Exodus - 19:1-6, 16-22

This is ERC Sundays, the messages at Emmaus Rd.

Church in DeWitt, Iowa. ERC is a Church of people

striving to grow in Jesus and make him known to others through

our faith, words and actions. Find out more about our church

at emmausrdonline.org. Here's this week's message.

Today marks the day in our movement of the book of Exodus

and beyond. It marks the day where we're

going to actually exit the honeymoon phase a little bit.

Because if you think about this, what's been happening so far is

that God has been doing all of the primary work.

He's been walking people along. And so we've seen all these

great miracles and all these really cool things are happening

in the lives of the people who trust and believe in Him.

Yet we need to move into a space out of the honeymoon phase and

into a longer, more sustainable relationship.

I think we see that in humans too.

If you've ever first fallen in love with somebody or you meet a

brand new friend, you know, there's there's all these very

high and just big emotions and all those feelings.

But what we need to do long term is we need to be create a

sustainable relationship that looks like that's very

approachable. And so how then do we approach

the Lord? Well, in order to approach him,

I think that there's there's five ways that this text that we

have from Exodus 19 is going to help us understand that.

I would say just for any of you who are scared, you're like, OK,

I expected a longer service, but you're normally like a

three-point preacher. Why are there 5?

I'll tell you that I'm going to move through these fairly

quickly as I can, and we'll do our best.

I really will. But I do think that the text

leads us in a logical line. These are the ways that we can

approach God. This is the process that we do

that. And so let me name them for you.

First of all, we need to recognize that we're already

accepted. That's an important thing.

Then we receive and live out His law, and then we recognize that

we're His holy representatives. We see that the Lord is good,

not safe, and then finally, we approach Him through Christ

alone. So that is the lens with which

we will view Exodus 19 today. And so if you have your Bibles

and you and you want to get those out or they're kind of in

the seats in front of you, you can follow along that way or you

can follow along on the screen. That is also just fine.

So we'll be reading Exodus 19 one through 6, and then we jump

ahead and we read 16 through 22, and we read this in Jesus name.

On the third new moon, after the people of Israel had gone out of

the land of Egypt on that day, they came into the wilderness of

Sinai. They set out from Refidim and

came into the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the

wilderness there. There Israel encamped before the

mountain. While Moses went up to God.

The Lord called him out of the mountain, saying, Thus you shall

say to the House of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel, You

yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore

you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself.

Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my

covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all

the peoples, for the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a

Kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

These are the words that you shall speak to the people of

Israel. Jumping ahead to verse 16, 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 of the camp trembled.

Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and

they took their stand at the foot of the mountain.

Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord had

descended on it, and fire, the smoke of it went up like the

smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly.

And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses

spoke, and God answered him in the Thunder.

The Lord came down on Mount Sinai to the top of the

mountain, And the Lord called Moses up to the top of the

mountain. And Moses went up.

And the Lord said to Moses, Go down and warn the people, lest

they breakthrough to the Lord, to look.

And many of them perish. And let the priests who come

near to the Lord consecrate, consecrate themselves, lest the

Lord break out against them. Here ends the reading of God's

Word. So we have these ways that we

are called to approach God. And first and foremost, friends,

if we don't get anything else today, I hope we get more than

this. But if you don't get anything

else today, please see that first and foremost, before

you've ever done anything, God has already accepted you.

We see this in verse 4 when He talks about the fact that He

brought them out. He bore them out.

Now had they done anything yet besides grumble and complain and

cry and Nope, they've done nothing at all.

And he brought them out anyway. He, he loved them anyway.

Now, I would say that the interesting thing about this is

that Christianity, and we've talked about this before, but

Christianity is wholly unique in the other world religions.

Because if you follow Islam, for example, and I've taken some

notes here, if you want to go to paradise, as Islam talks about

it, that is earned by fulfilling core beliefs and performing good

deeds. And if you really want to know,

the only way in Islam to assure yourself that you will be in

paradise with Allah is to die a martyr doing his work.

That is dangerous talk and I think it has led to a lot of the

radicalism of that particular religion.

Now on Buddhism, what you do is you accumulate this wholesome

karma and, and that karma and, and those ethical actions,

eventually they lead you into this otherworldly kind of

spiritual thing. You are no longer yourself.

You're just a part of the spiritual whole.

And you can do that by following the eightfold path.

You have to earn your way there by making sure you do all the

steps. Judaism, of course, is

determined by how well you follow the law of God.

And so your reward is equal to your ability to earn and follow

the law of God. Now, my favorite one that I

researched this week is Hinduism.

