Mt. Rose OPC

Our Old Testament reading is Genesis chapter one, verses 26 to 28, and this is the inspired and infallible word of God.

Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that lives on the earth.

And now let’s turn to Hebrews chapter 1, Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 through 4. And this will be our sermon text as well, though we will also make reference to that Genesis passage. Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 through 4.

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

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

This morning, we are continuing our sermon series that I have entitled questions people ask Christians. And last week, we considered the question, how can you say that Christianity is the only true religion? Before that, a couple of weeks ago, or three weeks ago, actually, we considered the question, how can I know that the Bible is true?

And the question that we are asking this morning is, doesn’t science disprove the Bible? Another way to put it, hasn’t modern science shown that the teachings of Christianity cannot be true?

This is a common question that people ask, but I think it’s probably safe to say that for most people, not all people, but for most people who ask this question or who have raised the objection that somehow science contradicts the Bible, for most people, they probably haven’t given a lot of thoughts either to the nature of science or to the teaching of scripture. Rather, for most people, it’s a question that’s born out of an assumption an assumption of something that simply isn’t true. And that is the assumption, the false assumption, that ever since the rise of modern science in our world, there has been this intense, ongoing, irresolvable conflict between religion and science, especially between Christianity and science.

Many people just assume that that is the case. And that’s been that way for the last 150 years or so. That’s how people have tended to think about Christianity and science, that it’s one of ongoing conflict and warfare. And not only that, but This again is the popular way of understanding things. Not only are the two in conflict, but it’s a conflict with enlightened, reasonable thinking on one side, and with blind faith, fanaticism, ignorance, and fear on the other side.

You may have seen the movie Inherit the Wind. That is the movie that was based on the famous Scopes Monkey Trial that took place in Tennessee, I think it was 1925. And if you’ve seen that movie, you have no doubt, the movie leaves you in no doubt, as to who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. The good guys are on the side of science. They are the calm, reasonable, rational proponents of evolution. And the bad guys are on the side of Christianity. They are the fundamentalist dimwits who refused to let go of their old-fashioned and outdated religious beliefs.

Or maybe you’ve heard the story of how the Catholic Church ruthlessly persecuted and even tortured Galileo because he taught that the earth revolves around the sun and not that the sun revolves around the earth. Well, these popular versions of these historical episodes, they contain as much myth as they do fact. Just for example, Galileo himself was a Christian and he was never tortured.

But I just mention these things to say that this question of science disproving the Bible, this comes out of a larger misunderstanding of the true relationship between Christianity and science. And so what I want to do today in order to address this question with you is first, to carefully define what science is. And secondly, to show why So far from being enemies, Christianity and science, the Bible and science, are actually good friends.

And as we do this, just like with every other question that we are considering this month, we will bring the light and the truth of the Scriptures to bear upon this question, this question of the relationship between science and faith. As Christians, this is how we answer questions about our faith. This is how we answer questions and objections that come to us. We do so on the basis of what God has revealed to us in his word.

And the reason for that is because the question that is lurking behind every question about Christianity, every objection to Christianity, the question that lurks behind all of that is a larger question, and that is this. Am I willing to accept the truth that God has given to us in the scriptures? Am I willing to accept that God has spoken to us about himself, his world, about us in the Bible? Or am I going to rely upon my own judgment, my own reason, to decide what is ultimately true and what is ultimately false.

That’s the real question behind all of these questions. And so as believers, we address these questions by saying, what has God said? What has God said? And that’s what we’ll do this morning.

And so with all that in mind, first let us consider the true nature of science, and why, when we understand what science is, properly understood, that it is not, and it cannot be, in conflict with Christian truth.

So what is science? As far as I can tell, there’s no definitive, authoritative definition of science that everybody agrees on. However, we can fairly define science in this way. It is simply the study of the natural world. And of course, scientists go about studying the natural world with a scientific method that includes observation, classification, experimentation, and of course, the use of the reason that God has given us, deductive reason, logical deduction, and so on.

we can actually define science from a biblical perspective. Biblically, science is simply the careful study of God’s creation. And we can also say that according to the scriptures, that this scientific study of God’s creation is something that God has actually commanded the human race to be engaged in. Not that He has commanded every single individual person to be a scientist, but humanity in general is commanded to engage in this pursuit of studying God’s creation.

Earlier, we heard from Genesis chapter one about the creation of Adam and Eve. And this is what God says in verse 28 of Genesis chapter one. And God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

And so this command given to Adam and Eve and derivatively given to all people coming from them, this command to subdue the earth and to have dominion over all living things, that means that God has given man the task of ruling over the world in such a way that the resources of the world might be used for the benefit of humankind. This is what theologians call the creation mandate or the cultural mandate. And to fulfill this creation or cultural mandate requires that man observe the world, to seek to understand the principles, the properties of creation, the workings of creation, to learn how to manipulate what God has created in order to bring benefits from the creation. And essentially, that is the work of science.

Now, the problem that we face when we think about science and Christianity is that many people use the term science to refer to something that really isn’t science. But rather, they’re using the word to refer to something that is an entire worldview that is based on the method of science, but it’s a worldview, it’s a philosophy. We can call this philosophy scientism. Not science, but scientism.

We could also call it naturalism, or evolutionism, or materialism. But whatever we call it, scientism is not science. But it’s a comprehensive understanding of the world that believes that only the scientific method is the true way for us to gain knowledge about the world. And so that the only truths that we can be certain of, the only truths that we can say, this is true, are those truths that are established by the so-called hard sciences, such as chemistry, or physics, and so on. Everything else is mere conjecture. Everything else that is not established by science is mere opinion.

And so, this philosophy of scientism, it inherently denies that God has spoken, that God has acted in the world. If there is a God, according to scientism, we don’t know who he is, we don’t know what he’s like, because he does not interfere in the workings of the world. And the purest form of scientism would say, there is no God, absolutely. The world is just made up of the physical properties that we can observe, and so on. And so, scientism is agnostic or atheistic.

And the problem with scientism is that people will claim to be speaking in the name of science when in fact they are declaring things that are not scientific facts, but they are ideas and beliefs based on a worldview and philosophy that denies the truth and existence of God.

And of course, the best example of this is evolution. If we mean by evolution that all living things today, including us as human beings, that we are the product of a gradual, natural process of natural selection over time, that was not directed in any way by any intelligent force, but is pure chance, if that’s what we mean by evolution, then evolution is most certainly not a fact of science. but it is a belief, it is really an article of faith. It’s an attempt to explain the world and us without any reference to God, a world without God.

But how often do you hear evolution presented and spoken of as though it were a cold, hard, scientific fact, a fact as indisputable as the speed of light or the law of gravity? But evolution is not a scientific fact. It’s a theory that comes out of this philosophy of life, this worldview. It is scientism masquerading as science.

Another example of this confusion are the famous words that were spoken by the scientist Carl Sagan back in 1980. Some of you may remember watching the television series, The Cosmos. And Carl Sagan opened that series with this famous line, the cosmos, that is the universe. The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.

Well, science has not proven that the cosmos is all there is, was, and ever will be. In fact, science cannot prove that. That is simply the expression of one scientist’s belief, his philosophy, what he happens to think is true. So the statement like that is not science, it’s scientism.

Now, just as a worldview, one major problem with scientism is that it is inherently contradictory. Because it says that the only truth we can know is the truth that is given us by science. Any truth that is not established by the methods of science, we cannot be certain of. It’s not true. It’s either false or we just can’t know if it’s true.

However, that in itself is a truth claim. It’s a truth claim that cannot be established by science. And so science or scientism, this philosophy, it’s self-contradictory. It cannot stand.

It’s really a kind of faith. It’s really a blind faith. It’s a belief about the nature of the universe. It’s not based on science, but it’s based on the belief that there is no God, that God has not acted in history, God has not spoken to us.

And this belief, this scientism, it’s not only self-contradictory, but it fails to speak to our deepest needs as human beings. Think about that. In the impersonal, materialistic world that’s conceived by scientism, that all that we, all that this world is, is made up of material matter, the forces that govern the laws of nature. That’s all that this world is. It’s a bleak universe to live in.

There’s no basis for morality, no basis for right and wrong, no basis for beauty, no hope for a personal God, no comfort and peace for the heart, no life for the soul. It’s essentially saying our existence has no meaning, no purpose, no significance.

One scientist said this about human beings, he said, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

But wouldn’t that make a great caption for an inspirational poster? Cheer up, you’re nothing more than a jumble of cells and molecules.

But this is where the conflict lies. This is where the conflict truly is. It’s between the Bible and Christianity and this understanding of the world that we’re calling scientism. The Bible, of course, is opposed to this kind of atheistic, idolatrous understanding of ourselves and the world.

And so Christianity is not opposed to science, but against scientism. And praise God for the message of Christianity, the message of the Bible, that you are far more than a physical creature. Yes, God created you with a body. We are physical creatures, but far more than that, we are created in the image of God. We are spiritual because we are like God.

And the God who created you, he has come to you in the person of his son, Jesus Christ, to bring you to himself forever, that you might experience the joy and the blessedness of His grace and love forever and ever. The message of the Bible is far more wonderful than anything that science might tell us about the world.

So science itself, the study of God’s creation, is not and ever will be the enemy of the Christian faith, and that brings us to our second point, that so far from being at war with one another, Christianity and science are actually good friends.

And first of all, they are friends because science cannot exist without the God of the Bible. One of the books that I have, written by a Christian theologian about science, he begins the book this way. He says, all scientists, including agnostics and atheists, believe in God. They have to in order to do their work.

And what he meant by saying that is that even though there are many scientists who will definitely say, I don’t believe in God, God does not exist, nevertheless, the very pursuit of science, the very work that they do would be impossible apart from God. And so, in order for every scientist to do science, he or she must believe certain things about the universe to be true. But those things about the universe that the scientists must believe to be true are only true because God is the one who both created the universe and he is the one who sustains from moment to moment all that he has created in this vast universe.

So what are those things about the universe that must be true if there is any possibility of doing science? Well, the answer is, The material or physical universe must be governed by laws, what we might call the laws of nature. These laws must be identifiable, explainable, or at least describable and predictable. In other words, there must be in the universe order, regularity, rationality.

If the universe was just a chaotic mess of non-stop random and unpredictable events, there would be no such thing as science. There would be no such thing as life. And since the universe is, in fact, not a place of utter chaos, but it is a place of order, of regularity, that raises the question, why?

Why is the universe the way that it is? Why are there laws that govern and bring order to the universe? Why is the universe made up in such a way that we can, in fact, study it as scientists do?

Well, the atheistic scientists might answer that by saying, well, the universe is the way it is just because That’s the way it is. It is what it is. It’s always been that way. It always will be that way.

But if there is no God who made these laws that govern the universe, if there is no God who upholds these laws from moment to moment, then how can we know that the universe has always been this way? And how do we know that the universe and the laws that govern it may not change tomorrow or in five minutes? And we might have a completely different universe.

And the answer is that apart from God, apart from a God who is sovereign in the creation of all things, apart from a God who is sovereign in sustaining all things, we simply don’t have answers to those questions. The universe as we know it depends upon the God who created it. Apart from the God of the scriptures, we cannot account for the laws of nature. And we have no real reason to think that those laws may not simply change at some point.

And so the only rational explanation that we can give for why the universe is the way it is, the only true assurance that we have that the study of creation, the pursuit of science is meaningful in any sense, is because what the Bible says about God is true. that He is the Creator who spoke all things into being from nothing, who by His sovereign power brought about the entire created order, and who by His sovereign power upholds and sustains and directs all of creation from moment to moment.

The very first words of the Bible give us the only solid foundation for the pursuit of science, Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God created the heavens and the earth.

So this entire cosmos was created by a God who is infinitely wise, infinitely good, a God who is a God of order, not of chaos. Later in Genesis, God promises us that he will continue to rule over all that he has made with regularity, with order, with predictability. The Lord says to Noah in Genesis 8.22, while the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.

And so God gives us His assurance that He will uphold the universe in such a way that we can depend upon the regularity of it, which is the basis for doing science. And one thing that our passage from Hebrews tells us is that the God who created and rules over all things, He is the same God who has revealed Himself to us preeminently in His Son, Jesus Christ.

In Hebrews 1 chapter 3, speaking of Christ, It says, he is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. So who is it that sustains the workings of the universe from moment to moment? Who is it that directs the courses of a trillion stars and a billion galaxies? Who is at the rules over the fall of every drop of rain to the earth? Who is it that numbers every grain of sand on the seashore, and even numbers every subatomic particle that makes up every grain of sand?

It’s Jesus. It is Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God who became man, the one who walked among us in this world. He is the one who upholds the universe, and all that is in it are the word of his power. Apart from Jesus, there is no possibility of science because there would be no universe to study.

on this passage from Hebrews chapter one, the Puritan John Owen, he wrote these words, he wrote these words in a pre-scientific age, but they apply just as much as they do, they apply just as equally true, they’re equally true today. Owen said this, he said, such as the nature and condition of the universe, that it could not subsist a moment, nor could anything in it act regularly unto its appointed end, without the continual support, guidance, influence, and disposal of the Son of God.

And so one reason why Christianity and science are friends is because science cannot exist without the God of the Bible. More specifically, science cannot exist without the Jesus of the Bible.

Another reason why Christianity and science are friends is because science helps us to keep the two great commandments. As you know, According to our Lord, according to Jesus, the entirety of God’s law for us can be summed up in two commandments. First, we are to love God, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Secondly, we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.

And science is one gift that God has given us to help us to fulfill these two great commandments, both to love God and to love our neighbor.

First, we’ll start by seeing how science can help us to love our neighbor. One way science does that is by bringing to the human race many benefits that have improved the quality of life in our world. Think of all the blessings and the benefits that we enjoy today that are the fruits of the scientific endeavor. Surgery, cancer treatments, medicines, vaccines, These are all the result of the work of science. They have made life in this world far less miserable than it was for people living 300 years ago, 400 years ago. And so this is one way that science helps us to love our neighbor.

Another way that we can think of is communication and travel technology, again, that are based on the findings of science. These have been a blessing to us. We can maintain our relationships with our loved ones over long distances. We could add to that list.

I was thinking about just the response to the fire that has been causing so much disruption for many of us. We have airplanes that can dump fire retardants on the flames. We have helicopters that can pick up large buckets of water and dump them on the flames. We have communication technology that can tell us that we need to evacuate. And so we have so many blessings that come to us as a result of science. And this is a way that man has helped man in loving his neighbor through the fruits of this endeavor.

Another way that science enables us to love our neighbor is that it offers powerful confirming evidence of the truth that this world has been created by a God in heaven. Now, of course, science itself can never prove or disprove the existence of God. Science cannot do that. But the more that scientists study the universe, the more they are discovering certain features in the universe that can only be reasonably explained by a divine designer.

For example, the irreducible complexity of the building blocks of life testifies that life itself, apart from God’s creative activity, cannot have emerged from non-life. The Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang Theory says that the universe had a beginning, that there was a point at which there was nothing, and then the universe exploded into being, according to the theory. Well, this bears witness to the truth Well, we as Christians have always known by faith, and that is the universe and all that is in it is not eternal, but only God is eternal, and He is the one that created the universe out of nothing. He brought all things into existence by the word of His power.

Also, and I had never heard of this before until I was preparing for this message, apparently in the last several decades, different fields of science have come to the conclusion that this universe is so exquisitely and perfectly constructed in the way that it is, that it is only this universe that could possibly bring about conditions to facilitate and to sustain life. and the possibility that the universe is the way it is in which life can flourish, that this is just by chance, the odds of that are just astronomically impossibly low.

And so, there are certain laws, certain properties, that if they were just slightly different, no life would be possible. But the universe is just so, so that life can thrive on our planet, And even scientists who don’t believe in God are coming to grips with this, and have to somehow understand this. Why is the universe the way that it is? Well, we know as Christians it’s because God created it.

Again, these are not proofs for the existence of God, but these are ways that science is confirming that the God of the Bible is indeed the Creator and Lord of the universe.

Yet another way that science enables us to love our neighbor that I believe must be mentioned is the fact that science has confirmed what Christians have always known to be true from the scriptures, and that is, what is conceived in the womb of a woman is nothing other than a full-fledged, individual human being. Science has shown us that even at conception, what is created in the womb is not an impersonal tissue or a clump of cells But what is created in the womb from the beginning, from the very beginning, is a unique and developing human being, an individual person. And we pray, of course, that this will help us to promote the cause of protecting the life of the unborn.

So in these ways, science helps us as humanity to better love our neighbor.

Science also helps us to love God. And science does this by showing us so many of the marvelous ways that this creation testifies to the wisdom, the goodness, and the power of God. If King David could look up at the starry sky and say, the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork, how much more can we behold the glory of God as we take in all that science has shown us? All that science has shown us about the incredible vastness of the universe, the amazing complexity of life, the existence of all kinds of wonderful creatures that King David never heard of.

How much more can we take in all of this and praise God and say, the heavens declare God’s glory. What a great, what an awesome, what a glorious God we serve. This God who has created this world. And the more that we can apprehend the infinite measure of God’s greatness and glory in creation, the more that we can grasp the wonder of the gospel.

When we read in our passage in Hebrews chapter one, when we read on in it, the author of Hebrews tells us that the one who upholds the universe by his powerful word, he is the same one who made purification of sins. The Lord who holds the stars in His hands is the Savior who came into our world to offer Himself a sacrifice to pay for the sins that you and I have committed against God.

If there is anything more wonderful than the truth that the man, the God-man Jesus Christ, that He upholds this entire creation, it is that He so loved us. He so loved sinners such as you and me that He laid aside His eternal glory. He became one of us in His incarnation, and He offered Himself to die the curse of death that we deserve, that we might be forgiven and receive the gift of eternal life.

And that love of Christ, the love of the Father for us, the love of Christ for us, this is far more marvelous, this is far more wondrous, this is far more glorious than anything that science will ever tell us about all the wonders of creation. The love of God as he has revealed it to us in his son, Jesus Christ.

And so I want to leave us with the question, have you come to know him as your savior? Come to Christ by faith and receive his free gift of salvation. Let’s pray.

The post Doesn’t Science Disprove the Bible? appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

The Old Testament reading is Isaiah chapter 45, verses 18 through 23. Isaiah 45, 18 through 23, the Lord tells the people of Israel that He alone is God, that there is salvation in no one else but Him. So let’s hear the word of God. For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, he is God, who formed the earth and made it. He established it. He did not create it empty. He formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord, and there is no other. I did not speak in secret in a land of darkness. I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, seek me in vain. I, the Lord, speak the truth. I declare what is right.

Assemble yourselves and come. Draw near together, you survivors of the nations. They have no knowledge who carry about their wooden idols, and keep on praying to a God that cannot save. Declare and present your case. Let them take counsel together. Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides me, a righteous God and a Savior. There is none besides me. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone out in righteousness, a word that shall not return. To me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear allegiance.

And now turn with me to John chapter four, John chapter four, or 14 rather, John chapter 14. For our New Testament reading, this is our sermon text as well. John chapter 14, verses 1 through 7. John 14, 1 through 7. Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going. Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

There have always been all kinds of reasons why people have objected and continue to object to the Christian faith. But in our world today, perhaps the one thing that people find most problematic about Christianity is the fact that Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation. Now, we as Christians have always believed and taught this, not because we just like the idea, but we have believed and taught this because this is what the Bible teaches. According to the scriptures, there is only one way to know God. There is only one way of salvation. There is only one path to heaven, and that is through faith in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

We’ve heard the words of Jesus in our sermon text from the Gospel of John. He declared this truth to us. He says, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. And we could add many other text to this one to show that there is salvation and no one else but Jesus. For example, in Acts chapter 4 verse 12, the apostle Peter declares, and there is salvation and no one else for there is no other name given among heaven or given among men under heaven by which we must be saved. No other name but the name of Jesus. 1 Timothy 2:5, for there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

And so, when the church of Jesus Christ, when we as Christians declare that Christ is the only way of salvation, or when we say that Christianity is the only true religion, we are only saying what God has declared in his word. However, in the minds of many people today, to make that claim, to say that Jesus alone is the way to salvation, or to say that the Christian faith alone can bring us to God and take us to heaven, this is nothing less than committing the unforgivable sin.

One author who has tried to synthesize the different religions of the world to create a kind of global universal faith, he lamented the stubborn resistance of Christianity to that program. He wrote this, he said, Christianity is a contentious faith, which requires an all or nothing commitment to Jesus as the one and only incarnation of the Son of God. Christianity is uncompromising, ornery, militant, rigorous, imperious, and invincibly self-righteous. He really shouldn’t beat around the bush. He should tell us what he really thinks about Christianity.

And maybe some of you as Christians, maybe you have been accused of these very things. Someone may have said to you, If you think that your religion and only your religion is the true one and that Christianity is the only way to God, well, that just makes you narrow minded. You are intolerant. You are bigoted. Or maybe you are listening to this sermon, and you are not a believer in Christ, and this is a question you have asked yourself. How can Christians claim that Jesus is the only way of salvation? How can Christians say that their faith is the only true religion in the world, and that all the other religions, by definition, therefore, must be false?

Well, this is the question I want to consider with you today. And as we do, we’ll first consider the challenge of relativism, and I will define that, but we’ll first consider the challenge of relativism to the Christian faith, and then secondly, we’ll look to the scriptures to see why we as Christians make the claim that the Christian faith is the only true religion.

So first of all, the challenge of relativism to the Christian faith. The reason why the Christian claim that Jesus is the only way of salvation, the reason why this is so objectionable in our world today, the reason why the idea that all religions are equally valid in some way, the reason why that idea, that notion is so dominant today is because we are enculturated, we have been trained, we have grown up in an environment in which it is natural to assume that truth is relative. And that idea, the idea that what’s true for me may not be true for you, what’s true for this people may not be true for that people, this is what we call relativism. And to us today, relativism seems as unquestionably true as the fact that the sky is blue, that the grass is green, that water is wet. We just assume that that is the case.

One author has written about this. I forgot to bring the book. I was going to read a quote from his book about it, but he talked about the fact that universities today that professors can just count on this, that the incoming students will have this unquestioned commitment to moral relativism. It’s not something that they were consciously taught so much, but something that they just assumed to be true because of the relativistic environment that we live in.

And because relativism is in the very air that we breathe, because of this, the most natural thing for us to think is that, well, every religion must have some truth to it, but no religion has the whole truth. Every religion is getting at the same thing, but there is no one worldview or philosophy or religion that can claim to have an exclusive possession of the truth. And so it sounds to us very reasonable, very plausible to say things like, the religions of the world are like a great mosaic. Each religion represents one little part of that mosaic that’s one color. But when you put them all together, they create this one grand design.

Or it sounds natural, it sounds reasonable and plausible to say something like, all the religions of the world are like different pathways that lead followers up to the same mountain summit. This kind of thinking, I think, is captured well by the bumper sticker I’m sure all of you have seen before that says, Coexist. And each of the letters in that word is made up of a religious symbol from Islam or from Christianity or from Judaism or from paganism. And the idea is that not only should different people of different faiths live together, which of course is true, but the idea is that we all share something bigger than our religion, that truth is relative, religion is relative.

And in this kind of environment, in this way of thinking, it’s just natural. In fact, we might even consider it just basic human decency to affirm the relative validity of every religion, to affirm that there is some truth in every philosophy or worldview or religion. And in this environment, the greatest possible offense is to make the claim to absolute truth. And so when Christians say things like, Jesus is the only way to God, or that the Christian faith is the only path to salvation, those claims not only strike people as self-evidently wrong, absurd, unreasonable, but they sound simplistic, arrogant, imperialistic, and closed-minded.

So what are we to think about all of this? How do we respond to this as Christians? Well, the first thing that we as Christians should say in response to this relativistic mindset is to say that, in principle, a claim to absolute truth, whether that is made by a religion or a philosophy, that this in itself is no logical or moral problem. Because when we dig just a little bit below the surface of relativism, what becomes clear is that Christianity is certainly not alone in making universal truth claims. There are many other religions that make universal truth claims as well. It is not the Christian faith alone that does so.

In fact, in principle at least, every religion, every worldview, every philosophy makes some kind of assertion of truth that necessarily must apply to all people universally. It’s just the nature of the case. Any attempt to make sense of the world must include something that is taken to be true in a universal or absolute sense. Otherwise, it would be futile, it would be meaningless to try to make sense of the world at all. And this applies just as much to the idea of relativism or religious pluralism.

Ironically, relativism itself cannot escape the charge of claiming a universal truth. There is an old Buddhist parable that is often told to illustrate and to defend the idea that all religions are relatively true, that all religions contain some truth, but no religion contains the whole truth. And it goes like this. Perhaps you’ve heard this. Once upon a time, there was a king who placed an elephant in a room. And then he brought in six blind men, and he told them to feel the animal and then describe for him what they thought the elephant is, or what they think an elephant is.

So they’re blind. He puts an elephant in the room. He tells them, this is an elephant. Of course, they can’t see it. He tells them to touch the elephant and tell him what they think it is. And so the first blind man touches the elephant’s head. And he says, the elephant is like a giant water pot. The second blind man, he touches the elephant’s ear, and he says, the elephant is like a fan. The third man felt the elephant’s trunk, and he said, no, an elephant is like a fat snake. The fourth blind man held on to the elephant’s tusks, and he said, no, all of you are wrong. An elephant is like two prongs on a plow. The fifth man grabbed the elephant’s leg. And he said, actually, in truth, the elephant is like a pillar. And finally, the sixth man held up the tail. And he said, all of you are wrong. You’re all mistaken. An elephant is like a rope.

And then the blind men began to argue with one another, to shout at one another. They were all convinced that each one was right and that all the others were wrong. And according to Buddha, the moral of the story is this: How can we be, or how can you be so sure of what you cannot see? We are all like blind people in this world. We cannot see God. Each of your religions may be partly right, yet none completely so.

Now, if we hear this parable, we don’t give it much thought, it seems to put forth a very humble, a very reasonable explanation about the nature of religion or an explanation of why there are so many various religions in the world. All of them are partially correct, but not one of them sees the whole truth. Not one of them can grasp the whole picture. But the problem with the parable is that, in fact, there is one person in the parable who does see the whole picture. There is one person who can see exactly what the elephant looks like in its totality, and that is the king who brought the blind men into the room. And so the parable only works if, in fact, there is one person who does see the whole truth.

