That would have been fun with
me. That would have given me more time to sneak out. No, I hate to joke about that,
but I did offer Gabe $100 to take my place this morning. He
turned me down flat. And I asked my wife nicely to
shoot me last night. She wouldn't do it. But I do
come before you with fear. I pray the Lord, and you pray
with me, that the Lord will calm my heart so I can speak for him faithfully and
clearly. Thank you, Brother Todd, and
thank you all the members of Todd's Road Grace Church for
having me. It means a lot to me that you
have me. And thank you, Claire and Annie. for hosting us so graciously
in this group. It's been a long time, but you
folks are precious to me, and you're just flat a good-looking
group. Handsome and beautiful. I told
the folks back home one time I'd preach to ugly people, but
I'm glad I don't have to. Exodus chapter 32 this morning. Verse 15. Exodus 32. Verse 15, And Moses turned and
went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony
were in his hand. And the tables were written on
both their sides. On the one side and on the other
were they written. And the tables were the work
of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the
tables. And when Joshua heard the noise
of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, there is
a noise of war in the camp. And he said, it is not the voice
of them that shout for mastery, and neither is it the voice of
them that cry for being overcome. But the noise of them that sing
do I hear. And it came to pass, as soon
as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf and the
dancing. And Moses' anger waxed hot, and
he cast the tables out of his hands and break them beneath
the mount. And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt
it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon
the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it. And Moses
said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast
brought so great a sin upon them? And Aaron said, Let not the anger
of my Lord wax hot, Thou knowest the people, that they are set
on mischief. For they said unto me, Make us
gods, which shall go before us. For as for this Moses, the man
that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we want not what
has become of him. And I said unto them, Whosoever
hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me, and
then I cast it into the fire. And there came out this calf. And when Moses saw that the people
were naked, for Aaron had made them naked under their shame
among their enemies, then Moses stood in the gate of the camp
and said, Who is on the Lord's side? Let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered
themselves together unto him, and he said unto them, Thus saith
the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side. and
go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp and slay
every man his brother, every man his companion, and every
man his neighbor. And the children of Levi did
according to the word of Moses. And there fell of the people
that day about 3,000 men. For Moses had said, consecrate
yourselves today to the Lord, even every man upon his son and
upon his brother. that he may bestow upon you a
blessing this day. What a terrible, terrible thing. And what a picture
is set before us here. In verse 19 particularly, Moses
sees the people down at the foot of the mountain partying around
this golden calf. Moses who had just come back
from meeting with God face to face. saw what the people were
doing. Those who not long before had
sung on the banks of the Red Sea, you remember what they sang
there? The Lord is my strength and song.
He has become my salvation. He's my God. And I will prepare
Him in habitation. My Father is God. I will exalt
Him. And now they're singing a different
song. And Moses takes those tables
of stone upon which the very hand of God has written his law.
Doesn't it say he wrote it with his finger? And while God was writing with
his finger, thou shalt have no other gods before me. These people
were dancing around this golden calf. And now that teaches us
something right there. There's a lesson right there
in that, isn't there? God did not write his law to keep us
from sinning. How naive do we think God is? God didn't write his law to prevent
men from worshiping other gods. He knew what they were doing
as he was writing it. And that before they were ever
even see this law, they were already breaking it. What does
that teach us? Think about this, those who survived
this ordeal, the ones that weren't stricken down that day, when
they did get a look at what God had written on those tables of
stone. You know, they spoke with Moses, I'm sure they said, now
Moses, you were up there speaking with God. You say he wrote something
while you were up there? What did he write? Oh. Thou shalt have no other gods
before me. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God alone. Religious people look at the
Ten Commandments and they like to put them up on their wall
and they say, oh good, God gave us a rule book. No, God gave
us a letter of indictment. The law is not the solution.
The law is a declaration of the problem. The law doesn't clean
the inside of the cup or the outside. The law shines perfect
light inside the cup to show how filthy and wretched it is.
Well, somebody said, well, why can't it be both? It just simply
isn't. God's book doesn't say anywhere
that God wrote his law so that you would know how to act. What
it does say is this, we know that whatsoever things the law
saith, it saith to them that are under the law for this reason. So you might shut up about how
good you are. And confess your guilt before
God. And what a picture these broken
tablets of stone present to us. They were broken in the truest
sense before Moses ever threw them. This is the law in the hands
of sinners. Broken, unrecognizable. You can't even piece it together.
