Mt. Rose OPC

The Old Testament reading is the prophet Micah, Micah chapter five, verses one through five. And this is God’s inspired and inerrant word. Let’s hear the word of God.

Now muster your troops, O daughter of troops. Siege is laid against us. With a rod they strike the judge of Israel on the cheek. But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore, he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has given birth. Then the rest of his brothers shall return to the people of Israel. And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth, and he shall be their peace.

Now let’s turn to Matthew 2. This is our New Testament text and our sermon text for this morning, Matthew 2, verses 1 through 12. Matthew 2, verses 1 through 12.

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem saying, where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose, and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet, And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.

Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, Go and search diligently for the child. And when you have found him, bring me word that I, too, may come and worship him. After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.

And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Last Sunday, we finished going through the book of Exodus. And for that reason, this morning, we are taking up another book of the Bible for our sermons at the morning services. And the book that we’ll begin looking at is the Gospel of Matthew. Now, actually, we are going to resume looking at the Gospel of Matthew. I don’t expect any of you to remember this, but last year for the Advent season, I preached three sermons from Matthew chapter one, and that was really the beginning of going through the gospel of Matthew. After those three sermons on chapter one, we went back to Exodus, but now that we have finished Exodus, we are going back to Matthew, but rather than going back to chapter one, we’ll pick up where we left off, and so we’ll start at chapter two. And Lord willing, by God’s grace, we’ll slowly work our way through this gospel. And I trust and I pray that by the end, we will have been encouraged and edified as we consider together the person and the work of our dear Savior, Jesus Christ, as that is revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures.

As Christians, we love the truth of the Incarnation, and we ought to love the truth of the Incarnation. It is a glorious truth. We love the Christmas story. We love the story, the truth, that God sent his Son into the world to be our Savior, that the baby, who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, that he was born, he came into the world in order to deliver us, to save us from sin and death. And in fact, his very name, Jesus, tells us that that is why he came into the world. In Matthew chapter one, the angel spoke to Joseph in a dream and said to him about Mary, she will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. And so Jesus was born to be our savior. This was the reason for his incarnation, for his coming into our world.

However, he was also born to be our king, our Lord. But because we naturally want to rule ourselves, but because of our fallen human nature, the truth that Jesus was born to be our king doesn’t fill our hearts as quickly with joy and gratitude as the truth that Jesus was born to be our savior. And that’s because a king demands obedience. A king lays down his law. We must submit to a king. And the last thing that we want to do, according to our sinful, fallen human nature, is to submit ourselves to an authority, to a king. The cry of our hearts is the same as the cry of the citizens of a nobleman in that parable that Jesus taught. They cried out, we do not want this man to reign over us. And so we naturally resist, we rebel against having a Lord, a king over us.

And not only that, but there have been too many evil kings in the world whose rule has been nothing but oppression and bondage. And so we tend to have a very negative perspective on a king or a ruler. But of course, the rule of Jesus over us is nothing like the tyrannical rule of wicked men. But the lordship, the kingship of Jesus over us is a gift from God. In fact, there is no greater blessing than to have Christ as our king. He is a king who rules over us for our good. He defends us from evil. He preserves us, keeps us in his care and in his kingdom forever. And so Jesus is like no other King the world has ever seen. And there is no other King that we should more happily submit ourselves to than King Jesus.

And this passage from Matthew in chapter two is all about the kingship of Jesus. He came into the world, not only to bring us salvation, but also to rule over us as his people. And Matthew shows us what kind of King that Jesus was born to be.

First of all, there’ll be three lessons here. The first lesson is this, Jesus is a King who reigns with the power and authority of God. Secondly, Jesus is a King who reigns in righteousness. And thirdly, Jesus is a King who reigns over us in order to bring us salvation.

So first, Jesus is a King who reigns with the power and authority of God. In chapter one of Matthew, Matthew tells us all about the birth of Jesus, the miraculous circumstances or the miraculous events concerning his birth. And now in chapter two, Matthew tells us what takes place about a year or two after his birth. And so there’s a year or two between chapter one and chapter two. And Matthew says this in verse 1 of chapter 2. He says, Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem.

We’ll consider Herod in a minute, but first I want to focus with you on these wise men who came from the east, somewhere from the east, we don’t know where, but they came looking for the baby Jesus. In Greek, these wise men, as you know, they are called magi. But what exactly were magi? Well, one thing we know that magi were not, they were not kings. That idea came much later in the history and tradition of the church, that the Magi were kings, but we know that they were not kings. The same goes for the idea that there were three Magi. Because they brought three gifts, it’s assumed and it’s become a common idea that there were three Magi who came to see the baby Jesus, but that’s not the case as well, and so the Magis were not kings. There probably were not three of them. Probably, well, we don’t know. There could have been, but there was, the Bible just doesn’t tell us exactly how many. If you happen to like the song, We Three Kings of Orient Are, I hope that the song is not ruined for you now, knowing that the Magi were not kings, and there may not have been three of them.

But basically, the Magi were astrologers. They studied the stars to get insight into world affairs. They were kind of astronomers, studying the movement of the stars and planets and so on, but also astrologers, deriving meaning from the motion of the celestial bodies. But they were also familiar with the various sacred writings of different peoples, and these wise men or magi, they were sufficiently exposed to the Jewish scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, the Word of God, They were sufficiently knowledgeable of the Jewish scriptures to know the prophecies that said that a king would be born in Israel, a king that would be the king of the Jews, who would reign over the people of Israel and one day reign over his people from throughout the world.

Now, these magi, they were pagan. Nevertheless, God in his grace, he revealed to them the truth about the birth of Christ, And he did so by the appearance of a star. The star told them, and also when they combined that with their knowledge of the scriptures and so on, God revealed to them in that way that the king of the Jews had been born. The star led them to Bethlehem and then, well, first led them to Jerusalem and then on to Bethlehem.

What was the star? No one knows for sure exactly what this star was. Some people say it could have been a natural phenomenon, such as a comet or supernova that God had ordained and that he used particularly to bring the wise men to the baby Jesus. What is more likely, I believe, is that the star was something entirely supernatural, that it was an extraordinary supernatural creation by God, a light in the sky that God created specifically to lead the wise men on their way. And I believe that is true because Matthew tells us that the star led them precisely to the place where the baby Jesus and Mary and Joseph were, the house where they were staying in Bethlehem.

Now, it was common then for dignitaries to pay their respects to foreign kings and to bring gifts to them, just as the Magi are bringing gifts to the Christ child. But Matthew makes a point of telling us that the Magi came all the way from the East, not just to honor Christ with their gifts, but they came to worship Christ, to bow down before him and to worship him. When they arrived at Jerusalem, they said this in verse two, where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. And when the star led them to Jesus, that’s exactly what they did. Verse 11 says, and going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.

And in worshiping the infant Jesus, they were bearing witness to the truth about who Jesus was. This was not just the birth of another human king, as extraordinary as that may have been, but this was the birth of the Son of God. This was the incarnation of God who came and took on human flesh. The Magi may not have been able to understand all of that or to explain all of that. Nevertheless, they knew by the grace of God that this child was worthy of their worship. Somehow they knew that this was the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and they worshiped him.

And that was fitting because Jesus is truly God in the flesh. 2.9 tells us, in him, that is in Christ, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. And that was true for Jesus. Even from the moment of his conception, from the moment that he was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, he was worthy of worship because in him, the fullness of deity indwelt bodily. He was worthy not just of the gifts, the honor of the Magi, but he was worthy of their worship.

And because Jesus, he is the incarnate son of God and he is king. It means that he rules with divine sovereignty. And so to say that Jesus is king is to say not only that he reigns over you and me as our Lord, our king, but he reigns over the church. He reigns over all the nations of the world. He reigns over the whole earth. He reigns over all creation. The entire cosmos is under the authority, the power of King Jesus, and he reigns with the absolute power and sovereignty of God because he is God. He is Lord, and if you belong to Jesus Christ by faith, you have the unspeakable joy and peace of knowing that his reign over you and all things is for your good, for your salvation, for your eternal joy and bliss.

And another implication of this truth that Jesus reigns as the Son of God is that his reign is one which will continue forever into all eternity. We certainly cannot say the same thing about human kings. We cannot say the same thing about the other king in this passage, who is King Herod. When Jesus was born, King Herod was at the peak of his reign over Judea. By this time, he had already ruled for several years. He had already completed several major building projects. He built theaters, cities, palaces, fortresses. It was King Herod who built the massive temple complex that we read about in the New Testament.

But what about King Herod today? What can we say about him? Well, if it wasn’t for the Bible, first of all, Virtually nobody would know about him. There might be a smattering of academics and historians here and there that would be familiar with King Herod, but if it wasn’t for the scriptures, he would be just another forgotten king in history. And nobody would really care much about him as well. And what about all the building projects that Herod built that presumably would last beyond his lifetime and for centuries and millennia? Well, they are nothing as well. It’s all mostly rubble now. Everything that he built is dusty ruins for archaeologists to dig out of the sands.

The poet Percy Shelley wrote a poem about an ancient ruler named Ozymandias. And this was a king who was a powerful ruler in his day. But in Shelley’s poem, all that remains of this great king is a statue of him lying in ruins in a desolate wilderness. And the poem that he writes about this once mighty king ends this way. The poem says, and on the pedestal, these words appear. My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. But then the poem goes on to say, nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. And that could describe the reign of King Herod as well. As powerful as he was, as feared as he was, as mighty as he was, as great as his works were, nothing remains of his rule but his name.

And the same can be said of every human ruler that comes and goes. Eventually, all his power, all his works, all that he has done turn to nothing. They are forgotten. But the child who was born the king of the Jews, he is still king. He is still reigning as Lord and sovereign over all creation and over this world. And as a Christian, you have the assurance that because Jesus has an eternal kingdom because he is king forever and ever. Therefore, your salvation in him is secure. You have an eternal salvation as one who belongs to this great king.

And the truth that Jesus is the sovereign and everlasting King over everything means this as well, that we cannot put our hope of salvation in man. We cannot put our hope of salvation in a leader or a politician or a political party. The scriptures explicitly tell us not to do this. Psalm 146 says, put not your trust in princes, in a son of man in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth. On that very day, his plans perish.

This is a truth that we need to remind ourselves today. Unless you have been somehow insulated from the world over the last several weeks. You know that we are in an election season. If you’ve opened your mailbox, you will have all kinds of advertisements from different politicians. But you can have the assurance as a believer knowing this, that no matter what the outcome of these elections may be, no matter who may come into power, no matter what law may be passed, As a Christian, you have the assurance of knowing that the one who truly holds the reins of power over all things is no politician, no leader, but it is the Lord Jesus Christ. He rules over our nation, He rules over all things, He reigns over all for our good, for our blessedness.

Now in the providence of God, He may raise up rulers that are corrupt, that do evil. Nevertheless, as Christians, we can still take comfort and joy in knowing that Jesus Christ is the true King of Kings. And so, if someday, God forbid someone as cruel and corrupt as a Herod should come to rule over us. Nevertheless, Jesus will still be ruling over him in glory, just as he was even in this passage. Jesus was the king even over Herod here, and in that we can rejoice.

And since Jesus is a king who reigns with the power and authority of God, it means that you owe him as a believer in Jesus Christ, you owe him all that you can give Him. And that is more than mere external conformity to what He commands, but you owe Him your praise, your adoration, your love, your worship, your devotion, and all from the heart. The wise men give us an instructive example here. They came to Jesus and they worshiped Him. They gave Him expensive gifts, but this is just a picture of the kind of wholehearted devotion and consecration and obedience that you owe to your King, the Lord Jesus Christ. And you can give him something that is far more precious than all the frankincense, gold, and myrrh in the world. You give him your very life. You give him your very heart. And that is the way in which you show your devotion to this King.

John Calvin had a personal motto that he had made part of his seal, and his motto was this, my heart I give thee, Lord, eagerly and earnestly. And your King Jesus demands nothing less of this from you, that you give him your life, your heart, your resources, your energy, your strength, all that you have, all that you are, you are to lay at the feet of Jesus. And he not only demands this, but he is worthy. He is worthy of this. He is the one King, the only King who is worthy of your total devotion. And so Jesus is a King who reigns with the power and authority of God.

The second lesson is this, Jesus is a King who reigns in righteousness. We’ve already talked a little bit about King Herod. He is somebody that we do know, not just from the scriptures. So there is some historical information about him apart from the word of God. But we know that he reigned from about 37 BC to about four BC, which means that Jesus was actually born not in the year zero, but he was born sometime between four and six BC. Technically speaking, this is not the year 2026. We’re more like in the year 2030 or 2032 or something like that, but we’re in the ballpark. It’s close enough.

Now, King Herod was a very talented, a very competent ruler. We’ve talked about his building projects, but he was also exceedingly cruel, exceedingly ruthless. At one point, he even had his own wife and sons murdered in order to secure his hold on power. Caesar Augustus testified to the cruelty of Herod. He said, it is better to be Herod’s pig than his son. And of course, Matthew also testifies to the terrible cruelty of Herod. When the king learns that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, he orders all the boys who lived in Bethlehem and in that region, two years old and under, to be slaughtered. And just like so many despots before Herod and after Herod, His political philosophy boiled down to this, murder anybody who is a threat to my power and my rule. And that’s how he ruled.

And therefore, because he feared any potential threat to his own power, he was naturally alarmed, very troubled, when he heard that wise men from the East had come looking for one whom they said was born king of the Jews. Matthew says in chapter two, verse three, When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Now why was all Jerusalem troubled with King Herod? It was because when King Herod was troubled, it usually meant trouble for everyone else. And so all Jerusalem was also troubled with the king.

So when Herod heard the news of the birth of this one called the King of the Jews, he summoned all the chief priests and scribes together, for a Bible quiz, a one-question Bible quiz, and that is, where is the Christ to be born? And all the Bible experts, they answered, they answered correctly. They said that the Christ would be born in Bethlehem of Judea. And once Herod understood that, he devised a plan to destroy the so-called king of the Jews. He would send the wise men to Bethlehem to find the child, and once they came back to Herod and told him the location of where this baby who was called the King of the Jews was. Herod, of course, would not go to worship him, but he would send his henchmen there to kill him, to murder this baby.

Now, one thing Matthew is showing us here is the tragedy that God’s own people, not only Herod, but the chief priests, the scribes, the leaders of the Jews, the leaders of the nation who were supposed to be looking for the coming of the Messiah, they had no interest whatsoever to discover the truth, whether this was truly the Christ child. As far as we can tell, not one of the religious leaders of the Jews made the six mile journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to see if indeed the ancient prophecies had come true. In Matthew, puts that in contrast with the wise men, these pagans, these Gentiles who came from the East, perhaps as far away as Babylon. They made this journey in order to find and to worship the Christ child, and yet the Jews themselves and their leaders would not go to see whether these things were so. Of course, these same leaders, they would be seeing a lot of Jesus in the years to come, And as we’ll find out, as you know, they hated what they saw.

As for Herod, his only interest in the child was to have him destroyed. But Matthew tells us how God and his providence and his sovereign rule over all of these circumstances, how he brought it about to keep that from happening. The wise men went back home another way. Therefore, they did not disclose to Herod the place where Jesus was. And as you know, as we’ll see next week, when Herod realized that he had been tricked by the wise men, he flew into a rage, he became furious, and he ordered all the baby boys in Bethlehem to be murdered.

Now, Matthew describes the depravity of Herod in order to give us a side-by-side comparison between these two kings. There are two kings in this passage. One is Herod, the human, evil, wicked king, and the other is Jesus. Herod’s reign is one of deceit, injustice, corruption, the reign of Jesus is one of righteousness.

Now, Matthew doesn’t say it in so many words in this passage, but we know that Jesus is the King who fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah chapter nine, verse seven, of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. And so the rule of Jesus is one of righteousness, one of faithfulness. It is also a reign of love. Jesus, the righteous King reigns in love.

Compare again, Herod with Jesus. Here, Herod is willing to sacrifice innocent children in order to maintain his rule. Jesus was willing to sacrifice himself. He was willing Himself to die in order to bring eternal life and forgiveness to His people. And so as your Lord, Jesus reigns over you with both His righteousness and His love. He always has your best interests at heart. His commandments are for your good. He will fulfill because He is righteous, because He is true. He will fulfill every promise that He makes to you in His word.

And therefore, although Jesus calls us to submit to him, and although by nature we are reluctant to submit ourselves to another, nevertheless, this is the only way for you and me to find true freedom, true life. salvation, eternal joy, eternal blessedness, it is by giving ourselves, by coming in subjection to this gracious, this righteous, this loving King Jesus. And so Jesus is a King who reigns in righteousness.

The third truth concerning Christ is this, Jesus is a King who reigns in order to bring us salvation. After King Herod asked the chief priests and the scribes, where is the Christ to be born? They told him in Bethlehem, and then they quoted scripture. They quoted from Matthew, or they quoted rather from Micah chapter five, verse two. In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet, and you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.

Now in this prophecy from Micah, and actually at the end, there’s added some words from 2 Samuel, but in this prophecy, as it’s quoted for us here in Matthew, Jesus is called not only a ruler, but a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. And for him to be called a ruler who is a shepherd or one who will shepherd means that he is a ruler who brings salvation. Because in the Old Testament, as you know, A shepherd rules for the good of his people. The rule of a shepherd is one of protection, deliverance, preserving life, giving life.

I think of Psalm 23. It begins with, the Lord is my shepherd. And it ends with, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And that’s because the Lord is my shepherd. And so Jesus, as king, he is the good shepherd. He is the good shepherd king who brings salvation, deliverance, life to his people.

And Matthew is also showing us something else in this passage, something that will become clearer as the New Testament unfolds, and that is that Jesus was born to be the King and the Savior, the Good Shepherd, not only of those from among the Jews, but He came to be the King of all those from throughout the world who come to Him in faith. And what shows that in this passage are the Magi. Again, these are pagans, these are Gentiles, usually in the New Testament, Magi or magicians are looked upon very unfavorably because they don’t know God, they don’t worship a God, but these do, these do. And just like with the magi, whoever comes to Christ by faith, whoever comes to Him to worship Him, to receive Him as their King and their Savior, receives from Him the gift of salvation and eternal life.

And one thing that this means for us as Christians is that you cannot have Christ as your Savior if He is not your King. You cannot have half of Christ. Christ cannot be divided, the Savior part and the King part. I’ll take the Savior part, thank you, but not the King half of Jesus. If you will have your sins forgiven, if you will receive the gift of eternal life, This gift which Jesus holds out to you in the gospel, you must submit to him as your Lord. This means by the grace of God, you must turn from your sin. You must repent of your sin. You must forsake it. You must turn to Jesus Christ and submit to him and ask him for the grace and the spirits to keep his commandments, to obey his word. You must walk with him as your Lord, if he is to be your savior. And there is only one Jesus Christ, and He is both Savior and Lord. And you can only have the whole Jesus. You either have the whole Jesus or you have no Jesus. And so you can have Him only as your Savior if He is not your Lord. And so Jesus is a King who came to bring us salvation.

And so with the birth of Christ, God fulfilled those wonderful promises that he had made to his people from throughout the centuries to raise up the son of David, the stump of Jesse, the son of David who would reign over a redeemed people from throughout the world. And as we’ve seen, Jesus is the king who reigns with the authority, the power of God. He reigns in righteousness, and he reigns as a savior.

But it’s not as though there was not a ruler over the world before Jesus came into the world. There was a ruler over this world. He still rules in some ways, and that ruler is Satan, the devil, the evil one. And his rule is not one of freedom in life, but his rule is one of bondage, oppression, and eternal death and destruction. And the beauty, the wonder, the glory of the story of the birth of Jesus is that what was the beginning of the end for the reign of Satan over this world? What was the beginning of what would be the destruction of his rule over us? It was a tiny little baby boy, an infant, cradled in his mother’s arms. born in this backcountry place in Judea of Bethlehem, a seemingly weak and helpless infant.

And yet, because of who this child was, because he was God in the flesh, he came to establish a kingdom of righteousness and love and salvation. Because of who he was and what he came to do, his birth was the death knell for Satan, the beginning of the end of the works of the devil. And this is why the angels in heaven rejoiced. Of course, that’s from Luke’s gospel. We know that the angels in heaven praised God at the birth of Jesus Christ. And this is why you and I should praise God at the birth of Christ as well. Because he was born to be our king, to bring us salvation, to bring us under his lordship, which is true freedom, true life.

And the joy of the Magi is an example for us here. The way that Matthew describes their boundless joy, it’s almost as though he’s straining at the limits of the proper use of language just to show us how intense the joy was of the Magi when they saw the star that would lead them to Jesus. Matthew doesn’t just say that they rejoiced, he says, they rejoiced exceedingly. But they did not just rejoice exceedingly, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. Now, if you were to write that as part of an essay for your English teacher, he or she would probably take a red pen and strike it out and say, too redundant, fewer words. But this was the way that Matthew was trying to convey to us. the intensity, the abundance, the overflowing joy that filled the hearts of the Magi, because Christ has come, the one who came to save us from our sins, the one who came to rule over us. He is born. He has been enthroned forever as King and Lord.

Do you have that joy in your hearts? Does the coming of Christ fill you with joy? Put your faith and hope in Christ that you may experience both the freedom and the joy of his gracious rule over you. Let’s pray.

The post The Child King appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

Our Old Testament reading in our sermon text this morning is Exodus chapter 40. This is God’s infallible and inerrant word, Exodus 40, starting at verse one.

The Lord spoke to Moses saying, on the first day of the first month, you shall erect the tabernacle of the tent of meeting, and you shall put in it the ark of the testimony, and you shall screen the ark with the veil, And you shall bring in the table and arrange it. And you shall bring in the lampstand and set up its lamps. And you shall put the golden altar, for instance, before the Ark of the Testimony and set up the screen for the door of the tabernacle. You shall set the altar of burnt offering before the door of the tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting and place the basin between the Tent of Meeting and the altar and put water in it. And you shall set up the court all around and hang up the screen for the gate of the court.

Then you shall take the anointing oil and anoint the tabernacle and all that is in it and consecrate it and all of its furniture so that it may become holy. You shall also anoint the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils and consecrate the altar so that the altar may become most holy. You shall also anoint the basin and its stand and consecrate it.

Then you shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and shall wash them with water and put on Aaron the holy garments. And you shall anoint him and consecrate him that he may serve me as priest. You shall bring his sons also and put coats on them and anoint them as you anointed their father that they may serve me as priests. And their anointing shall admit them to a perpetual priesthood throughout their generations.

This Moses did, according to all that the Lord commanded him, so he did. In the first month of the second year, on the first day of the month, the tabernacle was erected. Moses erected the tabernacle. He laid its bases, and set up its frames, and put in its poles, and raised up its pillars, and he spread the tent over the tabernacle, and put the covering of the tent over it, as the Lord had commanded Moses. He took the testimony and put it into the ark and put the poles on the ark and set the mercy seat above on the ark. And he brought the ark into the tabernacle and set up the veil of the screen and screened the ark of the testimony as the Lord had commanded Moses.

He put the table in the tent of meeting on the north side of the tabernacle outside the veil and arranged the bread on it before the Lord as the Lord had commanded Moses. He put the lampstand in the tent of meeting opposite the table on the south side of the tabernacle, and set up the lamps before the Lord as the Lord had commanded Moses. He put the golden altar in the tent of meeting before the veil, and burned fragrant incense on it as the Lord had commanded Moses. He put in place the screen for the door of the tabernacle, and he set the altar of burnt offering at the entrance of the tabernacle of the tent of meeting, and offered on it the burnt offering and the grain offering as the Lord had commanded Moses. He set the basin between the tent of meeting and the altar and put water in it for washing, with which Moses and Aaron and his sons washed their hands and their feet. When they went into the tent of meeting and when they approached the altar, they washed as the Lord commanded Moses. And he erected the court around the tabernacle and the altar and set up the screen of the gate of the court. So Moses finished the work.

Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.

And now let’s turn to John 1 for our New Testament reading. John 1, verses 14 through 18. John 1, 14 through 18.

And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

You may turn back to Exodus chapter 40.

And today, as you can tell, we’ve come to the end of the book of Exodus. After about a year and a half of going through this book of the Bible, we have finally come to the last passage, the last chapter. And as we look back and think about what we have seen in Exodus, we can think of the fact that a lot has happened to the people of Israel since the beginning of the book of Exodus.

At the start of the book, the Israelites, they were an enslaved people. They were helplessly trapped in the iron grip of a cruel pharaoh, who not only afflicted them with punishing labor, but also oppressed them, even to the extent that he ordered all of the baby boys of the Israelites to be murdered. But the people of Israel, they cried out to the Lord for help. And the Lord was merciful. He heard their pleas. He heard their cries. He remembered the covenant that he had made with their fathers, the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And for the sake of his promises, the Lord rescued the Israelites from their bondage to Egypt. And he rescued them in a most spectacular fashion by bringing upon the Egyptians all kinds of signs and wonders, the 10 plagues, by the parting of the Red Sea, the destruction of Pharaoh’s army, and all of that.

And the Lord not only rescued his people, but he came down and he met with his people, he was present with his people at Mount Sinai, and he confirmed his covenant with them. He confirmed that he would be their God and they would be his people. And the Lord promised the Israelites that he would lead them into the promised land that is the land of Canaan, the land of promise, the land flowing with milk and honey. And until that day that he brought them into that promised land, he promised that he would provide for them in the wilderness, And so he brought manna down from heaven to feed them day by day. He caused water to gush out of the rock in order to give the Israelites the water they needed.

And the Lord also gave to his people his laws that they might obey him as their God. And so with these laws, the people of Israel received the will of God and how they were to serve him, how they were to worship him, how they were to live as a holy people, a holy nation belonging to the Lord.

But perhaps most importantly of all, The Lord promised that in the tabernacle he would dwell among his people. And so the people of Israel received the promise from the Lord that he would be with them. He would be in their midst. He would dwell among them. In fact, according to one verse in Exodus, this was the whole reason for what God had, this was the whole reason why God had delivered his people from Egypt, so that he might be with them. Exodus 29, 46 says, the Lord says, and they shall know that I am the Lord, their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them. He brought them out of Egypt that He might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God, He says.

And so, as we look back, as we reflect on all that we have seen from the book of Exodus, we can see how the story of Exodus is really the story of God’s goodness, His grace, His mercy towards His people. How many different ways did the Lord demonstrate and show Himself to be a God who loved His people, who cared for them, who provided for them?

But the story of Exodus is also about the sin and the failure of the Israelites to respond in thankfulness and obedience to what God had done for them. If you remember, the Israelites complained in the wilderness. They complained about the lack of food and water, although the Lord always provided for them. They whined about how they wanted to go back to Egypt. The food was so much better there. Their lives were so much better there, they thought. They grumbled against Moses, the leader whom God had appointed to bring them out from Egypt. And in fact, at one time, their rebellion was so great that they wanted to stone Moses to death.

Worst of all, the Israelites at one point, they repudiated the covenant that God had made with them entirely. And they did this when they fashioned and worshiped the golden calf whom they worshiped when Moses was on top of the mountain. And so much of the story of Exodus is the story of the faithlessness, the rebellion, the unbelief of the Israelites despite all that God had done for them.

