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Now, here's today's message from Pastor Skip Heitzig.
So, would you please turn in your Bible to the Book of Exodus? We're beginning in chapter 19, and we're reviewing the rest of this book. We're sure glad that you made it for our midweek study. And as you are getting comfortable, we begin at the foot of Mount Sinai. I was reading an article this week about weather phenomenon that happens around the world, and they show different pictures of.
Of what these things were like, and one of them were known as UFO clouds, and it seems that whenever you have cone-shaped hills as part of a mountain range. And you'll have air that rises up on the slopes of that mountain, but then it is also compressed by gravity from above, and it produces what they call, what meteorologists call, lenticular clouds that look like UFOs. That I saw a picture look like a scene right out of Independence Day. I mean, it just looked like these UFOs were dotting the landscape, and they were just clouds. Then I read also in that article about something called upward lightning, and whenever there is a lightning strike around a city with tall buildings, that you can get a positive upward leader.
So lightning is shot from the ground up to where lightning is supposed to come from.
So instead of lightning coming down, it actually goes from the ground upward. Upward lightning, and then the third phenomenon was called sea smoke, and sea smoke is sort of a familiar. Code word for when cold air moves over warm water, it produces this large fog bank that looks like a greenish, purplish smoke, and it it it's almost like a wave. It looks like a tsunami of clouds coming at a person or at a city along the coast.
So, with that as a background, imagine what it must have seemed like to be at the foot of Mount Sinai. As God was thundering and lightning, and then speaking His word to the people, the giving of the law, and that's where we pick it up in chapter 19. Israel has been delivered out of Egypt; they're safe, they're sound.
Now God instructs them.
Now God teaches them His law, and so the emphasis changes in chapter 19 from narration. To legislation, from what happened in getting out of Egypt to what God has to say to this new nation now that they are His, the Jews refer to this section of the Bible, and in particular this part of Exodus, the first few chapters, as the kernel and the core of the nation's life. They realize that as Jews, they look back to and rely upon the law, the covenant that God made with Moses. You might look at it this way: God's revelation is their identification. They identify themselves as those who have been given by God the covenant of the law.
Now, just by way of review, if you remember Genesis really quickly, there were four events followed by four people. In the book of Exodus, we also have four stages of the birth of a nation, and we gave you four words last time. I'm going to pick up on them this time. Domination—that's chapters one through twelve. Domination, domination by Egypt.
Egypt is there. Lord, it's their owner. They are slaves of the Egyptians, so domination by Egypt, followed by liberation from Egypt. That's where we left it off last time in chapters thirteen through eighteen.
Now we look at the two final stages of the birth of a nation: that is, revelation and identification. God reveals His law to them, and the last section He has drawn them apart, and they identify as God's special people in this covenant.
So, in chapter 19, verse 1, in the third month after the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on the same day they came to the wilderness of Sinai.
So, this is three months after leaving Egypt. They're encamped at this mountain. They're in the wilderness, for they had departed from Rephidim and came to the desert of Sinai. And they camped in the wilderness.
So Israel camped there before the mountain. And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called him from the mountain, saying, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel." You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. God is jogging their memory at this point. Remember who you were. Remember where you came from.
Remember what I have done for you, and know how much I care for you.
Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to me above all the people, for all the earth is mine.
Now God here through Moses makes a reference of eagles' wings. I bore you on eagles' wings, and the Hebrew word is neshir. And it is believed that God was making a reference, a comparison to a special type of a bird called the griffin eagle, and and what's unique about this bird is that it will take its its young far away, or it will give birth far away, usually in a wilderness place where it can be undisturbed, and where the mother has to. Care for it in a very unique way because there are no natural resources.
So in that place, sequestered away from all natural resource, where the young would be completely dependent on the eagle, God said, "I took care of you that way." God brought them out to the wilderness. Where there were no natural resources, he gave them water from the rock. He gave them manna from heaven. He miraculously preserved them for forty years. And then God says, "You are, or you are to be, then you shall be." Verse five, a special treasure to me.
I wonder how you view yourself. I wonder if you see you like God sees you. I don't know that they felt much like a special treasure with dust all over their feet and all over their tents and all over their body and all that they had been through, all that they were wondering about. But God says you're a special treasure to me. And you are a special treasure to God.
Some people say, "Well, I feel so worthless." What you need to know is this: the worth of an object is determined by what somebody is willing to pay for that object. And if God sent His only Son out of heaven for you because you were that important to Him, then you have no right saying that you're worthless. When God says you're a special treasure to me. If you follow down the story to verse eight, all the people answered together, and they said, "All that the Lord has spoken, we will do." And so Moses brought back the words of the people to the Lord.
