Sorry for the lack of posts for over a month. The life of a youth director tends to get a little crazy during the summer anyways. It doesn't help matters when you have weddings across the country to attend and taking a computer just isn't an option. Add on to that the fact that when I have been at home my internet has been down and posting anything new just hasn't been possible.
I wanted to discuss a topic here that has been on my mind for a few weeks. During the second weekend of June we all loaded up and flew to Napa Valley, CA for a family wedding. One of Amy's cousins was getting married and it was a great time to see some family that we never get to see and my daughter got to meet many members of the family for the first time. All-in-all it was a great trip, but there was one thing that bothered me immensely. At the wedding "ceremony" there was no mention of God. There was an "officiant" who had no seminary training and wasn't ordained by any governing body. This started me thinking about the state of affairs in our country today.
The bride was of Asian decent and there was a customary tea held before the ceremony. Obviously this means that she had a sense of tradition that must be followed for a wedding to take place. However, to have Christ present in no way in the ceremony was something that we just don't see much down here in the south. I thought it was odd that the wedding was structured in the same manner as you would expect to find in the church, but without God. I know that it has gotten repetitive me saying that God wasn't present in the service but I am still trying to get over it. One thing is for sure, God was present in that place where two people pledged their love for one another. No matter how much those in attendance might not have wanted to acknowledge His presence, He was there. Remember, marriage is an ordinance that is instituted by God. Only with Christ as the center of a marital union is it truly marriage in the sense that it was intended to be.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Exodus 20:18-21 - Wanted: Covenant Mediator
Our text today comes on the heels of one of the most widely known scenes in all of the Old Testament. The people of Israel have come to Mount Sinai, to the mountain of God. God has just given the Ten Commandments to Moses and Moses has relayed them to the people of Israel. We have seen seas part, manna fall from the sky, and water spring from a rock. God has proven, as if He needed to, to all of Israel just how great and awesome He is. What we will now finally see from Israel is their complete recognition of God’s authority and their need for a covenant mediator, someone to stand between the people of Israel and God Almighty. We have it unfolded for us in 4 stages: the reaction of Israel, their request of Moses, the reassurance given by Moses to Israel, and finally Moses’ reproach.
In our modern society, we are too familiar and even dismissive with authority and people who are in positions of authority. Even the greatest of human authority figures in our own time don’t quite get shown the authority that they once did. Take for example the meeting between the Obama’s and the Queen of England that happened sometime back. Imagine the complete shock that the Queen must have felt when Michelle Obama gave her a nice pat on the back to go along with that ipod. Even someone as unfamiliar with foreign customs as myself knows that you just don’t touch the Queen of England without her permission. Or if you will, upon a trip to Washington D.C., Shaquille O’Neal decided that he was going to just stop by the White House for a quick visit with the president. He had no appointment and had no idea that no matter who you are, you cannot meet with the president without an appointment. Authority is not seen in the same light today as it has been in the past. And that makes it difficult for us to appreciate the reverence and awe with which we ought to approach the living God. And you see this in many ways, especially in the setting of school and the relationships between students and teachers and administrators. As some of you are well aware, my vocational occupation before attending seminary was that of a high school science teacher and a baseball coach. A profession that I found to be immensely challenging, rewarding, and frightening all at the same time. I loved getting to help the students become more confident in their knowledge of biological sciences when they didn’t feel as if they would ever understand. I always thought that maybe a student that I was helping to comprehend the basics of biology might go on to help discover a drug that could help us in our fight against Alzheimer’s, cancer, or any other disease. What I found many times, however, was the lack of respect that accompanied this position that simply did not exist when I was back in school. Now I don’t want this to sound like one of those, “Back when I was young…” stories, but it is going to have that sort of feel. I had a particular student who refused to show any respect towards any of his teachers. For discussion purposes I will just call him Vincent. Well, Vincent would continuously ask questions of his teachers that he had no business asking. Personal questions that no child should ever ask of an adult, much less a person in a position such as a teacher. Vincent would also continuously voice his opinion when he didn’t feel that a teachers questions were “unfair” or “invalid”. Now, I would have never told my teachers that I thought their questions were unfair, I might have thought it, but never would I have verbally admitted to them my opinions. Vincent is not an uncommon case in today’s society. Much of this can be attributed to our lack of a proper view of authority in this day and age.