Thankfully, though, the book of Exodus ends on a positive note. It ends on a high note. And that is, after God mercifully restored His covenant with the Israelites, the people finally responded with faith and obedience. As we saw last week, they gave themselves entirely to providing all of the materials that were needed for building the tabernacle. In fact, at some point, Moses had to tell the people, stop, stop giving, you’re giving too much. And not only that, but they devoted themselves to the construction of the tabernacle.

And what makes it even more true that the book of Exodus ends on a high note is that once the tabernacle is completed, God comes down from heaven and he is present among them in this cloud of glory. The glory of God fills the tabernacle, and so God is with his people. And so Exodus ends on a very positive note with this final passage. And as we take one final look at Exodus this morning, we’ll focus on these two things in this passage. The faithfulness of the Israelites, at least in this passage, and also the presence of God among them, and we’ll see how these things apply to us as the people of God today.

So our first lesson that we’ll consider is the faithfulness of the Israelites. Again, as we have gone through our study of the book of Exodus, we’ve seen how over and over again, the people of Israel did not respond in faithfulness to the goodness of God. They were often ungrateful, they grumbled, they complained against God, even though he had blessed them in innumerable ways. And at the heart of their faithlessness, at the heart of their sinful, rebellious response against the Lord was unbelief. The people of Israel did not have a heart that entrusted themselves to the Lord. They did not believe his word. They did not believe his promises.

The unbelief of the Israelites in the wilderness was so great that in the New Testament, it becomes a paradigm, an example that we are to avoid as the people of God today. And so the author of Hebrews, as he is writing with the experience of the Israelites in mind, he tells his readers, and God tells us through Hebrews, in Hebrews 3.12, take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. In other words, don’t be like those Israelites in the wilderness. Don’t be unbelieving, but be believing. Trust in the Lord, trust in His promises.

And the unbelief, the disobedience of the Israelites would continue throughout their time in the wilderness. However, Here, in the final chapter, at the end of the book, we do get a glimpse of what should have been, had the Israelites truly believed the Lord and did as he commanded. Here is a picture of what faithfulness to the Lord looks like.

Now, as you can see, today we skipped over some chapters. We skipped over the rest of chapter 36. We skipped over all of chapters 37 through 39. And the reason why we skipped over those chapters is not because I’m ready to be done with Exodus and to move on, but the reason we skipped over those chapters is because they essentially repeated all of the details about the tabernacle that we have already considered in some detail several months ago earlier in the book of Exodus.

The difference between those earlier chapters that dealt with the tabernacle and the chapters that we skipped over that deal with the tabernacle is this. Those earlier chapters tell us exactly how the tabernacle was to be constructed. We heard the words of the Lord to Moses as he was on top of Mount Sinai. He received the exact instructions on how he was to build the tabernacle. And we considered all those instructions, but the chapters that we skipped over, they tell us how the tabernacle was actually built, and it was exactly according to how the Lord commanded it, according to the pattern that the Lord had shown Moses.

And so, the work of the Israelites in actually constructing the tabernacle, it’s summed up for us. If you look at chapter 39, chapter 39, verses 42 and 43, let me read those verses to you. According to all that the Lord had commanded Moses, so the people of Israel had done all the work. And Moses saw all the work and behold, they had done it. As the Lord had commanded, so had they done it. Then Moses blessed them.

And so they finished the tabernacle, they did it exactly as they were commanded, and the Lord, or Moses, the Lord through Moses, blessed them. And because the people were faithful to provide the necessary materials, and because they constructed the tabernacle and they built all of its individual parts, when we get to chapter 40, The tabernacle is ready to be assembled. All of its various components have been built and constructed, the priest’s garments and all of that. Now it’s ready to be put together.

And that is what chapter 40 is all about, how Moses oversaw the assembling of the tabernacle. And so if you look at chapter 40, verses one and two, we read this, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, on the first day of the first month, you shall erect the tabernacle of the tent of meeting. And notice the date there, on the first day of the first month, that is significant. The first month of the year was the month in which the Lord brought the people of Israel out of Egypt. And so the Lord then, In his sovereign arranging of all things, he orders it that almost exactly one year after the exodus from Egypt, the people of Israel will erect this tabernacle and worship the Lord with it.

And in verses three through 15, God tells Moses exactly how he is to do that, which we heard. And then verses 16 through 33, we read how Moses obediently did all that God commanded in setting up the tabernacle. And even though the passage tells us that Moses did this, Moses did that, Moses completed that, it wasn’t that Moses himself personally was doing all of this. He was overseeing the work, but it’s just a manner of speaking. And so the Israelites under Moses’s direction built and erected and assembled this tabernacle into its final set-up form. And so, one year after the Israelites were rescued from Egypt, the tabernacle is ready. God’s very own tent that He will dwell in is prepared, and He is ready to meet with His people in the wilderness.

So, on the one hand, we would attribute everything that we read in chapter 40 to the grace of God. It was by the sheer grace of God that the Israelites had the heart to faithfully contribute everything to the tabernacle, to build everything for the tabernacle as the Lord commanded it. And so the faithfulness then of the people of Israel is a result of God’s grace. But we do want to notice that they were faithful. The Israelites did what the Lord commanded. In verse 43 of chapter 39, which I read just a minute ago, we read words that we don’t often read in the Old Testament. As the Lord had commanded, so had they done it. We don’t often read that as a characterization of what the people of Israel have done, but here it is. As the Lord had commanded, so the people did it.

And so God was merciful and gracious to his people to bring them to this place. As we saw in earlier weeks, the Lord was gracious. He restored his covenant with them. And because of the grace of God, the Israelites responded, at least here, they responded in faith and obedience, and they did just as the Lord had commanded them.

And here’s the lesson for you and me to take from this. As a Christian, know that this God, this God who was so merciful and so gracious to the Israelites who dealt with them out of his faithfulness, out of his steadfast love for his people, this God who forgave their sin, know that this God is your God. As a believer in Jesus Christ, this God is your Father in heaven who loves you, who is merciful and gracious, and kind towards you. Because just like the Israelites, you and I are often guilty of not doing what the Lord commands. You and I often transgress God’s commandments. We are often ungrateful, we complain, we grumble. We do not do what God has told us to do. And often we act out of a heart of unbelief rather than out of a heart of faith.

But as a believer in Jesus Christ, God gives us, you and me, the assurance that because we belong to Christ, God is at heart towards us, merciful, forgiving, kind, and gracious. He is ready to forgive. God is always ready to forgive His people. And when, by His grace, He repents and seeks His forgiveness, He does forgive you. He forgives you. He is abundantly gracious to you.

Consider the grace that God gave to the people of Israel. They acted in unbelief. They even rejected His covenant. They repudiated their status as the people of God, and yet He restored them to Himself. He was merciful, and He is merciful to you and me as well. And it’s because of His mercy, because of His grace towards us that we, out of gratitude, out of thankfulness, that we can serve Him. We can render to Him true obedience as God enables us by His grace to do so.

And consider how many times and how grievously the Israelites failed and yet God was gracious. And the same is true for you and me. It doesn’t matter how many times you have failed. It doesn’t matter how grievous your sin and your failure has been. When you truly repent and seek the grace of God, He will restore you. He will forgive you. He will fill your heart again with that joy of His salvation, with the peace of knowing Him as your God, the peace of conscience, knowledge that you are forgiven, God will bless you with that as you come to Him in humility and repentance and faith.

So God is gracious, He is merciful, and we see that as we come to the end of Exodus. He shows us His grace as He was gracious to the people of Israel. They responded in faithfulness, but really that was a testimony of God’s grace.

The second way that Exodus ends on a high note is this, God’s presence with his people. Just after Moses finished assembling the tabernacle, just after he offered all of the required sacrifices, this is what we read in verse 34. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

Now, this is the reason why God commanded the Israelites to build this tabernacle in the first place, that he might be present there, that he would dwell among his people. If you remember in the tabernacle, there was the innermost sanctuary, the most holy place. And in that most holy place was the Ark of the Covenant that was overlaid with gold. And on top of the Ark of the Covenant was the mercy seat or the lid that rested on top of the Ark. And on top of the mercy seat were two cherubim that were made entirely of pure gold. And the Lord promised that above the cherubim, above the Ark, in the most holy place, His presence would be there. He would dwell among His people.

And here, the presence of Almighty God was manifested to the people of Israel in the form of a cloud, this glory cloud that filled the tabernacle. We’ve already seen this cloud as we’ve gone through Exodus. It’s the same cloud that led the people of Israel in the wilderness. At night, its appearance was a pillar of fire. And here, too, we are told that the cloud of glory would lead the people in the wilderness. When it was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would follow the Lord in His leading. As long as it remained encamped over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would remain encamped there, whether it was for a day or for a week or for months. The people of Israel would be led only as the Lord would guide them with this glory cloud.

Moses doesn’t give us a detailed description of what this cloud looked like, but it’s safe to say that it radiated the glory of God, that it was God’s own divine splendor and glory and effulgence that radiated or beamed from this glory cloud. And what it signified was not only the divine majesty and the splendor and the glory of God, but it also signified the reality that this God was with his people.

And this is the reality, this is the truth that is at the heart of God’s covenant with his people. At the very heart of God’s covenant with his people is this promise. I will be your God, and you shall be my people. I will be your God, and you will be my people. And what that promise implies is a genuine communion and fellowship between God and His people.

So God’s covenant promise is really the promise of restoring that original communion, that original fellowship that we had as human beings with God before Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden. And so now here with the sacred tabernacle, the Lord has restored that communion between himself and man. Think about the people of Israel, where they are at this point. They’re living in a desert. Who wants to live in a desert? We might even say that this was a God-forsaken place that the Lord had led them into. But as long as God was with them, it was not God-forsaken. As long as the Lord was with his people, the desert became a new Eden, a new garden, the place where the Creator and His image bearers whom He created to have fellowship with Him, where they could enjoy that communion with one another.

This is why it’s so significant that the Lord, He made His presence known among His people by commanding them to build Him a tabernacle, a tent. It was to demonstrate the reality that the Lord fully identified with his people, Israel, just as they were living in tents in the wilderness. So the Lord had his own tent. He had his own tent among all of the other tents of the Israelites in the camp of the people of Israel. And so he would be with them. He would be one of them as long as he was present there with them. He became a tent dweller just like they were.

As wonderful as that was, we need to observe a couple of things about this presence of God with his people. First of all, he can only be present with them, he can only bless them with his presence as long as there was a mediator between God and the people. We saw this truth earlier as we looked at the priesthood. Although God dwelt in his tabernacle in the midst of his people, the common Israelite could not just walk into the tabernacle and come into the presence of God to pray to him or to worship him. That was forbidden because it was a holy place. But God gave the Israelites a representative, a priest, a priest who would bear the names of the tribes of Israel when he would go into the most holy place to worship the Lord. And so, The people of Israel needed a mediator. And the primary mediator, at least this time in the history of Israel, was Moses himself. It was Moses who spoke the words of God to the Israelites. It was Moses who prayed to the Lord on behalf of the Israelites. But the point is that unlike Adam and Eve, who enjoyed immediate access to God, who enjoyed unmediated fellowship with the Lord, the people of Israel could not come into his presence apart from a mediator.

And the second thing to note here is that Moses, though he was the mediator between God and the Israelites, even he could not enter the tabernacle when the glory cloud filled it. Look at verse 35. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

Now we read this and we say, wait a minute. Wasn’t this the Moses who stood on the holy ground in front of the burning bush as the Lord spoke to him from that bush? Wasn’t this the Moses who went up to Mount Sinai and entered into the cloud and the presence of God to receive from the Lord, from his very mouth, the law of God? Wasn’t this the Moses with whom the Lord used to speak face to face as a man speaks to his friend? Wasn’t this the Moses who would go into the presence of God and when he came out, his face would radiate with the glory of God? But not even Moses was able to enter into this tent, this tabernacle when the glory cloud filled it?

Well, what does that mean? Well, it means that even though God was truly and really present with his people, still there was a distance that even Moses could not bridge. There was still a distance between the Lord and his people that even the great Moses was not able to bring together. And it means that for there to be a complete and perfect and whole restoration of fellowship and communion between an almighty God and a sinful people, there must be a greater mediator than Moses. Because as great as Moses was, he too was a man who came from Adam. He was guilty of sin. He was born a sinner, and therefore he could not enter the tabernacle when it was filled with the glory of God, not even Moses.

But this shows us that it was God’s purpose and God’s plan all along to raise up for his people a greater mediator, one who was not only man, but one who also shared in the infinite holiness of God so that he could bring men into God’s presence, who could do that which Moses could not do, to bring us to God completely, entirely holy. And of course, that greater mediator is the Lord Jesus Christ. And as the incarnate Son of God, as God the Son, God himself who became man, Jesus both shares in the holiness of God and in our humanity. And so he can enter the presence of God where Moses could not because he himself is God. And because he is man, he can bring us into the presence of God in a way that Moses could not. And because he is both God and man, Jesus can bring a holy God and a sinful people together in communion, in blessed and perfect communion in a way that Moses could never do.

I’ve pointed out this before, and I know that many of you already know this, but it bears repeating. In the New Testament passage that we heard from the Gospel of John, in John chapter one, verse 14, when it says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, the Greek word there that is translated dwelt, it’s a word that literally means in Greek to pitch a tent. Or we could say, if we could use it as a verb, to tabernacle. And so we could say, the word became flesh and tabernacled among us.

And John uses that word there to show us that in Jesus Christ, we now enjoy the fullness of that reality that the Israelites could only enjoy in parts. The Lord was with them, and yet there was still a separation. Not even Moses could enter that tent, but now, in Jesus Christ, God has set up the greater tabernacle, the new tabernacle. In the incarnation, in the person of Christ, God has become man. Therefore, by faith in Christ, because he is both God and man, you can come into the very presence of God. You can do what the Israelites could not do in the wilderness. You can come into that most holy place, the inner sanctuary, by faith in Jesus Christ, covered with his righteousness. And in him, you have that direct access to the Lord. You have that communion and fellowship with him, which is eternal life itself.

And Jesus brings us into that blessed communion with God, not only because of who He is as God and man, but because of what He has done when He came into the world. He came to take away our sin, to remove that guilt from us, to take away that sin and impurity that keeps us from the presence of Almighty God. When scripture speaks about the incarnation of Jesus, it not only tells us that the Son of God came into the world as man, But it also says that Jesus came into the world in the likeness of sinful flesh. And so just as the Lord here in Exodus fully identified with His people in that He came and He dwelt among them in a tent, just like the Israelites were living in tents, so the Son of God, when He came into our world, He fully identified with us. He came in the likeness of sinful flesh.

Of course, Jesus was personally without sin. He was holy. He was without any trace of sin. Nevertheless, He came into the world just like one of us. And when he suffered upon the cross, when he bore the judgment of God, the wrath of God against sin, it was as though Jesus was suffering for the sin that was personally his. But it wasn’t his, it was yours, it was mine. But he suffered for it as though it were his. So he is completely satisfied God’s righteous judgment against us for our sin. And so we died that curse of death that we deserve so that we might have the life, the righteousness, the sonship that belongs to Christ. But now he gives to you and me.

And so if your trust is in Jesus Christ, the son of God, then your sins are forgiven, because Jesus bore them for you as he hung upon the cross. And in Jesus Christ as one who belongs to him by faith, you have the unspeakably glorious blessing of being able now to enjoy that true communion, that fellowship, that relationship with the God who created you, the God who knew you from before the foundation of the world, the God who gives you life, the God in whom there is eternal blessedness and joy and that he gives to you through his son. And so again, As we reflect upon Exodus and the people under the old covenant, we see how much better we have it than they did because of Jesus. God dwelt among them, and it would have been a glorious thing to see this glory cloud over the tabernacle, and yet we have it so much better than that because we can come into the presence of God through faith in Jesus Christ. We’re not kept apart from that most holy place, but we can come into God’s very presence and know that he receives us for the sake of Christ, his Son. And so this presence of God with the Israelites is the second way in which the Exodus, or the book of Exodus, ends on a high note. It points us to this glorious reality of God’s presence with us in his Son, Jesus.

And before we leave off with Exodus, so, before we I’ll leave off with this passage. I want to draw one more lesson from it. And that is this, that in Jesus Christ, we have the glory of God in the church. God’s glory was with the Israelites. We have God’s glory in the church in Christ.

Think about the people of Israel. As we think about what we’ve learned from Exodus, If you took away everything that God did for his people, there wouldn’t be much left for the people of Israel to be proud about or to boast about. They certainly weren’t a powerful people. They had no national glory to speak of. They were miserable slaves under Pharaoh. At this point in history, they weren’t a cultural force in the world. About all you can say about the Israelites at this time, apart from God, about the only thing you can say about the Israelites is this. They made some mighty fine bricks. There was no nation that made bricks as well as the Israelites. They can make bricks with straw. They can make bricks without straw. Now, no offense to brickmakers, but that is not a lot to glory in as a nation or as a people.

but the Lord was their glory, and that was everything. They were a weak people, they were an oppressed people, but because they had the cloud of the glory of Almighty God dwelling among them in their midst, there was no nation on earth that had such glory as the people of Israel.

And for the church today, Jesus Christ is our glory. And just like the Israelites then, we too, apart from God and His grace, we have very, very little to be proud about, to boast about, to glory in. In fact, the scriptures make it a point of telling us that in ourselves we have very little to be proud of. What Paul said to the Corinthians has always been true of the body of Christ. He says in 1 Corinthians 1 26 and 27, for consider your calling brothers, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

And so the next time you may be tempted to glory in your accomplishments or in your success or your wisdom or your knowledge. Remember this verse in 1 Corinthians. God chose you for salvation because as a rule he chooses that which is foolish and weak according to the standards of the world. The very fact that you belong to Christ is an indication that most likely you don’t have much glory in terms of what the world considers glorious.

And so as a church, our glory is not in our wealth. Our glory is not in our resources. Our glory is not in how influential we are in society. Our glory is not how powerful we may be in politics. Our glory is not in our human wisdom, but our glory is that in Jesus Christ, God dwells among us, that God is with us, that we are his people. He is our God. That is our glory.

And so our task as the church is not to try to impress the world with our wealth. Our task as the church is not to try to win the world over with our great influence and power or wisdom and intelligence. Let the world glory in all of these things. Our task as the church is to testify to a perishing world of the wonderful good news that with Jesus Christ, there is the forgiveness of sins and eternal life and true communion with God, our creator. So our glory is in Jesus Christ and our message to the world is his gospel of salvation. That is our glory. That is what God wants us as the church to do in this world, to bear witness to the truth that there is redemption, hope and salvation in Jesus Christ. And we are his redeemed people. And that is the glory that God has given to us.

But let’s make this more personal. What are your dreams of glory? Do you desire to be famous? Do you want to be an influencer? Do you want to earn the admiration of others? Do you want to gain a reputation of how competent, how good, how successful you are? Do you want to be known as a super dad or a super mom? Do you want to gain power and influence through wealth, success in your career? What are your dreams of glory? Where is your true glory?

It is the same glory that the Israelites had in the wilderness. The Lord was their glory. He was their life, their security, their hope, their joy. And Jesus Christ has all of these things for you and so much more. And so you don’t need to seek your significance, your worth, your value in the things that make you look better in comparison to others and the things in which you can glory before men. but your significance, your value is this, that you have Jesus Christ, that you have been loved by God, that you have been set apart to belong to him, that he is your Lord, he is your God, and you are his child, that God is your Father in heaven. There is no greater glory than that.

2 Corinthians 10, 17 says this, and we’ll end with this. Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 35, verse 30, to Exodus 36, verse 7. And this is the inerrant and infallible and inspired word of God.

Then Moses said to the people of Israel, “See, the Lord has called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, for work in every skilled craft. And he has inspired him to teach, both him and Oholiab the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. He has filled them with skill to do every sort of work done by an engraver or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, or by a weaver, by any sort of workman or skilled designer.

“Bezalel and Oholiab and every craftsman in whom the Lord has put skill and intelligence to know how to do any work in the construction of the sanctuary shall work in accordance with all that the Lord has commanded.”

And Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every craftsman in whose mind the Lord had put skill, everyone whose heart stirred him up to come to do the work. And they received from Moses all the contribution that the people of Israel had brought for doing the work on the sanctuary. They still kept bringing him freewill offerings every morning, so that all the craftsmen who were doing every sort of task on the sanctuary came each from the task that he was doing, and said to Moses, “The people bring much more than enough for doing the work that the Lord commanded us to do.”

So Moses gave command, and the word was proclaimed throughout the camp, “Let no man or woman do anything more for the contribution for the sanctuary.”

So the people were restrained from bringing, for the material they had was sufficient to do all the work and more.

Keep your place there in Exodus. That’s our sermon text, and let’s turn to 1 Corinthians 12 for the New Testament reading: 1 Corinthians 12, verses 4 through 11. 1 Corinthians 12:4–11:

“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.”

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

The passage that we looked at last week in Exodus was about, if you remember, the shining face of Moses. And so Moses, after he was in the presence of the Lord, his face would radiate something of the divine glory of God. And although that divine, holy light radiated, it inspired fear in the hearts of the Israelites. Nevertheless, at this point in Exodus, God’s basic disposition towards His people is not one of judgment or condemnation, but God’s basic disposition towards His people here is one of grace.

As we’ve been going through the book of Exodus, we have learned the story of Israel’s disobedience, but of God’s mercy. The people broke the covenant. They broke the covenant that God made with them when they made and worshiped the golden calf. However, out of His amazing grace and mercy, the Lord took them back. He forgave them. He restored them to Himself, and He graciously renewed His covenant with His people.

And part of that renewal of God’s covenant with His people, of bringing them back to Himself, was the renewal of the promise that God had made to His people that He would dwell in their midst. This is really one reason why the Lord brought His people out of Egypt in the first place: that He would be their God and dwell in their midst. And of course, the means by which the Lord would dwell in the midst of His people was the tabernacle that the Lord instructed Moses and the Israelites to make for Him.

And this morning, we are picking up in Exodus at the very beginning of the work of building the tabernacle. We’ve already gone through all of the instructions on how the tabernacle was to be built and all of its various components and the garments of the priests and so on. But now we’re just about to the place where the tabernacle is about to be built.

And just before our passage, Moses called for the people to contribute all of the various materials that would be needed for constructing the tabernacle. And there would be all kinds of stuff that would go into the making of this tent: gold and silver and bronze, and blue and purple and scarlet yarns, fine twined linen, and so on. And the people responded to this call of Moses to give, to contribute to the building of the tabernacle, very, very faithfully.

Verse 29—which is a verse we did not read, but just before our passage in chapter 35—sums up the people’s contribution this way: “All the men and women, the people of Israel, whose heart moved them to bring anything for the work that the Lord had commanded by Moses to be done, brought it as a freewill offering to the Lord.”

And so here is a time in which the Israelites responded to God’s command with great faithfulness, with great obedience. And it’s very refreshing for us to read this in Exodus, because most of what we have seen from the people of Israel in the book of Exodus has not been a model of faithfulness or obedience.

Just to name a few examples: you remember how the Israelites grumbled and complained in the wilderness because of a lack of food and water? Despite the fact that the Lord provided for them miraculously, nevertheless, they grumbled, they complained, they moaned. They were guilty of unbelief. They did not trust the promise of God that He would deliver them from the Egyptians when they were on the brink of the Red Sea. But of course, He brought them through. He fulfilled His promises to them.

Worst of all, the Israelites—when Moses was up on the mountain receiving from God the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, that covenant that God made with His people—the people were down below at the foot of the mountain, reveling in their idolatry, worshiping a golden calf, engaged in all kinds of debauchery.

And so the Israelites haven’t given us much of a positive example for us to follow as we’ve been going through the book of Exodus. Mostly, they’ve given us a bad example. And often the lesson that we’ve learned as we look at the Israelites in Exodus is: don’t be like these Israelites. Don’t be unbelieving, don’t be idolatrous, don’t be unfaithful, like the Israelites were in the wilderness.

But in our passage this morning, the Israelites do give us a good example to follow. To the command of the Lord given through Moses, the people give themselves, they devote themselves with tremendous zeal, with a willing heart, both to give for the building of the tabernacle and also to contribute to the work, to do the work of building the tabernacle.

And so for us as Christians today, this is an example for us of how we are to serve, how we are to give for the building up of the body of Christ. We have to remember that though God has delivered us from sin and death, He has saved us in order that we might have that glorious hope of being brought into heaven one day, that is not the only reason that God has saved us. But part of the reason that the Lord has saved us is so that we would be His servants, that we would devote ourselves to the great work that He has called us to. And we could sum up that work in this world in terms of building the church, of advancing the kingdom of God.

And in this passage, there are two ways that the Israelites give us a positive example worthy of imitation: First of all, God’s people used the gifts and abilities that God had given them to build the tabernacle. That’ll be our first point. Secondly, God’s people gave generously of their resources to provide for the building of the tabernacle.

So they served and they gave. And we’ll consider both of those things this morning.

But first, before we do, I want to be sure about one thing that we are all very clear on, and that is: it is Jesus Christ who builds His church. So this message is about how we are to serve and to give to build the church. But let’s remember, let’s set this as a foundation at the beginning: it is Christ, it is the divine Lord Jesus who builds His church. And so no matter what we say about our service in the kingdom of God, no matter how important that is, nevertheless, it is Jesus at the end of the day who builds His church.

Matthew 16:18 says—and I tell you, these are the words of Jesus—”I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Jesus says, “I will build my church.” And Jesus speaks as the one who is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth. He is the incarnate Son of God. He is God in the flesh. And He reigns over heaven and earth as the one who has absolute divine authority over all things. He reigns over all things, and He rules in order to call His people to Himself, to redeem His people from sin and death, to bring them to Himself, and to establish His reign over His people on earth. Jesus rules in order to establish His church, His kingdom, and He is building His church day by day in this world.

However, having said that, at the same time, we also must say that the sovereign Lord Jesus Christ works through the instrumentality, He works through the means, of people. Jesus uses people in order to accomplish His divine work.

Let me read to you a quote from a book that is on prayer, but is very applicable to what we are considering here this morning. This is from Power Through Prayer by E.M. Bounds. He says, “We are ever working to provide and stimulate growth and efficiency for the gospel. This trend of the day has a tendency to lose sight of the man, or else he is lost in the workings of the plan or organization. God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God’s method.”

And when it comes to Christ building His church, it is His sovereign work, but men are His method. And what we mean by men here is people: God’s redeemed people—men, women, children, all those who know the Lord Jesus Christ and serve Him. People are God’s method.

And this has always been God’s way. God has always used people as His instruments through which He accomplishes His purposes. We see that here in the book of Exodus with the building of the tabernacle. God did not have to give the building of the tabernacle to the Israelites. God could have commanded the angels in heaven to build a perfect tabernacle. God Himself could have created, by His mere word, a tabernacle and dropped it from the sky, from heaven, onto the ground in the midst of the Israelites. He could have done that, but that’s not the way God worked.

Rather, it was God’s will, according to His perfect wisdom, that His tabernacle would be built by His people. It would be built by His people as He filled them with His Spirit, as He equipped them and gifted them with the skills necessary to build it, and as He provided materials for it, also through His people.