Now, Hinduism is not so different from Buddhism in that

like there's kind of an A karma account that you're building up

and then when you do bad things like that account is deducted a

little bit. But my favorite thing about

Hinduism is this. If somehow you've built up your

account by good works enough, you can make it to their version

of heaven or paradise or whatever.

Now, the crazy thing about this that I, it just makes me laugh.

It's terrible. I shouldn't laugh at it, but it

makes me laugh because it's like what happens is you spend so

much time in that paradise or in that heaven or whatever and it's

like a gas tank. Eventually all of your good

deeds, they like whittle down, whittle down, whittle down and

guess what you get to do? You get to come back to Earth

and start over again. It's insane.

It's insane. But the whole point of all of

these different religions is that you have to earn your way

into whatever you're going to get.

But that's not how God acts. Now, if we think about all those

different religions and we think about what it looks like to earn

our salvation, maybe the maybe we have a human element here

that actually bumps up against that.

And that would be the relationship, I think, between

parents and their children. So, for example, when my wife

was pregnant with either of our kids, I know for sure that we

love those kids no matter what. They hadn't spoken yet.

They hadn't cried yet. They haven't done anything to

earn or take away our respect for them.

But we love them dearly. We would do anything for them,

right? So that is probably the closest

thing we can see on the human side.

So like how God treats us, how he looks at us.

Now consider this, what if, for example, we took these other

religions of face value and, and actually how most people, you

know, treat other people. And we said, OK, well, your

perfect adherence to doing what I tell you, doing the rules,

doing the law. That's what I expect from you.

And, and, and as soon as you stop doing that, I no longer

love you. I'm kicking you out of my life.

I would tell you that there is not a parent in this room who

loves their kid past the age of 2.

Not a chance. If you made it through the

terrible twos with your kids and they didn't break any of the

rules and they didn't make you mad and they didn't make you

want to put your hand through a wall, God bless you.

That was not my experience with two year olds or three or four

or five or teenagers too. You know, those are some.

Oh, Lord, those are some fun years.

Yeah. Yeah, those are some fun years.

But think about it, if God set us up to be in the position of

we have to do this thing perfectly, otherwise he no

longer loves us and he rejects us, none of us would make it

like there, there would be no chance.

And so then what we have to do is we is we have to ask the most

logical question. OK, well if God doesn't love us

because we can adhere to his laws and to his rules, if that's

not why he loves us, why do we need the law at all?

Can't we just throw the whole thing away and say, Nah, he's

going to love us no matter what. It's fine.

Don't even worry about it. Do what you want to do.

You do you, Boo. I think is how they say it.

Good gravy, I'm not. I should not try to speak in

modern slang. I'm really bad at it.

See, I got the hard no from Kristen.

Like, please stop doing that. So anyway, OK, so then why do we

need the law? What what what's the whole

what's the whole point of it? Let's let's that moves us right

into .2 verse 5 go there you go verse 5 and point it says this

Now, therefore, if that's a conditional statement, if you

will indeed obey my voice and keep my commands, you shall be

my treasured possession among all the peoples for all of the

earth is mine. What's happening here?

Well, God is acknowledging first and foremost that of course all

the earth and everything in it is in fact his.

Now we hear that conditional statement if and that can make

us wonder. You can be like Pastor Chris.

That's a conditional statement. Therefore you must be wrong

about everything you just said in the last four or five

minutes. I'm not and here's why.

If everything is already owned by God, the next level of him

owning everything is I want to love these things more than

everything else. You probably have things that

you own or people that you know that you love more than other

things or other people. Why do you do that?

Because they are expressing love back to you and, and all those

things that help us feel like we're reciprocating a healthy

relationship. All those things, right.

Well, again, coming back to it, if we're going to be his

treasured possession, what does that potentially look like?

Well, that potentially looks like following his law,

following his rules, living in the way that he called us to do.

Now, the fact that the law is not the reason why he loves us,

it means that the law is in fact there.

For what? For human flourishing.

The law is in place for human flourishing.

If you don't believe me, let me let me give you an example.

Think about this. What if we all follow the 10

commandments as prescribed by God, which we'll get to the 10

commandments in the sermon series very soon.

But what if we all follow them as prescribed by God?

Well, first and foremost, we would put God first.

So that's that's a start, right? He would be the first and

foremost in our lives, which means that we wouldn't worship

any created thing. We wouldn't bow down to any

idols, anything that that we made by our own hands.

We would speak rightly about God, which means that we would

have a true sense and we would show the world how we appreciate

Him by speaking rightly. We're not taking his name in

vain. We would rest well.

