I'm so thankful that we have
God's word. You say, well, that's no big
deal. There's millions of Bibles around this country. Yeah, well,
there's quite a few at my house. I'm thankful that we have God's
word, but I am more thankful that he has given some people
a heart for it. Most people, most church goers,
will go to church all their life and they'll wear out a half a
dozen Bibles, carrying them, throwing them on the car seat,
throwing them on the table at home, carrying them. But oh,
how good to have a heart for God's word. Food for the soul. In Exodus chapter 24, and I hope
you'll follow with me. We're going to be kind of going
through several chapters this morning and I want to just read the first
three verses of Exodus 24. And he, this is the Lord, said
unto Moses, come up unto the Lord thou and Aaron and Nadab
and Abihu and 70 of the elders of Israel and worship ye afar
off. And Moses alone shall come near
the Lord. But they shall not come nigh,
neither shall the people go up with him. And Moses came and
told the people all the words of the Lord and all the judgments. And all the people answered with
one voice and said, all the words which the Lord hath said, will
we do. The title of our message is this,
how we worship God. How we worship God. Not where we meet. Not when we meet. Not how we
dress. Not how many of us there are.
But how we worship God. It's not how we think of each
other. or decide about each other, or who we consider to be the most
important persons among us, or who does what in the church.
That's not it. This is it. How we worship God. How do we come to God? And I assure you, it's not in
the impressiveness of any teacher. It's not in the knowledge and
the personality of any preacher or the talent of any singer.
The emphasis is never any competitive spirit among us as to who's above
who, but simply how we worship God. And how do we worship God? Well,
you see the word worship at the end of verse one, and worship
ye afar off. You hear people say sometimes,
oh, I just want to get closer to God. Your closeness to God must be
in another. in a representative. For such sinful, vile creatures
as you and I, to come close in ourselves to one so holy as God,
He'd have to consume us and totally destroy us. Lest he defile and
corrupt himself and cease to be God. You know, people that you kind
of, we use the term have to keep your distance. Well, God's one
of them. If you're just coming to him
in you, we come, we come in Christ. So I'll begin with a thought
from each of these three verses we've read in verse one. We have
a selected representation of all Israel, of all the thousands
in Israel. This is God's appointment of
74 men. The people didn't vote on it.
God appointed it. And he said to Moses, God's appointed
leader, who is a tremendous picture of Christ. He said to Moses,
you and Aaron, your brother, and his sons Nadab and Abihu,
you four, along with 70 of the elders of Israel. You 74 men
come in representation of all Israel. In verse two, we have a given
a, another thought. A single mediation. A representation of 74, but a
mediation of one. In verse 2, God stresses to Moses
three times, you're the one and only one that's to come near. And Moses alone by himself shall
come near the Lord. And then the second time, in
other words, they shall not come nigh. And then a third time,
neither shall the people go up with him. So in verse four, excuse me,
in verse one, it's the 74 worship afar off. In verse 2, it's Moses
alone shall come near the Lord. And all this in the Old Testament
concerning the nation of Israel is only typical, as is Moses. You understand that the single
mediator in reality that comes near to God and no one else is
not Moses. but Christ. He is the single
Mediator. 1 Timothy 2.5, there is one God
and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. So I'm taking it slow now. In
verse one is the selected representation. God's choice. In verse two, It's
the single mediation, also God's choice. And in verse 3, we find a supposed
cooperation. When Moses came and told all
the people what God told him, verse 3 says, and all the people,
not some of them, not most of them, but all the people, answered
with one voice. That's agreement. They were in
one accord, one mind. And here's what they said. All
the words, the Lord, not some of what he said, not most of
what he said, but all the words which the Lord had said, will
we do. It's hard for you and I to imagine
that any people would be bold enough to profess to be capable
and committed to come up to God's standard in themselves by their
own conduct. And yet that's what these people
did. They said, it's a deal, Moses.
Go back and tell the Lord. It's a go. All he said, we'll do. That's hard to get hold of. And
yet multitudes of folk get up and come to church every Sunday
with the same filthy, deceived mindset that I'm making the grade. I know lots of folks that are
not, but I am. I'm doing it. I'll certainly
bring a smile to God's face today without even realizing that all
that smells like a sewer, an open sewer in the nostrils of
our God. We can't worship Him that way.