And in the very same way, this is how Christ builds His church. It is through His servants. It is through His people, whom He fills with the Holy Spirit, whom He gives a heart and a willingness to serve and to give.

And so, from a human perspective, we can look at the church and we can see it in terms of how God’s people are serving and giving, using their gifts and worshiping God and so on. But in the end, all the credit, all the praise, all the glory for the establishment of God’s kingdom, for the advance of Christ’s church, goes to God Himself, to Jesus Christ Himself. It is He alone who does the divine work of building His church.

The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:10, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” And so Paul says no one has served the Lord—and he’s not boasting, he’s telling the truth—no one has served the Lord like me, but it was not I, but the grace of God at work in me.

And that’s the same for every believer in Jesus Christ. Whatever gifts God gives us, however we use them, in whatever way we serve, we can only say: it is not I, it is not from me, but it is the grace of God within me who wills and to work, who causes me to work, who works through me to accomplish His purposes.

And so, it is Christ who builds His church through His people.

And with that in mind, the first way that the Israelites leave us a positive example in this passage is they show us that God’s people used the gifts and abilities that God had given them to build the tabernacle.

So in verses 30 through 35 in chapter 35, Moses tells the people of Israel that the Lord has called and appointed two men to lead in the building of the tabernacle: two men who were filled with the Holy Spirit, two men who were equipped by God for this work. And these two men were Bezalel and Oholiab. And in addition to that, we read how the Lord gifted and equipped different kinds of craftsmen to do all the work in building the tabernacle.

Think of all of the work that had to be done to construct this tabernacle. There was work with precious metals, there was work with jewels, there was stonework, woodwork, weaving and embroidery, and so on. And so God gave gifts to His people He filled with His Spirit, at least two of them, in order to accomplish all of this work.

And one reason why the Lord gave His Spirit particularly to Bezalel and Oholiab, and also why He filled the other craftsmen with skill to build the tabernacle, was because the tabernacle, because it was going to be the dwelling place of God on earth, it had to be a place that showed forth the beauty of the Lord. And so, on the one hand, it was built by the Israelites, it was built by humans, but on the other hand, it was built by them as they were filled with God’s Spirit, gifted and equipped, in order that it would be a suitable dwelling place for God, that it would show forth the beauty of God. It itself had to be a tabernacle of beauty.

Philip Ryken, writing about this passage, says this: “We serve a beautiful God who made a beautiful world, which he saved through his beautiful Son, so that we could become his beautiful people and live forever in his beautiful presence. God is so beautiful that everything in his tabernacle had to be beautiful, which is why he poured out his Spirit on Bezalel and Oholiab.”

And so this was not just an ordinary tent, but this was to be the dwelling place of the Lord among His people. This was, we could say, the great building project of the people of Israel at this time in the wilderness, this tabernacle of God.

Well, what is the great building project that God has called His people today to be engaged in? What are the people of God building today?

Well, it is the church. According to the New Testament, the church is the greater tabernacle. The church is the greater temple of God. 2 Corinthians 6:16: “For we are the temple of the living God.” 1 Peter 2:5: “You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house.” Ephesians 2:22: “In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

And so one thing that this tabernacle in the Old Testament represents when we come to the New Testament is the church, the people of God. We are the new temple. We are the tabernacle. We are living stones in this new tabernacle. We are what Matthew Henry called “the gospel tabernacle.”

And just like with the tabernacle in the Old Testament, the ultimate builder of this tabernacle, the church, is also God. It is Christ. And just as the Lord used His people back in Exodus to build His tabernacle, so God uses His people today, whom He gifts with various skills, abilities, and talents, to build His church.

Now, the Bible has quite a bit to say, especially the New Testament, about the gifts and the talents that God gives His people to serve Him. A lot of New Testament teaching about spiritual gifts is difficult to understand. If you come to the evening service, we’ve been going through 1 Corinthians looking at spiritual gifts. It’s not all very clear exactly what is being said there. But there are a couple fundamental truths that the Bible gives to us that we should have firmly fixed in our minds when we think about this topic of spiritual gifts or how God equips us or gifts us to serve Him.

And the first truth is this: that God gives every believer gifts and abilities for service. So every believer, every Christian, receives from God some spiritual gifts and abilities or talents to serve Him.

Let’s look again at our passage here in Exodus. In chapter 35, verse 31, Moses says that the Spirit of God filled Bezalel with skill, intelligence, knowledge, and craftsmanship. Then as we go on in chapter 36, verse 1, we read this about Bezalel and Oholiab: “in whom the Lord has put skill and intelligence to know how to do any work in the construction of the sanctuary.” And then chapter 36, verse 2, speaks of “every craftsman in whose mind the Lord has put skill.”

And so the Spirit of God not only filled Bezalel and Oholiab to serve as leaders for building the tabernacle and to teach others, but the Lord gave skills and abilities to all the rest of the craftsmen as well to do all the necessary work in constructing the different parts of the tabernacle. Now, the Lord didn’t give to every single Israelite a skill and ability to be a craftsman to work on the tabernacle, but to all those whom God called to that service, He did equip them for that work. There wasn’t one worker on the tabernacle who wasn’t equipped by God, gifted by God, in order to engage in this work that he or she was doing. Every person who was called to work on the tabernacle received gifts for that purpose.

Now, when we come to the New Testament, because every single believer in the New Covenant, every single Christian, is called in some way to contribute to the work of building up of the body of Christ, for that reason, God gives gifts and abilities to every believer. Every Christian receives some gift, some ability, some talent to be used in building up Christ’s body. As I said, not everything in the New Testament about the topic of spiritual gifts is easy to understand, but this truth is very clear. The New Testament is very clear about this: that God gives every Christian gifts for service.

So let me read again from 1 Corinthians chapter 12. This is our New Testament reading. It says: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

And so what this means is that no matter how or no matter who you are, if you belong to Jesus Christ by faith, by His grace, God has given you some gift or gifts. He’s given you a manifestation of the Spirit with which you are to serve others for the common good. It doesn’t matter how lowly you may think of yourself. It doesn’t matter how humble you may think you are in terms of your abilities and gifts and talents and so on. As a believer in Jesus Christ, you have received some gift, some ability, some way in which you can serve the body of Christ.

Well, how do I know what my gifts are? Well, the best way to discover those gifts is by seeking opportunities, taking advantage of those opportunities that come to you in the providence of God to serve the body of Christ. And as you step forward in faith to serve, you will find that God will lead you, He will direct you to better understand, better discover what gifts He has given you for service. In other words, don’t just sit around trying to figure out what your gifts are and then try to find a way to use them in the church, but open your eyes and see: how can I serve the body of Christ? What opportunities are there for me to serve now? I’ll try serving in this way. I’ll try serving in that way. And as you do, then the Lord will make clearer to you what your gifts are for service.

So God gives every believer gifts and ability for service. That’s the first fundamental teaching from the New Testament that we want to be clear about.

Secondly, you are to use your gifts and abilities for the purpose of building up the church, the body of Christ.

So consider Bezalel. He was filled with the Spirit of God. He must have been an amazing craftsman, an amazing artist with everything that he was gifted to do. However, you’ll notice that he did not use his gifts just to make beautiful pieces of art to please himself, to decorate his home, to show off to his friends, to open an art gallery. Bezalel was specifically filled with the Holy Spirit so that he could use his gifts to serve and bless the entire nation of Israel as he used them to build the tabernacle. And as for the other craftsmen to whom God gave gifts and skills and abilities, they too were called by God not to serve or please themselves with their gifts, but to serve their fellow Israelites.

And what was true for Bezalel, for the other craftsmen then, is true for you and me today. God gives us gifts specifically for the purpose of serving others, of building up the body of Christ.

Again, 1 Corinthians 12:7 says, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” 1 Peter 4:10: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.”

And so, with those verses in mind, that we are all gifted, we are all called to serve the body of Christ, that raises the question for each one of us: well, how can I serve? How can I serve the church? How can I serve the body of Christ with what God has given me?

Well, there are all kinds of ways that you can serve the church, and I won’t go into the many, many different ways that you could serve even locally here in this congregation, but here are just some of the ways that you can serve: You could host a prayer meeting. You could teach a Sunday school class. We are always looking for Sunday school teachers. You could invite a family over for a meal, or you could take a meal to a family who has had a crisis or who is very busy, who has not had time to cook. You could reach out to someone in the church who needs encouragement, who needs a friendly voice, perhaps to pray with them. You could befriend a brother or sister in Christ in the church. You could volunteer looking outside the church; you could volunteer at a local Christian ministry. You could just simply regularly pray for others.

And there are many, many, many other ways that you can engage in this calling to serve the body of Christ, to use what God has given you to bless others, to build up others in the church.

And so God has given you gifts for service, and you are to use those gifts for building up the body of Christ. And the question is, for you, for me: how will you serve? Not should you serve, but how will you serve? How can I contribute to the life of the church? How can I be a blessing to others in the way that I give of my time in serving others? And pray about that, and the Lord will guide you in answering that question.

So the first way that the Israelites left us with an example to follow is that they used the gifts and the abilities that God gave them to do what God called them to do: to build the tabernacle.

The second way that the Israelites left us with a positive example in this passage is that they gave generously of their resources to provide for the building of the tabernacle.

We didn’t read earlier in chapter 35, but if we did, we would have read how Moses put out the call to all the Israelites to contribute materials for building the tabernacle. And it could be perhaps that Moses thought at that time—this is my speculation, this is not from the Word of God directly—but perhaps Moses was thinking at the time, “Well, I know these people, and I’ll probably have to keep reminding them over and over that we need more contributions for the tabernacle. We need more bronze. We need more fabric. We need more tanned goat skins and all that stuff. I guess I’ll have to organize a bake sale at some point, probably organize a car wash. I don’t know how I’m going to get all these people to give what we need for the tabernacle.”

And if Moses had entertained any thoughts like that, then he would have been delighted to have been proven so wrong later. Because the Israelites, as it turns out, they gave and they gave and they gave, and they kept giving, and they kept giving every morning to the point at which the craftsmen finally had to go to Moses and say, in verse 5, “The people bring much more than enough for doing the work that the Lord has commanded us to do.” So Moses had to go to the people and he had to say, “No more contributions for the tabernacle. We’ve got more than we need.”

How many times have you heard a pastor say, “People, please, no more giving to the church. We don’t know what to do with all this money”?

But the really beautiful thing about all of this is not how abundantly that the people gave—which was a marvelous thing that they gave so generously—but the really wonderful thing about all this is how they gave. They gave from the heart. They gave willingly, joyfully, not under compulsion, not reluctantly.

And chapter 35 describes their giving in different ways: In verse 5, it describes how they are to give with a generous heart. Verse 21: “everyone whose heart stirred him and whose spirit moved him brought the Lord’s contribution to be used for the tent of meeting.” Verse 22: “all who were of a willing heart brought brooches and earrings and signet rings and armlets.” Verse 29: they gave as their heart moved them.

And so the people were not just giving abundantly, but they were giving with a joyful heart, a willing heart. They gave generously. We can presume they gave sacrificially.

2 Corinthians 9:7 is practically a description of how the Israelites gave here. That verse says, “For each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” We have here a picture of cheerful givers and the way in which they contributed to the building of the tabernacle.

And as Christians, this is how we are to give our offerings to the Lord and to the church: with a willing heart, gladly, generously. And perhaps the Israelites had a vision in their mind and their heart of what this tabernacle would look like. They wanted to give to the building of this tabernacle. They wanted to see the finished product and all of its beauty, to know that the Lord Himself would dwell there.

And as Christians, that too should be part of our giving. We ought to have a vision of the body of Christ, the redeemed people of God, being built up in love, of God calling His elect to Himself through the church. And this ought to fuel our desire as well to give to the church, to the work of the kingdom.

You know, I believe it’s very significant that in 2 Corinthians, when the Apostle Paul is writing to the Corinthians about giving, you’ll notice when you read those chapters in the middle of that book, you’ll notice that the Apostle Paul never tells the Corinthians, “Give 10%, give a tithe, tithe your income to the church.” He never says that. He could have. After all, the tithe was biblical. This was the percentage that the Lord required of His people to give, the people of Israel, under the Old Covenant.

But Paul lays down a different kind of standard. He lays down a standard that’s not a number, not a percentage—a standard for giving for the people of God, and it is giving with joy, giving with gratitude, giving sacrificially, generously. That is the standard for our giving.

Now, to be sure, giving 10% of your income is a good rule of thumb for most Christians most of the time. However, I believe that if every Christian aimed at this greater standard that we have given to us in the New Testament—that we are to give joyfully, willingly, gladly, sacrificially—I believe that on the whole, the giving would be much more than 10% of our collective income. I think it would go way beyond that. It would certainly go way beyond what is the standard percentage of giving for evangelical Christians, which, from what I understand, conservative evangelical Christians give about 3 or 4% of their income. They’re not even up to half of the tithe.

But be that as it may, this is the way we are to give: from the heart, as the Israelites did here. And we are to serve with our gifts gladly, from the heart, generously, as the Israelites did here.

And so we have here in Exodus a positive example for us in our giving and in our serving.

But now the question is this. The question I want to ask you is this: how do we get there? How do you get to this place? How do you get to the place where you are giving in such a way that can be described as willing and joyful, that you are serving in such a way that is sacrificial and cheerful?

Well, of course, it all comes down to the grace of God. In this passage, it says that the Lord stirred their hearts to serve and to give. And so it’s not as though the Israelites dug deep within themselves and they wheeled up from within their hearts this desire to give. No, the Lord stirred up their hearts. It was God who gave them this desire. So it’s all of the grace of God.

But here’s what you can do: First, don’t look to your heart, but first look to Jesus. Look to Christ, and consider how Christ has served you for your salvation. Because before God called us to Himself, before He brought us to Him and into His kingdom in order to be His servants, God gave us His Son Jesus to be our servant, to serve us.

Jesus says in Mark 10:45, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” When Jesus died the death that He died upon that cursed cross, He died as a ransom to deliver us from the judgment that was ours because of our sin. He gave His life as a ransom for many.

And just one implication of this amazing truth—that the Son of God came into the world to serve us, to serve us sinners by dying for us—one implication of that is this: there is no form of service in the church that is too mundane, too menial, too common, if it is service that builds up the body of Christ. There is no service that is below you and me. There is no way that we can serve the church that is below our dignity. If Christ Himself, the Son of God, could serve us by the suffering that He suffered, the reproach that He endured, the indignities that He was dealt with, then there is no form of service for you as a believer in Jesus Christ that is too lowly for you to engage in.

And Jesus served us with no concern for His personal status or reputation. Jesus did not come into the world in order to make a name for Himself. In fact, you could say that of all the people that really mattered in His Jewish society—the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin, and all of that, the Romans above them—Jesus was either dismissed by them or hated by them. He did not come to establish His own reputation or His name.

You’ll notice here that in our passage in Exodus, that there were many, many craftsmen whom God called to serve to build the tabernacle. However, only two of them are named: there is Bezalel and Oholiab. These were extraordinarily gifted men. They were those who were especially filled with the Holy Spirit. And God does raise up such extraordinarily gifted people in the history of the church. From time to time, He raises up a Martin Luther, a John Calvin, a Charles Spurgeon, and so on. But these are extraordinary Christians. Most of us do not fall into that category.

Most of us are called to serve the church in a way which is unknown, unheralded, unremarkable. We are called to serve the body of Christ with no special recognition, no fame, without the praise and the adulation of others.

But think about the building of the tabernacle. I mean, who were the men who cut the timber for the frame? Well, we don’t know their names. They’re not recorded for us in scripture. Who were the people who hauled those frames to the construction site? Who were the women who worked with the blue and the purple and the scarlet yarns? We don’t know. There were countless, nameless men and women who were engaged in the work of this tabernacle. It wasn’t just the two men who built it themselves.

And in the same way, most of us serve the church in ordinary ways. Our names will not be written in the Bible. Our names and our service will not be recorded for posterity. And yet this is how we are called to serve. You serve in the mundane tasks. Perhaps it’s the mundane task of preparing a budget for the church, or concerned with something to do with the building that we rent. Or perhaps you serve in the unextraordinary work of picking up the phone and making a call to a brother or sister who needs encouragement. Maybe you serve in the humble way of washing dishes after a fellowship meal.

But this is the way that Christ calls you and me to serve. And we should be willing to do it without recognition, without thanksgiving, just knowing that we are serving Christ. We should be willing to serve the church even anonymously. If no one knew how you served, would you still be willing to serve the church?

And so we need to consider how Christ served us for our salvation.

Secondly, we need to consider, as we look to Jesus, how He gave everything for our salvation. The scriptures tell us that Jesus impoverished Himself for our sakes, that we might be made rich.

2 Corinthians 8:9: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”

What an amazing truth that this verse tells us: that the Son of God, that God the Son, God Himself, the one who is infinite in glory and splendor and majesty, set aside that outward glory, that He became one of us. He was incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He became just an ordinary-looking baby boy. He gave up the joys and the bliss of His fellowship with His Father in heaven. He even came into the world in the likeness of a sinner. He came in the likeness of sinful flesh. He experienced all the limitations of our creaturely life. Even more than most of us experience, He was born in a low condition. And of course, He suffered. He was mocked. He was mistreated. He was disgraced. He gave up everything that pertains to His rightful glory as the Son of God. He was still God; nevertheless, He set aside His divine majesty, glory, and He came in the form of a humble servant. He became poor so that you and I might become rich.

And He also gave up His very life. He did not only die the physical death—He died on the cross, as horrific as that was—but even more horrific was the agony that Jesus endured as He bore the wrath of God poured out upon Him for the sins of the world, for your sin, for my sin. He suffered the agony of having His heavenly Father turn His face away from Him as He hung upon the cross.

This is how Jesus gave Himself for you. He gave up everything for you, for your salvation.

And so remember the grace that God has given you in His Son, Jesus Christ. This is why we serve. One author said grace is the best motivation for giving. How true that is. Guilt is a motivation for giving. Guilt is a motivation for serving. I can make you all feel guilty and perhaps you will give more and serve more, but that’s not the right motivation. That’s not the best motivation. It’s grace: what God has done for you, what you have received freely from the Lord. This is where we want our hearts to be.

And so as you look to Jesus Christ, remember how He served you. He laid down His life that you might be redeemed. Remember how He gave up everything for you: He gave up His privileges as the Son of God, He gave up the joy of heaven and glory. And then when you remember your Savior, what He’s done for you, then you will have the heart, you will have the desire to serve, to give with willingness, with joy, just as the Israelites did here in building the tabernacle.

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 34, verses 29 through 35. And this is God’s infallible and inspired and inerrant word. So let’s hear the word of God.

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses and behold, the skin of his face shone and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him and Moses talked with them. Afterward, all the people of Israel came near and he commanded them, he commanded them all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai. And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. Whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the people of Israel what was commanded, the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face was shining. And Moses would put the veil over his face again until he went in to speak with him.

Our New Testament reading is 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 3, verses 7-18. 2 Corinthians 3, verses 7 through 18.

Now, if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed its glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory. Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened, for to this day, when they read the old covenant, the same veil remains unlifted because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Our sermon text is Exodus chapter 34, but you might want to keep your finger there in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, because we’ll be looking at that passage as well this morning.

This morning we’ve come, in our study of Exodus, we’ve come to one of the more curious passages in Exodus, and that is the account of the shining face of Moses. And we cannot read this passage and not be filled with many questions about what is happening here. Why did the face of Moses shine the way that it did? Why did Moses put a veil over his face when it shined? And what does all of this mean? What did it mean for the people of Israel then? What does it mean for us as Christians today?

Thankfully, as we look at this passage and as we seek to answer those questions, and we’ll be asking those questions today, thankfully we have in the New Testament an inspired commentary or interpretation to guide us along the way. And that is what the Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3. And so we’ll be looking at both of these passages this morning as we ask these questions of our text.

The first question we’ll ask is this: Why did the face of Moses shine?

But before we answer that question, let’s ask this question: Did the face of Moses, in fact, shine at all?

I don’t know if you happened to bring your Latin version of the Bible this morning, but if you did, you will have noticed that it doesn’t talk about the face of Moses shining, but rather it talks about the horns coming out of the face with the head of Moses. And the reason for that is because in the original Hebrew, the word that’s translated to shine is a word that is very closely related to the Hebrew word for horns. And so the Latin Bible, which was the Bible of Europe for many, many years, it translates it that way as Moses having horns, not his face shining.

However, the word should be translated to shine. That’s the way that the New Testament translates it, and so that kind of puts an end to all the debate there. There’s no doubt that the face of Moses was shining. It wasn’t sprouting horns.

But I mention this because you may come across sometime, if you visit a museum or have an art book, you may come across an old painting or a sculpture of Moses, and there are horns coming out of his head. It’s not because the artist thinks that he’s the devil, but it’s because of that mistranslation in the Latin Bible of this passage that the mistranslation says that there are horns coming out of his head. So the face of Moses was definitely shining.

But why was that? Why did the face of Moses shine?

Well, it’s because he was in the presence of God. Verse 29 says, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. Moses had talked with God before this time and his face didn’t shine, but probably because not long before this, Moses asked to see the glory of God. He got a glimpse of the back of God. He saw a glimpse of God’s glory, but that was sufficient to cause the glory of God to remain on Moses and to shine.

And so the face of Moses would shine because he was with God. It’s like the full moon. When the full moon is in the sky, although the moon doesn’t give off any light on its own, yet it is very bright. And it’s very bright and shiny because it reflects the light of the sun. And in the same way, the face of Moses was reflecting God’s glory. And even for a time after he left the presence of God, his face continued to radiate this holy light. The Israelites would see it.

And so, the shining face of Moses signified for the Israelites that blinding brilliance, that effulgence of the splendor, the glory of God. And although it was just a reflection, nevertheless, because it was God’s glory, because it was the glory of the Holy One of Israel that would shine from the face of Moses, it was a terrifying sight for the Israelites to behold.

In verse 30, we read this: Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. And so even to see a reflection of God’s brilliance, His glory, His holiness radiating from the face of Moses, just to see a reflection of that was enough to fill the hearts of the Israelites with dread. And we would respond in the same way as well if we caught a glimpse even of a reflection of the infinite holiness of God expressed in this divine light, it would fill our hearts with fear as well. And so that’s why the face of Moses would shine, because he would be in the presence of the Lord.

A much more difficult question is this: What did this shining face of Moses mean?

At one level, we can answer the question as we look at this passage in the context of the larger story that we have been looking at here in Exodus. One reason for the shining face of Moses is that the Lord caused his glory to radiate from Moses’ face in order to show the Israelites that Moses was truly God’s prophet, and therefore, he was their leader. And that therefore, as God’s man, as God’s prophet, the people of Israel were to listen to Moses. They were to do what he told them to do. He had authority over them. It was a divine authority from God.

Remember, all this took place, everything that we read here in Exodus chapter 34, all this takes place after the Israelites, right after the Israelites committed this great evil of worshiping the golden calf, which we looked at several weeks ago. They made and they worshiped this golden calf, and as part of their rebellion against God, they doubted, they questioned, they even rejected the leadership of Moses. Back in chapter 32, verse one, the people of Israel said, as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.

Well, at that time when the Israelites were saying these words, Moses was at the top of Mount Sinai. He was receiving from the Lord the very law that the Israelites would soon be breaking down below in their making this golden calf. But in this way, the people rejected the authority and rule of Moses. They said, we do not want this man to rule over us. And in Moses’s place, they made Aaron, his brother, their leader. And of course, Aaron led the Israelites in the worst possible kind of way. He led them into idolatry.

And so, the people rejected the leadership of Moses. And, of course, this was nothing new. At one point in the wilderness journey, the people were so disgruntled about their circumstances, they were so mad at their leader, Moses, that they were ready to stone him. And so, it’s not surprising to read here that they were ready to replace Moses with a new leader. In fact, they were ready to replace the Lord with an idol.

But Moses was their legitimate leader. He is the one whom God called to lead the people out of Israel. He is the one whom God appointed to bring them into the promised land. And in order to make that clear to the Israelites that Moses had authority from God, God caused his glory to emanate from the face of Moses.

And you’ll notice in our passage that the fact that the face of Moses shone, this definitely got the attention of the people of Israel. When Moses called them to come to him, they actually listened to him. While he spoke with them, they listened to all the words that he gave them from the Lord. And so the shining face of Moses reinforced the true authority that he had had from God to be the leader of the people of Israel. So that’s one reason why his face shone.

But there is an even more profound significance to the shining face of Moses, and this is the meaning that the Scripture itself gives us in the third chapter of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. In that chapter, in chapter 3 of 2 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul, he is comparing two covenants. He is comparing, on the one hand, the Old Covenant. That is the covenant that God made with the people of Israel through Moses, their mediator at Mount Sinai. And this is the covenant that we have been looking at as we have been going through the book of Exodus. The old covenant, the covenant with Moses, with the people of Israel.

The second covenant that the Apostle Paul compares to the old covenant in 2 Corinthians 3 is the new covenant. This is the covenant that God has made with us in Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus on the night in which he instituted the Lord’s Supper, he said, this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

And the overall point that Paul makes in 2 Corinthians 3 as he compares this old covenant to this new covenant is that the new covenant in Christ is far superior, it is far greater than the old covenant. And we’ll consider the reasons why in a minute for that.

But for now, notice that Paul, he understands, and of course, this is the inspired apostle, this is God’s interpretation of His own word, but the apostle Paul understands the shining face of Moses to stand for the glory of the Old Covenant. So look what he says in verse 7 of Exodus 34—he says, or I’m sorry, verse 7 of 2 Corinthians chapter 3, the Apostle Paul says this: Now if the ministry of death, that’s how Paul refers to this old covenant under Moses, the ministry of death. Now if the ministry of death carved in letters on stone, that is the Ten Commandments, the Ten Commandments written with the finger of God, carved on those two tablets that Moses carried down from the mountain, the ministry of death carved in letters on stone came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, in verse eight, will not the ministry of the spirit have even more glory?

And so the glory that shone out from the face of Moses, that radiance of God’s glory that was so intense, so terrifying to the Israelites, that was the glory of the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant that God made with the Israelites through the mediation of Moses.

However, no matter how much glory that Old Covenant possessed, no matter how much the face of Moses would shine with the glory of that covenant, it was a fading glory. It was not permanent. It was not meant to shine forever. As Paul puts it three times in 2 Corinthians 3, it was a glory that was being brought to an end. It was a diminishing glory, a temporary glory because of the far greater covenant that God was preparing to establish with His people through His Son, Jesus Christ.

And in this new covenant in Christ, there would be such glory that all of the glory of the old covenant would be as though it was no glory at all. And so Paul says in verses 10 and 11, he says, indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.

And so Paul is comparing one kind of glory with another, the old covenant glory with the new covenant glory. And he says that the old covenant glory has been completely surpassed. It’s been eclipsed. It is no glory at all because of the greatness of this new covenant, what God has done for his people in his son, Jesus Christ.

I assume that most of you, perhaps, or many of you at least, have visited the Grand Canyon at some point. I never got to see the Grand Canyon in person until I was in my 30s. Of course, I knew what it looked like because I’d seen the Grand Canyon in pictures and movies and so on. And so I knew that it was a beautiful sight to behold. It was an amazing part of God’s creation.

