Transcript

Good morning church. We're excited to continue our series entitled the Story. We're in part five today of this 12 week journey. But before I begin, I want to make a short comment about the state of our nation, the state of our world today, and offer a prayer concerning that. May I share with you?

And some of you have heard me tell stories about this. My freshman year of my undergraduate degree at Radford University, my roommate was named Merhegan Lotfi. He was from Iran. And his brother Mehran was at Virginia Tech, a nearby school. And then another friend, Fashad.

All these guys used to hang out in my room my freshman year watching gun smoke on my black and white 13 inch TV. And what happened was it caused me to have a love for the Iranian people. And that still reverberates in my heart to this day. A desire for them to know the gospel. And so I want to offer a prayer for the Iranian people and for our soldiers and for our President.

But most of all, I want to offer a prayer for the persecuted church in Iran, which has endured much suffering over the past 50 years especially. And then I pray for God's will. Would you join me in prayer? Lord, you're sovereign and and the nations are as dust passing between your fingers. You are Lord of all, and so you are over kings and presidents and atollas and all of these things.

Lord, you're sovereign. So I pray for your will to be done. We pray for wisdom for our president, protection for our military. We pray for the civilians in the Middle east and also especially in Iran. But more than anything, I pray for your gospel to go forth for gospel opportunities.

I pray for the persecuted church in the Middle east and in Iran and for the Persian people and wherever Merhagon and Mehran and Fashod are, that you would protect them and give them an opportunity to say yes to the gospel as they've heard it many times from me. Lord, we love you. We know you're in charge of all things and we entrust these things to you in Jesus name. All of God's people said amen. And before I dig in, I've got to continue my countdown to Easter with you.

We started last week. It's five weeks until Easter. Well, Gary, why are you making such a big deal about Easter? Well, God made a big deal about it and also because it's the Sunday that people are most likely to attend church when you invite them. Christmas and Easter are the two times of the year that people are receptive to a gospel invitation to a Church invite.

And we advertise in all kinds of ways to ask people to come to church, but they still will respond more than any other way to a personal invitation. And so we want to encourage you to do that. You probably saw in your seats this network evangelism card, and I want you to take this home with you and pray about it. And note that you know more people than you realize that need to hear the gospel. And so just kind of look at these categories.

Who do you work with vocationally? Somebody that needs to hear the gospel. Who's someone in your family that's far from God, that needs to be brought near. Who's. Who's someone in your neighborhood, geographic location, someone that you see at the checkout line or that waits on your table at the restaurant commercially, and someone that you work out with at Planet Fitness or something.

I mean, just kind of think about it this week. Kind of put this somewhere where you'll think about it and write down at least one name in each category that you're praying for an opportunity that you might be able to invite them to church. Now, last week I told you that we were going to order some yard signs, and we've printed it on both sides, and we didn't put a date on it so that you can keep it in your garage for next year. But just like at Easter, hey, we're always pinching pennies around here, too. It's God's money, right?

We're trying to be good stewards. But I asked you last week, are you brave enough to let your neighbors know that you go to church? I wanted to know that. And you can say whatever you want to say, but the way I'll know it is when I drive around your neighborhoods and see one of these signs stuck in your yard so that your neighbors. And hopefully it gives you an opportunity to talk to your neighbors about the Lord.

You're just like, oh, you go to this Eastgate church. Didn't they buy that old movie theater behind the Taco Bell? Yeah, that's us. And you can talk to them about Jesus and invite them to church. Well, those are some things I've been talking about over the past few weeks.

April 5th is Easter Sunday. It's a time for prayer. It's a time for invitation. It's a time to share the gospel with people far from God. I want to encourage you in that regard.

Can I dig into the message now? I've got enough announcements out of the way. Are you ready? We're in week five of this journey. We're taking through the scripture, looking at the metanarrative, the big story of, of the Bible.

The Bible is 66 books written by over 40 human authors over a period of 1500 years. Yet it's just one book. And primarily it's a book about God. And even more specifically, it's a book about Jesus. And so we're looking for Jesus on every page because this book tells the story most of all that points us to Christ.

