but just around
the borders of the mountain. And Mount Sinai was altogether
on a smoke. It was smoking. The whole mountain
was smoking, he says, because the Lord descended upon it in
fire. God is a consuming fire. When
God came down on the mountain, the whole mountain of Mount Sinai
was smoking. Thunder, lightning, smoke, fire. People were trembling. The mountain
was shaking. and the smoke thereof ascended
as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet
sounded long and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and
God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon Mount
Sinai on the top of the mount, and the Lord called Moses up
to the top of the mount. And Moses went up, and the Lord
said to Moses, go down, charge the people, lest they break through
unto the Lord and gaze, and many of the people perish. So don't
come near, don't touch, and don't look. Don't look at God. Do not look. Don't you dare look.
Verse 27, And let the priests also which come near to the Lord
sanctify themselves, lest the Lord break forth upon them. And
Moses said to the Lord, The people cannot come up to the mount,
for you charged us, saying, Set bounds about the mount and sanctify
it. And the Lord said to him, Away,
get thee down. And thou shalt come up, thou
and Aaron with thee. But let not the priest and the
people break through to come up unto the Lord, lest he break
forth upon them. So Moses went down to the people
and spake to them. Now that's terrible, isn't it?
That's terrifying. The people were trembling. In
Hebrews chapter 12, it says, And Moses said, I exceedingly
fear and quake. Even Moses was afraid. This is
the result of the people believing they could make themselves, by
their obedience, special people to God. And now God's going to
give them this schoolmaster. You know what a schoolmaster
is? Well, we don't know what a schoolmaster is. It means like a harsh tutor. What would happen is that men
who had children, who had a son, for example, if they wanted their
son to someday inherit all that they had, which he would, before
he came of age, the father would take his son and he would assign
the son to be raised up by another man called a schoolmaster. And
that man would hold his son just like a servant, just like a slave,
to account for everything he was supposed to do and make him
do it, smack. Smack, do it, smack. There's no kindness here. Bam, bam. Box in his ears whenever
things got out of, this was the son, yet he was treated like
a slave until he came of age. Then he was treated as an heir,
a true heir. And God says in Galatians chapter
three, the law was our schoolmaster until Christ, until Christ came,
until faith was revealed, until God revealed the truth. of what
he would do in Christ. Now, let's read through the next
chapter, chapter 20. And God spake all these words.
In this whole context here, Moses is up on the mountain in the
cloud of thick darkness, the trumpet sounding loud, the mountain
shaking and quaking, fire, smoke, thunder, lightning. God spake
all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which hath
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage, thou shalt have no other gods before me. He first tells
them what he's done, and then he says, have no other gods before
me. Now Jesus explained this, he
summarized the law in these two ways. A lawyer came to him and
said, Lord, which of the commandments is the greatest commandment?
And Jesus said, this is the first and the greatest commandment.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with
all thy soul, with all thy mind, with all thy strength, And the
second commandment is just like it. The second commandment is
likened to it. It says, and thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang
all the law and the prophets. And so in this first commandment,
God says, you shall have no other gods before me. There is only
one God. Who is it? Jehovah. That's who's
speaking to them. Who is our God? The Lord Jesus
Christ, no other gods. before me in, well, let's keep
reading here. They shall not make unto thee
any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven
above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water
under the earth. The first commandment, don't
have any gods before me. Not, don't put anything before
God. Love him with all your heart,
soul, mind, and strength. Now, be real honest here at this
point. When have you ever loved God
one time with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? What
haven't you put in front of Him? I'm just asking these questions
because that's the way the law is meant to be applied to us.
