THROUGH THE BIBLE - Exodus 2..

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the church. Once again, the Lord has extended his grace and we can come together to praise him in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let's please open up our Bibles to the book of Exodus. We're going to be doing, as we always do, by his grace, the corporate reading of scripture. And we have reached Exodus chapter 20, a very important chapter, not only for the book of Exodus, but in general for for the entire doctrine of the Gospel. Exodus chapter 20. I'm going to be reading, as we always do, from the English Standard Version of the Bible.

So, if you have Exodus chapter 20, let's read together, corporately, as a church, the words of God, paying much attention with reverent hearts. May the Lord illuminate His word to us. 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, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the inequity of the fathers and the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, by showing a 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 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 belong in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder.

You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal, 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. Now, 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 afar 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 might be before you, that you may not see him. The people stood far off while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.

And the Lord said to Moses, thus you shall say to the people of Israel, you have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. You shall not make gods of silver to be to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold. An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you. If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you will your tool on it, you profane it.

And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it." Amen. This is the Word of God, brothers and sisters. As I said, this is a very important chapter, not only in the book of Exodus, but in general, in the whole history of redemption. Last week, I said that not only the chapter, but the place where this is taking place, which is Mount Sinai, Horeb, is a very important location, not only doctrinally, but also geographically, when we see the land of where the Lord was working His grace towards the promised land.

I said last week that every time that you think about Sinai, you should think about the law and about obedience. This is how the apostles in the New Testament are going to use the term Sinai, relating it to obedience and to the fulfillment of the law, and we read a passage in Galatians in which the apostle Paul demonstrates this comparison between Jerusalem, who is the spiritual city, and in Sinai, which is the city of the law. Now, as we approach here to chapter 20, we have indeed now the giving of the law, what we know as the Ten Commandments. There's a parallel passage to this, which is Deuteronomy chapter 5. And in that chapter, when we read that, we can see the Ten Commandments that are given, but also we can see some other details that Moses also gives to the people that are reading this text.

And that is, for instance, that the glory of God was revealed to the people of Israel when He was given these commandments. to the people of Israel to the point that as we have read it here in Exodus chapter 20, the people did not want to even hear or listen to the Lord. They said, you go and speak to God and then you tell us what we're supposed to do. Because we know that if we approach this holy God who we have just heard and seen in the mountain, we are going to die. And even in Deuteronomy chapter 5, it says, the Lord says that what the people actually said, it was true that if the people would have approached Him, they would have died because this is a holy, a perfect God who now, brothers and sisters, is given to His people the written law.

He's given the written law. And this is very important to notice because all of these commandments, the people of Israel had been already observing. They had been already observing, you shall not murder, you shall not kill, even before the people of Israel, the people of Israel before Egypt, if I may say, they had already been observing this loss. You may remember Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, all of them would have... taking accountability if someone was going to kill, if someone was going to worship another god, all of these things, these laws were already among the people of God.

Even you can push them even further back into the history of redemption and you can remember the first crime or the first sin that was committed after the fall was that someone, a brother, killed his brother and God made Him responsible and accountable for that. What we have here is now, as in Deuteronomy chapter 5 says, that God is entering into a covenant with His people at Mount Sinai or Horeb, giving them this written law. And there's so many things that could be said about the chapter, but I just want to focus on one verse, and that verse is verse 20, brothers. because here the Lord is going to give the purpose for which these commandments were given, at least to the people of Israel. In verse 20, after the people have said to Moses, you go and speak to God and you speak on behalf of Him to us that we may not die.

In verse 20, he says, Moses said to the people, and I want you to see here how he uses the words, do not fear for God has come to test you. that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin. Moses said to the people, Do not fear. God has come down to give you this law so that the fear of God may be in you and that you may not sin. The apostles and the prophets in the New Testament, the apostles in the New Testament, Apostle John says that a sin is a transgression of the law, that transgressing or breaking the law is a sin.

And here Moses is telling the people that the reason why God has given these commandments to them is, first of all, to test them, to test their obedience, as he had done it before in previous chapters. He gave laws and commandments so that they will be tested. And the second purpose is that within them there will be fear, there will be reverence, so that they may not sin against God. The fear of the Lord, the holy fear of the Lord that is brought to the eyes of a person by the presence of God, had been already revealed to the people of Israel to the point that they had said, please, Moses, you go before Him and speak to Him and you are the intermediary between us and God, lest we die. They had already seen that.

So one may say that in the heart of the people of Israel, fear already existed. Brothers and sisters, we have the entire Bible and we have the revelation of what is going to happen with the people of Israel and we know that the people of Israel, after receiving these commandments, after seeing with their eyes the manifested presence of Yahweh on that mountain, after not only seeing it with their eyes, but also seeing the smoke and the fire. And it says that in the midst of the darkness, the fire of God was there and speaking to them. Even in Deuteronomy chapter 5 says that God spoke to them, not to Moses, that they heard the voice of the Lord. After they saw and witnessed all of that with their physical senses, brothers and sisters, they would enter in disobedience and rebellion one and many, many times.

