Exodus chapter 20. I also want
you to turn to Deuteronomy 5 and Hebrews 12. Exodus 20, Deuteronomy
5, Hebrews 12. I want to read several verses.
Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5, Hebrews 12. Alright, look with me at
Exodus 20. This is our text today. Exodus
20, 18 and 19. All the people saw the thunderings
and lightnings, the noise of the trumpet, the mountains smoking. When the people saw it, they
were moved. They stood afar off. They said
unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear. But let not
God speak with us, lest we die. Now, Deuteronomy 5. Deuteronomy
5 verse 22. Moses is reminding the people
what happened that day. You may not know this, but Deuteronomy
is rehearsing everything that already took place. That's the
whole book of Deuteronomy. These words, the Lord spake unto
all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire
of the cloud of the thick darkness with a great voice. And he added,
no more. And he wrote them in two tables
of stone, delivered them unto me. And it came to pass when
ye heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, for the
mountain did burn with fire. And ye came near unto me, all
the heads of your tribes and your elders, and ye said, behold,
The Lord, our God, has showed us his glory and his greatness.
We have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire. We've
seen this day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth. Now,
therefore, why should we die? For this great fire will consume
us. If we hear the voice of the Lord,
our God, anymore, then we shall die. Who is there of all flesh
that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of
the midst of the fire, as we have, and live? Now Hebrews 12. And this is rehearsing that again. The whole
book of Hebrews, as we've noted, is a summary of the whole Old
Testament, especially the books of Moses. Hebrews 12, verse 22. It says, you come to Mount Zion,
city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem, innumerable company
of angels. He said in verse 18, I'm sorry,
look at verse 18. You not come to the mount that
might be touched, that is a physical mountain, that burned with fire,
blackness, darkness, and tempest. Now verse 22, you come to Mount
Zion, city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable
company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn,
written in heaven. Look at verse 24, to Jesus, the
mediator of a new covenant, the blood of sprinkling. Verse 25,
see that you refuse him not. If they escape not who refuse
him to spake on earth, how much more shall not we escape? We
turn away from him that speaketh from heaven, whose voice then
shook the earth, but now he's promised, yet once more I shake
not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, once more,
that signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken,
that is, the destruction of the earth, of things that are made,
that those things which cannot be shaken, unseen things, may
remain. Wherefore, we receiving the kingdom
which cannot be moved, Let us have grace, or hold fast, whereby
we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear,
for our God is a consuming fire. Now we've devoted a whole message
to that recently, do you remember that? It wasn't too long ago. We keep saying this because God
keeps saying it. He looked with me. He keeps saying
it. He keeps reminding us who He is, what He's like, His essence,
His power, His glory. God doesn't change. The God in
Exodus and Deuteronomy we read about is the God in Hebrews,
the New Testament. They heard, they saw a God who's
a consuming fire. They feared Him. And then Hebrews
says the same thing. Our God's a consuming fire. Who
is our God? Jesus Christ is God. Right? Our Lord Jesus Christ,
when He came to this earth, He veiled Himself in flesh, didn't
He, when He came? But one time for three of His
chosen disciples, He took them up on a mountain. And he peeled
that veil back, and it says, they saw him as the sun shineth
in its strength. What's a sun? It's a ball of
fire. And they feared exceedingly. That's Jesus. He's veiled. Okay? And he removed that veil
for three of them, and they saw the sun. They saw a fire. And
then in Revelation 1 is the only description of Jesus Christ in
the Bible, isn't it? There's no physical description
of Jesus Christ in all the Gospels and Epistles. But in Revelation
1 it says His countenance was as the sun that shineth in strength. It says His feet were like, His
eyes were as a flame of fires. His feet like brass that burned
in a fire. That's all they say. He's first
to be feared. And I've said this so many times. Nobody feared Jesus then. They
don't fear Jesus now. But the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of saving wisdom. That knowledge. The beginning
of knowledge. Fire. Christ said this. And I know we've already looked
at it. This is salvation, to know the true and living God