Now, let us begin to look at the response of Israel following the Ten Commandments. The first thing that we notice as we begin to explore the text is the Reaction to God shown by Israel. “Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off.” Some of your Bibles may say that the people saw and trembled, but I am convinced that the best possible translation here is saying that the people of Israel were afraid. Isn’t this response different from what we would expect to find from Israel? The presence of the Lord is upon them and they are afraid. Not just afraid, they are scared to death. There is complete and total terror amongst this group of people. This fear displayed by Israel is true of us today. God’s nearness can be a terrifying thing for sinners. Look back at to 19:16 and we see “On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled.” That is almost the exact thing that we have here in 20:18. We find that after the thunder, the lightning, the trumpet sounds, and the smoking mountain that the people feared, trembled, and stood far off in the distance.
Do you remember when this story at Mount Sinai started how the people of Israel were crowding in around it so closely? They wanted to look and try and catch a glimpse of God. Exodus 19:12 speaks of when the Lord instructs Moses to tell the people of Israel to “Take care not to go up the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death.” Now we have gone from the God having the people kept off of the mountain only by the threat of death to having them willingly move far away from the mountain out of fear. What has happened during this timeframe, the Ten Commandments? God came and met with Israel and they ran away.
As I mentioned earlier, the reaction of the people of Israel tells us one thing, God’s nearness can be terrifying for sinners. The people of Israel realized their guilt and unholiness before the awesome God, and they knew they were deserving of his condemnation. Just like the Israelites, we too long for closeness and intimacy with God. The problem is that we do not give the respect, awe, and admiration that is due to God in such intimacy. If you are like me you have prayed many times for God to “show you” what He would have you do. And if you are anything like me when that answer comes to you and you don’t like it, then you have a tendency to try and ignore God’s will. Notice that the important word there is try.
The next thing that we notice as we continue in this text is the Request made by Israel of Moses. Verse 19 says, “[Israel] said to Moses, ‘You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” Now we may quickly want to look down upon Israel for wanting to place someone between themselves and God. But think about how brilliant this request is on behalf of the Israelites. They could not bear God speaking directly to them. They knew that they were in need of a covenant mediator, someone who will stand between God and the people. In this particular case, they wanted Moses to be the one who stood between them and God. They wanted Moses to speak God’s word to them instead of hearing it directly from God himself.
Think with me for a just a moment on how gracious this was of God. What had the people of Israel been doing time and time again in Moses’ tenure as their leader and mediator? They had been questioning his roll and complaining every chance they got. Now, with God having spoken to them directly, the people can't wait to hear Moses. Think of someone in your life who has always stood there and said about a boss or a superior, “I know I could do a better job than he does” or “Why should I have to listen to him anyway?” Well, many times when people making those statements are promoted or given more responsibility, how quickly do they eat those words? Here the people of Israel are going from questioning Moses to saying, “Um, Moses, yeah we are afraid of hearing directly from God anymore so if we could just hear everything from you from now on that would be great.” God has stopped all qualms about Moses’ position as a leader and covenant mediator. The people of Israel realize now more than any other time up to this point that they are in need of such a mediator.
I want you to look at what the people of Israel say to Moses in their request. They don’t just ask him to stand in as a mediator between them and God. They assure him that they will listen. Now in 19:8 the elders of the people of Israel had already said to Moses, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” They have already committed to follow everything that God chooses to tell them. In asking Moses to speak to them the people of Israel are not trying to get out of the deal they have previously made. They are simply realizing the need for a mediator and are asking for it to be Moses. The Israelites are still going to keep their commitment to God for obedience.
