As Ron read this portion of scripture
to us a little bit ago, you might wonder at this point, what is
the reason that God gave these various laws? After all, as we
read it, you might think these were just kind of given in a
random order. and there's no connection of
them. But there is a connection, and
I hope that the Lord will enable me to connect the dots for you
this morning. You will remember when Moses
was first on Mount Horeb, and it's in Exodus chapter 3, that
the Lord revealed Himself to him out of a bush that burned,
but was not consumed. The Lord said, I'm going to send
you to My people. And He said, here's what He said,
here's what the Lord said to Moses. You will, you will serve
God in this mountain. You will. Now, Moses is gonna,
he's gotta go back to Egypt, and of course, a lot of things
have gotta happen in the next year, a little more than a year
or so. But that's God's word to him. You will serve the Lord. You will serve me. In this mountain,
serve means to worship him. And basically, it means you'll
do what I tell you to do in this mountain. And so, and we get to Exodus
19, and the Lord says, I brought you here unto my mountain. And we know the reason that he
brought them there. He brought them there to serve
God, that is to worship him, to do what the Lord said for
him to do. And so here's all of Israel and
they get to Mount Horeb, also called Mount Sinai. They're there
because God purposed for them to be there. But rather than
worship and honor and do what God told them to do when they
got there, they fell into idolatry. And rather than worship and serve
and do what God would have them do, they did what they wanted
to do. They missed Moses. They said,
he's been gone 40 days and 40 nights. We don't even know what's
become of him. So Aaron, make us a god, make
us an idol, make us a golden calf. We'll dance around the
calf. We'll even have a feast. to this
calf and will even offer our offerings or our sacrifices unto
this calf. And that's what they did. Now,
the Lord said, you'll serve Me when you get to the mountain,
but rather than serving the Lord, rather than doing what He told
them to do, rather than worshiping God and honoring God, they worshiped
a figment of their own imagination, a God fashioned after the gods
of Egypt. And therefore, in this chapter
34, after the Lord revealed to Moses his glory, the Lord warned
them about falling into false religion. It's a very dangerous
thing. And it's a thing that is easy
to get into, certainly for the natural man, but even the people
of God must be ever on our guard. Don't go back into error. Our business is to worship God. Our business is to serve God. Our business is to do what God
tells us to do and then to not do what He tells us not to do. So here are the children of Israel.
They have done exactly the opposite of what God told them to do. They worshiped other gods. And now God is going to give
to Moses further instructions for these people. And the Lord
gives to Moses these several statutes, we'll call them, or
laws. And it had to do with the way
they would serve God, the way that they would worship God.
And I'll give these to you briefly, but they do need to be mentioned
because this connects this to what's been said before. They
offered a sacrifice to, they had a festival, they had a feast
unto an idol. And now God says, now let me
tell you again the feast that you are to have. You're not to
honor an idol. You're not to honor a golden
calf. You're not to fulfill your own
wicked imaginations. You must do what I tell you to
do. Worship me. Have no other gods
before me. And so then he starts in chapter
34 here and verse 18, and here he puts them in remembrance of
the feasts that they are to be observing. the feast that they
are to be partaking of. This is a feast of God's ordination. This is a feast of God's appointment. The first one, of course, is
the feast of unleavened bread in verse 18. Now this was vitally
connected with that which we know to be God's Passover. It was inseparably connected
to the Passover. The Lord said, take a lamb, a
lamb of the first year, and you can read about this, of course,
back in Exodus chapter 12, a male in the very strength of his year,
of his days, a year old. He must be without spot and without
blemish. And you put that lamb up for
four days and then you kill it. and you take his, drain the blood
from him, drain it into a basin, roast that lamb, eat it then
with unleavened bread. Now then, back then they didn't,
it wasn't a feast of unleavened bread that lasted seven days,
but later it did become that according to God's rule. And
so first of all, there is the Passover, and then the Feast
of Unleavened Bread. And the Feast of Unleavened Bread
is simply a feast of fellowship. It's a feast of communion. Not
fellowship so much with one another, but fellowship with God. Listen,
how can you and I have fellowship with God? How can you and I have
communion with God? How can God have anything to
do with us? How can we have anything to do
with God? By means of that Lamb that God
sacrificed for us, Christ Jesus. See, there's the connection between
the Passover and this feast of unleavened bread. Unleavened
bread means no leavening agent. No leavening agent. What does
a leavening agent do? Well, basically it puffs up. And the Lord says to them, this
must be a feast of unleavened bread and all of your puffiness
in yourself, all of that self-righteousness, all of that arrogance, it's got
to go. This is a feast of unleavened
bread. It's a feast where you remember
Me and you give thanks for that Lamb that was sacrificed." Of
course, that pointed to the Lamb of God who was sacrificed for
His people. Behold the Lamb of God, John
the Baptist said, that taketh away the sin of the world. The
question is, how was our sin taken away? And the answer is,
through the blood, the sacrifice of that Lamb, the Lamb of God.