And then he says, don't make any graven image. You don't know
what God is like. I remember when I was about 10
to 12 years old, I was in a Sunday school class and the teacher
was asking us, my cousin was there, and he asked us, what
do you think God is like? Of course, I'm trying to come
up with this mental image of what God is like, and thinking,
what a dunce, I can't even think of what God is like. I mean,
you gotta be some kind of a spiritual bozo not to know what God is
like. And my cousin, he says, ah, he's an old man with a long
beard, and he sits on a, I don't know. I thought, where'd you
get that idea from? Well, I was just as void of understanding,
but God says, there is none like me. Don't make any likeness to
God because there's nothing in heaven, nothing in earth or nothing,
no man that you can compare to God. You can't conjure up an
image of what God is like. There's only one way you can
know him. Jesus said that no man knows the father, but the
son. And no man knows the Son, but the Father, and He to Whomsoever
the Father will reveal Him." Or the Son will reveal Him, however
it goes in Matthew 11, 27. You can't know God unless He
makes Himself known, and He makes Himself known in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Christ is our God, nothing before Him. Don't make an image. God has revealed Himself in His
Son. And yet we make images, don't we? We try to imagine what
God is like. People make things that go around
their neck. They put things in their yard,
little statutes, and they make these things called icons that
they think are like God. They imagine. And this is the
definition of idolatry, is to come up with imagination of what
God is like and apply that to our understanding of God and
trying to come to God and thinking God's going to accept us according
to our imagination. No, God has to make himself known
and he has done so only in the Lord Jesus. So we've broken this
one too, haven't we? Verse, that's the second commandment.
He goes on in verse five, thou shalt not bow down thyself to
them nor serve them, for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the father upon the children unto
the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. What is
idolatry? Hatred of God. Verse six, and
showing mercy unto the thousands of them that love me and keep
my commandments. Wow, here's a mention of grace. God shows mercy in the law itself. Verse seven, thou shalt not take
the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not
hold him guiltless that takes his name in vain. To take God's
name in vain means to use it without due and proper understanding
and respect. If you watch these shows on TV
where someone's performing and they're giving some kind of an
award or someone builds a house for somebody and they walk in
and surprise them, they go, oh my God, that's the first thing
the world does. Oh my God, that's taking God's
name in vain, isn't it? Anytime we use the Lord's name
without a due and correct understanding and a proper respect for Him,
or especially if we take God's name and we, it's like, you know,
when someone mentions it, oh yeah, I knew a certain person,
an important person. He was very handsome or very
strong or very noble, very honest, very intelligent. And you somehow
apply that person's qualities by just knowing them to make
yourself seem more important to those you're talking to. That's
taking God's name in vain. It's like when you're in a group
of people who are religious and you speak about God in order
to make yourself seem as important as they are. That's taking God's
name in vain. We've all done that. I speak
of myself, maybe you haven't. Verse eight. Remember the Sabbath
day to keep it holy. Six days thou shalt labor and
do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord.
In it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter,
thy maid, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle,
nor thy stranger that is within thy gate. Not only you don't
do anything, but don't you make other people do something for
you. Now the Sabbath day is taught in the New Testament as being
a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ and His saving work. So that
keeping the Sabbath means we don't do anything in salvation
because the work has been done and it's been done perfectly.
Christ completed it and finished it. And to try to do anything
for it is like to try to add your paintbrush to a Rembrandt.
It's like trying to improve a perfect carving of something with your
chisel or doing something to what's perfect. That would be
an insult, wouldn't it? Of course, it's the greatest
insult to try to contribute to a salvation that you not only
couldn't do anything, but you put yourself under the wrath
of God and you had to be reached down by God in Christ and rescued,
and then you claim some glory for that. That's not resting. But it says in Hebrews chapter
four, we which have believed do enter into rest. Whoever believes
in Christ has ceased from his own works as God did from his.
The work is done. Stop trying to work. So the commandment
here, you know, some people say, well, you know, God is sovereign
and he's going to do what he wants and therefore I don't have
to do anything. Is that what God is saying here? Don't do
anything? No, he's saying the work you need to do here is believing
Christ and not trying to add to that. It's the hardest thing
to do, isn't it? Because pride gets in the way,
our own fear gets in the way, our own belief gets in the way,
and we think we have to do something in order to be accepted by God.
