Preaching Promotes God's Greatness

Introduction

I have received a lot of encouragement from so many of you once my initial sermon was announced. And I’m grateful to all of you that reached out in any way to assure me of your support, eagerness to hear, and especially prayers. I owe no one more than my wife, Nana and Pastor Walker who have unfairly suffered patiently while I tried to sort it all out. But truly, I’m thankful to you all.

The difficulty for me has very little to do with the text itself. In truth, I’ve known for some time what I would like to preach as my formal “initial” sermon. I don’t struggle with context or content of the thing preached. The problem for me, is the preacher himself. The problem is me. Specifically, the problem is me, knowing me, and preaching in spite of me.

There’s really no way that I can put into words how profoundly UNworthy I feel to even be standing where I’m standing—much worse to speak and presume to preach. I wrote and re-wrote multiple introductions before I figured out how my agonizing over me was actually the answer. Yes, my agony was God’s answer.

You see, I’ve come to a few convictions about preaching at this point in my life. Here’s the first one: preaching is not about the preacher. I’ve been in agony over the fact that no matter how high an opinion someone might have of me, I know myself. I know how easily the best of what I do is corrupted by what I’ve failed to do, the spirit and attitude in which I do it in, or the sin that runs parallel to what I’ve done. There’s more than one way to fall off a horse and you’re looking at a man who at one time or other, has found ALL of them.

But God, who is rich in mercy, helped me to perfect my first and foremost conviction about preaching. It’s one thing to say what is thing is not, but it’s just as important to say what the thing is. So let me complete my conviction on preaching:

Preaching is not about the preacher—preaching is about God.

Watch out for preachers forcefully qualifying themselves forgetting there’s only ONE Who qualifies. Beware of the preacher who is long on self and short on the scripture. Remember the word revealed to Jeremiah:

“Thus says the LORD, “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this: that he understands and knows ME, that I AM the LORD Who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”

That’s the God I serve for you. He’ll let me sit, suffer, and struggle through intro upon intro, just to let me discover that the very thing that pains me about myself is the very thing that makes me want to preach Him to the world. The solution to my problem with me, is the very thing worth proclaiming about Him.

So, in the time that remains, let me tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to read Exodus 34:1-7. I’m really going to focus on verses 5,6, and 7 because I’m convinced it’s the essential manuscript of a sermon itself. We’re going to pray. Then, after giving my personal commentary on verses 5-7, I want to help you APPLY those three verses in our modern context by looking b-r-o-a-d-l-y at the Mosaic context. God’s word is for God’s people and He’s still speaking to us through it, Amen? Let’s look together:

Exodus 34:1–7 (ESV)

The Lord said to Moses, “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.”

So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord.

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

PRAYER—O LORD, our Lord; how excellent is Your name in all the earth...

Verses 1-5

In my effort to get to the sermon within my sermon, I want to alert your attention to the verbs in the LORD’s direct speech to Moses. There are three verbs after the immediate context of verse 1. In verse 1 itself, there is one verb commanded by the LORD to Moses.

Do you see it? It’s the verb “cut”. God tells Moses “cut two tablets of stone like the first or “the first ones” or “the first time.” God promises to do something Himself, do you see it? God says, Moses, if you cut the stones out, I’ll write on them. I need you to see that. See the past-tense verb “broke”? We can already see a critical truth being addressed: God is looking to fix in the PRESENT what was broken in the PAST.

Moses is back at the Sinai’s summit because not long ago, when he descended with the Law of God, what he saw among the people of God had him angry enough to break the first tablets.

I want you to understand that the next series of verbal commands from God to Moses are comparatively passive when we put them up against the verbs describing God’s activity. Look for yourselves—

In verse 2, God tells Moses, “be ready.” Then He tells Moses “come up.” Finally, the LORD tells Moses “present yourself.” You see that?

Now compare it with verse 5, we are told that the LORD “descended” in a cloud, “stood” with Moses, and “proclaimed”

There’s an syntactical symmetry here—there’s an intentional balance in the number of verbs because when we look at the verbs ascribed to God, they are, in essence, a response to the verbs He commanded Moses to take. I don’t want you to think of God as REACTIVE—no, no—not at all. God is not laying still and dormant until you and I make a move: God TOLD Moses what to do. Our actions are prescribed to us BY and FOR Him. In other words, God ordains what is to be done and ordains His response AHEAD of what is done. Moses doesn’t merely cut the stone on his own, come up to Sinai on His own accord, present Himself before the LORD on Moses’ say-so. NO!