God didn't offer Him up in the hopes that He would put away
sin. He offered Him up for our sins
to remove them from us as far as the east is from the west.
It wasn't a redemption that was an effort. It was a redemption
that was successful. That's the Passover. And then
they had the feast of unleavened bread. This is a time of fellowship. It's a time of communion. It's
a time of feasting on that unleavened bread. Our Lord Jesus said, I
am the living bread that came down from heaven. He that eateth
of me shall live forever. We feast on Him. You see, in
a sense, this is like the feast of unleavened bread this morning.
We're feasting on Christ Jesus. We eat of Him. What does it mean
to eat of Christ Jesus? It means to believe Him. It means
to receive Him. It means to welcome Him. It means
to honor Him. It means to rest in Him. He's
the only Savior. He's the Savior I need. He's
our only righteousness before God. I need Him. I need His righteousness. I need His bloody death to put
away my sins. I need Him to be my righteousness. I need Him to be my acceptance
before God. This is a feast of unleavened
bread. There's no benefit in offering
a sacrifice to or partaking of a feast to a man-made idol. That's not going to help you.
That just gets you deeper in debt. The only hope for you and
me is in this Lamb of God who took away the sins of all of
His people. Because God said, when I see
the blood, I'll pass over you." Not when you see it, though we
do see it to a degree, but there are times when our eyes aren't
on the blood. Our eyes aren't on the Lamb.
Shame on us, and that's to our regret. But our acceptance before
God, is based upon His view of that sacrifice of His Son that
satisfied His justice, removed that which stood in the way of
us in God, our iniquities. God views the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Paul says, Christ, our Passover,
was sacrificed for us. And therefore we eat the feast
of unleavened bread. We gather together this morning
to hear the gospel of God's grace, to feast again. May God spread
out for us a banquet table, a buffet, as it were, of good things, of
the very wine of the gospel, of that bread who came down from
heaven, And may we drink in of the gospel that makes the heart
merry. And may we eat of the bread of
life of Christ Jesus, the unleavened bread. In Him was no arrogance. In Him was no pride. In Him was
no hypocrisy. In Him was no sinfulness. We
eat of Him. We eat of Him and live forever.
and we fellowship with God this morning through feasting on the
gospel of our Lord Jesus. Well then, he speaks in the next
verse, verse 19, of the ownership of God. Verse 19 says, all that
openeth the matrix, the womb, God says, it's mine. And every
firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male. The ownership of God. Here's
God presses His claim upon His people. He's the owner of all
things. That golden calf they worshiped
owned nothing. That golden calf they worshiped
Aaron fashioned that out of the gold of the people. Oh no, no. That golden calf is just what
it is, a calf that's golden and dead. It is lifeless. It could be of no help to anyone.
