Exodus (Lesson 68)

Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W.

Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Delane, Florida.

Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs will bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior.

Now here's your host, Pastor James W.

Knox.

I'm Brother James, and I greet you one more time in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world, and I welcome you to the Preaching of the Cross Radio Broadcast.

This program is a ministry of the Bible Baptist Church in the land, Florida, heard by the grace of God on this radio station and many, many others around the world.

In fact, the Lord has been so good to us, we have responses coming from six continents, about 150 countries, all 50 states, and it is a joy to be able to just talk about God's perfect word, the Holy Bible, minister from his word to your heart.

And we're very happy that you've tuned into the program today.

We've been studying for a good long while this Bible book of Exodus.

We come on the program today to the blessed 34th chapter of Exodus, and we're going to be starting at verse number one.

Moses is back up on Mount Sinai speaking with God once again.

And the Bible says in Exodus 34:1, and the Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee, two tables of stone, like unto the first.

Exodus 34:1

If you were not with us or not familiar with the Bible, God wrote with his finger the law upon tables of stone, as Moses came down off the mountain and saw the Israelite people dancing round about the golden calf.

In his anger and fury he threw the tables of stone to the ground, and they broke in pieces.

Moses didn't break the law.

He broke the tablets on which the law was written.

The people broke the law.

Verse 2, and be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning unto Mount Sinai and present thyself there to me in the top of the mount.

And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount, neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount separation.

People aren't fit to be in the presence of such a holy communication.

And verse 4, he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first.

That's what you gotta like about Moses.

He did what God told him to do.

Didn't alter it, didn't change it, didn't suggest that he knew better.

He just did what God told him to do.

And Moses rose up early in the morning and went up unto Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand two tables of stone.

What did God say to do?

Hew.

What did he do?

He hewed.

How many?

Two.

Out of what?

Stone.

Come where?

Up in the mountain.

When?

Early in the morning.

Listen, this man, this man was blessed by God because he obeyed God.

You want God's blessing on your life?

Stop trying spiritual gymnastics and religious tomfoolery and just do what God said to do.

Verse 5 And the Lord descended of the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord.

And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children and the third and to the fourth generation.

And Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.

Now, this is God's declaration of his name.

Try to say that little pamphlets, they want to con you by quoting one verse out of Psalms which they misquote or misread, as to say that only which it says that only God, God, nobody else but God has the name Jehovah.

They twist that thing around and imply that God's only name is Jehovah.

God has many names in the Bible.

But his name is more, it's far more broad.

It is much too vast to be summed up in a James or John or William or Henry or Peter or Paul.

You see, God's name takes in God's person.

We use the name to signify the person.

If I say Sue or Betty or Sally or Josie, you think of all there is known to you about that person, it's all summed up in the name.

So when God is summed up in one of his many names, thou shouldst call his name Jesus, or Jah, or jealous, or Jehovah, or I am that I am, these are just identifying names or designations.

But they don't tell the full story.

The Lord, when he declared his name, when he proclaimed his name, he said, The Lord, dominion, the Lord God, overall, creator, master, sustainer, provider, ruler, judge, merciful and gracious.

Now in the New Testament, grace comes before mercy because Jesus Christ has already died upon the cross.

In the Old Testament, mercy comes before grace, as God delays judgment and withholds the full measure of punishment until the Son of God can provide payment for man's sin.

But God is merciful.

Mercy?

That's when a man does not receive what he deserves.

God is merciful and gracious.

What is grace?

It's when a man does receive what he does not deserve.

And so our God is merciful and gracious.

He suffers man's blasphemies, he suffers man's sins, he suffers man's bad manners and lack of gratitude, and he does so for a long, long time.

He's long suffering, not willing that any should perish.

He's long suffering, giving men space to repent and abundant in goodness.

Now God is good.

He's good all the time.

He's always good, he's a good God.

But he's not just good, his goodness abounds.

Is there evil in the world?

God's goodness is greater.

Is there sorrow in the world?

God's goodness is greater.

Is there trouble in the world?

God's goodness, see, he's abundant.

His goodness abounds, goes beyond the boundaries.

Whatever you need, God is good enough to provide that and more.

And he's abundant in truth.

Abundant in truth.

You couldn't in your lifetime, if you had no other interest but studying God's Word, if you had nothing to divert you from the study of God's Word, if you were the most brilliant intellect, had the greatest powers of concentration, and were the most skilled student of literature, you could spend your lifetime searching and studying the pages of God's holy word, and the truth found in that book would always abound.