And so the claim of relativism, the claim that there is no absolute truth, or that no one can know absolute truth, it is actually a statement in itself that is taken to be absolutely true. And so it is a self-defeating kind of way of looking at various religions in the world, or philosophies, or worldviews. The idea that no religion sees the whole truth, in fact, though it sounds humble on the surface, in fact, it is a very bold and audacious claim. We might even say it’s a very arrogant claim that the person who says that, that they know the whole truth about religion that every other religion in the world is blind to.

The whole point of this is to say that the challenge of relativism to the Christian faith is an empty challenge. It is an invalid objection. Merely because Christianity claims to possess the truth that applies to all people everywhere, merely because the Christian faith claims knowledge of the truth, and that therefore other religions and philosophies that aren’t in conformity with that truth are wrong, merely for that reason, does not make Christianity wrong. It does not make it untrue or unreasonable.

The real question is not, does Christianity claim to be the only way to God? Of course it does. It’s not a problem. The real question is, is this claim true? Is this a true statement? Is this a true claim? Is the content of the Christian message true or is it false? Is Jesus the only way to salvation or are there other pathways to God? That’s the question that we are concerned with.

And that brings us to our second consideration, which is that very question: Why the Christian faith is the only true religion. There is one thing that every religion has in common. And that is every religion, in one way or another, offers the hope and contains the idea of salvation. Some kind of salvation. Salvation for those who follow the teachings of that religion. Salvation for those who worship the god or the gods of that religion. Now what that salvation entails and how people are to obtain it will be different from religion to religion, but every religion offers some sort of promise, some sort of hope to give us life, meaning, and significance, a life, meaning, and significance that transcends the brutal realities of life in this day-to-day world.

And the first question we should ask is this. When we consider religion in general, or the religions of the world, the first question we should ask is this: Since all religions have some idea of salvation, what is that salvation that we are in need of? What do we need to be saved from? What is it that is our most basic fundamental problem that plagues us as human beings living in this world? Every religion recognizes that something is wrong with this world, something is wrong, and offers some kind of salvation from it. Well, what is wrong?

Well, the Bible’s answer to that question is, our most fundamental problem is not the miseries that we endure in this life, as horrible as they are, our most fundamental problem is not even the death that faces us in this life, as terrible as that is, but our deepest problem is our alienation from God. That is our deepest problem. We are alienated from God, and that is because of our sin. We are cut off from the blessing, the favor of God, the communion with God that He created us to enjoy because of our sin.

God created us to have fellowship with Him forever and ever. He created us to live eternally in the blessedness and joy of knowing Him, worshiping Him, loving Him, and being loved by Him, the God who created us, who made us in His image. But we lost that communion with God when we sinned against Him. And now, apart from the grace of God, we are, each one of us, we are subject to the judgment, to the wrath of God. And that judgment of God is rightfully ours because we have sinned and rebelled against Him.

And that judgment that is rightfully ours because of our sin against God is not merely that we must die in this world and suffer the miseries of this world, but it is eternal destruction, an eternal death, living forever under the wrath of God. This is the judgment that God says we deserve as sinners. This is the judgment that the Bible calls hell. And this is all because of our sin. And this is the most fundamental, this is the deepest problem that plagues the human race. This is the deepest problem that each and every one of us has. We are alienated from God, we are under his wrath because of our sin. Romans 3:23 says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 6:23 says, the wages of sin is death.

Now, at this point, someone might say, well, you’re just using the teaching of Christianity to prove the truth of Christianity. And that’s just circular reasoning. And to that, I would say two things. First of all, I would say to that person, let me ask you a question and be honest. Do you have a guilty conscience? Does your conscience convict you that you have ever done something that you know is wrong, something that you know is evil? And if they’re honest, they’ll say yes. Well, that is God’s testimony to that person personally. That is his personal testimony to that person that he has sinned against God, that he is under God’s judgment, that the guilt that we all experience, that is a sign, testimony from God, that we deserve his judgment.

And I would also say this, the fact that all people are sinners has been abundantly proven day after day, year after year, throughout all of human history. In one way or another, all of the problems of this world, all of the miseries of this world can be traced back to the corruption that is in the human heart. Greed, lust, covetousness, hatred. In the human heart, it’s from this that springs all the problems, all the suffering, all the evil, all the miseries that exist in this life. The British author G.K. Chesterton, he made a very insightful observation. He said that the doctrine of original sin, we might say, the universality of human sin, this is the one Christian doctrine that can be proven from the facts of human history. This is the one doctrine that can be shown to be true just by looking at history with open eyes.

And as bad as all of that is, the problem of our sin is even worse. Because of our sin, we are spiritually dead. The Bible says that we are dead in our sins and trespasses. We are no more capable of pleasing God than a dead person is capable of running a marathon. And it’s for that reason, because of our sin, because we are dead in our sin, that the salvation whatever that may be that is offered by all the religions in the world is a false hope because we cannot save ourselves from our sin. We cannot save ourselves from the righteous wrath of God, no matter how many religious things that we do, no matter how many good works that we perform, no matter how pious and faithful we may be according to the tenets of whatever religion that we may belong to. We cannot be reconciled to God on the basis of morality or good works or religion. Our sin has left us utterly helpless to save ourselves from our sin.

This is our condition. We cannot save ourselves from the sin and death under which we are in bondage. We need God to save us. We need God to intervene and to act for us. And that is what the Christian message is all about. That is the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that God has accomplished the salvation for us that we so desperately need that we could not accomplish for ourselves. And he has done this for us in the person of his son, Jesus Christ.

The man Jesus Christ, he is the Son of God. And he is the Son of God in the sense that he was and that he is the incarnation of almighty God. He is the eternal creator and sovereign Lord who has come to us as man. He took on human flesh. And so he was, he is both God and man from the time of his incarnation and for all eternity. And he came into our world to bring us salvation.

And in our passage from the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of that salvation that he, as the incarnate Lord, came to bring us. These words that we read from John chapter 14, Jesus spoke these words to his disciples as they were reeling from what Jesus had told them moments before. Jesus had told his disciples that he was going away from them and that where he was going, they could not come. They could not join him there.

Remember, this was the night of the Last Supper. This was the eve of the arrest, the crucifixion, the death of Jesus. And for that reason, Jesus said to his disciples, where I am going, you cannot come. But to comfort the hearts of his disciples, Jesus said to them in verse one in chapter 14, he says, let not your hearts be troubled. And then He promised them that where He was going, He would prepare a place for them, that He was going to prepare a place for them in His Father’s house. And this, of course, is the promise of heaven, the promise that one day that Jesus would be reunited with His disciples, that one day the disciples would be brought back again with Jesus in glory in heaven, in the house of His Father forever.

And in verse 4, Jesus said to his disciples, and you know the way to where I am going. Now, Jesus said this to his disciples because he had earlier told his disciples on multiple occasions that he must be crucified and buried and that he must die. Of course, he said he would be raised again as well. And so they already knew the way that Jesus was talking about when he said that he would go from them, that they could not come with him. That is, he would go to be with his Father. But the way that he would go to be with his Father was through the cross, through his death upon the cross.

But the disciples did not understand that. They seemed to think that Jesus was talking about him going away for a while someplace here on earth, someplace in Jerusalem. And so Thomas said to Jesus in verse five, Lord, we do not know the way you are going. How can we know the way? Or we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?

And then Jesus answered his disciples. He answered Thomas in a way which, so often as he does, it was a little bit cryptic at the time, but it certainly would become clear to them later. He says in verse six, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. In other words, by saying this, Jesus was saying to his disciples, the way that I am going to the Father is through the cross, and the way that you will go to the Father is through me. It is through my crucifixion, through my resurrection.

And so what Jesus was telling the disciples and what Jesus is telling you and me with these words is that the salvation that we so desperately need is found only in Him. It is found only in the person of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is found in Him as He was crucified to pay the penalty for our sin, as He was raised from death to life to give us that eternal life that we so desperately need.

And this is what makes the Christian message unique. This is what makes the Christian message so glorious, so wonderful. It is that God has done for us what we could not do. God has saved us in his Son Jesus Christ.

Notice what Jesus says in verse 1. He says, Believe in God, believe also in me. Now when you think about it, this would have been a very shocking thing for the disciples to hear. Because these were all Jews. These disciples had grown up as Jews, hearing all the time, being taught all the time that they were to put their faith, their hope, their trust in the Lord alone, not in any other God, not in any other man. But now here is Jesus, this man, who is telling them, believe in God, believe in me. Believe also in me. That same trust and hope and faith that you have in God, you must put that faith in me as well.

And why is that? It’s because he is the very God that Israel worshiped. He is the very God that Israel called upon. He is the very God who created the heavens and the earth. That was the God of Israel. And there he was standing in the flesh as man before the disciples saying, believe in me.

And with these words, Jesus is telling us that salvation from sin and death becomes ours only as we put our faith and our hope and our trust in Jesus Christ to believe that he died for our sins, to believe that he was raised up from the dead for our salvation. And so what all of this means is that Jesus is not just one way of salvation. He is not just one way for us to come to God, to be reconciled to God. He is the only way of salvation. Jesus says in verse six, he says this very thing, no one comes to the Father except through me.

And so if our most fundamental problem is our alienation from God because of our sin, and if the only way that our sin could be atoned for and forgiven is for Jesus Christ, the God-man, to die for our sin in our place, to bear the curse of death that we deserved, and if that atonement and forgiveness becomes ours only if we are united to Jesus Christ by faith, then salvation can only be through trust in Jesus Christ. That is the only way. No one comes to the Father except through Him.

And this forces the question upon each of us: Have you put your trust and hope in the Lord Jesus Christ? That is the only way to be saved. If you are trying to make yourself good before God, to make yourself right before Him by the things that you do, or by being a moral and decent human being, that is not sufficient. There is no amount of good things you can do to atone for your sin and to be forgiven. It is only by coming to the one who has done that for you, that is the Lord Jesus Christ, and bowing to Him as your Lord and Savior.

Now, it is true. It shouldn’t embarrass us, but it is true that according to the Christian faith, according to the Scriptures, there is a sense in which God’s plan of salvation is radically exclusive. We might even say intolerant. It is intolerant of every other attempt to be made right with God apart from Christ. It is exclusive of every other religion that preaches a way of salvation apart from Jesus Christ. No one is saved apart from faith in Jesus Christ.

But at the same time, God’s plan of salvation is radically inclusive. John 3:16, we heard this earlier: For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. God does not exclude anybody who comes to faith in Jesus Christ. It does not matter what your nationality is, what your race is, what your social status is, your education. All who come to faith in Jesus Christ receive the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

What’s most amazing of all about this is that it doesn’t even matter what sins you have committed. No matter how great your sins have been, no matter how much evil you may have done, no matter how far you have strayed from the righteousness of God, if you come to Jesus Christ in faith, repentance, seeking his mercy, he is merciful, he is gracious, he does not cast anyone out who comes to him. No matter how vile, no matter how wicked a life he may have led, there is salvation for all who come to faith in Christ. And so Christianity, in that sense, is inclusive.

But this is why we can say as Christians that the Christian faith is the only true religion. Because it is only the Christian faith that brings us to Jesus Christ. And it is only Jesus Christ who can save us from our sin. Jesus said, I am the truth. I am the truth.

At the very deepest level, truth is not merely a matter of correct ideas and notions that correspond to reality. Of course, truth is that. Whatever is true to reality is true. But truth is not ultimately found in a worldview or a philosophy or a religion. But truth ultimately is found in a person, in a person. Truth is truth. Truth is what it is because God is truth. God is truth. God is the source and the origin of all truth.

And Jesus claimed that for himself. Jesus did not say, I am the rabbi from Galilee who teaches the truth. I am the man who knows the truth and proclaims the truth. Jesus said, I am the truth. I am the truth. And for that reason, coming to know the truth is more than just coming to agree with the doctrines, the teachings of Christianity, but coming to know the truth means coming to know Jesus, the person, the Son of God.

And this is why we can say as Christians that the Christian faith is the only true religion. It’s because it is only through the gospel that the truth himself comes to us, that the truth makes himself known to us for our salvation, for our comfort, for our hope. What the Apostle Peter declared in Acts chapter 4 verse 12 was true then, it is true today, it will be true until the end of the world. There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Let’s pray.

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Our Old Testament reading this morning is Psalm 119, verses 105 through 112. Psalm 119, verses 105 through 112, and this is God’s infallible and inerrant word. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I have sworn an oath and confirmed it to keep your righteous rules. I am severely afflicted. Give me life, O Lord, according to your word. Accept my freewill offerings of praise, O Lord, and teach me your rules. I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law. The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts. Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart. I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever to the end.

And now let’s turn to the New Testament, 2 Timothy 3. This is our New Testament reading and our sermon text for this morning. 2 Timothy 3, verses 14 through 17. 2 Timothy 3, verses 14 through 17.

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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

This morning, we are beginning a series of sermons through the month of August, a series that I have entitled, Questions People Ask Christians. And my hope is that these sermons will be helpful for those who may hear them who are not believers in Christ, who have yet to come to faith in Christ, but have questions about the Christian faith. But I also hope and pray that these sermons will be helpful for those who are already committed Christians.

These are questions that we will ask that all of us as Christians, we should be able to answer for ourselves. And Lord willing, we should be able to grow in our confidence to answer these questions when those who do not know Christ, who are outside the Christian faith, when they put these questions to us. And one of the wonderful things about our faith in Christ is that we don’t have to be afraid of hard questions. Of course, the Lord does not give us answers to all the questions that we may ask of him, but because he is truth and because his word is truth and he has revealed himself and his will to us in his word, we can be confident that there are good answers to the tough questions that we might hear from others or the questions that might even arise in our own hearts and minds.

This morning, the question we are addressing is this, how can I know the Bible is true? And in many ways, this is the most important question of all when it comes to any question that we might ask about Christianity. First of all, all of the answers to all of the other questions that we might ask about the Christian faith, they’re ultimately rooted in the scriptures. The answers come from the word of God.

For example, just one question that we will consider this month, that question will be, how can a good God allow evil? Well, we will never arrive, we will never come to a satisfactory answer to that question until we accept the truth about who God is, his character, his nature, and until we accept the truth about his rule over the universe as these truths are revealed to us in the scriptures. Only from the standpoint of the scriptures and of what God reveals to us there can we begin to answer a question such as, how can a good God allow evil? And many other questions that are asked of the Christian faith. And so this question about the truthfulness of the scriptures, this is foundational for answering every other question that may be raised concerning our faith in Christ.

Secondly, and most significantly, this question of how can I know the Bible is true is of first importance, is preeminently important, because there is so much at stake for you and me personally in the way in which we answer this question. If the Bible is true, and of course I believe it is true, but if the Bible is true, this is what it means for you. It means that you have been created by God, and you have been created by God to know Him, to serve Him, to love Him, and to worship Him. But because of your failure to know Him, serve Him, love Him and worship Him, you are guilty of sin against a righteous God. And unless your sin is forgiven by God, you will be eternally condemned. You will be cast out forever from the presence of God and you will endure the torments of His just and righteous wrath forever. That is what the Bible teaches.

And so if the Bible is true and we are apart from Christ, that is what is going to be true for you and me. But if you come to faith in the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, according to the word of God, then your sins will be forgiven. You will receive the gift of eternal life and the promise of eternal blessedness and glory will be yours.

And so with this question, is the Bible the true word of God? There is so much at stake for us. There’s so much at stake for us personally, nothing less than heaven or hell. And so we are not asking a merely intellectual question to satisfy our curiosity when we ask the question, is the Bible true? Is it trustworthy? It’s not as though we are concerned with asking other kinds of questions like, whether or not there are really black holes in the universe, or how did the dinosaurs become extinct? Those may be interesting questions and interesting things to ponder, but your life really isn’t affected by whatever the answer to those questions may be.

But the question that we’re asking this morning has everything to do not only with your life here and now in this world, but with your life in all eternity. And so if the Bible is in fact true, which of course I believe it is with all my heart, then what’s at stake for you personally is your eternal destiny. And so this question is of preeminent importance. There is no more urgent and important question for you and me to ask than this, is the Bible true?

Now, if you don’t already believe that the Bible is true, I want you to believe that it is true. I want you to come to see the truth that the Bible is the word of God. But more importantly, far more importantly than that, God wants you to believe that the Bible is true. And so this morning I’m going to give you two main reasons why you should accept the truth of the scriptures.

The first reason is this, you should believe the Bible because it is reasonable to do so. You should believe the Bible because it is reasonable to do so.

Before we go any further, we should be clear about what we mean when we say, I believe the Bible, or I believe the Bible is true. First of all, what is the Bible? What Bible are we talking about? We’re talking about the 66 individual books that make up the Old and the New Testament. 39 books in the Old Testament, 27 books in the New Testament. We don’t have time to get into this issue here, but the Bible does not include the books that are called the Apocrypha. The Bible is just those 66 books that contained in the Bible that you are holding, most of you are holding in your hands now.

And to say that I believe the Bible, to say that I believe that the Bible is true means this, it is to say that I accept as true what the Bible claims about itself. I accept that the Bible is speaking the truth when it says of itself that the Scriptures are the Word of God. In other words, to believe the Bible is true is to believe that everything that it says, everything that is given in the scriptures is true, trustworthy, without error, and authoritative, and it is to believe that because God himself, the author of the scriptures, is true, trustworthy, without error, and authoritative.

And this is a truth that is given to us in our passage this morning from our New Testament or from the New Testament reading. The apostle Paul, of course, he wrote this letter to Timothy. Timothy was his younger coworker in the gospel ministry. Paul was like a father to him, a mentor to him. And in verses 14 and 15 of chapter 3, Paul encourages Timothy to continue to devote himself to learning and to living by what he calls the sacred writings. And the sacred writings are the scriptures, the scriptures that Paul and Timothy had at that time, that the church had at that time, what we call today the Old Testament. The New Testament was not yet written.

And Paul grounds this exhortation to Timothy. He bases this encouragement to Timothy to continue in the scriptures in the strongest possible way by telling him or perhaps reminding him of what the scriptures truly are, the nature of the scriptures. And that is what Paul says in verses 16 and 17. So let me read those verses to you again, verses 16 and 17. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

In verse 16, Paul uses a compound word in Greek that combines two different words. It combines the word for God and the word for breathe. And that is literally God breathed. And that’s how the English Standard Version translates that compound Greek word breathed out by God. And so what that means is, is that though each book of the Bible was written by a human being, that there was a human author in each book of the Bible. Nevertheless, the true author, the ultimate author, the originator of all the words of scripture is God himself. These words came from God. They are breathed out by God.

And notice that Paul says that all Scripture is breathed out by God. This means that every book, every chapter, every passage, every sentence, every word in both the Old and the New Testaments comes from the mind of God. This breathed out by God covers all of Scripture. And so it’s not just passages like Psalm 23 or John 3:16, these passages that we memorize and love and hold dear to our hearts that are breathed out by God, but every passages, even those that are hard to understand, every passage that condemns our sin, every passage that speaks a truth that is unpopular in our world today, these are all equally the authoritative, the infallible, the trustworthy word of God.

And so this is the Christian view of the Bible. And this is the Christian view of the Bible because this is the Bible’s view of the Bible. That all the scripture is breathed out by God.

Now, at this point, someone might say, OK, I’m convinced that the Bible says that it is from God. It is the word of God. But is it truly reasonable for me to believe that? Because after all, the Bible was written so many ages ago. It was written in a pre-scientific, a pre-modern age when people believed in all kinds of myths and fables and all kinds of gods. Not only that, but the Bible was written in ancient languages that we don’t even speak anymore. And all we have in our Bibles today are copies of copies of copies of the original manuscripts. Those have been lost to history. And so how can I know really that the English Bible that I have is truly the Word of God?

Well, first of all, to begin to answer those kinds of questions, the Bible testifies to a faith that was absolutely unique and extraordinary in the ancient world. It is true that people back then believed in all kinds of myths and fables and different gods. It’s not so much different today. But unlike all the other religions of the ancient world, the scriptures taught that there is just one God. There is one God, the creator and the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth. And so the teaching of the Bible about God is as different as it can possibly be from all of the myths and the religions of all of the peoples of the ancient world. It is extraordinary. It was extraordinary then, it still is today in many ways.

Secondly, we can have perfect confidence that the English Bible that we read today is a faithful and reliable translation and transmission of the original manuscripts that were written in Hebrew and Greek. Now, it is true, of course, that we don’t have the original writings of the Bible. We don’t have anywhere the Psalms that David wrote in Hebrew. We don’t have the very first, the original copy of the letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans in Greek. Those have been lost to history. But the books of the Bible have always and had always been copied and transmitted with the utmost care to preserve the exact words that were being copied. I mean, after all, the scribes who copied the scriptures from one manuscript to the next, they believed that they were handling the very words of God and so they were very meticulous, very careful.

And when you look into it and look how manuscripts that are thousands of years apart are so exactly matched up together. You can see the care with which people copied the scriptures, but of course, ultimately, the sovereign rule of God over this whole endeavor to keep his word pure and to keep the integrity of his word. There are variants among manuscripts, scribal variants, that do exist. However, most of them, virtually all of them, are inconsequential in terms of affecting the meaning of Scripture. And, this is very important, there are no differences among the various manuscripts of the Bible that would change any fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith. So none of these differences affect anything that we consider to be absolutely fundamental and true and important for the Christian faith, for knowing God and worshiping God.

And what’s more, when we compare the biblical manuscripts that we have, when we compare this to all other kinds of literature, when it comes to the number of manuscripts, when it comes to the antiquity of the manuscripts that we have of the scriptures, we have an embarrassment of riches. There are literally thousands and thousands of biblical manuscripts that are centuries old. Some of those manuscripts of the New Testament goes far back to the second century AD, virtually just decades after the original manuscripts were written. As far as the Old Testament, we have manuscripts that go as far back. These are the Dead Sea Scrolls. They go back as far as 250 BC.

And so all of this is to say that it is perfectly reasonable to believe that the English Bibles that we possess today, that we read today, that they are true and faithful transmissions of the words of the original biblical books that were directly breathed out by God. In other words, it is eminently reasonable for a Christian holding his English Bible today to say with perfect confidence, this is the word of God. This is God’s word. He’s given it to us and he’s preserved it in his marvelous providence so that we have the true and trustworthy word of God.

And not only that, it is perfectly reasonable for a Christian to believe that the Bible that she reads has not been contradicted by history or archaeology or science. Now, we need to be honest. We need to say that there are some difficult questions about how what the Bible says harmonizes with what we know or what we think we know about the findings of science or archeology or history. But even with those questions, there was nothing in any of those fields of knowledge which categorically refutes any of the teaching of scripture, anything that the scripture tells us. And that will always be the case. Because the same God who gave us his infallible word is the God who created the universe, the God who rules over all things by his sovereign will, his sovereign power. And so what we learn that is true from nature or from history will never contradict the truth that God has revealed in the scriptures. So there may be some questions about this or that, but we know that ultimately there is harmony, that they harmonize together.

Someone may yet say, well, it’s not reasonable for me to believe in the miracles of the Bible. Let’s be honest. People just don’t rise from the dead. But we might say to that person, well, how do you know that? Have you personally examined the corpse of every single person who has ever died to confirm that they, in fact, are still dead? Of course not. No one could ever do that. It’s just an assumption that someone makes based on their own very, very limited experience.

But if anyone is willing to accept the truth about God, as God has revealed to us in the scriptures, that God is almighty, He is infinite in power, that He is the sovereign creator of all things, including life itself, that He is the author of life, and there is nothing at all unreasonable about believing that this God can rise or can raise someone from death to life. There is nothing unreasonable about believing that God can do any of the miracles that are recorded for us in the scriptures. And so you should believe the Bible because it is reasonable to do so.

However, that is not the greatest reason why you should believe the Bible. The greatest reason why you should believe the Bible, the reason why you must believe the Bible is because the Bible shows itself to be the word of God. And this is our second point. You should believe the Bible because it evidences itself or shows itself to be the true word of God.

A few weeks ago, I received an email that supposedly came from Adam Gustafson. Adam’s our ruling elder here, one of our ruling elders here. And let me read to you the exact words of this email. Hi, I am experiencing difficulty accessing the church directory. Please send me a PDF copy. Thank you for your assistance. Blessings, Adam Gustafson, elder.

Now, if I had been in a hurry, I might’ve just hit reply and sent him a copy of the church directory. But thankfully, I looked over the email a little more closely, and the more I looked at it, the more obvious it became to me that this was a fake, it was a scam, this wasn’t truly coming from Adam. Over the years, I’ve gotten a lot of texts and emails from Adam, and so I recognize the style of his communication with me. He wouldn’t start off an email by saying, hi. He’d probably say something like, pastor, or hey, brother. And even though Adam is always grateful when I send him something by email or text when he asks for it, he has never ever said in an email, thank you for your assistance. It just did not sound like Adam. And he would not need to, nor has he ever identified himself to me in a text or email by saying elder. I know that he is an elder. And not only that, but I know he already has a copy of the church directory. And of course, when I looked at the email that this message came from, it was not Adam’s email, so it was obviously fake.

And I knew it was fake because it completely lacked all of the marks that would have shown it to be genuinely coming from the true Adam. And when it comes to the Bible, the ultimate reason why we should accept it as the Word of God is because, unlike a fake email, the Bible bears all the marks of being truly from its author. It bears all the marks of being truly from the one whom it claims it comes from, and that is God himself. In other words, if we read the Bible with an open mind, we cannot but see that the words and the teaching in it and the scriptures in their entirety cannot have come from man, but they must be these words that are here in the scripture. They must come from the mind of God.

Let me read to you from our larger catechism, the Westminster larger catechism, question and answer number four. Question, how doth it appear, how does it appear, that the scriptures are the word of God? Answer, the scriptures manifest themselves to be the word of God by their majesty and purity, by the consent of all the parts, and the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God, by their light and power to convince and convert sinners, to comfort and build up believers unto salvation.