What we learn from this is simple: whatever the problem is, God has a prescribed pattern of obedience for us to follow and a solid solution for disobedience. But we have to move in God’s time, and in God’s way. The LORD does this because in the City He’s preparing for those that love Him and are called according to His purpose, no one will live there, the way they lived in the book of Judges. You know what was said about them, right? The book of Judges tells us over and over again that,

“In those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.”

Let such a thing not be said of us, who have received so much more through Jesus in the New Covenant than they ever received in the Old Covenant, amen?

Summarizing this section, the verbs ordained for Moses are set up for him to receive and the set of verbs God chooses for Himself are set up for deliver. Moses comes up Sinai, but the LORD comes down from His cloud. Moses is to prepare himself—but for what? Look at your Bibles: the Lord has descended, now He is “standing” in order to do what?

HE PROCLAIMS.

The Hebrew verb here is Qara-h, which can either mean to read aloud or cry aloud. The same verb is found in Jeremiah 7:2 where he was commanded to go “Proclaim” in the temple concerning Judah’s sins. In Jonah 3:4, it’s the same verb—Jonah is “qarah-ing” in the city of Nineveh. Neither Jeremiah nor Jonah are given a scroll or book to merely read aloud to their audience—we understand they were PROCLAIMING God’s message. Proclaiming means to cry aloud—to declare—to exclaim—to call out—in a word, proclaiming is preaching. Yes, God PREACHED to Moses.

So, it appears necessary to make a minor addendum to my earlier comment about preachers who preach themselves. As we are about to see, when GOD STOOD to PREACH—even through preaching literally to an audience of one, the man Moses—God could think of no better subject to preach, no better topic to proclaim, than God Himself!

And so, in this, what is formally considered my initial sermon, I’m cheating a bit, because I’m sermonizing about the sermon of Another. And what better is there to expound upon than a sermon preached by God Himself?

There are many things to point out about this sermon, but I want to highlight just a few… I suppose in prudence I should probably stick to three points or aspects about the sermon in verses 6 and 7. First and foremost, I want you to see

The Excellencies of the Savior

The Extremity of Savlation

The Echo in Scripture

The Excellencies of the Savior

See how God opens up His sermon:

“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful an gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”

The thing about God that so many misunderstand is that we were made to be like Him, but He’s not like us. Another way to put it: we are made in His image, but He is not according to our image. That mistake is more common than many think.

A very famous person once said this about her difficulty understanding God, “I was in church, listening to a charismatic minister preaching about how great God was—that He’s omniscient, omnipotent, that He’s omnipresent, and everything… but then He said, “The Lord thy God is a Jealous God” and… I was enraptured in the moment until he said “jealous”. And something struck me. I was thinking, “God is omnipotent, God is awesome and all these things, but He’s jealous? Jealous of me? And something about that didn’t feel right in my spirit because I believe that God is love, and that God is in all things.”

I’m not going to put her name out there, but if you draw a circle, it will be hard to distinguish between that circle, and the first letter of her first name. It’s ok if you don’t get it now, as the saying goes, “you’ll get it on your way home.”

I want you to see how deeply troubling and wrong our view of God becomes when we think of Him as we would think of ourselves or as we would view just any other person we know. And the scripture warns us explicitly in Psalm 50:21

“These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.”

Just because God is a ruler doesn’t mean He rules like other rulers. Just because God speaks doesn’t mean He lies like other talkers. Just because God makes promises doesn’t mean He breaks them like other promise-makers. No, God is a promise Keeper—He’s the God of truth and is NOT a man that He should lie, the scriptures say.

So when God stands up to proclaim and preach about Himself, He’s not a narcissist—He’s not insecure, as if He needed human approval to make Him feel better about Himself or to hide some hidden flaws. No, God is perfect—perfect in EVERY way. Actually, it’s His PERFECT LOVE that DRIVES Him to preach Himself to Moses and through Moses, He preaches Himself to us.

My brother, my sister, don’t you know that is the greatest Person you or anyone could ever know?

He is the highest ideal imaginable,

the most magnificent mind conceivable,

The Most Generous Gift-giver,

He’s the Foundation of Justice

He’s the highest height of humility

His love is the most satisfying,

His mercy is the most re-assuring,

His arm is the most powerful

His peace is the most durable--

No One is more forgiving

No One is more hospitable

No One is more glorious

No One is more joyous with joy to spare

And in fact, according to Psalm 16:11

“[He] makes known to [us] the path of life; in [His] presence there is fullness of joy; at [His] right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

THIS is the God of the Scriptures and He is the ONLY God worth preaching about!

If God preached anything or anyone else OTHER than Himself—it would be an act of profound hatred toward us. If He truly loves us, He could only proclaim and promote what is truly best for US. Therefore, we see the excellency of God in this way: He proclaims Himself—not only for His glory, but also for our GOOD! It’s because of His perfect love that He preaches and promotes the most perfect Gift: Himself.

