Exodus: Who Is the LORD?

What a wonderful adventure it has been to travel with Israel from Egypt's land to Sinai, and along the way to meet with God. We have been touring this book of the knowledge of God for nearly three years now; I preached the first sermon on Exodus on Sunday, November 22, 2020. We have seen how God brought His people from slavery to worship, how He revealed Himself first at the burning bush, then in...

We began looking at this book nearly three years ago, if you can believe it — on Nov. 22, 2020. Since that time, we have seen some incredible truths both doctrinal and moral. We have seen that Exodus is the book of the knowledge of God, symbolized by Pharaoh's opening question, "Who is the LORD?" And we have seen that God brought Israel from slavery to worship by way of the knowledge of Himself. T...

Virtually no one has died on a commercial US flight since 2014. Flying is just about the safest thing you can do these days. Why is that? My friends, if there is a single word that explains this near-miracle, it is the word "checklist." Before any plane is allowed to get off the ground, every last system and feature on that plane is meticulously gone over and checked off. Nothing is left to chance...

The Tabernacle used one ton of gold, two tons of silver, and three tons of bronze — and it was portable! Now, don't worry. There is no one-to-one correlation between the building campaign and generosity recorded in these chapters and the building campaign and generosity that our church may be called upon to participate in. There is a correlation, of course. But it's different than you are probably...

After wrestling all night with an angel, Jacob got to see the face of God. The text implies that it was the face of the Man who wrestled with him. In that man's face, Jacob saw the face of God. It is a clear foreshadowing of the coming of the God-man, the man whose face is God's face. Our text this evening contains another clear foreshadowing of the coming of the God-man. The face of Moses was not...

Our text this evening perfectly captures the dual authorship of God's written word. In this command to write down the words of God, we see an effortless gliding from Moses' writing to God's writing — an ambiguity that perfectly captures Scripture's nature as the divine-human book.

We saw last time the extraordinary promise made to the Mediator that in Him God would do marvelous things, exceedingly marvelous things. The Lord immediately then describes the terms of the covenant once more, in language by and large quoted from ch. 23 or from ch. 13. There is not really anything new in this passage; it is a repetition of material we've already seen. Why? Because God is reiterati...

We have seen throughout these chapters that the relationship between God and Israel is utterly dependent on the relationship between God and Moses. Like it or not (and you should like it), the Almighty's attitude toward Israel is a function of His attitude toward the mediator who stands between Him and Israel. That theme has surfaced in a major way in the previous sections of the golden calf narra...

The name of God is beautiful and rich. Indeed, rather than preaching just one sermon on it, I would love to pause and preach a sermon on every one of the attributes that God lists as belonging to Himself in our text this evening. As valuable as that would be, though, we are going to hasten through these, what the Jews call the "thirteen attributes," in just one sermon this evening. We are going to...

Recall with me the original motivation for the golden calf: "Make us gods to go before us," said Israel to Aaron. And he did. But that was no god, not worth worshiping, incapable of leading. Nonetheless, it well expressed the human desire for a visible god. We want to see what we worship! It is astonishing what an outsized role the sense of sight plays in our lives. That is true also in the religi...

We come this evening to an absolutely incredible account of the Mediator's work. What we see is that Moses dares to make his requests of Yahweh on the basis of Yahweh's covenant — as he has before. But then he takes it further, and also appeals on the basis of God's gracious attachment to him, Moses. "Save them because you know me and are gracious to me!" That's the core of the Mediator's appeal....

It is crucial to understand the large-scale narrative arc of these chapters before looking more closely at the details. God reiterates His promise to accompany Israel in His angel, only to have Moses insist twice that Israel won't budge without Him. And so the issue of the "God to go before us" comes to a head: Is Yahweh going to accompany Israel? Moses boldly insists that God come with them, and...

We have been looking for the past two weeks at the mediator and his work. We saw the way that Moses interceded for the people after their sin with the golden calf. We also saw how he put a stop to their sin and made them drink the product of their wickedness. The mediator does both things. He stops sin, and he asks God to forgive sin. We generally like to emphasize one or the other. Some of us are...

Last week we saw one side of the Mediator's work. We saw Moses interceding with God for the continued existence of Israel. That is a truly glorious part of what our Mediator does for us. But it is far from the whole of the Mediator's work. We like the idea that Jesus asks God to forgive our sins. It makes our sins seem more manageable, less offensive. Jesus almost seems to be someone who's OK with...

Today's sermon on the Golden Calf is going to be largely negative in tone and content. My goal is to preach Christ — but today, I do so by preaching anti-Christ! By that I mean, of course, that I will describe Christ through looking at the opposite, the idol that the people and Aaron made while Moses talked with God atop Mt. Sinai. This idol, in all its gross ugliness, points to the beauty and suf...

What we will see here, in God's seventh speech to Moses on the summit of Sinai, is that the Sabbath day is not to be profaned, not even for the great purpose of building the house of God.

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, we come this evening to look at yet another piece of furniture found in the tabernacle. This piece was not found in the tabernacle proper, but rather in the courtyard outside the tabernacle. It stood between the altar of burnt offering and the tabernacle door. This piece of furniture was a large tub or tank for holding water; its name is typica...

We live in the age of Big Data. The most popular class offered to undergraduates at Harvard University is now Introduction to Statistics. It enrolls more than seven hundred each year, out of a total undergrad population of about six thousand. Oh, and there I am too, rattling off statistics with which to make my case. Maybe most statistics are indeed made up on the spot, but the fact that you feel...

The incense symbolizes prayer and thus the inner, spiritual side of religious worship. The incense altar is the counterpart to the bronze altar, which symbolizes physical gifts and thus the outer, costly side of religious worship. Both altars are necessary; true religion is both internal and external. You may think of Paul's dictum that "He is a Jew who is one inwardly." True enough. But the inwar...

This stuff is relevant to us because we have such a high priest. He has His hands full, because He's got the whole world in His hands. He is busy consecrating all of it to His Father, making it holy, bringing about the day when Eden will cover the earth and it will be full of the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. His hands are full, but He knows our name, feeds us, an...

This whole chapter is God's instruction to Moses about how to fill the hands of the priests, as in the expression "You've got your hands full." To ordain a priest is to fill his hands — to give him plenty and more than enough to do. My wife and I have five children, and we hear it all the time: "You've got your hands full." Presumably when people saw Aaron trying to wrestle yet another bull into t...

The priesthood of Christ is incredibly important; indeed, it is every bit as much at the heart of Scripture as His Kingship. We need a King to rule us, but we also need a priest to save us and represent us before God. In Christ, we have such a priest. That, in turn, should motivate us to study the pre-history of priesthood. What was priesthood like before Christ? Because the answer to that questio...

What can we learn from the passage we just read? To most of us, it sounded like some rather boring details about an altar and a courtyard. But brothers and sisters, there is very much a spiritual lesson present within this chapter. We are going to talk not only about the physical items of furniture or landscaping that are presented here, but also about their meaning. What we'll see is that the alt...

Why, when the church has fought about issues of all kinds, do we have 37 verses on the fabric and frame and furniture of the tabernacle, but no chapter on church government or the mode of baptism or the advisability of contraception? Brothers and sisters, God's ways are not our ways. God wanted to come and live with Israel, and all this material on His dwelling place is here because, well, it's Hi...

You don't really know a man until you've been in his home. When you see how he lives, that explains a lot. That reveals a lot. That makes many other things clear. Well, in the same way, to take this tour of Yahweh's home, or tent, reveals to us things about Him that we couldn't learn in any other way. So let's dive in.