Moses on the Mountain with the Lord - Part 5
Exodus 23:1-33
Sermon by Rick Crandall
McClendon Baptist Church - June 30, 2010
BACKGROUND:
*The LORD God of the Old Testament who appeared to men was God the Son, the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ. We are studying these appearances because the same Lord is here with us right now. Each of these appearances has something to say to us.
*Nobody in the Old Testament had more meetings with the Lord than Moses. Tonight we will take another look at Moses’ fourth meeting on the mountain with the Lord. (1)
*In Exodus 20, the Lord spoke out loud to all of the people, and it scared them to death. So in Exodus 20:19, “They said to Moses, "You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.”
*That’s when Moses went back to the thick darkness where God was. And the Lord began to give Moses many specific details of the law.
-Tonight let’s begin by reading Exodus 23:1-8.
INTRODUCTION:
*This Sunday is the 4th of July, and we will celebrate our freedom in a time of uncertainty. Yet, the fact of the matter is, we can always trust in our God!
*Francis Scott Key stressed this truth in a seldom sung verse of “The Star Spangled Banner.” Remember that Key was held captive on a British ship in Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Baltimore in 1814.
*Through the night he strained his eyes to see if our army in Fort McHenry had survived the battle. And in the morning he rejoiced over the victory won. Then he wrote these words:
“Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "IN GOD IS OUR TRUST."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!” (2)
*And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
-Trust in the Lord!
1. First: Trust in the Lord to be a righteous God.
*Vs. 1-8 remind us again that our God is a righteous God, and this reality should affect all of our relationships. Last week we began to focus on the fact that God cares about relationships. God cares about how we treat Him, and how we treat other people.
[1] And when the Lord began to speak to Moses about this in Exodus 21, He started on the right way to treat slaves.
*This was an eye-opening passage for me, because it reveals to us that the slavery in the Bible was very different from the slavery once practiced in our own country. Old Testament slavery was voluntary. Poor people sometimes sold themselves for a temporary period of time to keep their families from starving. And God wanted these slaves treated kindly.
*Slavery from the 1600 to 1800’s was very different. African warlords and kidnappers sold captives to Europeans. The captives were usually force-marched to coastal ports on the west coast of Africa, where they were held for sale to the European or American slave traders.
*Historians estimate that between 9 and 12 million slaves arrived in the New World. Typical slave ships contained several hundred slaves. They were often stacked in like chord wood, like you see in this picture, and 2 to 4 million died on the way. (3)
*But in Exodus 21:16, the Lord told Moses, "He who kidnaps a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death.”
*No wonder former slave captain, John Newton wrote:
“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.”
*Our God is a righteous God! -- He cares about the way we treat slaves.
[2] And He cares about sincerity.
*This is the main focus in the opening verses of Exodus 23:1-3:
1. "You shall not circulate a false report. Do not put your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.
2. You shall not follow a crowd to do evil; nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after many to pervert justice.
3. You shall not show partiality to a poor man in his dispute.
-And again in vs. 6-8:
6. You shall not pervert the judgment of your poor in his dispute.
7. Keep yourself far from a false matter; do not kill the innocent and righteous. For I will not justify the wicked.
8. And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the discerning and perverts the words of the righteous.
*Our God is a righteous God, so He wants us to be honest and trustworthy in the way we treat other people. He cares about sincerity.
[3] He also cares about sympathy.
*So in vs. 4&5 the Lord said:
4. "If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall surely bring it back to him again.
5. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden, and you would refrain from helping it, you shall surely help him with it.”
*Our God is a righteous God! -- He cares about sympathy.
[4] And He cares about the way we treat strangers.
*The Lord mentioned the proper treatment of strangers back in Exodus 22:21, where He said: “You shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
-Now in Exodus 23:9, the Lord stressed again: “Also you shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
*These commands demonstrate the goodness of God over and over again.
-And without a doubt, we should trust the Lord to be a righteous God.
2. But also trust Him to be a jealous God.
*That sounds odd at first, because we usually think of jealousy as a bad thing.
-But our God is a jealous God, and we get a taste of that in vs. 13, where the Lord said: “And in all that I have said to you, be circumspect and make no mention of the name of other gods, nor let it be heard from your mouth.”
*God knows that His people are prone to wander. We see it again starting in vs. 23, where the Lord said:
23. “My Angel will go before you and bring you in to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off.
24. You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works; but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars.
*And in vs. 32-33:
32. "You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.
33. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against Me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.’’
*And there’s the key. Richard Strauss explained the meaning of God’s jealousy:
-“The root idea in the Old Testament word “jealous” is to become intensely red.
-It refers to the color of the face or the rising heat of the emotions associated with intense zeal or over something dear to us.