The Extremity of Salvation

The excellency of God is also seen in the way He delivers His people. In fact, there is a direct corolation between Who He is in His character and how He chooses to bring salvation for those who trust in Him. Specifically, God’s method of saving is consistent with the way He perfectly balances two extremities: mercy and forgiveness on the one hand with justice and retribution on the other.

There’s certainly great tension in this text because anyone reading these verses has to wrestle with this questions:

How can patience and punishment occur at the same time?

How can graciousness toward sin exist where the gravity of sin is also acknowledged?

How about you? How do you maintain the balance between these two extremes?

If we’re honest, we have a very convenient and self-serving way of maintaining such a balance in our every day lives. In fact, just earlier this month, I had a most IN-convenient moment of illumination about this very thing.

I was on Southern Avenue, having just dropped off one of my daughters to an extracurricular activity. I was going home and took a left onto Naylor Road and if you’re familiar, you know there’s a light on one side, but coming from Southern on the opposite direction, you can slide right, come up the minor hill and you can join Naylor Road that way. But: there’s a big bright YIELD sign if you’re sliding right to make things safer.

So, I’m making my left and noticing a man in a red sports car who SHOULD have heeded the YIELD sign… I could see him directly and realized I had to slow down significantly because Mr. red sports car drove right on through the YIELD sign… and why? He was looking down at what I presume was his phone. Didn’t ever look up, never saw me coming, never cared—not even a little bit.

You know how quickly things happen. All of this was within 2-3 seconds max, but I’m INSTANTLY at my boiling point. I’m enraged because I’m sharing the road with Mr. Red Sports Car who couldn’t care less about my life. I thought about the daughter I had just dropped off, asking myself what would I have done if she was in the car? All kinds of thoughts flood my mind as I’m now following Mr. Red Sports Car and seething the whole way. Now, because I’m a Christian, and maybe because I’m a deacon at THE New Macedonia Baptist Church, I don’t just cuss at the drop of a hat. And I very rarely, if ever these days, use a four-letter word. So I heard these words leak out from under my breath,

“Mr. Red Sports Car, you’re gonna get everything that’s coming to you.”

No curse word, no screaming, but every bit of harm-wishing disdain for a man possible was in my heart. And why? Because I was in the right, he was in the wrong, and if I hadn’t been a defensive driver in that moment, it could have cost me greatly.

But the truth is, I’ve mindlessly missed a stop sign at least twice in my lifetime. I haven’t always obeyed every speed limit sign either. But if you ask me, I’d have a reason— “So and so made me late”… “I was on my way to help someone”… I could easily rationalize my way out of it, “Oh well, nobody was coming anyway”…

It may not be traffic violations for you, but how many times has someone done wrong against you—and you weren’t having it—but you did practically the same thing to someone else but of course, you had a good reason for it? You could justify it for yourself, but no justification is acceptable for someone else, right?

Here’s my point: in handling the extremity of grace and justice, the fallen children of Adam have an easy solution: we demand justice for the sins of others, but pour grace on grace for our failures. They SINNED, but we only made mistakes. Isn’t that right?

But God is not like us. He is exactly the opposite. Because when it was time for Him to resolve the balance between mercy and justice, He gave us all the mercy and pronounced justice on Himself.

If you don’t know, let me help you—this tension between the Grace of God and the Justice of God runs all along the scripture and isn’t fully resolved until Jesus is on the Cross: there, the sinless Lamb of God, exchanges His righteous to all who put their trust in Him WHILE taking on the punishment due to them for their sin. You see it? God extends grace to the unjust, while pronouncing the sentence of the wicked upon the righteous.

The Poet Laureate of the Church, Shai Linne put it like this,

All Adam's descendants are inherently filthy That's problematic for a God who will not clear the guilty If God is gonna save us and demonstrate what His love is It must be in a manner that's consistent with His justice Jesus Christ, The Righteous One, the perfect solution Proving that God is just on the basis of substitution Perfect obedience, consecration without a flaw Yet on the cross He suffered the condemnation of the law

Salvation is of the LORD because He is the only One Who maintains both mercy and justice perfectly—without sacrificing either one. He balances the extremities of salvation perfectly because He is perfect.

Echo of Scripture

This self-description of God has legs. It must have been a sermon because it produced wording that has successfully echoed in the Scriptures. Like every great sermon, it has left it’s mark, not only on the hearer, but on those who are impacted by the hearer.

David said it this way,

Psalm 103:7-11 “He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;” “He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

Nehemiah said it this way:

Nehemiah 9:16-17 ““But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.”