It would always always lie still farther than you could reach, still higher than you could climb, still deeper than you could dig.

He's abundant in truth, and he keeps mercy for thousands.

Not only is he merciful, but he bestows that mercy over and over and over again, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

This is one of the most oft quoted verses in all the Bible.

It is found in full or in part in Exodus twenty, verse five, Numbers fourteen, verse eighteen, Deuteronomy five verse nine, Nehemiah nine verse seventeen, Psalm 103 verse eight, Jeremiah 9 24, Jeremiah 30, verse eleven, Jeremiah thirty two, eighteen, Jeremiah forty six twenty eight, Daniel nine four, Nehemiah chapter one, verse three, iniquity inward, transgression crossing the line, sin coming short of the glory of God.

God forgives, but but at the time of Exodus thirty-four seven, he had no means whereby to clear the guilty.

That is, he could graciously and mercifully withhold the judgment and punishment that was due, but he could not cleanse the record of the sinner, the transgressor, the one conceived in iniquity, because no satisfactory payment had been made.

Now listen, listen carefully.

The word forgiving here is like unto the word remission as found in the New Testament.

It portrays the idea of sending a thing out of sight where it is not noticed, or passing something by without noticing it.

God could forgive.

Now this is borne out in Hebrews chapter 10.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

Hebrews chapter 10 and verse number 17.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

Hebrews 10 verse 17.

Hebrews 10:17

Let me turn there so we can get it just right.

Hebrews 10, 17.

Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.

Verse 18, now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.

See, Hebrews, after Jesus dies on the cross, there is an offering for sin whereby God could clear the guilty.

That was not so in the time when Moses stood upon the mount.

God freely forgave thousands before Jesus came in the flesh.

In Psalm 78, Psalm 78 and verse number 38, the Bible says this.

But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity and destroyed them not.

Yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath.

In Psalm 99, Psalm 99 and verse number eight.

There the Bible says, Thou answeredst them, O Lord our God, thou wast the God that forgavest them, though thou took vengeance of their inventions.

In Psalm 85, 2.

Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people, thou hast covered all their sin.

So many other places.

Psalm 25, 18, Psalm 32, Numbers 14, God forgave.

Before he died on the cross, Jesus forgave.

Many times, Luke 7, 42, 47, Matthew 18, 21.

Many times, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, you read of Jesus forgiving someone.

This was done on the basis of mercy and grace, and was tied to or connected with the stopgap measure of the blood of bulls and of goats.

In Hebrews chapter 9, back to Hebrews again.

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

Hebrews chapter 9, and let's look at verse number 19.

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you.

But Hebrews 10 4 says nothing of remission.

It says that these offerings could not take away sins.

Look, Hebrews 10 1.

For the law, having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things can never, with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually, make the comers thereunto perfect.

For then would they not have ceased to be offered, because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins, but in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.

For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.

So all of those sacrifices and all of those offerings, contrary to what many teach and what many believe, they did not take away sins because they could not take away sins.

God could forgive, but he couldn't clear.

He could remit, but he could not justify.

This explains how God could forgive Old Testament saints but not clear them.

Their sins were overlooked without being removed, because the redemption price to pay for those sins was not made until Jesus died on Calvary.

Again, Hebrews, Hebrews tells the tale.

Hebrews sets forth the truth in chapter nine, Hebrews chapter nine, and verse number, let's read verse 15.

And for this cause, he, Jesus Christ, is the mediator of the New Testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.

So they could be forgiven, but they could not be redeemed until the redemption price was paid, and that was paid by Jesus Christ on the cross.

Romans 3 25 states that God put up with sins and overlooked them.

Acts 14, 16, he even winked, that is, closed his eyes to it as much as he could, looked the other way.

On the basis of Old Testament blood offerings.

However, the propitiation for sins, Romans 3.25, must die before the sins can be done away with.

Colossians 2.14 says the handwriting of ordinances stood against the sinner until it was blotted out by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

Thus the term.

For the remission of sins, always refers to the fact that God had been forgiving sins for centuries before Calvary.

Matthew 26, 28.

That's my blood shed for many for the remission of sins.

Acts 2, 38, for the remission of sins.

Mark 1.4 for the remission of sins.