That means we're not going to be so stinking busy.

We're not running around in 50 different directions.

That is probably going to lower our blood pressure, make us

calmer, better people, and that's really good.

So God wants us to rest well. And then we, we would be in good

relationships with our parents and they with us, which means

that from those relationships, when we leave our home and we go

out into the world, we'd be much better, more productive,

respectable citizens. And so that would be good for

everybody. And of course, we wouldn't kill

or commit adultery or steal or lie.

And then lastly, we certainly, we, we certainly wouldn't be

chasing after the Joneses, would we?

No we wouldn't because our relationship with God and with

others around us would be so fulfilling that looking at what

other people have, it would not create jealousy, it would

actually create joy. You would give your neighbor a

big old high 5 and be like sweet new car good for you.

Instead of saying, well, I should have a new car.

Mine doesn't have cool features. No, if we follow the 10

commandments like this is what life would look like.

It would lack jealousy. We would just be at harmony with

our neighbors and with God himself.

And if you think about that, does that not sound fairly

perfect? We get all these writers and all

these creators who who write stories about utopias and things

like that. I mean, think about it, in our

society, in America, even in the state or even in the city of

DeWitt, we have hundreds if not thousands of laws and rules.

I think God nailed it the first time when He kept it very simple

at 10. And again, those 10 things are

there not to hinder us, not to take away our freedom, but

actually to promote our human flourishing.

If we did those things, man, life would look pretty amazing.

However, when we fail to adhere to those designs, what we need

to know is that doesn't mean that God stops loving us when

you mess up. It doesn't mean God hates you.

It doesn't mean that he's waiting to kick you down into

the rivers of fire. That's that's not what he's

doing. The same way that when our kids

misbehave, we don't necessarily throw them out of the house,

although some of them probably deserve it.

Until you're 18. Bam.

Yeah. See, it's great to have a front

row. I love that.

Well, here's the thing. When we, when we disobey God's

design, which is for our flourishing, those 10

commandments, I, I tend to think that like, it's like this.

If, if you have a, if you have a car and then you put sugar in

the gas tank and then it doesn't run the way you want it to run.

You can't actually be mad at the manufacturer for that.

You need to stop, read the manual for the machine and then

go forward with how the machine is designed to work.

Therefore, if we think about the law that way too, in the

commandments that God gives us, what we ought to do is, is we

ought to put the right thing in the tank, right?

Because if we put the wrong thing in there, that is our

bodies and our lives, we can't get mad at the manufacturer that

is God for the thing not working correctly, right?

So what we recognize is when we fail to do the law the way that

God has prescribed for our flourishing, what we're really

doing is we're just making our own lives more difficult and

we're making the lives of those around us more difficult.

That's how that works. So if we are going to work

properly, we need to adhere to the law that promotes

flourishing. That brings us up to .3 being

His holy representatives. When we are being His holy

representatives, that means we're probably doing so because

we're flourishing. This verse tells us that you

shall be, to me a Kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

Priests and the holy nation. Well, in order to understand

this idea, we have to kind of break down in context what it

means to be a priest. There's a biblical scholar, and

his last name is Kaiser, and he puts it this way.

The whole earth or the whole nation was to act as mediators

of God's grace to the nations of the earth.

Again, the idea behind this language is that we would

individually and as a community uphold the law of God.

Therefore loving him, putting him in his proper position, and

therefore reaching out to our neighbors appropriately with not

a heavy burdensome law, but love and care and respect and a lack

of jealousy and all those kinds of things.

It's like, as I mentioned, if we decide if we take seriously

God's commandments and we really actually start to live those

things out, you know what's going to happen?

Think about it from somebody else on the on the outside,

their perspective, they're going to go, man, these guys are kind

of weird, but they're weird in like a way that I kind of like,

they're weird in a way that is kind of attractive.

And so like, I look at my life and I've got some infighting,

I've got some drama, I've got all this stuff.

Their lives don't look perfect, but they don't seem to have

that. That doesn't seem to be present

among them. And it doesn't seem to be

present among them because they, they seem to be respectful of

people that they normally wouldn't.

They're generous with their time and they're generous with their

money. They don't hold on to these

things. Like it's like it's going to

kill them if they get rid of it. Man, I, I wonder what it would

be like to join a community like that.

And here's the thing, when people start asking those

questions, then we ought to be the people who are ready to

receive those questions and to receive those people.

And again, that means that we are called into this life where

we get to exit out of this building and we get to go

represent our living God. And then when people start

asking those questions, we are called to speak the truth in

love. 1 without the other doesn't work.