It owns nothing. But God says, all that openeth
the matrix is mine. I own all things. He's the sovereign
owner of everything. And because He's the owner of
all things, He exercises His sovereign right to do what He
wills with His own. The Lord always does that which
pleases Him. That which He does may not please
you, and that which he does may not
please me. But whatever the Lord pleased,
that did he, in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in all deep
places. He does His pleasure. This is
simply God stating His sovereignty. There is no attribute of God
more wonderful or more comforting to the people of God than the
sovereignty of God. No doctrine in the Bible is more
blessed or more encouraging to the children of the Lord than
this. Under the most adverse circumstances,
in times of the severest troubles, When you're carrying the heaviest
of burdens, you must, and I must believe
and rest in that God who is sovereign over all things, who ordained
our troubles and our trials, and know that he works them all
together for our good. There's no doctrine in the Bible
that is more basic, more fundamental, more absolutely set forth in
the Scriptures than God's absolute right to do what He wants to
with all that He owns. And He owns everything. And God
says, here, all that openeth the matrix is Mine. Well, Lord,
isn't there some room for discussion on this? No! No! He just makes a statement. What
He is doing here, He is declaring His ownership, that is His sovereignty. The doctrine of God doing His
will, His right to do what He wants to with His own, the doctrine
of absolute sovereignty, it is essential to the very character
of God. And hear me, all of you here
and all of you who are watching, if you in your heart deny the
absolute sovereignty of God over all things, you may as well deny
His justice, or His love, or His grace, or His very being. To say that God is not sovereign,
you may as well say there is no God. Because if you deny the
absolute sovereignty of God, that He owns all things, you're
saying God is really irrelevant. And He is not irrelevant. He's a God who does His will. And He makes this declaration
to Israel to let them know, all things are mine. I'm the owner
of everything. And then thirdly, He says in
verse number 20, He speaks of the redemption of a filthy animal. Here the Lord likens His people,
in a spiritual sense, to being like an ass. And they really misbehaved when
they made that golden calf, when they bowed down to it. And they showed themselves to
be just unclean people. And you know Isaiah said something
to that effect in Isaiah 64 and verse 6 concerning all of us.
We're all as an unclean thing. All of us are. We're like the
lepers. The lepers in the Old Testament,
they had to go around. Once they'd been diagnosed as
having leprosy, they would go to the priest and the priest
would say, you're unclean. They'd have to put a rag or something
like that over their mouths and go around. And when people came
to approach them, they said, unclean, unclean. That's you. That's me by nature. We're like the firstling of an
ass. And the only hope for us, an
ass is a stupid animal. It's a rebellious animal. It's an animal that will not
do what he's told to do unless you force him to do it, and even
then you'll have great difficulty. And God says, when your ass has
a foal, two things can be done with that.
You're either gonna have to redeem it or you're gonna have to break
its neck. And here we are. Job likens us
to a wild foal, wild ass. What's to be done with us, Lord?
I'll either redeem you or I'll break your neck forever. And
I'll tell you a bunch of us wild asses, He redeemed. He didn't
redeem everybody, but He redeemed many, a multitude which no man
could number. And it was his prerogative whether
to leave us as the filthy people that we would be by nature or
redeem us. And if you're a believer and
not because you're a believer, but you're a believer because
of what God did for you, he said, I'm gonna redeem you. My friend, you think about that.
He could have left you in your sinfulness, in your filth, break
his neck. That's everlasting doom. But God said, I will redeem. What's the cost of my redemption? The precious blood of Christ. And in a sense, speaking figuratively
now, God broke His neck and not ours. Our Lord Jesus suffered, bled,
and died, not because of any sins of His own, but because
of my sins, because of the sins of all of His people. The redemption of the filthy, And make no mistake about it,
and I'm not trying to be unkind. You can take it any way you want
to, but by nature, my friend, you are filthy. And your outer
behavior may be good as we count goodness, as we measure goodness. It may be. But there is within you great
pollution before God. And God says, you're unclean. Therefore, I'm gonna redeem you.
Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Can you rejoice in the doctrine
of redeeming grace? He washed you. He washed you. At the end of verse number 20,
he says, and don't appear before me empty. When you come to worship
me, you bring the sacrifice of praise. Bring the sacrifice of
thanksgiving to God. Don't come empty. Come with your
heart filled with joy, filled with gratitude for what He's
done for you. When you enter into this building
this morning, when you entered in, I hope that you entered in
with an awareness of, a consciousness of, and a grateful heart for
all the good things that God has given you in Christ. Who are you that God would bless
you with his son? You're just an unclean creature. And yet God has blessed you with
all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. You can
rejoice in that, can't you? Sure you can. And sure you do. Then, number four in verse 21,
he reminds them of the Sabbath day command. He says, six days
shalt thou work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest. And of course,
this pictures their literal Sabbath day. Of course, there is no literal
Sabbath day now. Some people say, well, the Sabbath
day was changed to Sunday. I don't read that in the New
Testament. But this six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh
day thou shalt rest teaches us to rest in our Lord Jesus, who
is our Sabbath. He is our Sabbath. And He who
is our Sabbath finished His work, His work of redemption, His greatest
work. of establishing righteousness
for his people. He did many good works during
his life. There's no question about that.