But God says, no, it's done in Christ. And if it's not done
in Christ, you can't certainly make it up. And if it is done
in Christ, at the expense of his own life, offering himself
to God, what are you going to do more than that? If God required
the death of his son, He certainly didn't see anything in you that
was going to make it possible for him to accept you according
to justice. Stop working. Do nothing. And
that's the hardest thing for us to do is to come to God only
on the basis of what Christ has done. Have we broken this? Do
we believe perfectly? Not in any way. We can't claim
that. Only Christ. Even our faith is
a gift of God. And that faith in this life is
not perfect. The object of our faith is though,
he's the one who perfectly believed and obeyed and submitted to God
and worshiped God and perfectly confessed our sins. We trust
his prayers and not our own. We come in his name and not our
own name. And so in verse 12, honor thy father and thy mother
that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God
giveth thee. There's a promise. If you do honor your father and
mother, your days will be long. If you don't, God says if a child
doesn't obey his father and mother, he's to be put to death. That's
what the law said. If you have a rebellious son,
you know what you're supposed to do? Get all Israel out there
and stone him because he wouldn't obey his parents. That's what
God thinks about dishonoring your mother and father. And how
many of us have honored our mother and father? I think back of my
own, I remember my dad asked me one time, and he pointed this
out to me, I probably wouldn't, my conscience wouldn't have even
kept it in there. He pointed it out. How come you didn't help
me paint the house when I asked you to? You know you like to
paint houses for other people, but you didn't want to help me
paint my house. All I could say was, yeah, I'm guilty. And I
looked back on it and all the things I could have done to help
my dad and didn't do it then, I could have made his life so
much easier. I complained about helping him
take his shoes off at the end of the day when his back was
sore and he had been out working to support nine kids because
I thought, you can't even take your own shoes off. You see,
I had a heart of arrogant pride. And I didn't view what my dad
did in bringing me into the world and providing everything for
me and protecting me and teaching me and even chastening me. I
didn't view that with the proper honor and respect. This was God's
way. It pleased God to set this up
this way. Why would I fight against God's
way of protecting me and raising me? You see, that's dishonoring
your father and mother. Solomon bowed down when Bathsheba
came and he was sitting on his throne, his mother. He bowed
down to her. And there's so many examples
of this. Moses even bowed down to Jethro, his father-in-law.
These people honored their mother and father, and Jesus accused
the Pharisees. He says, you excuse yourself
from this commandment because you say, well, you know, I have
these things I'm gonna give to God, therefore it can't use what
I have to take care of my mom and dad when they need it. That's
called Korban. You call it Korban. Because you
excuse yourself from keeping this commandment in order that
you might keep your riches instead of taking care of your parents
when they need your help. You see, a child provides when
they grow up, they're to provide and take care of their parents.
And how little we do this according from the heart with joy to show
our thanksgiving to our Heavenly Father for caring for us. and
giving as parents. Because we always do things for
ourselves, don't we? You see, everything we've done
is breaking every commandment. In verse 13, thou shalt not kill.
I've never killed anybody, never actually taken the life of another
person. Oh, but have you ever hated somebody because you envied
the fact that they got more than you, or that someone praised
them when they didn't praise you, or that they showed them
a greater kindness, or they wanted their fellowship and they didn't
want yours, and you hated them in your heart? Jesus said, if
you hate, then you've murdered your brother. If you hate, if
you envied him, you've murdered him. And the law deals with the
way we think, not just what we do on the outside. So if you
murder, he says in 1 John 3, he says, like Cain, who hated
his brother and murdered him, Abel. So hatred in the heart
is murder. And we might, well, I don't really
hate people, but you try to discredit their character, don't you? That's
character assassination. because you want to make yourself
look better. Verse 14, thou shalt not commit
adultery. Don't even look in lust. Verse
15, thou shalt not steal. I've never taken anything. I
remember we were in the store one time and my cousin stuck
a pair of tennis shoes down the front of his pants. I thought,
what are you doing? No shame, no fear. And yet, how
quickly we're ready to take credit for what someone else has done. We want to take someone else's
ideas and claim them to be our own because we like the praise
of men. That's stealing. There's so many
ways we steal. when we rob someone's honor.
Verse 16, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Either you tell a lie or you love to hear a lie. That's bearing
false witness. Not only those who speak against
other people and discredit them. Let me show you their laundry.
It's all, they're so bad. That's speaking against, that's
gossiping. And when you love to hear about it, then you're
guilty. Verse 17, thou shalt not covet
thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife,
nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor
anything that is thy neighbor. The Apostle Paul says covetousness
is what? Idolatry. Why? Because wanting
something God hasn't given you is putting something in front
of God. Idolatry. You've broken the whole law.