Jeremiah said it this way:

Lamentations 3:22-23 “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

Jonah, in his madness, actually accused God in this way:

Jonah 4:2-3 “And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.””

We could go on and on, as no less than 8 biblical authors in no fewer than 14 passages are either directly or partially quoting from God’s self-description in Exodus. They are words for us to remember even in our day because God is the same, “yesterday, today, and forever,” Amen?

I’m a rookie in the pulpit, but I’m a veteran in the pew. So, I know how things work sometimes: we have our fill of the scriptures and encourage the preacher, but how do we apply what we’ve heard? Let me help you in the last minutes that are mine: I want to give a word of application looking back at what brought Moses to this point but also looking forward. Like I said, I’ll do this in big, broad strokes because of the time:

Looking Back

Moses, having received the Law, was literally on a mountain high: atop Mt. Sinai, what could possibly go wrong? But below in the valley, Moses’ brother Aaron had submitted himself to the whims of the people, essentially leading them into idolatry and moral embarrassment to say the least. In his anger, Moses broke the stone tablets containing the 10 commandments but now had to deal with the fact that Israel had broken faith with God already, so early in it’s journey from bondage to freedom. What would God do? He had already threatened to remove His presence from among His people—Moses wasn’t sure, but he had hoped to make atonement some how.

But when Moses reached Sinai’s summit, there was no mysterious ceremony prescribed for him to perform for the people’s atonement. Instead, God preached to him. There a new strategy to win the people over. It wasn’t about a better marketing to make YHWH more appealing than Baal. Moses didn’t have to cook-up programs to keep the people busy so they wouldn’t have time to sin.

Instead, God merely said, so far, you’ve made it on my grace and mercy and that’s how you’re going to make it moving forward. I had poured out My steadfast love on Israel splitting the Red Sea for them, but I visited the iniquity of Egypt upon the whole nation through the 10 plagues.

So, I’m simply saying this to you: God’s good preaching made sense of their past. By pointing to Himself, God reminded Moses that he and Israel made it this far because of God’s grace. And that’s what I’m telling you: If you are struggling to figure out how to recover from a past or perhaps recent failure, I’m re-directing you to God Maybe you’ve lost your zeal and passion for ministry for whatever reason—maybe before you explore the strategies of the latest, greatest ministry guru, you might need to re-engage your first love. Maybe you need to spend time basking in the greatness of God, not merely seeking the fruit of spiritual success. You may need to get to the root: contemplate the greatness of God’s mercy and justice.

Looking Forward

The awful truth of the Exodus experience is this: while an estimated 2 Million Israelites left Egypt, only TWO of that generation actually entered the Promised Land of Canaan. It’s a sobering thought and a bitter pill to swallow. This isn’t just Old Testament history, but it’s a teaching that applies DIRECTLY to us as New Testament or New Covenant believers. Why?

The Holy Spirit-inspired author of Hebrews spends several chapters to argue this very simple premise: the Christian life today is exactly analogous to the life of Israel in the wilderness because in both cases, believers are weary travelers who have not yet arrived at their destination.

So in conclusion, I’m calling your attention to this simple fact: if our New Testament experience is comparable to the Wilderness Experience of the Old Testament, if we are to have a better than 2 of 2 Million survival rate, it behooves us to see what took them out or else it will take us out too.

Your homework assignment is to read Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 this week so you see all that I’m saying here. But I’m just going to read one verse for the sake of time. Hebrews 3:19

“So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.”

I want you to understand this: unbelief is not merely saying, “I don’t believe in God.” But here’s my definition for unbelief, “Unbelief is the fertile farm where the killer crop of sin is sown and succeeds.”

Every kind of sin you and I commit is growing only because there’s we have knowingly or unknowingly surrendered a plot of the soil of our hearts to unbelief. The adulterer has stepped OUTSIDE the boundaries of marriage because he/she doesn’t trust God’s power and goodness to provide for their need WITHIN the boundaries of marriage. The man or woman unable to forgive or unable to relinquish anger against those who have harmed them cannot fully bring themselves to trust that God is their avenger: therefore, they seek vengence themselves. The thief doesn’t steal except because he doesn’t believe God will supply for all his needs.

Yes, I am calling you toward self-examination to see if there is any root of unbelief in your heart. But more importantly, I am reminding you of the greatness of God. The greatness of His love towards we who trust Him is this seen in this way, Romans 8:32

“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

Everyone I love dearly is not in this room tonight, but so many of them are. I have accepted the call to preach, in part, because I want to do my part to teach, reprove, correct, and train God’s people for their maturity so they are equipped for every good work.