If you read the Bible, and if you read it paying attention to what the Bible is saying, what it’s communicating, you will be struck with the majesty of all that it speaks of. Because it speaks of the majesty, the greatness, the glory of Almighty God. It speaks of his wonderful works of creation, of providence, of redemption. The scriptures speak of a God who is infinitely pure and holy and righteous. And it urges us to imitate God, to be like God in righteousness, purity, holiness. And so the word of God is pure and is holy. And from beginning to end, the Bible tells us a story of God’s sovereign work of creation, of redemption, of one day bringing all things so that all things will bring glory to him. It speaks of the sovereign work of salvation in Jesus Christ. And in this way, all the scriptures magnify the glory of God.

And in all of these ways, the scriptures bear marks of its divine author. But not only that, there is power in the Bible, power to transform lives, to change sinners into saints, to bring comfort and hope to believers, to bring lasting transformation even to entire nations. And this too is testimony to the truth that the Bible does come from God himself. He is the author of it.

The reformer John Calvin said this. He said, indeed, scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their color or sweet or bitter things do of their taste. Well, how do you know that sugar is sweet? How do you know that coffee is bitter? It’s not because you read about it in a book. It’s not because someone explained that to you, but you have tasted sugar and you know that it is sweet. You have tasted coffee. You know that it is bitter. They prove themselves, they evidence themselves to be what they are.

And so you do not come to believe the Bible, you don’t come to believe it and accept it as the word of God because the preacher says you should, or because the church says you should, or because the experts say you should, but you come to believe the Bible because you see for yourself that every word in it comes from the mind of God. It is truly God’s word.

Now, somebody might say to that, well, that sounds great, but I’m sorry, I just don’t see that at all. All I see is just another religious book alongside all of the other books of all the other religions in the world. The true reason why anybody would say that and the reason why so many people fail to see the truth about the Word of God is because they are blind to that truth. We were born with spiritual blindness. We cannot see what is obviously true until God takes away that blindness.

A man who is physically blind cannot see anything but darkness. You can take him outside on a clear day at high noon, and the sun is shining brightly in the sky, and all he sees is darkness. He’ll say, I don’t see the sun. Well, that does not mean that the sun does not exist. It just means that his eyes have not been opened. He cannot see it. And for you and me to truly see the truth that the Bible is the word of God, we must have our spiritual blindness removed. We need our eyes open. We need the spirit to illumine our hearts that we might acknowledge and receive what is true, that the Bible is the word of God.

And that’s what the larger catechism goes on to say. The Spirit of God, bearing witness by and with the Scriptures in the heart of man, is alone able to fully persuade it that they are the very Word of God. Only the Spirit of God can open our eyes. Only the Spirit of God can enable us to see the light of God’s truth radiating from the pages of the Scripture.

And part of that truth about the Scripture is that the Spirit, by His power and grace, enables us to see is that to put it in the language of the catechism. The scope of the whole Bible is to give all glory to God. That is the entire, where the Bible is leading us to see God in all of his glory. And the Bible gives all glory to God in one magnificent way above all others. And that is it reveals to us the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, According to the Bible, Jesus Christ, he is the one who preeminently, above all else, reveals the glory of God to us.

Listen to 2 Corinthians 4:6. For God who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The face of Jesus Christ reveals God’s glory. And so as the Bible reveals to us the glory of God, it does so as it reveals to us the person of Jesus Christ, because he is the incarnate son of God. He is God in the flesh. And through his word, through his word in the scriptures, Christ calls all people to come to him in faith.

And what this means for you is this, what this means for you and me, for all of us is this, that you cannot ask the question, how can I know the Bible is true? You cannot ask that question without asking at the very same time this question, am I ready to accept the claims of Jesus Christ upon my life? In other words, you’re coming to believe that the Bible is God’s word, and you’re coming to faith in Jesus Christ as your savior from sin and death. These are two sides of the same coin that go hand in hand.

In fact, you see that connection, that inseparable bond between the word of God and between Christ, who reveals the glory of God through the scriptures, You see that in our passage in 2 Timothy, in verse 15, Paul says to Timothy, you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. In other words, as the sacred writings reveal Christ, you come to salvation. They make you wise for salvation.

And so the real question is not, how can I believe the Bible is true? But the real question is, Why would you not believe the Bible is true? The scriptures speak the truth, the truth about your sin, your guilt before a holy God. The scriptures proclaim the glorious good news that Jesus Christ came into the world to save us from sin and death by his offering himself a sacrifice upon the cross to atone for our sins and by his resurrection from the dead.

If you are sincerely and genuinely asking the question, how can I know the Bible is true? The answer is, come to the Jesus of the Bible. Come to faith in the one to whom the Bible testifies. Repent of your sin, believe in him as your savior, submit to him as your Lord. And then, and only then, can you truly see that the Bible is the word of God. And then you will be able to say with the apostle Peter, of those words that he spoke to Jesus, you will say as well, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

Let’s pray.

The post How Can I Know that the Bible is True? appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

Our Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 32, verses 1 through 14. Exodus chapter 32, verses 1 through 14. And this is the Word of God. This is God’s infallible, His inspired, His inerrant Word.

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, up, 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 Aaron said to them, take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters, and bring them to me. So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron.

And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.

And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. And the Lord said to Moses, go down for your people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them.

They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And the Lord said to Moses, I have seen this people and behold, it is a stiff necked people. Now, therefore, let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them in order that I may make a great nation of you. But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?

Why should the Egyptians say with evil intent did he bring them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. 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 have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever. And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.

And now turn with me to 1 Corinthians 10, verses one through 11. 1 Corinthians 10, one through 11 for our New Testament reading. For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink.

For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were, as it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

We must not indulge in sexual immorality, as some of them did, and 23,000 fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now, these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

You can turn back to Exodus chapter 32. This is our sermon text for this morning. As we continue in our study of the book of Exodus, today we have come to what is one of the most infamous episodes in the entire history of the nation of Israel, and that is their making and worshiping the golden calf. If the crossing of the Red Sea is the highlights of the book of Exodus, then this chapter describes for us the low light in the book of Exodus.

Here are the people of God at their very worst. We might say that this was their mountain bottom experience. However, as the Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, as he writes about this incident, as he writes about other incidents that took place among the people of Israel during their wilderness wanderings, he says that these things were written down for our instruction. And since that is the case, as we look at this sad story of the Israelites’ worship of the golden calf, we’ll consider how it instructs us as the people of God today.

This morning, we are only looking at the first half of the golden calf incident. And so all of chapter 32 is taken up with this event. We’ll look at the first half today, and the rest of chapter 32 we’ll look at later. But in our passage this morning, we’ll divide it up into three parts as we consider it.

First of all, we’ll consider the idolatry of the Israelites. Secondly, the judgment of God. And thirdly, the intercession of Moses.

And so first, the idolatry of the Israelites.

At the beginning of chapter 32, Moses has been up on the mountain, Mount Sinai, for almost 40 days and 40 nights. And during that time, the Lord has given to Moses various laws and statutes and instructions that will govern the life of the people of Israel, the worship of the people of Israel. And so at the beginning of chapter 32, the Lord, at least for now, he has finished speaking to Moses on the top of Mount Sinai. Moses has in his hands the two tablets with the 10 commandments written with the finger of God.

And he has in his mind and in his heart all of the other laws that God has spoken to them or spoken to Moses. And so Moses is, he is ready. He’s ready to come down to rejoin the people of Israel. But before he does that, we read what’s taking place down below at the bottom of the mountain.

And down there, things are not going so well. Look at verse 1 in chapter 32. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, Up, 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.

And so Moses has been away for over a month now, and the people are getting anxious. They do not know what has become of him. They are ready to move on, but where is their leader?

And so they do the very same thing that we do when we fail to entrust ourselves to God’s wise and good care for us, his love for us. When we become impatient with God’s timing and his dealings with us, we do what they did, that is, we take matters into our own hands. And that’s what the people do here. Verse one says that the people gathered themselves together to Aaron.

The Hebrew suggests that this is not a friendly meeting with Aaron, but rather the people are hostile, perhaps even threatening Aaron with harm if he does not comply with their demand. And what is it that the people, in this very unfriendly way, are demanding of Aaron? Well, they want him to make for them gods to go before them and to lead them on their way to the promised land. So they are done with Moses, and really, in a sense, they are done with the Lord.

They are ready for new gods to lead them into the promised land. Now, to put it mildly, the way that Aaron responds to this certainly is not his finest hour. What he should have done, he should have rebuked the Israelites for this sinful demand. He should have, or he should have refused to go along with it.

But instead, out of his own fear of man, Aaron does what he surely knew was wrong. He collects all of their gold jewelry, he melts it in the fire, and then he takes the molten gold from the fire and he fashions it into the image of a calf. The word calf here really refers to a young but a full-sized bull. And so the image is one of strength and power.

And of course, that’s why they made that an idol, because of what it communicated. In fact, the Egyptians worshiped idols in the form of bulls. And so this was something that the Israelites learned from them. Ironically, sadly, the Israelites are imitating the worship of the very people whose tyranny the Lord, who is the true God, delivered them in the Exodus.

And so the Israelites are committing this gross idolatry of the idols of the nation that held them in bondage and from which the Lord delivered them. But Aaron makes this graven image. He then builds an altar, and then he announces that tomorrow there will be a feast to the Lord. But of course, it’s not really a feast to the Lord.

It’s a feast to this idol or idols. And then the next day, the Israelites worship the gods of their own hands. They worship this God and these gods with burnt offerings, peace offerings. Now, if we’re keeping score, at this point, the Israelites have managed to break at least two of the Ten Commandments.

They’ve broken the first and the second commandment. The first commandment says, you shall have no other gods before me. After Aaron made this golden calf, the people said in verse four, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. So the text suggests that there was more than one idol that was made.

There was certainly the golden calf that Aaron made, but perhaps he or others made other idols because the people said, these are your gods, O Israel. And so, at that point, the people of Israel ceased to be a people who were monotheistic, that is, a people who believe in and worship one God. They became a people who are polytheistic, that is, a people who believe in and worship many gods. And of course, this was a violation of the first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me.

And here they are making gods in place of the Lord. But even if Aaron had only made one idol, that still would have broken the second commandment. The second commandment says, you shall not make for yourself a carved image. And the meaning of the second commandment is that the Israelites were not to represent God.

Remember, God is spirit in the words of our confession. He is a most pure spirit. He cannot be captured or represented by any visible form. And yet the Israelites make this golden calf and they claim to be worshiping the Lord with this idol.

And so, when the people beheld this golden image, along with the other idols that Aaron made, they identified them as the gods who led them out of Egypt. And so, they were identifying these idols with the true God. And this is a violation of the second commandment. Now, why in the world did the Israelites make this idol?

They had seen all that the Lord had done for them. They had witnessed his miraculous saving might and were delivered out of Egypt by signs and wonders. They saw his presence in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. They were reminded of his care for them every morning as there was manna on the ground for them to collect and to eat.

And so why in the world did the Israelites resort to this gross idolatry? Well, one reason was because that was their habit. That’s what they were used to. For 400 years, the Israelites were immersed in a pagan and idolatrous environment.

This was their default religion. This is what people did then all around them, make an idol and worship it. In the book of Acts, when Stephen recounts the history of Israel, you remember in chapter 7, just before he is martyred, the first martyr of the church, Stephen gives a history of the nation of Israel. And he says, as part of his speech, he says in Acts 7:39, our fathers refused to obey him, but thrust him aside.

And in their hearts, they turned to Egypt. You’ve heard the saying, you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy. Well, the same thing applies here. You can take the Israelite out of Egypt, but you apparently cannot take the Egypt out of the Israelites.

In their hearts, they returned to Egypt. They naturally went back to that idol worship that they had seen and no doubt had practiced there. So that’s one reason why they turned to idolatry. But the more basic reason, the more fundamental reason is that they made this idol, they worshiped it because idolatry is simply the default religion of all people.

It’s the default religion for all of us. The Israelites were only doing what we do according to our fallen, sinful nature. As sinners, we cannot but help, or we cannot but make an idol and worship it, thrust God to the side, reject the Lord, refuse to serve and acknowledge the true God, the living God, and instead make idols of our own hands, our own imaginations, and worship them as our God.

And one of the great appeals of making an idol like this is that it enables us to worship a God who essentially does our bidding, a God who essentially gives us the freedom to do what we want to do in our own sinful desires. R.C. Sproul, commenting on the golden calf, he wrote this. He said, the cow gave no law and demanded no obedience.

It had no wrath or justice or holiness to be feared. It was deaf, dumb, and impotent, but at least it could not intrude on their fun and call them to judgment. This was a religion designed by men, practiced by men, and ultimately useless for men. And that is the default religion for every single human being after the fall of Adam.

We will, by nature, make idols and worship them. Psalm 106 calls what the Israelites did here an exchange. There was a trade-off, an exchange. Psalm 106, verse 20.

They exchanged the glory of God for an image that eats grass, or for the image of an ox that eats grass. In Romans chapter one, the apostle Paul uses the same language from Psalm 106 to describe the natural idolatry of all those who do not know and worship the true God. He says in Romans chapter one, verse 25, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen.

Again, there is an exchange that takes place, a trade. Instead of the true God, we will worship idols. Instead of the creator, we will worship the creature. And this idolatrous exchange on the part of the Israelites, this exchange of the truth about God for a lie, you’ll notice that it led them to more and more sin.

The result of this idolatry was that sin abounded. And that is the nature of idolatry. Worshiping an idol instead of worshiping the true God, the true God who has made himself known to us in his son, whenever we worship an idol instead of the true God, the fruit of that, the result of that will always be sin. Sin will abound.

There’ll be further evils. And that’s what we see in this passage. After the Israelites made offerings to their brand new gods, verse six says that the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. Now Moses is using euphemistic language here.

When you consider the nature of pagan and idolatrous feasts at that time and even today, it’s not hard to read between the lines that people did not rise up to play croquet or softball, but they rose up to engage in all kinds of debauchery and immorality. That’s what pagans did at their feasts and their parties, and no doubt that’s what the Israelites were doing at their great party in the wilderness as well. And a very, very important lesson for us here is this, that all sin is ultimately rooted in false worship and idolatry. Again, first, the Israelites broke the first and second commandments.

They worshiped false gods and they attempted to worship the true God falsely. But that wrong worship led to wrong conduct. After the worship, they rose up for their feasting, their immorality, their quote unquote playing. And this is very important for us to understand the roots of sin in our lives because we tend to see only the surface of the sin as the problem.

And so we might say to ourselves, I have a problem with getting angry at others. Or we might say to ourselves, I have a problem with lust. Or I have a problem because I’m failing to be the husband or the father that I should be. And so I need to reform my behavior.

I need to modify my conduct. I need to change my ways. Now, to some extent, it’s good, of course, that we recognize our sins and our faults. That’s where true repentance begins.

We need to acknowledge where we have failed to do what we should do. But that is only where we start. We need to go further than that. We need to go deeper than that.

We need to realize that my anger problem is really a worship problem. I yell at my kids because I’ve made an idol out of my own peace and comfort. Or my lust problem is really a worship problem. I’ve made an idol out of myself and my desires.

Or my marriage problem is really a worship problem. Because I’ve made idols out of success and wealth, I’ve sacrificed my relationship with my wife. The sin in our lives springs from the false worship that begins and takes place in the heart. But what is the answer to all of that?

Well, the answer is to worship Christ, to make Him the object of our heart’s affections and desires and worship and adoration. And as you, by the grace of God, as you seek your life, your treasure, your joy in the Son of God, in Jesus Christ, the less then you will seek your life and happiness in the idols of this world. And the fruit of that will be a life that is more and more conformed to the righteousness that God requires of us. If the Israelites had only trusted in the Lord, if they had only put their trust in Him, knowing that He would care for them, that He would provide for them, that He would lead them, if they had truly worshiped Him from the heart, they would not have made an idol and they would not have fallen into such sin and depravity as they do.

And so overcoming sin begins in the hearts. And again, it begins by lifting up Jesus Christ and worshiping Him as the true and only God. And so this is how we begin to put sin to death in our lives.

We begin with worship where our heart is. What are we glorifying in our hearts? What are we making much of in our hearts and our minds? And of course, this is all a work of God’s grace.

This is all of grace. It’s not something that we can will to do within ourselves. And so the first thing we have to do is to pray. We need to pray like this, Lord, turn my heart from the idols of my own making.

Lord, I acknowledge I have made this or that an idol of my life, but turn my heart from this and turn it to you. Give me grace, Father, that I would seek and find true life, my true blessedness, my true treasure, delight in knowing you, worshiping you as you have made yourself known to me in your son, Jesus Christ. And as God answers that prayer for us, He breaks for us the power of idolatry in our lives and the presence of sin in our lives. So that is the idolatry of the Israelites.

The second part of the story is the judgment of God. The Lord’s response to what Israel did, their idolatry, shows us just how seriously the Lord takes it. God says to Moses in verse 7, He says, Notice how He says to Moses, They are your people. Have you ever told your spouse, Do you know what your child did today?

Or did you hear what your son said today? Well, here God disassociates Himself from His people. And why is that? It’s because they have broken His covenant.

They have first disassociated themselves from the Lord. So God says, Moses, they are your people. Then the Lord tells Moses everything that the Israelites have done. Of course, Moses is up on the mountain.

He doesn’t know. He hears it from God. And then the Lord says in verse 9, I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. This is actually the very first time, but not the last time that the Israelites in the Bible are called a stiff-necked people.

When I hear that expression, the image that comes to my mind of being stiff-necked is a picture I have of our dog when she was a puppy. And when I tried to take her for a walk on the leash about a block from our house, she decided that she was done having a walk and she would dig all four paws into the ground or on the sidewalk and then she would rear her neck up as I pulled on the leash. And the harder I’d pull on the leash, the harder she would rear up her neck and make it clear that she was determined not to be led one more inch by me.

And that’s exactly what the Israelites are like here. They will not be led by God. They are stiff-necked. They refuse to follow His or to keep His commandments.

They ignore godly instruction. They won’t listen to the word of God. They are determined to do things their way. They are obstinate.

They are stubborn. They think that they know what is best for them, and they will do what they think is best. That’s what it means to be stiff-necked. Now, let me ask you this.

You don’t happen to know anybody like that, do you? Until God softens our hearts, we all have stiff necks. In our folly and blindness and sin, we reject the way of God. We’re determined to do things our way.

We know what’s best for ourselves, no matter how foolish and wrong and no matter how much harm that may do to us. And so we can see ourselves in the people of Israel in our own sinful ways in which we reject the Lord so often. And God’s judgment against a stiff-necked people who continue to refuse, who will not repent, who continue to reject the Lord and not submit to his word, that judgment is very severe. In fact, it is complete destruction.

The Lord says to Moses in verse 10, Now therefore, let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them, and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you. Although the Israelites were the people of God, because of their obstinate disobedience, they had brought God’s judgment upon themselves. And the lesson here for us is this. As we, as Christians, as we are the covenant people, the covenant people of God today, we too are duty-bound to obey Him.

That is part of what it means to be God’s covenant people. We are bound to obey Him. And that is the lesson that the Apostle Paul draws from the history of Israel in the wilderness. When he writes about it in 1 Corinthians 10, he says that these things were written as examples.

They were written for our instruction. He says, do not be idolaters as some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. Paul’s writing to the new covenant people of God in Corinth, do not be like them.

Do not be disobedient. Now, all the Israelites, they were included among the people of God, the covenant people, nevertheless, just mere membership in God’s covenant people was not sufficient for their salvation. They also had to demonstrate the reality, the truth of their faith by their obedience. If they had true faith in the Lord, if they were truly entrusting themselves to the Lord, then that would have resulted in true faithfulness on their parts.

Instead, they were faithless in both senses of the word. They were unbelieving, and also they were faithless in that they did not keep God’s commandments. As the people of God who were saved by the grace of God, the Israelites were bound to keep the commandments of God. And that is true for you and me as well as Christians.

Again, we are God’s covenant people. We are God’s new covenant people, His people through Jesus Christ. And what that means, first of all, is that your salvation is entirely by the grace of God. You are saved from your sin.

You are saved from eternal death on the basis not of what you have done, not even partially on what you have done, but solely on the basis of the perfect obedience of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. To put it in theological terms, you are justified, you are made right with God solely on the basis of what Christ has done, and that salvation is yours by faith alone, apart from works. At the same time, that faith that justifies you, the faith that saves you, is a faith that is never alone. It is not true saving faith if it does not produce in your life the fruits of genuine obedience to the Word of God.

And so what this means is that it is not enough to simply call yourself a Christian in order to be saved. It is not enough neither to simply be, merely to be a church member or simply to be baptized or to grow up in a Christian home. But what saves you is faith in Jesus Christ, a faith that produces the fruits of repentance and obedience to God’s commandments. Not perfect obedience, but genuine obedience.

And so here’s the lesson for us. Just as the Israelites were bound to obey the word of God precisely because they were God’s people, so we as Christians are bound to obey the word of God because we have been made his people by his grace, apart from our works. Because we have been saved by the grace of God and made His people, therefore, we are bound to keep His commandments.

And God gives us His grace. He gives us His Spirit. He enables us to do so. Now, the Israelites deserved the judgment that God had declared against them.

Their sin was so grievous, so great that they deserved that awful judgment that they would all be destroyed, all except for Moses. But God showed them incredible mercy. But he only showed them mercy after the prayers of Moses.

And that is the third part of the story that we are looking at today, the intercession of Moses.

And here we learn just what kind of godly, humble character Moses possessed. The Lord says to Moses in verse 10, now, therefore, let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them, and I may consume them in order that I may make a great nation of you. Now, if I had been Moses at that point, I would think to myself, okay, let’s see. These people who have been nothing but a thorn in my side, you will get rid of all of them, and you will make of me a great nation.

I will be the father of a new nation. Lord, you’ve got a deal. That sounds good to me. But Moses didn’t say that.

Moses wanted the best for the people of Israel, despite how much grief they have already given him, despite how sinful and wicked they were acting down on the mountain, or at the bottom of the mountain. And so Moses prayed for them. And did he ever pray? According to Deuteronomy 9:25, Moses lay prostrate before the Lord.

He prayed for 40 days and nights for the people of Israel. There are prayer warriors, and then there is Moses. He’s in a class by himself. But what a character that Moses had, that he would pray for this stubborn and rebellious people, for the Lord to have mercy.

But what’s remarkable about Moses’ prayer, not only the length of it, as we learn from Deuteronomy, but you’ll notice that Moses does not directly appeal to the mercy or the grace or the compassion of the Lord. Of course, he could have done so because God is all those things, but he appeals first to the glory of God. He appeals also to the integrity of God’s name. He says to the Lord, if you destroy your people, your name will be dishonored among the Egyptians.

The Egyptians, they’ll be able to say, look, the Lord brought his people out of Israel only in order to destroy them in the wilderness. What kind of God is that? He is not a good God. He is an evil God.

And Moses also appeals to God’s character. That is his faithfulness to his covenant promises. He says, Lord, remember, remember what you have pledged, what you have promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. You promised that you would multiply their offspring and give them the land of promise.

And by praying in this way, by appealing to God’s own glory and to the integrity of his name, Moses gets to the heart of the matter here and he gets to what’s really at stake here. And it’s not the salvation of the people of Israel, but it’s the vindication of the greatness, the goodness, the glory of God. In other words, Moses is praying, not for my sake, O Lord, not for the Israelites’ sake do I ask you to have mercy, but for the sake of your great, your awesome name, for your own glory, have mercy on this people who do not deserve it, but be merciful for your own glory.

And in this prayer that Moses prays, there is a great truth here. A truth that applies to you and me, and that is that God has saved us not only because He is compassionate and merciful, and it was His will to rescue us from the eternal misery and death that we deserve because of our sins. God has saved us not only because He is love, and He has willed, according to His unfathomable purposes, He has willed to make us objects of His love, but God has also saved us most fundamentally He has saved us for the exaltation, the glorification of His name. He has saved us so that for all eternity, all of creation will magnify and glorify the greats, the goods, the glorious name of God.

And since that is the case, the starting point for genuine Christian humility is to understand that. That my salvation in Christ is ultimately, it’s not about who I am, it’s not about me, it’s not about my story, as important as that is to me, but ultimately my salvation in Christ, it’s about God. It’s about who he is, about his story, how he has glorified himself through saving an undeserving people. For Moses, as it should be for us, the center of the universe was not him.

It was not even the Israelites, but it was God. And that’s how it should be for us as well. The center of our universe, our spiritual universe, should be the Lord. Psalm 115:1, not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness.

And so in response to this prayer of Moses, as Moses prays that the Lord would act for the sake of his own name, the Lord acts, he has mercy. Verse 14 says, and the Lord relented from the disaster that he’d spoken on bringing on his people. So it was the intercession of Moses that brought about the salvation of the Israelites from the judgment that they deserved. And in doing this, Moses shows us a greater Moses.

He shows us Jesus Christ, the Son of God, because Jesus, just as Moses did, He prays for His people. He prayed for His people on earth. He continues to pray for us, even as He is seated at the right hand of the Father. But Jesus did what Moses could never do.

He not only prayed for His people, but He took our place upon the cross. Jesus took our place to bear that awful judgment, that wrath of God that we deserve because of our sin and our guilt. Because just like the Israelites, we have made this terrible exchange. In our sin, we have made this terrible trade-off.

We have exchanged the glory of God for empty idols. We have exchanged the glory of the creator to make idols of the creation. We have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and that is the evil exchange that brings us death. But in Christ Jesus, we have the great exchange that brings us eternal life, and that is God gives us the perfect righteousness, obedience, holiness, innocence of Jesus Christ, and He gives it to us as though it were our very own, and it is our own.

And he takes our sin and our guilt and our evil and our corruption, and he gives it to Jesus. And Jesus bore it for us at the cross. This is the great exchange that brings us everlasting life. And Moses also points us to Christ in the way in which he showed love for his people.

Now, the text doesn’t say so in so many words, but I think we’re on safe ground to infer it from what is said, that it was out of love for his people that Moses prayed for them. What was it that drove Moses to pray night and day for 40 days for his people if it was not, in part at least, his love for them? These were his people. He did not want them to see.