And so that's what we've been working on. We started in Genesis with the creation, how God made man in his own image. But because sin entered in, so death entered into creation itself. We saw that man became so wicked that God judged the earth by universal deluge, a flood, but made a way out for Noah and his family by providing an ark for their salvation. We looked at how God gave and made a covenant, a unilateral covenant with Abram and then put him to sleep while he walked both sides of the covenant, which point to how Christ someday will pay for humanity's side of the covenant.

And then last week we looked at the crossing of the Red Sea, how God rescued the Israelites from the Egyptian army by parting the sea. And that brings us to this side of the Red Sea in the land of Sinai, to a message we've entitled the Commandments, Exodus chapter 20. And as we look at the Commandments, we're going to be talking about why God gave them to us. Why the Commandments? What's the purpose?

Now some of us few the Commandments as a kind of ladder. As if we could somehow climb a ladder to heaven by keeping the Commandments. But that was never God's intent. Because as we labor to climb the ladder, we soon fall off. We soon realize that we can't keep the Ten Commandments.

And so we fall into despair. We collapse in guilt. Or we delude ourselves and we become legalists. And we water them down so that we can keep them and think somehow we are keeping them. But the truth is the law was never meant to be a ladder to earn God's love.

It was given as a way of life to the redeemed people that God already loved. If we misunderstand the purpose of the law, we will misunderstand God's character and our need for Christ. As we look at the Commandments, we're not looking at a cold legal contract. What we're really looking at is a covenant commitment between a husband and his bride, between God and his people. In Exodus chapter 20, God declared the Ten Commandments to the Israelites at Mount Sinai to establish a holy covenant of laws for his people, whom he had already graciously redeemed.

And as we look at the text, I think we can discern his divine purposes behind the giving of the law. As we look, I think we'll find three divine purposes behind the giving of God's law to his people. Are you ready? You got your seatbelts on? We're going to go fast.

We've got a lot to cover. Chapter 20, verse 1. And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I am the Lord your God. Am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the Lord and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it, you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter, your male servant or.

Or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder.

You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant, or his ox or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.

And 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 and said to Moses, you speak to us, and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us, lest we die. 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 stood far off while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.

This is God's word. Amen. We're looking for three purposes for the giving of God's law. The first is this. To remind us of his saving grace.

To remind us of his saving grace. Before God gives a single thou shalt not. He gives a this is who I am statement. Let's not skip verses one and two of chapter 20. He begins by saying, I've already rescued you.

The Exodus, which is a picture of grace. The Exodus, the Red Sea crossing, it's a picture of grace. And Sinai is the law. Let's not forget that grace came before the law. It precedes the law.

We don't have to wait until the New Testament to discover God's grace. God's grace has always been his purpose. His free gift of salvation has always been true from Old Testament to New Testament. Notice how it begins. And God spoke all these words, saying the word words in the Hebrew is.

God debar all these. Deborim, it says in the Hebrew. This is important because we call it the Ten Commandments. But the Jews don't call it that. They call it the ten words, the ten Deborim.

The ten words we've ascribed to this passage the word commandments, when perhaps a better terminology would be a covenant, kind of like a kind of like marriage vows. This was designed not to somehow earn God's favor, but to live out after God had already shown his grace and favor to us. What it looks like to be wed to him, to be his follower, to be his people. Well, Gary, you're acting like he's our husband and we're his bride. Well, notice how he begins.

He begins by speaking aloud these words. And then he says something for the first time. We've gone through the whole book of Genesis. We're 20 chapters into Exodus. We've never heard God say this.

He never said this to Adam. He never said this to Noah. He never said this to Abram. He says, I am the Lord your God. First time.

First time. He uses the possessive for himself. You're my people. I'm your God. You call me your God.

That's my name. He says, I am Yahweh Elohim. I am the Lord your God. This is. This is like.

This is like a marriage vow. This is like. This is. This is what it looks like. He chose them before he gave the covenant he's already rescued them and delivered them.