You don't even know what it says. Much less are you able to keep
it. So broken that you can't even read it anymore. We don't even know what love
looks like, do we? Didn't he say love fulfills the
whole law? We don't even know what love is by nature. We don't even know what it looks
like to honor God. Much less are we capable of doing
it. You can't piece it together so that it's even recognizable.
But is God's law preserved? Is God's law broken forever with
no remedy? How will we ever know what was
written on that law? I'll tell you how. There's an
unbroken copy. And I thought for years, and
I probably preached it before, that the broken law was in that
ark under the mercy seat. That's not true. The law that
was in that ark under the mercy seat, not broken. The law in
our hands is broken. But there's an unbroken copy.
Where is it? It's under the mercy seat, preserved
in Christ Jesus. God wrote another copy that never
was broken. God's law is kept, preserved,
fulfilled, honored by man, by the man, Christ and all whom
he represents. Do you know what God wrote on
those tables of stone? We can't even really know, can
we? Even if you can recite them perfectly, you don't know what
they say. You that would be under the law,
don't you hear the law? You know what the answer to that
rhetorical question is? Absolutely not. If you did, you
wouldn't want to be under it. What the so-called preachers
are saying about the law is a lie. It's not accurate. Are you trying
to put the pieces of the broken law back together on your own?
You can't do it. If you want to know what was
on those tables of stone, you know how you're going to know?
Look to Christ. And in that new covenant, we
just read about the old covenant, in that new covenant of God's
unconditional grace wherein Christ Jesus has fulfilled all of the
terms of the law for you and kept God's holy law perfectly
for you and paid the price for your not keeping of it. Do you
know what one of the blessings of that covenant is? I want to
look at all the blessings of that covenant this morning briefly.
But you know what one of them is? I'm going to write my law,
but not on tables of stone this time. I'm going to write it on
your heart. Turn to Hebrews chapter 8. Verse 7, For if that first covenant had
been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the
second. What was the fault with the first
one? Was there a problem with God's law? No. There is thou no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus, because what the law could not
do, in that it was weak through your flesh. The reason the law
couldn't do what we by nature think it can do, make us holy
if we follow it, is because of the weakness of our flesh. There's
nothing wrong with the law. But bless God what the law could
not do in that it was weak through our flesh. God sent his son to
do it. So there's fault with that, there's
a problem with that old covenant, not with the law itself, but
with us, for finding fault with them, verse 8, He saith, Behold,
the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. And
you know this new covenant is older than the old covenant.
It's just new to them. I'm going to make a new covenant
with them. Not, it's not going to be like
the old one. Not according to the covenant
that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by
the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. Why not? Why is it going to be different?
Because they continued not in my covenant and I regarded them
not, saith the Lord. Under that covenant there's no
hope for us. And so this one's not going to be like that. For
this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my laws into their
mind and write them in their hearts. That's the first thing. I'm going to write my law again,
but this time I'm not going to put my finger to stone. I'm going
to put my finger in the very heart of my sheep. And I'm going to write my law
there and I will be to them a God. This is the second thing. It's
all really one thing. You understand that we just kind
of have to divide things out so we can get a hold of them. But I will be to them a God. And they shall be to me a people. So let's look at the, Paul, listen
to this, the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their
mind and write them in their hearts. You remember what Paul
spoke of in Romans chapter seven? We may go in a minute and read
some of that, but it's really the whole chapter, and I don't
want to take time to read it this morning. Paul said, I can't
keep the law of God. He said, there's another law
in my members. The things that I would do, I would honor the
law. I love the law of God after the
inward man. The things that I would do to
honor him, I find not how to do it. I can't do it. I can't
keep the law because there's another law in my members warring
against God's law. But I love God's law and the
things that God has commanded are right and true and good and
holy. Those are the things that I would
do. And the things of the flesh are the things that I don't want
to do. I do them, but I don't want to. What happened? You never said that before. That
I want to keep God's law, but I can't and I don't want to do
the things that I did before. But I do. What happened? It didn't used to be that way.
