God of Thunder and Grace
Download MP3But you can open your Bibles to Exodus chapter 19. Now earlier this summer, when we were still meeting at our house, we actually looked at this text. And I've debated this week whether or not, we should go over this text again, but it's an important text, and the church has grown a lot since we were in our living room. And so I thought I would teach through it again and maybe look at a few new things as well. So if you're at my house this summer, apparently God wants you to hear these things again.
Joel Brooks:So listen close, maybe we won't have to do it in another 6 months, if you pay attention. For Israel here, the next 11 months, the next 59 chapters are at Mount Sinai. So it's absolutely crucial that you have a good understanding of what is going on right here. Now read with me in the chapter 19. We'll look at the first six verses.
Joel Brooks:On the 3rd new moon after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. They set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness. There Israel encamped before the mountain while Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him out of the mountain saying, thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the people of Israel, you yourselves have seen what I did to the Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.
Joel Brooks:Go to verse 16. On the morning of the 3rd day, there there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, And they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln and the whole mountain trembled greatly.
Joel Brooks:And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him in thunder. The Lord God came down on Mount Sinai to the top of the mountain. And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain. And Moses went up. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:God asked that you would be
Jeffrey Heine:our teacher, Holy Spirit, that you would come. You would
Joel Brooks:write these words on our hearts. You would write these words on our hearts. I pray that we would walk away from this place with a much deeper affection for you. Lord, as we're going through those commandments, just 10, over and over again, I could see how I had failed. Thank you for your grace and mercy.
Joel Brooks:Lord I ask now that in this time my words would fall to the ground and they will blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, let your words remain and may they change us. And I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Anna Dillard in her book, Pilgrim of Tinker Creek, writes about the sovereignty of God.
Joel Brooks:And listen to this. It says, she says, there's not a guarantee in this world. Oh, your needs are absolutely guaranteed by the plainest words, knock, seek, and ask, and God will give it to you, but you need to read the fine print. Not as the world giveth, give I unto you, and there is the catch. When you ask of God, you will come back transformed, but not in the way you bargained for.
Joel Brooks:For you will come back dribbling and crazed. Your needs are met, but not as the world giveth. And when it finally comes time for you to die, you finally understand that you are dealing with a maniac. Have you ever thought of God as a maniac? A maniac.
Joel Brooks:I mean, when I read that, at first it really rubbed me the wrong way, but then I could see there's a certain element of truth to this. Dillard was was on to something, because the God of the Bible does not always act like a sane man. He certainly cannot be controlled, and and sometimes he he does things that that seem absolutely terrible. And you can see this if you're to look at just one biblical example, the life of Jacob. Jacob was a pretty horrible person.
Joel Brooks:If you if you go through his life, he never really did anything of worth. He was a liar. He was a user. He was a deceiver. You never even get a hint in his life that he's interested in in in in God, or knowing God early on.
Joel Brooks:Then finally in Genesis 32, he prays for the very first time. He lets out this this it's a beautiful prayer. Talking about the sovereignty of God, and how great God is, and all of these things, a beautiful prayer. And this is how God responds. After Jacob finally turns to him, he attacks him in the middle of the night, throws his hip out of joint, and he walks with a limp for the rest of his life.
Joel Brooks:Does that sound sane? Does that sound predictable? That god would do that? I mean, god is he is holy. He is powerful.
Joel Brooks:He is just, He is faithful, but one attribute that we can never use to describe our God is tame. He is certainly not tame. And don't ever call him safe. And here, we get a glimpse of this in the wilderness at Mount Sinai. He comes down in thunder, and in fire, and in earthquakes.
Joel Brooks:And I I left a picture out there from National Geographic this past week that that shows what I I kinda think Mount Sinai probably looked like. And it says volcano shooting up all these ash, all this ash, and within the ash, there is lightning going around everywhere. And this is a terrifying sight. This is where the people were. And they're covering their ears at one point in Exodus, and they're trembling, and they're saying, God don't speak to us anymore.
Joel Brooks:Speak to Moses because if you speak to us, we're going to die. We're gonna die. And if you remember just last week, they were saying, God's not even with us. He's not any among us. Think God shows up, and they're scared out of their minds, and they're like, no, no, no.