He did not want to see them destroyed. He was committed to their good. And if Moses interceded out of love for his people Israel, how much more does Jesus, the Son of God, the one who loves us perfectly, how much more does he intercede for you and me out of his love for us? If this episode of The Golden Calf is written down for our instruction, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians, then let’s especially learn this final lesson that only in Jesus Christ, only in the incarnate son of God do we have a perfect mediator, a perfect savior, one who alone can bring us salvation and eternal life.

He is the true Moses. Have you made him your savior from sin and death? Have you put your trust and faith in him? Let’s pray.

The post The Golden Calf appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

Our Old Testament reading in our sermon text is Exodus chapter 31, verses 12 through 18, and this is God’s inspired, his infallible, and inerrant word. And the Lord said to Moses, you are to speak to the people of Israel and say, above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths. For this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Therefore, the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed. And he gave to Moses when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone written with the finger of God.

Let’s turn now to Mark chapter two, verses 23 through 28. And this is our New Testament reading. Mark two, 23 through 28. This is the Lord’s teaching, part of his teaching on the Sabbath. One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain fields. And as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath? And he said to them, have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him. And he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. The grass weathers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. You can turn back to Exodus chapter 31.

In 1924, at the Olympic Games in Paris, France, there was an athlete there who did something that caused an international controversy. No, it had nothing to do with his gender. It had nothing to do with performance enhancing drugs. In fact, this athlete was a man of tremendous integrity. He was a serious and faithful Christian. And he was so committed to his faith in Christ that after the Olympics were over, he turned away from the fame and the glory that he could have enjoyed for a long time after the Olympics. And instead, he spent the rest of his life as a missionary serving in far away China.

You probably know who I’m talking about, most of you will. His name was Eric Liddell, and he was from Scotland. He was a sprinter from that nation. And what he did that was so controversial at those Olympic Games was that he withdrew from the 100-meter race, even though that was his best event. And that was almost a sure thing for Great Britain to get a medal in that event. And so you can imagine that his withdrawing from that race caused a lot of people to be very unhappy.

And why did he withdraw from the 100 meters race? It was because one of the qualifying heats for that race took place on a Sunday. And for Eric Liddell, Sunday was not just another day, but it was the Lord’s Day. It was a day in which he could not, with a good conscience, engage in anything that basically amounted to work, and his racing that day would have basically been work for him. And so, out of conscience, he withdrew from the race altogether.

Of course, if you’ve seen the movie Chariots of Fire, you know the really dramatic parts of Liddell’s story at the Olympics that year. He would go on to shock the world by winning the 400-meter race, a race that he was not supposed to do well in. It was not his best event, but that unlikely victory made him a national hero. And that part of the story, if you’ve seen the movie, it makes for a great movie. But I believe the best parts of the story of Eric Liddell and the 24 Olympics was his faithfulness, that he was faithful. He was faithful to his conscience. He was faithful to the word of God in obeying the fourth commandment. And just a reminder, the fourth commandment, it’s been a while since we were in the Ten Commandments, but the fourth commandment says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

It’s very hard to imagine a similar scenario taking place at the Olympics today, where an athlete refuses to compete in his best event because it takes part on Sunday. The truth is, for most people today, the Fourth Commandment is essentially irrelevant, useless, a quaint relic from a bygone religious era. As a society, we don’t value the Fourth Commandment as we once did.

In the days of America’s westward expansion, as missionaries were going out west, crossing the Mississippi River, they called the western frontier, everything beyond the Mississippi, they called it the land beyond the Sabbath. It was a kind of spiritual wilderness with no regard for God’s law. But that could very well describe the time in which we live. We very much live in a time that is the land beyond the Sabbath.

And that is a tragedy, because insofar as we as Christians fail to keep the fourth commandment, we not only fail to honor the Lord who gave it to us and commanded us to keep it, but we deprive ourselves of a precious gift. God gave us the Sabbath for our good. We heard that from our New Testament reading. Jesus said in Mark chapter two, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. In other words, God created the Sabbath, he gave it to us, his image bearers, for our good, for our blessing. And so the Sabbath day is both a commandment and it is a blessing, it is a gift from God. That was true for the Israelites then, back in the days of Exodus, that is true for us as Christians today.

And so as we consider the fourth commandment this morning from this passage of scripture, we’ll first see what it meant for the people of Israel back then, and then we’ll consider the significance of the fourth commandment for us as Christians today.

So first, the meaning of the Sabbath commandment for the people of Israel who received it from the Lord back in the days of Exodus. So at this point in Exodus, Moses has been up on the mountain of Mount Sinai for almost 40 days and 40 nights. And he’s been there receiving instructions directly from the Lord. Instructions that included various laws that would govern the society, the life of the nation of Israel. And also, as we’ve seen the last several weeks, instructions concerning the tabernacle and the worship there.

But before God gave these instructions to Moses, the first thing he did from the top of Mount Sinai was that he declared to all the people of Israel the Ten Commandments. And with our passage this morning, we have in a sense, we have come full circle because at the very end of this passage, we read this in verse 18. And he gave to Moses when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone written with the finger of God. And so after all the other laws and instructions that the Lord gave to Moses on the top of Mount Sinai, he gives to him at the very end of all that, the two tablets of stone on which were written the 10 commandments. And that was where the Lord began to proclaim his law to the people of Israel with the 10 commandments.

Now, the two tablets that God gave to Moses, most likely these were two separate copies of the 10 commandments. We often think of the two tablets, tablet containing the first four commandments, the other tablet containing the last six commandments. That may have been the case. Perhaps, though, more likely, it was two copies of ten commandments, and the reason for that was because there were two parties to this covenant. There was the Lord and the people of Israel, and each party had their copy of the law of the covenant.

And the fact that the Ten Commandments were written in stone with the finger of God tells us a lot about the supreme importance of these Ten Commandments. All of the laws that we have considered concerning the tabernacle and the garments of the priests and the worship there and so on, all of those laws would one day give way with the coming of Christ, because Christ would be the fulfillment of everything that those laws were pointing towards. As well, all of the laws that governed the people of Israel as a nation, those too would give way to the establishment of the church. The church is a spiritual kingdom. We no longer apply the civil laws that God gave to the people of Israel to the church today.

But the Ten Commandments, these are different. These were literally written in stone. And they were God’s enduring commandments, not only for the people of Israel then, but they are his law for all people at all times and in all places.

And what remarkable thing about the way that the Lord gave his laws and instructions to Moses is that before he gives to Moses the two tablets of stone that contain the 10 commandments, he speaks to Moses about one of the commandments in particular, and that is the fourth commandment. And that was our passage this morning. And so the Lord says to Moses in verse 13, he says, you are to speak to the people of Israel and say, above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths. For this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you.

Notice how the Lord emphasizes this commandment. He says, above all, above all, you shall keep my commandments or my Sabbaths rather. And that raises the question, why did the Lord choose to remind Moses of this one commandment in particular? Why did he not remind Moses of the first commandment? That would seem to be the one commandment we might choose out of all 10 to impress upon someone, to have no other gods before the Lord, Moses could have reminded the Israelites of the sixth commandment, or the seventh commandment, or any of them. But why did the Lord remind Moses, after the end of all these instructions that he gave to him, that the people of Israel were to be especially vigilant in keeping the fourth commandment?

Well, the answer is found in what the Lord says to Moses, both in verses 13 and in verse 17. If you look at verse 13, the Lord says, This is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. And then in verse 17, the language of sign is used again. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth. And on the seventh day, he rested and was refreshed.

And so the fourth commandment, in a way that made it unique, distinct from the other nine commandments, was a sign. It was a sign for the people of Israel that they were a people who belonged to God. They were people who belonged to the Lord. It was the Lord who sanctified them, he says in verse 13. That is, it is the Lord who sets them apart. It was the Lord who set his people Israel apart from all the other nations of the world to be his beloved people, to be his redeemed people, his holy people.

In other words, insofar as the people of Israel kept the fourth commandment, Insofar as they rested and worshiped on the seventh day of the week, they testified, both to themselves and to the world, that they were in covenant with the Lord, that the God who created the heavens and the earth, the true, the living God of all things, that He had made Israel His people, and Israel had God, or the Lord, as their God.

And if the Israelites were tempted to think that keeping this commandment as a covenant sign between them and the Lord, if they were tempted to think that this was something that was not so serious or so important, something that could be safely ignored, the Lord tells Moses here in this passage just how seriously he takes the fourth commandment. Look at verses 14 and 15. Verse 14, you shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Verse 15, six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death.

And so the death penalty was the consequence for breaking this commandment for the people of Israel. Later in the Old Testament, we read in the book of Numbers that upon the Lord’s instructions, a man was stoned to death for breaking the Sabbath. Now, what did this man do to deserve the death penalty when he broke the Sabbath? Did he go on a murder rampage on the Sabbath day? Did he commit adultery on the Sabbath day? No. What he did was, is he went outside to gather sticks, presumably to make a fire. Now, that strikes us as being cruel or harsh. Why did the Lord bring this penalty of death upon this man who simply went out on the Sabbath day to gather some firewood?

But the Lord was showing the people of Israel just how important it was that they keep the fourth commandment, just how serious a matter it was, how seriously the Lord took the fourth commandment. Remember, it was a sign of God’s covenant with His people. And so for the Israelites to break the fourth commandment, it really was on their part an act of denying the Lord, rejecting the covenant. It was a kind of defiant rejection of God’s goodness and grace in making Israel His people. It was really an act of apostasy. And so according to God’s perfect justice, to break the Sabbath required capital punishment.

And so, by telling Moses here as a kind of final word, after all of his other instructions and laws that he gave to the Israelites, that they were to keep the Sabbath day holy, and by applying these penalties to the fourth commandment for breaking it, God was driving home the truth that the Israelites always had to remember who they were. They could not forget that they were a people who had been redeemed by the Lord, who were set apart for God to belong to Him, who were loved by God, who belonged to God. They were His people. The Lord was their God.

And they would remember that week by week as they observed the Sabbath day, as they rested from their work on that day, as they worshiped the Lord that day. They would remember who they were and who God was as their God. One person put it this way, the Sabbath day was like a wedding ring for the people of Israel. It was kind of a intangible wedding ring, a sign that they did not belong to themselves, but that as a people, they belonged to another. That is, they belonged to the Lord. And so that’s what the fourth commandment, the special significance that it had for the people of Israel.

But now let’s ask the question, how does this passage apply to us as Christians today? Well, the first thing we need to ask is the question, does this passage apply to us at all as Christians today? Does the fourth commandment apply to us as Christians today at all? Are we bound to keep the fourth commandments?

Well, let me ask this. Are we bound to keep the fourth commandments in the same way that the Israelites were bound to keep the fourth commandments? We don’t have time to do full justice to this question, but the answer is yes and no. First, there are aspects to the fourth commandment that don’t apply to us today.

For example, the first one to mention is that for us, the day that we are to keep holy is not the seventh day of the week, but the first day of the week. And why is that? It’s because it was on the first day of the week that our Lord Jesus rose from the dead. And so that’s why the New Testament refers to the first day of the week, and this is the day that the New Testament Christians gathered according to 1 Corinthians, but this was the day on which Christ was resurrected from the dead, and so the New Testament refers to that day as the Lord’s Day. It is the Lord’s Day. And so for us as Christians, Sunday, the first day of the week, is our Sabbath. It is the Lord’s Day.

Also, the penalties for breaking the fourth commandment obviously no longer apply to the church today. I hardly need to say it, but God does not command the church to put anybody to death ever for any reason. That is not the church’s calling or commission in the world today. We are a spiritual kingdom, and so we don’t exercise the death penalty for someone breaking the commandment of God.

However, having said all that, the heart or the essence of the Fourth Commandment is still very much in effect for us as Christians today. First of all, stating the obvious, it is one of the Ten Commandments. It was not written in pencil to be erased later, but it was written on tablets of stone with the finger of God. And if we don’t believe that the fourth commandment is no longer valid or binding upon the church today, then basically we don’t have ten commandments. We have nine commandments.

But not only that, but it is a commandment that is grounded in creation. The very first Sabbath day was the Sabbath rest that the Lord himself took when he rested from all of his works in creating the world, the heavens and the earth. And so like the institution of marriage, which was also given with creation, the Sabbath day transcends the nation of Israel. It is something much greater than simply a law for the nation of Israel at that time. And so we are in solid biblical ground to say that, yes, the fourth commandment does still apply to us today.

When Eric Liddell refused to compete because it was a Sunday at the Olympics, it wasn’t because he was a legalist at heart. It wasn’t because he was bound by religious tradition. No, he refused to compete because of a conviction based upon the word of God. That Sunday is the Lord’s day, a day to rest and to worship God.

And if the fourth commandment, if it still applies to us as Christians today, which it does, then much of what the Lord says to the people of Israel then, or what he said to them then, will also apply to us as Christians today. And so that’s what I want to look with you at is how this passage applies to us as Christians today as we seek by God’s grace to keep the fourth commandment.

And as we do so, as we look at this passage, the main truth, the main takeaway that I want you to be impressed with or that I pray that the Lord will impress on our hearts today as we look at the fourth commandment is the truth that God has given this commandment to us for our good. It is meant to be a blessing to us. It is not supposed to be a burden. It is not supposed to be a drag, but it is supposed to be for our good. And you and I will only begin to keep the fourth commandment when we do see it as that, as it is a gift from God. We will only make the sacrifices that we need to make to keep the fourth commandment when we know that in keeping it, there is blessing. And there is blessing in keeping this commandment.

Now, having said that, it also must be said that everybody’s circumstances are different. There is some work in this world that simply must be done on a Sunday. If I have to have emergency surgery on a Sunday, I definitely want a surgeon who is willing to work that day. I don’t want to wait till Monday. I might be in heaven by Monday.

And what’s more, for all kinds of reasons, that we can’t get into because there’s almost as many reasons as there are situations and people. But for some people, at least, it may not be wise, it may not be practical to refuse to work on Sunday. Of course, that’s a case-by-case situation.

Not only that, but the particulars of keeping the Fourth Commandment will be different from person to person, from family to family. I will not offer you a list of do’s and don’ts for the Lord’s Day. I will let your conscience be your guide. I will let the spirit of Christ as he speaks through his word be your guide in what keeping the Lord’s Day holy looks like for you and for your family.

But with all that in mind, I want to focus on two truths about the Sabbath from this passage that apply to us today. First of all, for us as Christians, it is a day of rest. The Sabbath is a day of rest. What was good for the Israelites then is good for us today. A day off from our usual labors, our usual responsibilities. That is something good so that we can rest.

It is especially something that is needful for us today. It’s always been needful, but it’s very needful for us today as well, because everybody is going full steam 24-7 in our world today. There’s always something more that needs to be done. There’s always something that demands our attention all the time. We live in a consumer culture, and so our stores, our services are available all the time, Therefore, employers demand employees who are available to work on any day. And what free time we do manage to have, we tend to fill it up with entertainment, recreation. And so the pace of our lives is hurried and frantic.

What do people tell you when you ask them, how are you doing? What is the number one response that you usually get from that question? I can tell you what it’s not. I rarely hear the answer, I’m just bored. I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t have anything to do. I have all this time on my hands. You don’t hear that very often. Usually what you hear is, I’m busy. I’m so busy. I’m crazy busy. I don’t know how I’m gonna get it all done.

Well, what if God gave us one day each week in which we could step back from all that busyness and all that activity, take a breath, and just rest, rest from our work? And not only that, what if on that same day we could turn our thoughts, our attention, to the things of eternal consequence, to things that have eternal value, eternal worth, the things of God, the things of Christ, the things of our salvation, of our hope in the life to come, the world to come. Well, God has given us that gift. He has given us that gift in the fourth commandment.

And the question for you and me is, do we avail ourselves of it? Do you take advantage of this gift of God, or have you, without even realizing it, adopted the culture’s idea that Sunday is just another Saturday. That’s the way the world looks at Sunday. It’s just a repeat of Saturday, a day that we can devote to whatever we please.

But Sunday’s not just another day that belongs to you. It doesn’t belong to you. It’s not a day for you to be more productive with your work and your studies. It’s not a day to entertain yourself. God has given us six days of the week. He has given us six days of the week to pursue our work, our recreation, and so on, but he’s given us one day, a Sabbath day, to rest from all of that and to rest in him.

And so we are to rest on Sunday, not just because God commands it, and that is sufficient reason to do anything that God commands because God commands it, but we need the Sabbath day because we need to rest. We need to take a break from our busy lives to focus on the Lord, to rest from our work so that we can enjoy the Lord on that day.

Now look again at verse 15. It says, Notice how it’s called a solemn rest. Not just a rest, but a solemn rest. And also that the day is holy to the Lord. It is set apart to God. It belongs to Him.

And so what that means is that the rest that God commands us on the seventh day is not just inactivity, it’s not doing nothing, but it’s resting from our work in order that we may be engaged in the worship of God. In Leviticus 23.3, the Sabbath day is called a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. And so what that translates into for us as the church today is that as Christians, on Sunday, we make church a priority. It is called a holy convocation. How do we have a holy convocation? We come to church on the Lord’s day to worship God with His people.

And we make time in the day for fellowship, for worship, We make time in the day for reading the scripture, prayer, meditation. And if we love Christ, if there is in our hearts a love for Christ as our Savior and Lord, and I trust that is true for all of us, that we have a genuine love for Christ, then the Lord’s day will not be a burden. it will not be drudgery, it will not be something that we dread because we can’t go out and do this or that, but it’ll be something that we look forward to, something we delight in, that we desire to have.

Notice how in verse 17 it says that, after the Lord made heaven and earth in six days, on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed. Well, we know that God did not need to rest, literally. We know that He did not need to be refreshed. God is the inexhaustible source of all life and vitality and being and energy and power. He does not need to be refreshed. He does not get tired. But He says this, and He did this for us, for an example to follow, because we do need rest. We need the physical, spiritual refreshment that comes to us when we keep the Lord’s Day, when we enjoy this solemn rest. And so the Lord’s Day is a day of rest.

Secondly, the Lord’s Day is a day for Christian witness. Remember, in this passage, what is being emphasized here is the fact that the fourth commandment was a sign. It was a covenant sign between God and his people. And in the same way, the Lord’s day is meant to be a sign for us that we do not belong to ourselves, but that we belong to another. We belong to Christ.

This is one of the fundamental truths that is true of you as a believer in Jesus Christ, that you are not your own. You do not belong to yourself. You are not your own master and Lord, but you belong to Christ. I read this passage a couple of weeks ago, I think, from 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 6, 19 and 20. As a believer in Jesus Christ, as one who has come to Christ for salvation, you have also come to him as your master. You belong to him. You have been redeemed from sin and death by the grace of Christ. You have been delivered from bondage and you have been given over to a new master, one who is gracious, a gracious Lord, whose rule over you is loving and merciful and kind. You belong to a Master who does all things for your eternal good, for your eternal blessedness. And so you are not your own, but you belong to Jesus. But to belong to Jesus, to be His, is nothing but good. It is nothing but good.

Many of you will be familiar with the first question and answer from the Heidelberg Catechism. This is a catechism that came out of the Reformation. It’s not the catechism that we use for our own theological standards as a Presbyterian church. Nevertheless, it is a wonderful catechism. But the first question and answer in the catechism goes like this, what is your only comfort in life and in death? And the answer is that I am not my own, but belong body and soul in life and in death to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

And for that reason, because we belong body and soul to Christ, the Lord’s Day is kind of like a placard or a billboard that advertises the fact that we are His. When we keep the Lord’s Day holy, when we set it apart, when we rest, when we worship on that day, we are proclaiming to ourselves and to the world that This is not our day, this is the Lord’s day, and we are not our own, but we belong to God.

In fact, you could even say that in keeping the Lord’s day, there was a kind of preaching of the gospel in that, because you are telling the world, today is the day that my Savior rose from the dead. Today is the day that Jesus Christ was raised victorious over sin and death and hell forever, and my victory is in Him. My life is bound up with Him. And therefore, this day belongs to my Savior. And therefore, it doesn’t matter what others may do on Sunday. It doesn’t matter what others may think that I should do on Sunday. I will rest in my risen Lord, and I will worship Him with His people. And so for us, the Lord’s Day is a day for Christian witness.

I believe one of the major stumbling blocks that keeps people from coming to faith in Christ in the first place is this idea that somehow becoming a Christian is all about loss. What will I lose if I come to faith in Christ, if I become a Christian? I will lose my freedom to do as I please. I will lose my freedom to think for myself.

But for those who come, to Jesus as their Savior, what they realize is that it’s all about gaining, it’s not about losing. What they discover is that what they really lose is the so-called freedom to sin, but what they gain in return is infinitely greater, the forgiveness of sins, the blessing of a clean conscience, the gift of eternal life, the joy of knowing Christ, the hope of the life to come, the world to come, courage in the face of death,

And in the same way, we as Christians, we look at the fourth commandment and we only think about what we have to give up, what we might lose. And so we look at it the wrong way. We think, well, we’ll lose the freedom to use the day as we please. We lose the ease and the comfort of conforming to our culture around us that has no holy day. We lose out on opportunities for work, for study, for sports, and so on.

But we shouldn’t think of the Lord’s Day in that way, of what we might lose or give up, but we should think of it in terms of what we gain, what we benefit from it. And when we make the Lord’s Day holy, when we keep it holy, we gain a priceless treasure, an entire day devoted to Christ, a day for physical rest, spiritual rest, a day to look ahead, ultimately, to that eternal rest that God has promised us in Christ.

After Eric Liddell raced and won the 400 meters in the Paris Olympics that year, 1924, after the race was over, he opened a note that one of his trainers had given to him before the race. And the note said this, in the old book, it says, he that honors me, I will honor, wishing you the best of success always. Of course, the old book in that note was the Bible. And he was referring to 1 Samuel 2, verse 30. The Lord says, those who honor me, I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed.

And one way to honor the Lord is to keep his day holy, the Lord’s day. It is to devote that one day of the week to a solemn rest. And we honor the Lord when we make worship, resting, taking a break from our usual work and activity, when we make that a priority on Sunday. Of course, there will be unavoidable circumstances, there will be emergencies, but when we establish a pattern in our lives in which Sunday is the day that we rest and worship, we honor the Lord.

And if you will honor the Lord in that way, he will honor you in return. because the promise that he made to the people of Israel then is the same promise he makes to us today. Those who honor me, I will honor.

Let’s pray.

The post Sacred Time appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 31, verses one through 11. Exodus 31, one through 11, and this is God’s holy word.

The Lord said to Moses, see, I have called by name, Bezalel, the son of Uri, son of Hur of the tribe of Judah. And I have filled him with the spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood to work in every craft. And behold, I have appointed with him Aholiab, the son of Ahazamak, of the tribe of Dan. And I have given to all able men ability, that they may make all that I have commanded you: the tent of meeting, and the ark of the testimony, and the mercy seat that is on it, and all the furnishings of the tent, the table and its utensils, and the pure lampstand with all its utensils, and the altar of incense, and the altar of burnt offering with all its utensils, and the basin and its stand, and the finely worked garments, the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons for their service as priests, and the anointing oil and the fragrant incense for the holy place. According to all that I have commanded you, they shall do.

Our New Testament reading is Ephesians chapter five. You can keep your place there in Exodus 31. Our New Testament reading, Ephesians five, verses 15 through 21.

Ephesians five, 15 through 21. Look carefully, then, how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. You can turn back to Exodus chapter 31.

We’ve been working our way through the book of Exodus for some time now, and at this point in the book, the Lord has just finished giving to Moses all of the detailed instructions on how the tabernacle was to be built. In the verses just preceding the passage that we heard in chapter 31, the verses just before that, those instructions came to an end with the Lord telling Moses how he was to make the bronze basin that would be used for the ceremonial washing of the priests, the anointing oil that would be used for anointing the priests, the incense that would be burned on the altar of incense.

And so Moses has received all these instructions, and it was just Moses that the Lord spoke to on how all of this was to be built, how everything was to be made. However, it was not Moses who would be doing the actual craftsmanship. It was not Moses who would be working with all of these materials to build this tabernacle.

Instead, the Lord would call and equip other men—and we know from another passage, at least some other women as well, but the Lord would call and equip other men to do the actual work of constructing everything that had to do with the tabernacle, the structure, the wooden beams, the curtains, all the things that were included in the tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, the table for showbread, the golden lampstand, the garments for the priest, and so on. And so the Lord has appointed men, and like I said, some women as well, to work on these things.

And the most striking fact about the Lord’s calling and equipping these craftsmen to make all of these things was that at least one of them, Bezalel, the Lord says that he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He says in verse three, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God. And he is filled with the Spirit of God in order to accomplish all of this work.

And this is the detail that I want to zero in on with you this morning as we look at this passage, that the Lord would fill Bezalel, and perhaps Holyabizuel, with the Holy Spirit. And when it comes, or when you hear the term, filled with the Holy Spirit, what comes to your mind?

Do you think of someone having some kind of euphoric, ecstatic experience by which they are somehow raised above all the common struggles and difficulties of life and live on a kind of elevated plane? Or do you think of worshippers in a church service falling down or shouting out or speaking in tongues? Or maybe you think of a Christian who says he has had a second blessing or a second experience of grace. Before, he was just a Christian, but now he is a spirit-filled Christian.

Well, there’s much confusion over what this expression means, and that’s because there’s much confusion over the role of the Holy Spirit in general. Of the three persons in the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, it is the Holy Spirit whose work, whose purpose, is most misunderstood among Christians. And so we want to understand what it means that Bezalel and Aholiab were filled with the Holy Spirit.

We especially want to know what that means because as Christians, we are commanded by God to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We heard that from Ephesians 5, verse 18. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. But if we don’t know what that means, we can hardly know what we are seeking if we seek to be filled with the Spirit. And so with that in mind, we want to consider with this passage, and we’ll consider other scriptures as well, what they have to teach us about being filled with the Spirit.

And the first lesson that we can take from this passage is this, that the Holy Spirit equips God’s people for service. The Holy Spirit equips, enables God’s people to serve Him.