James chapter 2 verse 10. If you've broken one commandment,
it's a covenant. To break one part of the covenant
is to default the whole covenant. It's because every commandment
contained in that is the ultimate, which is to love God with all
your heart, mind, soul, and strength. And to fail to love God that
way is to break the whole law. And all of us, if we're honest,
if we really knew what we were, and this is a painful thing to
realize, that God is so holy that no man can approach into
the light of his presence, the light of his truth. Now, look
at one verse in the New Testament. We're gonna look at a couple
actually look at John chapter 1 The book the st. St. John the gospel it says st. John on my Bible. It's just the
gospel of the Apostle John John chapter 1 in verse 17 For the
law was given by Moses But grace and truth came by Jesus Christ
You see that? The law, according to the apostle
Paul in Galatians 3, was our schoolmaster unto or until Christ. The King James says, to bring
us unto Christ, but the words to bring us are not in the original. It's just until Christ. Until
Christ came, who was born of a woman and made under the law
and fulfilled the law that we might receive the adoption of
sons, until he came and fulfilled the law, then we were under the
schoolmaster. Until God revealed, what? Grace
and truth. And you say, well, what is the
truth here? You see, we know the law is true,
but the law doesn't tell us all about God. It doesn't reveal
God. How can we know God, then, in
Jesus Christ? Because the law is not only revealed
by Him, but the truth of how God can be just and justify the
ungodly by His, Christ's, fulfillment of the law. That's revealed in
Him, and therefore God's grace According to truth and righteousness,
in fulfillment of all the requirements, and in fulfillment of the just
demands, all in Christ and God's full character, all of His holiness,
His glory is seen in Christ, grace and truth. And so when we look back at Exodus,
we see the lie that we are prone to believe about ourselves. And
by nature, we just like the children of Israel, we think the way we
come to God is by doing what he said. And so you hear, that's
what happens in the heart, of our natural heart, when we hear
someone tell us, now in order for you to be saved, you need
to do this. And you say, okay. I'm gonna do that. Well, it's
gonna require you to walk up these steps on your knees until
your hands are bloody and your knees are bloody. Okay, I'm gonna
do that. So we make up something and we do that. That's what they
do in Catholicism. You gotta do these things. In
the Baptist, you gotta raise your hand, you gotta go forward,
you gotta ask Jesus into your heart, you gotta turn around
and tell the people, this is what I did, even though you're
a little kid. Okay, so I'm gonna do that. Whatever it costs me,
I'm gonna do that. But God says no. When you have
that attitude, when you think that you're going to do something
in order to make yourself acceptable to God, the only thing you're
going to know about God is thick cloud, darkness. Don't come near,
don't touch, don't even look. And you're going to hear God
and His justice coming down in fire with smoke and a loud trumpet
and the mountain quaking and terror is going to grip your
heart. And it should, because you cannot face, you cannot approach
into the light of God. His truth will kill you. You
know how painful it is to realize what you are in the presence
of others or in your own mind? To realize this is what you are,
this is what you have done, and you're guilty, and you can't
claim any excuse. The fault is all yours. You deserve
what you're getting. You know how painful that is?
It's very painful. We've all experienced it to some
small extent. But think of it in God's presence.
That's the way God in his holiness sees us all the time, only incomprehensibly
more. That's the light. We can't approach
to that. We cannot bear that light. God can't compromise his
truth. He can't accept a sinner. Something
else has to happen. And so he goes on here in Exodus
Chapter 20, verse 18, and the people saw the thunderings and
the lightnings and the noise of the trumpet in the mountain
smoking, and when the people saw it, they removed and they
stood far off. God said, don't you come near,
don't you touch, don't you look. And everything drove them away.
