Exodus Introduction to the Law 19:16-25 Last week we didn t finish up the passage on the preparation for Sinai and the giving of the Law so this is where we will pick up. In addition, I intend to spend some time this morning discussing just what is the value of the law, what principles underlie it, and what is its value to us today. I especially want to emphasize that our focus, as we study each of the Ten Commandments, will be on its relevance to us. X A Nation of Priests, A Holy People C. God comes to Sinai Vs.16-25 XI Introduction to the Decalogue A. What Is The Law? 1. What Are The Basic Principles Of The Law? 2. What Are The Purposes For The Law? He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8 ESV Introduction: Reviewing the first two sections of this chapter we saw Israel choose to place herself under the Law. We speculated the choice may have been between following after the Lord on strictly a basis of faith, as they had supposedly been doing, or becoming the people of The Law. They opted for being under the Law In section two God gave them the word of preparation. They were called to ritual cleanliness and warned of the danger of approaching God, His presence on Mt. Sinai. The danger of death was to both men and animals who set foot on the mountain. The message was intended to show the seriousness of communion with the One True God. Now let s pick up with the last section of the chapter. God s appearance on the mountain naturally cause fear and awe in the nation. God s giving the Law was a frightening time for the people. Its seriousness was not to be taken lightly. The passage is reminiscent of Christ s death on the cross with darkness and thunder, etc. Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split (Matthew 27:45, 51 ESV). It is interesting these occurred with the giving of the Law and again at the Cross was the freeing from the results of breaking it. The surrounding incidents are very similar. The sounds
heard were like those of a trumpet. The presence of God was manifest before the people. He appeared in the midst of smoke and fire and Moses spoke to Him. God in turn spoke to Moses. He answered with thunder. Moses understood the Lord s word. And while the people didn t they did know it was God Who was speaking. Moses was called to the top of the mountain by God, who sent him back down with a warning. Don t try to see Me for My Presence will bring you death! Next comes one of those confusing verses. God warned that even priests must prepare for His presence in order to approach Him. The question is: who were these priests? Some argue this verse was misplaced as the Levitical Priesthood had not yet been established. Others believe any nation would have some kind of priesthood, even if God hadn t established it. Another view is this was a priesthood made up of the consecrated firstborn or a reference to Aaron and his sons for by the time Moses wrote his account they would have been priests. I don t really have an opinion except to say that any view that says this verse doesn t belong here is one I am very uncomfortable with. Anyway, Moses and Aaron were instructed to come up the mountain to receive God s Word. The people, including the priests, were again reminded to stay off the mountain or die. The Law was to be given and that is what we will examine next over the next weeks. A. What Is The Law?: As with any introduction it will be necessary to lecture more than discuss, although I welcome any questions. One book I used for this study, above and beyond those I am always using, is Mere Morality by Lewis B. Smedes. First, I want to note there is a distinction between The Law in its broadest sense and the Decalogue. The Law encompasses the Decalogue and all the additional detail found throughout the balance of the Pentateuch. Let me quote the Illustrated Davis Dictionary of the Bible regarding The Law. The term the law with the definite article, but without any other qualifying word, occasionally refers to the whole O.T. in general..., but it is employed much more frequently as the title of the Pentateuch. It is the law of God. It was written in a book, included the legislation contained in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy 1 Now while we are going to examine the Decalogue specifically, we will look at The Law as a whole in this introduction for what is true for the whole is true for the part. It is important we understand that just because the Decalogue was given at Sinai at a specific moment in time doesn t mean God had not made His standards known previously. This was the formal giving of a legal code. Smedes points out in his book, 2 the Israelites weren t exactly surprised at anything they found in the Ten Commandments. As with certain institutions found in Scripture, most notably marriage, God sets standards and principles that are general. He expects mankind to obey them whether they follow Him 1 Illustrated Davis Dictionary of the Bible, Royal Publishers, Inc, Nashville, TN, 1973 2 Smedes, Lewis B., Mere Morality, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI, 1983. ) 176 (