I would imagine that Moses probably felt a great deal of relief when the Lord told him that he had already appointed two men to take part in and to oversee the construction of the tabernacle and everything that was connected with it. Because the tabernacle and everything in it called for the craftsmanship and artistry of the highest order, and involved all kinds of material: gold, silver, bronze, precious stones, wood, fabric, and so on.

And the Israelites, whom Moses had just led out of Egypt into the wilderness, we know that they were really good at one thing. They were really good at making bricks. But how was Moses going to find a skilled craftsman or craftsmen to build a tabernacle according to the pattern that was shown to him on the mountain? Moses knew that he wasn’t capable of that. He was a shepherd. So who was going to do that?

Well, the Lord is good. And as St. Augustine put it in his famous prayer, God commands what he wills and he gives what he commands. And so the Lord provided for Moses and the Israelites, not only two skilled men to oversee the construction of the tabernacle, but many others as well, whom he gifted and equipped with ability and competency to carry out all the artistry and the craftsmanship that was required for the tabernacle.

So let me read again verses three through 6, just to hear how God provided the people that would be necessary for building this tabernacle. He says, verse 3, And I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft. And behold, I have appointed with him Aholiab, the son of Ahazemek, of the tribe of Dan. And I have given to all able men ability that they may make all that I have commanded you. And then he goes on to say what they will make.

We don’t know a whole lot about these two men who are named, Bezalel and Aholiab. The text does tell us a little bit about their family histories. Just an interesting note here, Bezalel is probably the grandson of the same Hur that held up Moses’ hand when the Israelites were fighting the Amalekites. And so we’ve learned about his grandfather earlier in Moses.

But you’ll notice that neither one of them was from the priestly tribe of Levi. Bezalel was of the tribe of Judah, and Aholiab, he was a Danite. He was from the tribe of Dan. So what that means is that once they finished the articles and building the tabernacle, because they weren’t priests, because they weren’t Levites, they would not have been allowed to touch the things that they had made after they made them. And not only that, but for some of the things that they made, they would not even be allowed to see them again.

And that would be true for most of the Israelites. Most of the Israelites would never lay eyes on much of what these craftsmen would work so hard to build. And so, these two men and the other craftsmen, they would have to serve the Lord simply for the sake of serving the Lord. They would have no opportunity to display or to showcase their handiwork, their skill in the pieces of art that they made.

The reward in their work would have to be simply the joy of serving the Lord and serving others. And of course, that is the reason why any one of us should be willing and desirous to serve God, simply for the sake of serving God, simply for the sake of bringing glory to Him and serving Him, simply for the sake of doing good to others, and not in order to showcase our gifts or our abilities.

Now, both of these men had what we might call natural abilities or talents that they were born with to do this kind of craftsmanship. Presumably, perhaps, there was some way in which they were able to pursue these crafts, even in Egypt. And of course, it was God who gave them those abilities. Whatever thing we may be naturally good at, whatever bent that we may have towards this or that kind of a skill, that is a gift of God.

But far more important than that natural gifting, we may call it, God filled them with the Holy Spirit. Again, in verse 3, he says, And I have filled him with the Spirit of God. And the first thing we need to observe here is that God filled, He filled Bezalel and Aholiab, He filled them with the Holy Spirit specifically so that they might carry out the task that God had given to them.

God had appointed these two men, they were chosen by Him to build the tabernacle, to oversee its construction. And as part of His sovereign call to that service, to that work, He filled them with the Spirit. And what this means is, is that being filled with the Spirit cannot be separated from the particular God-appointed task or area of service that He gives to the one whom He fills with the Spirit.

And when we look at other teaching in the Bible, look at other places in the Old Testament, we see the same thing. Where this expression is used, filled with the Spirit, or where a similar expression is used, it is so that somebody may serve God in the way that God has appointed for him to serve.

For example, before Moses died, he laid his hands on Joshua. Of course, Joshua would be the leader of Israel, so God gave him a definite task to lead the people of God. And for this task, to lead God’s people, God gave the Spirit to Joshua. Deuteronomy 34:9, Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him. So the people of Israel obeyed him and did as the Lord had commanded Moses.

The prophet Micah, he tells us how he was filled with the Spirit of God when he was called by God to serve him as a prophet. Micah 3:8, But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.

We see this very same pattern when we go on to the New Testament. In the Gospel of Luke, we read how John the Baptist, he was filled with the Spirit even before he was born. He was filled with the Spirit from his mother’s womb. And why was that? So that he could fulfill his prophetic calling. Luke 1:16, and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.

In the book of Acts, we read how on the day of Pentecost, the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit when Christ, the exalted Christ, when he poured out the Spirit upon the church. And this was not merely for their own good, for their own edification, but it was so that they might bear witness to the risen Christ, that they might declare that Jesus Christ is Lord in the languages of all of the Jews who had come from various parts of the world.

Our New Testament reading, Ephesians chapter 5, we are commanded to be filled with the Spirit, but following that command is a description of the ways in which we are to serve God. We are to address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. We are to give thanks in all things to God. We are to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And then Paul goes on in chapter 5 to detail all of the ways that we are to serve Him in our families and at work and so on. And all of this is premised upon this truth that we are filled with the Spirit as Christians.

And so the biblical pattern is that God fills His people with the Holy Spirit in order that they might carry out the work or service or ministry to which God has called them. And so what this means for you as a Christian is that God has not only given you the gift of salvation as a believer in Jesus Christ—you have received the gift of the forgiveness of your sins, you have received the gift of eternal life, you have received the gift of the promise of heavenly glory and the life that is to come—but not only that, but God calls you in giving you these gifts of salvation. He also calls you to be his servant, to be a servant of God, but also to be a servant of others for the sake of God.

And so as a believer, then you are called both to salvation, but also to service. And to enable you to serve Him faithfully, fruitfully, God fills you with His Holy Spirit. And so to be filled with the Holy Spirit, it’s not about having a kind of ecstatic experience or speaking in tongues or receiving a second blessing from God, but it’s about being equipped, enabled, empowered by God, by His Spirit in order to be faithful to Him, to serve Him in the way in which He calls you to serve.

And along with the Holy Spirit, God gives every believer, everyone who comes to faith in Christ, receives from God with the Spirit, spiritual gifts for service. Romans 12:6, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. Let us use them to serve others. 1 Corinthians 12:7, 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 to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to receive the gifts of the Spirit along with the Spirit means that God, He equips you, He enables you to serve Him in whatever way that He calls you to serve Him.

So let’s ask a bigger question. What is the goal of that service? Well, the goal of Spirit-enabled service is to glorify Christ. The goal of Spirit-enabled service is to glorify Jesus Christ.

For Bezalel and Aholiab, their goal, at least their immediate goal, was very clear. They were to construct the tabernacle. They were to build everything in the tabernacle, or at least to oversee it. And they were to do it according to the instructions that Moses gave to them, according to the instructions that he received from the Lord. And so they were to build this tabernacle, we might say, according to code, according to God’s divine code.

But in the nature of the case, since this was to be the dwelling place of God, they had to build everything and construct everything and design everything in such a way that it would be consistent with the character of God, because this would be God’s tabernacle, his tent. This is where he would dwell. And so the tabernacle and all the parts of it had to reflect the glory and the beauty that belongs to God himself. God is the ultimate source of all glory, all beauty. He is infinite in beauty, infinite in glory. And so his tabernacle had to be a reflection of that.

The Lord said this about the priestly garments. The priestly garments, we looked at that a few weeks ago. Exodus 28, verse 2, God says to Moses, now, that was just said about the priestly garments, but we can surely say that that would be the case as well for everything connected with the tabernacle, that it was to be made for glory and for beauty. And so what these craftsmen made had to be beautiful.

Another way to put it, they were creating works of art. In fact, this passage gives us something of a theology of art. Since God is the one who is the infinite source of all goodness, truth, and beauty, then the best art, or true art, is that which in one way or another reflects or expresses the goodness, the beauty, the truth that is inherent with God himself. And so, in their obedience to the Lord’s instructions, and in making everything beautiful, Bezalel and Aholiab, they were giving glory to God.

But we could take that even a step further. They were giving glory to Christ. Although Christ had not yet come into the world, nevertheless, they were glorifying the Son of God in all that they did in making the tabernacle. As we’ve seen, as we’ve gone through Exodus, as we have looked at all of the different parts of the tabernacle, ultimately what the tabernacle revealed to the Israelites was the glory of Christ, the second person of the Trinity, the fact that God dwelt in the tabernacle, the priestly service that would take place there, the sacrifices and so on. These were all types and shadows of the Messiah, the Christ, who was yet to come.

And so we can say this then: the Holy Spirit filled Bezalel and Aholiab so that they would magnify the pre-incarnate Christ in all the things that they made for the tabernacle. So that was the goal of their service.

And the Holy Spirit does the very same thing today. His work is to bring glory to Christ. Earlier I said that there’s a lot of confusion in the church today concerning the person of the Holy Spirit. What is his relation to the Father, to the Son? How is he active in the life of the church? How is he active and present in the life of individual Christians?

So much of this confusion could be cleared up if we could settle our minds on one fundamental truth, and that is this: that in all that he does, it is the primary purpose of the Holy Spirit to bring glory to the name, the person, the work of Jesus Christ. That is what the Spirit does.

When Jesus was on the eve of his crucifixion, he told his disciples that although he was going away from them, the Father in heaven would send them the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to be in His place with His disciples forever. But Jesus put it this way in John 14:18. He said, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. In other words, Jesus is saying when the Spirit comes to you and indwells in you, it is I myself who will come to you. And so the Spirit mediates the presence of Christ in us.

It is also the Holy Spirit whom Jesus promised, who would teach the disciples all things. After he left, he would bring to their mind the remembrance of all that Jesus had taught them and said to them. And so the Spirit would impress upon the hearts, bring to the minds of the disciples the teachings of Christ. At one point, Jesus said that the Spirit would glorify him. And that’s what the Spirit does, and that’s why, at least one reason why, He is called, in the New Testament, the Spirit of Christ. He is the Spirit of Christ.

And so we can characterize the entire ministry of the Holy Spirit as the ministry of highlighting, magnifying the truth, the work, the person of Jesus Christ. The theologian J.I. Packer, he compares the role of the Holy Spirit to that of a floodlight set in the ground in front of a building. So imagine a building and in front of it, in front of the bushes and all that, there’s a floodlight or floodlights that are set into the ground. And when you walk by the building at night, you don’t see the floodlights because they’re buried in the ground. But what you do see is the building lit up by the light that they shine. And so in the same way, Packer says that the spirit is the hidden floodlight shining on the Savior.

And even before the incarnation of Christ, the Holy Spirit filled these two workmen, Bezalel and Aholiab, that they might glorify the coming Christ, that through their work the light of the Spirit would shine upon Christ. And that is the purpose for which God fills His people with the Holy Spirit today. That is why we are given the Spirit of Christ today. It is so that Christ may be made known, that He may be glorified, not only in our own hearts and minds, but also that He may be made known and glorified through us who are filled with the Spirit as God’s people.

Let me quote from J.I. Packer, he says this, he says, the truth we must grasp here is that our exercise of spiritual gifts, and we can include with that, our being filled with the spirit, is nothing more nor less than Christ himself ministering through his body to his body to the Father and to all mankind. From heaven, Christ uses Christians as his mouth, his hands, his feet, even his smile. It is through us, his people, that he speaks and acts, meets, loves, and saves here and now in this world.

So as believers, as God fills us with his spirit, we then make Christ known to one another and to the world even in the way in which we serve. And so we should ask ourselves a question. How am I seeking to serve Christ in the world in this way? How am I seeking to be the mouth, the hands, the feet, even the smile of Jesus to others? Because it is Christ himself who comes to bless and to minister to others as you seek to serve others in the name of Christ and by the power of the spirit whom he has given to you.

And so as you seek to encourage others, as you pray for others, as you give of your time and your resources in serving others, as you show love to others, as you seek to advance the good of others, in all of these ways by the spirit of Christ whom God has given you and who is working through you, it is Jesus himself who comes to the person you serve for their blessing and for their good. And so, to be filled with the Spirit is in order that we might glorify Christ as we serve others in the name of Christ.

And with all that in mind, we can look at this passage from another perspective, and we’ll conclude with this, and that is this: that just as the Holy Spirit filled and enabled Bezalel and Aholiab to build the tabernacle, so we can even say, in that sense, who was the true builder of the tabernacle? It was the Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ. But just as He enabled them to build the tabernacle then, so the Spirit of Christ is at work in the world today. And He is building a far greater tabernacle. He is building the Church of Jesus Christ.

The scriptures tell us, and we’ve already considered this as we’ve gone through and looked at the tabernacle from Exodus, but the New Testament counterpart to the tabernacle, later the temple, is the church, the people of God. 1 Corinthians 3:16, do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s spirit dwells in you?

And just as the first tabernacle was a work of art, it was something beautiful since it reflected God’s own beauty and truth, so the temple, the greater temple that the spirit is building today out of you and me and out of all of God’s people, it is something too that is beautiful.

One of the consequences of our fall into sin is that we have brought ugliness into God’s creation, which God said was very good, and since God created it, it was and is beautiful. But by our sin, we have brought ugliness into this beautiful creation. There are many ways that we can describe sin. Sin is lawlessness. Sin is rebellion. There are other ways that we can describe sin. But one way that we can describe it is to say that sin is ugly. It is ugly. It is contrary to all that is beautiful and good.

My pride, my rebellion against God, my obsessive love of self, my hatred, my envy, my lust, there is nothing that is attractive or comely or beautiful about any of these things. Sin is ugly. It’s a perversion of what is good. And the consequences of sin are ugly. What are the consequences of sin? Well, we’re reminded of them every day in this world. Conflict, hatred, war, disease, ultimately death. These are the ugly realities that mark our sad world because of our fall into sin.

The good news of the gospel is that God gave us his son, Jesus Christ, so that we might be transformed from something that is ugly to something that is beautiful, beautiful and lovely, that we might be made beautiful, beautiful in righteousness and holiness, even as Jesus himself is perfectly and infinitely beautiful because he is righteous, because he is holy.

And God is doing this in us, and He is completing this work in us of making us something truly beautiful. He does this in us because of what He first did to His Son, Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us that even though Jesus was sinless, God made Him to be sin. He made Him to be sin so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

And so what that means is that when Jesus hung upon the cross, when Jesus was crucified there, the Son of God as man, He bore all the repugnancy, the hideousness, the ugliness of our sin. He became sin for us. Though in Himself, He was always pure and sinless, yet for our sake, He assumed the likeness of something ugly. Something hideously ugly, a sinner, crucified, dying this grotesque, horrible death on a Roman cross and bearing the wrath of God, the curse of God because of our sin. God gave his son over to that, to that bearing the ugliness of our sin so that we might become something beautiful.

And Jesus raised Him from the dead on the third day. And He raised Him from the dead, not in ugliness, no longer the one being crucified, but He raised Him up in glory, in honor, in beauty.

And if you belong to Jesus Christ, if you have come to Him by faith, if He is your Lord and Savior, then this is the work that God is doing in you now by His Holy Spirit. It is a radical, a thoroughgoing transformation. He is recreating you from a person who was ugly because of sin into a person who is beautiful because of righteousness. And that is the work of the Spirit, to make you beautiful as Jesus himself is beautiful, beautiful in love and righteousness and holiness.

Back in Exodus, it was the work of the Holy Spirit to fill these two craftsmen, that they might make something beautiful for God, his tabernacle. And now the Holy Spirit fills you and me. He fills every one of his people in order that he might make something. And he is making something that is far more glorious, far more beautiful than that tabernacle in the wilderness, the greater tabernacle, the spiritual tabernacle. And this is made up of boys and girls, men and women who are being conformed more and more into the image of Jesus Christ.

And when you think about it, of all the beauty that surrounds us in this world, of all the beauty that God has made, there is nothing that is more beautiful and lovely than what you are in Jesus Christ, a redeemed sinner, one upon whom God has set his love and one in whom he is working to conform to the image of his son. Can there be anything more beautiful than that? There isn’t.

In fact, we can say that as a believer in Jesus Christ, you, along with all of God’s people, you are God’s masterpiece. His greatest work of all that he has made in creation that declares that God is a master artist. This is his greatest work yet. And he has continued to do that good work in you by his Spirit to conform you more and more into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray.

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Our Old Testament reading, and this is also our sermon text, is Exodus chapter 30, verses 11 through 17, or 11 through 16. And this is the inerrant, infallible, inspired word of God. So let’s give our attention to God’s word. The Lord said to Moses, “When you take the census of the people of Israel, then each shall give a ransom for his life to the Lord when you number them, that there be no plague among them when you number them. Each one who is numbered in the census shall give this: half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary. The shekel is 20 gerahs. Half a shekel as an offering to the Lord. Everyone who is numbered in the census from 20 years old and upward shall give the Lord’s offering. The rich shall not give more and the poor shall not give less than the half shekel when you give the Lord’s offering to make atonement for your lives. You shall take the atonement money from the people of Israel and shall give it for the service of the tent of meeting, that it may bring the people of Israel to remembrance before the Lord so as to make atonement for your lives.”

And now turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter—this is our New Testament reading, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20. “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. Food is meant for the stomach, and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, ‘The two will become one flesh,’ but he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

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

As Christians, we often tell ourselves when we’re thinking about a church—our church or another church—we often tell ourselves that the size of a congregation is not what is most important about a church. Rather, the most important thing for a church is that they are faithful to proclaim the gospel, faithful to worship God according to His word, faithful to serve the Lord as He would have us to serve. So whether a church is big or small, that’s the most important thing, is to be faithful. And so, with that in mind, we try to be somewhat indifferent about the numbers of the people in our congregation. And that’s all true.

That should be our focus. We should be focused on being faithful to Christ, being faithful to the mission that Christ has given to the church, to make disciples of all nations, and to trust that the Lord, according to His perfect wisdom, according to His sovereign will, He will use a church, His people, a congregation, as He will, as He sees fit.

However, we can also say that biblically God is concerned about numbers. We might even say God is very concerned about numbers. One of the great promises that we have in the scriptures about the salvation that God is bringing about through Christ is that it is his purpose not just to save a few people, not just to save even many people, but to save an incredibly huge amount of people. God’s promise to the patriarchs was that their descendants—and as Christians, we are all descendants of the patriarchs—but God’s promise to them was that their descendants would be as numerous as the grains of sand on the seashore, as numerous as the stars in the heavens. And those are things that are virtually uncountable. Those are expressions that are meant to communicate an unbelievably vast number of people.

And it’s not only God’s will and purpose that many, many people should be brought into his eternal kingdom, but also throughout the scriptures, we see at various places that it was God’s will to number his people, to count his people. Of course, God is omniscient. That means he knows all things. He knows all things perfectly. And so he didn’t need the leaders of Israel to carry out a head count for God to know exactly how many people belong to his covenant community. But he called for accounting of his people from time to time, really for the sake of the people themselves. It was important for the people of God to know that God not only had many people in the world who were his worshipers, but also that God knows exactly who they are.

And for example, when the prophet Elijah—you’ll remember when he complained to the Lord that there was no one but him, he was the only true prophet, the only true worshiper of the Lord that was left, all the other people of Israel had forsaken God’s covenant—the Lord said, “No.” He encouraged him. He said, “No, there are yet 7,000 in Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal and kissed him.” And so even in those dark days of apostasy in the nation of Israel, there were still many, many thousands, in fact, of those who were faithful to the Lord. And Elijah needed to know that. He needed to know that he was not alone.

As Christians, we also need to know that we are not alone. In our world today, we very much feel outnumbered by those who do not know Christ, those who do not worship Him. But at the same time, we need to know that we belong to a huge multitude of redeemed people and that that number is growing day by day as Jesus carries out what he promised to do to build his church.

Our passage this morning is about this very thing. It’s about numbers, namely the numbers of people who made up the nation of Israel, which were God’s covenant people in the old covenant. And in this passage, the Lord gives directions to Moses on how the leaders of Israel were to carry out a census or a counting of the number of people. And as I said, I believe that part of the census, part of the reason why the Lord made this provision, was to encourage the Israelites. They already would have been encouraged when they considered what they were now. They were no longer this ragtag band of 70 people who fled to Egypt for their own safety, but by the Lord’s blessing, 400 years later, they had become a great nation. And so the Lord, by ordering a census, would encourage his people from time to time that they were many.

But as we take a closer look at this passage, we’ll see that there are other spiritual lessons that God had embedded in this practice of taking a census of the nations, or of the nation of Israel, and those lessons are relevant for us today. So as we look at this passage, we’ll draw some lessons from it for us today.

And the first lesson that we can take from it is this: we need to beware of the danger of pride, the danger of pride. Look at what the Lord says to Moses. So in verse 11 and 12, the Lord said to Moses, “When you take the census of the people of Israel, then each shall give a ransom for his life to the Lord when you number them, that there be no plague among them when you number them.”

So whenever Moses or a future leader or a king of Israel would set out to number the people, they had to collect what is called here a ransom from each person that was counted. Verse 13 tells us that this ransom was half a shekel. Don’t think of a shekel, at least in this context, don’t think of it as a coin, but it’s actually just a weight. It’s about two-fifths of an ounce or 11 grams. And we know from other scriptures that what was weighed out, what made up a shekel, was silver. That was the precious metal that was currency. And so every person who was counted in the census had to pay this offering to the Lord of half a shekel of silver. According to one commentator, paying half a shekel for the people of Israel then would be similar to us having to pay a couple hundred dollars or a few hundred dollars today. So it wasn’t a fortune, but it wasn’t just pocket change either.

In verse 16, we learn that all of the half shekels of silver that were collected in the census, that they would go—or this silver would go to the maintenance of the temple, or the tabernacle rather. In verse 16, it was for the service of the tent of meeting. And so the money would be put to this very important, this very practical use to maintain the tabernacle where the Lord was worshiped.

Verse 14 tells us who was numbered. Verse 14 says, “Everyone who is numbered in the census from 20 years old and upward shall give the Lord’s offering.” Again, from other Old Testament passages, we know that everyone here is referring to men. Men who were 20 years old and upward. Now, that doesn’t mean that women and those who were under the age of 20 were not somehow counted among the people of God. They most certainly were considered by God members of His covenant people, but they were not included in the actual census. We’ll see in a minute there was at least one reason for that, but it was the men who were over 20 years old who were the ones who were actually numbered.

Now, going back to verse 11, notice that the reason why each man who was counted had to pay this half-shekel tax was so, verse 11, “that there be no plague among them when you number them.” And so on the surface, on the first reading of verse 11, things appear to be this way, that if the Israelites did not pay this half-shekel ransom when they were counted in the census, that this would trigger God’s judgment or bring upon them God’s wrath, and that judgment for their failure to pay this tax would be that he would bring upon them some kind of deadly plague. But I believe there’s more to this in verse 11 than meets the eye, that there’s more to this relationship between the plague that is threatened and the half-shekel offering.

And I say this based on other scripture, what we read about when we read other places in the Old Testament when a census was actually taken, namely when David, when he was king, when he decided to take a census. You’ll recall, I think it’s from 2 Samuel, 1 Chronicles, that David, as king, decided that he would take a census of the people of Israel. But this was not a righteous thing that he decided to do. In fact, 1 Chronicles 21 says that Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel. Satan, of course, does not incite anybody to do anything that is good or righteous, and so this was, by definition, something that was evil, this idea of David’s to take a census. Even Joab, his general, warned David, “Don’t do this, don’t take the census.” But David was stubborn, he did it anyway, and the result was a complete disaster for the people of Israel. The Lord brought a plague upon them, and 70,000 people were destroyed by that plague.

Now, the Bible doesn’t spell out for us exactly why David’s desire to number the people of Israel was so evil and so wrong, but one clue that we have is when we consider that normally a nation or a king would take a census of his people in order to know how strong he was militarily, maybe even to plan a war. He needed to know how many fighting men he had. And that’s why there was only, or it was only men who were 20 years old and upward who were counted in the census because they could serve as soldiers in a war. And so based on that, it seems that David wanted to take the census for the wrong reasons. Perhaps he wanted to simply size up his power as king. How many soldiers do I have underneath me? Or maybe he wanted to glory in the strength of his kingdom. Or perhaps he was preparing for a war that the Lord had not sanctioned. Or maybe David just simply failed to trust in the Lord. He wanted to size up the nation. He was worried about the Lord’s protection or provision. Whatever the reason, the particular census was the result of David’s sin. It was not righteous. He did not do it out of a desire to honor God or to give thanks to God or in obedience to God’s commandment.

But you’ll notice if we had read the passages about David’s census that there’s nothing in there that suggests that this plague came upon the people of Israel because they failed to pay the half-shekel ransom. I think it’s safe to say that throughout history, rulers and governments have not been prone to fail to collect on a tax that they impose on their people. But not only that, Scripture makes it clear that David was guilty before the Lord, even before he actually carried out the census. Again, his sin was wanting to do the census, to do it for the wrong reason.

And so in light of all of that, in our passage this morning, we shouldn’t read verse 12 as simply saying that God would bring a plague upon the people of Israel when they took a census if they failed to pay this half-shekel offering. Rather, what verse 12 is saying is that this half-shekel offering was how the Lord would remind the Israelites, the rulers and the people, that taking a census could be a very dangerous thing, that they had to be very careful when they went about to take a census of the people of Israel. It only had to be carried out for the right reasons, for righteous motives. It was not to be taken in order to size up or to bolster one’s political or military power or national strength. In other words, the half-shekel ransom and the threat of the plague were cautions built right into the law of taking a census that had to be done for the right reasons. If it wasn’t, God would judge the people just as he did under David when he brought a plague upon them.

In this, there is a general principle that we can derive from that that is very much true for you and me as well today as Christians. And that is this, that when God has given us—and God has given all of us—many blessings, many good gifts, good things in this world, when we receive these blessings, when we possess them, when we have them, we are in danger of spiritual pride. And why is that? It’s because by nature we either use the blessings that God gives us, the gifts that he gives us, we either use them to inflate our own sense of self-importance, or we use them to fulfill or pursue our own self-centered sinful desires. In other words, we are told often to count our blessings, and that is a good thing, understood correctly. We are to count our blessings, to remember all of the ways that God has been good to us, but we can count our blessings for all the wrong reasons.