You see, God's justice demanded a legal basis on which to forgive.

And that basis does not show up in history until Jesus Christ is crucified.

Oh, it was foreshadowed, it was foretold, Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, and elsewhere.

But until this time, the time when Jesus died on the cross, the temporary basis, the Levitical system of offerings only only moved God to look the other way.

It did not, it did not provide him with a means whereby to clear the guilty sinners.

This explains why Old Testament saints, when they died, did not go to heaven, did not enter the presence of the Lord.

Luke 16, 22, when Lazarus died in faith, he was carried by angels into Abraham's bosom.

That's Luke 16.

At death, now the born-again Christian, washed in the blood of Jesus Christ, is said to be absent from the body and present with the Lord, transported directly into the third heaven where God dwells.

Philippians 1 23, 2 Corinthians 5 1 to 10.

So Jesus Christ shed his blood because God had forgiven sins and had to have a basis on which to forgive them to clear the sinner.

Peter baptized because God had forgiven Israel.

They were told to manifest their belief in this fact.

Luke 23 34, Acts 3.19.

So, so think with me, please.

We are not saying the Bible doesn't say, the Bible doesn't teach that before Calvary men looked forward to the cross and that's how they were saved.

The trouble with that is, apart from maybe, maybe Abraham and maybe Moses, nobody looked forward to Jesus dying on the cross to pay for their sins.

You can't find that anywhere.

In fact, the the Old Testament prophets that wrote about it in Peter's epistle, we learn that they didn't understand what they wrote about.

They just wrote it down.

So the Old Testament people weren't saved by looking forward to the cross.

They were saved when they repented and put their faith in God's grace and God's mercy.

And God forgave them.

But since their sins had not been paid for, he could not take them to heaven.

He could not clear them of their guilt.

So they waited in paradise.

When Jesus Christ died on the cross, the veil of the temple rent and twained from top to bottom, his precious blood shed to satisfy the demands of the holy God, he left that cross, not his body, him, him, Jesus Christ, entered the lower parts of the earth, walked through hell, appeared to the spirits that were in prison, declared himself to be not only the Messiah, the Savior, but declared that he had made the full, complete payment for their sins.

And at that time the Bible says the graves of many saints opened.

Some arose, walked in the streets of Jerusalem.

When he left the lower parts of the earth, he rose from the dead with the keys of death and hell.

He ascended that morning and led captivity captive.

Ephesians chapter 4, Ephesians 2, Ephesians 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

So that paradise, which once was in the heart of the earth, you know that because Jesus said to the dying thief, today thou shalt be with me in paradise.

And when Jesus died, he went down into the lower parts of the earth.

But when he rose from the dead, he led captivity captive, ascended up on high.

And when you next read of paradise, it is in the third heaven.

You see, those people didn't go to hell because they died in faith.

But they couldn't go to heaven because payment had not been made for their sins whereby God could clear them.

So he graciously forgave them.

But being a righteous God, he could not take them to heaven unless someone somehow paid for their sins.

And when he went to the cross, Jesus Christ died to pay the penalty for all sins, for all men, for all time.

So those who had died in faith now had a Savior, now had a payment that could clear them.

And so those of us today, the moment, the moment we put our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, we can be instantly cleared and promised direct transport to heaven when we die, because Jesus has paid it all, and truly all to Him we owe sin and left a crimson stain, but what did he do?

He washed it white as snow.

Now gracious and merciful, they're often linked together.

Of the thirteen times the words gracious is used, only once does it stand alone without being linked to merciful.

It uh it's a heartfelt response.

Someone has something to give to someone who has a need.

It implies action from a superior to an inferior, who has no real claim on such gracious treatment.

It's clear, therefore, that those who enjoy the gracious acts of God can claim no right to be treated in such a wonderful way.

Their actions make them deserving of judgment, but God, because of his own character, not because of our works, displays his grace toward us.

God's gracious acts are acts done gratuitously, 2 Samuel 24, 1 Chronicles 21, without taking compensation, Genesis 29, Exodus 21, or without cause, undeservedly, 1 Samuel 19, 1 Samuel 25.

I am glad that God is gracious.

I am glad that God is merciful, and I am glad that after he had suffered a long, long time, that long-suffering God watched his Son Jesus Christ pay for your sins and for mine, so that we might know right this very moment that we are forgiven and cleared, and therefore have eternal life.

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And good day.

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