Well, Gary, where do you see that? Well, we had it last week, but he restates it briefly. I am Yahweh Elohim. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. We said last week, Egypt is kind of a metaphor for the world and the house of slavery, well, we don't have to go far to the New Testament to see how slavery to sin is the picture.

I'm the one who brought you, called you out of the world. I called you out of slavery to sin. I've set you free. I am your God. And he uses his covenantal name that he revealed to Moses.

Yahweh, I am that I am. That's the name I've revealed to you and you alone. I am your God. You're my people. I'm the one who rescued you.

I'm your deliverer. Do you get this? The law is meant, really, it's guidelines, covenantal instructions for what it looks like to love God. That's really what we see here. He spoke all these words.

Now, don't miss this. You probably still have in your mind the three hour movie that was made some 60, 70 years ago that stars Charlton Heston. And you think they had to wait for the tablets to come down, but that's not the way this reads. He spoke the Word aloud to the people and God spoke all these words saying, and to be clear, we can go over to Deuteronomy. As Moses reflects back on this.

He writes this in Deuteronomy chapter 5, verse 22. He says these words, the Lord spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud and the thick darkness with a loud voice. And he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me. This is Moses reflecting back on this moment in Exodus chapter 20.

He's saying, you heard him. And they said, we don't want to hear him anymore. You go talk to him. They were terrified.

I am the Lord your God. He says it five times here in our reading today. I am Yahweh Elohim. I am your God. Who is this God who wants a relationship with us so badly that he would deliver us and rescue us and then entrust to us kind of like, kind of like a king coming down from heaven and resting on the mountain.

And so there's lightning and there's smoke and there's darkness and there's trumpets sounding upon his arrival I am the Lord your God. And he announces this constitution and bylaws, this covenant. This is what it looks like to be my people.

It's the ten words, the Decalogue, the ten Commandments. Okay, but not like a ladder to climb, but more like a covenant to love and keep in gratitude. I am the Lord your God. I brought you out. God's grace has always come before this law.

Look what Paul says about it in Galatians, chapter three. He says the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say and to seeds many meaning many people, but and to your seed meaning one person who is Christ. What I mean is this. The law introduced 430 years later does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise.

For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise. But God in His grace gave it to Abraham through a promise. These are the people, the people that are the followers, the children of Abraham. And now they've already got this promise. He's their God now.

He's going to give them what it looks like to live and follow him. Salvation has never been about law keeping. It's never been about trying to be good enough. It's always been by God's grace, through faith in His Son, Christ Jesus. It's always been about his salvation.

We've been called to this. But as we study this, let's not forget, even as we read in Ephesians that having followed him and received him, we are called to live for him and like him. Notice Ephesians, chapter 2. We remember 8, 9. We often overlook verse 10.

So let's read all three verses. For by grace you've been saved through faith and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works. So that no one may boast. We usually stop there.

Oh, okay. You can't earn it, you can only receive it. That's right. However, for we are his workmanship. Interesting Greek word there, Poiema.

We are God's poem. We are his work of art, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So these 10 words are a picture, a covenant of what it's to look like having received salvation through Jesus by grace, which is God's free gift, unmerited favor through faith. We've received it, now we're to walk it out. William Barclay said this.

He said the law does not come to a people who are seeking to find God, but to a people whom God has already found.

So this chapter begins like a wedding vow. I am the Lord your God. And then he begins to make these statements. To them it sounds kind of like, do you take this woman to be your wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward in sickness and health, for richer, for poorer, to love and to cherish till death do you part? A lot of us have made that vow.

You don't make that vow to earn marriage. You make that vow having already made a commitment. And you're already standing together and getting ready to put the ring on. It's not like the vow makes you married. What makes you married is saying, I do as an act of the will, making a decision to give yourself to one other for the rest of your life and no other like that.

And so it sounds kind of like that. You don't follow the rules to get married. You follow them because you are married and because you value the relationship. And God declares himself to be our God. And he often in the Old Testament refers to himself as our husband and us as his bride.