Let me share a personal example just to illustrate what I mean. When I meet someone for the first time and we’re engaged in the introductory small talk, “What do you do?” and so on, it comes up pretty quickly, I tell them that I’m a pastor. And oftentimes, that’s a conversation stopper right there. But if the person’s willing to keep talking, sometimes or often, one of the first questions they’ll ask is, “Well, how big is your church?” And of course, what I am hearing that person asking me is, “Just how good of a pastor are you, really? How big is your church?” Of course, I tell them the truth. We have about 1,000 members, not including our three satellite campuses.

But the point is that we as pastors, although we know better, even in our worst moments, we cannot help sometimes that we are tempted to measure the success of our ministry, maybe even to measure our own sense of or to give ourselves a sense of personal worth or validity by the numbers of the people in our church. And so we take a mental census of not only the size of our congregation, but the size of other congregations in our denomination, our presbytery, in the community. And we do it all for the wrong reason, because it’s all about our pride.

And in one way or another, we are all guilty of this, of something like this at least. We take a census of this or that to measure our own success, to assure ourselves of our own personal worth. Parents might think, “We’ve got more kids than that family. We’re not only better parents, we may even be better people because we are doing more to be fruitful and multiply than they are.” Or we might tell ourselves, “Well, compared to other people, I’ve got more likes, I’ve got more followers on social media. I must be pretty special. I must be pretty important.” Or maybe you take a census of the dollars that you have in your bank account. Or you size up your GPA. Or you count your accomplishments. Or you take an inventory of how successful you’ve been in your career. And you do this in order to validate yourself, to make yourself seem better than others. Somehow we think that our significance, our value is measured by how much we’ve accomplished in this world or how much we have gained in this world. And so we can count our blessings for all the wrong reasons.

What should we do instead? Well, instead we are to give thanks to God. We are to give thanks to God for every good thing that He has given us, whether it’s He has blessed us with talents, with success, with whatever. We are to give praise to God because every good gift, every perfect gift comes from above. It comes from the Father of lights. God is the source of every blessing. Every good thing that I possess is from God, not from me. And so, if we do take a census of what we have, if we count our blessings, we should do it only in order to praise and to thank God for His goodness to us.

And that brings us to the second lesson, and that is the need for wholehearted devotion to the Lord. Even though I’ve been referring to the half shekel as a tax, strictly speaking, it wasn’t really a tax. You’ll notice that in the passage, it’s called a ransom. And the idea behind it was not that God was claiming just a small portion of what the Israelites possessed—that would be the idea of a tax. Rather, what’s implied in the word ransom is that God was claiming his absolute lordship, his absolute ownership, not only over everything that each Israelite possessed, but over the person of each Israelite as well. And so by calling this a ransom, and when the Israelites had to give it, it was a recognition on the part of the Israelites that they belonged entirely to the Lord. They were the Lord’s.

And as a Christian, that is true for you as well. Not only all that you have, all that you are is God’s. You belong entirely to Christ. And that’s true for two reasons. First of all, you have been created by God. You did not create yourself. You did not come into being of yourself. But it is God who made you, He created you, He sustains you, He gives you life and breath. You are nothing apart from Him. And that’s true for all of us. And so we belong to Him because He is our creator. Not only that, but as a Christian, you have been redeemed by Christ, and so you belong to Him because He is your Savior. And so we are doubly owned by God, by creation and by salvation.

1 Corinthians 6 puts it this way—this is the passage that we heard from the New Testament: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” As a Christian, you are not your own. This is such an important fundamental truth that we need to absorb into our hearts and into our thinking. You do not have sovereign rights over your life, over your body, over your time, your talents, your resources, but all things are to be devoted to because they belong to Christ, because you were bought with a price.

Now the Apostle Paul declared this truth in 1 Corinthians that we are not our own. He proclaimed this truth to them in the context of a passage in which he is speaking about sexual immorality. And in our world today, if there is one area in which we must be radically different from the world around us, it is this: in our understanding of sexuality. Because the world tells us the opposite of what the scripture tells us. The world says you are your own. You belong to yourself. You have the sovereign right to use your body in any way that you please with anyone that you please. But God says this to us: you are not your own. You belong to Christ. And so you must glorify God with your body and use your body in a way that honors him as he has revealed in his word.

And this truth that we belong to Christ, body and soul, this applies to every aspect of life. Our entire being, our entire lives belongs to Him. And so we are to devote our bodies, our minds, all things to the worship, to the service of Jesus Christ, our Lord. And so the second lesson from this passage is a call for wholehearted devotion to the Lord.

The third lesson is this: this passage speaks to the nature of our salvation. The half shekel is not only called a ransom in this passage, but it’s also called, in verse 16, atonement money. And the half shekel was to be offered by the Israelites, according to verse 15, to make atonement for your lives. Now, of course, the money itself did not atone for their sins, but it was a token of the atonement that God had provided for them ultimately in Christ, but also through the sacrifices, in a sacramental way, through the sacrifices that they offered.

And so by calling the half shekel offering both a ransom and atonement money, this money that was given to the Lord during the census, it would have impressed upon the minds of the Israelites a far greater reality than just the fact that they were about to be counted. And that is, as Israelites, as the people of God, they were those whom the Lord had redeemed. He had redeemed them with a ransom, and that redemption was based on an atonement, an atonement that was accomplished by the shedding of blood, by the sacrifice of blood.

And the Old Testament uses the ideas of redemption and ransom and atonement and blood sacrifice to describe the work of God’s salvation for his people, because it was all pointing towards the greater sacrifice by which the coming Christ, the Messiah, would bring salvation to his people, because it would be a redemption based on the sacrifice of his own body, the sacrifice of himself. The Christ, when he came into the world, would offer himself as the Lamb of God, an atonement to cover the sins of the people of God.

And that is exactly what we need. We are in desperate need of an atonement, a blood sacrifice to cleanse us, to take away our guilt and our sin, because we are in bondage to sin by nature. By nature, we are captives to sin, and the only ransom that can save us is the death of Jesus Christ, his blood shed upon the cross. Psalm 49:7 says, “Truly no man can ransom another or give to God the price of his life.” And that is true, but Jesus is the exception to that rule because he is not just man, but when he united his sinless divinity, his deity, with true humanity, he became the God-man. And He is the one who can ransom sinners such as you and me from our bondage to sin and death. He is the only one who can do that.

And Jesus said that is exactly why He came from heaven into the earth, into our world. 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.” And so God sent his son to us in order to offer himself as this sacrifice by his suffering, his death, the blood that he shed upon the cross. There is forgiveness of sins. There is cleansing. There is eternal life. There is redemption.

And the question that this impresses upon us is this, and I’ll ask this question to you. Have you come to Jesus Christ by faith? Have you repented of your sins? Have you put your trust in the Son of God as the only one who can bring salvation to you, as the only one through whom there is forgiveness, the gift of eternal life? And if you have, you belong to Christ and you are counted. You are counted among the redeemed people of God.

We’ve often heard the expression, “The devil’s in the details.” Well, when it comes to the scriptures, it’s often God and his grace that are in the details. And there’s a wonderful detail in this passage that we need to notice in verse 15. Let me read verse 15 to you. Notice the egalitarianism here: all the Israelites, whether they were rich, whether they were poor, whether they were great, whether they were lowly, they were all redeemed by the very same purchase price, this half shekel. And what that means is that in the sight of God, not one of his redeemed people is more valuable or worthy than any other. In the case of the Israelites, they were all redeemed by the same amount, by the same price.

And what this means for you and me is this: is that God places the very same worth and value upon each one of His beloved children. Every single person who belongs to Jesus Christ, every single one was purchased by Christ with the same blood that He shed upon the cross. Every single one who belongs to Jesus Christ has been loved with the same divine love of the Father from all eternity. And so there is no one in the church, there is no one among God’s people who is inherently more valuable or more important or more worthy than anybody else.

And let me ask you another question. Do you see your brother or sister in Christ as just as worthy and valuable as you are in the sight of God? And not only that, but do you treat them that way? Do you treat your fellow Christians as though they are equal in value, importance, and worth as you consider yourself to be as one who has been loved by Christ?

Well, the greatest census of God’s redeemed people is yet to come. There are various—I don’t know what the plural of census is, but there were various times when the people had a census taken in the Bible. But the greatest one is yet to come. And that will be on that day when the Lord Jesus Christ returns. And every single one of his beloved people will be raised up from the grave, from death, with bodies that are immortal, incorruptible, imperishable, and glorious forever and ever. And there will be such a vast number of people who have been redeemed in Christ, who are raised up in glory, that they will be literally uncountable by us.

That’s exactly what John tells us in his vision that he gives us in Revelation. In Revelation 7:9, he sees a great multitude that no one could number. No one but God, that is. No one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the Lamb. And the promise that God gives to you as a believer in Jesus Christ, as one who has come to your Savior in faith, that if you are numbered among God’s people today, if you belong to Jesus Christ by faith today, you will be numbered among God’s people on that great day as well.

And why is that? It’s not because of how great your faithfulness is. It’s not because of how strong your will is to persevere. It’s because of the ransom that Jesus Christ paid for you and the greatness of that ransom, that His blood shed upon the cross, the blood of the Son of God of infinite value and worth. It is sufficient to cover all your sins, all your sins. And so death has no more claim on you. You are no longer subject to the condemnation, the wrath of God. Your sins are forgiven. You have been redeemed by the grace of Jesus Christ and that forever and ever.

On that great day, the words that Jesus spoke will be proven true. Jesus said in John chapter 18, “Of those whom you gave me, I have lost not one.” And so the great census taker will see on that day that everyone whom he loved, everyone for whom he died will be with him in glory for all eternity.

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is from chapter 30, and the passages are two passages. First, verses one through 10, and then verses 34 through 38. So we’ll read first verses one through 10, and then 34 and 38. And this is God’s inspired and infallible and inerrant word.

So let’s hear the word of God. Exodus 30 verses 1 through 10. You shall make an altar on which to burn incense. You shall make it of acacia wood. A cubit shall be its length and a cubit its breadth. It shall be square and two cubits shall be its height. Its horns shall be of one piece with it. You shall overlay it with pure gold, its top and around its sides and its horns. And you shall make a molding of gold around it. And you shall make two golden rings for it. Under its molding on two opposite sides of it, you shall make them. And they shall be holders for poles with which to carry it. You shall make the poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. And you shall put it in front of the veil that is above the ark of the testimony in front of the mercy seat that is above the testimony where I will meet with you. And Aaron shall burn fragrant incense on it every morning. When he dresses the lamps, he shall burn it. And when Aaron sets up the lamps at twilight, he shall burn it. A regular incense offering before the Lord throughout your generations. You shall not offer unauthorized incense on it or a burnt offering or a grain offering, and you shall not pour a drink offering on it. Aaron shall make atonement on its horns once a year. With the blood of the sin offering of atonement, he shall make atonement for it once a year throughout your generations. It is most holy to the Lord.

And then verse 34, to the end of the chapter, the Lord said to Moses, take sweet spices, stacte and onycha and galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense. Of each shall there be an equal part and make an incense blended as by the perfumer seasoned with salt, pure and holy. You shall beat some of it very small and put part of it before the testimony in the tent of meeting where I shall meet with you. It shall be most holy for you. And the incense that you shall make according to its composition you shall not make for yourselves. It shall be for you holy to the Lord. Whoever makes any like it to use as perfume shall be cut off from his people.

And now let’s turn to the New Testament for our New Testament reading. It’s Revelation, chapter 8, verses 1 through 5. And this is part of what the Apostle John witnessed in his vision of the worship that was taking place in heaven. So Revelation, chapter 8, verses 1 through 5.

When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne. And the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints rose before God from the hand of the angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. You may turn back to Exodus chapter 30 for our sermon text this morning.

When I was in grade school, the house that we lived in, in the backyard, it had a couple of mint bushes. And from time to time when I was a kid, I would pluck off a leaf from the mint bush and I would hold it to my nose and I would breathe in the minty aroma. And to this day, anytime I smell fresh mint, it reminds me of that house in the backyard. And so it’s one of my favorite smells. One of the pleasures that God has given us to enjoy in this world is the fragrance of pleasing aromas. Think of the smell of the air after a springtime shower. Think of the scent of your dad’s face after he shaves, the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, or how about the smell of barbecue on the grill? It’s a gift of God that we can enjoy these pleasant aromas.

And God also created a holy aroma, a sacred fragrance, an aroma that was redolent of his own glory and greatness. And that is the incense that was burned in the tabernacle, in the holy tabernacle. And that is the subject of our passage this morning, the incense that was burned in the tabernacle and the altar that that incense was burned upon.

Just by way of reminder for us, we are considering the tabernacle, and we’ve gone over its basic structure, and if you remember, the tabernacle was divided into two rooms. There was the most holy place, that was the inner sanctum, and then adjacent to that was the holy place. And so in the most holy place, there was one piece of furniture or an item, and that was the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. And that was where the Lord dwelt. And so you could say his presence in the tabernacle was concentrated or focused there. He dwelt above the cherubim that were on the mercy seat on top of the Ark of the Covenant. So that was the most holy place.

And then the room next to it was the holy place. And there were three items placed in that room. And we’ve already looked at two of those items. One was the table on which was placed the bread of the presence. And then opposite of that on the other side of the holy place was the golden lamp stand that contained or that had seven lamps attached to it. And then the third item that was placed in the holy place was the altar of incense. And that is what we are considering this morning on this altar. There was incense burned day and night. And like everything else in the tabernacle, the altar of incense communicated truths to the Israelites about God and about the salvation that he had worked for them and about the promises of God for his people.

And so today I want to consider the questions with you. What was the spiritual significance of the altar of incense and the incense that was burned on it? And what implications, what does this mean for us as believers today, as Christians? But before we consider those questions as we have been doing, as we’ve been going through the tabernacle, we’ll consider the items themselves that are described for us in this passage. We’ll take a closer look at the altar and the incense.

We’ll begin with the incense. What was it exactly? God actually gives us a recipe for it at the end of the chapter, which we heard. It was made up of four spices, stacte, onycha, galbanum, and frankincense. As for the first three of these spices, biblical scholars aren’t exactly sure what they were. Stacte and galbanum, they probably were resins derived from a certain kind of plant or plants. Onycha may have been a powder that was made from the shells of mollusks that lived in the Red Sea. As for frankincense, we can be much more sure about that. We know more about frankincense. It is, it was, and is a spice derived from the resin of a tree called the Boswellia tree. And of course, we are all familiar with frankincense because that was one of the three gifts that the wise men, not the three wise men, but one of the three gifts that the three wise men brought to the baby Jesus.

And because we don’t know for sure exactly what the spices were, we don’t know what the incense smelled like, but since this was a recipe that God gave to the Israelites, it must have had a very pleasing aroma. For us in our day and age, we are familiar with incense, but most of us probably don’t consider it something particularly desirable or valuable. If anything, incense may have a negative connotation for us. I have to be honest, when I smell incense, the first thing that comes to my mind is that somebody is burning it to mask the smell of something else that they are smoking, something that they are smoking, which is not tobacco. That’s what I always think of when I smell incense. That’s what I think that’s going on. I know that’s not always the case, but for some reason, that’s what I think of.

But in the days of the Bible, incense was a highly prized commodity. It was often used in the worship of gods. And for that reason and for other reasons, it was considered very valuable, very desirable by people. For example, we know this is the case because the wise men from the East, they considered it worthy to be a gift to give to a king. And so frankincense was very prized, very valuable, and incense in general was.

But the most important characteristic of this incense was not how valuable it was, not what the ingredients were, not even how lovely a scent it may have given off, but the most important thing about this incense was that it was holy. It was sacred. And like everything else in the tabernacle, it was consecrated to the worship of God. And therefore, it was not to be used by the people for any common purpose. The Lord tells Moses in verse 37 and 38 that the Israelites were not to go home and make up this incense for themselves. If they did, they would be cut off from the people, which meant they would either be banished from the people or else they would be put to death. And so this was only to be used in the worship of the Lord. And so it was holy.

And the altar on which it was burned was also holy. And so in verses one through five, Moses gives us a description of that altar. Like the other items in the tabernacle, it was made out of acacia wood. It was covered with pure gold. Picture it being about three feet tall, and it was a square about a foot and a half long, a foot and a half wide. And like the bronze altar that was out in the courtyard outside the tabernacle, this altar also had four horns that protruded from the top of it. And it also had rings for poles with which to carry it, because remember the tabernacle was portable, it was mobile. And so when the Lord led the people to a different place in the wilderness, the poles would be put into the altar and it would be moved along with all the other items in the tabernacle.

One of the most significant things about this altar of incense was where it was placed. And the wording in the text isn’t super precise. However, the usual understanding was that this altar of incense was placed right up against the veil that separated the most holy place from the holy place. And so even though this altar of incense was in the holy place, nevertheless, it was very close to the most holy place. It was just across the veil from the Ark of the Covenant. And because it was so close to the most holy place, the smoke and the perfume of the incense it would permeate the entire tabernacle, the whole tabernacle, the most holy place, and the holy place would be filled with the smoke and the aroma of the incense that was burned there.

And keep that thought in your mind, because as we’ll see, there is great theological significance to the fact of where the altar of incense was placed. And that aroma of God’s holy incense would have filled the tabernacle at all times. The Lord in this passage, he commands Moses that the high priest was to burn the incense every morning when he went in to trim the lamps on the golden lamp stand, he was to burn it at night as well. And so the incense offering was offered twice daily. And so basically more or less the aroma of the incense would have permeated the tabernacle at all times, day and night. And so that’s a little bit about the altar and the incense that is described for us.

Now let’s consider what is the meaning of the incense? Surely it served a greater purpose than simply to provide a pleasant aroma in the tabernacle, and indeed it did. However, if the Lord told Moses what the incense meant when the Lord gave Moses these words, he did not write them down for us. And so we can’t tell from the passage itself what the significance of the incense was, and so many suggestions have been made.

One idea is that the smoke of the incense acted as a sort of protective cloud to shield the priest from the holiness of God, so that when he came close to the presence of God, when he approached the most holy place, the incense cloud would protect him from God’s dangerous holiness. And that is true for at least one day of the year on the Day of Atonement. We learned from another place in the Bible, from Leviticus, that the cloud from the incense that was burned on the altar of incense, it would cover the mercy seat so that the priest would not be consumed by God or that he would not die in the presence of God when he went into the most holy place. So that was one purpose for the incense, at least on the Day of Atonement.

But there are many other passages in scripture that shed some light for us on what this incense was all about. For example, in Psalm 141, verse two, David says this. He says, let my prayer be counted as incense before you and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. And so here you see the connection between incense and prayer.

And we see the same thing in the New Testament. In chapter one of Luke’s gospel, we read about Zechariah, the priest of God, the man who would become the father of John the Baptist. When he went into the temple to burn incense, Luke tells us in chapter one, verse 10, the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense. And so here too, we see this connection between prayer and the incense that was burned in the tabernacle or the temple.

And this connection is made even clearer in Revelation. In chapter eight, the passage that we heard from our New Testament reading, the Apostle Paul, the Apostle John rather, he describes the scene that he sees when he is given a vision of heaven. Let me read to you again, verses three and four from Revelation eight. And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel.

And so again, incense and prayer are joined together. And earlier in Revelation, in another passage in chapter 5, incense, this incense is actually equated with or identified with the prayers of God’s people. Revelation 5, 8. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

And so the incense in the tabernacle, the incense later in the temple, it stood for, it represented the prayers of God’s people as those prayers were lifted up on behalf of the people by their representative, who was the priest who would enter into the holy place to burn the incense, to pray to God, to worship God. The people’s prayers were being lifted up by him on their behalf. And so the smoke of the incense it would drift into the most holy place. Remember that altar was right up against the veil, and so the smoke from the incense would permeate the holy place and the most holy place. And that incense smoke would go right up to the presence of the Lord. Literally, the smoke would come into the most holy place where the Lord was, and if we can speak of the Lord this way, He would smell the incense as a pleasing aroma.

But that was a picture of the prayers of the people of God. As they were being offered by the priest, they would be going up as the incense before the presence of the Lord and be received by him. And that is the meaning of the incense. In this very symbolic way, God was promising the people of Israel, your prayers, I will hear. Your prayers will go up to heaven. Just as the incense goes into the presence of the Lord in the tabernacle, so the Lord would hear the prayers of His people.

And there are two truths in particular that we can draw from this that apply to us as Christians today. First of all, God has given us the great privilege to pray to Him. And we’ll consider what an amazing privilege this is that we can pray to God. And secondly, God has promised that he will hear our prayers.

So first of all, God has given us the great privilege to pray to him. And so for the Israelites who had a true spiritual understanding of these things, he knew that through the ministry of the high priest, his prayers would go up to God. But that same Israelite would also always be conscious of the fact that he was never himself allowed to go into the presence of God. He was not, sure he could pray on his own, but it’s not like he could enter into God’s presence and lift up his prayers directly to the Lord in the way that the high priest could. The high priest went into the place where God dwelt. Once a year, he went even into the most holy place. Before the Ark of the Covenant, he was in the presence of God. But that was not true for the common Israelites. There was always a great distance between the common Israelites and the Lord. It was the priest who enjoyed this closeness with God. It was the priest who was given this incredible privilege to go into the presence of God and to pray to him on behalf of the people of God.

And that was true not only for the priest going into the tabernacle to pray, to worship, but the entire Old Testament system of the sacrifices of the priesthood. It was only the priests who were given the privilege to worship and to pray directly in the presence of God. As for the rest of the Israelites, they were kept apart from this intimate communion with the Lord. And so they depended upon the priest in order for their prayers to be brought up to the Lord through their priest.

Now this wasn’t God’s intention for his people for all times. In fact, even in Exodus, God gives us a hint that he is going to bring about something even greater than that, far greater than that. So back in Exodus chapter 19, verse six, the Lord promises to the people of Israel, you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. And so it was God’s intention, His design for His people, not that they would always be represented by this human priest who would pray for them and worship God for them in the presence of God, but that one day He would make the whole nation a nation of priests.

And of course, that came to fulfillment with the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, when He came into the world. He has brought this promise to fulfillment, and this is the glorious reality that is now true for you and me as those who belong to Jesus Christ. First Peter 2.9 says this, but you are 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 into his marvelous light.

Peter says we are a royal priesthood. We are a royal priesthood. That status of being a priest before God, that is true for each and every one of us now, who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ by faith. And that is because of what Christ has done for you. Because of his saving work for you, you have been given all the honors, all the privileges that only the high priest enjoyed in the Old Testament. And so in Jesus Christ, you do not have a human priest upon whom you must depend to pray for you or to mediate that relationship that is yours with the Father in heaven. But you are united to Jesus Christ, and because you are united to Jesus Christ, you are a priest of God. You can go to your Father in heaven in Jesus’ name and know that you come into his very presence, and you can pray to him directly through the name of Christ.

This is one of the great truths that were rediscovered and proclaimed by the reformers of the Protestant Reformation back in the 16th century. It is what they called the priesthood of all believers. Of course, they were coming out of a church context in which there were priests and then there were the common people, and only the priest had special access to God. But the reformers said, no, as believers in Jesus Christ, every single Christian enjoys the very same access to God as even a priest does. And so we can go to the Father and pray to Him and worship Him in a way that the Israelites could not under the old covenant.

And this is because of what Jesus Christ has done for us when He came into the world. He came as our true priest, our great high priest. and He offered Himself upon the cross as a sacrifice that our sins might be forgiven, that that alienation between us and God was taken away so that we could be reconciled to God as our Father. And in doing so, Jesus abolished forever that old system of priests and sacrifices, and He has replaced it with His priestly ministry for us. And so because of this, because of Christ because you are in Christ united with him who is your priest, you have a kind of direct access through him in the presence of God that was unheard of in the days of the Old Testament.

And so Hebrews describes this privilege we have in this way, Hebrews 4.16, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. And so just as the high priest could draw near to God in the tabernacle, burn the incense, be in the presence of the Lord, so you and I can draw near to our Father in heaven with our prayers and worship. Ephesians 2.18, for through him, we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. We have access to the Father in Christ through the Spirit.

Now, this is an amazing privilege that God has given to us. This is an amazing blessing that he has given to us in Christ. But the question I think we should ask ourselves is this, do we really take advantage of the privilege that we have to pray to God? Do we really make use of this blessing, this privilege that we have to come into the presence of God to unburden our hearts, to pray to Him, to praise Him? Think about it.

By faith in Jesus Christ, you can come into the presence of the Almighty God, who is the creator of heaven and earth, who rules in absolute sovereignty over all that he has made, who is the one who controls and reigns over all things, and you have the promise that when you come to him in Jesus Christ, that he receives you and that he hears your prayers. It’s as though, it’s not exactly like this, of course, but it’s as though God just stops all of his activities as God, all of his sovereign work in upholding and sustaining and governing all of creation. It’s as though he puts it all to the side. It’s as though he stops thinking all his infinite thoughts that are his as the one who is infinite in knowledge and wisdom, and he puts all that to the side, and he focuses his attention and his focus entirely on you. And he says, talk to me. I hear your prayers. He’s not distracted. He’s able to hear the prayers that you lift up to Him, even though He is God.

And so what an amazing privilege that God has given to us. But the real question, I think, is this. When we consider it that way, when we consider what we have in Christ and our access to God himself, to pray to him, why are we not more in prayer? Why are we not constantly in prayer? We have to be honest and say the reason we don’t pray as much as we should is because there is still so much unbelief in our hearts. We don’t truly, we believe it, but we don’t truly act as though we believe it, that we can come to God at all times, at any time, and pray to Him and know that He hears us. We are far more secular-minded than we’d like to think.

And of course, we live in a day and age that makes the practice of prayer very challenging, very difficult. We are inundated with endless distractions. Of course, many of those distractions we bring upon ourselves. There are so many claims to our time. There are so many things that we have to do. There are so many things that we just want to do. And so as we allow ourselves to be immersed in all the activity, the noise, the busyness of our lives that fill up all of our time, we completely forget that the most profitable, the greatest, the most spiritually beneficial thing that we can do as Christians is to stop doing and to start praying.