Notice the Israelites reaction to what happens if Moses does not accept this request, “do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” The entire purpose of the exodus from Egypt was so that Israel would be saved to worship God. Continuously God saves His people so that they may worship Him. Now that they are at the foot of God’s mountain and He has come to meet them and worship with them and what do they have to say? “Um, Moses, sorry to ask this of you, but is there any way that you could ask him to never speak to us again.” They do not want to hear the voice of God speaking directly to them anymore. They want Moses to be the one to speak on His behalf to them. The Israelites recognize their need for a mediator. They are completely aware of the fact that they cannot endure the unmediated presence of the one true God. To fill this role of mediator, who better to ask than Moses, the one whom God already appointed to fill this role?
At my age, it is often that I hear friends of mine who either do not regularly attend church or are only physically present while their mind drifts of to a more “entertaining” place have the wrong idea about God. They think that God’s “job” is to forgive there sins and to grant their wishes. They think that they can just walk right into the presence of God and ask for anything they want. I can tell you for sure that the Israelites that were present on that day at Sinai did not share in the attitudes of the uninformed Christian of today. They saw the holiness and glory of God. They also saw their sin. They saw it in all of its ugly and dirty shame. They knew that they were in need of a mediator. We would do well to keep in mind that we too, are in constant need of a mediator. Our mediator is one far greater than any other could ever hope to be, even greater than Moses. Our one true mediator is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Next I want us to look at the Reassurance given to the people of Israel by Moses in verse 20, “Moses said to the people, ‘Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” The people of Israel seem to have misunderstood God’s intentions at Sinai. They were afraid that God was going to crush and destroy them. But Moses, as covenant mediator, steps in here to reassure the people that this is not God’s desire. Moses is informing the people of Israel here that God’s reasons for coming to them is not bad, but is indeed something that is good. God has not come to scare them or to discourage and beat them down, he has come to encourage them. In fact, the first words out of Moses’ mouth are, “Do not fear.” He is telling the people of Israel that they should not be afraid of this coming of God. Just as we find with Mary or with Samson, when God or any theophany, or representative of God, appears to someone they are told, “Do not fear.”
Moses goes on to explain why Israel is not to fear this visitation, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you.” I want to clarify something here that might seem a bit confusing. The first words say that Israel should not fear, but later on Moses says that the reasoning for the visitation is so that the fear of God may be before Israel. Is this a contradiction of Scripture? Of God? Of Moses? Of course not! In saying do not fear, he came that you would fear Him, God, through Moses, is telling the people of Israel the vast difference that exists between being frightened by God and appropriately fearing God. Moses is wanting the Israelites to fear God and not to simply be afraid of the pyrotechnics that have just occurred before their very eyes. How many times are we guilty of simply being frightened of God instead of fearing him as we should? Heavens Gates and Hells flames play.
Moses goes on to explain here that Israel should not fear because God has drawn near to them. He has given them the Ten Commandments and drawn near to them so that they would always fear Him. But the fear that He’s speaking of here at the end of verse 20 is not the fear of terror or dread; but the reverence that leads to obedience and awe of the gracious and sovereign God. Moses is also explaining that the reasoning for God’s actions is not only to instill fear in Israel, but also to test them. His test is not a test of obedience though, but more along the lines of a showing of the need for a mediator. After all, there isn’t hardly any time between the giving of the Ten Commandments and Moses’ speaking again to the Israelites. Read the last part of verse 20, “That you may not sin.” You see, the people of God in the presence of God were to experience two things at the same time. On the one hand, they were to realize that God was an awesome God, and they ought to be judged. And at the same time, that God was a good and a merciful God, and He had provided for them a mediator, and He had redeemed them out of Egypt, and He was for them.