And then Jesus carries it forth and he says, the church is the bride of Christ. And we see this picture throughout the Scripture. To understand the purpose of the law, you have to first understand that grace precedes the law. It's always been about God's grace. It's never been about earning.

The law is not somehow something like it was God's plan A and he had to come up with salvation for a plan B. No, grace was always the only plan. It was always from the very beginning. Whenever he said to the serpent that a seed was coming, capital S, seed is coming, and you'll bruise his heel, but he'll crush your head. That's in Genesis 3, what many have referred to as the proto evangelium, the first gospel.

There's one coming, and he is Jesus, and he's going to carry our sins on the cross. And so this is the first purpose that we see for the giving of the law, is to recognize that grace precedes the law and is a necessity for those who would follow the covenant. Here's the second purpose. To restrain us by his covenant love. The law has a restraining, kind of like guardrails effect for us, guardrails for the soul.

As you think about the law, we think of it in two tablets. The scripture says it was in two tablets. And if you think about the two tablets, one tablet is vertical and it goes towards God. So the first five commandments go towards God and How we think about God and respond to God. Okay, that fifth commandment is kind of like a hinge in the binding between the two commandments because it's kind of vertical and horizontal.

The second tablet is horizontal. How you treat others. Or as Jesus said very quickly, what's the greatest commandment? He said, love God. Love your neighbor.

And so you could say the two tablets. The first tablet is love God, the second tablet is love neighbor. Summarized in. In that way, as we think about how many laws come out of this, we could almost think about these laws, the Ten Commandments, like chapter headings of a book of laws that follow. So that each of them kind of have underneath them applications and specifics about what the implications are.

The Jews, as the rabbis have numbered them, they see 613 laws in the Old Testament. 613. You could look at it like this. Jesus summarized it in two. Love God, love each other.

Or God said it in 10. And then he began to get specific over the next 603. And so as we're looking at these, I have preached a 10 week sermon before on this chapter. I won't be able to get into that much detail today, but I'm kind of flying over it a little bit to try to get us to understand the purpose of the law, to think about how we as Christians deal with the law. And so let me give you three categories.

For those of you that are taking notes, take these notes quickly because I won't be able to linger long. The three categories are. There are three types of law. Moral, ceremonial and civil. Moral law.

Ceremonial law. Civil law. There are 6, 113 of these in the Old Testament. The Ten Commandments fall under the category of moral law. They are eternal and universal.

They are binding. They apply to all for all time. They show forth the character of God. Although I will have more to say about one particular one. Commandment number four, which kind of sits between moral and the second category, ceremonial.

Ceremonial has to do with sacrificial worship, temple worship, the details of sacrifice, which is no longer binding. It had all along the temple worship. The sacrifices always pointed to a fulfillment which Hebrews tells us was fulfilled in Christ. Christ is the fulfillment of the ceremonial law. So we no longer need sacrifice because he's the perfect sacrifice, one and done once for all.

Still with me. Then we have a third category, civil laws, which have to do with the uniqueness of the country, the people of Israel, to set them apart, which was applicable to them. So we have a lot of those kind of laws about Kosher laws about what they eat, what they, how they dress, those kind of things. Those two were for a time period for the nation of Israel. What does that leave us as Christians?

That leaves us the Ten Commandments that we're looking at, which are moral law, but not as a way of earning, but as a way of marking how we are to live, how our lives are. To reflect with great joy and gratitude what God has done in our lives. And so let's look at them quickly. I wish I could take more time. We're just going to go through them.

First of all, you shall have no other gods before me. Put God first. That's what he says. Put me first. I'm going to put you first.

Put me first.

Whenever you get married you're supposed to put that other person first. That's what you're being called to. And he's saying, put me first, I'm going to put you first. And then he says something, he says, don't make any carved images or as the King James says, no graven image. Don't make idols.

Don't make any idols that you worship. That's the first thing they did while he was up there, getting God writing down with his own finger the ten Commandments. There was his brother Aaron down there making the golden calf. They wanted a God like they could see. They wanted to worship something of the creation.

So he made a golden calf. And we tend to default. We worship nature, we worship things that we can see.