or not. I think these are true of much found in the Law. Conversely many of the specific rules were given just for Israel and in some cases applicable only when they were in the Land. Finally as Dr. McGee points out: In chapter 20 of Exodus we have the giving of the Law. The Ten Commandments are given first but they are only part of the Law. Instructions pertaining to the altar are also given; the Law and the altar go together. 3 As we will discuss in Section 3 The Law must go hand-in-hand with the Sacrifice. With the Decalogue comes the Tabernacle, the Brazen Altar, and the shedding of blood. 1. What Are The Basic Principles Of The Law?: I want to start discussing what are the underlying principles that one finds with God s law. By the way I don t claim I am covering all the issues involved, only two specific ones. Two of the most important themes underlying the Law are God s justice and love. Both are needed for law to be functional. Even in our legal system we talk about the letter of the law being tempered with justice. In God s system justice is carried out in love. Christ made this abundantly clear when He capsulized the Decalogue in two commandments. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law? And he said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with 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. (Matthew 22:35 40 ESV). Justice refers to respect for rights; with the first commands, God s rights and with the latter, men s rights. With love we are talking about caring first for God and second for men. While the commands are thou shalt not, we will also look at them in terms of thou shalt This week I want you to read over the commandments and try to trace them to the teachings of Christ. This is one of the things we will be doing as we look at each one. Also think about the issues of justice and love as you are doing your studying. For Israel, I suspect, the primary issue was with God s justice, though He provided the sacrificial system out of love. I think our primary focus needs to be on the love and how we will apply God s love in law so we are aware of the rights of others. Christ focused on the love of the law, when He recapped it in two commandments in Matthew 22. Now let s talk a little more specifically about the two principles of justice or rights of others and love. Much of this has again come from Smedes. 4 3 McGee, J. Vernon, Thru the Bible with J. Vernon McGee, Volume 1, Genesis - Deuteronomy, Thomas Nelson Inc., Nashville, TN 1981 4 Smedes, adapted from p. 21-23. ) 177 (
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8 ESV). As you go through both the law and the teachings of Jesus you will see an overwhelming concern for justice. It is often demonstrated by the need for the protection of the oppressed, children, orphans, widows, and the poor. Much of the law related to debt, slavery, etc. was to protect the helpless. It also taught justice as it related to property and other material rights. Justice is about rights, and the recognition that if one has rights, someone else has an obligation to honor those rights. Justice is also impersonal. Law should be carried out regardless of who is involved. If God treated us as we deserved we would be in big trouble, that is why we are grateful for His love that paid the price of His justice. Please note, God paid the price of His justice, because of His love. He did not ignore justice because of that love. This is the answer to those who say that God will judge no one because He is so loving. The justice of the law is retributive, but justice has been met for Christ has paid the price. Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law (Romans 3:19 28 ESV). This is where love comes in, where the rights of others become more important that our own, for we are trying to become more Christ like. This principle of God s justice, as opposed to men s, is shown in this parable: For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you. So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, Why do you stand here idle all day? They said to him, Because no one has hired us. He said to them, You go into the vineyard too. And when evening came, the owner ) 178 (
of the vineyard said to his foreman, Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first. And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. But he replied to one of them, Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity? So the last will be first, and the first last. (Matthew 20:1 16 ESV). But with the issue of justice and peoples rights should come for us as believers concern for love and peoples needs. As Christians we are not to live for ourselves. But as Christ did, we are to live for others. This is an area we will be considering as we examine the commandments. We carry them out by living not for ourselves, egocentricity, as the world tells us, but to live first for God and as an outgrowth of that second for others. All this runs contrary to what the world defines as self-love, which is seen as the highest good. But we too can demonstrate self-love, if we mean by that striving for the goal of true fulfillment, which is being what God wants us to be. Smedes notes we can seek as a goal of self-love, joy, which the Westminster Confession defines as our true destiny: glorify God and enjoy Him forever. 5 Consequently, we are to obey God s law of justice in a way which demonstrates His love for us. This was made most clear when He, taking on human form, came to pay the price of His justice for us with His death and resurrection. Now we can stand before God justified, covered with Christ s righteousness. As has often been said justice is the tough side of love. God s commands cannot be ignored because of the need to be loving. But they can be carried out as God would have them because of love. The call to love is often the call to love the unlovable. After all, from God s perspective, I would certainly think we qualified as unlovable and yet He loved us. And so, we must love others with that same love. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16 ESV). 2. What Are The Purposes For The Law?: Finally, we need to talk about what is the purpose of God s law. This appears to be a simple question, but as with much of what God does there are a number of answers, all of which are true. Before I give you some of the answers let s see how many ideas you can come up with. Take a few minutes to think of reasons for law. Then we ll open up the floor. Nest, examining Scripture, we will look at some purposes for law and see how well we did on our own. 5 Ibid. ) 179 (