That's what the law does. By nature, before we're saved,
we think that way. And even after we first believe,
we continue to have this baggage that we carry. And when we come
to God in an attempt to, let's say, in the beginning of our
salvation, we think, well, I've got to fulfill my part so God
will fulfill the transaction. I've got to do something in order
to make my salvation work. Or in the middle. In the middle
of our life, we think, well, I've got to do these things to
make myself more holy so that God will be approved of me. I'll
be more pleasing to God. Or at the end, well, God's going
to reward me if I have lived properly. He's going to give
me more. All those things are just an example of what's in
our heart naturally, that we do something and God responds
to us with grace and favor. But the law is meant to do certain
things. It's given in order to show us
that we are guilty. That's the first thing. And the
second one is to show us that by the deeds of the law, no flesh
can be justified because the law brings the knowledge of sin. It shows us our guilt. It teaches
us what sin is. And like it says in Hebrews 4.12,
it's like a sword. It divides between the bones
and the marrow, the spirit. It divides and exposes what we
are in the presence of God. That's what the law does. And
then, because we're sinners, When the law comes, what happens
to our sin? It amplifies. It's like pouring,
well, it's like cancer. Cancer feeds on the cells of
our body that we normally live on. Sin is like a cancer. You
give it the law and it just grows, it multiplies. God says in Romans
5.20, when the law entered, sin abounded. And then in Romans 7, he said
that by the law, sin appears exceeding sinful, because it
takes sin Taking advantage of the law, which is good and holy,
puts me to death and makes my sin exceeding sinful. Because
it takes what's good and puts me to death by it. That's what
sin is. It's exceeding sinful. And the
law exposes us as being exceeding sinful. But in all these actions
that the law has on us, showing us our guilt, defining what sin
is, making our sin more apparent and more exploding. That's what the law does. Anything
that does that in your life is the work of the law. But here
we have the truth of scripture, that whatever the law does, Christ
has addressed. Our guilt, how is it taken away? By the blood of Jesus. The blood
of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin. What the law could not do, Christ
did. It shows us our sin. Christ shows
us His righteousness. He undid the law. I mean, He
put us to death with Himself and therefore broke that covenant
with us, with the law. And in Romans chapter 7, when
our sin becomes exceedingly sinful and puts us to death, in our
experience, the Apostle Paul says, Oh, wretched man that I
am. And then he says, who shall deliver me? I thank God through
Jesus Christ our Lord. The Lord Jesus Christ, by him
came grace and truth. The fulfillment of the law came
by him. And so now when we read this in Exodus chapter 20, the
people said, They saw this and they said to Moses, verse 19,
speak thou with us and we will hear but let not God speak with
us lest we die. That was a true statement. Verse
20, and Moses said to the people, fear not for God has come to
prove you. and that his fear may be before
your faces, that you sin not. And the people stood off, and
Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was. And the
Lord said to Moses, Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel,
You have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. You shall
not make with Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither
shall ye make unto you gods of gold. An altar of earth shalt
thou make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings,
and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen, in all
places where I record my name, I will come to thee, and I will
bless thee. And if thou wilt make me an altar
of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone, for if thou
lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it, neither shalt
thou go up by steps to my altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered
thereon. Now here at the end of all this
terror, God tells Moses, tell the people to make an altar Tell
them to bring a sacrifice. But make sure when they build
an altar, they don't chop the stones. They don't take a chisel
and make stones of a different shape so they'll fit together
better. And don't make these steps up to the altar. Don't
come up gradually by increasing steps. Because if you touch,
if you put your tool to it, if you come up by steps, then you've
completely polluted it. Anything you do with respect
to the altar to contribute your part, it won't be accepted. What is the sacrifice for? He
says, without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of
sins. The sacrifice is to God. The sacrifice is given to God.
And only by the shedding of blood can a sinner be accepted by God.
What is the altar? Jesus told the Pharisees, he
says, you say, well, if we have some gold and we bring it into
the temple and you swear by the temple, it's okay, but you can't
swear by the gold. And he says, Don't you realize
that the gold is of no value to God unless it's brought into
the temple? The temple is what makes the
gold sanctified to God. The temple's greater than the
gold, so if you swear by the temple, you not only swear by
the gold, but you swear by the one who built the temple. And
then he talks about the altar the same way. The altar sanctifies
the gift. The sacrifice would be no good
unless it was put on the altar. The point is from that is that
the temple is greater than the gold and the altar is greater
than the sacrifice. So the altar here that has to
be constructed out of just earth or raw stones represents the
Lord Jesus Christ himself. And he's the high priest too.
And he's the sacrifice. He's the one God accepts. We
can't do anything. Christ has to do it all. And
he did it all in his death. So at the end of the giving of
the law here, which completely silences us and convinces us
of being guilty, and shows us our sin, and shows that sin abounds
when the law is given, so we're exceedingly sinful, Christ addresses
all of that in the sacrifice of himself, according to the
will of God. He's the one who comes as our
mediator. They came to Moses, don't let
God speak to us, you speak. You speak. We need a mediator,
and the law tells us that. You need a mediator. And the
law tells us the way God accepts sinners is through the sacrifice.