and the true Jesus Christ, the true one, not the one men say
He is. He said, I am come to bring fire
on the earth, didn't He? Didn't He say that John? He said,
suppose I am come to bring peace? What did He say? A sword. Catholics call him gentle Jesus,
meek and mild. Well, he was meek and mild as
a man, as a servant, like a lamb. But he's a lion now. The first
thing John saw before he saw a lamb was a lion. The lion is the most fearsome
animal in all the jungle. There's a reason the lion is
king. Every animal fears it. Fear. That's the beginning of
wisdom. Fire. Fire. And I know we've looked
at these things, but we still learn something. I'm still learning. Fire is a fearful thing. Fire is both fearful and wonderful,
isn't it? Fire is power. Power. Beauty. Isn't it? It's beautiful. You look at a
fire and it holds your attention. That's mesmerizing. There's a
reason God compared himself to fire. It's fearful. It's wonderful. It's power. It's beauty. It's glory. Fire is light. You can't see without fire, long
before electricity. Long before electricity. And
when the Lord turns out the electricity, there's only one way you're going
to be able to see. Fire. Children of Israel walked by
night. They could see because there
was a pillar of fire that lit the way. It was darkness to Egypt,
but they had light. What? Fire. Christ is alive. Fire is alive. Fire is purity. Nothing unclean can live in the
midst of fire. It purifies. Fire is warmth. Nothing. Ron, I'm sorry, electric
power company, I like gas. Gas. You turn it on, there's
a fire. Actually, there's no better fire
than a wood fire. Right? Or you can just put your
backside up in the fire. Right now, you're warm. Fire
is warming. Fire is needful. Oh, you can't
live without fire. You can't cook. You can't cauterize. You can't clean. You can't purify
anything. You can't live without fire. You can't live in the midst
of it. You can't live without it. Fire
will consume. The only thing that will really
take away everything completely with no trace of it is fire. That's what the Lord's going
to do when He comes. Consumed by the brightness of His coming.
Fire. Elijah on Mount Carmel. You remember? All those false
prophets had their gods they were calling on. Jumping on their
altar. We'll look at it in a minute.
I hope we get to it. Elijah said, the God that answers my fire,
that's God. And what did the fire answer?
John, what did that fire do? It consumed the water, the altar,
and the sacrifice, and everything. Everything consumed it all. That's
God. That's Christ. Disciples saw
him on the mount, sun and fire. When the disciples heard him
later after he arose on the road to Emmaus, they said after he
spoke to them, He spoke to them. The fire spoke
to them. And they lived. What did they
say? Our hearts burned. Did not our
hearts burn within us the word of God? Doesn't it just burn
within you? Fear. This is so interesting. I ordered a bunch of contact
lenses. I get them every 90 days or so.
And they sent me these little glasses. These little dark glasses,
I thought, what is this? And I looked at it, it said,
you can look directly at the sun. And the sun was real bright this
morning. I put it on, put them on, and I could look right at
the sun. And it was beautiful. I mean, it was, I could see it.
It was just bright, still bright yellow. I can't look at it without
the glasses. I took them off. We see through a glass. Darkly. We see Him, but not as He is. Right? Disciples, a couple of times,
they saw Him as He is, and they feared exceedingly. What manner of man is it? These were grown men, like Simon
Peter, not afraid of anybody or anything. When they saw Him
as He is, they were scared. You see, this is the God of the
Bible. He's the first to be feared.
You'll worship. You'll bow down to something
or someone you fear, won't you? So, that's what He reminds us
here, again. Alright, now look at Exodus 20. Verse 20, look at this. Moses
said unto the people, fear not. Fear not to those who fear. You understand this, don't you?
Do we ever quit fearing the Lord? No. No. And yet, we fear not. We come bold. We come up close, don't we? People
were far off. And so were you one time. He's
come to die, made nigh by the blood of Christ. He came to preach
peace. What did he say? Fear not. Fear not. Read on. God has come to prove
you. Verse 20, 2020. Here's clear eyesight. 2020. This is what it's all about. Fear not. You know, God is a
consuming fire. If you fear Him, you need not
fear. He's come to prove you. That's the proof of true faith. That is, fear may be before your
face. Why? That you sin not. Do you understand what that means?
Yes, you do, don't you? He just gave the law, didn't
He? This is another description. This is a preeminent description
of God, like fire. Holy, holy, holy angels that you send not. My, my. Holiness. Our Lord said, be holy. I'm holy. Holiness is all that
God is. Holiness is good. God's good. God's righteous. God's just.