You know what happened? God put his finger on Paul's
heart and he wrote his laws there and not just the Ten Commandments. The law being written on the
heart and not just on tables of stone, it doesn't mean that
we're personally going to be able to keep the law, but it
does mean that we're going to want to. It does mean that we're going
to agree with the law's indictment against our sin. It does mean
that we're going to side with God against ourselves. And I'll
tell you what else it's going to do. It's going to cause us
to look to him who did satisfy God's law. We're going to understand
that God's law must be satisfied. And we're going to bless God.
This writing. And you know what's a blessing
to this writing of the law on our hearts, it doesn't make us
able to keep the law. So that alone is not going to
solve our problem. But bless God, that's not the
new covenant. It's just part of it. There's number two, also,
I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people. Look at Leviticus chapter 26,
just briefly. Leviticus chapter 26. Look at
verse 12. And he said, and I will walk
among you and will be your God. And you shall be my people. Isn't
that just what we read in Hebrews? That's the new covenant. Well,
no, not here. It's not. I'll show you why. Notice all the I wills, and let's
trace them back up a ways in that passage of scripture. I'll
walk among them. I'll be your God. You'll be my people. Verse
11, I will set my tabernacle among you. Verse nine, I will
have respect unto you and make you fruitful and multiply you.
Verse six, I will give you peace in the land. Verse four, I will
give you rain in due season. Verse three, if. You see that? If you walk in
my statutes and keep my commandments. and do them. This is the difference
between the old covenant and the new covenant. You look in
Hebrews 8 there, you won't find an if. It's not contingent upon you.
It's not dependent upon you. It's dependent upon the messenger
of the covenant. The one whose blood is the precious
blood of the everlasting covenant. The one who said this cup right
here is the new covenant in my blood, which I shed for you. That's the difference. The old one was contingent on
your obedience. The new is conditioned only upon
the obedience and faithfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ. So
when we say it's an unconditional covenant, just understand that
means there's no conditions for me to meet. There are conditions,
but not for me. And I'm so glad about that, aren't
you? And then thirdly, God is going to reveal himself to every
sinner who is included in this new covenant. He said, every
man shall not teach his neighbor and his brother, saying, no,
the Lord. And that doesn't mean we're not going to teach our
children about the Lord. You know it's not going. He said
how many times? Teach them to their children.
Teach them to their children. But here's the thing, it's not
going to just be you teaching them. All shall know me from
the least to the greatest because they all shall be taught of God. If you're in this new covenant,
if you have an interest in this new covenant, you're not just
going to hear from me this morning. You're going to hear from God.
And his Holy Spirit is going to take the things of his precious
son and reveal them to you. And then fourth, I'm thankful that the Lord wrote
the law on my heart, and like Paul, I love God's law. You can't despise the law and
love God. The law is God's character. It's an expression of His holiness. But I'm glad for this part too.
I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their iniquities
will I remember no more. God has laid on his son the iniquity
of all of his people, all those with whom he makes this new covenant
of grace. Christ's blood is the blood of
the everlasting covenant, Hebrews 13, 20. His precious blood has
redeemed them from all sin. He obtained eternal redemption
when he went into that holy place, not made with hands as our high
priest, not without blood. He had something to offer. How
can God, how can he be merciful to my transgressions? He's promised
he will. Christ crucified. How can God
forget what I've done and what I am by nature? Christ crucified. In verses 21 through 24, we won't
turn back. You'll remember what it said
when I say this. Aaron gives an account of what
happened there in Exodus that makes himself look pretty good,
doesn't it, in comparison to what actually happened. Notice
how he mentions the mischief of the people but not his own.
He didn't say anything about that. And he said, I cast the
gold into the fire and this calf jumped out. When it actually
says in verse 4 that Aaron fashioned it with his own hand. That's
what it says, literally. He fashioned it with a graving
tool. Now this is why sinners don't come to the Lord Jesus
Christ. We've seen our need of him. You
know why? Because God has written his law
on our heart. But as long as the law is just
on tables of stone, people are not going to come to him because
they just don't need him. Need him. Aaron represents all of
us here by nature. Do you see? The one-two punch
here in this passage, not only had the people sinned greatly,
did you notice that word in verse 31? Sinned greatly and so much
that God revealed to Moses that the right thing to do in verse
10, he said, what needs to happen is I'm going to wipe all of them
out. That would have been the right thing to do, but I'm going
to kill them all. Moses interceded. They had a mediator. But here's
the second thing. Not only was their sin great,
but they didn't much care. They didn't much care. Aaron
wouldn't have denied. You know, if you pressed Aaron
about it and asked him, now, didn't you make that good? He
wouldn't have denied all wrongdoing if you pressed him about it.