Now that's a bold statement, right? Everything God says, man, we're up for it. Bring it on. Give us the law. We'll keep it.
We'll do it. We're all in. It's a wonderful thing to say. It's a very difficult thing to do. To make the statement, everything God tells you we will do.
The problem with that promise is capacity. We as humans don't have the capacity to keep the law. That's why Jesus was sent. That's why the covenant of grace will be unfolded. As we continue the story, Deuteronomy chapter five, verse twenty-nine, and I am getting a little bit ahead of myself, but God said this really about this promise that they're going to do it.
He said, "Oh, that they had such a heart within them that they would fear Me and that they could keep My commands." That was the heart cry of a creator who gave the law, heard the promise of the people to keep it, and said, "You know, I wish they, I wish they could pull it off. I wish they had the heart and the ability to do it." But he knew they couldn't. And Paul addresses this later on in the New Testament, in the book of Galatians. He talks about the role of the law, and he says the law was our schoolmaster. Pedagogos is the word.
The tutor who would bring a child from its home, walk it all the way to school, would be the superintendent of that child in the early phases of the child's development.
So the law was meant to lead us along until we got to the real teacher, the real master, the real schoolmaster, and that is Christ. It was the schoolmaster to lead us to the cross. It was the law that said you need a savior, and once it pointed out the savior, we came under a new covenant. That's the covenant of grace. In verse 16, here's some of that meteorological phenomena I told you about.
It came to pass on the third day in the morning that there were thunderings and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the mountain, and the sound of the trumpet was very loud.
So all the people who were in the camp trembled. Please mark that the giving of the law was not a beautiful sight; it was a dreadful sight. People were shaken in their boots. They were terrified.
Now Mount Sinai was completely in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire. Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly.
So if you were there and you were looking at Mount Sinai, it kind of looked like a volcano, like an erupting, fiery, burgeoning volcano in the distance. Why all this phenomenon? It's a demonstration of God's perfect, holy character, His flawless, amazing, powerful character. The rabbis used to say of this scene, "No mortal can gaze on the unveiled majesty of God." This is Connect with Skip Heitzig. Want to understand your Bible better without getting lost in all the details?
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Now let's return to today's teaching.
Now God's going to say the same thing in a little bit. You can't look on Me and live, Moses. You can't gaze upon Me and live.
So God did not let the children of Israel see Him. But rather, God let Moses hear Him. God revealed by voice His will to Moses, His words to Moses, and Moses will then deliver them to the children of Israel. God's voice here is very dramatic, but you shouldn't look to this as the model of how God speaks. Because if you are thinking, "Yeah, man, this is awesome to read about," but I've never had God like shake my mountain, or shake my vehicle, or or bend down to me and go, "Hey, Skip, this is God." I never had an experience like that.
I never have either. More often than not, God will speak to you like He did to Elijah, who was expecting some miraculous, earth-shattering. Fire, experience. God heard him speak in a still small voice, and more often than not, you'll hear God speak to you in His Word through His Word in a still small voice. In fact, if we fast forward to the New Testament.
And this is one of the big differences between the synagogue and the church, between Judaism and Christianity. Judaism makes it all about the precepts and the principles of Moses. The New Testament says that was good for then, but now it's not about the precepts and the principles. It's about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. All of that is fulfilled in Him.
Now God speaks through His Son, primarily Hebrews chapter one verse one. God, who in different ways and in different times spoke to our fathers through the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things.
So the focus is not on the precepts of the law. The precepts given at Mount Sinai, the principles of the law, but the person of Jesus. I am going to read what I think is a good commentary from the New Testament on what we're reading in the Old. I am reading out of Hebrews chapter twelve, where the writer says, "For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire. That would be Mount Sinai." And to blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of the trumpet and the voice of words.
So those who heard it begged that the word would not be spoken to them any more, for they could not endure what was commanded. And if so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow. And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, "I am exceedingly afraid and trembling." The writer continues, "But you have come to Mount Zion, not Mount Sinai. That was then. This is now." You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly of the church of the firstborn, who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.
And to the blood of sprinkling that speaks of better things than that of Abel, so a contrast between the old and the new, between one mountain and another mountain, between the covenant at Sinai and the covenant in the blood of Christ at Mount Zion, which took place just outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem. When we continue on. And get to chapter twenty, we have God's top ten. It's the beginning of the law, but the law will continue several chapters after this, many chapters after this. But basically, God condenses all of his regulations into ten big ones.