But there was nothing like the first time walking up to the edge of the canyon and going out on the visitor’s platform and seeing that amazing sight for the first time with my own two eyes, to see it in person and all of its splendor and majesty. And so you really haven’t experienced the magnificence, the beauty of the Grand Canyon until you’ve seen the real thing with your own two eyes. And when you do see it in person, then you realize that there is no picture in the world of something like that, no matter how well taken it is, no matter how beautiful it is, there is no picture that can do justice to the beauty and the grandeur of something like the Grand Canyon. You have to really see it in person.

And in the same way, as glorious as this covenant was that the Lord made with Moses, and it was glorious, His face shone. Nevertheless, it was just a picture. It was only a type of the reality to which it pointed. That is, the coming of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who would bring to fruition that salvation that that old covenant pointed towards.

So the new covenant is exceedingly glorious. It far surpasses the glory of the old covenants. It’s like the light of a candle that is swallowed up by the light of the sun. And so the new covenant glory swallows up the glory of the old covenant.

Another way to look at it would be this. The face of Moses shone with God’s glory because it was a reflection of the glory of God. But when the son of God came into the world, when God himself in the person of his son, Jesus Christ, came into our world in the incarnation, there was a divine radiance, a glory that shone from his face to be seen only by faith to be sure, and yet the glory of God shone from the face of Jesus. And it was a divine glory that was infinitely more intense than that of Moses, because Jesus himself as God was the source of that divine glory.

Hebrews 1:3 says, He is the radiance of the glory of God. It doesn’t say He is a reflection of God’s glory, or He merely shows us God’s glory, but Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory. He Himself is the source of His own divine glory that shines in His face.

And it’s because Paul is speaking about the Old Covenant here in relation to the New Covenant and how the New Covenant far surpasses it in glory, it’s for that reason that Paul uses some very strong language to refer to this Old Covenant that was made with Moses and the people of Israel. In verse 7, he calls that Old Covenant the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone. In verse 9, he calls that Old Covenant with Moses the ministry of condemnation.

And what Paul has in mind here is the fact that the Old Covenant under Moses, in that covenant, what was front and center, the centerpiece of that covenant was the law of God. It was the Ten Commandments, God’s moral law, written on these stone tablets for the people of Israel. Now, to be sure, there was grace and salvation under the Old Covenant. Those Israelites who put their trust in the Lord, they were truly saved by the grace of God. They were saved by the redemption that would come with the coming of Christ.

Nevertheless, in that old covenant, it was the law that was set forward. It was the law that was central. And because the law of God cannot give us eternal life, because the law of God can only condemn us for our sin, because the law of God only leads to death for us as sinners, therefore, Paul calls it, a ministry of death, a ministry of condemnation.

And for that reason, the new covenant is far superior to the old, because in the new covenant, it’s not the law that is front and central. It is not the law that is the centerpiece, but it is Christ and the grace of God in his son, Jesus Christ. It is the grace that is gloriously, wondrously revealed in his son, who laid down his life for sinners, that we might be saved. And so the glory of the new covenants far exceeds that of the old.

In 2 Corinthians 4, verse 4, Paul speaks of the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. The light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. And so we could put it this way. The glory of the new covenant is the gospel. The glory of the new covenant is the good news that Jesus Christ, the son of God, that he became man, he lived and died for sinners such as you and me, and that whoever comes to him and puts their trust in him will receive the gift of eternal life.

And it’s for this reason, in 2 Corinthians 3, that Paul calls the new covenant ministry of the gospel the ministry not of death, not of condemnation, but the ministry of righteousness. It is the ministry of righteousness because it is through Jesus Christ, by faith in Him, that we receive the righteousness of God by which we are saved. And so, Christ, in his gospel, is the glory of the new covenant, and the glory is far greater than that of the old covenant. As greater as seeing the Grand Canyon with your own two eyes is far greater than seeing a picture of the Grand Canyon.

And so the shining face of Moses signified the glory of that old covenant, but it was a fading glory. It would be overtaken by the new, the glory of the new covenant. And that brings us close to the answer for our next question.

And the next question we’ll ask this morning is this: Why did Moses put on the veil to keep the Israelites from seeing his shining face?

If you were Moses, if I were Moses, we would always want the Israelites to see the shining face of God. We would want there to be no question that I have been with God. I am God’s man. You must listen to me. See the face. See my face. See God’s glory shining out from my face.

But that’s not what Moses did. In verse 33 it says, And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. He covered his face. And that raises the question, why did Moses cover his face? Why did he not want the Israelites to behold God’s glory as shone out from his face?

Again, thankfully, we have for this passage God’s own interpretation given to us in the New Testament. And this is what the apostle tells us in 2 Corinthians 3, verses 12 and 13. He says, since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end.

So what this means is that Moses deliberately concealed something of the nature of the old covenant from the Israelites. He concealed something of the glory of that covenant that they might not see it. And the truth about that covenant that Moses concealed with the veil over his face was this, that the glory of that covenant was coming to an end. It was a fading glory, it was a diminishing glory. Or to put it in other words, that old covenant itself was only temporary. Just as the radiance of God’s glory shining from the face of Moses would fade, so that old covenant would be eclipsed by the far greater covenant that is to come.

So when Moses put the veil over his face, he kept the Israelites from seeing the truth that that covenant that God made with them on Mount Sinai, although it had all the appearance of permanency, law of God written on tablets of stone and God speaking from the top of Mount Sinai and so on, nevertheless, that covenant one day would come to an end. Now the Bible doesn’t tell us exactly why, but we do know that it was God’s will at that time to keep hidden from His people, from the Israelites, or at least to keep partially hidden from His people the truth that one day that old covenant would come to an end. That it was only temporary, it was only for a time.

In Ephesians chapter 3, the Apostle Paul speaks of God’s plan to bring salvation to the world through his son Jesus Christ. He speaks of this plan of salvation in Ephesians 3:9 as a mystery, a mystery hidden for ages in God. And so we see here part of the hiddenness of that mystery. God’s purpose was to keep the mystery hidden behind the veil of Moses.

But the apostle Paul compares that ministry of Moses where he put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at the outcome of what was coming to an end, Paul compares his own ministry to that of Moses. The fading glory of a temporary covenant under Moses, he compares that with his own ministry. And with his own ministry, Paul was bold. He openly proclaimed the Lord Jesus Christ and the glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ. There was no veil. There was nothing to hide.

But the plan of God has come to fruition with the coming of His Son. And so it was Paul’s ministry to proclaim openly and boldly the good news of what God has done in the Son, Jesus Christ.

Now, what are we to make of all of this? Well, one implication or lesson that we should take from this is that as Christians, we should never look back on the experience of the Israelites under the Old Covenant and wish that we had been there in their place, or think that they had it better than us for some reason. And we may be tempted to think that, because consider what the Israelites saw and experienced in their deliverance from Egypt.

I mean, they saw the Lord do wonders and signs in their midst. They saw the Egyptians suffer from these 10 plagues. They saw how the Lord humbled Pharaoh. They saw how God brought them to the edge of the Red Sea and then parted the waters for them to walk through. Then they saw the waters come cascading over the Egyptians and all of them perished. They saw the Lord reveal to them in the glory cloud, a pillar of fire by night, a pillar of cloud by day. They heard the voice of God thundering from Mount Sinai. They saw the shining face of Moses. They saw the bread, the manna miraculously given to them morning by morning.

And we read all of that and we say, wow, that would be great. Wouldn’t it be great to experience all that, to see the power of God, the majesty of God revealed in that way. But the whole point of what Paul is saying in 2 Corinthians is the opposite of all that. What Paul is saying is, no, we have it so much better than they did.

And why is that? Because that glory, the covenant that they were under was a fading glory. And the glory of the covenant that has come to us, that God has made with us in his son, Jesus Christ, is a permanent glory. It is a glory that never fades. They only lived in the time of shadows and types. We live in the time of the fulfillment of all that God promised, the coming of his son, Jesus Christ, the sending of Christ into the world for our salvation.

And that brings us to the last question that we’ll consider today. What does all this mean for us today?

Well, first of all, it means that we must look to Christ for salvation. Again, when we read about this veil that Moses put on his face, to conceal from the Israelites the truth that this old covenant glory was fading or coming to an end, that was the purpose of the veil. However, when you read 2 Corinthians 3, Paul, he adds another significance to the veil. There’s another thing that that veil symbolizes, and that is it symbolized the unbelief of the Israelites at that time.

And so in 2 Corinthians 3, in verse 13, Paul says this: he says that Moses would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But then he says in verse 14, but their minds were hardened. There was a veil over their hearts.

And the response of the Israelites, according to Paul, according to the scripture, the response of the Israelites, even to the partial revelation of God’s truth under the old covenant in the days of Moses, by and large, it was one of unbelief. Their hearts were hardened. And the unbelief of the Israelites then was a failure to see that they were not to put their trust in the ceremonies and the sacrifices and the laws that God had given to them, but they were to put their trust in the Christ who was to come and the promised Messiah, the one who would bring them salvation, the one to whom all of their ceremonies and sacrifices and laws pointed.

And Paul goes on to say that that same hardness of heart that was true of the Israelites at Mount Sinai, that unbelief that was true of the Jews in his own day, Paul says in 2 Corinthians verses 14 and 15, for to this day, he’s speaking of his fellow Jews who are unbelievers, for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts.

If you were here last Sunday evening, you were treated to the piano concert by our friend Mr. Sam Rotman. And also, Mr. Rotman shared with us his testimony of how he came to faith in Jesus Christ. And he told us how he grew up in a very, very religious Jewish home. And he was a very religious and pious Jew, at least externally. And he told us how he was absolutely blind to the truth about Jesus Christ. He refused to consider the Christian claim that Jesus was the Messiah that he and his fellow Jews were looking for.

And for many Jews today, that is still sadly true. That same veil that the Apostle Paul speaks of lies over their hearts. They do not see the truth that Jesus is the Messiah whom they profess to look for and to long for.

But what’s true of the Jews then and today who do not accept the Lord Jesus Christ is true for all unbelievers at all times. By nature, we are all spiritually blind. Jew or Gentile, we all have a veil lying over our hearts. By nature, we cannot, we will not see the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus.

How can we come to see the truth about Christ? Well, the veil must be lifted. And it can be lifted only by the grace of God. Only when God lifts that veil and opens a heart and shines light upon the heart can a person see the truth of Jesus Christ, that He is the image of God, that He is the Son of God, that He is the Savior to all who come to Him in faith.

And if today you see by faith the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, if you behold by faith Christ, and you know, you believe, you are convicted of the truth that He is the Son of God, that He came into the world to die for your sins, that He was raised from the dead, if that is your faith, if that is your hope, you have been given a wonderful gift. God has lifted the veil over your hearts and enabled you to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And if you see Christ, if you trust in Him, you have been saved. Your sins are forgiven. You’re holy and righteous in the sight of God. You are an adopted child of God.

But if today you are hearing my words and you have not come to faith in Jesus Christ, then hear the promise that God makes to you, that if you turn to the Lord, that is, if you repent of your sin, if you embrace Jesus Christ as your Savior, if you come to Him as the only one who can save you from your sin and rescue you from the judgment, the wrath that is to come, if you come to Him as your Savior, then you will be saved.

The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3, verse 16, when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. And this shows us what is at the heart of the gospel as far as our salvation is concerned. The gospel is not about God telling us, here are the good works that you must do, here is the kind of person you must be, here is all the religious things that I require of you if you are to be saved. But the gospel says this: look, behold my son. Look at the one whom I have given to you, whom I have sent into the world for salvation. Look and see what He has done for you. Look at the works that He has done for you. Look at the sacrifice that He has made in your place. And by looking to Him in faith, then you will be saved.

And so believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe that He died for your sins, that He was raised from the grave. Believe that He is the Lord, and you will be saved. The veil will come off and you will see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

And just as you are saved from sin by looking to Jesus, so it is by looking to Jesus as you gaze upon him, as you look to him as your Lord and Savior, that God by his spirit does his good work in you and transforming you and making you more and more like Jesus in holiness and righteousness.

Again, the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:18, he says, And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

And so what this means is that you begin your Christian life by looking to Jesus. That’s where salvation is found, by looking to Christ. But you continue in your Christian life by looking to Jesus. You are sanctified by looking to Christ. And we could even say you die as a Christian, you die a Christian death, we might put it, as you look to Jesus.

And so for us, the shining face of Moses is telling us this: Don’t look to the law of God. Don’t look to your own good works. Don’t look to your own morality. Don’t look to what a decent and good and upright person you have been, how you are better than other people. Don’t look to that. But look to Christ and His perfect obedience and His suffering for you. Look to Jesus for salvation.

There and only there will you see the fullness of God’s glory. And to behold His glory is to find life. It is to be transformed as well, little by little, into his image.

And so keep your eyes fixed on your Savior, Jesus. And like the face of Moses, as you look to Christ day by day, your life also will radiate something. It will radiate something of the glory of God to those around you.

Let’s pray.

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I will ask you to open your Bible with me to Habakkuk chapter 1, 1 to 14. This is our Old Testament reading and it’s also our sermon text for this morning. Let us pray and seek God’s blessing of his word.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, You spoke long ago to our fathers by the prophets. In these last days, you have spoken to us by your son. We thank you that you have not led us in darkness, but have given us your word, a lamp to our feet and a light to our paths. As we come to the oracle that your servant Habakkuk saw, we confess that by ourselves we cannot rightly understand it. Our minds are dull, our hearts are easily distracted. So we pray with the psalmist, open my eyes that I may behold the wondrous things out of your law. Send your Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds and soften our hearts. Like Habakkuk, we live among violence, strife, and injustice, and we too are tempted to ask, how long, O Lord? Teach us through this passage to bring our burdens and perplexities honestly to you, trusting in your justice, your providence, and your promise. Strength your servant who brings your word. Help me to speak it faithfully and clearly. Hide me behind the cross, so that it is not the voice of man, but the voice of the shepherd who has heard. Let this word not return to you empty. By it, convict us of sin, comfort us in Christ, and lead us in a new obedience. For the glory of your name, we ask this in Jesus’ name, our Lord. Amen.

The word from Habakkuk, chapter 1, verse 1 to 4. The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw. Oh Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear? I’ll cry to you violence and you will not save. Why do you make me see iniquity? Why do you idly look at wrong? destruction and violence are before me, strife and contention arise, so the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth, for the wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted.

And the New Testament reading is from Romans chapter 1, verse 16 to 17. And now let’s turn to Romans chapter 1. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jews first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. For it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God will stand forever.

Now we can turn back to Habakkuk chapter 1.

Since the fall of Adam and Eve, all mankind has been under the wrath and curse of God. Yet out of his mere love, God offered us and saved us by giving his Son, Jesus Christ, and by granting faith and repentance unto life. He has also given us the ordinary means of grace, namely his word, the sacraments, and prayer. Through these, we can receive the benefits of Jesus Christ and his redemption. Prayer is a Christian duty, but sadly, it is also one of the most neglected. Many books have been written to teach us how to pray rightly and fruitfully, but the best teacher is always the Bible itself and the prayer God has recorded in it.

So let me begin with a question. How is your prayer life? Do you pray? If you do, that is wonderful. But do you pray in the right way? And do you pray for the right things? And what should a Christian do in the midst of a chaotic and morally decaying society? Habakkuk helps to answer these questions.

From this passage, I want to show you that Christians should pray to God earnestly and honestly, seeking Him on the basis of His promise and His law. We will consider these three points. First, Habakkuk prayed. Second, Habakkuk prayed in the right way. And third, Habakkuk prayed for the right things.

The first point Habakkuk prayed is from verse one to the first part of verse three. Prayer is a conversation between man and God, and the two features of these verses make that plain. Namely, the first one, Habakkuk addressed God directly in verse two. Oh Lord, he’s talking to God directly. Secondly, notice the pronouns used. I cry, you will not hear, and why do you? So this is a man having a conversation with God.

This is one of the most noticeable difference between this book and other prophetic books. In the other prophetic books, the prophet is speaking God’s word to God’s people. But from verse one, we know that the author of this short book is Habakkuk. He was a prophet. These are the words of his dialog with God, but at the same time, since it’s recorded in the scripture, it is also the God’s word to us. As a prophet, Habakkuk spoke God’s word, and he knew what God had taught about a prayer.

Scripture gives at least four reasons why prayer matters. The first reason is prayer is a mark of godly man. After Abel’s death, God gave Adam and Eve another son, Seth, to carry on the godly line. Of that line, scripture says, at that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord. That’s Genesis 4. This mark continues in the New Testament. When Luke described the centurion, Cornelius, he named the three signs of his godliness. First, he feared God. Second, he gave alms generously. And third, he prayed continually to God. That’s Acts chapter 10. Habakkuk is a godly man.

He prayed because he knew that God commands and invites his people to pray. That’s a second reason. In 1 Chronicles 16 and Psalm 105, God said, Seek the Lord and his strength. Seek his presence continually. In Amos chapter 5, God even pleads with Israel, seek me and live. Habakkuk obeyed God’s command and he prayed.

And there is also a third reason, God promised to hear and answer. Habakkuk prayed in expectation God will answer his prayer as he promised. In 2 Chronicles chapter 7 it says, If my people, God tell Israel, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face, I will hear from heaven. And also the same thing in Matthew chapter 7, Jesus said, That means these promise comes all the way to the New Testament time. Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Philippians chapter four teaches that, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and mind in Christ Jesus.

The fourth reason, God grieves when his people do not pray. In Isaiah chapter 43, God laments, Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob, And in Hosea chapter seven, none of them calls upon me as God’s complaint. As Christians, we see this even more clearly now. In Gethsemane, Jesus was grieved that his disciples would not pray with him. Could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. That’s Matthew chapter 26.

So come back to my question again. Do you pray? Do you bear this mark of God’s people? The Shorter Catechism teaches that God requires of us the diligent use of the outward means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption. And prayer is one of those means. You should pray and pray every day. As Paul says, He prayed in everything. Habakkuk prayed. He bore the mark of godly man and also obeying God’s command, sincerely expecting God’s answer to his prayer.

Habakkuk not only prayed, he also prayed in the right way. And that comes to our second point. He prayed in the right way. That’s from verse two to three.

Prayer is a genuine communication with God. Jeremiah chapter 29 and also Deuteronomy chapter four state the requirement of being genuine. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Habakkuk prayer was genuine and wholehearted in these three ways.

First, he prayed with faith. He believed in God’s providence. See verse three. Why do you make me see iniquity? Habakkuk knew that God governs all things. It was God’s will to place him in that time and place as a witness to the corruption around him. He also believed in God’s justice. He expected God to hear him, to act, and to set things right.

And secondly, He prayed with honesty. Habakkuk did not hide his perplexity. He could not reconcile God’s holy, wise, and powerful providence with God’s apparent silence toward the wickedness in Judah. So he told God plainly. It’s very straightforward. Look at verse 2. You were not here. you will not save.” He complains God’s inaction. And in verse 3, why do you idly look at wrong? He cannot understand why God is indifferent to the wrong, to the wicked. And also verse 2 again, how long? He’s weary. It has been too long. He has been waiting for God’s answer for too long.

And lastly, he prayed persistently and with intensity. The words, how long, tells Habakkuk had brought this burden to God many times. Yet he did not stop. He poured out his whole heart with sorrow and fear. Look at these words. I cry to you for help. I cry to you, violence. That’s in verse two. Just picture. A mother who sees her child fall into a river and being swept away by the current, he does not speak calmly. He will scream and ask him for help, save my child. That is how Quebecer cried out as he watched the whole society falling apart.

Remember his ministry is contemporary with that of Jeremiah and also Zephaniah. That’s a time approach the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon. And that’s a time that leads to exile. He cried for the open moral corruption of Judah. And it was a cry of a broken heart. And a broken heart, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. That’s a testimony of David in Psalm 51. God sees the tears of his people and treasures them. As Psalm 56 says, you have kept count my dole tossings, put my tears in your bottle and they not in your book. That’s how God treasure his people. when he sees the contrite heart, he will treasure their loyalty, their dependence on him.

You should examine your own prayers. Do you know the character of God you are speaking to? Do you believe in his perfect wisdom, goodness, love, and power? Are you sincere in your prayer? When you ask, do you actually expect him to answer your prayer? Do you keep praying if the answer has not yet come yet? In Luke 18, Jesus told the parable of the persistent widow, so that we ought always to pray and not lose heart. It is right to bring your doubts, confusion, and even complaints honestly to God. Your thoughts may be wrong, but bring them to Him. Anyway, ask Him to correct them and to give you a new perspective. And that is the right way to pray.

Habakkuk not only prayed in the right way, he also prayed for the right thing. And that is our third point from the second part of verse three to verse four. What did Habakkuk pray for? He prayed that God’s law will be obeyed in Judah, and the justice will be restored.

In verse 3 and 4, he paints a vivid contrasting picture, featuring two figures. The first figure, we see the first figure in verse 4. So the law is paralyzed. The Habakkuk pictures God’s law as a man who can no longer move or do what he is made to do. Why had God given Israel the law? To bless them. The law taught them how to love God and one another so that they might enjoy peace and prosperity in the land. God said to the Israelites in Leviticus chapter 26, if you walk in my statues and observe my commandments and do them, then I will give you your reigns in their season, and the land shall yield its increase. I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. And I will make you walk among you, and I will be your God.

So, what about the second figure we see in verse 3? Strive and contention arise. Once a law lies paralyzed, strive and contention stand up like a strong man. And what they bring to? They’ll bring destruction and violence. That is the chaos that follows when God’s law is persistently being disobeyed. There is no peace. Dispute, quarrels, and lawsuits spread among neighbors, in workplaces, and even in families. If left unchecked, they grow into physical violence, destruction of property, and even murder. That was the society Habakkuk lived in.

Habakkuk also named the cause of this Chaos. Look at verse four. The wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted. The officers God had ordained to uphold his law has been corrupted. Perhaps the priests who were to teach the law neglected and broke it themselves. Perhaps the king and the officials who were to govern by it violated instead. Either way, the wicked held power. They hanged the righteous on every side until they lost their influence in the land.

So Habak prayed for the right thing. that God’s will and God’s law will be honored in Judah. He judged his society and he brought his prayer to God on the basis of God’s promise and God’s law. Your prayers should do the same. Your love for God, your love for your neighbor should show in what you pray for. Let your prayer rest on God’s promise and God’s law.

How to apply this to our own day? Though the disorder of Habakkuk’s day is just as visible in ours, strife and contention fill the news and social media. Theft and violence are often treated lightly. Calling evil what it is can bring ridicule or accusation. Those charged with upholding justice sometimes protect the wrongdoers more than the one who were wronged.

Are these things in your prayer? Do you see them merely as social and political problem? Or do you see them for what they, at the root, is disobedience to God’s law? You should pray with understanding. Cry out to God for help as Habakkuk did, and do not stop until Christ returns. But pray with understanding, no confusion. Jesus and Paul warned that lawlessness would increase in the last days and that sins would grow even worse before Christ’s return. That’s the teaching in Matthew chapter 24 and 2 Thessalonians chapter 2.

You should pray with confidence and hope. Jesus Christ has overcome the world. He reigns in heaven. He restrains and conquers all his and our enemies. He rewards those who seek him. And the day is coming when he will judge publicly and finally.

You should pray for the church and the world. Pray for your pastors. Ask God to keep them faithful to the truth and courageous in proclaiming it even under pressure. And give thanks. Thanks God for faithful ministers and a faithful church. Pray for Christian living in your family, in your church, and even the Christians in the world. Ask that believers will love God’s law and live it out with resolve. And pray to be sought and liked yourself, so that others may see the glory of God in your conduct.

Before I conclude my sermon, I’d like to mention two things.

First, find joy in God of salvation. Habakkuk’s book begin with a prayer of tears, confusion, perplexity, but it ends with a song of great joy. Yet his circumstance had not changed. In fact, he expects them to grow even worse. Look at Habakkuk 3, verse 17. This is a picture of total desolation. Worse than anything he described at the beginning. And yet, he goes on, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation. His joy rested in God alone, the God who would save him. What God did to Habakkuk’s heart, he can do the same in yours. As you pray earnestly and persistently, honestly laying your heart before him, his spirit will enlighten your mind, renew your will, and strengthen your faith. Through prayer, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The second point, see Christ in Habakkuk. Finally, Habakkuk points us to Christ. In his earthly ministry, Jesus saw firsthand how God’s law has been paralyzed. The temple had become a marketplace. The Sabbath was burdened with man-made rules. The teachers of the law lacked true understanding and were full of pride and hardness of heart. In the gospel, we see Jesus constantly in prayer. He grieved over his disciples’ little faith, pronounced vows on those who would not repent, and wept over Jerusalem. Yet he knew the Father’s will and the plan of salvation perfectly. and he kept a perfect line of prayer with the Father. He also teach us, his followers, how to pray, and he give us the Lord’s Prayer as our pattern.

So we should pray. Brothers and sisters, we cannot say we do not know how to pray. We have seen how Habakkuk prayed and how God worked in his heart to strengthen his faith. We have the Lord’s Prayer as our model, and we have the Holy Spirit help us in our weakness. As Romans chapter 8, verse 36 to 39 beautifully summarized, for your sake, we are being killed all the day. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. A sad situation, right? And they said, no. That’s not true. No. In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. We are not been defeated losers in the eyes of the world. In God’s eyes, we are the conquerors. We are in God’s side. We are in Christ. Overcome the world. For I’m sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height or depth, nor anything else in all creation will not be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That’s a confidence he will give us.

Let us pray.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the gifts of scripture, prayer, and the Holy Spirit, by which you grow us in faith in Jesus Christ and apply to us the benefits of his redemption. We thank you for the example of Habakkuk. He prayed with an open heart, earnestly and honestly. He was a man with limits. but he brought those limits openly before you, and you worked facing him, turned his heart, gave him a new view of his circumstance, and renewed his obedience. Lord, we need that same faith and that same new obedience. Teach us to pray. Help us to pray every day according to your will, as you have revealed in your law and your promise. Help us to understand your word. In all our weakness and failings, help us to pray openly and honestly, bringing you our confession, confusion, our doubts, and even our complaints. And let your Holy Spirit work in our hearts, show us your glory, and help us to grow in Jesus Christ and in obedience to your statutes. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

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The Old Testament reading and our sermon text is Exodus chapter 34, verses 10 through 28. And this is the inerrant and infallible word of our God. Exodus 34, 10 through 28.

And he said, “Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people, I will do marvels such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim, for you shall worship no other God, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice. And you take of their daughters for your sons and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods. You shall not make for yourself any gods of cast metal.

You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread as I commanded you at the time appointed in the month Abib, for in the month Abib you came out from Egypt. All that open the womb are mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep, the firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it, you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem, and none shall appear before me empty-handed.

Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest. You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end. Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord your God, the God of Israel, for I will cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders. No one shall covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year.

You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the sacrifice of the feast of the Passover remain until the morning. The best of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

And the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words, I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” So he was there with the Lord 40 days and 40 nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets, the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

And now let’s turn to John chapter 14 for the New Testament reading, John 14, verses 15 through 17. John 14, 15 through 17.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

You can turn back to Exodus 34. This is our passage this morning. And in this passage, Moses is on the top of Mount Sinai. We saw last week in the passage before this that while Moses was on the top of Mount Sinai, the Lord passed by him. He revealed something of his glory to Moses. A part of revealing that glory was proclaiming his name to Moses. And when Moses saw God’s glory, when he heard God declare his name, we read that he quickly bowed down to the ground and he worshiped.