God made us so that we have a capacity for worship. I don't think animals worship. I don't know about that. As soon as I said that I thought of a couple of dogs I've had through. They would look at me like they really, really loved me.

But you know what I mean. God made us unique so that we look to a creator. We're going to worship something. He says, don't worship man made things. Don't worship idols.

He says, I'm a jealous God. Verse 5. Now that always gives people trouble. God's a jealous God. Well, I'm jealous of my wife.

Not in a weird way. I'm fine with you guys. Want to talk to her a little bit but I'm taking her home with me.

And so that's kind of how it is with God here. Human jealousy is often insecure, self centered, it's reactive. A person has a low self esteem so they're jealous. You know, they've got this hurt in their background. That's not God.

God's jealousy is covenantally righteous. It Flows from his holiness. And his jealousy is protective of what is rightfully his.

Your God. And you're my people. I'm jealous for your love. Put me first. Don't make any pictures of me.

I'm the unseen God. I'm the unseen mover. You know I'm behind all things. I'm the Creator. Don't worship.

Don't worship. Romans chapter one says, we lower our eyes to the creation. We worship the creation rather than the Creator who made us. Don't do that, he says. And then verse six, he talks about his steadfast love and how his steadfast love motivates him.

The Hebrew word there is chesed hesed. It's like the equivalent of Hebrew to the Greek word agape. God's unconditional love, covenantal love. Now look at the third commandment. Don't take my name in vain.

Don't use my name in an empty way. Oh, my goodness. Our culture today, can you believe it? What we hear in the workplace and on the playground and on the movies and TV shows that we watch? People saying jesus Christ and God this and G.D. that and all these.

Just the misuse of God's name. It's the third commandment. He says, don't use my name in an empty way. In a flippant way, he says, my name has weight. My name has glory.

I am the Lord your God. Don't misuse my name. The fourth one is, remember the Sabbath. I mentioned this one before. This one is a unique law.

It's the only one that's not repeated in the New Testament. I believe it sits kind of in the middle between ceremonial and moral law. It sits. It has a ceremonial expression, but a moral principle. Its expression is seen as a sign of Israel, which makes it ceremonial.

Look at Exodus, chapter 31. The people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel. So it was a.

It was a ceremonial. It has a ceremonial aspect for the people of Israel that they're to keep the Sabbath from 6pm on Friday to 6pm on Saturday. That's a sign of who they are. Yet to the believer, Paul says this as he writes to the church at Colossae. Chapter two.

He says, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come. But the substance belongs to Christ. And so Christ is Our Sabbath rest. Again, referring to Hebrews.

I don't have time to look up all these with you. I'm moving fast. But Christ is our Shabbat, our Sabbath rest. Remember, do you remember how Jesus offers this invitation? He says, come unto me, ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you Shabbat.

I will give you rest for your souls. And so he's the fulfillment of the Sabbath law. At the same time, however, we see a reference to creation, that God created all things in six days. And on the seventh day he rested, which is a principle worth keeping. So I would say, I wish I had more time as you study on this further.

I think as a principle, Sabbath keeping in terms of we need rest, one out of seven days is a good principle. And historically, as believers, we've decided that our best day of worship and rest is the first day of the week. Why? Because Jesus rose from the grave. And every Sunday is Easter Sunday for us in a way, because we're saying our Savior overcame sin, death and the grave.

That's why we worship on the first day of the week. And Paul warns not to judge about these kinds of things. Well, I've said a lot about the Sabbath law. You can study on that further as we continue. We come to the fifth, which is the last one of the first tablet.

Honor your father and mother. Take note, there are only two commands stated in the positive. All of them are in the negative. Thou shalt not. Thou shalt not.

Here's Remember the Sabbath. Honor your father and mother. These two sitting here. Many people will take the honor father and mother and put it on the second tablet. Because they say, well, that's horizontal, that's towards your neighbor.

But I think that's mistaken. It really sits here in the center of the two. Because for a season, children, young people, you are under your mom and dad as proxies of God's authority. And so they are stewards of God over you, bringing you to the Father. And so you're to honor them as you honor God in a way, as you look to God.