The Lord said He's given these four commandments, these initial commandments that are related to Him, that you shall not have other gods before me, that you shall not have any idol, that you will not use my name in vain and that you will respect, that you will observe the Sabbath. These commandments related to him. And then from number five onwards, these commandments about the coexisting of people within the land. It's very interesting how in verse 12 he says, Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that your Lord has given you. Four commandments in relation to God and then six commandments in relation to the people and in the land.

They've received all of that. And you know what they did with the law of God? They made the law of God an idol to the point, brothers and sisters, that because they thought that they had the law in their hands, that they were already good with God, that they were in good terms just by being holders of the law, just by keeping the law, by protecting the law, by being the holders of the oracles of God. The Jews thought that they were in right standing with God. They were far away from the revelation of what it is to have a right standing before the Lord.

This is the accusation and the exhortation that Paul does to the Jews that I want you to see with your eyes in Romans chapter 2. Because brothers and sisters, not only this Exodus generation, by the people of Israel in general is going to take the law and is going to make them basically their idol. They are going to be just because we have the oracles of God, just because we have the law, just because we know the law, then we are the ones that are in the right standing before God. And this is the accusation that Paul is going to give to the Jews in Exodus chapter two. Go to Exodus chapter two and in verse 17, the apostle chapter 2 verse 17 the apostle paul is going to give this exhortation to these jews to the ones that had received the law, to the ones who had the commandments of God, but to the ones who thought that only having the commandments of God was sufficient for them to have a good standing before the presence of God.

So then the apostle in Romans chapter two, verse 17, is going to give this accusation against them, against the Jews. He says, But if you call yourself a Jew, that is a person of Israel, and rely on the law and boast in God, and know His will, and approve what is excellent." Brothers and sisters, pay attention to those words. They have the law. They know the law.

Not only that, they approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law. And if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth, You then, who teach others, do not teach yourself while you preach against stealing from the Ten Commandments. Do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery from the Ten Commandments, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols from the Ten Commandments, the Second Commandment, do you rob temples?

You who boast in the law, the Ten Commandments, dishonor God by breaking the law, For as it is written, the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, Jews, who have the law, who are the instructors of the law, who are boasting in the law, who are the recipients of the oracles of God, who are the ones who say that know the God of Israel." But then verse 25, he says, For circumcision, indeed, is of value if you obey the law. But if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, that is, if a Gentile keeps the law, Will not his uncircumcision be regarded uncircumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised, the Gentile, but keeps the law, will condemn you who have the written code, the ones that was given in Mount Sinai, uncircumcision, but break the law.

For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical, that is, of the flesh. Verse 29, But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from men, but from God. Brothers and sisters, the apostle will say after this that the purpose of the law is that it might bring knowledge of sin. In Exodus chapter 20, it says that he was testing the people of Israel by giving them the law and that he was expecting that fear, real fear, reverence of God may be within their hearts.

These people had witnessed, seen, observed, they were in the presence of all of these mighty things that had taken place from God Himself. Yet the heart of many, most of them, was not circumcised really and truly. They had not been visited by the power of the Spirit that was not going to circumcise the flesh, but the heart. They had not visited or they had not approached God with faith in grace and therefore everything that they were doing, even if it looked good outside, it was in the flesh and it was not in the spirit. And it does not matter that a man may have a vision of God himself.

If he remains in the flesh, then that man will go back to his sinful ways, because it is impossible for men to please God and to fulfill the requirements of the law, apart from the intervention of the Spirit through the operations and workings of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ comes, Romans 10, and He is the end of the law for righteousness, that everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ becomes in the eyes of God a fulfiller of the law in Christ, so that when God sees us, He sees the fulfillment of the law in the person of Jesus Christ. His righteousness is gloriously imputed unto us and not only that, but the Spirit of God imparts His righteousness as we progress in this life, becoming more like the person of Jesus Christ, something that it was impossible for the people of Israel to accomplish in the flesh. But I want you to see the last detail of that chapter because it is a prophetic utterance of the Lord. that is going to say, from here onwards, the Lord is going to establish the whole law, which is very important, brothers and sisters.

But in verse 24, he is going to give these laws of altars, that is, small temples, if you want, where the manifested presence of God is going to be. And in verse 24, he says, An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. Now pay attention to what he says there. in every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you." The Lord is indeed going to cause His name to be remembered through the history of the rebellion of Israel, many times when they went back from obedience, when they disobeyed and they were breaking the covenant, many times the Lord indeed caused them to call upon the name of the Lord that His name may be remembered among the people of Israel.

And the Lord did that so that... by the people of Israel, the Messiah will be born." What is the purpose of the giving of the law? The apostle said that it was given because of the transgression. These people were rebellious.

Like us, these people were breaking the law that was... the work of the law that was written in their heart, they were continually breaking it. So the law was given because of their transgressions until the Messiah, Jesus Christ, will be born among the people of Israel. under the law, fulfill all of the requirements of the law on behalf of those who were united to Him before the foundation of the world, so that the true Israel will not be the physical of Israel, but the Israel of the heart, including those who were among the physical Israel, and including those who will be among the physical Israel, those who are visited by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. So then, we are lovers of God.

And the law comes to us not as a burden unto righteousness, but as a pleasing instrument to the Savior who fulfilled the law. We are not under the law, but we are under grace. By being in Christ, we obey His commandments because we love Him. Amen.