And then after he worshiped, Moses did something that we have seen him do very frequently in the last several chapters or the last few chapters of Exodus, and that is Moses prayed. As the leader of the people of God, as the mediator between God and the people of Israel, Moses prayed for God’s people. He interceded for them. He prayed that the Lord would forgive them, that He would forgive them for their sin of worshiping the golden calf, and that the Lord would take His people back to Himself, that He would fulfill His promises to bring them into the Promised Land.

And our passage this morning begins with the answer that the Lord gave to Moses to his prayer. He says in verse 10, God says to Moses, “Behold, I am making a covenant.” This was the answer that Moses wanted to hear. This was what he longed to hear from God, that he was going to make a covenant or renew his covenant with the people of Israel. He would not, as he threatened, he would not leave his people to themselves. He would not disown his people. Although if God had chosen to do so, he would have been perfectly just and right to do so because the people had sinned against him so grievously. But He shows his mercy, he is going to renew his covenant and continue to bless them.

And this covenant needed to be made again because by their sin and their idolatry, Israel had broken it. But God in his mercy and grace will restore them and he will restore that covenant. And so when Moses heard the Lord say in verse 10, “Behold, I am making a covenant,” this must have thrilled his heart, because the word covenant points to the very foundation of God’s gracious dealings with his people Israel.

The very reason why God delivered his people from Egypt, the very reason why he protected them and provided for them throughout the wilderness was because of his covenant promises to Israel, specifically his covenant promises to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their descendants. The very reason why God determined to lead His people through the wilderness and to bring them into the Promised Land was because of His covenant, because He had pledged Himself to the people of Israel that He would do so.

And so God’s covenant is His gracious act in which the Lord takes a people for Himself to be His people, and He in turn devotes Himself to them as their God. And at the heart of God’s covenant is his promise, a promise that we hear again and again in scripture, the promise that “I will be your God and you shall be my people.”

And so in the covenant, God demands from his people their faithfulness, their obedience, their fidelity. But He promises His people that He will be faithful to them, that He will provide for them, that He will protect them, that He will guide them in this life. And ultimately, the covenants that God made with His people in Scripture, the ultimate promise of those covenants is eternal life in the world to come.

And the covenant was not just something between the Lord and Israel in the Old Testament, but as Christians, God has made a covenant with you and me in Jesus Christ. God has taken us to himself so that we are his people and he is our God forever and ever. And although the circumstances, the details of the covenant that God made with Israel back in the Old Testament are different from the covenant that God makes with us in Christ, nevertheless, in many, many ways, they are very much the same. And so for that reason, this passage that speaks about God’s covenant with the people of Israel has much to teach us about the nature of God’s dealings with us as we are in covenant with Him today. And so as we look at this passage this morning, we’ll consider a few of those lessons together.

And the first lesson we learn is this, that in His covenant, God magnifies His grace towards us. In this covenant, God magnifies His grace towards us. When we consider the people of Israel and God’s gracious dealings with them, we can only truly appreciate the magnitude, the greatness of the grace of God towards His people Israel when we remember the greatness and the magnitude of the sin and the evil that they committed against Him.

You’ll remember, and we saw this the last few weeks, but you’ll remember that at the very same time that Moses was on the top of Mount Sinai, as he was receiving the Ten Commandments from the Lord, the people of Israel down at the bottom, at the foot of the mountain, they were busying themselves breaking those very commandments. They broke the first commandment and the second commandment when they made a golden calf and worshiped it. And no doubt, when they rose up to play in their revelry, they broke many of the other commandments as well.

And this was a very grievous sin. It wasn’t the case that the Israelites sinned in some relatively minor fashion, a sin that could easily be atoned for by offering the appropriate sacrifice. But their sin was much more than that. It was much more basic, more fundamental. In a very radical way, by their idolatry, they destroyed the very foundation of God’s covenant with them. And so their sin was not merely a transgression of the terms of the covenant, but in fact, in worshiping the golden calf, the people of Israel, they basically rejected the covenant altogether. It was a total repudiation of that covenant that God had made with them.

And that’s why when Moses, when he came down the mountain, he had the two tablets in his hands containing the Ten Commandments, and his holy anger and righteous indignation, he dashed the tablets to the ground. They shattered in pieces. That was showing the people of Israel what they had done. By their idolatry, they had not just sinned against God, but they had shattered the covenant that God had made with them into pieces.

And so for God here now to say to Moses in response to his prayer, “Behold, I am making a covenant,” this is a demonstration of God’s grace, manifestation of his mercy. This is amazing grace. This is the kind of grace that the apostle Paul speaks about in Romans when he says where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. God met the horrible sin of the people of Israel with incredible grace, grace abounded all the more.

And here God was demonstrating the truth of what he had just declared to Moses on the mountain, that is, he is a God who is gracious. He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. This is God’s character. He shows grace even when his people sin against them.

And for the Israelites, after they heard the good news, after Moses would come down from the mountain, that God was still going to be their God, that he was going to restore his covenant with them, perhaps some of the Israelites wondered to themselves, how can God do this? How is it that God can forgive our sins? We have broken His covenant. We deserve death. We deserve condemnation for what we have done.

And if any Israelite asked himself that question, that was a very good question indeed. How can a holy God, a God who just declared to Moses that He will by no means clear the guilty, how can He then go on and do that very thing? Clear the guilty, restore His people back to Himself after they had sinned so wickedly against Him?

Well, the answer to that question of how God can show such wonderful grace to His people Israel in the face of their sin, the answer to that question lies in the truth that standing behind God’s grace in this passage, standing behind the grace of God to the Israelites at Mount Sinai, was that great work of salvation that God would one day carry out through His Son, Jesus Christ. God would send his very own son into the world. And God would send his son into the world in order to lay upon his son all the guilt, all the sins, all the transgressions of his people that his people had committed from all ages, from the time he had a people until today.

Jesus Christ came to bear the sins of the people of God both before and after His coming. And so God could forgive the sins of the Israelites here, even the sin of idolatry, even the sin of breaking His covenant, because of what Christ would do at the cross. It was Jesus who bore the guilt of their sin. It was Jesus who received in Himself that judgment, that destruction, that death that the people of Israel all deserved because of their sin. It is because of the gospel that God could show such amazing grace to the people of Israel here.

And it is this saving work of Jesus that is really the greatest marvel among all the wondrous things that the Lord said that he would do for his people of Israel. Look at verse 10. In verse 10, the Lord tells Moses that he is going to do amazing things for Israel. He says, “Before all your people, I will do marvels such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation, and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do.”

Now here God was speaking in the immediate context, God was speaking about the marvelous things that He would do in leading the Israelites into the Promised Land. And as we read on in the Old Testament, we read about some of these marvels that God did for His people. He caused the flowing waters of Jericho, or the Jordan River rather, He caused those waters to come to a stop so the people of Israel could cross on the dry land into the Promised Land. He caused the walls of Jericho to fall down before the people of Israel so Israel could take the city. At one point, He caused the sun to stand still in the sky when Joshua was battling the Amorites so that the Israelites could defeat their enemies. And so, God did marvelous things as He said that He would do.

But of all the awesome things and wonderful things that God did for His people, nothing compares to what God had planned to do and has done with the coming of Jesus Christ to the world. Because when Jesus came into the world, it was God himself coming to us in the person of his son. And there is no greater miracle than this. There is no more wonderful thing that God has ever done. There is no greater work that God has done than this, that God, God who is uncreated, God who is spirit, God who is infinite and eternal, that he should forever unite himself to our human nature, that He should take on human flesh, that He should become one of us, a man.

And not only did He become man in the incarnation, but He did so for us, so that as man, He could atone for our sins by bearing them on the cursed cross. And this is the greatest marvel that God has done for us. He has accomplished our salvation through the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, his son.

If God magnified his grace toward the Israelites and that he brought them back to himself here in our passage, then God has also magnified his grace to you and me in the gospel. Because our sin is also grievous in the eyes of God. We too have broken God’s covenants. We too have sinned wickedly against him. In our sin, our idolatry, our rebellion, we have transgressed God’s commandments.

Yet despite the greatness of our sin and guilt, God has shown us mercy. He has shown us grace in his son, Jesus Christ. The blood of Jesus Christ is sufficient to cover all your sins and my sins. And so God has magnified His grace and mercy towards us by making us His people, by keeping us as His people in this covenant that He has made with us in His Son, Jesus Christ. So that’s the first lesson.

The second lesson that we can take from this passage is that in His covenant, God demands our loyalty to Him. After the Lord promises Moses that he will renew his covenant with the people of Israel, he then warns Moses that the people of Israel must not make a covenant with any other nation. Once they go into the promised land, they are not to start making treaties with the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and so on. He says in verse 12, “Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go.”

And the Israelites must not make a covenant with the nations of Canaan because if they do, the Lord says in verse 12, “it will become a snare in your midst.” And how was it that making a covenant with the people of the land would become a snare to the people of Israel? It was because by making a covenant with those pagan people, they would be opening themselves up to start worshiping their gods. And so, God’s concern here was with idolatry.

And of course, God was justly concerned, especially given the fact that the Israelites had just committed that gross idolatry in worshiping the golden calf. The people of Israel, if they so easily fell into idolatry with no other help from another nation, when they worshiped the golden calf, then how much more easily would they be tempted to idolatry if they made a covenant with these pagan nations.

And because of the great danger of even the presence of idols in the land, the Lord commanded Moses that the Israelites must commit to what we could call a scorched earth policy when it came to the idols and their idol-worshiping sites in the land of Canaan. The Lord says in verse 13, “You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim.” And so when the Israelites went through the land of Canaan, as the Lord drove out the people before them, when they came across these pagan idols and the altars and the Asherim poles, they weren’t supposed to put them into a storage unit or put them in a museum. They were supposed to destroy them completely. They were to obliterate any trace of idolatry.

And of course, this scorched earth policy towards idols, this is what the Lord calls us to as Christians today as well. Now, this doesn’t mean that we go out into the world and start destroying all the idols that we might see in our world today. But what it does mean is that we are to completely destroy the idols of our hearts. We are to spare no room in our hearts for an idol, a false god.

And it’s not hard to identify what might be an idol for us, whatever it may be that you are tempted to look to, to give you a sense of ultimate satisfaction or security or life or meaning, that thing is an idol. And the primary way that you destroy the idols of your heart is to fill your heart with Christ, that is, to come to Christ by faith and to seek in Him that which only He can give you. Only Jesus Christ, the Son of God, can fill our hearts with what they desire. Only Christ can give us true life, true contentment, true significance, true joy and peace. And as you seek and find that in Christ, then the idols that tempt you will lose their power over you, and that’s the way in which you go about destroying the idols of your hearts. If you don’t, if you leave room for a foothold for an idol, it will become a snare to you, to use the language that the Lord used for the people of Israel.

Now, after the Lord tells Moses that the Israelites must destroy the idols remaining in the land, he goes on to elaborate on the reason for that commandment and for this warning against idolatry. And here, in the words that God speaks to Moses, we find the introduction in the Scriptures of a theme that we will see throughout the Scriptures, and that is the truth that the covenant relationship that exists between God and His people is a relationship that is like the relationship between a husband and a wife. The Lord is the husband of his people, and his people are the bride or the wife of the Lord.

You see that at least implied in verse 14. In verse 14, the Lord says, “for you shall worship no other God, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” Now, when we hear the word jealous, we immediately have negative thoughts in our mind. We think of jealousy only, usually we think of it only in the wrong or the bad sense, that is a kind of envy of other people wanting something that someone else has in a sinful kind of way. This is the kind of jealousy that we are familiar with, but that is not what God is talking about here when he says his name is jealous. But here, jealousy refers to God’s holy zeal to have the complete devotion, the affection, and the love of his people. God wants his people for himself. He does not want them to go after idols.

And it is for our good that God is jealous over us. One author called God’s jealousy his passionate and protective love for his people. And here you see the analogy with a human marriage. God’s jealousy is like the righteous jealousy of a husband who, not out of self-centeredness, but out of a true love for his wife, is zealous for her devotion and affection and love for him.

And you see this idea that the Lord’s covenant with his people is a marriage bond in what God goes on to say to Moses. He says in verse 16, that the sons of the Israelites, that if they take the daughters of the Canaanites to be their wives, that their pagan wives will surely lead them into idolatry. And notice that the language that God uses is quite shocking. He calls this false worship whoring after other gods. Other English versions use the term prostituting, which may be not quite as harsh sounding to our ears, but the meaning is no different.

According to God, to worship an idol, to go after a false god is nothing less than spiritual adultery. And that is every bit as true for us today as it was for the Israelites then. We too are a people who are in a covenant relationship with God that is like a husband and a wife. Paul makes that very clear in Ephesians chapter five. He compares a marriage between a man and his wife, he compares that to the union that exists between Christ and his people, his bride. And so because we are the bride of Christ, whenever we give our devotion or affection or service to an idol rather than to Jesus, we are guilty of spiritual adultery. We are being unfaithful to our husband, Jesus.

And this way of looking at sin is very important because this is how God sees our sin. But this is not how we often see our sin. So often we consider sin only in terms of breaking a law that God has made, but we think of it in terms of how we might think if we break a law that a government has made. For example, if I break the law of the state of Nevada by driving too fast on I-80, just hypothetically speaking, of course, I don’t feel, if I do that, I don’t feel as though I’ve offended anybody in particular. I’ve broken a law, it’s a number on a sign, there’s some statute written in a book somewhere, but I don’t feel like I have offended anybody in particular. It’s all very impersonal.

And that’s how we think about breaking the laws of the government, but that’s not how we ought to think about breaking the law of God. Because when it comes to sinning against God, we can never abstract God’s law from his person. We can never separate the law from the lawgiver. God’s law for us is His will for us as His people whom He has loved and taken to Himself, and with whom He desires this covenant communion, the relationship. And so anytime I sin against God, I am offending Him personally. I am dishonoring or disgracing the Father who loved me. I am dishonoring and sinning against and offending the Son who is my bridegroom and who has made me his by his death on the cross.

So let me ask you, would it make you more careful to keep God’s commandments if you always looked at sin in this way? Instead of considering God’s commandments as a list of rules that you must keep that is somehow abstract and detached from the Lord, instead of doing that, think about the fact that God’s laws are His will for you, and to break His commandments is to sin against Him personally. And so, the second lesson is that in the covenant, God demands our loyalty to Him.

The third lesson is this. In His covenant, God calls us to obedience to His commandments. When we come to the second half of our passage, verses 17 through 26, you’ll notice that there are many laws that are given here that we have already seen in the book of Exodus. The Lord has already given most of these laws to Moses to give to the people of Israel. And it’s not clear why they are repeated. Some of these laws have to do with worship. Others have to do with sacred festivals and others with the Sabbath. But it does beg the question, why did God give these laws again to Moses and why these particular laws and not other laws?

Well, one reason why God gave these laws again is because the Israelites needed to hear them more than once, especially in light of the fact that they had just committed this gross idolatry. That certainly explains verse 17. Verse 17 says, “You shall not make for yourself any gods of cast metal.” It’s impossible to think that the Israelites would not think of their sin with the golden calf when they heard Moses repeat that law to the people. And so God was saying, O Israel, you certainly need to hear this law again. Don’t make yourself a god of cast metal. Don’t do what you did with the golden calf. You need to hear it again.

And this is a reminder to us that as the people of God at that time and as we today, we have always struggled with spiritual amnesia. And so we have to be reminded again and again of God’s will for us in the scriptures. We have to be reminded also again and again of God’s promises to us, his love for us, his grace to us. We are a forgetful people, and so it’s not surprising that many laws and promises are repeated in the Scriptures.

I mean, essentially, what I do as a preacher is to remind you of things that you have already heard. I think 90% of my preaching is probably telling you things that you have already learned, already heard, but you need to hear again. I need to hear again.

With some of these other laws, it’s not clear why God chose them specifically for repetition here, but there is at least one theme that we can discern that emerges from these laws, and that is obedience to God’s commandments encompasses the entirety of our lives. God does not just want obedience in one part of our lives, but our entire lives are to be submitted to his will, conformed. In other words, in His covenant, God is here demanding of the people of Israel nothing less than a life completely consecrated to serving and worshiping Him. Their lives were to be radically oriented around all that the Lord required of them as His people.

And this was the only way in which the people of Israel would enjoy the blessings of the covenant. It was only through their comprehensive obedience to all that God commanded that they would truly enjoy the fullness of that communion that they were blessed to have with the Lord.

And so, for example, the Lord here repeats for Moses the fourth commandment. He says in verse 21, “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest.” And so the Lord is saying, the commandment to keep the Sabbath is not just when you have the leisure time to do so, when it’s convenient, but even in plowing, even in harvesting times, when you are most busy, when it is most tempting to stay out in the fields and do your work, even then you keep my Sabbaths. And so God is demanding of his people a comprehensive obedience.

Likewise, all the males in Israel would have to go up to what would be the city of Jerusalem three times a year for the annual sacred feasts. Again, to keep this commandment, the Israelites would have to orient their lives around them. They would have to plan and schedule their time accordingly. They would also have to orient their entire lives around these other commandments as well. And so they were not God’s covenant people on a part-time basis, but their whole lives were to be conformed to His will.

And again, it is the same with you and me as those who belong to Jesus Christ. Jesus demands nothing less than that of us. He demands that we are to give ourselves to Him entirely, wholly, to be His. 24 hours a day, our entire lives are to be consecrated to His service and worship and obedience.

But here’s the thing to keep in mind. For the Israelites then, who truly knew the Lord by faith, for the Israelites who truly entrusted themselves to God and found in God their heart’s delight and treasure and joy, for them, in His covenant with them, they did not find His covenant demands to be an oppressive burden. Rather, they rejoiced in serving and worshiping God.

We see this in the Old Testament. We read responsibly from Psalm 119. And in that Psalm, the psalmist says, “Oh, how I love your law!” How many times a day do you just burst out saying, “Oh, how I love your law”? Probably not very often. But why does the psalmist say that? He says it because he loves the Lord who gave him the law. Because he loves God, he loves his law.

And in the very same way, Jesus says in the New Testament passage that we heard, John 14:15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” First John 5:3 says something similar: “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome.”

If you, by faith, have come to Christ, and you have come to know Him as your Savior, you have tasted and you have seen that the Lord is good, you have, by faith in Christ, experienced that love that He has for you, then the obedience that He calls you to—an obedience that encompasses the entirety of your lives—that obedience is not burdensome, but it is a delight. It should be a delight.

This is the ideal. We know that ideally the commandments of God should not be burdensome to us. But the reality isn’t always matching the ideal. We all struggle at times to truly rejoice in the Lord. We struggle at times to desire to keep his commandments. We don’t wake up every morning with the first thoughts in our head saying, “I can’t wait to keep God’s commandments today.” Sometimes God’s commandments, what he wills for us does feel burdensome, but that’s not where our hearts should be. Our hearts should be in a place where we want to serve, we want to please the Lord, where we even delight in His commandments.

But how do we get to that place? Well, we get there by remembering the grace of God, His mercy. What is the foundation of this covenant that is made with us in which He has brought us to Himself? It is His love, His mercy, His grace. He has freely forgiven you of all your sins. He has given you new life. He has raised you from death to life.

Another way to put this is this: You should never see only the commandment of God, but you should see your Savior who is standing behind the commandment—your Savior who loved you and brought you into that communion with Him. And the more that you delight in Christ, the more you delight in his love and his grace to you, the more ready you will be to walk in that wholehearted obedience that he calls you to as your covenant Lord and Savior.

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading and our sermon text is Deuteronomy, I’m sorry, it’s Exodus. Don’t change your place in the Bible. It’s Exodus chapter 34, verses one through nine. And this is the infallible, the inerrant word of God.

Exodus 34, one through nine. The Lord said to Moses, cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke. Be ready by the morning and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain.

Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain. So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first and he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him and took in his hand two tablets of stone. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation. And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said, if now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance. You can keep your place there, because we’ll be going back to there. 

But for our New Testament reading, turn to John 1.

John 1, verses 1-5, and then verses 14-18. So John 1, verses 1-5, and then 14-18. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory.

Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. For from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses.

Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the father’s side, he has made him known. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

You may turn back to Exodus chapter 34. One of the marvels of living in the age that we do in the time that we do of having the internet is that we have instant access to virtually all of the knowledge in the world. Whatever it is you want to know, all you have to do is pull your phone out of your pocket and talk to Siri or whoever, and presto, you have instant knowledge. What you didn’t know before is right there on your screen.

And so thanks to technology, we can gain all sorts of knowledge about all sorts of things. But there is only one kind of knowledge that will do you any good for eternity, and that is the knowledge of the true God. No matter how much information you have mastered in this life, no matter how learned you may be, at the end of the day, the only question that will matter is this, do you know God? Have you come to know your creator, the one who made you, the One who is Lord, do you truly know Him?

And the question is not, do you know about Him? Do you know information about God? But do you truly know Him as He has made Himself known to us in His Son, Jesus?

In our congregation, the Ladies Bible Study has been working their way through the classic book by J.I. Packer called Knowing God. And Packer begins that book with a quote from the 19th century English preacher Charles Spurgeon. And this is what Spurgeon wrote. It has been said by someone that the proper study of mankind is man.

I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God’s elect is God. The proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy which can ever engage the attention of a child of God is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls Father.

By the way, Spurgeon wrote that when he was 20 years old. I wonder if you and I would write something like that when we were 20 years old. But he was a man who truly knew God. He knew Him well.

Another man who truly knew God, again, not just knowing about God, but knew Him, was Moses. God had revealed himself to Moses on many occasions, and we’ve seen how Moses would go to the Lord in prayer and speak to God, and God would speak to him. In fact, in our passage last week in verse 11, chapter 33, it says, consider someone you are close with, a good friend of yours, you would not hesitate at all to say, yes, I know that person.

I know him very well. I know her very well. We’ve had many conversations. We’ve talked a lot.

That’s the way Moses knew God. He knew him as a person knows his friend. And Moses wanted to know God more. He wanted to know him more deeply, more profoundly.

He wanted to have his heart enlarged in the knowledge of this great God that he had come to know. And the way that Moses expressed his desire to grow in the knowledge of God was by praying to the Lord that the Lord would show him his glory. He says in verse 18 of chapter 33 from our passage last week, he says to the Lord, please show me your glory. We could say that, at least in part, at least in part, to know God is to behold Him.

To see God in His glory and majesty and greatness is to come to know Him. And Moses had, in fact, seen God in that way, and so his heart cried out for an even greater vision of God. He says, please show me your glory. He wants to know Him better.

And in the passage that we read today, that we heard today, this is basically God’s answer to Moses, to his prayer to show him his glory. Because here the Lord shows him his glory, and Moses comes to know him even better. And Lord willing, we will come to know him better as well, as we hear from the word of God. And there are three truths here about what it means to truly know God.

And the first truth is this, that you can only know God by faith. You know God only by faith. After Moses prayed in verse 18, please show me your glory, the Lord told him that he would show him his glory, but only partially, not fully.

And that’s because no person on this side of heaven is able to behold the full revelation of the glory of God and live. And so for his own good, so that Moses would not be destroyed, the Lord told Moses that he could not see his face. In other words, he could not see the fullness of his majesty and glory. He said in verse 20, you cannot see my face for man shall not see me and live.

And so in order that Moses may catch something of his glory, a glimpse of his glory, but not perish, the Lord said, you will see my back. And so the Lord said that when he passes by him, he will remove his hand and he will see the back of the Lord, which is to say he will catch a glimpse with his eyes of the incredible splendor and glory of God. Then at the beginning of chapter 34, the Lord tells Moses what he must do before he shows him his glory. He says in verse one, cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke.

You remember that the first time that Moses was up on Mount Sinai, God gave to him, along with all of the laws that we have considered, God gave to him the two tablets of stone on which God wrote with his own finger, as it were, the Ten Commandments. But when Moses came down the mountain and he saw the Israelites reveling in their idolatry, Moses became angry and he threw the tablets on the ground and they shattered in pieces. And so now, when the Lord tells Moses, bring two tablets up to me, what the Lord is saying is, I will restore that covenant that the people have broken. I will renew the covenant that the people shattered by their idolatry and sin.

So the Lord is saying to Israel through Moses, I will continue to be your God. You will continue to be my people. And so this is a gracious word that God gives to Moses. And then God tells Moses to come up in the morning to Mount Sinai.

He is to come by himself, and he is to make sure that not only are there no other people with him, because they would perish at the sight of God, but he’s also not even to bring any animals with him, and no animals are even to come close to the mountain, because the holiness of God is so great, so overwhelming, that even the sinless creature the animals would be destroyed if they were in the presence of God’s full glory. And yet, despite that, God does allow Moses to come up. God protects him from perishing in his own holiness.

And he does that so Moses can serve as the mediator, the go-between between the people of Israel and the Lord. And so Moses does what the Lord commands. He makes the two new tablets. He gets up early in the morning.

He climbs up to Mount Sinai. And verse 5 says this, the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And so God proclaimed his name, the name of the Lord. And this is the name that God had already revealed to Moses at the burning bush.

It’s the name that is translated in our Bibles as Lord, but particularly Lord with all capital letters. And so in your English Bible, sometimes there is Lord, capital L, small o-r-d. That is not the name of God, but when you see capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, that is God’s name translated into English. Nobody knows exactly how it is pronounced.

It’s something like Yahweh. In the name of God, Yahweh means I am, I am. That is God’s name. And His name indicates the truth that God derives His existence only from Himself.

He is I Am. He is not dependent upon any other thing or being in order to be God. He is absolutely independent of His creation. He needs nothing outside of Himself or His existence to be made whole.

That is exactly the opposite the case with you and me. We are creatures made by God, and so, therefore, our very existence depends upon God, our very lives depend upon God. In Him, we live and move and have our being, but that is not true of God. He lives, He moves, He has His being in Himself.

And His name reflects that truth. He is the great I am. And after God declared to Moses his divine name, verse six says this, the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. You’ll notice that God declared his name two times, the Lord, the Lord.

And this was to emphasize, to magnify the greatness, the splendor, the majesty of his own person. Because his name is a reflection of who God is himself. And that’s really true for all of us. A name is never just a name, but a name stands for the person that you are.

You fill up your name with meaning on the basis of your character, what kind of person you are. I remember many years ago, our family was traveling somewhere in the Midwest. I think it was Wisconsin, if I remember, and we were, it was a road trip. And we were listening to the radio.

We haven’t done that in a while. But at that time, we were listening to the radio and the news was on. And they kept talking about this person who had committed some very bad, terrible crime. I forget if it was murder or bank robbery or something like that.

And they kept talking about this person, how they were looking for him. And his name was Scott Johnson. And so I thought about, for a lot of people at the time in the state of Wisconsin, when they heard the name Scott Johnson, they associated that with all kinds of awful misdeeds, crimes.

What do you suppose people think when they hear your name? Do they think what you would like them to think when they hear your name? There is nothing more precious than a good name. There’s nothing more valuable that we could possibly possess than a good name.