God's pure. God's loving. All together. Sin is all that man is. Ugly. Filthy. Unrighteous. Wretched. This is exactly how God sees
man. This is exactly how man is. God
looks on the heart. Man, God doesn't see his man.
His vision is not limited like ours. We can only look on the
outside. God looks on the heart. We're going to see in Psalm 33
that the Lord looketh on all the inhabitants of the earth.
He sees it all clearly. We can't. He sees it as it is. God is veiled from us. We can't
see him as he is. He sees us as he is. Sin is all
that man is. He says, sin not. We do, don't
we? We're sinful. But God. God is merciful. He can't just,
martyrs just say, God can't just forgive sin. He's got to pay
it. He's got to punish it. He's got
to. How does he do that? Christ. was made sin. Christ was the burnt offering. The burnt offering. He went through
hell on Calvary's tree. Oh my. Alright, look at verse
21. People stood up far off and Moses drew near unto God in the
thick darkness where God was. What a picture of Christ this
is. I was going to have you turn
to Ephesians 2. You who were far off were made nigh. I just
quoted that there. Christ came and preached peace
like Moses came back from God with the word. People that are
sat in darkness have seen a great light. Upon them hath the light
shined. Christ came down, talked with them. All right, now look
at verse 23. All this goes together. Verse
22, the Lord said unto Moses, say unto the children of Israel,
you've seen that I've talked with you from heaven. In other words, he didn't come
down in person. They didn't see any image. They
didn't see anything. He talked from heaven. They heard thunderings. Moses
heard him talk. And Moses was the mediator. There's
only one mediator between God and man. And Moses was that mediator
who represents Christ. But they didn't see God. And
God keeps reminding them over and over, you didn't see any
image. You have never seen me. Right? You've never seen me. And He calls images the abominable
thing, doesn't He? The accursed thing, doesn't He?
Accursed. Don't make any images. That was
the second commandment, wasn't it? All right, look at verse
23. You shall not make with me gods
of silver, neither shall you make unto you gods of gold. Shall not make with me, that
is, try to make it in my likeness. No gods of silver, no gods of
gold. He calls it a cursed, abominable
thing. All right, the material world.
I'm going to call it the worldly world. You've got the worldly
world and you've got the religious world. Which is worldly. But
the material, unbelieving world, Romans 1, talks about idolatry. And Romans 2, the religious world. Both in darkness. Both have idols. And that idol is money. Isn't it? Gold and silver. Gold and silver. I need to talk about the idols
made with wood. Isaiah did. Isaiah said it was
Isaiah 41. He said they cut down a tree,
and they make an idol out of it, and then they bow down, and
then with the rest of the wood, they cook their food. Don't you realize it's just dead
wood? Gold and silver, he said, don't
make idols of gold and silver. Why? What's this talking about?
The love of money is the root of all evil. An idol is something
that rules you. A god is one that rules you,
that you bow and scrape to, that you will sacrifice your life
for that idol, and that's gold and silver. People live for gold
and silver. They sacrificed their whole lives
thinking these things will give them peace, happiness, joy, security. If I can just get enough money,
and today I see all the time it's a million dollars enough
to retire on. Man, oh man, if that ain't America. just reading it. I was watching
somebody make from over in one of these poor third world countries
making this expensive item for people to have and I saw that
they make six dollars a day. Six dollars a day. This country's, man oh man, That's what people bow and scrape
to in a gold and silver religious world. It's no different. The
love of money is the root of all evil. Why don't people, why
don't men preach this God who's a consummate fact? Why don't
they preach this Jesus Christ who came as a fire and a sword?
Why don't they preach that? You can't make any money. You
can't fill your building up. You can't build these buildings.