As a basic thought, all law is for the purpose of bringing order and to preventing anarchy. This is true whether we re talking about democratic laws or those of a dictatorship. This is one of the primary reasons for the establishment of government by God. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed (Romans 13:1 7 ESV). God s law is the basis by which we know what God expects of us. The commandments, as explained by Christ, further clarify what God really expects of us. Be clear God expects us to live to His standards. They are not given with the premise failure them is acceptable. This is why I have said the way to get to Heaven other than through Christ is by being perfect. Never-the-less God does recognize men cannot keep the law and so provides a way of forgiveness, pictured by the blood sacrifice Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 9:22 ESV). The law functioned on two levels, the literal law, such as the dietary laws. Certain animals were considered unclean, such as shell fish and pigs. The shell fish were unclean because they were scavengers and as such were potentially harmful to eat. Pork was also dangerous to eat because of illness and ignorance in preparation. Obedience to the law in these cases resulted in benefits of health and length of life. But these reasons were not the only basis for God giving the law. The issue of ritual cleanliness was also a picture of spiritual separation from that which was unclean and therefore the need to live in righteousness. It is not surprising so much emphasis is placed on marital faithfulness, for all through Scripture the marriage is a picture of the relationship between God and His people; the unfaithful wife, God and Israel; the bride, Christ and the church; adultery, a picture idolatry. As you can see underlying specific laws are spiritual principles and pictures of relationships between God and His creation man. God s laws are applicable to all men be they believers or pagans. And just as with our own law ignorance is not an excuse to avoid punishment. The only way to avoid punishment is to accept Christ s payment for sin. Finally, if the law is God s standard, then it is also a mirror to show us just how far from God s standard we fall. ) 180 (
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, You shall not covet. (Romans 7:7 ESV). The law isn t what causes us to sin. It is what shows us we do sin. The law therefore was provided to Israel to show it, and us, their inability to meet God s standards. The sacrificial system was provided to show the way to pay the price for breaking the law. The mirror of the law shows the sinful nature. The sacrifice shows the cure for the penalty of sin, Christ Jesus. We know that we, because of our sinful nature, continue to break the law and though Christ has paid our penalty, we are not excused from God s standards. We cannot ignore God s law. This is why we will be examining the commandments over the next weeks, to see just how applicable they are to us today and how much Christ really expects from us. One last point; while we often fail to meet God s standards, God Himself provides the resource to become more Christ like, His Holy Spirit. The purpose of the law is to bring us to Christ. Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. For the wages of sin is death and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, he entered not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 3:19 20, 6:23; Hebrews 9:22, 11 12; Romans 6:23 ESV). So, over the last weeks we have been taking about prayer as it relates to dependency on the Lord, as it focuses on praise of Him, as we remember all He has done for us. We also have talked about the role of the Holy Spirit in our prayer and walk. Taking into consideration Israel s preparation for being in the presence of God, how does this issue of preparation apply to our prayer life? Do you ever think about the fact that when you pray you are caring out one of your priestly roles before the Father? How can that knowledge effect the quality of our prayers? Finally we have talked much about the quality of prayer, how has an improved prayer life effected the quality of your walk? Remember what Peter tells us: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9 ESV). Our role today as priests is to give out the truth of the Gospel. And we are also training for our service to the Lord in the Millennial Age. ) 181 (
Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years (Revelation 20:6 ESV). ) 182 (
Exodus Introduction to the Law 19:16-25 X A Nation of Priests, A Holy People C. God comes to Sinai Vs.16-25 XI Introduction to the Decalogue A. What Is The Law? 1. What Are The Basic Principles Of The Law? 2. What Are The Purposes For The Law? Introduction: (Micah 6:8; Matthew 27:45, 51) A. What Is The Law?:
1. What Are The Basic Principles Of The Law?: (Matthew 22:35 40; Micah 6:8; Romans 3:19 28; Matthew 20:1 16; John 3:16) 2. What Are The Purposes For The Law?: (Romans 13:1 7; Hebrews 9:22; Romans 7:7, 3:19 20, 6:23; Hebrews 9:22, 11 12; Romans 6:23; 1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 20:6)