Proverbs 22:1 says a good name is to be chosen rather than great riches and favor is better than silver or gold. We can give thanks to God that no matter how much we might have ruined our own good name by our sins, our misdeeds, that God is good, he is gracious, he can restore the goodness of our names. And as a Christian, your name doesn’t stand for somebody who is without sin, but as a Christian, your name stands for someone who is forgiven, who has been loved by God, who is justified, and even in the sight of God, righteous because of Christ. And so as a believer in Christ, you do have a good name.

And for God, His own name is invested with His inherent holiness, His glory, His greatness. God alone in Himself is righteous and holy, and His name is the expression of all that. His name possesses the true character of God. And so he proclaims his name twice to Moses, and then he goes on to identify several different truths about the person or the character of God that are all bound up in his name, the name the Lord.

And those truths include that he is merciful and gracious, he is slow to anger, and he is abounding in steadfast love. Now, in a minute, we’ll consider each of those descriptions of the character of God in more detail. But for now, what I want you to see is that, for the most part, the way in which the Lord answered Moses’ prayer to behold his glory was that the Lord proclaimed to Moses these truths about his character that really make up the full meaning of his name. Now, the Lord did give to Moses a revelation of his glory that Moses would see with his eyes.

It was a partial revelation. In the passage that we looked at last week, God said that he would hide him in the cleft of the rock and as he passed by that he would remove his hand and Moses would see the back of God. He would catch a glimpse of God’s glory. However, that wasn’t the primary revelation here.

This wasn’t the chief way that God made His glory known to Moses. It was not a visual revelation, for the most part, but a verbal revelation. The Lord proclaimed these truths about Himself to Moses. These truths that He is a God of mercy and grace, patience and love, and righteousness and justice.

All of these truths about God make up His glory. And these are the truths that the Lord declared to Moses. And it was in this way, mostly in this way, that Moses beheld the glory of God. You’ll notice that whatever Moses saw with his eyes, whatever that sight was when he saw the back of God, he does not describe that for us.

He doesn’t tell us what he saw, but he does write down for us what he heard. He heard these wonderful truths about the character of God. And the lesson that we need to take from this today is that God, for us, God does not reveal his glory to us in a visual way. He does not give us a sight of his majesty, his splendor that we behold with our eyes.

He did in part for Moses. But for the most part, even for Moses, he revealed his glory to him by declaring the truth about who he is. And that’s how the Lord makes himself known to us. That’s how we behold his glory today.

And so the way for you to come to know God, the way for you to truly know God in a way that brings salvation is not by having a vision of God. God does not reveal Himself to us in that way. But it is by believing the truth about God, the truth that is revealed about Him in the Scriptures. We have the Bible, the scriptures, which are now the way in which God makes himself known to us.

And in the scriptures, God has given us, in fact, a far greater revelation of his glory than even what Moses saw on Mount Sinai. We can only imagine that what Moses saw when God removed his hand and gave him a glimpse of his back, even a partial revelation of the glory of God would be almost overwhelming because God is infinite. We can imagine that it was indescribable. Perhaps that’s why Moses didn’t even attempt to write down what he saw.

It was glorious. Nevertheless, God has revealed himself in a way that is even more glorious, more wonderful to us in the scriptures. And he has done that by revealing his glory to us in the person of his son, Jesus Christ. And so when we, by faith, believe all that the scriptures tell us about the person of Jesus, the work of Jesus, we are, in fact, beholding the glory of God.

In all that Jesus did to us, He made known to us the truth of God, because in all that He did, He did as God, because He was and is the Word who became flesh. He doesn’t just reflect the glory of God. He doesn’t just point us towards the glory of God, but He Himself was and is the revelation of God’s glory because He is God. And so when we see Jesus dying for sinners, such as you and me, we see there the mercy of God, the love of God.

When we see the patience that Jesus exercised towards others, we see there the patience, the long-suffering of God towards us. When we see how Jesus forgave his enemies, we see the forgiveness that God has for his enemies. And so as you look to Jesus Christ by faith, as you look to him as he is revealed to us in the scriptures, in the face of Jesus, you behold the glory of God. And so if you would know God, if it is your heart’s desire, like it was for Moses, to behold God, to grow in the knowledge of Him, to truly know Him as He is, then believe in Jesus.

Believe that He died for your sins. Believe that He is the incarnation of the everlasting God who came into the world in order to bring salvation to you, a sinner, by his death, by his resurrection. And then you come to know God by faith in Christ. And so, you know God by beholding his glory as that is revealed in his son.

And to know God in this way is to have eternal life. Jesus said, this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. So our first lesson or truth is that you know God only by faith.

The second truth here is this, you can only know God if you know the whole truth about God. So when God declares his name to Moses, he proclaims several truths about him, about his character, his nature. He is merciful and gracious, he is patient, and so on. Theologians call these various truths about God his attributes, his attributes, and the attributes of God are the qualities or characteristics that are true about God.

And you’ll notice that when God revealed His glory to Moses by proclaiming who He is and by declaring truths about Him, the very first truth that He begins with is the truth that God is fundamentally, basically, a God who is gracious. He is a God who is gracious. He says in verse 6, He is merciful and gracious. The mercy and grace of God refer to the truth that God does not deal with us as our sins deserve.

Rather, in his mercy, God forgives us our sins. And in his grace, God does good to us. Although because we are by nature morally corrupt, depraved, and sinful, nevertheless, God is merciful and gracious. He blesses us.

He shows us favor. And He does this not because we are good, but He does it because He is good. He says in verse 6 that He is slow to anger. God is patient.

He is long-suffering. Unlike you and me, when He is provoked, He does not fly off the handle. He does not lose His temper. He doesn’t lose His control.

But He is patient. He is like a patient father with his foolish and childish toddler who doesn’t get angry and yell, but who is kind and gentle and patient with this child. God is that way towards us. God is also abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

The phrase steadfast love, that is a translation of a Hebrew word that refers to the gracious and loving dealings that God has with His people, particularly because they are His people to whom He has bound Himself in covenants. He has promised to be their God. They are His people, and on the basis of that, He shows love and mercy and kindness. That is God’s steadfast love.

That’s how God loves us in His Son, Jesus Christ. Made Himself our God by way of covenant in Christ, and so He loves us on that basis. His faithfulness here can be translated His truth. God is true to His word.

You can depend upon Him. He keeps all of His promises to us. And notice that the Lord doesn’t just say that He is a God of steadfast love and faithfulness, but it says that He is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. He is a God from whom there are rivers of steadfast love and faithfulness flowing out to his people.

Matthew Henry says it very well. The Puritan commentator, he says, the springs of mercy are always full, the streams of mercy always flowing. There is mercy enough in God, enough for all, enough for each, enough forever. That is how God’s love abounds to us.

In verse seven, the Lord describes how He is faithful to His people from generation to generation. Verse seven, He says, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. The word thousands here refers not to thousands of people, but it refers to thousands of generations. In other words, it describes how God keeps His covenant promises to His children, and to their children, and to their children, and so on.

God is also a God who forgives iniquity and transgression and sin. You’ll notice, that’s what we read in verse 7, you’ll notice that there are three words used here to describe sin: iniquity, transgression, and sin. And the reason why there are three words here to describe sin is to underscore the fact, the truth, that God’s forgiveness covers all kinds of sin and all degrees of sin. And so there is no sin that you have committed, no matter how heinous it is, no matter how terrible it may have been.

There is no sin of which you may be guilty, that God cannot forgive and will not forgive as you come to Him by faith in Christ. He forgives all manner of sin. You cannot out-sin the grace of God. But the Lord goes on in verse seven to describe another aspect of His character that is just as true of Him as His grace and mercy, and that is His righteousness and justice.

He says in verse seven, “but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation”. Now, we can’t read this to mean that God somehow condemns the children for the sins of their parents. God is just. Each person will be judged according to his own sin.

But what it does mean is that just as parents can hand down God’s promises to future generations by their faith and their faithfulness, so parents can hand down sin and unbelief to future generations by their own sin and unbelief. Again, to be sure, children are guilty of their own sin and unbelief. However, so often it is sin and unbelief that they learn at home from their parents. Now this is not to say that the children of faithful and godly parents will never stray from Christ or reject the faith or walk in a way that is not pleasing to the Lord.

That certainly does happen. We acknowledge that, that that happens. And when it does happen, when the children of faithful parents stray from God, reject the faith, it is a very heartbreaking thing to do. And when it does happen, we don’t blame the parents, we weep with the parents.

We pray with the parents for their children, that God would bring them back. It also needs to be said that none of us are perfect Christian parents. If any of us has a child or children who grow up to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior and to walk by faith in Christ, we cannot even in the smallest way give credit to ourselves or chalk that up to our good parenting. But all the glory goes to God.

This is just another way of saying that salvation is always of the Lord. Salvation is always a gift of God’s pure mercy and grace to the one who receives it. And if God is pleased to give that gift to our children, we bless Him for it, we praise Him for it, we cannot say, it’s because I was such a good parent. However, having said that, we can say that on the basis of this passage and on the basis of other scriptural teaching, in God’s general dealings with people, ordinarily, generally, He brings it about that the faith of the parents or the lack of faith of the parents is often passed down to their children.

And so, at the end of the day, we pray. We pray for God’s grace for our children, that He will fulfill His covenant promises that we may see that fulfillment in our day. But notice how the grace of God here far exceeds His justice. He keeps steadfast love, not to three or four generations, but to thousands, to the thousands generation.

On the other hand, He visits the iniquity of the fathers only to the third and fourth generation. And so if we can put it this way, there is a kind of comparison here in verse 7. And God’s grace, His mercy, far outshines His strict justice. And again, that gets to the truth that God is fundamentally a gracious God.

He delights in showing grace and mercy to sinners. And what’s significant about this list of God’s attributes – of course, everything that is named here is significant – but it’s significant that God declared all of them to Moses. God didn’t just tell Moses that he is gracious and merciful and leave it at that, nor did he just tell Moses that he is righteous and just and leave it at that, but all of these truths together, taken as a whole, constitute the full glory of God, who he is as God. As one author put it, God’s glory was revealed in the totality of his perfections.

And it is absolutely crucial that if we are to know God rightly, if we are to have a right knowledge of God, the God who’s made known to us in the scriptures, we don’t just believe a part of who God is, we believe everything about who God is. We live in a time when many people think of God only in terms of love and mercy and grace. And at the very same time, people do not like, some even hate, the idea of the righteousness of God, the holiness of God. But the problem is, without a true understanding of God’s righteousness, we cannot truly understand God’s grace.

It is only against the backdrop of the truth that God is a holy God, a righteous God, who must deal justly with sin that we can understand the full extent, the full meaning of His mercy, of His grace. He does not deal with us as we deserve, as His righteousness demands. And so He is merciful only because He is also righteous and just. But when we reject some truths about God, we have a distorted understanding of God and we don’t truly know Him.

Mercy without righteousness becomes a kind of easy indulgence. Grace without holiness becomes a kind of blanket tolerance for sin. And so this distorted, false understanding of God sounds like this, you know, God is he’s not all that concerned about righteousness and holiness. You go ahead and live however you want, follow your heart, do what you think is right, what pleases you.

God is always there to accept you. He is always there to to love you and to be good to you and to be gracious to you, no matter how you live your life. Or God is is good. He just wants you to be happy.

He is willing to accept you as you are, without any demand for change or repentance or to live righteously. That’s the kind of distortion we get of God. He becomes kind of a cosmic Mr. Rogers, who’s all acceptance, but no demand for change or for righteousness. The truth is, God is both righteous and merciful.

He is both holy and gracious. Paul says this in Romans 11, verse 22. Note then the kindness and severity of God. God shows incredible kindness, incredible mercy to those who come to him in repentance and faith with true sorrow for their sin.

God is abounding in steadfast love. He loves, He delights in forgiving those who come to Him, seeking that forgiveness. But for those who fail to repent, for those who reject Christ, who will not obey the gospel of Jesus Christ, who will not come to Him in faith, God shows what else is true about Him. He is a God of severity, of righteousness, of justice, and he will by no means clear the guilty.

And so to truly know God, you must know the whole truth about God. And that was revealed to Moses when the Lord passed by and declared his name. But there was another time that the scriptures tell us, an unparalleled time, when the Lord revealed the full extent of his love and mercy and grace and of his righteousness and holiness. And of course, that was at the cross of Jesus Christ.

The cross of Jesus Christ is a revelation of the uncompromising righteousness of God, because we see in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ what sin deserves. This is what your sin deserved. This is what my sin deserved. God cannot tolerate sin.

He cannot abide with sin. He must judge it. He must condemn it. And when you see Jesus, by faith, hanging upon the cross, you see there the revelation of what God must do to sin.

He must destroy the sinner. The curse of death, that Jesus died, is God’s righteous response to sin. But at the very same time, the love, the mercy were revealed so magnificently, gloriously at the cross of Jesus Christ, because Jesus hung there, not because of his own sin, not because he was deserving of the wrath of God, but he hung there in the place of others. He hung there to take the sin and the guilt of others, of you and of me.

And that is the expression of the love of God that he provided a way in his son that we might be forgiven. And if your faith is in Jesus Christ, then you have received that grace. You have come to know the love of God, that the God who has saved you, he is a righteous God, but his justice has been satisfied with Christ. And you are now forgiven, and in his presence, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, accepted, loved, the object of his favor, both now and forevermore.

And you have come to know God in all of his glory, a righteous God, but a God of love.

Real briefly, the third truth that this passage teaches us is that you know God only if your knowledge of Him leads to worship. I remember the very first day of seminary, one of the professors was talking to us students. We were all eager to crack open these huge theological tomes and start learning theology and studying Hebrew and Greek and filling our heads with all kinds of knowledge of God. He says, he said to us, there are 14 inches between the heart and the brain.

And whatever we learn about God in the years ahead, in all of our studies, if it only remains in the brain, if that knowledge never travels that 14 inches down to the heart, then what good is it? It does us no good at all. If the knowledge of God is mere information, it is, to us, worthless. It’s not true knowledge of Him.

That certainly wasn’t the case with Moses. All that the Lord revealed to him, it didn’t remain in his brain. He didn’t say to himself, I can’t wait to go down to the mountain and impress all the people of Israel with my amazing knowledge of God. It didn’t remain with him in his head, but it traveled down into his heart, and we know that because he did the only thing that a person can do who is overcome in the presence of God, knowing him, and that is that Moses bowed down and he worshiped.

He worshiped. Verse 8, and Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. This was Moses’s response to the revelation that God had given him of his glory. When he beheld the small glimpse of his glory, when he heard these truths about who God is, all he could do is to bow at the feet of God and praise him.

And God has revealed his name to you as well for that same purpose, so that you will praise him, that you will worship him in the name that God has revealed to you is not just Lord, but the name is Jesus. And he has proclaimed his name to you, not on Mount Sinai, not giving you the two tablets of the law, but he has proclaimed his name to you in the gospel, in his son, Jesus Christ, full of grace, full of truth. And if you have come to know him by faith, you have come to know God for forgiveness, for salvation, for eternal life. But above all, that you might worship him, that you might praise and give glory to him for who he is as your God and your savior.

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading in our sermon text is Exodus chapter 33, and this is God’s inerrant and infallible Word. Let’s hear the Word of God. The Lord said to Moses, depart, go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, to your offspring I will give it. I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey, but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people. When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, Say to the people of Israel, You are a stiff-necked people. If for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you.

So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you. Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments from Mount Horeb onward. Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.

Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up and each would stand at his tent door and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent and the Lord would speak with Moses. And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship each at his tent door. Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend.

When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent. Moses said to the Lord, see, you say to me, bring up this people, but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, I know you by name and you have also found favor in my sight. Now, therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight.

Consider too that this nation is your people. And he said, my presence will go with you and I will give you rest. And he said to him, if your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people?

Is it not in your going with us so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth? And the Lord said to Moses, this very thing that you have spoken, I will do. For you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name. Moses said, please show me your glory.

And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name, the Lord. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But he said, you cannot see my face for man shall not see me and live. And the Lord said, behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock.

And while my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand and you shall see my back but my face shall not be seen.

And now let’s turn to 1 John 3 for our New Testament reading, 1 John 3, 1-3.

1 John 3, 1-3. See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God, and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is, and everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

You can turn back to Exodus for our sermon text this morning. We are continuing to work our way through the book of Exodus. And last Lord’s Day, we looked at the terrible consequences that came upon the people of Israel because of their idolatry and sin, because they made this golden calf and worshiped it. And those consequences included Moses coming down the mountain and in anger, shattering the two tablets of the covenant that God had given to Moses to give to the people of Israel. 3,000 Israelites were killed by the hand of the Levites at the command of the Lord. And on top of that, the Lord sent a plague upon the people of Israel.

And in our passage this morning, we learn that there was one more consequence, one more evil fruit that was born because of the idolatry of the Israelites, a consequence that was potentially the worst consequence of all, and that is the Lord would no longer be with his people. His presence would no longer go with them. In verse one in chapter 33, the Lord commands Moses to lead the people to the land of Canaan, the promised land. And in verse two, the Lord says that He will send an angel before them. He doesn’t say that He will go before them, but He will send an angel before them to drive out all of the Canaanites who inhabit the land.

But then the Lord says this to Moses in verse three. He says, “Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey, but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.” This was the worst thing that the Israelites possibly could have heard from the mouth of God, that the Lord, the Lord their God, the Lord who mercifully heard their cries of distress when they were under the tyranny of Pharaoh and rescued them from Egypt. The Lord who delivered them through the parting of the Red Sea and destroyed all their enemies after them. The Lord who provided for them the manna in the wilderness. The Lord who protected them in the wilderness. He would no longer be with his people.

From this point on, the Israelites were on their own. Verse four says that this was a disastrous word. And indeed, it would be a disastrous word: “I will not go up among you.” And when the people heard it, they mourned.

Perhaps this was the first time that the Israelites really began to understand the magnitude of the evil that they had committed. Perhaps now, for the first time, they’re really coming to grips with what they had done, how they had sinned against God, how they had forfeited any claim or right to His presence with them. Perhaps now, like the prodigal son in the far country, this was the point at which the Israelites came to themselves, or came to their senses, and realized just how foolish and evil they had been.

If the Lord left them, from now on they would be no different from all the other people in the world, all the nations around them. As Paul put it in Ephesians, speaking of Gentiles apart from Christ, the Israelites would be without hope, having no hope and without God in the world. So this was a disastrous word. And rightfully, the people mourned.

But at least they still had Moses. They still had Moses, their leader, their mediator, to intercede for them, to pray for them before God. And as we look at this chapter, we’ll see that the Lord not only answers the prayer of Moses when he pleads to him that he would not forsake his people, but the Lord also answers a personal prayer of Moses to give him a far greater experience of his presence that he had yet known before. And this morning, we’ll walk through this chapter together, we’ll take a section at a time, and as we go along in this chapter, we’ll draw some lessons from it that apply to us today as believers in Jesus Christ, as the people of God today.

So first, we’ll look at verses one through six. Again, in these verses, the Lord tells Moses that he has to lead the people to the promised land. Notice how the Lord refers to the people of Israel. In verse one, he calls them “the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt.” And so at this point, the Lord is not even claiming the people of Israel as his people. They are your people, Moses; you are the one who led them out of Egypt.

God promises Moses that he will send an angel before them to drive out all the inhabitants of the land. And then in verse three, as we saw, the Lord tells Moses that he will not go with the people of Israel, and he tells him why he will not go with them. Look again at verse three, he says, “I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people”—lest I consume you, destroy you on the way. The reason why the Lord would not, at this point, at least, the reason why he says he will not go up with his people into the land of Canaan was because they were so stiff-necked, they were so rebellious, so stubborn in their rejection of God, that if he was with them, even for a single moment, he would consume them in his wrath because of the sin in their hearts.

And that’s because God is holy. He is righteous. Just like oil and water cannot mix, so God in His intrinsic, inherent holiness cannot abide with anything that is less than perfectly holy and righteous. He cannot abide with sin. Evil cannot dwell in His presence. Habakkuk 1:13 says, He is of purer eyes than to behold evil; He cannot look at wrong. And so, He could not go with His people; He would destroy them.

This is a reminder to us, as the sons of Adam, as the descendants of our first parents who sinned against God in the garden, as those who live in a world that is cursed by sin, and as those who are fallen from the good graces of God. This is our most fundamental problem: it is our sin. This is our most basic human predicament. This is the most profound dilemma that we face as human beings. Whatever multitude of other problems that plague us in this world, this is it. This is the worst; this is at the bottom of all of them, and that is, by our sin, we are alienated from the God who created us. Because of our sin, unless God intercedes with His grace, because of our sin, we cannot hope to enjoy the presence of God until our sin is forgiven.

And we cannot be forgiven, we cannot make ourselves righteous by anything that we can do. And so by nature, because of our sin, we are helplessly in bondage to our sin and to this condemnation that is ours because of it. And what that means, of course, is that because we cannot save ourselves, we need God to save us. There is only one who can save us from this predicament, there is only one who can deliver us from this bondage that we are under to sin, and that is the Lord.

And of course, that is exactly what God has done for us in His Son, Jesus Christ. When we come to Christ in faith, He forgives our sins, He covers us with the righteousness of Jesus himself, that we may be reconciled to God more properly, that God may be reconciled to us, that his wrath may be taken away so that he may be with us for blessing and good. And this is what God has done for us in the gospel. But here’s an illustration of why we need the gospel: in our sin, if God was with us even for a moment, he would consume us.

Now, when Moses told the people that the Lord would no longer go with them, they were devastated, as they should have been. Verse four, “When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments.” The people mourned. And these were not just crocodile tears that the people of Israel were shedding, but their sorrow was genuine. They demonstrated their contrition, their repentance, by putting off their ornaments. The text doesn’t tell us exactly what these ornaments were, but most likely, given the context, they had something to do with the idolatry that they committed when they worshiped the golden calf. And so they showed their repentance by not wearing this jewelry. Verse six, “Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments from Mount Horeb onward.”

So at this point, things are looking very grim, very bleak, but there is one glimmer of hope in what the Lord says to the people of Israel through Moses. He says in verse five, “So now take off your ornaments that I may know what to do with you.” Perhaps the Lord has not finally determined that he would leave his people as they deserve. Perhaps, humanly speaking, or if we could speak of God in human terms, perhaps he will reconsider what he has declared. God may yet be gracious and merciful to his people and bless them again with his presence.

And as you know, the Lord was merciful. He was gracious. He did not carry out this awful judgment that the Israelites deserved. He did not abandon his people to themselves, leaving them to their own devices. Again, that’s what they brought upon themselves, but God was gracious. He would again take His people to Himself. He would go with them through the wilderness; He would lead them into the promised land.

And this demonstrates one of the wonderful promises that God makes to you and me in Jesus Christ, and that is He promises that He will never leave us nor forsake us. If you belong to Christ, that is God’s assurance, His guarantee to you: He will never leave you nor forsake you. We can rejoice, we can be glad that God does not deal with us on the basis of justice. We have this instinct within us, and sometimes people will say they want God to be fair, they want God to be just. Do we really want that? Do we really want God to deal with us according to what we deserve? No, and He doesn’t deal with us according to what we deserve.

Because if He did, every single day we would forfeit any claim or right that we might have to the presence of God, to God’s blessing. We would forfeit it because of our sin, because of our unbelief, because of our idolatry. But God doesn’t deal with us like that in Christ. And as a believer in Jesus Christ, God deals with you on the basis of His mercy, His grace, not what you deserve, but what He wills, how He wills to bless you and to love you, to forgive you. God sees you not as you are in yourself, but He sees you as you are in Christ.

And in Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven. God does not see them; He does not count them against you. In Christ, you have been justified; you are proclaimed righteous, perfectly righteous in Christ. In Christ, you have been adopted into God’s family. Not merely forgiven, but adopted. You have God as your Father who loves you; you are the beloved child of God. And so your standing with God is secure. God is not looking down from heaven at you, just waiting for you to mess up. He’s not going to say to you someday, “What, you’ve sinned again? I’m washing my hands of you, I’m through with you.” No, God doesn’t deal with us that way.

He is patient, forbearing, forgiving. He loves you, and He promises that He will be with you always in this life and in the life to come, even though you and I daily provoke Him with our sin. God is merciful. And the amazing thing is, and here we run into some mystery as we consider the ways of God with us, though it is God’s will, of course, that we not sin, and when we sin, we displease Him, we do what is contrary to His will and to His holy character, nevertheless, God uses even our sins, even our failures in His providence, in His sovereign work in our hearts and in our lives, to use them somehow to further us in His gracious work of sanctification, drawing us nearer to Him, conforming us more and more to the image of Jesus Christ. And it’s not the sins themselves that God uses, but it’s the consequences, the way that He works in our hearts when we fail, when we sin, that God uses to work these gracious and loving purposes out for us.

Now, in verses 7 through 11, we read how the Lord used to meet with Moses outside the camp of the Israelites, and he met with Moses in what is called the Tent of Meeting. This passage, or this section in the chapter, if this is confusing to you, you’re not the only one. This was always confusing to me. And the reason for that is because, as we have seen, God gave to Moses all of these very elaborate and detailed plans on how the Israelites were to build this tabernacle, and the tabernacle is also called the Tent of Meeting. But at this point, the tabernacle has not been built. In fact, at this point, there’s some question as to whether it will ever be built. And yet here, Moses is meeting the Lord in what is called the Tent of Meeting.

And the key to understanding this confusion is to understand that the Tent of Meeting here is not the same Tent of Meeting that refers to the tabernacle, but this Tent of Meeting is a temporary tent, and it was the place where Moses would meet with the Lord. Moses called it the Tent of Meeting; maybe he should have called it something else, but that’s what he called it. And so this is a kind of second Tent of Meeting, but not the tabernacle.

And these verses explain how Moses would go outside the camp, he would meet with the Lord there. If you read between the lines a bit, he intercedes for the people in this Tent of Meeting. The people see the Lord—well, not the Lord himself, they see the pillar of cloud above the tent—and when they see that, they worship God. We’re introduced to Joshua, as Joshua is mentioned here as a young man who guards the tent when Moses is not there.

But what made this tent a necessity was the fact that the Lord had said that he would not go up among his people, because the tabernacle was the place where the Lord was going to dwell with his people. That’s where his presence would be. He would dwell above the cherubim, above the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies in that holy tent or tabernacle that the Israelites were to make after the pattern that God had showed to Moses on the mountain.

But now all those plans for the tabernacle have been shelved. The Lord would not be with his people, and if the Lord would not be with his people, then what point was there in making a tabernacle? What point would there be in a tabernacle that was empty, with no presence of God there? But Moses had this provisional, temporary tent of meeting.

And so this was one way in which the Lord was giving a visible demonstration of what he had said, that he would not go up among his people. Only Moses could meet with God in this tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. And not only was it outside the camp, but in verse 7 it says that Moses pitched it far off from the camp. It was far off from the camp, as if to underline this sad truth that the Lord would not be among his people, he would not even be near his people, but he would meet with Moses far off in this tent of meeting.

But again, there’s still hope here. The Lord had not utterly abandoned the people of God, the Israelites, because he would still manifest his glory to them in this pillar of cloud. He would still meet with Moses and Moses would still intercede for the people of Israel. The Lord would still hear him. And so this is another indication that God was not ready to utterly forsake his people.