But we're called to speak the truth in love to those people

and bring them in and invite them into a community where they

know they can be seen and they can be heard and they can feel

safe. Now I know that's very touchy

feely and I don't I don't mean to be that way, but it's true.

Like as we do those things, that's our goal is to invite the

one more in so that they can join in a community that's

healthy, that's not self-serving, but is others

serving. And so that's what it looks like

to be a priest of God. Now, if we're going to be this

holy nation that he's talking about in this verse, it means

that we need to be the kind of community that outsiders are

attracted to, that outsiders are attracted to.

And So what makes a community attractive?

Well, I'll tell you what I think DeWitt, although it's only a

town of 5000, I've lived, we've lived over a lot of different

parts of the country and man, DeWitt is incredibly attractive.

And you want to know why? Because in general, to me, it

feels and it looks clean and well run.

And I would say that there's, there's typically things to do.

People are generally nice to me and all those kinds of things.

Well, if we want to be a community of believers that's

attractive to the outside world, what then should we look like?

I'm not going to stand up here and answer all that for you

because I would, I'm willing to bet I think you're smart enough

that you know what a healthy community is supposed to look

like. And we are.

Lord help us, we are trying to live that out every single day,

not just on Sundays, are we not? Yeah.

OK, so here's the thing. As we look like that healthy

community, we are going to look more and more like Jesus.

And looking more and more looks like Jesus means that we don't

come ready to be served. We come ready to serve.

And just like he said, I came to serve and give my life as a

ransom. So let me ask you some questions

that you don't need to answer out loud right now.

What would it look like to ransom your time for someone

else? What would it look like to

ransom your finances for the betterment of somebody else?

Think about those things. Consider it as you do that,

let's recognize something else about approaching God.

We need to approach God knowing that he is good but he is not

safe. Verses 21 and 22 get a very real

sense of the danger of approaching God and you're like,

but I but I thought Jesus loves being and he wants to give me a

big hug. Yes, that's true.

But if we do not take God seriously the way we ought, we

approach at potentially our own harm or our own death Even so,

where did I get this phrase? God is good, but He's not safe.

Well, if you know who CS Lewis is, he was a writer and he wrote

the books, the Chronicles of Narnia, among a lot of other

things. And I think that he actually got

this little section that I'm going to read to you.

I think, I can't verify, but I think he got this section of

writing from these verses. And here's here's what this

little section sounds like in the Chronicles of Narnia.

So Aslan is a lion who represents Jesus Christ in these

books, right? And so the kids are about to

meet Aslan, a lion, and they're kind of freaked out about that,

as they should be. But here's how it reads.

Oh, said Susan, I thought he was a man.

Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous

about meeting a lion that you will deary and make no mistake,

said Missus Beaver. If there's anyone who can appear

before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver

than most or they're just silly. Then he isn't safe, said Lucy.

Safe, said Mr. Beaver. Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver

tells you? Who said anything about safe?

Of course he's not safe, but he's good.

He's the king, I tell you. Yeah, that's Jesus.

He is good, He is not. Stay safe.

So when God shows us that as they approach the mountain,

there's some very real danger to that.

There's a good reason why that's dangerous, because God is

otherworldly, God is holy, God is set apart, God is perfect.

You approach perfection and utter sin the way that we are

built. And man, you are really taking

your life into your own hands. That is dangerous work to

approach him. Think about it this way.

For the millennia there have been, there have been kings and

Queens. And so for anyone to approach

the king or the queen without direct invitation, you were

probably going to die doing that.

You would be killed. Bring that forwarding even into

our modern day. If the president is anywhere

nearby and I run towards him, I try to approach him, guess

what's going to happen to me? I am going to be detained and

probably killed. I cannot approach such a person

without a direct invitation. I can't, it's, it's too

dangerous. I can't do it.

And so when we think about God, the Holy of Holies, we ought not

to try to attempt to approach him lightly.

We ought not to be like, hey bro, what's up?

No, this is God, the creator of the heavens and the earth.

We do not approach Him lightly. We take that seriously.

Now, as I say that you might wonder, and I've even wondered

at times, can I approach Him at all?

Because quite frankly, I know who I am.

I know what I've done. I have seen the deep recesses of

my heart and more times than I care to admit it is black.

Can I approach him at all? God has given us a way to do

that. God has given us a way to

approach him, and we have to approach him through Jesus

Christ alone. And this is what that looks

like. First Timothy 25 says, for

there's one God and there's one mediator between God and men,

Christ Jesus. And then Jesus tells us, I am

the way, I am the truth. I am the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

There is not a second way. It is just through Him.