God only gave you one daddy and one mom and you to honor them. Now, that word honor is of interest. It has to do with giving them what they're worth. And so this also implies financial means that you're to support them. They changed your dirty diapers, they fed you, they clothed you, they housed you.

One day they'll need you to do for them the same. Probably I've already told my children, which one is responsible for that.

He's preaching Right now on Rocky Mount, he's the one that caused me a little bit extra grief. Of course, he turned out to be a preacher, too. I think I probably did the same to my parents. But honor your father and mother so that your days will be long in the land. And then we have the second tablet.

I won't go into as much detail, but these are about love your neighbor. Love God is the first tablet. Love your neighbor. Don't kill your neighbor. Don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't bear false witness, don't lie, don't covet your neighbors.

I think if you look at the Hebrew closely, it says, don't cover your neighbor's house or their suv.

But it numbers a lot of stuff. They're donkey. There's, you know, all these details, but don't want what other people have. Trust what God has given you. And so these are the laws that he has given to his covenantal people that he loves.

And these laws are given out of love, not to limit us, not to steal our joy, but to give us boundary lines so that we can experience freedom and joy, knowing that he loves us so much. He's basically saying, as we would say to a toddler, don't touch that. You'll burn yourself. And of course, Paul talks about this in Romans 7. That immediately activates the rebellious nature of humanity that we've inherited from our forefathers, Adam and Eve.

It immediately goes, I must touch it.

I must touch it. And then they get burned. But the parent says, I don't want you to touch it because they love you. They don't want. And that's what the commandments are about.

That's what the ten words about. Jesus summarized it like this. He was asked, what's the greatest commandment? He says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.

And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. The apostle Paul talks about how it's the love of Christ now, though, that controls us, that compels us, so that we become those who keep the law out of gratitude. Second Corinthians, he says, for the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all.

Therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him, who for their sake died and was raised. And so with joy and Worship and gratitude are happy that we have these 10 words to help us. And it's the spirit of God that helps us. If you were to put a fence around a playground near an area where cars are zooming by, would you say, oh, man, I wish you hadn't put that fence?

You're really limiting the liberty of the children now. That'd be a ridiculous thing. You spend all kind of money on the playground. You want them to have fun on the playground, but on the other side of the fence is death. And really, that's what God's words here are.

On the other side of that is death. God's commands are expression of his covenantal love. When we reject his design, we harm ourselves. True freedom is found within God's covenantal love. This leads us to the third purpose.

Are y' all still with me?

To reveal to us our need for a holy advocate. To reveal to us our need for a holy advocate. Here's what God's words, his 10 words really do to us. They terrify us because as soon as we try to do them, we realize there's something inside of me that's broken. I can't keep them.

Why did he even give them? And it points us to a need of someone who could stand in the gap between us and God and advocate for us, be a mediator between us, someone holy. Because we're sinners. We need someone who could be the go between, the holy advocate. We're in verses 18 through 21 now, and we can see what happens here.

We can see that the people responding to what they're experiencing now. When all the people, verse 18, saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled like we're down in the valley of sin. We're so far removed from God, and he's high and holy. It's a mountain we could never climb. The distance between the chasm between my sin and God's holiness, especially too great.

Who could mediate between us? Who could go between us? So they say to Moses, verse 19, you speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.

They were overwhelmed with God's holiness, with the distance between them and God. They needed someone who would come and be a mediator and go between. And so Moses is not a perfect mediator, but he's a shadow of the one who is to come. Notice. He speaks on God's behalf to the people immediately as they express their fear.

He says, do not fear. Don't be afraid of God. Like that. And then he says, for God has come to test you, that you fear him. Make up your mind, Moses.

He's differentiating between two kinds of fear. Don't fear in the sense that God isn't your God and that he loves you. Don't fear him like he's some kind of chaotic God that just is just going to strike you dead at any moment. Like that. Like you can't trust yourself with him.

Don't. No, you can trust him. At this covenant he's describing is an extra expression of his character. He's a delivering God. He's a saving God.