As we move on in verses 12 through 17, we see one way in which the Lord pleaded with his people, that Moses would plead with the Lord for his people to bless the Israelites with his presence. And that is Moses, if we can put it this way, Moses would remind God of who the people of Israel were. He says in verse 13, “Consider too that this nation is your people.” Remember God, you have chosen this people, you have loved this people, this nation, as wayward as they are, as stubborn and stiff-necked as they are, these are your people.

Basically, Moses says in a shorthand way the same thing that he says back in chapter 32 at verse 13. He says, “Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self and said to them, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and all this land that I promised I will give to your offspring and they shall inherit it forever.” And so Moses is telling the Lord, “Lord remember, remember, these are your covenant people. You have promised to be with them. You have made them your own; they are yours, you are their God.”

And thanks in part to this faithful intercession by Moses, the Lord did not give up on his covenant promises to Israel. He says to Moses in verse 14, “My presence will go with you and I will give you rest.” And so God would remember his covenants; He would not abandon His people in the wilderness, He would not leave them to themselves, but He would be with them to bring them into the Promised Land. And He would do this gracious thing despite the sin, despite the failures of the people of Israel.

And this demonstration, the grace of God here, that He willed, that He committed Himself to be with His people despite their failure, despite their sin, this shows us a glorious truth that is at the very heart of our hope in Jesus Christ, and that is this: that God is leading us. As believers in Christ, He is guiding us, leading us, taking us to our promised land, which is heaven, the glory that is to come. In the new age, with the new heavens and new earth, God is taking us there.

And what will get us there is not our own faithfulness, our own steadfastness, our own obedience, our own consistency in serving God, but what will get us there is the faithfulness of God, His mercy, His steadfastness, His lovingkindness. Philippians 1:6 says, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” I have no doubt when Paul wrote those words, he did not write them thinking about how godly and holy and righteous the Philippians were; he knew them. He knew they were sinners; he knew their failures.

And the Holy Spirit speaks these words to us, not because He sees how godly and righteous and faithful we are, but He speaks these words to us because they are a reflection of God’s grace, His mercy, His loving purposes for us to bring us to heaven, bring to completion that good work that he has begun in us. And here in Exodus 33, the Lord is bringing to completion the good work that he started with the Israelites. Despite their sin, he is going to bring them into the promised land.

Now in verse 16, we see another way in which the Lord petitions, or that Moses petitions the Lord, not to withdraw his presence from them. He says in verse 16, “For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?” So Moses here gives expression to a truth that the Israelites had forgotten, or at least they did their very best to erase, and that truth is that the people of God were distinct. They were set apart from all the other peoples, all the other nations in the world. There was something utterly unique and different about this people, and it was that God was with them. That’s what made them special and distinct: the Lord was with them. Verse 16, “Is it not in your going with us so that we are distinct?”

And so when the Israelites made this golden calf, this idol, and worshiped it, what they were doing was they were acting like all the other nations around them, all the other nations of the world. They were worshiping the idols of their hearts that they made with their own hands; they were exchanging the glory of God for the creature. And why is that? It’s because they did not know the true God—well, they knew Him, but they suppressed the truth in unrighteousness. They did not know Him in truth; they did not know the Creator of the universe, the Lord of all, because he had not appeared to the peoples of the world.

God had not taken the nations of the earth and made them his possession. He had not made a covenant with them as he did with the people of Israel. He had not promised any other people of the world that he would be their God, that they would be his people. That was a promise given only to the people of Israel.

And so because the people of the world were without God, therefore they did what we do by nature, and that is we make our own gods, we worship the idols of our own imaginations, the idols we make with our own hands. But Israel was different. They were God’s people; He loved them, He chose them, He would dwell among them, and that’s what made them special, that’s what made them distinct from the world, and it is the same reality that sets us apart as the church of Jesus Christ from the world around us. It is that God dwells in our midst, the living and the true God, the God who sustains all things, in whom we live and move and have our being. This God dwells in our midst as those who belong to Jesus Christ.

This is what makes us distinct as the Church, as Christians: God has given us His Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, to indwell in us. He’s made us the new tabernacle, the true dwelling place of God on earth. And this truth, this reality, ought to show itself in the life of the church, in the life of the people of God. There are many ways in which we should be radically distinct from the world.

One way is that we worship God. On a beautiful Sunday morning, we’re not out on the golf course, we’re not at the beach, but we’re gathered here together to give thanks and praise and to worship God. That certainly makes us different from the world. We pursue righteousness; we reject the morals of this world, and we seek to honor God in the way in which we live. We show love for one another.

In all of these ways, we are distinct from the world, but all of these things boil down to this one great fundamental truth that separates us from the world, and that is God is in our midst. He lives among us. And insofar as you and I as believers in Christ, insofar as we live lives that are faithful to Christ, insofar as we are faithful to worship and serve the Lord, to pursue righteousness, to reject sin, to love one another from the heart, to show love to one another in acts of kindness and mercy, then we will be a witness to the world about us. Where is God to be found?

Well, He is the most pure Spirit; we cannot see Him, yet here is a people among whom he lives. He has made himself known to them; they worship him, they serve him, they love him, they love one another. Their God is. And so like the Israelites, as the church of Jesus Christ, we are set apart from the world because the Lord is among us. And to the extent that our collective life as the body of Christ manifests that truth, to that extent we are what God has called us to be in 1 Peter 2:9, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.”

At the end of this section, in verse 17, the Lord reaffirms to Moses that yes, he will go with his people. He says in verse 17, “This very thing that you have spoken, I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”

And that brings us to the last section, verses 18 through 23. Moses is still interceding for the Israelites, but he is led to make this bold request in verse 18, a request for himself, really. He says, “Please show me your glory.”

Now, this seems like an abrupt change. I mean, Moses is praying on behalf of the Israelites, and then seemingly out of the blue, he says, “Oh Lord, show me your glory.” But it’s not hard to imagine how Moses came to this point, because he is in the presence of God, and he’s caught up in being in his presence, in the glory, the majesty, the greatness of God. And God has declared to Moses that he will be merciful and gracious to his people, and Moses, his heart longs for an even greater experience of the fullness of God’s presence. And so he says, “Please show me your glory.”

He wants more. And that’s true for every believer in Jesus Christ. The more we experience the truth and the love and the grace of God that he pours out upon us through his son, Jesus Christ, we are never truly filled. We are never truly content and satisfied with what God has blessed us with; we want more of God. We want to experience His grace, His love, the life that He gives us more and more. When we truly taste that, we never get full.

And so for Moses, it’s as though he forgets why he came into the presence of God in the first place, to pray for the people of Israel. He just tells the Lord the longing in his heart: “Oh Lord, I want more of You. Please show me Your glory.” And this is Moses. Remember, of all the people in the world, no one had seen the glory of God like Moses. He beheld that wonderful manifestation of the glory of God in the burning bush. It was Moses alone who went to the top of Mount Sinai and beheld God there. The Lord spoke to him in the tent of meeting face to face, but he wants more of God, so he says, “Show me your glory.”

Now, the Lord cannot answer this prayer, at least to the full extent that Moses would like. He cannot show Moses the fullness, the perfection of his glory, because if he did, he says in verse 20, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” Even Moses could not survive being in the unguarded presence of God in the fullness of his glory and majesty; he too would be consumed because of sin. Paul says in 1 Timothy 6:16 that God dwells in unapproachable light whom no one has ever seen or can see.

However, the Lord does answer his prayer. He will not give Moses a revelation of the fullness of his glory, but he will reveal something of his glory to Moses. He will make his goodness pass before him; He will proclaim his name to him; He will put Moses in the cleft of the rock. He will not see the face of God, but God will remove his hand from Moses and he’ll catch a glimpse of his glory in his back. And that’s just a way of saying that he will not see the face of God, the fullness of his majesty and greatness, but he will see his glory in parts. And that’s what God does for Moses in the next chapter, which we’ll see, Lord willing, next week.

But Moses gives us an example to follow here when he prays to see the glory of God, and that is above all else as a Christian, this ought to be the longing, the desire of our hearts: to know more of God, to behold Him in His glory for who He is as God, as our Savior. Another way to put it would be this: we should want above all else to be in the presence of Jesus Christ. This should be our heart’s longing, to behold Him by faith, to commune with Him, to know Him. And if your hope is in Jesus Christ, one day you will be in his presence forever.

Notice that for Moses, there was no point in going to the promised land if the Lord would not be with him and the people of Israel. He says in verse 15, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.” Oh Lord, we’ll just stay in the wilderness. It doesn’t matter how many rivers of milk and honey are flowing in the promised land; it doesn’t matter how glorious the promised land is; if you are not there, what’s the point of being there? For Moses, what made the promised land a place worth going to was that the Lord would be there.

And in the same way, what makes heaven a place that we want to be is because that’s where Jesus is. There are many people in this world who think they are going to heaven; they assume they’re going to heaven. They think that they’re going to like it in heaven. They think that heaven is going to be just the magnification of everything they want in this life. It’ll be spending time at the beach all day, free beer all day, it’ll be hanging out with your friends all day. But these same people, they don’t truly know Christ; they don’t love Christ. In fact, for many of them, they want nothing to do with Christ.

Which raises the question: if you want nothing to do with Jesus in this life, then why do you want to go to heaven? What makes heaven heavenly is the presence of Christ, of Jesus. And it is only those who have tasted the goodness of the Lord, who have come to Christ by faith, who have found him to be their heart’s delight and treasure—it is only those who love Christ in this life who will be blessed with being in the presence of Christ forever in the life to come.

Is this the longing of your hearts? Is this where you are in your hearts? Do you want to be with Jesus? I know we all want to avoid the horrors and terrors and agonies of hell, but do you want to be with Jesus? Is that why you long for heaven?

If it is, this is God’s promise to you, that one day you will be with him; you will see him in all of his glory. First John 3:2 says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.” We shall see him as he is.

Again, Moses prayed to the Lord, “Please show me your glory.” And God has given us an answer to Moses’s prayer that far exceeds what Moses experienced when God showed him his glory. In part, Moses would see a partial revelation of the glory of God, but he has given you and me a far greater revelation when he revealed himself to us in his son, Jesus. John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” We’ve seen the glory of God in the person of Christ.

Jesus says the most amazing words in John 14:9. He says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Now, sometimes we wonder, “Well, I have an idea in my mind of Jesus, because I read about Him in the New Testament, and His love and His grace, but what is the Father like?” Well, Jesus says, when you look at me, you look at the Father, revealed the Father, because the Father is in me, in my love, my compassion, my grace. This is nothing other than the grace, the compassion, the love of the Father through me.

And so when you, with the eyes of faith, see Jesus, you are beholding in his face nothing less than the glory of God, the very thing that Moses longed to see. And as you look into the face of Jesus and see there, you see there not only God’s glory revealed, but you see the love of the Father, and you also have the guarantee of God’s promise that because He has given you His Son to be your Savior, that He will never leave you nor forsake you. He gives you the promise that He will be with you always, forever. He will bring you into that true promised land, that glory that is coming with the coming of Christ.

Let’s pray.

The post The Glory of God in the Face of Christ appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

Our Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 32, verses 15 through 35. 32, 15, to 35, and this is God’s infallible, his inspired, his inerrant word. Let’s hear the word of God.

Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides, on the front and on the back, they were written. The tablets were the work of God and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.

When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, there is a noise of war in the camp. But he said, it is not the sound of shouting for victory or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear.

And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it.

And Moses said to Aaron, what did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them? And Aaron said, let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. So I said to them, let any who have gold take it off. So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.

And when Moses saw that the people had broken loose, for Aaron had let them break loose to the derision of their enemies, then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me. And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. And he said to them, thus says the Lord God of Israel, put your sword on your side, each of you, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill his brother and his companion and his neighbor.

And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And that day about 3,000 men of the people fell. And Moses said, today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day.

The next day, Moses said to the people, you have sinned a great sin. And now I will go up to the Lord, perhaps I can make atonement for your sin. So Moses returned to the Lord and said, alas, this people has sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will forgive their sin, but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.

But the Lord said to Moses, whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you. Behold, my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them.

Then the Lord sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf, the one that Aaron made.

And now turn to Matthew chapter 10 for our New Testament reading, and then we’ll turn back to Exodus. Matthew chapter 10, verses 34 to 39. Matthew 10, 34 through 39.

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

When you read a fairy tale to children, what are the final words that are written on the last page? They live happily ever after. And we might be tempted to think of salvation in that way, that once a person comes to faith in Christ and his sins are forgiven, that is the end of the story and he lives happily ever after.

But of course, you know that that idea of the Christian life is not true. The Christian life is often filled with sorrow, with struggle, with suffering. And although in the Christian life we do enjoy the peace of God, the life of God, the joy that God gives us, nevertheless, the happily ever after part does not truly begin until we are brought into glory, to be in the presence of God forever. That’s when the real happily ever after begins.

And one of the ways in which we as Christians struggle in this life is that we must deal with the consequences of our sin, of our foolishness, the ways in which we have transgressed God’s commandments. We know as Christians that we are forgiven, we are justified, we will never be more forgiven than we are at this moment, trusting in Christ. Nevertheless, in this world, we still must face the consequences of our sin. And sometimes those consequences can be very severe and very difficult.

And that is the hard lesson that the Israelites learned after their sin of making and worshiping the golden calf. The Israelites were spared from complete and utter destruction. However, the story of the golden calf episode does not end with the words, and they lived happily ever after. Instead, the Israelites suffered the dire consequences that their sin and their idolatry brought upon them. And today we’ll consider those consequences as they are described for us here in our passage, and we’ll draw some lessons along the way for us as Christians today.

But first, since it’s been a while since we’ve been in the book of Exodus, let’s review a little bit what happened to this point in the story of Exodus. The Israelites, they are at Mount Sinai in the wilderness. Their leader, Moses, he has been on the top of the mountain in the presence of the Lord, and he has been receiving from the Lord the various laws and statutes and commandments that would govern the life and the worship of the people of God.

And God has just given to Moses the two tablets of stone upon which God himself inscribed the words of the Ten Commandments. And so Moses is ready to come down the mountain to bring the law of God to the Israelites. But before he does, he learns from the Lord what has been taking place at the foot of the mountain among the people of Israel. And what he hears is simply appalling.

The people of Israel, they went to Aaron, Moses’ brother, who was left in charge of the people. They went to him and they demanded that he make for them a God to quote, go before them, that is to lead them on their way to the promised land. And so the people of Israel have given up on Moses, they have given up on the Lord, and they are ready to make their own God to lead them to the promised land.

And so, this is in the first part of chapter 32, we read that some time ago, but Aaron collected all the gold jewelry of the people, and we read that he made from it a golden calf that is an idol. And the Israelites proclaimed in verse 4, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Then Aaron doesn’t stop there, but he makes an altar to the golden calf, and the people make offerings to it. They sat down to eat and drink, and then they rose up to play. It was a great festival of idolatry and hedonism in the desert. We might say it was the original burning man taking place there in Egypt, or not in Egypt, but at the foot of Mount Sinai.

And this sin of the Israelites was so great that the Lord threatened to annihilate the entire nation of Israel, except for Moses. He would save Moses and he would start with Moses and make a new people of God with Moses as their progenitor. But because Moses interceded for the Israelites in prayer, we read in verse 14, the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. And so Moses, the faithful leader and mediator of the people of Israel, through his intercession, he saved the people from utter destruction.

And as I said, if the story of the golden calf ended right there, if there was nothing after verse 15, or verse 14 rather, we might think that the end of the story was they lived happily ever after. But that was not the end of the story. The Lord did spare the Israelites from complete destruction, but He did not spare them, He did not save them from suffering the consequences of their sin. And as we’ll see, those consequences were very severe.

The first consequence of Israel’s sin was that they had to endure the righteous anger of Moses against them. As Moses came down the mountain with the two tablets in his hand, he meets his assistant, Joshua. Joshua was waiting for him partway down the mountain. And as the two leaders come closer to the foot of the mountain, they hear in the distance down below a faint noise of shouting.

And Joshua being the military man, he assumes that it is the sound of war. But Moses knows better because he has already heard from the Lord what is really happening down there. And he says to Joshua that these are not the shouts of war, but the shouting and singing of a people reveling in their idolatry and in their immorality. It’s a great party that they’re having down at the foot of the mountain, an idolatrous and debauched party.

And we read this in verse 19, verse 19: And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. At first glance, when we first hear what happens, what Moses does there, we assume that what happened was that he just became so enraged that he blew a gasket and in his uncontrollable anger, he hurled the tablets on the ground and they shattered on the rocks. Now Moses was certainly angry, there’s no question about that. He was very angry.

And we know that Moses, he was a man, he was a sinner, he was capable of an unrighteous, sinful kind of anger that we are all very familiar with. We know that that was true at least one other time in the Old Testament. But not here. This was a godly anger. This was righteous indignation on the part of Moses. He was righteously appalled and angry at the sin of the Israelites because they had dishonored God, because they had debased themselves in their idolatry and revelry.

And his throwing down the tablets to break them was not because Moses just lost his anger and threw his tablets to the ground like we might do if we get angry at something, we want to throw something. But rather, Moses deliberately broke the tablets in order to show the Israelites the truth of what they had done. Moses was kind of acting out the truth of what the Israelites had done by their sin. And that is because of their idolatry, they had broken their covenant with God. They had shattered that covenant that God had made with them just as completely as the tablets were shattered into pieces on the ground when Moses threw them down.

And then after that, Moses in his holy indignation and zeal, he dealt with the idol that the people had made. He burned it with fire. He ground the remains of it into powder. He scattered the powder into water. And then he made the people of Israel drink the water.

It’s not clear why Moses made the people drink the water. One suggestion is that since this idol-infused water would come out as human waste, Moses was demonstrating to the Israelites the utter worthlessness of their idol, as if to say, this is the true worth of your cherished golden calf. It is garbage, it is waste.

Now, there is a lesson for us as we see how Moses took care of this idol that was the occasion for such sin. And that is, the only way for you to deal with an idol in your heart is to completely destroy it, to get rid of it. We may not make actual golden calves today. We may not make idols out of wood or metal or gold, but we are capable of making an idol out of many things.

And anything that becomes for you the chief desire of your hearts, anything that you look to in this life and creation to give you a sense of happiness or contentment or significance or worth or fulfillment, anything that is not Jesus Christ becomes an idol. Money, comfort, pleasure, power, these are some of the golden calves that we can make with our hearts and in our hearts. And our idols that we make, they demand nothing less than our wholehearted devotion, just as the Israelites gave themselves over to worshiping this calf.

So the idols that we set up in our hearts demand our full devotion, our loyalty. We cannot serve an idol and serve Jesus Christ at the same time. We cannot serve both. Only one can be our master, either Christ or the idol that we have made. And that is the power of an idol over our hearts and our lives.

And Moses understood that. He knew that he couldn’t just take this golden calf and take it away and put it in storage somewhere. He knew that it had to be completely destroyed or else it would be a temptation at some other time for the Israelites to take it out and to worship it. And in the same way, the only way for you to overcome idolatry is to destroy the idols of your heart.

And the chief way that you do that is by making Christ the desire, the delight of your hearts. As you, by the grace of God, as you seek that life, that blessing, that peace, the joy that only Christ can give you, that Christ can give you in abundance, as you seek that, as you make that your heart’s treasure, the thing that you long for, the thing that you want more of, as you fill your heart with Christ, then the idols have no more room in your heart. And it’s in that way that you can destroy the idols that otherwise tempt us instead of Christ. And you destroy the power of idols by doing so.

Well, after destroying this golden calf, Moses confronted his brother Aaron. And Aaron was guilty not only for caving in to the evil demands of the Israelite people. He should have stood his ground and said, no, we will not worship an idol. He not only caved in to their demands, but he also went the extra mile. He actually helped them to make the idol. He made it himself, in fact.

Now, presumably, we have to believe that at some point Aaron repented of this great sin that he had committed. But what we see here is not that repentance. In fact, what we see here is a classic example of how not to deal with your sin and how not to deal with when we have done things that we know are wrong, that are against God’s will.

First of all, you don’t blame others for the wrong you have done. In verse 21, when Moses asks Aaron what the people did to him that he brought such a great sin upon them, Aaron starts off by reminding Moses of what a bunch of good for nothings the Israelites were. He says in verse 22, you know the people, that they are set on evil. Moses, you know the kind of troublemakers that I’m dealing with here. Obviously, they’re the problem, not me.

And when we are confronted with our own sin, it’s instinctive, virtually. It’s such an automatic reflex on our parts. We point our fingers at others. We say things like, it’s not my fault, it’s my parents’ fault. It’s my wife’s fault. It’s my husband’s fault. It’s my friend’s fault. It’s society’s fault. We are ready to point the finger at anyone and everyone except for us for the sin that we ourselves are guilty of and responsible for. And that’s exactly what Aaron does. He blames the Israelites.

But when we have sinned, we must not do that. We must take full responsibility. We must say to ourselves, and when necessary, say to others, I have sinned. I am guilty. I did this particular wrong, and I make no excuses for it. It’s my fault I sinned.

Secondly, when confronted with our sin, we must confess the whole ugly truth of it, of what we have done. Again, we are experts at this, but we will minimize our sin, we will whitewash our sin, we will spin it so that it sounds like it’s something other than what it really is in truth, sin. And that’s exactly what Aaron did.

If there was a list of the top 10 lame excuses of all time, I think Aaron’s explanation to Moses of how this golden calf came to be would rank near the top of that list. Aaron says to Moses that the Israelites gave him their gold and then he tossed it into the fire. And then the weirdest thing happened. This golden calf just popped out of the flames.

I think the word that the Jewish people have for this kind of shameless excuse-making is chutzpah. And Aaron is demonstrating it in abundance here. He threw the gold in the fire, and this golden calf just came out of the flames. An honest answer would have been something like, Moses, I confess that I have sinned against God. I made this idol. I led the people to worship it. I built the altar for it. Please forgive me, and may the Lord forgive me.

But instead Aaron essentially lied. His recounting of the story of what happened is pretty accurate when he talks about what the Israelites did and said to him, but when it comes to his own parts, basically he lies. When your conscience convicts you of sin, or when you are confronted with your sin, the only right thing to do is to admit it. And sometimes, or… probably all the time, virtually all the time, that’s the hardest thing to do, simply to admit it. I did wrong, I sinned. And you ask for forgiveness for those that you have hurt by your sin.

Most of all, you ask the Lord for forgiveness. As David prayed in Psalm 51, against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. And the good news is, is that there is always forgiveness with God. God is always ready to forgive us. He is always ready to hear the confession of His people of sin. When they seek forgiveness, when they acknowledge their sin, when we come to Him and say that we have sinned and confess our sins, He is more than ready to forgive.

First John 1:9 says that when we confess our sins to the Lord, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Why is it so hard for us to simply acknowledge what we have done? We want to justify ourselves, we want to make ourselves right, but when we simply confess the truth and come to the Lord and seek His mercy and His forgiveness, He does not withhold that from us, but He forgives us. And then He gives us grace that we can begin to walk in new obedience.

So the first consequence of the Israelites’ sin was the righteous anger of Moses. The second consequence was much more severe than that, and that is the destruction of 3,000 people by the hand of the Levites. Verse 25 says that Moses saw that the people had broken loose to the derision of their enemies.

There is so much in this chapter that is so tragic, but this is one of the most tragic parts of this whole chapter of the Golden Calf incident. The people of Israel, they were supposed to be a holy nation. God made them His people. He created them. And He made them a people, not only to worship Him, but to be a people to show forth to the nations of the world what true righteousness is, who the true God is, what true worship looks like, what holiness looks like. They were to be a shining light to the world, showing forth the truth of God.

But instead, because of their idolatry and sin, they became a laughingstock of the nations. They were mocked by their enemies. They were derided by the nations that they were supposed to bear witness to. And in that way, not only did they fail to bear witness to the truth, but they only confirmed the nations of the world in their own sin and unbelief.

And here is one of the terrible consequences of our own sin as Christians. It destroys our witness before the world that we are a people belonging to a holy God, that we are a holy people because of Jesus Christ. It destroys our witness before the world of the truth of the gospel. And so when there is a scandal in the church, we become an object of derision to the world. And our testimony to the truth of Christ, our preaching of the gospel, sounds hollow and false.

As for the sin of the Israelites here, it was extreme. And so it called for extreme measures. Verse 26 says that Moses stood at the gates of the camp and he called out to the people, Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me. And we read that it was the Levites, the sons of Levi, who gathered to Moses.

And Moses gave the Levites here a command, a severe command. The Levites were to put on their swords. They were to go throughout the camp. They were to put to death those who were guilty of the evil things that Israel had done. Presumably, the Levites were to find and to kill the worst offenders, the ringleaders who led the people in this idolatry. Amazingly, they spared Aaron himself. And they were to show no mercy, even to their own brothers. They were to show no mercy to their friends, to their neighbors, but they were to strike down the guilty.

And the Levites faithfully carried out this the severe command from the Lord. With the sword they struck down, put to death 3,000 men. Now this is a difficult passage for us to read today, because not only were the Levites commanded by God to put to death their fellow Israelites, even in some cases their own brothers, but we read that they would be blessed in doing so.

Well, what are we to make of this? Well, first of all, this is certainly not a model or a pattern for the church today. Today, God prohibits any kind of physical punishment for Christians who sin. That is not a part of church discipline. It has no place in church discipline.

But God has given the church a process. Christ has given the church a way in which we address sin in the church. We call it church discipline. Begins with loving admonition, it calls for repentance. It should always be carried out in the spirit of love and prayer and desire to see the offender brought to repentance. In the most extreme case where there is not repentance, it calls for excommunication. But even with excommunication, we pray and hope that the offending person will be brought to repentance and faith, that the Lord would give him a new heart and work repentance in his heart and bring him to new obedience.

And so, this isn’t a model for how the church is to maintain the purity of the body of Christ today, but Christ has given us a new way to do that. Secondly, it’s important to understand that what’s at stake here is nothing less than the gospel. If God did not purify his people, if he did not work in this way to preserve their holiness and faithfulness to him, there would be no gospel today. There would be no salvation for the world today. There would be no salvation for us.

The hope of the world depended upon the basic moral and spiritual integrity of the people of Israel. And that’s because it was from the people of Israel that Christ would come. God would raise up the Messiah, the Savior of the world, from among his people. And if Israel had went her own way, if she had abandoned the Lord and her idolatry, if she had lost all association with God, and if she became like all the other nations in the world, then the promises of God to raise up from among his people a Savior could not have been fulfilled.

And so, although what the Lord commanded the Levites to do strikes us as extreme and shocking, nevertheless, it was really the Lord acting out of faithfulness to his own promises to raise up a savior, to bring salvation, that he carried out these very severe measures.

So that was the second consequence of the Israelite sin. The third consequence of the Israelite sin was a plague from the Lord.

After Moses goes to the Lord and pleads for mercy, that he would forgive the Israelites their sin, the Lord answers his prayer by promising that the angel would lead them to the promised land. In this way, God is amazingly merciful to His people Israel. He did not deal with them as their sins deserve, not even close. Yes, 3,000 men were killed, but that was just a tiny fraction of the whole nation of Israel, and they all deserved that.