But it’s tragic that we don’t. We have this infinite resource in God, and yet we so infrequently avail ourselves in prayer to Him. And what’s just as tragic is that instead of using this, our privilege, to come to our Father in heaven, instead what do we do? When we are confronted with the challenges and difficulties of life, the uncertainties of life, we are overwhelmed with anxiety, we worry, we fret, we are nervous, we’re fearful, But why should we be? Why should we be anxious and fearful when we can pray to the God who rules over all things? According to His infinite wisdom, according to His infinite love for us, who promises that He rules over all things for our good. So why should we worry?

And the Bible, in fact, tells us that the antidote to anxiety is prayer. Philippians 4, 6, and 7, 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 minds in Christ Jesus. And so one of the greatest gifts that God has given to you in Christ is this blessing and privilege to pray. But how much does your own prayer life demonstrate that you truly treasure and value this privilege that God has given to you?

God has given us also this, in addition to this privilege to pray to him, he has given us a wonderful promise, and that is that he hears our prayers. Notice that the altar, coming back now to Exodus 30, notice that the altar on which this incense was burned, it needed to be consecrated with the blood of a sacrifice. So let me read verse 10. This is Exodus 30, verse 10. Aaron shall make atonement on its horns once a year with the blood of the sin offering of atonement. He shall make atonement for it once in the year throughout your generations. It is most holy to the Lord.

So once a year on the day of atonement, the high priest, after sacrificing the sin offering, the goat, he would take some of the blood of that goat and he would put it on the horns of the altar of incense. And in that way, he would make atonement for it. That is, he would consecrate it so that it would be most holy to the Lord, so that it would be suitable for the worship of God. And so if the incense then that was burned on the altar, if it was consecrated by the blood of a sacrifice, and if the smoke of the incense stands for the prayers of the people of God, then there is a very important biblical truth illustrated for us here, and that is this, that our prayers must be consecrated or sanctified by a blood sacrifice.

Just as we cannot go to God in ourselves without a sacrifice to atone for our sins, without blood in order to atone for our sins, namely the blood of Jesus, so our prayers cannot go up to God apart from a sacrifice of atonement. In other words, our prayers must be sanctified in order to be received by God. And this is what Jesus does for us as our great high priest. He not only sanctifies you so that you may come into the presence of God, a holy God, but through His mediatorial work, He sanctifies your prayers so that your prayers are heard by your Father in heaven when you pray to Him in the name of Jesus.

And this is a truth that should be a great encouragement to each one of us. Because what it means is that God hears the prayers equally of every single one of his people, every single one of us who come to God in the name of Jesus Christ and pray to him. Those prayers are heard. It doesn’t matter how unskilled our prayers may be, how simple our prayers may be. It doesn’t matter that our prayers are imperfect because they are coming from our hearts, which have imperfect desires and mixed motives. As a Christian, you can know that God hears you. He hears you for the sake of Jesus.

I’m sure you’ve had the experience when you’ve been with a mature Christian saint, a man or woman who has a great gift in praying, like in a prayer meeting, and their prayers are very reverent, devotional. They pray with great eloquence with scriptural language. There’s hardly anything more edifying than hearing someone pray like that. It’s almost as if you’re being brought up into the presence of God through their prayers.

But at the same time, that can make us feel very inadequate when we think about our own prayers. Because in comparison, my prayers sound so basic, so simple, so ineloquent, unpolished, unskilled, but the encouragement that this passage gives us is that it doesn’t matter how simple or how unpolished your prayers may be, God hears them. He hears them because of the sacrifice of Christ. God doesn’t only hear the prayers that are eloquent and saturated with scripture language, but he hears the prayers of each one of his people who ask him for their desires in the name of Christ. And so you can know that God hears your prayers when you lift them up in the name of your Savior, even if they are stammering prayers, halting prayers, even if it’s just the groaning of your spirits when there are times when you don’t even know how to formulate your prayers into words.

Think of the tax collector in the parable that Jesus taught. This tax collector, perhaps he never prayed. He didn’t know how to pray. But as he stood in the temple, he was struck, his conscience was struck that he was a great sinner, that he needed God’s grace and mercy. And so the words just came out from his heart through his mouth. God, be merciful to me, a sinner. What a simple prayer that was. And yet that was a prayer that brought that tax collector eternal life, the forgiveness of sins, and it was all because of the grace and the mercy of Christ, because he lifted that prayer up to the Father, and the Father heard him for the sake of Christ.

And one question I want to ask you this morning is have you prayed that same prayer of the tax collector? Have you called out to God for his mercy that your sins may be forgiven, that you may receive the gift of eternal life. Have you made that prayer? God, be merciful to me, a sinner. If not, then this is the first prayer that you must pray. And God promises that he will answer that prayer, no matter who prays it, no matter how bad their sins may have been, no matter how far from God they may have been, When anyone comes to the Lord and prays by faith in Jesus Christ, God, be merciful to me, a sinner, God hears that prayer and answers with life, salvation, forgiveness.

Romans 10, 13, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And if you have received that gift of salvation, know that with that gift, God has given you another gift, the gift of prayer. And he promises that for the sake of his son, Jesus Christ, he will hear your prayers. And he will answer your prayers. He will answer your prayers, perhaps not in exact conformity to what you want, but he will answer your prayers according to that which will be for your eternal good, your eternal blessedness. And he will answer your prayers for that which will bring him the greatest glory. And so God has given us this amazing privilege that we can pray to him and he promises in Jesus Christ to hear us.

Let’s go to the Lord now in prayer.

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Our Old Testament passage is chapters 28 and 29 of Exodus, but as you can see, these are very long passages or very long chapters. So rather than reading all of both chapters, I will read some sections from each chapter.

Chapter 28 is concerned with the garments that the high priest wore and a little bit about the garments that the regular priests wore in their service in the tabernacle. I’ll just read verses 1 through 4 to begin with.

So first, chapter 28, verses 1 through 4. Then bring near to you Aaron, your brother, and his sons with him from among the people of Israel to serve me as priests. Aaron and Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, and you shall make holy garments for Aaron, your brother, for glory and for beauty. You shall speak to all the skillful, whom I have filled with a spirit of skill, that they may make Aaron’s garments to consecrate him for my priesthood. These are the garments that they shall make, a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a coat of checkerwork, a turban, and a sash. They shall make holy garments for Aaron, your brother, and his sons to serve me as priests. They shall receive gold, blue, and purple, and scarlet yarns, and fine twined linen.

And then if we were to read on in chapter 28, we would read all of the details of how those various garments were to be made. And then coming to the end of the chapter, picking up at verse 40, these are the final instructions concerning the priest’s garments.

Verse 40, chapter 28. You shall make for them linen undergarments to cover their naked flesh. They shall reach from the hips to the thighs, and they shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they go into the tent of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister in the holy place, lest they bear guilt and die. This shall be a statute forever for him and for his offspring after him.

Chapter 29, the concern of this chapter is the ordination or the consecration of the priests who would serve in the tabernacle. So first I’ll read verses one through nine. Now this is what you shall do to them to consecrate them that they may serve me as priests. Take one bull of the herd and two rams without blemish and unleavened bread, unleavened cakes mixed with oil and unleavened wafers smeared with oil. You shall make them a fine wheat flour. You shall put them in one basket and bring them in the basket and bring the bull and the two rams. You shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and wash them with water. Then you shall take the garments and put on Aaron the coat and the robe of the ephod and the ephod and the breastpiece and gird him with the skillfully woven band of the ephod. And you shall set the turban on his head and put the holy crown on the turban. You shall take the anointing oil and pour it on his head and anoint him. Then you shall bring his sons and put coats on them. And you shall gird Aaron and his sons with sashes and bind caps on them. And the priesthood shall be theirs by a statute forever. Thus you shall ordain Aaron and his sons.

And then the rest of chapter 29 has the details of how the priests were to be ordained and the various sacrifices that were involved with that. I’ll read the last few verses of chapter 29. These have to do with the daily offerings that were to be offered at the tabernacle and later at the temple.

So starting in verse 38, chapter 29. Now this is what you shall offer on the altar. Two lambs a year old, day by day, regularly. One lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight. And with the first lamb, a tenth measure of fine flour, mingled with a fourth of a hin of beaten oil, and a fourth of a hin of wine for a drink offering. The other lamb you shall offer at twilight, and shall offer it with a grain offering and its drink offering as in the morning, for a pleasing aroma of food offering to the Lord. It shall be a regular burnt offering throughout your generations at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting before the Lord, where I will meet with you to speak to you there. There I will meet with the people of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by my glory. I will consecrate the Tent of Meeting and the altar; Aaron also and his sons, I will consecrate to serve me as priests. I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. 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. I am the Lord, their God.

So keep your place there in Exodus, and let’s turn to Hebrews chapter seven for our New Testament reading. And as you have noticed, I’m sure, many of our New Testament readings have been in Hebrews, because Hebrews explains to us all of the significance of the tabernacle and the priesthood that we have been reading about in Exodus.

So Hebrews chapter 7, verses 23 through 28. So chapter 7, verses 23 through 28. The former priests were many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them. For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He has no need like those high priests to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath which came later than the law appoints a son who has been made perfect forever.

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

Many of you will already be familiar with this concept, but in the Old Testament, God provided three kinds of offices or leaders for the people of Israel. He gave them prophets, priests, and kings. And the people of Israel needed each one of these offices for their salvation and for their faithfulness to the Lord.

And the same is true for us. As Christians, for our own salvation, for our faithfulness to God, we need someone who can perfectly fulfill each one of those offices for us. We need a perfect prophet who will make known the word of God to us. We need a perfect priest to offer a perfect sacrifice on our behalf in order to take away our sin. And we need a perfect king to rule over us, to defeat his enemies and our enemies.

And of course, Jesus, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, He is the one who fulfills all of these three offices for us. As our Savior, as our Lord, He is our great prophet, priest, and king.

As a prophet, Jesus declares to us through the scriptures the will of God for our salvation, for our growth and grace. As a priest, the Lord Jesus offered up himself as a sacrifice to atone for our sins forever. And as a priest, he continues to make intercession for us before his Father in heaven. As a king, Jesus rules over us for our good. He fights and he conquers all of our enemies.

Because these two chapters in Exodus are all about the institution of the priesthood, what I want to consider with you today as we consider these chapters is what do these chapters tell us about the priestly role that Jesus has fulfilled and continues to fill for us? What does it mean that Jesus is our great high priest?

As we have been looking at all the details of the tabernacle, we’ve been seeing how they all point in one way or the other to the coming of Christ. Today, the details have to do with the priesthood, the people that would serve in the tabernacle. And so since the priesthood in the Old Testament was a type of, since it pointed towards the true high priest, the Lord Jesus, we’ll look at these chapters by asking the question, what do these chapters teach us about Jesus, our great high priest?

There are three truths about Christ as our priest that we can glean from these chapters from Exodus. First of all, as our high priest, Jesus was appointed by God. So Jesus was appointed by God to be our priest. Secondly, as our high priest, Jesus was and is holy. And thirdly, as our high priest, Jesus is compassionate.

So first of all, as our high priest, Jesus was appointed by God. In this very long section of Exodus, in these two chapters that we are taking together, obviously we will not dwell on all of the details because there are too many. But in chapter 28, what is described for us is the special clothing that the priests were to wear as they ministered in the temple. So God had a purpose, a plan for their clothing. They were not to wear ordinary clothes, but they would be clothed in this very special way. And chapter 29 describes how the priests would be ordained to this office.

But before all of that, the very first thing that the Lord tells Moses at the beginning of chapter 28 is who would serve as the priest, or who would serve as priests. The Lord gave that responsibility, that privilege, that office to Aaron. Aaron, of course, was the brother of Moses, and it would be Aaron and his sons who would serve as priests in Israel.

So look at verse one in chapter 28. Verse one in chapter 28. This is the Lord speaking to Moses. Then bring near to you Aaron, your brother, and his sons with him from among the people of Israel to serve me as priests, Aaron and Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.

It’s just assumed here at this point, but it becomes clearer later in scripture that there would be one priest who would be the high priest or the chief priest. He would have the greatest responsibility, the greatest privilege of all the priests, because he would be the chief of the priests. And the high priest, the first one would be Aaron. He was the first high priest. And then the office would be passed down to one of Aaron’s sons and to one of his sons. And so it went from Aaron to Eleazar to Phineas and so on.

You’ll notice that Aaron was not chosen to be the high priest as a result of a democratic election among the people of Israel. Aaron did not run a successful priesthood campaign. He wasn’t elected to serve as high priest by popular vote. Rather, he was elected to this office in a very different sense, and that is he was elected by the only one whose vote matters, and that is he was elected by God, by the Almighty God, the Sovereign Lord. It was his choice, his appointment. He is the one who made Aaron the priest.

And in doing this and choosing Aaron to be the high priest, the Lord was laying down an unbreakable and inviolable law. And that is this: It is God and God alone who chooses the man who will serve as priest in Israel.

The book of Hebrews puts it this way, Hebrews chapter 5 verse 4, “And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was.” So there were no self-appointed priests, at least legitimately. There were no democratically elected priests, but there was only the priests and the priests whom God had chosen.

Now, sadly, the Israelites did not really understand this until they learned it the hard way. Later, as we read through the Old Testament, we read about the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites. And in one episode, there is a man named Korah, who is a Levite. And he couldn’t stand the fact that only Aaron and his sons were to be priests. He was jealous that only they could be a priest. And so Korah decided to do something about that.

He gathered 250 men to himself, and together they accused Moses of wrongfully denying them and the rest of the Israelites the privileges of the priesthood, the access to God that only the priest could enjoy. And as a result of Korah’s rebellion against God and his will for the priesthood, what happened was, as you know, God caused the earth to open up under Korah and his family, and he and his entire family were sent down alive to the depths of Sheol. And so that was what God thought of Korah’s idea that everyone should be a priest.

The lesson was this, according to the words of Moses. This is what Moses said after this incident with Korah. In Numbers 16:40, he said, “no outsider who was not of the descendants of Aaron should draw near to burn incense before the Lord, lest he become like Korah and his company.” And so only Aaron and his sons could be priests. Later in Numbers, the Lord himself says this to Aaron, “I give your priesthood as a gift and any outsider who comes near shall be put to death.”

And so a priest was, or to serve as a priest, that office, it was an honor that no one could take upon himself. Only God could appoint him to serve as a priest.

That was true for Aaron, and that was true for Jesus as well. He was appointed by God. He was set apart by God in order to serve as our high priest. Hebrews chapter five, verses five and six say this: “So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, ‘you are my son, today I have begotten you.'” Verse six, “as he says also in another place, ‘you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.'”

I believe that one reason why the Lord was so clear and so insistent on this point that only he would choose who the priest of Israel would be is because in this way, the Lord was teaching his people that salvation, that eternal life would be found only in the Savior that he himself would choose for his people, the Savior that he would raise up for his people. It’s as though through this law that only God could choose the priest, it’s as though the Lord was saying to the people of Israel, “you need to understand that your hope, your hope of my dwelling with you forever, your hope of the forgiveness of your sins, your hope of eternal life and salvation, it depends upon the ministry of the priesthood, and it depends ultimately upon the ministry of the one true priest who is yet to come. And therefore, I, not you, will choose who will be your priest.”

Again, it is as though the Lord was saying to the people of Israel, “I know your hearts, you Israelites. You would choose your own priests. You would make yourselves priests. But the only priest that I choose, the coming Messiah, only he can bring you eternal salvation. And so you must know that it is I who will appoint and give you your true savior, and so the priest is the man of my choosing, not of yours.”

And so it’s significant that Aaron was chosen by the Lord to be the high priest because that was the way in which God would bring salvation to us. He would choose the man who would be our high priest, and that is Jesus. So first, Jesus was appointed by God as our high priest.

Secondly, as our high priest, Jesus is holy. He is holy.

In chapter 28, after the Lord told Moses whom he appointed to serve him as priests, he told Moses how the priests were to be clothed for their ministry in the tabernacle. And that is the concern of all of chapter 28. You can go home, you can read that whole chapter. You can look at the pictures online of what the priest’s garments looked like to give you a better idea of that.

But these are the garments that Aaron was to wear and the high priest who came after him. Verse 4 gives us a summary of the various parts of the outfit that the high priest was to wear as he ministered in the tabernacle. This is chapter 28, verse 4. These are the garments that they shall make, a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a coat of checkerwork, a turban, and a sash.

The breastpiece, or it’s called the breastpiece of judgment, this was a piece of cloth that was folded over. It was square, about nine inches by nine inches. It was made out of gold, blue and purple and scarlet yarns. It was made out of fine twined linen. And it was laid on top of the ephod on the chest of the high priest.

Now the breastpiece had two very important features. The first was there were fastened on it 12 precious stones that were arranged in four rows of three stones each. And on each of these stones was engraved the name of one of the 12 tribes of Israel. So literally, the high priest bore the names of the tribes of Israel before God as he ministered in the tabernacle, and we’ll come back to that point in a few minutes.

The second feature of the breastpiece was that it contained the Urim and the Thummim. The Urim and the Thummim. This is one of these mysterious details that the Old Testament gives us, but doesn’t give us much information about it. What exactly were the Urim and the Thummim? Nobody knows for sure, there’s no description of what they were. But whatever they were, they were used by the Israelites to determine the will of God in certain circumstances. When you read on in the Old Testament, you’ll read how from time to time the Israelites would consult the Urim and the Thummim to seek God’s will for a particular decision that was to be made. And so, whatever they were, they were part of the breastpiece that was worn by the high priest.

The ephod was like the breastpiece in that it was also made of the same material. It was made out of gold, of blue, purple, scarlet yarns, fine twined linen. This was the outermost garment that the high priest wore. And so it was on top of the ephod that the breastpiece was laid. And under the ephod, the priest wore a blue robe, and under the blue robe, he wore what is called a coat in checkerwork. And then under that, the high priest and all of the priests, they wore linen undergarments. This was literally the underwear that God appointed for them and even designed for them to wear in their ministry in the tabernacle. The chapter also describes the turban that was worn on the head of the high priest.

Now, about all of these various garments, the Lord says this in verse 2. So look at verse 2, chapter 28. Notice how the Lord describes these garments that Aaron was to wear in his high priestly duties. They were holy, they were glorious, and they were beautiful.

So first, the garments were holy, and they were holy because only the high priest could wear them, and they could only be worn as he ministered in the tabernacle. And so just like everything else that’s connected with the tabernacle, the priest’s clothing also was holy, and that’s because the tabernacle was holy. And as we’ve seen, the tabernacle was holy because that is where the holy God dwelt. That is where the Lord made his presence among his people. And because God is holy, everything in the tabernacle was holy, down to the priest’s garments that he wore when he ministered there.

They were also glorious. They reflected the glory of God. You may have noticed that all of the materials that went into making the priest’s clothing, they were the same materials that were used to make the tabernacle. Fine twined linen, blue and purple and scarlet yarns and gold and so on. Just as the tabernacle itself was a reflection of the glory of God, so the priest’s clothing reflected God in his glory as well.

And the same can be said for beauty. The tabernacle was beautiful. And it was beautiful, like we’ve said, most of all because the Lord is beautiful, because that was the Lord’s dwelling place. And so the tabernacle was beautiful. And the high priest showed forth the beauty of the Lord as he wore the beautiful garments that God himself designed.

And so in this way, the garments that the high priest wore, they showed forth, they expressed the splendor of God, His greatness, His glory, His beauty, His holiness. And this was one of the basic functions of a priest. This is one reason why God gave to Israel a priest. It was in order to represent to the people of Israel who God is, to represent God to the people of Israel. And one way that He did this was with these garments that He wore.

However, the more important function of the priest was not to represent God to the people, but it was to represent the people before God. And it’s for that reason that what is stressed above all else in both chapter 28 and chapter 29, what is stressed, what is emphasized is the absolute requirement that the priest had to be holy. He had to be holy because he was representing the people of God to the Lord.

And so chapter 29, again, we only read part of it. You can read it at home to get all the details. It describes the ordination of the men who would serve as priests. And everything in that ordination service, all of the sacrifices, the blood that was sprinkled on the priests, this was in order to set apart these men as holy, as those who would serve as priests before God. In fact, their ordination is called a consecration, and that’s what it was. They were consecrated. They were set apart. They were made holy, distinct from the rest of the people of Israel as one who was serving God in a unique way. And so they were made ritually holy so that they could serve as priests for the people of Israel.

Now, it’s important to understand that the priest had to be holy as he represented the people of God before God, not because the people were holy. In fact, the people were not holy. They were unholy. They were unrighteous. They were sinful. Rather, it’s because he represented a sinful people before a holy God that he had to be holy in order that the sacrifices, the worship of people who were unrighteous, unholy, people who sinned, in order that they might be acceptable to God, in order that their persons might be acceptable to God, they had to be offered through a priest who himself was holy.

This is what is meant by the words that were engraved on the gold plate that was on the turban that the high priest wore on his head. The words that were engraved on that gold plate are, “holy to the Lord, holy to the Lord.” But listen to how the Lord explains this to Moses. So this is verse 38, verse 38 in chapter 28. “It shall be on Aaron’s forehead,” that is the gold plate, “and Aaron shall bear any guilt from the holy things that the people of Israel consecrate as their holy gifts. It shall regularly be on his forehead that they,” that is the people of Israel, “that they may be accepted before the Lord.”

And so in order for an unholy people to be accepted before the Lord who is holy, they needed to offer their sacrifices to him through a representative who himself was holy. In other words, the holiness of the priest was a requirement for the people of Israel in order that their worship and that they themselves would be received by the Lord. And so the priest had to be holy.

And even today when we hear the word priest, we think of someone in theory who is holy. When I was a seminary student and I met someone for the first time, they asked me what I do and I told them that I’m going to seminary. So often their first response was, “oh, so you’re going to be a priest.” And I thought to myself, “well, no, I’m married. Priesthood’s definitely not an option for me. I’m Protestant. I’m not going into the priesthood.” But just being called that by other people kind of made me feel a little strange. I felt like in their eyes, there must be a halo over my head. There must be a divine glow coming out from my face. And somehow I’m unlike them. I am holy because I’m studying to be a priest, or so they thought.

But of course, that’s not the case; even as a pastor, I’m a sinner like everyone else. That’s one reason why I’m glad to be called, not a priest, but a minister of the gospel, a minister of God’s Word. I’m just one sinner ministering to other sinners and showing them the one who gives us forgiveness and eternal life.

But the priest, at least ritually, ceremonially, the priest had to be holy. But that was the problem. That was the problem with the entire institution of the priesthood that God ordained. The reason why those priests could never bring an eternal salvation, the reason why their ministry would never result in the forgiveness of the sins of the people of Israel, at least forever, was because they were not truly holy. The priests were men. They were sinners just like the rest of the Israelites. Of course, they were made ceremonially clean and holy, but there was still always the need for a perfect priest, a holy priest, to represent sinners before a holy God.

And of course, that is the priest that Jesus came into the world to be for us. He came to be the high priest that the Israelites lacked. He came to be the high priest that we desperately needed, one who was perfect in every way, one who personally possessed in himself a holiness, a righteousness that is acceptable by God. And of course, Jesus is holy in this way because he is very God himself, because He is the Son of God. He is personally holy.

Hebrews chapter 7 describes Jesus as our high priest in these words. These are the words that we heard from our New Testament reading, verse 26, chapter 7: “Jesus is holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.” You could not say that about Aaron or any of the high priests. Verse 28: “For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a son who has been made perfect forever.”

And just as the Israelites were accepted by the Lord by the ministry of the high priest who was ceremonially holy, ritually holy, so we are accepted by God in the person of Jesus Christ because of his inherent, his intrinsic holiness and righteousness.

The high priest was clothed with the garments of holiness when he presented the sacrifices to the Israelites. But compare that with Jesus. Jesus, the true high priest, when he offered his sacrifice, that once-for-all sacrifice of himself upon the cross, what were the garments that Jesus wore at that time? Well, he had nothing on. Jesus wore nothing. He was naked. And why is that?

Well, humanly speaking, historically speaking, it’s simply because that’s how the Romans crucified their victims. They took off all their clothes to increase the shame that they experienced as they were lifted up on the cross in order to die that excruciating death naked. But there’s a deeper meaning to that as well in the case of Jesus. It’s because he did not need any outward garments of righteousness. His garments of righteousness were his very own intrinsic holiness and righteousness that he possessed in himself as the holy, the innocent, the unstained Son of God.

All of this means something wonderful for you. It means that because of Jesus Christ, if you are trusting in him as your savior from sin, it means that God will receive you in Christ no matter how bad your sin may have been, no matter how far you may have strayed from the Lord, no matter how sinful and unrighteous and ungodly you may have been. When you, by the grace of God, repent and come to Jesus, when you come to Him confessing your sins, seeking forgiveness, God forgives all your sins. He forgives every sin that you are guilty of, no matter how heinous, no matter how bad, and He can do that because of who Jesus is, as both High Priest and Sacrifice, because He is holy, because He is the innocent, righteous Son of God. His priesthood and His sacrifice are sufficient to cover all of your sin, all of your guilt, and to give you a perfect righteousness before God.

If your faith is in Jesus Christ, you have a perfect and eternal salvation because you have a perfect high priest. He not only interceded for you at the cross when he offered up himself a sacrifice to take away your sin and guilt, but the Bible tells us that Jesus continues to intercede for you. He pleads for you before the Father in heaven by virtue and on the basis of his once for all sacrifice. And so he continues to serve you as your great high priest. And because he is holy, his service is effective in your salvation and taking away all your sins. So as our high priest, Jesus is holy.

Thirdly, as our great high priest, Jesus is compassionate.

Aaron and his sons and all the priests that would come from them, they were human in every sense of the word. Of course, they were human beings. They were men just like us. But when we say that someone is human, we also imply that they’re imperfect; they sin just like we do. And that was true for Aaron and his sons. No matter how exalted their office was, they were fallen human beings. That’s why they had to be clothed in these garments of righteousness. That’s why their holiness was only a ritual holiness. That’s why in their consecration to the office of priest, they were sprinkled with the blood of sacrifices to make them ritually holy and pure. But they were still sinners.