Oh, no. Why didn't these people say when
Moses told them what the Lord had said, why didn't they say,
oh, dear Lord, oh, God, you know, we cannot come up to your standard. We know you're holy, sinless. We cannot come up to your standard
in ourselves. The only way we'll ever stand
before you is for you to come up to your
standard in behalf of us. And this God did for us in our
mediator. Not Moses, but the one and only
mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Moses went
ahead and wrote it all down. the agreement. And then he offered
sacrifices and offerings, and he took the blood of the offerings.
And verse six says he took half of the blood and sprinkled it
on the altar where the animals were slain. And the other half
of the blood, verse eight, he sprinkled on the people. This is a A blood covenant, an
agreement. You took the other half of the
blood and sprinkled it on the people. And verse 8, and said,
behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with
you concerning all these words. This is what you've agreed to. It's signed and sealed in blood.
A valid document. It's what you promised God you'd
do. Now, instead of the Lord coming back at these people as
he well could have and said, why you bunch of low down liars,
you know, you're not going to keep all my commandments. And you wouldn't, if you could. But he doesn't do that. The Lord didn't bless them like
that. What did he do? He called Moses and Moses alone
back into the Holy Mount. And the last verse of this chapter,
verse 18, says that Moses was there 40 days and 40 nights to
learn what God would do. This 40 days and 40 nights coincides
with Matthew chapter 4 verse 1. Jesus was led up of the spirit
into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. How long? 40 days and 40 nights. Moses is the typical mediator. Christ is the true mediator. During these 40 days and 40 nights,
God showed Moses some things. Beginning in chapter 25, all
the way to the end of the book, through chapter 40, except for a parenthesis, chapters
32 through 34, in all these other 13 chapters, God is giving Moses
instructions of how to construct and carry on the service in the
tabernacle, how to worship, how to worship God. And you and I
know that everything about that tabernacle, and it's been a long
time since we've talked about the tabernacle. I keep hoping
Brother Jim will venture into it. It's going to be a lengthy,
lengthy class and teach it to us in our Bible class. But everything about that tabernacle,
the materials, the numbers, the sizes, the colors, the service
of it, all pointed to Christ. So instead of God blasting these
people, he called Moses back into the mount for 40 days and
40 nights and said, here's the answer. And he shows him Christ. And the first thing that God
instructed in all these chapters in this massive construction
project, he started in chapter 25 in verse 10 and said, Thou
shalt make an ark of cheetah wood. And verse 11, Thou shalt
overlay it with pure gold. Wood overlaid with gold. These two materials combined
into one speaks of the humanity and the deity of Christ. The
wood, humanity, the gold, the deity. Now before I speak any more about
this ark, which was a box, wood covered with gold, Before I say
any more about that, it's called the Ark of the Covenant, the
Ark of God. Let's back up and see that the
Lord had given Moses the 10 commandments back in chapter 20. And he never left it to Moses
to remember them. or even to write them down, God
Himself wrote them down. It says back there that they
were written with the very finger of God, the commandments. Now turn to chapter
31 and verse 18. I'll read that to you.
3118, and he gave unto Moses, when
he had made an end of communing with him upon Mount Sinai, two
tables of testimony, tables of stone written with the finger
of God. The Ten Commandments, these two
tables of stone were to be put inside the ark, inside that box
of wood covered with gold. The box God gave the instructions
for back in chapter 25. And the tables of stone, the
10 commandments, and I don't want to offend anyone,
but these were not to be posted on the wall. They were not to be posted on
the courthouse wall or the schoolhouse wall or the church house wall. They were not to be made a sign,
like a realty sign, to put out in your front yard so folks could
drive by and say, I tell you what, a real Christian lives
there. They believe in the Ten Commandments. These were not posted for men
to see and profess to obey. Don't lie to God and lie to yourself.