But God promises Moses that He will still lead His wayward people to the land of Canaan, He would send his angel before them to lead them on their way. He would still give them that promised land that he had promised to give to their forefathers. But even so, the sin of the Israelites was so grievous that the Lord, because he is a righteous God, a holy God, who must deal with sin, He brought a final judgment against them, and that was the plague with which he inflicted them. In verse 35, we read, Then the Lord sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf, the one that Aaron made.

Now put yourself in the shoes of an Israelite who is going through all of this, who survived this, and things would look pretty bleak at this point. Your leader Moses comes down from the mountain, and he is so filled with righteous anger and indignation, he dashes the covenant of God with you to the ground, and it shatters in pieces what will be the future of Israel. And then 3,000 men were put to death, and then the whole nation suffered from this plague. We don’t know exactly the nature of it, but it was a plague, so it was awful.

Nevertheless, as an Israelites, you could always think about the fact that God was still gracious to you. He was still merciful to your people. You could give him thanks for his mercy. He did not destroy the entire nation. And God would have been just and right to do so, but he refrained.

And so even in the midst of the terrible consequences for their sin, God was gracious to his people. And God is always gracious to us as well. Even when we have to deal with the bad consequences that our sin brings into our lives and into the lives of others, that we know that God is always merciful and gracious to us in Christ.

And there’s another way that the Lord shows His grace here, and that was through this call of Moses in verse 26, when he says, who was on the Lord’s side? Despite the great sin of the Israelites, the Lord gave the people an opportunity to come over to his side, to repent, to declare their allegiance to him. And in doing so, they would find blessing.

Because this account of the golden calf tells us that the entire nation took part in this idolatry, it’s safe to assume that even the Levites, perhaps not to the same degree, but to some degree at least, they must have shared in the guilt of the people of Israel. But they came over to the Lord’s side. They answered the call of Moses. Here was an opportunity to repent, to come to the Lord.

And one lesson to take from this is that as long as you have life in this world, no matter how badly you have sinned, no matter how grievous the things that you have done are, no matter how much you may have messed up and made a mess of things, the Lord continues to call out to you. He calls out to you in the gospel invitation. Who is on the Lord’s side? Repent of your sin. Come to Christ. Come to my son. You will be forgiven and restored.

And by the grace of God, you can still answer that call. It is God’s gracious call to receive the gift of salvation. It is His call to come to Jesus, to entrust yourself wholly to the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

And if this call to come to the Lord’s side is a call to salvation, then there’s another lesson here for us, and that is this salvation is costly. This salvation to which the Lord calls us and offers us, it is costly. It costed the Levites. It demanded that the Levites show total devotion and allegiance to the Lord and to His word, even to the point of putting to death their own brothers. The Lord demanded that they would be faithful to Him, even more than their loyalty to their own blood, to their brothers.

And that’s… The Lord Jesus Christ demands nothing less of you as well. He calls you to total devotion to Him, complete consecration to Him, to make Him Lord of your life and to put Him above even loyalty to friend, to neighbor, even to family. Jesus put it this way, whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Christ demands nothing less than your absolute devotion to him, even above your own life. And so there is a cost in answering the call of God to receive that gift of salvation.

But the greatest cost of our salvation is not that, our devotion to Christ that he calls us to, but the greatest cost of our salvation is the sacrifice that Jesus made for us when he laid down his life for us upon the cross. And in our passage here this morning, you see a picture of what Jesus has done for us. You see a picture of that in Moses as he serves as the leader, the mediator, between the people of Israel and the Lord.

Moses himself, of course, he did not share in the sin of the people of Israel. Perhaps he was the one Israelite who was free of guilt from this golden calf sin, but he suffered. He suffered the anguish of knowing that they were condemned. And he was willing to suffer even eternally for the sake of his people Israel.

He says in verse 32, He’s praying to the Lord, he says, but now, if you will, forgive their sin, but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written. The book there is the book of life. What he says is a little, a little obscure. We can’t read too much into the words, but it’s hard not to think that Moses was grasping at an idea that perhaps he himself didn’t even fully comprehend, and that is if somehow, if his name could be blotted out of the book of life, perhaps that would mean salvation for the people of Israel.

But Moses could not do that. He was a sinner like the rest of the people. He may not have been guilty of this idolatry of the golden calf, but he certainly could not be a substitute for his people. He could only do so much. He couldn’t die in their place that they may live. The Lord simply says in response to Moses, whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book.

But in Jesus Christ, you have a greater mediator than Moses. Moses said he was willing to have his name blotted out of the book of life, but Jesus for a time, he truly did have his name blotted out of God’s book of life. As he hung on the cursed cross, the father turned his face away from him. And Jesus suffered the unspeakable judgment of those who are cursed to die an eternal death for their sins.

And speaking of the consequences of our sin, if you want to see the true nature, the true consequences of our sin, look to the cross. It’s there you see what our Lord suffered because of your sin, because of my sin. He was the sinless son of God. He was righteous, he was holy, and yet he suffered the agony of one under the wrath of God. Condemnation, shame, and death. It’s there we see the full extent of the consequences of our sin.

But the good news is this, that if you believe in Jesus Christ, if you have put your hope in him as your savior, the death that he died, he died for you. That curse that He took upon Himself, He took it for you. He suffered that condemnation, that wrath, the shame, the reproach that was for you and for me because of our sin. And if you trust in Christ, He took it for you. So you are free from condemnation.

It is true, you may need to endure the painful consequences of your sin. God does not save us from that. Our actions have consequences, good or bad. And God does not always deliver us from that. But he does promise that he will use those consequences for your good, as chastisement, as discipline, to form in you a more Christ-like character, to grow you in holiness and righteousness.

And the gospel declares that even now, by faith in Jesus Christ, by trusting in him, even if you are dealing with the consequences of your own sin and foolishness, you know that your sins are forgiven by God. You have been adopted as a child of your heavenly father. You have the promise that your name is not only written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, but that it will never, ever be blotted out of it because of what Jesus has done for you.

Let’s pray.

The post Who Is on the Lord’s Side? appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

Our Old Testament reading is Genesis chapter 50, verses 15 through 21. And in this passage, we hear the words that Joseph spoke to his brothers after they had been reunited and after his brothers had dealt so treacherously with Joseph, and he suffered so much as a result of that. Joseph is able to look back and to see that God had a good purpose even in all that they had done to him. So let’s hear God’s Word.

This is the infallible and inerrant Word of our God. Genesis 50, verses 15 through 21.

When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.” So they sent a message to Joseph saying, “Your father gave this command before he died, ‘Say to Joseph, please forgive the transgressions of your brothers and their sin because they did evil to you.’ And now please forgive the transgressions of the servants of the God of your father.” Joseph wept when they spoke to him. His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, “Behold, we are your servants.” But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. So do not fear. I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

And now let’s turn to the New Testament for our New Testament reading, and this is also our sermon text for today. Acts chapter 17, verses 22 through 34. Acts 17, verses 22 through 34. This is Paul’s speech or his sermon before the Areopagus in Athens.

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown God.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘in him we live and move and have our being,’ as even some of your own poets have said, ‘for we are indeed his offspring.’

Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine image is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, “We will hear you again about this.” So Paul went out from their midst, but some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Well, I know all of us are very grateful that the fires that were so threatening just over a week ago, that they have been brought under control. So we give thanks to God for that. And we are also very grateful to God that the fires were not as devastating as they could have been.

Some of us had to evacuate our homes, but no one in our church family suffered from the loss of our houses or significant property. For our family, our biggest loss was we had to throw out some spoiled food in the fridge. So not bad at all.

But we know that there were some in our community who did suffer much loss. From what I understand, there were several injuries. And I read yesterday that sadly one person did die from their injuries from the fire, and there were several dozen homes that were destroyed in the fire. And of course, that would be a devastating thing to suffer.

As Christians, as we experience a disaster like this, of course, the first thing to do, the best thing to do is to weep with those who weep, to show the compassion of Christ to those who have suffered loss, as God gives us opportunity to help those in need. At the same time, as Christians, we are called to think biblically about these kinds of events. How do we understand a sudden disaster or tragedy in the purposes of God? Why does He permit these things to happen?

Which raises a more general question: how do we understand the rule of God over us in our day-to-day lives, or God’s rule in this world? Well, these are the questions I want to address today with you, and we’ll do so by focusing on the teaching of what is called the providence of God, the providence of God.

So first of all, what is God’s providence? Well, to put it most simply, the providence of God is the truth that God exercises sovereign rule over all his creation. There is nothing that takes place in this world, whether it is good or evil, there is nothing that takes place that is outside the absolute control, power, authority, and rule of God, the Creator and Lord of all.

One of the best definitions of providence is found in our Shorter Catechism, the Westminster Shorter Catechism. What are God’s works of providence? This is number 11. God’s works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful, preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions. And God preserves and governs all his creatures and all their actions according to his eternal decree that he has set before the foundation of the world that he made in eternity, that decree that all things will take place exactly as they do in fact take place.

God has decreed all things to unfold in the course of the history of creation, just as they do. And this encompasses everything. God’s decree is over all things, from the movements of galaxies, from the courses of the tiniest subatomic particles. God’s decree encompasses all the affairs of this world; it also includes all the circumstances of your life in this world.

Now, God does establish and work through secondary causes and means. However, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, we can say this: that God unfailingly brings to pass, he infallibly brings to pass all that he has determined in eternity. And His providence is His rule over all of creation to bring about that eternal purpose that He has set for His creatures.

And so, what that means is that there is nothing in this world that takes God by surprise. God is not shocked. He is not surprised. He is not taken aback by anything that happens in this world. There is nothing that happens that is contrary or opposed to his sovereign will in governing his creation.

Now, does that mean that God is responsible for the evil that is in the world? No. God is not the author of evil. He is not the originator of evil and sin. He cannot be. He is holy. He is pure. He is righteous. Sin and evil are absolutely contrary to all that God is and his righteousness as God.

However, it does mean that even sin and evil, however mysterious their origins may be, they are under His absolute power and rule. And in a way that is far beyond our comprehension, He uses even sin and evil to further His own holy, His wise, His good purposes for His creation. And what all this means for you personally is that your life is not ruled by chance, by fate, by destiny, but it is God, the God who created you, who gives you life. It is God who personally superintends and governs and controls every circumstance of your life, from the life-changing events down to the tiniest details.

This may surprise you, but the word providence is not actually found in the Bible. If you read the King James Bible, there is one instance where the word providence is used, but it actually refers to the rule of man, not the rule of God. But providence, like the word trinity, although it is a word that is not found in the scripture, the truth of it, all that it signifies is most certainly taught in the scripture.

So providence is biblical. And there are many, many passages of the Bible that we could go to to see where this truth is made very plain, that God is the one who rules over all things. For example, we read this in Nehemiah 9, verse 6: “You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their hosts, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve all of them. And the host of heaven worships you.” It is God who preserves all his creation.

Psalm 119, verse 91: “By your appointment, they stand to this day, for all things are your servants.” All things, even the actions of those who do evil, all things are God’s servants, and He uses them for good.

Ephesians 1:11, speaking of God, of course: “He works all things according to the counsel of His will.”

And so there we can multiply Bible verses and passages that show us this truth of the providence of God. But today I’ve chosen this sermon by the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts to teach us some lessons about the providence of God.

First, we’ll look at the background to Paul’s speech. And as we do, as we look at the speech after that, we’ll follow the logic of what he says as he makes his appeal to the Athenians.

If we read earlier in Acts, we would see that Paul was sent to Athens for his own safety. If you remember, he was in Berea where he was preaching the gospel, but because of the opposition that was stirred up there by the enemies of the gospel, Paul was whisked out of the city for his own safety. And so he was taken to Athens, and he was waiting in Athens to be reunited with his fellow missionaries, Silas and Timothy.

Now, Paul was not the kind of person when he had some unplanned free time to just relax. He’s not the kind of person who would go to the beach and read a book and just wait for his friends to show up. But rather, in Athens, Paul devoted himself to doing what he did everywhere he went, and that is he preached the gospel. He preached the gospel to the Jews in the synagogue. He preached the gospel to the Gentiles in the marketplace.

And when he preached to the Gentiles in the marketplace, his preaching there created something of a stir. Some of the philosophers, we are told, were interested, at least interested enough to talk to Paul about what he was preaching. But other people dismissed him. They brushed him off. They called him a babbler. Verse 18: “What does this babbler wish to say?”

But some at least understood that Paul had a serious message to communicate and so they wanted to hear more. And so they took him and they brought him to the Areopagus. The Areopagus is actually a couple of things. First of all, it’s the name of a hill in Athens, a rock-covered hill. It’s also known as Mars Hill. But the Areopagus was also the name that was given to the judicial court of Athens that was charged with governing the moral, the religious affairs of the city. And so it was a kind of court.

Paul wasn’t on trial. He wasn’t charged with any criminal activity. Rather, he was taken to the Areopagus, this court, so that they could inquire more fully about his preaching. They wanted to hear more about what he had to say. And this curiosity on the part of the Athenians about Paul’s preaching was not necessarily a sign that they were ready to believe his message about Christ and the resurrection. But they were curious to hear more from Paul because, as Luke says it in verse 21, he says, “Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.”

I’ve often thought that that’s a very fitting description for the internet. What is the internet but a gigantic forum for hearing or seeing or telling something new? Well, the Greeks didn’t have the internet, but they did have Athens, and there they could hear something new. And with the preaching of Paul, they definitely heard something that they had not heard before. And that is the message of the resurrection of a man named Jesus. And they wanted to hear more about this strange teaching from this Jew who was preaching the resurrection of Christ.

Now, Athens was a city that was famous for its religious devotion. And of course, by religious, we mean pagan religions. There were the Jews who lived there. Of course, they worshiped the true God in the synagogue. But for all of the Gentiles, for the pagans who lived in Athens, they had all kinds of gods. The gods that they worshiped were virtually beyond number. One writer said at the time that in Athens, it is easier to find a god than a man.

And as Paul began his sermon to the Areopagus, he speaks about one altar in particular that caught his attention as he was noticing all of the altars to all the various gods in the city. It was an altar with the inscription: “To the unknown God.” Whatever the original intention may have been of the person or the people who set up that altar and inscribed those words on the altar, the Apostle Paul took it as evidence that the Athenians, despite all of the philosophies that they professed, despite all of the gods that they worshiped, that at some deep level in their hearts, they recognized that there was one true God.

We know this is what Paul understood because this is what Paul has told us in his letter to the Romans in Romans chapter 1. Paul says that God has made himself known to all people everywhere in the things that he has made. And so Paul knew that the Athenians had received from creation a certain knowledge, a true knowledge of the true God. However, just as all people do everywhere, the Athenians also suppressed that knowledge of God in unrighteousness. And so, although they did in fact receive the revelation of God through his creation, they didn’t truly know God because they suppressed that truth of him in their hearts. And yet in this altar that they made to the, quote, “unknown God,” they bore a kind of indirect, unwitting witness to the very truth about God that they perceived at one level, and yet they rejected at a more conscious level.

And so their altar to the unknown God was a kind of testimony on their parts, even if it was an unconscious testimony to the existence of the true God, the creator and Lord of heaven and earth. And so accordingly, the apostle Paul begins his speech to the Athenians by saying in verse 23, “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”

And you’ll notice in what he does in this sermon, Paul does not once quote the scriptures. And the reason for that is obvious: because he is preaching to Gentiles who did not know the scriptures. But rather, of course, everything that Paul said to the Athenians was scriptural, biblical. However, he just didn’t quote the scriptures.

However, the Apostle Paul appeals to something that the Athenians could recognize if they were willing to admit it. And that is, he appeals to the providence of God. And so he says in verses 24 and 25, he says, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, he does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”

And so Paul tells the Athenians that the true God, the living God, the one who is both the creator and the one who upholds and sustains human life, that he is the God that they have given witness to in this unwitting way, to the unknown God. And what a difference between this God and the pagan gods, the false gods, the idols that they worshiped. The pagan gods all over Athens, they were confined to their temples. They needed the help of man to keep them alive. And so the Athenians made them temples to house them, they gave them food offerings to feed them.

But Paul declares the truth about the one true God, that there is no temple in all of creation, no matter how big, that could possibly contain this God. And so far is he from needing the service of men to sustain his life, that he is the one that gives life and breath to all mankind, as he says in verse 25. And so Paul appeals to the providence of God. He’s telling the Athenians: You have been provided food and air and life. It is God who gives that to you.

And Paul continues to speak about the providence of God. He says in verse 26, this means that all people on earth come from Adam. All of us were made from Adam. We speak of different races among people, but biblically, theologically, there is just one race. It is the human race, and we are equally members of it.

Paul goes on to say that God is the one who has determined the times and the places in which all people have dwelt. In verse 26: “having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.” Here again, Paul is declaring God’s providence: that it is God who has placed all people, and this is true for you and me, He has placed us exactly in the time and the place where it was His will for us to live in this world.

Oh, there are so many more details that we could look at in this sermon, but since we’re focusing on the providence of God, we’ll have to skip some of the details, though they are very fascinating. But instead, you’ll notice that Paul ends his sermon by calling the Athenians to repentance. He says that God has been merciful to them. He has overlooked their ignorance, but now that he has raised up Jesus from the dead, and in light of the judgment that is to come upon all people, Paul tells the Athenians they must repent. They must repent of their unbelief, their idolatry. They must put their trust and hope in the Son of God, the resurrected Jesus Christ for their salvation.

So this was an evangelistic message. Some rejected it. Some put their faith in Christ. But Paul’s primary appeal in this message was to the providence of God. And if, by the grace of God, the Athenians could see it, they would acknowledge that, yes, as even their own poets have testified, it is this God, the creator, whom they have called the unknown God, it is in him that they live and move and have their being.

And everything that Paul told the Athenians then is true for you and me today as well. How is it that you continue to enjoy life in this world day by day? Well, it is God who gives you life and breath and everything. Every meal you eat, every breath you take, every morning that you wake up in this world is God’s gift to you.

Why do you live where you live? Why do you live now at this time and not some other time? It is because God in his providence has placed you exactly in the place where he willed you to be.

And we can expand on those kinds of questions. Why are all the particular circumstances in your life what they are? Well, it’s not chance or fortune or bad luck, but God has determined all the circumstances of your life so they are what they are by the will of God.

We could go even deeper than that. Why do you even exist in the first place? Why do you continue to exist from day to day, from moment to moment? Why do we not all suddenly evaporate, evaporate in a moment of time and become nothing? Well, it’s not because we are upheld by our own power, it’s not because we are sustained and upheld by some impersonal laws of nature, but it’s because in God and in God alone, we live and move and have our being. Our very existence, our moment-to-moment existence is dependent upon the power and the rule of God over us.

Like the Athenians, all of us live under the providence of God, and this truth of God’s providence means at least two things for you and me. First of all, it means that we must look back on the past with gratitude, and secondly, we must look ahead to the future with hope.

So first, we need to look back on the past with gratitude. In the present, as we’re going through the present, as we’re experiencing life moment to moment, we don’t always see the hand of God at work in the events of our lives. But often with hindsight, we can look back and see how God intervened in our lives in ways that were for our good.

Perhaps you can think of times in your life in which the Lord blessed you in a particular way, in a special way, a remarkable way. Or perhaps you can think of a time when God gave you a certain provision that exactly met the need that you had at that time. And for those blessings of God, you must give thanks, because it is through these provisions of his providence that he shows his fatherly care, his love, his concern for us in this life. And so there are times when the hand of God is very evident, and with hindsight, we can see exactly how God in his providence gave us what we needed at the right time, or perhaps he saved us from some trouble in some remarkable way.

But God’s providence is also evident in the very ordinary events of our lives as well. His sovereign hand is behind all the non-spectacular, ordinary blessings that you and I have received. And these blessings also are a cause for thanksgiving. Do you enjoy good health? Have you been provided for? Has God kept you safe? These are gifts of God’s grace for which we must give thanks.

There’s a story told about one of the early presidents of Princeton College, a man by the name of John Witherspoon. And if you’re a history buff, that name will ring a bell for you. John Witherspoon was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. In fact, he was the only active clergyman who signed the Declaration. But there’s a story told about him that goes like this:

An acquaintance of Witherspoon said to him, “Dr. Witherspoon, help me to thank God for his wonderful providence. My horse ran away, my buggy was dashed to pieces on the rocks, and behold, I am unharmed.”

Witherspoon replied, “Why, I know a providence a thousand times better than that of yours. I have driven down that rocky road to Princeton hundreds of times, and my horse never ran away, and my buggy was never dashed to pieces.”

And that’s true of our lives as well. Every day that you have health, every day that you are kept free from harm, every day that God gives you your daily bread, this also is a testimony to the wonderful providence of God.

I was reflecting on the fires last week and I thought about, so I was thinking about the sermon as well. Our family, we’ve been here in Reno for six, about six and a half years now. And on only two of the days that we have lived in Reno, we’ve had to evacuate our house because of the threat of harm. But all of the thousands of other days that we’ve lived here, we’ve been kept perfectly safe. And why is that? It’s because of the gracious providence of God.

We give God thanks for the way he kept us safe from the threat of fire, but we also give thanks, or we ought to give thanks, for the way that God keeps us safe, even in the ordinary times, when there is no obvious threat. That is still God’s care for us.

As a believer in Jesus Christ, you can say this about yourself: Everything that has taken place in your life, every event, every experience, even the suffering that you have endured, this has taken place under the gracious rule of a Heavenly Father who loves you and who uses all things for your good, for your salvation.

And this raises the question: Are you grateful? Are you thankful to God for his goodness to you, the way that he has dealt with you in his providence, doing you good? Do you thank him for every temporal and spiritual blessing that he’s given you in Christ? Can you thank Him even as you think back on the hard times, the struggles and the suffering that you have endured? Can you thank Him even in those circumstances as well?

If you believe that God is sovereign over you and that He has a good and wise and loving purpose for you in all the circumstances of your life, then you can give thanks to Him in all the circumstances of your life. And so we can look back and give thanks to God for His goodness to us and His providence.

We can also look forward with hope. And that’s because the promise of God is the same for the future as well. He promises that he will rule over all things in our lives for our good.

There may be some things for you on the horizon that are filling you with apprehension, with dread. Maybe it’s a family matter, a very difficult relational matter. Perhaps it’s an employment issue or perhaps a serious health concern, or financial concern, or maybe you’re just anxious because the future is always uncertain, and that uncertainty of the future just fills you with anxiety. Well, whatever it may be, you can be assured that no matter what takes place tomorrow or the next day or the next day, either it will be good in itself and an obvious blessing, or God will use it for your good, and it will be a blessing that comes to you in the form of something that is difficult. And so you always have the promise that God will continue to work out His gracious, loving purposes for you in the future.

On a very practical level, there is, when it comes to thinking about the providence of God, a challenge that all of us face as we seek to be faithful to God, as we seek to be faithful to Him in this world that is full of unknowns and uncertainties. And that is, how do we respond to the interruptions that come into our lives?

If you’re like me, you like to plan, you like to have a fairly set idea in your mind of what the day is going to look like, what the week is going to look like. But then the inevitable interruption comes and it ruins all your plans and you get frustrated. However, that’s not the right way to look at these interruptions. Interruptions are nothing other than God’s reminders to us that he is the one who plans our lives, not us. And our frustration in the face of interruptions is really nothing else than our failure to remember that it is God, not us. It is God who is the Lord of our lives.

I think C.S. Lewis had some very wise words to say about this. C.S. Lewis wrote this, he said, “The great thing, the great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s,” quote, “own,” or, quote, “real life. The truth is, of course, that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life, the life God is sending one day by day. What one calls one’s,” quote, “real life is a phantom of one’s own imagination.”

In other words, the life that God actually gives us, even with all of its unexpected interruptions and changes to our plans, this is the life that God has given us to live, not the one that we have fancied and imagined for ourselves.

But what about the major disruptions, the hardships that come to you? You suffer an injury or sickness that upends your life. You lose a loved one, you lose a job, or your career takes a very sudden and bad turn. Well, the same truth applies to all these major events that turn your life upside down. They come to you not by chance, not by fate, but by the providence of God, and they are used by God for your blessing, for your good.

And the providence of God extends to what we call natural disasters. This past week, we heard about the terrible flash flooding in Nepal. Apparently it was caused by a glacier that had broken up and loosed a ton of water that came flooding into villages and hundreds of people, perhaps, probably thousands of people have been killed. Well, why does God allow something like that to take place in his providence? What is the good that he brings from that?

We don’t know. We don’t know. We can’t answer the specific questions. Why this specific thing? Why did God allow this tragedy to happen? Why did He allow all of these hundreds and thousands of people to die suddenly? We don’t know. But we do know that God is infinitely good, that He is infinitely wise, and that in His rule over all things, in His providence over this world, even in these disasters and calamities, He has something that is good that He will bring from it. He has a holy and wise and good purpose for it.

And this providence of God even extends to the evil that people do to one another. God uses even the evil and the sin of men for good.

That was Joseph’s testimony after he suffered injustice after injustice because of the treachery, the betrayal of his brothers who sold him into slavery. Joseph could look back on that, that experience, that time that was filled with all kinds of hardship for him. He could say, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as it is this day.”

Some of you may have suffered tremendous heartache and pain and grief because of the ways that other people have sinned against you, the ways that other people have abused you. Well, know that you have in Jesus Christ a compassionate Savior. You have a Savior who knows what it is like to suffer the sin and the evil that is inflicted on Him by the hands of men. But you can also say the same thing as Joseph: They meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.

And nowhere is the sovereign rule of God in bringing good out of evil more apparent than it is in the cross of Jesus Christ. Peter says these remarkable words in Acts chapter 2. As he’s preaching the resurrection of Christ, he says, “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”

And so Paul says to the Jews in Jerusalem, you were lawless, you were sinning, you were wicked, you crucified the Son of God. But before that, he says, it was all according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. And so God, in his sovereign rule over all things, he determines, he planned for the most wicked, the most heinous crime that would ever be committed, the crucifixion of the righteous and holy son of God. But he did this so that sinners such as you and me might have our sins forgiven, that we might receive the gift of eternal life.

It was God’s purpose to give him over to lawless men so that he would suffer that judgment that belonged to you and me for our sin, for our guilt. And if your trust is in Jesus Christ, then know that Jesus took your sin and guilt and he bore it at the cross so that you could be forgiven. And so we look back and we can see that even in that most awful event where Jesus Christ was betrayed by Judas, where He was demanded to be crucified by His own people, where lawless men nailed him to the cross, even over that, God was carrying out His perfectly wise and holy and loving purposes.

If you could trust that He was provident in that and doing good in that, then you can trust the same God in His rule over all the circumstances of your life for your eternal good, no matter how painful they may be, no matter how sad they may be, what you experience and suffer in this life, God promises out of His love for you that He will use it to bless you, to do you good. And that blessing and that good will extend for all eternity.

I’ll end by quoting this wonderful description of God’s providence. This is from the Heidelberg Catechism. This is a question, I forget the question and answer, but this is the answer to what is God’s providence, and we’ll end with this.

Providence is the almighty and ever-present power of God, by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty, all things in fact, come to us not by chance, but from his fatherly hand.

Let’s pray.

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