However, as sinners, as men, they could sympathize with those whom they represented, their fellow Israelites, because they too were weak and frail. They too were tempted. They too struggled with sin. And so they could have compassion on the people for whom they ministered, because they knew what it was like to be human, because they were men themselves. Hebrews 5:2 puts it this way, speaking of the high priest: “he can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness.” And so the Israelites knew that though this high priest occupied this great office, nevertheless, he was really no different from me. He could sympathize with me. I could even perhaps confess my sins to him, and he would understand.

Well, Jesus also served and continues to serve as our high priest, and he serves as our high priest as one who is human, one who is man. Now, Jesus is divine. He is true God. He always was true God, even in his conception, his crucifixion. He continued to be 100% divine, yet he was always, since his incarnation, true man, truly human, and his humanity was a sinless humanity. Nevertheless, though he was sinless, though he was righteous, he experienced the struggles and the temptations that you and I face in this world. Hebrews makes that very clear. Hebrews 2, verses 17 and 18: “Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

And so Jesus never succumbed to temptation, praise the Lord. If he had, we could not have him as our Savior. Nevertheless, Jesus was tempted, and he suffered. He suffered. He lived in this world in which there is grief and pain and loss. He experienced all of those things. In fact, there is no form of suffering that you can endure in this world, no matter how extreme, whether it is spiritual or physical or emotional suffering, there is no kind of suffering that you can endure about which Jesus cannot say, “I know what it’s like to go through that.” He knows.

Now that doesn’t mean that Jesus suffered in exactly the same way that you have suffered in all the exact same circumstances, but it means that because He suffered as a man to a degree that no human being has ever suffered before or ever will, because He suffered as a man, no matter your exact circumstances, He knows your pain. He knows what it’s like to live in this fallen world. He knows what it’s like to experience temptation. And for that reason, he can sympathize. He is compassionate. He knows what it’s like to endure sorrow and grief. He knows what it’s like to endure the physical pain that he suffered, the emotional pain that he suffered. He knows what it’s like to be tempted.

One of the beautiful pictures of this description of the priesthood is how the high priest wore the names of the tribes of Israel on his chest, on the breastpiece. Actually, he wore them in two places. There were two onyx stones on his shoulders that were inscribed with the names of the tribes of Israel as well. But the breastpiece and the names of the people of Israel, or the tribes of Israel, were over his chest, over his heart. In fact, that’s what the passage tells us. In chapter 28, verse 29, it says, “So Aaron shall bear the names of the sons of Israel in the breastpiece of judgment on his heart when he goes into the holy place to bring them to regular remembrance before the Lord.”

Well, as your high priest, Jesus does the same thing. He bears your name on his heart. He knows everything that you are going through, and he brings you to remembrance when he prays for you before the Father. And can you imagine a better friend than that? Someone who knows you perfectly, someone who knows what it’s like to go through whatever you may be suffering, one who has himself suffered and been tempted, but one who is merciful, one who always has you on his heart and who prays for you continually before the Father in heaven, before the one with whom he has most intimate fellowship. He prays to you, to the one who hears and answers all the prayers of his son.

And this is the kind of friend that you have in Jesus. He is a faithful, he is a merciful high priest. And so he is our great high priest. And as our priest, he is God’s choice for our salvation. He is holy and he is compassionate.

Let’s pray.

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Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 27. Exodus 27. And this is God’s inerrant and infallible word. So let’s give attention to the reading of God’s word this morning.

You shall make an altar of acacia wood, five cubits long and five cubits broad. The altar shall be square and its height shall be three cubits. And you shall make horns for it on its four corners. Its horns shall be of one piece with it, and you shall overlay it with bronze. You shall make pots for it to receive its ashes, and shovels and basins and forks, fire pans. You shall make all its utensils of bronze. You shall also make for it a grading, a network of bronze, and on the net you shall make four bronze rings, four bronze rings at its four corners. And you shall set it under the ledge of the altar so that the net extends halfway down the altar.

And you shall make poles for the altar, poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with bronze. And the poles shall be put through the rings, so that the poles are on the two sides of the altar when it is carried. You shall make it hollow with boards. As it has been shown you on the mountain, so shall it be made.

You shall make the court of the tabernacle. On the south side, the court shall have hangings of fine twine linen, 100 cubits long for one side. Its 20 pillars and their 20 bases shall be of bronze, but the hooks of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver. And likewise for its length on the north side there shall be hangings 100 cubits long, its pillars 20, and their bases 20 of bronze, but the hooks of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver.

And for the breath of the court on the west side there shall be hangings for 50 cubits with 10 pillars and 10 bases. The breath of the court on the front to the east shall be 50 cubits. The hangings for the one side of the gate shall be 15 cubits with their three pillars and three bases. On the other side the hanging shall be 15 cubits with their three pillars and three bases. For the gate of the court there shall be a screen 20 cubits long of blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twine linen embroidered with needle work. It shall have four pillars and with them four bases. All the pillars around the court shall be filleted with silver. Their hooks shall be of silver and their bases of bronze. The length of the court shall be 100 cubits, the breadth 50, and the height five cubits with hangings of fine twine linen and bases of bronze.

All the utensils of the tabernacle for every use, and all its pegs, and all the pegs of the court shall be of bronze.

You shall command the people of Israel that they bring to you pure beaten olive oil for the light that a lamp may be regularly set up to burn in the tent of meeting outside the veil that is before the testimony. Aaron and his son shall tend it from evening to morning before the Lord. It shall be a statue forever to be observed throughout the generations by the people of Israel.

Our New Testament reading is Romans 12:es 1 and two. Romans 12 1 and two.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

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

What is the most important thing about you as a Christian? Well, it could be that your sins are forgiven. Of course, that is a wonderful thing, but that’s not the most important thing about you as a Christian. It’s thought that you are going to go to heaven when you die. That too is a great thing, great reality. But that is not the most important thing about you as a Christian.

The thing that is most important about you as a believer in Christ, as a Christian, is this. By the grace of God, you are now a worshiper of the true God. That is why God saved you. That is why God has forgiven your sins. That is why he will bring you into his heaven to be there forever and ever. It is so that you might worship him. So that you would be his worshipper beginning in this life but extending into eternity.

Jesus said that these are the people that the Lord is seeking those who will worship him. The father is seeking such people to worship him. Jesus said, “And it was for the same reason that the Lord delivered the people of Israel from Egypt from the bondage and the misery that they were experiencing under the cruel hand of Pharaoh. It wasn’t just so that they might experience the freedom, the joy of being liberated. That was a wonderful blessing. Of course, it was good for the people of Israel. But there was a greater reason even for that. So often when Moses would go to Pharaoh and say to him, let my people go or thus says the Lord, let my people go, he would follow it up by saying that they may serve me that they may serve me in the wilderness. So even then, even then the father was seeking such people to worship him.

And this is what the tabernacle is all about. Tabernacle, of course, we’ve been studying it now for several weeks. It was the place in which the Lord made his dwelling among the people of Israel in the wilderness. But it was that place. The Lord was there so that they could worship him, praise him, glorify him.

In our passage this morning, there are three parts of the tabernacle that are described for us here. The bronze altar, the courtyard, which was surrounded by the walls that are described for us, and the oil that was to be used for the golden lampstand. Today we’ll look at some of the details uh in this passage. We’ll focus a little bit on the altar and the wall of curtains that surrounded the courtyard. Uh but I want us to step back and consider the tabernacle in its entirety. The tabernacle uh as a whole, what it was, what it was for. And we’ll do that because there are lessons for us today as believers on how we are to worship God. How we are to think about the worship of God.

Lessons that this tabernacle and not only what this passage says about it, but what other scripture says about the tabernacle. It was the place where the Israelites worshiped the Lord. And so, what can we learn about our worship as Christians today from it? So, that will be our concern this morning.

But before we begin to draw some of those lessons, let’s take a look at some of the details of this passage. It is this passage that does describe for us different parts of the tabernacle. The Lord says in verse one, he says to Moses, “You shall make the altar of acacia wood 5 cubits long and 5 cubits broad. The altar shall be square and its height shall be three cubits.”

The altar was the largest piece of furniture or the largest item that was connected with the tabernacle. Dimensions are given to us in cubits. Translate that into feet. Picture a square about 7 and 1/2 ft wide and long. It was about four and a half feet tall. Like the ark and the table for showbread, the altar was made of wood. But unlike those other things, it was covered with bronze. And there was a practical reason for that. The bronze would not have melted when it was exposed to the heat of the fire that was continually burning in the altar. So, it was covered with bronze but made of wood.

Uh there were four horns on the altar, one on each corner. And we know from the scriptures that a horn often symbolizes uh strength or power, but it’s not exactly clear why there are horns on the altar or what they meant in connection with the altar. There’s no explanation given us uh for that. But the horns do play an interesting part in the history of Israel. When we read on in the New Testament or the Old Testament rather, the altar came to be seen and and the horns of the altar came to be seen as something that would protect somebody who was under the judgment of execution.

And so in First Kings, for example, when Solomon was carrying out judgment against the men who had sinned either against him or against his father David, two of those men at different times, Adonijah and Joab, uh they fled into the tabernacle and they grabbed the horns of the altar hoping that that would save them from the justice from the judgment that was coming to them from Solomon. Um, as it turned out, it did work for Adonijah. He was spared death at that point, but it didn’t work for Joab. He was put to death even though he sought refuge by grabbing hold of the horns of the altar. And so, it plays that role uh in the history of Israel.

One way we might describe the altar is to say that it was essentially a large grill because this is where all the animal sacrifices would be burnt or roasted. The sacrifices that are described for us in the book of Leviticus, the burnt offering, the grain offering, the sin offering, the guilt offering, the peace offering. These would be offered up. The ones that were to be burnt or roasted, these would be offered up on this altar. They would be grilled there. And so the altar was the place where these sacrifices were burnt. And the fire of the altar was to be burning continually night and day.

In order for the priest to carry out this continual burning of sacrificial meat, they needed tools for the work. And so Moses is also instructed by the Lord to make pots for the ashes. He used to make shovels and basins and forks pans. And these also are all made out of bronze. And just like a grill today, the altar had a grading on it. And that grading would be the place where the sacrificed animals would be laid to be burnt. And like the other items of the tabernacle, the ark of the covenant, the golden lampstand, the table for the showbread, the altar was to be carried with poles. And so Moses was to make poles to be inserted into the rings so that the altar could be carried that way.

After Moses is told how to make the altar, the Lord tells him how to uh make the walls that would surround the tabernacle, which created a large courtyard um or large space immediately around the tabernacle itself. And so there was to be four walls.  They would be made uh pillars and curtains, curtains made of fine twine linen. Uh the pillars would be about seven and a half feet tall. So unless an Israelite was going into the tabernacle, normally he would not be able to see what was in it beyond the walls. He might see the top of the tabernacle. He would see the smoke rising from the altar, but normally he would not see what was happening inside the courtyard or inside the tabernacle area.

The eastern wall was different from the other three walls because it contained a gate. This was the area or the gate through which the Israelites and the priests would go in and out of. It was made of fine twine linen as well, but the gate would be embroidered with needle work out of blue and purple and scarlet yarns. So, it was decorative.

Moses was also instructed to make tents out of or 10 pegs out of bronze. We don’t know for sure, but it’s a safe guess that the 10 pegs were used to secure ropes which would stabilize the pillars and the curtains. Um and so usually uh when you see pictures of the tabernacle in the courtyard, you’ll see uh ropes coming out from the pillars and secured into the ground by these pegs.

Uh the dimensions of the court were 150 ft by 75 ft. So imagine a large rectangular uh area enclosed with these pillars and and white curtains and Inside the tabernacle itself is the bronze altar and between the tabernacle and the bronze altar there would also be a basin uh for ceremonial washing. Um the entire size of it just to picture in your mind how big the whole courtyard would have been would be about four tennis courts lined up side by side. So that gives you a picture of how big the tabernacle area was.

Now, one noteworthy thing about the entire tabernacle structure was the relative simplicity of it and and we’ve mentioned this before although it was made out of the finest materials, gold, silver, bronze, fine twine linen, these very expensive uh yarn dyed with scarlet blue and purple and so on. Despite that, despite the fact it was elegant and It wasn’t overly imposing. It wasn’t overly ornate. It wasn’t garish or goddy or ostentatious. It was relatively simple and elegant.

However, the most beautiful thing about the tabernacle, what made it truly a thing of beauty was that the Lord himself dwelt there. It was God himself that beautified the tabernacle that made it something that was truly beautiful.

And this is the first lesson that we can take from the tabernacle for our worship of God today. What makes our worship when we gather together as we are now? What makes our worship service truly a thing of beauty is the beauty and the glory of God himself who meets with us. The God whom we worship. It is his beauty. It is his glory that makes our worship something beautiful.

Now, this is not to say that we ought not to have beautiful things associated with our worship. If it’s possible to have a beautiful sanctuary, then that is good. There’s certainly nothing wrong with it. And it is proper fitting that we would have one if possible. It’s good to have beautiful music and worship. But what’s most important by far is that our hearts are filled with the beauty of God himself. Again, that’s what makes a truly beautiful worship service. It’s the invisible beauty, the invisible glory of God, the beauty of his truth, the beauty of his gospel, his love, his mercy, the the glory of his son, Jesus Christ.

And for that reason then as Christians if we do we don’t have a church building to worship in as many Christians do not have in the world today like Christians in Uganda for example some before they had a little building they worshiped under a tree. As Christians we can worship God under a tree. We can worship God in a plain jane cinder block building and still our worship service can be beautiful because it would be filled with the beauty and the glory of Jesus Christ the one whom we worship. So that’s the first lesson for our worship service or our understanding of worship today is that it is the Lord himself that makes a worship beautiful not all the trappings of it but God himself that beautifies his worship.

The second lesson about worship that we can take from the tabernacle is that we must worship God together. The tabernacle was the one and only place where the Lord would dwell among his people and it was the one and only place where the Lord commanded the Israelites to bring their sacrifices to worship him. Later in the Old Testament, the Lord will explicitly command his people that they are not to offer their sacrifices anywhere except at the place where he appoints, which was the tabernacle. And so with the tabernacle, the Lord was focusing his worship in one place.

And for that reason, worship was a communal or a corporate affair. It was something that the people of God, the Israelites, that they did together. Of course, individual Israelites or groups of Israelites would bring their sacrifices uh to the temple at different times and yet the tabernacle but there would be other Israelites doing the same thing at the same time. So they would worship together. In other words, under this arrangement, this arrangement that was commanded by God, worship was not an individual, a private matter. It was not even primarily something that was done by families separated from other families, but rather God’s intent for worship, the worship of his people is that they would worship him together as his people corporately as a body.

And you see the same communal worship in the New Testament among the first Christians. Just as the Holy Spirit by his power brought individual people and families to faith in Jesus Christ to belong to Christ, so he also brought them together that they would belong to one another as the body of Christ.

And so Acts tells us about how Christians worship together regularly. Acts 2:44 and all who believed were together and had all things in common. And what did they do together? Verse 42, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers. uh very consistent with that. The New Testament tells us that as the gospel was preached, as people came to faith in Jesus Christ, as they were saved by the grace of God, they were naturally united to a local congregation or they formed a congregation, a church.

And so the New Testament has no category. There is no um New Testament teaching uh or possibility of a Christian who is separated from who is not meaningfully involved with a local congregation, a local church, a body of believing Christians. And so from the tabernacle to today, God’s will has always been that his people should worship him together as a body.

And so Hebrews 10 says, “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another. and all the more as you see the day drawing near. And so for you as a believer in Christ, this is God’s will for you. Not only that you should believe in Christ and follow him and serve him, but that you should worship God with other believers, with the people of God, with the church. It is God’s will for you that you are meaningfully involved and active in a local congregation of the people of God. It has always been the will of God that his people should worship him together. And the tabernacle points us to that.

A third lesson that the tabernacle teaches us about worship is that worship should be joyful. Now, here we’re bringing in other scripture passages, not directly from Exodus chapter 27, certainly implied in everything that is said in Exodus about the tabernacle, but we’ll look at some other passages. But the point is that worship, worshiping God should be a joyful affair.

Just as the design of the tabernacle was relatively simple, the worship that took place there was also relatively simple. It was not overly elaborate or complicated, it consisted mainly of the sacrifices that the people of Israel brought to the temple or to the tabernacle to be worshiped. Later when the temple is built and perhaps sometime even before that music would be added to the worship of God. But for now, for this time of wilderness wandering, at least the worship that took place at the tabernacle was focused on the sacrifices.

The Israelites and the priests slaughtered the animals that uh that they brought into the tabernacle. The priests would offer them up on the altar. At least for some of the sacrifices, the Israelites would eat them uh there. uh at the temple or at the tabernacle rather. So the worship was simple but we can say that it was supposed to be a time of rejoicing.

Moses speaks of the worship that would be first at the tabernacle then later at the temple in Deuteronomy. He says this, “And there you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice you and your households in all that you undertake in which the Lord your God has blessed you.”

When we read the Psalms, we read how the psalmist described the worship of God at the temple as intensely joyful. Psalm 43:4. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the liar, oh God, my God. Psalm 84:es 1 and two. How lovely is your dwelling place, oh Lord of hosts. My soul longs, yes faints, for the courts of the Lord. My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.

What was true for the temple then that the psalmist sang about was true for the tabernacle uh here in Exodus that as the Israelites would go there to worship it would be a time of rejoicing rejoicing before the Lord.

We have spent some time now as we’ve been going through these chapters in Exodus looking at all the various details of the tabernacle and the stress that we have the stress has been on on the holiness of the tabernacle. It is a sanctuary. It is a place where an infinitely holy God met with his people. So it was holy. And we might get the impression that for that reason, it was an austere and joyless place. We might get the impression it was a place where the priests ministered with grave, unsmiling faces, that the people brought their sacrifices with fearful hearts or heavy hearts.

But in reality, it was supposed to be a place of joy, celebration. This was the Lord who redeemed them, the Lord who chose them, who brought them out of Egypt, who loved them. We might put it this way. The tabernacle was a serious place. But as CS Lewis described, heaven, it was serious about the business of joy.

That should characterize our own mindset, our own understanding or attitude when we come into the presence of God to worship him together. We should come both with awe and rejoicing. We should come with a sense of reverence because we are coming into the presence of almighty God and we have seen how he is a holy God. But at the same time our hearts should rejoice. We should exalt in the Lord in the salvation that God has accomplished for us in his son Jesus Christ and what he has done for us. And so our worship should be reverent, yes, but also joyful.

Our fourth and final lesson that the tabernacle teaches us about the worship of God is this. We must worship God with a sacrifice. And we’ll spend a few minutes on this.

Ever since Adam and Eve sinned against God in the garden, ever since that time, ever since they were then alienated us from God because of their sin and guilt. Since then, the only way that man can approach God is with a sacrifice. A sacrifice with blood. Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve, they offered sacrifices to God. Uh the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, when they worshiped the Lord, they made an altar, they offered sacrifices to God. We saw in Exodus how after God gave his law to the Israelites, Moses and the Israelites, they constructed an altar and they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on it.

And now here through Moses, the Lord is instituting a permanent well till the coming of Christ, a permanent institution of an altar of a priesthood of worship that would be centered upon sacrifices, bringing sacrifices, blood, the blood of animals shed to the Lord. And this cements this truth that After the fall, you and I or any man cannot come into the presence of God without a sacrifice.

At the church where I served as an intern for one year on this pulpit they had at the front of the church, there was a gigantic Bible uh laid on top of the pulpit. I mean, it was huge. It was probably about that big. It probably weighed like 10 or 15 pounds. Um, and it was right there on top of the pulpit for everyone to see. And the reason why or the point of having that pulpit Bible so prominent, it wasn’t because the pastor needed to read the Bible without glasses. That wasn’t the reason. But the point of this oversized Bible was to communicate the truth of the centrality, the premacy of the word of God and the worship of God’s people. That the Bible is central. This is the God’s word and therefore that communicated that to everyone who came there for worship.

And in a similar way, the altar was conspicuously large and present in front of the tabernacle of God. And it would have communicated to the people of Israel the centrality, the necessity of sacrifices, that they could only come into God’s presence with the blood of a sacrifice. That the tabernacle in the sense or the altar stood between the Israelites and the tabernacle itself. In other words, there had to be bloodshed for the Israelite for the priest to go into the presence of the Lord.

And so the altar and the sacrifices taught the Israelites that if they were to come into the presence of God, they needed the blood. They needed sacrificial blood to cover their sins. The New Testament puts it this way. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. If there is no forgiveness of sins, we cannot worship God. So if we are to worship God, we must come with the sacrifice, with the blood of a sacrifice.

A couple of weeks ago, I said as we were looking at the uh at the Ark of the Covenant that the best thing, or rather, I think we’re looking at the tabernacle as a whole. But the best thing about the tabernacle is that it no longer exists. That’s the greatest thing about it. And that’s because we have Christ. We have Jesus, the one to whom the tabernacle pointed.

And it’s the same truth with this bronze altar. There’s no more need for an altar on which to sacrifice animals to the Lord. And that’s because the son of God, Jesus Christ, has come in order to be the one perfect sacrifice uh that all those animal sacrifices were only types of and pointed to. Jesus Christ came to be the one who would shed the blood that would forever truly remove our sin and guilt before the Lord forever.

The book of Hebrews explains how the altar and the tabernacle and the priesthood, it says in verse 101, they were but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities. So the true form of all of these realities was Jesus Christ in the fullness of time. He came to fulfill everything that the tabernacle, the altar, the sacrifices, everything that they represented to the people of Israel.

But until Jesus came, there could be no end to the sacrifices. And so every day, every week, every year, the Israelites had to spill the blood of animals in order to worship God, in order to come into his presence. Think of that for a thousand years or so. Think of how many animals were sacrificed, how much blood was shed. And these sacrifices never came to never came to an end. They were repeated over and over and over. And the fact that they were repeated over and over and over uh taught the Israelites that they were insufficient to truly take away sin. They could never completely atone for the sin and the guilt of the people of God.

But Hebrews says in 9:26, Hebrews 9:26 that Jesus has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. There was only one shedding of blood that could atone for your sin, for my sin. There was only one sacrifice that could forever take away the guilt of your sin. It wasn’t the blood of a bull or a goat, but it was the blood of the sinless son of God. Only his blood can atone for your sins, can cover your sins. And if your faith is in Jesus Christ, if your hope is in the son of God as your savior, then know that his once for all sacrifice on the cross, his once offering up of of himself on that heavenly altar, that that was one and done, a sacrifice that forever takes away your sin.

However, it’s still true that we must come to God with a sacrifice. Only now it’s a different kind of sacrifice. It’s not the blood of an animal because we have been justified. We have been forgiven by the blood of Christ. But we come to the Lord with the sacrifice of our lives. We consecrate ourselves to God.

The New Testament uses the language of sacrifice to describe the devotion, the consecration that we are called to to give to God as his people whom he has redeemed. Romans 12:1 says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” 1 Peter 2:5, you yourselves are like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

So as a believer in Jesus Christ, this is what you are called to. You are called to devote yourself wholly entirely to the service of the worship of God through Jesus Christ as a sacrifice. You are a sacrifice. But that raises the question for us. Good to examine our lives and to ask this question. Am I giving myself to the Lord service and worship and obedience?

We should ask ourselves, would I be willing to die for Christ? Is my devotion to him so complete that I would be willing to die for him? Think about that. It’s perhaps for us to answer that abstractly, to say yes, of course I would be. But think about what if that situation never came up. Would you be willing to lay down your life for the sake and only for the sake of Jesus?

But perhaps an even harder question, and I’ve heard it put this way, this something that another preacher has said that it may be even a harder question to ask ourselves. Are you willing to live for him? Are you willing to live a life of self denial, self-sacrifice, service, dying to yourself for the sake of Christ. That’s what it means to bear the cross of Christ. It means to die to yourself that you might live to him. And so, just like the sacrifices of the burnt offerings that were completely consumed on the altar, so you and I as Christians are called to be completely consecrated, consumed in a life that serves Christ, that honors him, that is given to him.

And this is what God has always demanded of his people. Wholehearted, whole soul devotion to him. One of the primary complaints that the prophets had against the people of Israel is that they went through all the motions of offering sacrifices to God and worshiping him and yet their hearts were far from him. It was simply a religious ritual. It was just external obedience to the letter of the law. There was no heart there. Their heart was far from God. And this kind of heartless, faithless, hypocritical, going through the motions, this was the kind of worship that God condemned. It wasn’t truly worshiping God.

And so Samuel will tell Saul in 1st Samuel 15:22, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey better than sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams. What God wants from his people is obedience from the heart. Not just going through the motions of the Christian life, but from the heart, giving ourselves to the Lord. David says in Psalm 51, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise.”

We no longer bring to God animal sacrifices. We no longer offer up goats and bulls on the altar. However, we can be as guilty as the Israelites were of a kind of formalism, superficialism, hypocrisy in our worship. I mean, who among us has not been guilty of this? Who among us has not come to church? Simply going through the motions, singing the words of a hymn, but maybe not even thinking about it, hearing a sermon, but maybe not even listening or really taking it to heart. We’ve all been guilty of this kind of hypocritical, formalistic worship that the Lord condemns.

Part of the good news of the gospel is that God has not only given us his Jesus Christ to forgive us of that sin and many other sins. But with Christ, God also gives us his Holy Spirit. He gives us a spirit to create in us a new heart to give us a true zeal, a true love, a true desire for Christ, for God. And by the grace of God, by the work of the Holy Spirit in you, you can worship in a way that pleases him, that honors him.

And as you come to the father to worship him, as you come in the name of Christ by the grace of God, as he gives you a heart that is filled with gratitude for him and for his sacrifice of himself to save you, as you worship God in this way from the heart, giving him thanks, rejoicing in him, you are bringing to God the best sacrifice. You are bringing to him a far greater sacrifice than all the goats and the bulls that were slain upon the altar. But you are bringing from the heart a sacrifice of praise, of worship, of thanksgiving to God. And that is the worship that pleases the father. Let’s Pray.

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