And in fact, the Jews asked him in John chapter 10. They got
upset with him, picked up stones to stone him. He said, for which
of my good works do you stone me? And they did not deny He
had done many good works. They said, for a good work we
stone thee not, but you're just a man. You say you're God. That's
why we pick up stones to stone you. But He had His greatest work
just in front of Him. That's the work of our salvation. That was the work of our redemption. which he finished to the satisfaction
of God as testimony of that, his resurrection. God raised
him from the dead and God exalted him. And our Lord Jesus has entered
Hebrews chapter four. He has entered into his rest. Now let us labor to rest in him. And it's kind of an interesting
wording there in Hebrews chapter 4. Let us work at not working. To just rest in Him. And you've
always got to be conscious of this. And you must never let
creep into your mind this idea that there is something that
I could do that would make God be more favorable toward me. No. Rest in the Lord Jesus. Only, that is, believe Him. Believe
Him. Don't take the eyes of faith
off Him ever. And the same law that certainly
applied to the Israelites about not working, It applies to all of God's people. Don't work, don't work, but rest. And don't let anything else interfere
with your rest in Christ. Not even things or people that
seem to be very important. See, the Lord puts this in. He
didn't just throw these words in for nothing right there at
the end of verse 21. He says, in erring time and in harvest,
thou shalt rest. But Lord, those are important
times. Man, things are beginning to bloom and blossom and the
ears beginning to form and I got to get out there and I got to
hoe the garden. I've got to get those weeds out.
I want a good harvest. And then in time of harvest,
well, I got to pick my crops. God said, even in those most
vital times in your life as a farmer, Rest. And I'm telling you, don't
let anything, anybody come between you and your rest in Christ Jesus,
no matter how important you think they are. Here's our motto, Christ only
and Christ is all. Alright, then he goes, into the,
to observe the Feast of Weeks. This is verse 22. Thou shall
observe the Feast of Weeks, which we call, and it's called in the
New Testament, that's Feast of Pentecost. Why is it called the
Feast of Weeks? It's five weeks plus a day. I'm sorry, seven weeks plus a
day. Thou shall observe the Feast
of Weeks, 50 days, of the first fruits of the wheat harvest. In other words, here's really
the second feast of the year. If you look at it this way, Passover,
which kind of bled into the Feast of Unleavened Bread, that's in
the springtime, okay? And then you get into the summertime
and you have the Feast of Weeks, or as it says here, that is the
feast of the first fruits of the wheat harvest. That's in
the summertime. And then he's going to go on
and say, in the Feast of Ingathering, that's like the Feast of Tabernacles,
that's what he's talking about, that's in the fall. These were
the three great periods of time for the Israelites, especially
for the males. They must go to Jerusalem, Passover,
Feast of Unleavened Bread, and then Feast of Weeks. which is
when the harvest first begins to come. I used to, in Virginia,
I had a big garden, and I enjoyed growing lots of potatoes. And
I loved going and robbing those potato hills and getting them
little potatoes, and just so good, so good. First fruits. First fruits. That's what the
Lord's talking about. in erring time and in harvest,
and then he says, in the feast of weeks, observe the feast of
weeks, remembering the goodness of God, remembering that it's
the Lord who gives the harvest. The Lord provides for all that
we need. and we gather together to thank
Him. We thank Him for the spiritual
benefits He gives us, and we also thank Him for the physical
benefits He gives us, for those material benefits that are ours
through Christ Jesus. This is like the beginning of
a harvest. Think of Acts chapter 2, when
God gave to Peter that powerful message On the day of Pentecost,
when the Spirit of God was fully come, 3,000 souls were brought
into the kingdom of grace by almighty effectual omnipotence,
the very power of God the Spirit. A harvest. But it's not attributed
to man, but only to God. And then he closely associated
with this, then is of course next the Feast of In-Gathering
at the year's end, or the Feast of Tabernacles. This is when
all the crops come in. This is late fall. Late fall. And they gather everything in,
have another feast. See, there's a meaning to this
feast. The Israelites, when they held that feast to the golden
calf back earlier, that calf had done nothing for
them, though they said, these be our gods that brought them
out of Egypt. No, they didn't. God brought
them out. And God led them. God divided
the Red Sea. God led them through. God brought
the waters back against their enemies. The Lord provided water
for them. He provided bread for them. He
has now taken them to Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai. It's the Lord! It's the Lord! And you want to
say to those Israelites, are you so foolish? as to attribute