Joel Brooks:Leave. And they want to flee. This is not the God that you can put, you know, on a on a calendar, I mean, with maybe the good thought for the day, you know, or a God that would enjoy being reduced to, you know, real kind of pithy statement on a bumper sticker or a t shirt. This is not the God that you can come to and worship and yawn at the same time. It's not a God who is your buddy, or a God as I would hear when I was a director at UCF.
Joel Brooks:I would hear some students actually pray, what up God? That is not the God here. He's not your best friend here. And he is certainly not a predictable god, and he's not a god that you can control. And I would say that this is not the God that the Israelites bargained for.
Joel Brooks:We're gonna look at this next week, but they wanted a much tamer God. Maybe a smaller God, maybe a little one that's made out of gold, something that they could carry around and worship on their own terms. Not this. This is not a God that you want angry with you. It's not a God that you would want to ever disobey.
Joel Brooks:And make no mistake, God wants these people terrified at Sinai. He wants them absolutely terrified before he gives them the law. And so when we come together and we gather to worship, we need to remember that he is awesome. We need to take his word seriously. God is a God of thunder, and he's a God of fire and smoke and earthquake.
Joel Brooks:Now this poses a number of problems for us because this is the kind of God that some of my neighbors point to and and they think, that's why I'm not a Christian. Right there. That's that's why I'm not a Christian, you know. And they just kind of roll their eyes, and to them, the Bible just seems very outdated. It seems archaic, and and and they can't relate to modern culture.
Joel Brooks:And this this idea of this angry God coming down to the top of a mountain with fire and smoke, they just look at that and they say, no thanks. No thanks. And all these laws that we're supposed to live by, you know, why would I ever want that? So what do we do with this this ancient law, this this terrifying god who thunders them down? Well for starters, the first thing we need to do is put the entire law in its proper perspective, in its proper place.
Joel Brooks:If you remember a couple of weeks ago, we looked at God gave the people a test about gathering manna. It was a very simple test. Gather manna, enough for one day. Don't gather it on the Sabbath. Really easy test.
Joel Brooks:They failed. So God's not looking at that thing, well you failed that. Now let me come up with like 59 chapters of law, and see it, you know, see how well you're gonna do here. That's not it. The test isn't about rules that they're gonna have to obey to get in a relationship with Him.
Joel Brooks:That's not it. You don't have to do these things, or God's up there angry and he's gonna smite you. The foundation for the law is found in verse 4, which we just read. Says, you yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles wings and brought you to myself. So although God is a God of thunder, he is also a God of grace.
Joel Brooks:And he reminds the Israelites, you are slaves. You were crying out in your misery, and I swoop down like an eagle, and I put you on my back, and I carried you out of Egypt. I set my affection on you, and it's crucial to understand that God did this before he ever gave them any law. God saved them before he ever told them how to behave, before he ever told them what to do. Their salvation is already secured before they ever get to the law.
Joel Brooks:He doesn't ask that you clean up yourself, that you do this laundry list of things so, you know, we can get together and have a relationship. No. Saved. Redeemed. And then here's the law.
Joel Brooks:So your salvation has absolutely nothing to do with whether you have cleaned up your act. And so this makes us ask a question, well what then is the law for, And there are a lot of reasons, but I'm gonna go with the 2 most immediate that are in the text. Look at verse 5. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples for all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. The first thing God says is if you obey my law, I will treasure you.
Joel Brooks:I will treasure you. And the language he uses is there of a, it's a special Hebrew term. It's, you know, a king owns everything. He owns the the streets you walk on, really even the house that you live in, but he's saying there are certain things, certain treasured possessions that he keeps in his own bedroom. Things precious to him, and he says, if you obey this law, you become that to me.
Joel Brooks:I will treasure you in in a very personal and intimate way. And you need to think of this, the the best way I can think of this is in terms of a love relationship. You know, some of you are, if you're head over heels in love with somebody, you know, you and you really, you you really want to impress maybe this girl. What you're gonna do is you're gonna go to her Facebook page, you know, and you're gonna you're gonna go through all the lists there, and you're gonna find out what are her interests, what are all the songs, the bands that she likes, you know, is it romantic walks on the beach at night. You know, you're gonna find all of those things, and then you're going to do them.
Joel Brooks:You're gonna try to be that to her. Why? You want her to treasure you. You know what she likes. You know what's in her heart, and so you're gonna do things to impress, to win her heart.