*In fact, both the Old Testament and New Testament words for jealousy are also translated “zeal.” God is zealous or jealous to protect what is precious to Him. And that would be YOU. (4)
*Listen to something Paul told Christians in 2 Corinthians 11:1-3:
1. Oh, that you would bear with me in a little folly and indeed you do bear with me.
2. For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
3. But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”
*Our God is a jealous God because He wants to protect what is precious to Him.
*James Merritt also points out that God is a jealous god, “because God has a monopoly on being God. He has the exclusive copyright, the eternal patent. He has cornered the market on being God.
*No human being ever has the right to be jealous of another human being because you are not the only human being that there is. No preacher has the right to be jealous of another preacher, because there are other preachers in the world. No athlete has the right to be jealous of other athletes, because there are other athletes in the world. But God has a right to be jealous, because there are no other gods.” (5)
*So The Lord warns us against false gods. But He also commands our worship.
-And we can’t go into detail here, but this is what the Lord does starting in vs. 14:
14. "Three times you shall keep a feast to Me in the year:
15. You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread (you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt; none shall appear before Me empty);
16. and the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors which you have sown in the field; and the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you have gathered in the fruit of your labors from the field.
17. "Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord GOD.
18. "You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with leavened bread; nor shall the fat of My sacrifice remain until morning.
19. The first of the firstfruits of your land you shall bring into the house of the LORD your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
*All of these things the Lord commanded because He is worthy of our worship, we are prone to wander, and He wants to protect His people from the devil’s snare.
-So trust in the Lord to be a jealous God.
3. And trust Him to be a generous God.
*We see a miraculous example of the Lord’s generosity starting in vs. 20:
20. "Behold, I send an Angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.
21. Beware of Him and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions; for My name is in Him.
22. But if you indeed obey His voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
23. For My Angel will go before you and bring you in to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off.
24. You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works; but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars.
25. So you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you.
26. No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.
*We see the Lord’s generosity again in vs. 31 where He said, "And I will set your bounds from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River. For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.”
*Church, those boundaries include part of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, all the way to the Euphrates River... -- And 2 Chronicles 9:26 tells us that’s how far the kingdom stretched during Solomon’s reign.
*Our God is a generous God! -- And the greatest generosity He ever displayed was on the cross of Jesus Christ.
-So in Eph 1:7 Paul said: “In Him (i.e. in Jesus) we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.”
-Then in Eph 3:8 Paul said: “To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,”
*“The unsearchable riches of Christ” -- How much is that?
*Jeff Ferrera of Waukegan, IL was balancing his check book one day and called First Nat’l Bank of Chicago to get his balance. The electronic voice droned, “Your primary checking account currently has a balance of $924,844,204.32”
*Jeff was one of 826 customers who were almost billionaires for a day because of the biggest error in the history of U.S. banking, a goof that totaled almost $764 billion! A lot of people jokingly told Jeff to transfer it to the Caymans and run for it. But Jeff just called the bank.
*$924,844,204.32 -- That’s a lot of money, but it’s not a drop in the bucket compared to the unsearchable riches of Christ! (6)
*So trust in the Lord to be a generous God.
4. And trust Him to be a meticulous God.
*That is to say: God has a plan. God has a plan for your life, and He takes care of the details. The Lord doesn’t leave any loose ends hanging around.
*We get a sense of this truth in vs. 27-30, where the Lord said:
27. “I will send My fear before you, I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come, and will make all your enemies turn their backs to you.
28. And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you.
29. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beast of the field become too numerous for you.
30. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased, and you inherit the land.”
*I love that part of God’s plan. He was taking care of the details.
-God wasn’t going to put more on the Children of Israel than they could bear.
-And He won’t put more on you than you can bear.
*The Lord had a plan for the Children of Israel, and He’s got a plan for your life, too.
-“Little by little” the Lord said.
-God was watching the little things, and it reminded me of the sparrow.
*Hear Jesus in Luke 12:
6. “Are not five sparrows sold for two copper coins? And not one of them is forgotten before God.
7. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
*So we sing these words:
-“Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,
-Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home,
-When Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He:
-His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
-I sing because I’m happy,
-I sing because I’m free,
-For His eye is on the sparrow,
-And I know He watches me.” (7)
*Moses on the mountain reminds us tonight that we can always trust in the Lord.
-Let’s trust Him as we go to God in prayer.
1. Good explanation of Moses’ time on the mountain: “Seven Ascents” by Richard Gamble - www.heraldmag.org/2006/06mj_3.htm
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner
3. Sources:
Information - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Passage
Picture - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Slave_ship_diagram.png
4. Online sermon “A Jealous God” by Richard L. Strauss - http://bible.org/seriespage/jealous-god)
5. James Merritt quote found on Christianglobe.com, exact source unknown
6. SermonCentral sermon “Looking Back - Planning Ahead” by Steve Shepherd - Phil 3:12-14
7. Words: Civilla Martin, 1905. Music: Charles Gabriel - www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/h/i/hiseyeis.htm