the works of God to something that you have made? But that
is exactly what the person in false religion is doing. They
attribute what they think they have to a false god that can't
save. In fact, Isaiah records the word
of the Lord and says, why do you pray to a god that can't
save? You pray before that golden calf all day long. You reckon
He can hear? Can He help you? Has He blessed
you? Why, that golden calf, He couldn't
do anything for them. They actually had to do for the
golden calf. Oh, that sounds like false religion
today, doesn't it? No, no, no, we worship the God
who has His will, who does His will among the armies of heaven
and the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay His hand or
say unto Him, what doest thou? That's the God we worship. The
God who saves by means of the smitten lamb of God. So we observe the feast of ingathering
in a sense, all the people of God do. That is when all the
saints of God will finally be gathered into the garter, the
fold of salvation. Quite often I'm asked, when will
the end come? When do you think the Lord's
coming back? When the last of His wheat has been gathered into
the garter. When the last of His sheep have
been brought into the sheepfold. when the last of His elect ones
has been born into the kingdom of grace, then the end will come. That's what I believe. Notice this. He says in verse 23, he kind
of sums it all up about these feasts. He said, three times
in the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord
God, the God of Israel. We tend to put a lot of butts
in after the promises of God, don't we? That's nature. But Lord, You say when we get
into the Promised Land, You want all the men to go to Jerusalem
to worship You. Do it three times a year. But Lord, what about our elderly? Who's going to watch after them?
What about our wives? What about our children? And
Lord, you know, I've worked that farm really hard. Will the nations
come in and rob me of my lands? Who's going to look after everything
I've got if I drop everything to go worship you? Look what he says in verse 24.
I'll cast out the nations before thee, and I'll enlarge your borders.
Neither shall any man desire thy land, You do what I tell
you to do. They'll look at that piece of
land that you've left for a while in order to go to Jerusalem and
say, I don't know why anybody would want that piece of ground.
I don't know why anybody would want to farm that. That's so
rough. It's so rocky. Why would anybody
want to live there? No, we're not interested in that.
God says, neither shall any man desire thy land when thou shalt
go up to appear before the Lord thy God three times in the year.
Hear me. You worship God through Christ
Jesus. God says, I'll take care of you.
I'll take care of you. Well, that means that I won't
ever get sick and I won't ever have any troubles or anything.
No, you know better than that. but your soul is doing just fine. Just fine. And nobody can harm
it. He says in verse 25, Thou shalt
not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven. Hey, here's this
leaven again. Don't you mix your self-righteousness
You are puffed up feelings with the death of Jesus Christ. You
think highly of yourself. You're a fool. You are a fool. Oh God, cause us to take our
place as sinners before you and never leave that ground. I'm
a sinner saved by grace. I'm a mercy beggar. I'm one who
always is in need of Christ the Savior. That's me. That's me. Don't want to ever
leave that footing. And he says in verse 26, the
first of thy first fruits of the land shalt thou bring into
the house of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not seethe. This is
very important. Thou shalt not seethe or boil
a kid. What is a kid? It's a male or
female goat six months old or less. Thou shalt not boil a kid in his mother's milk. Well, what in the world is that
in there for? Oh, that was another tradition of the heathens. They
thought if they boiled a kid, a little baby goat, in the milk
of its mother, then they'd take that milk and that'd go out and
sprinkle it on their gardens, on their roses, on other things,
their fig trees and so forth. And thereby they thought that
God's will bless my crop. God said that's heathenish. Those
gods can't help you. And don't you pick up that heathen
practice. You see, the Lord so often told
Israel, and He reminds us constantly, stay away from false religion.
This superstition that it'll even arise in your heart and
you'll begin to think, you know, I'm going to read my Bible today,
but I believe God will be more happy with me if I read my Bible.
I believe I'll be more accepted. Now, is reading the Bible a good
thing? Oh, absolutely. Is denying the lusts that my
flesh has, is that a good thing? It's a good thing to deny them.
That's right. It's a good thing to fight against
sin, fight against the old man. Yes, you've got to do that every
day, but that's not why God accepts you. He accepts you for Christ's sake.
You're always accepted in the Beloved, the one of whom we're
going to sing hymn number 50, Fairest Lord Jesus. Acceptance is in the Son of God. It's in the Lord Jesus and Him
crucified. Hymn number 50, Fairest Lord
Jesus.