Beginning
With Moses & the Prophets
"Danger
Beyond this Point"
Scripture
reading is Exodus 19: 7 - 15
Introduction
God is transcendent, surpasses everything; He is supreme; He is
way beyond anything we can perceive, yet at the same time He is imminent. God
is involved with everything that happens in the universe all the time at the
same time.
There are scholars that say the church has a tendency to emphasize
one over the other - In the middle ages people approached God in awe &
wonder. Cathedrals built then were constructed to praise God’s majesty, His
loftiness. I’m sure you have visited the Basilica of St. John here in Savannah.
We live though in an age of immanence, we see God more as a
personal friend, which He is, than as a supreme Deity. He has come to be
more of a user-friendly-God than One Who is Holy & Majestic. That results
in a rather casual approach to worship. This isn’t meaning the style of worship
but the attitude that most worshipers seem to have.
Granted that the place where believers gather is just a building,
whether at home, in a rented theater, in a restaurant, but Jesus said that
where two or more are gathered in His name there He is in the midst of them.
Many go to church in the same way they’d stop by a friends house to watch a ball
game, rather than the way in which one would enter the room of a King, or even
the Oval Office.
Could it be that we’re too comfortable worshipping God than we
ought to be?
Annie Dillard, and American author of prose, poetry &
criticism wrote in her book of essays, Teaching a Stone to Talk, that
she worries many have forgotten how dangerous it is to come close into the
presence of God.
“I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently
sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power
we so blithely hold? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The
churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up
a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats
& velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers
should issue life preservers & signal flares; they should lash us to our
pews.”
This chapter began with God assuring His love for His people -
They now have reached Mt. Sinai, the mountain of God, & here they would
actually meet with God.
God had reminded them how He carried out in eagles wings like a
mother bearing up her faltering young. He spoke tenderly to them; they had a
special place in His heart. The goal for their salvation was fellowship with
Him. They were His royal precious treasure.
They would be His people & He would be their God. Israel
responded in faith - and Moses called the elders & told them what God
commanded him.
When the elders passed to the people what God had said the people
said they’d do all God had said so then Moses took that reply back to the Lord.
Now God tells Moses that He is coming down personally to the mountain, Mt.
Sinai, but He’ll be in a but will be able to hear Him when He speaks to Moses
so that the people will believe in Moses, that he truly spoke with God.
The Creator is willing to come down from His throne, from heaven,
to His people. Nehemiah would later say as the people gathered to hear the
reading of the Law - Then You came down on Mount Sinai, And spoke with them from
heaven; You gave them just ordinances and true laws, Good statutes and
commandments.
(9:13).
We are shown that if God weren’t willing to
stoop down to our level & visit us, because of His transcendence, his
separateness, there would be now way whatsoever we would be able to see Him or
talk to Him.
But He is willing to come down to us. He is
transcendent & immanent, He says- the high and exalted One Who lives
forever, whose name is Holy, "I dwell [on] a high and holy place, And
[also] with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of
the lowly And to revive the heart of the contrite. Isaiah 57:15.
Now redemption is the story of God stooping down to save. From the
very beginning God walked with Adam & Eve. They heard Him as He walked,
they had to have known who it was; their actions of trying to hide implies they
were accustomed to waking and talking with Him in the cool of the day. Again
from Isaiah 57:15, the
high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, "I dwell [on]
a high and holy place, And [also] with the contrite and lowly of spirit In
order to revive the spirit of the lowly And to revive the heart of the
contrite.
We know sadly that Adam & Eve lost the
immediacy of God’s presence, but because of His great love, he’s been reaching
out ever since to restore our fellowship with Him. That’s why He sent his Son
into the world, to restore that fellowship. That Son’s name is Emmanuel, God
with us.
The Lord brought His people close & as they
did, they clearly saw there was a vast distance separating them from God. God
was revealing Himself & at the sametime concealing Himself - In different
ways God kept His distance; hiding in a dark cloud of glory as in verse 9;
Psalm 97:2a - Clouds and thick darkness surround Him; Isaiah 6:4 - the
foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out,
while the temple was filling with smoke. At the transfiguration in
Matt.17:5 - While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed
them,--
The clouds of glory suggest heavenly majesty
& concealment of the divine for our security, mankind’s. Being shroud in
mystery shows His otherness & separateness from His creature - Truly,
You are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, Savior! Isaiah 45:15.
He also kept His distance by telling Israel to
stay off His Holy Mountain - Coming down on the mountain alone made the
mountain itself holy by His presence. When God called to Moses from the burning
bush he told Moses Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your
feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. Exodus
3:5. So now Moses has to set up a perimeter around the mountain so no one would
try to go up the mountain or even touch, I guess any part of it. I’m sure there
would have been souvenir relic hunters then. Mostly it would have been for
public safety. How do you describe God? He’s holy, majestic, so -- awesome,
that He is dangerous. Nadab & Abihu, Aaron’s sons in Leviticus 10:1-3: Now
Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after
putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the
LORD, which He had not commanded them. 2 And fire came out from the presence of
the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. 3 Then Moses said to
Aaron, "It is what the LORD spoke, saying, 'By those who come near Me I
will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be honored.'" So
Aaron, therefore, kept silent.