Joel Brooks:And what God is doing here, when he gives us the law that we just went through earlier in our liturgical reading, what he's doing here is he is telling you his heart. This is my heart. This is what I like. I've already saved you, but but this is who I am. He's revealing to us his character, the things he's passionate about.
Joel Brooks:And if you read through chapters 19 through 24, you're gonna find that he is passionate about justice, helping the poor, sexual purity, kindness, and all these things. And and what God says is, now that I rescued you and we are in a relationship, this is what I want. This is what I want for you because this is in my heart. And we don't do these things to get in his heart. We do these things because we already are there, and he wants to treasure us.
Joel Brooks:The other reason for the that we find in this text for the reason of the law is in verse 6. Says, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Now usually when you read through the 10 Commandments, you make them very very personal. They're per they're just about you, but they are given to a community. A very distinct community.
Joel Brooks:And they're given to us and we're to be a a new kingdom within this kingdom here. We're to be a new city within the city of Birmingham. We're we're to be, as Jesus said, a city on a hill, a community. These laws are for a group of people, and this is what it means to to be a holy nation, to be a kingdom of priests. It means you need to be utterly, absolutely distinct.
Joel Brooks:That's what a holy nation is. You're totally distinct. To be a priest means you're a mediator, and you point people to God. So you're to be a distinct people and you're to point people to God as a community. Now let's look at some of these laws.
Joel Brooks:We could go on and on about some of the specifics here, but let's look at what actually in these laws make Israel distinct. What should make us distinct? Now I was watching a PBS special on the law of Moses the other night, and it actually surprised me because it was so liberal. But one of the one of the scholars, he actually came out with a really astute observation, And he said that, you know, in all the other religions up to this time, when you look at their laws, dealing with their God and everything, all of the laws were very vertical. It was how they, the people, should relate to their God.
Joel Brooks:And then you come to the Jewish faith here, and you get to the law of Moses, and it goes horizontal. There's the vertical element. Yes, it is between you and God, but then all of a sudden it gets very horizontal. How do you relate to your neighbor? How do we relate in community with one another?
Joel Brooks:And so that was utterly distinct for its time. There was nothing like that. The Hebrew law tells man how they should treat one another, and God spends a whole lot of time telling the Israelites to treat 4 different groups. He says, I want this is how you're gonna treat the poor, how you're gonna treat the orphan, how you're gonna treat the widow, and how you're gonna treat the immigrant. If you read it over and over, that's where God's heart is.
Joel Brooks:Those 4 groups. And it says that if we are kind, and if we give ourselves to those people, we point the world to Christ. We're a kingdom of priests. There's some pretty radical stuff in here. You know, for instance, in every ancient Near Eastern law at this time, it was only the elite that were protected.
Joel Brooks:The laws were only for the wealthy. If you look at all the other laws at this time. For instance, the Hebrews were commanded to take care of the poor without interest, and that is totally unique. They were to give loans to the poor and not charge any interest. One of the parallels to this is is from the Hammurabi laws at the roughly around the same time, and it says, yes, when he lends to the poor, and he give them grain, charge 33% interest.
Joel Brooks:And then here comes the Hebrews and they say, give to the poor no interest. Another radical law here was adultery. At this point in history, adultery was only a sin that a woman could commit. A man cannot commit adultery, only a woman. In all societies up to this point, men could get married and then they could have whatever sexual relationships they wanted with no consequences, nobody looked down on it, and then this comes here.
Joel Brooks:And God says, it's wrong for both a man and for a woman to have any extramarital affairs. Utterly unique. God also says that the Israelites are set to set aside 10% of their income to give to the poor and to the Levites, unheard of in any society, to set aside that amount amount of money to give to the poor, and actually, every 3rd year you were to give more. If you wanna prorate that to how much you were supposed to give under the law every year, it comes out to 23.3 percent of your income a year is what the Hebrews were required to give away. 23.3%.
Joel Brooks:And that's not counting the year of jubilee, which happens every 50 years, and which is said, everything you own goes back into the collective pot and is redistributed back to the original owners every 50 years. Can you imagine trying to establish that now? What if next year was a year jubilee? The chaos. Everything goes into the collective pot, and we try to figure out who was the original owner and all of that.
Joel Brooks:And and it was a just as big of a mess for them as it was for us, and that's why never once do we have the Hebrews ever recorded keeping the year of jubilee. Ever. How do you keep something like that? That? That's too radical.