The law really is made up of two parts. If you understand
this, it really helps. It helps me a lot. The law basically
says, this is what God requires of you for obedience. And then
it says, and this is what God requires because of your sin.
propitiation, a satisfaction to God. Those two things make
up the entire law. And Christ did both. Only he
could fulfill the law. Only he loved God with all his
heart, soul, mind, and strength. Only he loved his neighbor as
himself. And only he could offer himself
in propitiation to God for our sins, to make satisfaction, to
take our sins away, to blot them out. to show that God is just
in his sacrifice of himself and a justifier in the full acceptance
of us because of his sacrifice. And so the giving of the law
takes place in the context of our pride that we can do what
God requires. He shows us he obliterates our
pride. No, you cannot. This is what
God is like to those who try to come to him on their own.
Thick cloud, shaking, quaking mountain on fire, smoke, lightning,
trumpets, and even Moses is afraid. And you draw back and say, I
can't stand to hear God. I'm going to die. You're right.
That's what God is like, unless you come to him by Jesus Christ.
The law said, don't come near. Don't touch and don't look. And
what does Christ say? Come unto me, all you who labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And the woman
snuck up behind Jesus in the crowd and pressed through the
crowd in order to touch but the hem of his garment. She touched
him and he commended her faith. And she said, your faith has
made you whole. And then not only that, but he
says, look unto me and be ye saved. So he doesn't say don't
look, he says you do look. Because in looking to Christ
we're saying all that God required of me, which I failed to bring,
has been laid on him to do and laid on him to bear my sin. He confessed my sin is his and
he bore the punishment for it. And he fulfilled God's law for
my righteousness and I received the life because of his obedience.
And now the law, which was our schoolmaster, is ended as soon
as Christ hung on the cross and died. What happened? The veil
of the temple was rent from top to bottom, torn in half, and
the way into the holiest of all was made possible. Not made possible,
was opened. How? By the blood of Jesus. How do we come to God? With our
arms up? Afraid? God's going to see something
in me and find a reason to put me to death? Well, that's the
way the law says to come. You can't come that way at all.
You'll be rejected and you will be put to death. If you come
near, a dart will be thrust through you. But how does God say to
come in the new covenant? Having therefore, brethren, boldness
to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new
and living way, which he hath consecrated through the veil,
that is to say, his flesh, his broken body, and his shed blood
is the way. And God says, coming that way,
you come boldly. And if you don't come boldly,
then you're coming in part by something you have to bring.
Now, you're a sinner. And God says to come boldly by
the blood of Jesus. Is there any uncleanness in the
holiness of God? Is there any doubting and uncertainty? Of course not. God is not uncertain. God himself by his Holy Spirit
says, come boldly by the blood of Jesus. He's telling us in
that statement that Christ's blood is the basis, is the reason
why not only God can accept us, but the reason why we come boldly.
We don't come thinking that we have no sin. We look at Christ's
blood and say, it was shed because of my sin to satisfy God in all
of His holiness, to make a way to make God known to me and bring
me into His presence. Therefore, we come that way.
And so we see here, Our lie, the lie that's in our heart,
is this false belief that we can come to God by keeping what
He requires from us, and that we can satisfy Him for our sins.
But the truth is, is God is so holy, and in His law, He reveals
what's required of us, and we fail to do it all. We can't do
it. We're sinners. It shows us our guilt. It shows
us what sin is. It shows us our sin is exceeding
sinful. It makes us sin more. and make sin abound. But where
sin abounded, grace did much more abound. That as sin reigned
to death, grace now reigns through the righteousness of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the
Lord Jesus Christ. In him we see your grace and
the truth of how you can be just, how you fulfilled what's required
of us, what you required. to have us who in ourselves have
no strength, who in ourselves are guilty. And in ourselves,
we are deserving of your wrath and have no basis for coming.
And yet in the Lord Jesus Christ, we not only have a basis, but
we're told from your word to come boldly by him in faith,
believing him, looking to him, coming to the hem of his garment
and reaching forth and taking hold on him and coming near to
him and asking him to save us by his grace and by his truth
that he did it all to rest in him. And Lord, we thank you that
we can behold in the Lord Jesus a perfect understanding of your
law and a perfect fulfillment of it, not only that in the obedience
of the precept, but in the suffering and the penalty of it bringing
us near. Thank you for this grace. In
his name we pray, amen.