Exodus: Who Is the LORD?

probably none of the commandments has been so troubled by errors in both directions, errors of excess and errors of defect. Most of the commandments are broken primarily in defect, as people serve other gods or fail to do enough to preserve life, chastity, and property. But this commandment, though it is indeed frequently broken by defect, is also often broken by excessive, exaggerated attempts to...

we saw last week that the third commandment requires us to be mentally engaged in speaking about God and bearing God's name. When you stop thinking, you need to stop praying. Don't keep talking to or about God when you're no longer paying attention to yourself! But though we saw that reverent attention is required whenever we use and as long as we bear the name of God, this week I want to talk abo...

The main theme of Exodus is the knowledge of God. It is the knowledge of God that leads His people out of slavery and into His presence for worship. Thus, the first third of the book deals with getting out of Egypt, and the final half of the book deals with the Levitical way of access into God's presence for worship. God reveals Himself in bringing His people out, and He reveals Himself through th...

The English word "jealous" or "jealousy" appears 49 times in the NKJV, and the Hebrew root appears 87 times in the Hebrew Bible. The jealousy of God is a huge part of His character. It's something we need to know about, respect, and take into account in our worship. Indeed, brothers and sisters, I dare to proclaim to you tonight that until you understand the jealous, burning passion of God, you wo...

In the first half of this chapter, Paul bestows the Holy Spirit, heals people just through his handkerchiefs, teaches every day for five hours for two years, and convinces huge numbers of people to burn their magic books. In the second half, he is silenced and sidelined; we get to hear only one sentence from him: "After that, I must also see Rome." What happened to the mighty apostle? Luke is show...

God is jealous, and when He sees us carrying on with an image, His jealousy rises up against us. From this fact about God's beautiful, righteous, and holy character flows this, His #2 command for His people. The first thing you need to know to successfully honor God is that you are to have Him alone and no other as your God. The second thing you need to know is that He challenges an exclusive prer...

The Ten Commandments are a portrait of God. They are statements regarding what your Heavenly Father loves and how He lives. They tell us about God first and about our behavior second — and what this commandment tells us, positively speaking, is that God is jealous for His worship and demands that He be worshiped exclusively on His own terms, not ours.

The first commandment sums up in itself all loving, knowing, believing, hoping, choosing, worshiping, and more. That is its glorious positive side. But stated negatively (as, indeed, the commandment is) it bans sin in general, and in particular bans all forms of idolatry. To have anything else other than the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as our God is to violate this first and greatest c...

This commandment is the most important and virtually contains all of the other commandments; in other words, to break any other commandment is to break this one, because to sin is to stop having God for your God. That notion — or better, that practice — of having God for your God — is the core of Biblical religion and the substance of this commandment. As with all the commandments, we are going to...

The Ten Commandments, as we will see today, don't come to us in a vacuum. They come to us in an environment of love and saving grace. Because God has already given Himself to you, these commands are yours and your children's forever so that you can respond in love to the God who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. As we will see in particular today, the first five commandments all...

Three points this evening: first, the rigor of the law, for it commands the whole person; second, the perfection of the law, for it covers all possible ethical situations; and third, the Lord of the law, for the law reflects the glory and beauty of the persons of the Holy Trinity.

I want to confront a popular error head-on. Put briefly, this error is the systematic replacement of moral categories by psychological ones in the realm of decision-making. What do I mean? Just this: As you try to figure out how to handle your key relationships, you will hear a lot of psychobabble from the world. You will hear the words "self-care," "abuse," "expectations," and "emotional needs" t...

Do you remember last week's sermon? "You Don't Understand Holiness." That was its title. And do you know what approach the Almighty took to rectify that lack of understanding of His holiness among His people? Yes, that's right. He promptly revealed the Ten Commandments to them. These are words for a people who don't understand holiness, who don't know who their God is or what He requires of them....

Some commentators accuse this chapter of ending on a note of anticlimax. The anticipation builds and builds, and then peters out with a whimper, a speech by Moses rather than a glorious, awe-inspiring revelation of God Almighty. Those commentators have missed the basic plot of the chapter, which is this: Israel arrives at Sinai, spends two days getting ready to meet God, literally marches out of c...

The theophany on Sinai is undoubtedly the climax of Old Testament revelation. God spoke to Abraham for a few minutes at a time, scattered across decades of Abraham's life. But He spoke to Moses all day long for weeks. Fifty-seven chapters of Scripture were given at Sinai; there is no comparable chunk of revelation all given at once until the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Obviously this is ext...

This is the beginning of that Sinai revelation. This passage shows how God spoke to Israel, where He spoke, and how His people responded. And since we are the same people in covenant with God that Israel was at the foot of Sinai, this passage is relevant to us. The promises are ours; the commands are ours too. So listen to the promises and keep the covenant, all through the grace of the Mediator w...

We need to learn the humility of Moses; we need to learn to delegate. But this passage is not here to teach us that we need to delegate. This passage is here to teach us that Israel was ready to hear God's law and enter His covenant, and more broadly that in order to be a faithful covenant partner with Yahweh, a society needs to be organized in its ability to make and enforce judicial decisions. A...

Throughout Exodus 18 the narrator is obsessed with Jethro being Moses' father-in-law. He mentions it 13 times in 27 verses in this chapter. That is a full quarter of all the uses of the word "father-in-law" in the entire OT. And that's why I've titled this sermon "A Father-in-law's Faith." Brothers and sisters, as we will see in the course of tonight's sermon, this is an account of Jethro's conver...

at this halfway point come two stories which, at first glance, seem to have very little to do either with the exodus from Egypt that occupies the first half of the book, or with the information about building the tabernacle that occupies the second half of the book. What does this visit from Jethro, and the appointment of judges over Israel, have to do with the rest of Exodus? Why on earth is it i...

We have seen now three episodes of complaining in a row. In each one, God provided. He gave water in the desert — twice. He gave food in the desert. He gave the Sabbath. Now, though, Israel is attacked from outside — and that occasion allows God to reveal more of Himself. The occasion of God's further revelation is an assault from the wild tribesmen of Amalek. Amalek was a descendant of Esau and l...

Massah and Meribah stand to this day as a lesson on what not to do. If you want to stay in God's good books, don't pull a Massah and Meribah. Thus, we know that the place has become notorious as a location of disaster. But tonight I want to examine with you what exactly happened at Massah and Meribah. Thankfully, unlike the great unsolved mysteries of the past — who killed JFK? Why did Dag Hammars...

What's the issue in this second round of complaining? What is Moses trying to tell us? Simply this: Yahweh provides for His people, and He tests His people to see whether they actually believe in His provision and obey His stipulations connected with the provision.

Israel grumbles at Mara here in Ex. 15; in the next chapter, they grumble in the wilderness of Sin; and in the chapter after that, they grumble at Rephidim. Lord-willing, we will spend a week looking at each one of these episodes. Interestingly, after the people leave Sinai there are three more grumbling episodes in Numbers 14-17. This is not a problem that was easily overcome, and if you have a c...

The Song of the Sea is one of the four major songs in the Pentateuch, and the only one that does not speak of the latter days. The other songs are the blessing of the patriarchs in Genesis 49, the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32, and the blessing of the 12 tribes in Deuteronomy 33. The first and last songs in the Torah, then, are about the twelve tribes and what will befall them in the latter days...