by professing any such obedience like this crowd did. Well, we're just careful not
to sin. Listen, you don't have to do anything to sin. You can't
even think without sinning. And we've said this many times,
sin is not what you do, it's what you are. And you need somebody to carry
you to God besides yourself. You can't get in a million miles
of him. Sin is not what you do. It's
what you are. You do what you do because of what you are. Now in that Paris thesis I referred
to, or parenthesis I referred to earlier, chapters 32 to 34,
Moses is on the way down the mountain. back down into the
camp, he and Joshua. And they heard a commotion. They
heard music and laughter. And Joshua said to Moses, it
sounds like a celebration after a victory in a war or a battle. Moses said, no, no, it don't
sound like that. Moses said it's more like a big
party going on. Just a revelry. You find all this in chapter
32. And the Lord said to Moses, Moses,
hurry up and get on down from here, bud. There's trouble down
there. Get on down there. To thy people. You'll find that In verse seven
of chapter 32, God don't say my people. He said, thy people,
Moses, your crowd, your people. They played the fool. It's been 40 days and they've done exactly what
they promised they wouldn't do. That first commandment, thou
shalt have no other gods before thee. And they've got Aaron to
make them a golden calf. And they called it God. And even
said, he's the one delivering them from Egypt. The second commandment, thou
shalt not make unto thee any graven image. That's exactly
what they did. Aaron called for all their gold.
He was a real preacher calling for the gold. He wanted all your gold, jewelry,
and so on. And they gave it. And he made that golden calf,
a graven image. That's exactly what they did,
violated that second commandment. And then thou shalt not bow down
thyself, nor serve them. That's exactly what they were
doing. All of this, they'd just got
through promising they wouldn't do. And when Moses got close to the
partying, he saw the partying and the dancing and the worshiping
the golden calf. And verse 25 says they were dancing
naked, worshiping the false god they'd
made. with the gold the living God
had given them. Dancing, partying, naked and
worshiping an idol. Multiplied thousands are in church
today. I hope it's not the case here. come to church well-dressed, sitting quietly, but in their heart of hearts,
they're naked before God and dancing in celebration of
themselves, worshiping the golden calf of
a deceived mind that God is happy with us. because of us. God is not happy with us because
of us. We can't worship Him that way. When Moses saw that, he got mad. And he threw down the tables
of stone and broke them. And then he took that golden
calf and he ground it to powder. mixed it with water and made
people drink it. Moses called all the sons of
Levi and he said, who is on the Lord's side? This mess going on here is not
on the Lord's side. Who is on the Lord's side? Let
him come unto me. And he sent the Levites with
their swords throughout the camp of Israel, and they slew 3,000
that day. You say, boy, that don't sound
like anything God would do. That's exactly what God did. Moses interceded for the people
and God was merciful. And in chapter 34, the Lord told
Moses in verse 1, Hew thee two tables of stone, like unto the
first. And I will write, God said I'll
do it again. I will write upon these tables
the words that were in the first tables, which thou breakest. This second set of stones, tables,
with the commandments written on them, did get to where God
said put them. In the ark, out of men's sight, with the lid closed, called the
mercy seat. And when the high priest on the
Day of Atonement, once a year, sprinkled blood upon that mercy
seat, it pointed to Christ. It was never about what men could
do concerning their sins. It was by faith in what God would
do concerning their sins. That's the difference. How do
we worship God? Looking to Christ. and Christ alone. Jeremiah 1.16,
I will utter my judgments against them who have forsaken me and
burned incense to other gods and worshiped the works of their
own hands. Wow, how familiar that is. Worshiped
the works of their own hands. Look at us. How proud God is
of us because of us. It is vain. It is vile. We're all guilty. My question,
why should God not put me in hell? One reason. By His own choice. my life is hid in Christ. That's the only reason. You're
looking at one this morning who wants nothing to do with God
apart from Christ. I delight in talking about the
Lord. But hey, I want nothing to do
with any religion or anybody that wants to talk about God
apart from His Son. Acts 17.25, neither is He worshipped
with men's hands. As though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life,
and breath and all things. So how do we worship God? Looking
to Christ, the one and only mediator between God and men, the man,
Christ Jesus.