The last thing that I want to briefly look at in this passage is the Reproach made by Moses to God. Now obviously I cannot stand here and tell you that Moses reprimanded God. All we are given in the text is, “The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.” Notice the reversal of polarity between the people of Israel and Moses. The people stood afar while Moses drew nearer to God. Like the Israelites, we, as sinners, are not capable of drawing ourselves nearer to God. For that task, we must rely upon a mediator. We are fortunate enough to have received an understanding of the one true mediator that even Moses was unaware of. Moses is a sinner just like us, he too is in need of a mediator. His mediator, just like ours, is the Lord Jesus Christ. Gospel story (RYM-God’s plan)
So as we look back on this passage we see that like the Israelites, and even Moses, we are in need of a covenant mediator. We have seen the need played out for us in the reaction of the people, their request, Moses’ reassurance, and Moses’ reproach. Is there any doubt about the need for a mediator then? Is there any doubt about the need for a mediator today? Only God can make it safe to come near to God. Your own righteousness cannot make God safe, only the righteousness of Christ can do so. God is the only one with the power to make Himself safe. And that is exactly what He did in His Son Jesus Christ. If we will trust in the Son, then we will know reverence for God and not anxiety or dread.
In our modern society, we are too familiar and even dismissive with authority and people who are in positions of authority. Even the greatest of human authority figures in our own time don’t quite get shown the authority that they once did. Take for example the meeting between the Obama’s and the Queen of England that happened sometime back. Imagine the complete shock that the Queen must have felt when Michelle Obama gave her a nice pat on the back to go along with that ipod. Even someone as unfamiliar with foreign customs as myself knows that you just don’t touch the Queen of England without her permission. Or if you will, upon a trip to Washington D.C., Shaquille O’Neal decided that he was going to just stop by the White House for a quick visit with the president. He had no appointment and had no idea that no matter who you are, you cannot meet with the president without an appointment. Authority is not seen in the same light today as it has been in the past. And that makes it difficult for us to appreciate the reverence and awe with which we ought to approach the living God. And you see this in many ways, especially in the setting of school and the relationships between students and teachers and administrators. As some of you are well aware, my vocational occupation before attending seminary was that of a high school science teacher and a baseball coach. A profession that I found to be immensely challenging, rewarding, and frightening all at the same time. I loved getting to help the students become more confident in their knowledge of biological sciences when they didn’t feel as if they would ever understand. I always thought that maybe a student that I was helping to comprehend the basics of biology might go on to help discover a drug that could help us in our fight against Alzheimer’s, cancer, or any other disease. What I found many times, however, was the lack of respect that accompanied this position that simply did not exist when I was back in school. Now I don’t want this to sound like one of those, “Back when I was young…” stories, but it is going to have that sort of feel. I had a particular student who refused to show any respect towards any of his teachers. For discussion purposes I will just call him Vincent. Well, Vincent would continuously ask questions of his teachers that he had no business asking. Personal questions that no child should ever ask of an adult, much less a person in a position such as a teacher. Vincent would also continuously voice his opinion when he didn’t feel that a teachers questions were “unfair” or “invalid”. Now, I would have never told my teachers that I thought their questions were unfair, I might have thought it, but never would I have verbally admitted to them my opinions. Vincent is not an uncommon case in today’s society. Much of this can be attributed to our lack of a proper view of authority in this day and age.
Now, let us begin to look at the response of Israel following the Ten Commandments. The first thing that we notice as we begin to explore the text is the Reaction to God shown by Israel. “Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off.” Some of your Bibles may say that the people saw and trembled, but I am convinced that the best possible translation here is saying that the people of Israel were afraid. Isn’t this response different from what we would expect to find from Israel? The presence of the Lord is upon them and they are afraid. Not just afraid, they are scared to death. There is complete and total terror amongst this group of people. This fear displayed by Israel is true of us today. God’s nearness can be a terrifying thing for sinners. Look back at to 19:16 and we see “On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled.” That is almost the exact thing that we have here in 20:18. We find that after the thunder, the lightning, the trumpet sounds, and the smoking mountain that the people feared, trembled, and stood far off in the distance.