He wants to be your God. You don't have to fear that, but you should fear his displeasure because he's serious about sin.

And that's what he says. He did that to test you, that the fear of him may be before you so that you may not sin. He wants you to take sin seriously because he's a holy God. And what this does is it shows that we need someone that can help us. And Moses then does this after.

He says that to the people, the people stood far off, kind of like Adam and Eve, who hid themselves while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. And he begins to climb the mountain and disappears from their sight. He's both one who talks to them, but also one who goes beyond the veil and is an intercessor for us before God.

Excuse me. The apostle John says this in his first letter. He says, my little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with Father Jesus Christ, the righteous. I'm writing these things.

I'm giving you this covenant so that you'll know what sin looks like and that you'll stay away from it. But if you do sin, John's practical. He's an old man now. He knows that we're going to stumble. If you do sin, don't stand far off.

Don't run from God. Don't fear him like that. Instead, run to him through the person of Jesus, your holy advocate, who took your sin on the cross and offers to give you his righteousness in the place of your sin, to take your death and to offer his eternal life for those that would come to him. And so we see in Galatians 3:24. Paul says, so then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith.

If you go to the doctor, they always want to do some sort of test, you know, try to figure out what's wrong with you. They do some sort of diagnostic scan and often, often that makes you feel worse. How did that help me? Well, it didn't. A diagnostic scan doesn't help you.

It just tells you what's wrong with you. And the law left to itself, James says, is like a mirror.

He says some of us look at the mirror of God's word and we just walk away like we forget it. But he instead instructs us, when you look in the mirror of God's word, go out and apply it. But here's the thing, the doctor does the scan so that he'll know what kind of medicine to give you or whether or not a surgeon needs to come and cut it out. And so that's what the covenant is like. It's like a mirror that you should call us not to run from God, but to run to God through the person of Jesus and say, I confess my sin to you and I know that you are faithful and just to forgive me of my sin through Jesus.

And even more than that, to cleanse out the spot in me so that I'm without shame, so that I can come to you freely. The human thing is always to do what Adam and Eve did. It's always to do what the Israelites do did, to stand far off from God. But the mediator, the holy advocate Jesus says, come unto me, you that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. This is the invitation the law moves us to the advocate, to Jesus.

Why did God give his law? To remind us of his saving grace, to restrain us by his covenant with love and to reveal to us our need for a holy advocate. Sinai was not the goal of the trip. Sinai was a stop off point. They're headed to the promised land.

The law written on stone was never God's ultimate goal. It was never meant to be the final chapter, as Hebrews chapter 10 says. This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds. And so this law was never meant to stay on stone tablets. It was always meant to be written on our hearts.

Jesus is the greater Moses who did not stand far off. He drew near. He fulfilled the law we could not keep. He bore the penalty we deserved. And now through his spirit, he empowers us to live with loving obedience and gratitude to this beautiful covenant of love that God gives us.

Not earning, but living it out as if it were written on our hearts as indeed it is through the spirit of Christ. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for a challenging word today. Thank you most of all for your grace that precedes the giving of this covenant of love.

Thank you for Jesus. Lord, there are people in the room today that have never. They've never surrendered their life to you. You know who you are in the room today. As you look at these 10 words, all of us must recognize that we've broken every single one at some point and in some way.

And so, Lord, we come to you saying we are sinners and we are thankful that we have a savior in Jesus who died in our place. If you've never submitted your life to him, never committed your life to him, would you do it right now? I invite you to do it so through prayer with me, dear Lord Jesus, just pray I'm a sinner. I believe you died on the cross for me, that you were raised from the grave and that you live today. Come and save me and forgive me of my sins and adopt me into your family.

I want to be a child of God. I want to serve you and follow you all the days of my life. I say yes to you today. Lord Jesus. Others are here today and you're a follower of Jesus.

But your next step might be to get off the legalism wagon and get off the trying to earn things. You're a believer now. Ask the Lord today to give you a fresh understanding of what it means to live in liberty with the law written on your heart. Lord, we pray all this now in your name. Amen.