And it should be noted that God expects two things. That can be seen in the Ten Commandments. Two things, basically, God wants supreme devotion to Him and sincere affection for others. That's the Ten Commandments: supreme affection, attention, devotion to God, and sincere love and affection for others. And so the law.
Came in two tablets. The Bible says, "Two tablets." Why? Because there's two parts of the law. There's the first four commands, which are vertical commands. They talk about our relationship with God.
It goes this way on this plane. The second six commandments are on the horizontal plane. It's person to person. It's man to man.
So the Ten Commandments. You shall have no gods before me. You can't make any images that represent God for the purpose of worship. You are not to take God's name in vain. You are to keep the Sabbath day.
That's the fourth commandment. Fifth commandment, as you saw in the video, was honor your father and your mother. Followed by you shall not murder. Followed by you shall not commit adultery. Followed by you shall not steal.
Followed by you shall not lie, and followed by the last commandment, which Paul said when he read that one, it slayed him, and that is thou shalt not covet. And the reason that slayed Paul is he realized for the first time the law doesn't just deal with outward actions, but with inward attitudes. Because if you lie, if you steal, if you kill, those are outward actions. But if you covet, you are doing that internally. You have a desire, an inordinate desire for something you don't have.
Nobody sees that, but he realized that's an attitude of the heart, and God cares about the attitudes of the heart.
So the two tablets of the law. As one person put it, the Ten Commandments were given in tablet form, and obeying them will save a lot of other tablets. A lot of people take tablets, tablet, tablet, every day, tablets, settle their stomach, get them to sleep, get them up in the morning. You just stay close to the Lord and take these two tablets of the law to govern your actions and your attitudes. In verse twenty four is something that I just want to fly a little closer to the ground on this one.
In fact, it has to do with the ground. Notice an altar of earth. God says, "You shall make for me, and you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I record my name, I will come to you." And I will bless you. And if you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it out of hewn stone, carved up, nicely fitted and adorned.
For if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it. It's an interesting text to me. It's actually one of my favorites because it shows me that God was not into ornate, detailed worship structure. He did not want worship to be distracted by something man did. He wanted the focus to be on Him, undistracted worship.
He didn't want anybody going, "Now that is such a cool altar." Look at that altar, man! They must have who was the architect of that altar? See, now the focus is on the art and architecture of the altar rather than on the one who gave the talent of art, and that is God Himself. Not that God is opposed to art. I'm going to show you that in a few minutes.
But when it comes to worship, God seems to just love that pure, unadorned, unhewn stone. As an altar of sacrifice. What is the principle? Simply this: art must never supersede heart. It's all about the heart more than the art.
Art is okay as long as you have the heart in it. If you have art and no heart, it's just empty. It's like so what? That's why the highest form of artistic expression is that of worship to the Lord. Remember the Samaritan woman who was talking to Jesus, and the conversation got a little too close to home for her, and so she gets all religious and she said, "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain.
That is Mount Gerizim up in that area. You Jews say Jerusalem is the proper place to worship." And Jesus said, "It doesn't matter where you worship." It matters that you worship and how you worship. You have to worship the true God, and you have to worship Him in spirit and in truth.
So, heart always supersedes the art. Chapter twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, and twenty four. This is where, for a lot of people, Bible reading boggs down. They get all excited going through Genesis and Exodus. As long as the story.
Is fast-paced, but now we get to the nitty-gritty, nuts and bolts laws of everyday life. We go through social law that is property rights. We go through moral law: what you can and can't do, what is morally acceptable before God, and in practice, and precept, and spiritual laws. Chapter twenty-one, verse one.
Now these are the judgments. Which you shall set before them, and the laws that filled this book of Exodus are strikingly similar to many laws that came after it that were based upon the premises given in the laws of Moses, including our own nation. Verse two: If you buy a Hebrew servant, I just want to touch on this. If you buy a Hebrew servant. He shall serve you six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free and pay nothing.
I'm having you look at this because there's a pattern. You've already noticed it. You're going to notice it again throughout the Bible, and that's a pattern of the Sabbath or the pattern of the six and one. We're so glad you joined us today on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before you go, don't forget about Pastor Skip's brand new devotional, Soaring Above It All.
This one-year devotional gives you a panoramic view of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, helping you better understand God's Word and stay engaged with it every day. Request your copy as our thanks when you give fifty dollars or more to help bring clear Bible teaching to people around the world. Give today at connectwithSkip dot com slash offer or call eight hundred nine two two eighteen eighty eight. See you next time. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
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