But you know what he said? He said, you know how the people
are. You know how it is, Moses. Don't be mad. You know how it
is. That's how we feel about our
sin by nature. We don't understand the depth.
We don't understand the extent of the damage that sin has done.
We don't know who we sinned against. David said, against thee and
thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. We don't
understand that. Paul said, when the commandment
came, not just on stone, but to my heart, sin revived and
it killed me. It killed the me that could ever
again think that I might do something to please God. We don't know what we are by
nature. It's just, oh, you know how it
is. Think about some of the ways that God describes our condition
in the Scripture. We're lepers. head-to-toe corruption,
stinking running sword, unclean, unfit, vile, disgusting, an abomination
to God, legally excluded under Old Testament law from fellowship
with the people of God, much less God Himself. An issue of
blood. Bleeding out and unable to do
anything about it in all of our efforts. All of the money that
we've earned by our works, we've spent it all and just gotten
worse. A withered hand. All through the Word of God,
the hand, and particularly the right hand, is a symbol of power,
of ability to work and accomplish the will. Exodus 15, 6, thy right
hand, O Lord, has become glorious in power. Thy right hand, O Lord,
hath dashed in pieces the enemy. Guess which hand it was that
our Lord healed of that man with the withered hand. Luke's account
tells us that. No power When we were yet without
strength, Christ died for the ungodly. When we couldn't do
anything about our problem, he did. The death he accomplished
on Calvary. Dead in trespasses and sins. Lazarus is four days stinky dead. And our Lord Jesus Christ. sovereign
and almighty, and by virtue of the precious blood that he shed
eternally for his people, said, come forth. Paul said in Ephesians 2.1, you
hath he quickened which were dead. And here's the insanity,
we're that, we're leprous, vile, wretched, helpless, spent everything
and accomplished nothing. dead, wretched before God. And we think we can make a decision
and make it all go away. I think it was Augustus' top
lady that said, a man's free will cannot even cure him of
a toothache or a sore finger. And yet he madly thinks it is
in his power to cure his soul. If we knew the reality of the
problem, And we will when God touches our heart. We would abandon
all vain thoughts of our good outweighing our bad. We don't
have any good. And we would cry for mercy. Do
you see this in our text? Somebody who's blaming everybody
but themselves and saying, oh, don't be mad. You know how things
are. They might need a second chance, but they don't need mercy.
If that's where you are, you don't need, you know, you need
a second chance maybe to do the right thing. And how absurd is
it that religion talks about the Lord Jesus Christ, God in
eternity, purposed and sent his son into this world and he made
his very soul an offering for sin and shed his precious blood
to redeem a people. And you know what they say about
that? They say, well, what that does is that gives you another
chance to do the right thing. Like in the garden, we had a
chance. Like the Lord Jesus Christ came
unto his own, and what did they do? They received him not. But Christ bought us another
shot. That's the most horrible thing you will ever hear. Peter didn't say, Lord, give
me a chance. He said, Lord, save Save me, and somehow we've got
to get to that place. And you know how we get there?
The finger of God has got the right on my heart. We'll fall at the Lord's feet
then, knowing that we shouldn't even be there according to the
law. Lepers were to avoid all society. I have no right to even
come before you, Lord. Isn't that what he said to the
woman of Canaan? It's not right for me to do anything for you.
Truth. But I'm here anyway, I'm coming
anyway. I'll do the gracious king approach, whose scepter
mercy gives, perhaps. He might just receive me. Perhaps he will receive my touch
and then the sinner lives. I can but perish If I leave,
I'm resolved to try. For if I stay away, I know I
shall forever die. I'm coming to him. The Lord told Jacob, let me go.