And he invites us into that way, doesn't He?

Now I want to bring out two things pretty quickly, two parts

that prove this to be true about the fact that we can approach

this holy awesome God through Jesus Christ.

Think about the woman at the well.

If you don't know that story, I'm going to give you the brief

version. So Jesus meets a Samaritan woman

at the well and she's there in the middle of the day because

her community has totally exiled her.

Nobody likes her. Everybody talks bad behind her

back. They spit on the ground when she

comes by and hear Jesus is in the middle of the day talking to

her. And Jesus does this incredibly.

He does the hard thing. He brings the law right to her

face and he talks about how many husbands she's had.

And you're like, whoa, Jesus, slow down.

That's a little intense for a first meeting, isn't it?

But he does that. So of course, Jesus bringing

forth her sin, even though he has no reason to know that she,

she feels the awkwardness of that moment.

And so she shifts gears and she changes the conversation to

somebody, to something else. And she starts talking about,

well, Jews worship at the temple in Jerusalem and in Samaritans,

we worship on this mountain over here and blah, blah.

And, and Jesus looks for her and goes, ah, you got it all wrong.

Because soon people will not worship at a location.

They will worship in spirit because God is Spirit.

So you know what he's telling her and you know what he's

telling us that in order to approach God, in order to

worship him the way he deserves, it's a posture of our heart.

It's not a place we go. I love the fact that all of you

come here on any given Sunday, but this is not a holy place.

This is a building that God has built to house those who will

worship him. The building itself is not holy.

It's our heart position. So as we come to God, as we

approach God in worship, what is the position of your heart as

you do that? Is it one of pride and arrogance

of Yep, I I already know this. I've heard this.

This pastor is like he's repeating himself blah blah.

I've heard the song 100 times. I don't even like this song.

Why don't why do they keep playing that?

No, our posture is 1 of humility and it's one I'm saying, Lord, I

want, I want to give you everything I want to.

I want to put my sins at the foot of your cross because I

cannot bear them anymore and I know you'll take them from me if

I ask. That's humility.

The second thing that I'll that I'll point out and then I'll

finish up. The second thing that I'll point

out is this, when Jesus was on the cross, it reports that there

was a there was a veil. There was a curtain that

separated the people from what they called the Holy of Holies

in the temple. And this curtain, it's reported

that it was 60 feet tall and four inches thick.

Now, I don't know if you've ever hung drapery, but no, thank you

that that's a little bit much, But it says this, the curtain of

the temple as he's being crucified, as he gave up his

spirit, the temple, the curtain of the temple was torn into from

top to bottom and the earth shook.

What's happening here? What's happening here is that

Jesus Christ, because he has taken the penalty for all of our

sins, he has cut down the dividing line between US and

God. So therefore we get to approach

God now because all of our sins are taken away by the blood and

the body of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Yeah. So that means when we move and

we want to approach God, we can do so in actual, real

confidence, knowing and believing that he is inviting us

into his space. He's inviting us into a

relationship with him because his son paid the penalty for

everything that we should have paid for.

And he did it on the cross. He said all of his blood, he, he

allowed his body to be broken so that way we can approach God.

Incredible, incredible. No more curtain.

It's gone. Friends.

You may have come to the place where you don't feel like God is

approachable because of something you've done, Something

you've said is something that you haven't repented of yet.

It's just welled up inside you. It's a deep secret that you have

not told anybody because guess what?

If you tell them, they'll never love you again.

And that's what you think. Can I tell you you're wrong?

You're wrong because of Jesus Christ.

You can still approach God. And if that's you, today I'm

going to close out in prayer. I want to.

I want to pray for you and I want to pray with you that God

will tear down that curtain between your heart and him.

Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we have

all sinned. We have all fallen short of your

glory. The fact that we can come before

you and speak to you is pure gift, and it is a gift because

of what your Son has done. So, Father, I pray that if there

are heavy hearts here in this room today that are listening to

this Lord, would you tear that wall down?

Would you demolish it? Would you blow it up?

That we might come to you in confidence, knowing that Jesus

Christ has perfectly loved us and has set us free from our sin

and brings us to the foot of your throne.

Lord, at the foot of your throne may we worship wholeheartedly,

maybe recognize that because of your Son we are 3.

Lord God, give us Your spirit that we might worship in freedom

today and that we might approach you with assurance and

confidence. We pray all this in Jesus name,

Amen. Thanks for listening to ERC

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