Do you remember when this story at Mount Sinai started how the people of Israel were crowding in around it so closely? They wanted to look and try and catch a glimpse of God. Exodus 19:12 speaks of when the Lord instructs Moses to tell the people of Israel to “Take care not to go up the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death.” Now we have gone from the God having the people kept off of the mountain only by the threat of death to having them willingly move far away from the mountain out of fear. What has happened during this timeframe, the Ten Commandments? God came and met with Israel and they ran away.
As I mentioned earlier, the reaction of the people of Israel tells us one thing, God’s nearness can be terrifying for sinners. The people of Israel realized their guilt and unholiness before the awesome God, and they knew they were deserving of his condemnation. Just like the Israelites, we too long for closeness and intimacy with God. The problem is that we do not give the respect, awe, and admiration that is due to God in such intimacy. If you are like me you have prayed many times for God to “show you” what He would have you do. And if you are anything like me when that answer comes to you and you don’t like it, then you have a tendency to try and ignore God’s will. Notice that the important word there is try.
The next thing that we notice as we continue in this text is the Request made by Israel of Moses. Verse 19 says, “[Israel] said to Moses, ‘You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” Now we may quickly want to look down upon Israel for wanting to place someone between themselves and God. But think about how brilliant this request is on behalf of the Israelites. They could not bear God speaking directly to them. They knew that they were in need of a covenant mediator, someone who will stand between God and the people. In this particular case, they wanted Moses to be the one who stood between them and God. They wanted Moses to speak God’s word to them instead of hearing it directly from God himself.
Think with me for a just a moment on how gracious this was of God. What had the people of Israel been doing time and time again in Moses’ tenure as their leader and mediator? They had been questioning his roll and complaining every chance they got. Now, with God having spoken to them directly, the people can't wait to hear Moses. Think of someone in your life who has always stood there and said about a boss or a superior, “I know I could do a better job than he does” or “Why should I have to listen to him anyway?” Well, many times when people making those statements are promoted or given more responsibility, how quickly do they eat those words? Here the people of Israel are going from questioning Moses to saying, “Um, Moses, yeah we are afraid of hearing directly from God anymore so if we could just hear everything from you from now on that would be great.” God has stopped all qualms about Moses’ position as a leader and covenant mediator. The people of Israel realize now more than any other time up to this point that they are in need of such a mediator.
I want you to look at what the people of Israel say to Moses in their request. They don’t just ask him to stand in as a mediator between them and God. They assure him that they will listen. Now in 19:8 the elders of the people of Israel had already said to Moses, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” They have already committed to follow everything that God chooses to tell them. In asking Moses to speak to them the people of Israel are not trying to get out of the deal they have previously made. They are simply realizing the need for a mediator and are asking for it to be Moses. The Israelites are still going to keep their commitment to God for obedience.
Notice the Israelites reaction to what happens if Moses does not accept this request, “do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” The entire purpose of the exodus from Egypt was so that Israel would be saved to worship God. Continuously God saves His people so that they may worship Him. Now that they are at the foot of God’s mountain and He has come to meet them and worship with them and what do they have to say? “Um, Moses, sorry to ask this of you, but is there any way that you could ask him to never speak to us again.” They do not want to hear the voice of God speaking directly to them anymore. They want Moses to be the one to speak on His behalf to them. The Israelites recognize their need for a mediator. They are completely aware of the fact that they cannot endure the unmediated presence of the one true God. To fill this role of mediator, who better to ask than Moses, the one whom God already appointed to fill this role?