Joel Brooks:That's too distinct, God. That's the word I'm looking for is holy. That's right. Utterly distinct from anyone. Holy.
Joel Brooks:We need to be a community like this. The world looks how we use our money, it's one of the main things they look at us. We need to be utterly distinct in how we give with one another, how we share with one another, how we take care with one another, and when we do that, we point people to Christ. Let's take a look at the Ten Commandments themselves. You know, these are the famous ones.
Joel Brooks:God has, I've heard him as he's the great editor. All this huge lawn, he reduces it down to 10 points here. He knows you're on the move, busy man. Here's just 10. Summarizes it all.
Joel Brooks:Look at chapter 20 verse 2. 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, or 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.
Joel Brooks:I'm a jealous God. Now this is actually, most people don't realize this, but this is wedding language. And sometimes this is still used in Jewish wedding ceremonies today. That the Jewish people, they they they would say that, you know, I will have no other. I will have no other.
Joel Brooks:I will only be married to you. And in verse 5, God says that the reason he's not gonna tolerate others is because he is a jealous god, just like a husband would say, I'm not gonna tolerate any others because I'm a jealous husband. And so this covenant, seen under that wedding lens, this is a very intimate relationship here. What of marriage? Now really all of these commandments can be summarized in the first, you shall have no other gods before me.
Joel Brooks:No other gods before me. God gives you 2 options. You're gonna either have him as a god, or you're gonna have other gods. Don't ever think he could go through life and try to pick some third option. If there's anything we've seen so far in the book of Exodus is you will always serve someone or something.
Joel Brooks:You will either serve God, or you will serve something else, but you're not gonna go through life not serving. God did not create you to worship, he created you worshiping. Always worshiping. As humans, you cannot help but worship. The only question is, what is the object of your worship?
Joel Brooks:Will it be the Lord, or will it be something else? But you cannot not worship. That's not how God made you. Now, if you really want to understand what an idol is, look at the last commandment. The last commandment and the first commandment are actually wed together.
Joel Brooks:They're very appropriate bookends. You shall not covet. You shall not covet. Coveting is actually the same thing as idolatry. They're really the exact same command.
Joel Brooks:One just makes you look a little deeper in your heart. Colossians 35, Paul says this, put to death what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Coveting is idolatry, Because when you treasure something more than you treasure Christ, it's an idol. That's what coveting is. And notice that when God gives the command to covet, not to covet, he actually gives a lot of specifics.
Joel Brooks:The other commandments, there's no real specifics there. Thou shall not murder. Pretty much done. Nothing. But when when he gets to coveting, he flushes it out.
Joel Brooks:Look at it again. He says, thou shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not cover your neighbor's wife, or those male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's. And he really flushes this out, and what God is doing is he's listing idols. These are the most common idols that you have right here.
Joel Brooks:How often have you made an idol of your dream house? That house you long to have one time. Thou shall not covet your neighbor's house. You you long for and you make an idol out of the perfect marriage. Whether you're not married, you want to be in that perfect marriage, or whether you are married, and you always look at others thinking, wow, man.
Joel Brooks:I wonder if their marriage is even better, and you're thinking of these things. It's an idol. Or how about the idol of having an easy life? I want people to serve me. I want some man servants.
Joel Brooks:I want some female servants. I want to be served. If life was just easier, then I'd be happy. That's an idol. How about possessions?
Joel Brooks:Oxen and donkeys, these were for the wealthy people, and you think, if I could just have a little bit bit more, then I'd be happy. Idols. These things were idols back then, they're idols back, they're idols today. Anything you treasure more than Christ is idolatry. Coveting is an idol.
Joel Brooks:You know, Lauren and I, we've realized now that we have we've been out of our house now for 4 months, once it got damaged by the tree, and we've been we've been living in, what Caroline calls the gray shady lady, and we wanna get back to Sunnyside, which is our house. And and Lauren and I, we've realized this that we have turned our house into an idol. It doesn't help that it's right across the street, and we get to see the the lack of progress made every day, but but it's an idol to us. We keep we we say things like this, man, you know, once we finally get back to our house, things will settle down. Once we finally get back in there, our children are gonna behave.