And Jacob said, I will not. The Lord said that the kingdom
of heaven is going to be taken by force. I can't let you go until you
bless me. Something happened up in here
when that's the case. God's law written on the heart
makes that one distinction now. We're no less sinful, but our
days of not caring are over. And here's the thing, the fact
that we desire to honor God's law, what will that cause us
to do? Well, we're going to try harder. When God writes the law
in our hearts, you know, we realize that we understand the spiritual
nature of the law. We understand something of the
holiness of God. That's going to make us try harder to please
God. No, it's not. No, that's not what it's going
to do. It's not going to cause us to go about to establish our
own righteousness. It's going to cause us to look
to Christ who as our representative honored God's law. We don't honor
the law by doing our best. Our best is an insult to God.
when presented as a righteousness before Him. We honor God's law
by believing on Christ through faith. We don't make void the
law. We establish it. Paul said, I must win Christ
and be found in Him. And what does that mean? To not
have my own righteousness. I must win Him. The law on the
heart is not just the Ten Commandments. But one time the people stopped
murmuring against Moses, one time, and blaming him as they
did in our text. And the Lord said, Moses, they're
not murmuring against you, they're murmuring against me. But they
murmured against him in our text and said, we don't know this
Moses, we don't know where he's at. But one time they told the
truth. They had murmured and rebelled
one too many times. And God sent fiery serpents into
their camp and much people died. And they came to Moses and they
said, we have And God said to Moses, put a serpent of brass on a pole
and lift it up. And our Lord said to Nicodemus,
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so the
son of man must be lifted up that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have eternal life. God's son must be made
in the likeness of the problem. For what the law could not do
and that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own
son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. Condemn sin
in the flesh. With the law written on our hearts,
we know that God's law must be satisfied. And we know the only way it can
be. By Christ and by grace through
faith in Christ. Again, Paul said in Romans seven,
the law is just and good and right, and I would keep it. I don't do it, but I would how
I would. I want to. But do you remember
where all that led him? When God had written on his heart,
he didn't just despair of self, he did that. The things that
I want to do, I can't do. Does that sound like free will
to you? And the things that I would not
do, how I want to honor my Lord, I don't want to dishonor the
Lord Jesus Christ, do you? But do you know where that led
him? to turning over a new leaf, to a New Year's resolution to
do better. Who's going to save me? I thank
God through Jesus Christ, my Lord. I'm going to be saved by
him. That's where the law, the law
on the heart doesn't cause a sinner to try to keep the law for righteousness. It causes a sinner to say, I
thank God through Jesus Christ, my Lord, I'll be saved. The law written on our hearts
doesn't make us any more capable of honoring the law in ourselves,
but it makes us need to see the law honored. And it'll cause us to praise
the name of God forever for that other promise of the new covenant.
Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. This
thing of God writing on our hearts, it's just another way of saying
he gives us a new heart. The law is not written on the
old heart. You can't put new wine into old bottles. The law written on stone is condemnation. We saw that. You condemned already. The law written on the heart
is grace. The law on stone is terror and
trembling. They said we can't even approach
Mount Sinai. We can't even... You go talk
to him for us, Moses. The law on our heart is our schoolmaster. to bring us to the Lord Jesus
Christ. Why did the prodigal come to himself? God put his finger on his heart,
didn't he? And he said, I'm an idiot and
my father is gracious and right and fair and he loves me. That woman taken in adultery,
the Lord Jesus Christ wrote on the ground and those who saw
that went away guilty, rebuked, and left the one whose life. But he wrote on that woman's
heart, didn't he? And then said, now go and sin
no more. And we know she didn't go away
sinless and perfect in herself, but she went away wanting to
be. And that was just one of the
promises of the covenant. Neither do I condemn they. There's
another one. This cup is the new covenant,
he said. Where is it? Where is the new
covenant? In that blood, Paul. Bruce, wherever you are in that
blood, in that blood, in that blood. the new covenant in my
blood, in the precious blood of the Redeemer. Christ is lifted
up. We read that a while ago. Christ
is lifted up. Look and live. My old pastor Jack Shanks wrote
something once that's been a blessing to me for many years. He said,
the more we look at Christ crucified, the more we will mourn for sin. Look at the cross until all that
is on the cross is in your heart. He who was pierced is your God,
your maker, your benefactor, and your best friend. Our Lord said, blessed are they
that mourn. I'll comfort them. Happier those that are deeply
sad. That's what our Lord said you
understand that you understand what that is If you do God has
written his law on your heart And he's forgotten all of your
sins and he's your God he's revealed himself to you And he's said to you, this cup
is the new covenant in my precious blood, which I shed for you. I shed it for you. Happier those that mourn. May God bring us
to that place. For Christ's sake. Amen.