At my age, it is often that I hear friends of mine who either do not regularly attend church or are only physically present while their mind drifts of to a more “entertaining” place have the wrong idea about God. They think that God’s “job” is to forgive there sins and to grant their wishes. They think that they can just walk right into the presence of God and ask for anything they want. I can tell you for sure that the Israelites that were present on that day at Sinai did not share in the attitudes of the uninformed Christian of today. They saw the holiness and glory of God. They also saw their sin. They saw it in all of its ugly and dirty shame. They knew that they were in need of a mediator. We would do well to keep in mind that we too, are in constant need of a mediator. Our mediator is one far greater than any other could ever hope to be, even greater than Moses. Our one true mediator is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Next I want us to look at the Reassurance given to the people of Israel by Moses in verse 20, “Moses said to the people, ‘Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” The people of Israel seem to have misunderstood God’s intentions at Sinai. They were afraid that God was going to crush and destroy them. But Moses, as covenant mediator, steps in here to reassure the people that this is not God’s desire. Moses is informing the people of Israel here that God’s reasons for coming to them is not bad, but is indeed something that is good. God has not come to scare them or to discourage and beat them down, he has come to encourage them. In fact, the first words out of Moses’ mouth are, “Do not fear.” He is telling the people of Israel that they should not be afraid of this coming of God. Just as we find with Mary or with Samson, when God or any theophany, or representative of God, appears to someone they are told, “Do not fear.”
Moses goes on to explain why Israel is not to fear this visitation, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you.” I want to clarify something here that might seem a bit confusing. The first words say that Israel should not fear, but later on Moses says that the reasoning for the visitation is so that the fear of God may be before Israel. Is this a contradiction of Scripture? Of God? Of Moses? Of course not! In saying do not fear, he came that you would fear Him, God, through Moses, is telling the people of Israel the vast difference that exists between being frightened by God and appropriately fearing God. Moses is wanting the Israelites to fear God and not to simply be afraid of the pyrotechnics that have just occurred before their very eyes. How many times are we guilty of simply being frightened of God instead of fearing him as we should? Heavens Gates and Hells flames play.
Moses goes on to explain here that Israel should not fear because God has drawn near to them. He has given them the Ten Commandments and drawn near to them so that they would always fear Him. But the fear that He’s speaking of here at the end of verse 20 is not the fear of terror or dread; but the reverence that leads to obedience and awe of the gracious and sovereign God. Moses is also explaining that the reasoning for God’s actions is not only to instill fear in Israel, but also to test them. His test is not a test of obedience though, but more along the lines of a showing of the need for a mediator. After all, there isn’t hardly any time between the giving of the Ten Commandments and Moses’ speaking again to the Israelites. Read the last part of verse 20, “That you may not sin.” You see, the people of God in the presence of God were to experience two things at the same time. On the one hand, they were to realize that God was an awesome God, and they ought to be judged. And at the same time, that God was a good and a merciful God, and He had provided for them a mediator, and He had redeemed them out of Egypt, and He was for them.
The last thing that I want to briefly look at in this passage is the Reproach made by Moses to God. Now obviously I cannot stand here and tell you that Moses reprimanded God. All we are given in the text is, “The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.” Notice the reversal of polarity between the people of Israel and Moses. The people stood afar while Moses drew nearer to God. Like the Israelites, we, as sinners, are not capable of drawing ourselves nearer to God. For that task, we must rely upon a mediator. We are fortunate enough to have received an understanding of the one true mediator that even Moses was unaware of. Moses is a sinner just like us, he too is in need of a mediator. His mediator, just like ours, is the Lord Jesus Christ. Gospel story (RYM-God’s plan)
So as we look back on this passage we see that like the Israelites, and even Moses, we are in need of a covenant mediator. We have seen the need played out for us in the reaction of the people, their request, Moses’ reassurance, and Moses’ reproach. Is there any doubt about the need for a mediator then? Is there any doubt about the need for a mediator today? Only God can make it safe to come near to God. Your own righteousness cannot make God safe, only the righteousness of Christ can do so. God is the only one with the power to make Himself safe. And that is exactly what He did in His Son Jesus Christ. If we will trust in the Son, then we will know reverence for God and not anxiety or dread.
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