People won't come to hear that. They won't come hear how God
is holy and you're sinful and wretched and vile and miserable
and a dog and a worm. People aren't going to come hear
that. But you scratch their ears, and scratch their back, and tell
them what they want to hear, and you take off the offense
of the cross, and you tell them how much God needs them. The
church can't be a church without you. They'll flock to you, and
they'll fill your coffers up. And you can build all the buildings
you want to, and you can have millions of dollars, like Billy
Graham had. He died with $25 million in the
bank. That man's a false prophet. The canker of that gold and silver
rose up in the judgment against him. Can you imagine? And they do it all in the name
of Jesus Christ, who didn't have a dime to his name. Love of money. Religion is all
about it. Now God is a spirit, and these
images, these images, that adorned buildings and people wear around
their neck. God is spirit, and he said he's to be worshipped
in spirit and truth. What's that? What's the truth? Christ. You can't worship God
apart from Jesus Christ. You can't know God. You can't
call on God. You can't have a worship service unless it's in the name
of, for the glory of, and mentioning Jesus Christ in Him crucified.
God's not in it. He won't hear a prayer. Except
through Jesus Christ. Through that burnt off willy. Don't do it. That's too strict.
It's Bibles. God is to be worshipped in spirit
and truth. Christ crucified. A bloody cross. A bloody cross. That cross was
an awful thing. It wasn't a beautiful thing.
It was awful. You can't paint a picture like
that hanging on your wall. It makes you ill. His visage
was marred more than any man ever. You take away his glory when
you take away his sufferings like that. You try to beautify
it. It's a bloody cross, and it's
not an adornment of the flesh. It's an adornment of his glory
for suffering. You understand? It's not to adorn
our flesh to wear a gold cross around our neck. He wore a crown
of thorns on his head, spikes in his hands. clumped his beard
out of his face, unrecognizable like a lamb burnt in a fire. Ugly to the eye, awful looking
to the eye, altogether glorious to God and his people. You don't
adorn your flesh with something beautiful. When Christ took something
ugly, made sin, that's what the cross is all about. I told myself I wasn't going
to give up. This world hasn't seen wrath
yet. This is what people are doing,
making something beautiful and adorning the flesh so that people
can admire their Christianity. God hates it. The worst idolatry of all is
to make an altar to beautify the cross, to make a Something
glorious to wear around your neck, to draw attention to yourself. That's the worst idolatry of
all. Make a clever cliché out of the
cross. It's very common to use the name
cross point as a name for your church. Put a little E on the
end of the point. Isn't that cute? This is the point of the cross,
and then you have a little designer cross out of multicolored to
make a really beautiful cross. The cross is not a beautiful
thing. It's the worst, ugliest thing, horrible thing that ever
happened. That altar in the Old Testament
was made of brass, okay? that the animals will burn on.
It's made of brass because it conducts heat and it won't consume. But if you look at that altar,
it's black. There were animals sacrificed
on that day in and day out, day in and day out. It was black.
You couldn't see any brass. The Ark of the Covenant was made
of wood covered with gold, covered complete with gold. When it was
first made, it was glorious. was made for one reason. But
that Ark of the Covenant was made for one reason. To put the
log, put the bread, the rod that budded in it, that pot of manna,
and to seal that up. And then pour blood all over
it. And they kept pouring blood all over it. Every day, they
ended up pouring blood all over it. Until that Ark was covered. You ever seen dried blood? You've
seen it. He's a nurse. I've seen it. You've
seen it. Blood's one of the hardest things to get out in. Stain.
Ain't that a good picture? But that art, that golden art,
glorious as it was, was covered, caked brown, ugly to the eye. Ugly to the natural eye. But that was salvation. It's not a beautiful thing. Not
a thing to be admired. It's the one that hung on it
to be admired. His glory. Not ours. His hanging on the
cross. Not us hanging the cross around
our neck. Him hanging on it. You understand? Tell them, don't
wear one. Tell them about Christ on the
cross. That's how men are saved. Not seeing you. Not seeing your
adornment. Not you. Them. It's seeing Christ
on the cross. Where are they going to see that?
Well, you tell them. And you bring them. And I'll tell them.
I'll lift him up high. Well, you won't see a thing.
You won't see a cross. You won't see a picture. You won't see
anything. But hopefully, you'll see Christ hanging on a cross
with the eye of faith. And you'll bow down to him. Altar of earth and stone. My
time's up. You want me to rush through this
or continue it next week? Okay, Margaret says continue.
To be continued. But you know what that altar
of earth and stone is, or rather, who Christ is. Yeah, we'll look at that next
week.