Joel Brooks:You know, the only reason they're misbehaving is because, you know, we're in this house and it's chaos. You know, once we get back in the house, we'll probably never argue again because there'll be nothing to argue about. Life will be perfect once we get back in our house, and we keep saying this, and and and there's an element of truth to some of those. And so we Lord and I, we've even acknowledged it's an idol, but but I really think it's true this time. I mean, I I really think once we get back there, and I it just amazed me, we all do that.
Joel Brooks:We always think that one little object of our desire that's gonna make us happy is the exception to this rule. That's it. Now, I know that there's idles out here. I know that, but but really, if I were to get get this, I really think it would be better. Lauren and I are fools.
Joel Brooks:We are fools. One of the reasons the law was given to community is so you guys could point your fingers at us and say, you're fools, because we're blind to it. And we need community to tell us that's an idol in your life. You're obsessed with that. How do we get rid of these idols?
Joel Brooks:We go to Jesus. We got to see that Jesus is ultimately the one that meets our needs. Go to verse chapter 24. The ultimate purpose of the law is to lead us to Jesus. So realize that you can't do this without Him.
Joel Brooks:You know, real quick, if I were to get a sign, and I were to put it in my front yard that says, please do not throw rocks at my house. Now, I have never once had anybody throw a rock at my house, ever. I guarantee you, if I were to put that sign in my yard, as Lauren and I are laying in bed at night, we'd hear, windows would be breaking because there is a part, and it's just what is in man. You see a law, nobody tells me what to do. Nobody.
Joel Brooks:And it actually awakens sin within you. That's what Galatians tells us the the purpose of the law is, is to show what's in you, And this should lead us to Christ because we can't meet the law, but Christ does, and that's who the law points to. Chapter 24 verse 3. Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules, and all the people answered with one voice and said, all the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do. Idiots.
Joel Brooks:That's it's not in there in Hebrew, it should be. And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and 12 pillars according to the 12 tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the people of Israel who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood, and he put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar.
Joel Brooks:Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, all that the lord has spoken, we will do and we will be obedient. Fools. And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words. Now this is a pretty astonishing text because God says, here it is, here's the law, I mean, and it is huge. Here's the law, and they said, every word of it, Lord, we will do.
Joel Brooks:They can't obey the first command. They can't even pick up manna like they're supposed to, and here they are cutting animals in half, which is how you made a covenant and said, if we don't obey it, cut us in half just like we cut this animal. Blood's required for a covenant. It's required. And when I read this, I don't know how I would have responded.
Joel Brooks:I don't know how I would respond about it. I I had a feeling they had to know as they were saying all that you've commanded, we will do. They're like, let's hope he's merciful. Let's hope he's gracious. We'll see what happens next.
Joel Brooks:Look at verse 9. It says, and Moses and Aaron and Nabib and Abihu, and 70 of the elders of Israel went up and they saw the God of Israel. Wow. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness, And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel, they beheld God and ate and drank. This is astonishing.
Joel Brooks:They just basically lied to the Lord. All you've commanded, we will do. Do unto us as as as we've done to these animals. Slaughter us if we don't keep your word. And here is god in thunder and in smoke, and in lightning, and the whole the whole mountain is shaking.
Joel Brooks:And then it says they have this incredible vision of God. Then it says they sat down and they ate with Him. They ate with God. God and glory, this God of thunder, this God of majesty says that they ate with him, they beheld him. In the New Testament, we see how this is possible through another meal in which God ate with man.
Joel Brooks:Jesus is having a meal commemorating this event, the Exodus. And then he says, hey, you know, drink the this, this is the blood of the new covenant, Not the covenant you did there because you failed. This is the blood of a new and better covenant. My blood. And the God of thunder, the God of lightning, the God of wrath, that God will judge me.
Joel Brooks:The meal in Exodus points us to Christ who took away this curse so that we can have the blessing. The blood that was thrown over the people, sprinkling them reminds us, as Hebrews says, that our hearts have been sprinkled. Our hearts have been sprinkled clean, sprinkled by the blood of Jesus. Pray with me. Lord, I can't get that line out of my head, the best obedience of my hands.
Joel Brooks:The very best that I can do dares not appear before your throne, But faith can enter thy answer thy demands by pleading what the Lord has done. Thank You, Jesus. Thank You. And I pray that this week that this would move us. It would change us.
Joel Brooks:You have shown us your heart, and you have shown us your sacrificial love. And because of that you have put your spirit inside us which now allows us to truly obey your law. And I pray we would go in the power of your spirit and do that this week. And I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