Uzzah in 1 Chronicle 13:10 who just touched the
Ark to keep it from falling: The anger of the LORD burned against
Uzza, so He struck him down because he put out his hand to the ark; and he died
there before God. For sinners coming into His presence means sudden
death, when He tells Moses, You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me
and live! So, the Israelites being brought by God to Himself were
somewhat too close for comfort so He kept them safe.
Could this be a warning to us? To believers,
christians to not have a presumptuous attitude in our worship? We all are in
the presence of a Holy & transcendent God & we should then - show
gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence
and awe; 29 for our God is a consuming fire. As Scripture tells us in
Hebrews 12:28b-29.
The Israelites have a dilemma. Being drawn
close into a personal relationship with a Holy God who was too dangerous to
even approach. God says, come here but if you do you die. What do they do to be
safe?
Well, no problemo, God has got it covered, He
has the answer. They are to prepare for His arrival - They were to be
consecrated - wash their garments demonstrating they knew God was holy & to
meet Him requires holiness. The preparation would be three days. I couldn’t
find why three days; maybe time for the garments to dry. Then to refrain from
being with a woman, just abstain from personal indulgence that would take their
minds off of God. Paul says as much in 1 Corinthians 7:5--
What about our preparation? What was true for
Israel is true for us but in a different way. The King of kings & Lord of
lords is coming, Jesus Christ. He came once to be born in a manger & to die
on a cross for sinners, us, the world. Soon He will come again to judge the
world -- Are we ready to meet Him?
Paul told the Corinthians in his second letter,
7:1 beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh
and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. David says in Psalm
4:3 & 4a - know that the LORD has set apart the godly man for
Himself; The LORD hears when I call to Him. 4 Tremble, and do not sin; Meditate
in your heart upon your bed, and be still.
Don’t get ahead of me; but when it comes to
meeting with God you can’t come as you are, recall we have
already been redeemed, we have been saved from our bondage - Scripture tells us
to Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see
the Lord. Now,
we can’t make ourselves holy enough, pure enough, clean enough to meet God.
Manhas been trying to do that ever since sin entered into the world with the
fall. Just about every religion in the world has some sort of self-purification
- The religions of the world are all just a bunch of different ways to wash
your clothes as a way of getting ready for God. Unfortunately there isn’t a
soap made where we can clean up ourselves well enough for God. Our best
efforts, scrub as hard as you might, will still leave a stain, even a tiny
speck. God is perfect in holiness - all of us have become like one who is
unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us
wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
(Isaiah 64:6).
A Mediator
To be ready to meet the King is more than
personal consecration - We need a mediator, a lawyer, someone to advocate for
us. Someone who can bridge the gap between the finite sinful people & the
holy transcendent God.
For Israel, Moses served as their mediator ever
since God called him to be a prophet at the burning bush -- Moses was given
special access to Him. when God had something to say to His people, He said it
to Moses who in turn said it to the people.
Moses represented the people before God. He
cried out to God when they were in need. Moses had to answer to God when the
people grumbled. Moses interceded for the people in prayer before the throne
with his hands raised. -- Moses was a two way messenger. He had to keep the
lines of communication open at all times. He was the
signal officer --
But as mediator he was charged with sitting
Israel apart as holy unto God. He consecrated. How? There’s nothing specific in
Scripture, but he did something & washing their clothes wasn’t enough. God
has to make them pure & this He did through His mediator Moses.
What action did Moses take? Most likely he
performed some kind of sacrifice. That is something that God always required
for holiness. That’s what Adam & Eve needed when they failed to cover up
their sin. But there God Himself covered them. (Gen. 3:21).
Moses offered a sacrifice to consecrate the
Israelites. He had precedence for this in his own experience. Before bringing
the Israelites out of Egypt God told Moses to Sanctify to Me every
firstborn, the first offspring of every womb among the sons of Israel, both of
man and beast; it belongs to Me, and by sacrificing for their sins an
animal, a one year old lamb.
Moses will do this later to set apart Aaron
& his sons as Israel’s priests. As mediator Moses’ role wasn’t just to converse
with God, but also to consecrate His people by making atonement for their sins.
To wrap this up,
This brings to what we need; A
mediator who will cleanse us from sin & consecrate us for God’s holy
service. And we have such a mediator - He has been retained for us all. He is a
better mediator, the best, He has obtained a more excellent
ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has
been enacted on better promises. (Hebrews 8:6). The only one we’ll ever
need - Jesus Christ - If there was a riddle concerning God’s transcendence
& immanence, the answer is Jesus Christ.
He is Emmanuel - God with us - He is truly
divine - He possesses all of God’s Kingly majesty - He shares our humanity
because He is a real human being. He speaks with God for us & makes us pure
enough for God, Scripture says we have been sanctified through the
offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Heb. 10:10).
Through the person of His Son, Jesus the
transcendent God is immanent. He said to His disciple Phillip, “He who has seen Me
has seen the Father.” Without giving up His divine nature Jesus took on our human
nature & entered fully our lost condition, yet remaining sinless.
As a man Jesus revealed God to us; as a man He
suffered all the indignities of life on earth; as a man He suffered and died on
the cross for our sins.
“Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; Hail
th’incarnate Deity, Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel.”
From Hark the herald angels sing.
