Sermon Tone Analysis

Meeting God: Our desperate need for a mediator.

Big Idea: When we begin to understand the holiness of God, we become acutely aware of our need for a mediator.

3 Observances:

The Commandments (Words) were audibly heard

The people wanted a mediator

Their response earns God’s approval

Over the last several weeks, we have looked at the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments are first recorded in Exodus 20, after Moses came down from the Mountain.

God had delivered Israel out of the slavery of Egypt, and shown his mighty power and authority over all creation, and He gave these Ten Commandments as a moral law to live by.

It is important we understand something, or else we may attempt to get out of our responsibility to obey the moral laws of God, and that is that these Commandments are not only for ancient Israel, they are for all of us.

There are parts of the covenant between God and Israel that do not apply to us, and we are so thankful for that.

Jesus said He came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

There are many rules and laws, mostly regarding worship, that were exclusively for the people of Israel.

They may be called holiness laws.

Holiness means setting apart.

God’s chosen people, Israel, had a bunch of rules that would make them be set apart from the pagan communities around them.

Rules about what they could eat, how they needed to dress, how to deal with the Dead, and so on.

There were also ceremonial laws, or maybe we could call these the laws of worship.

The sacrificial system is a big part of that.

God was very specific about how his people were to worship him, how to atone for sin, how to remove guilt, and so forth.

Thankfully for us, Jesus becomes or once and for all sacrifice for sin.

We don’t have to keep bringing animals to the altar.

Our church is not a slaughterhouse, which the temple literally was.

Our sacrifices to the Lord are to be our very selves, our bodies and souls and everything we are, everything we have.

All of our heart and soul and mind.

These ceremonial laws were very strict, and God at times reminded the people how to regard the worship of the Holy God.

The priest Aaron’s sons were killed for bringing unauthorized fire into the tabernacle.

Uzzah was killed for merely touching the ark of God, because He touched it in an unauthorized manner.

These are just a couple examples of how seriously God regarded His rules for how the people were to worship Him.

It was a deadly serious business, worshiping God.

And though we are not held to the standard of worship that God imposed on Israel, we can learn much from the worship God prescribed, and we should always evaluate our own worship in light of that, lest we become arrogant in our worship, or lose our holy fear of God.

We are not held to the holiness laws Israel was.

We are ok to eat foods they didn’t, thank God. (Bacon).

We can wear clothes made of two different materials.

We do not have a complicated set of rules we must follow perfectly to enter into God’s presence, and even then only the priest on behalf of God as His representative.

We are given access through Jesus, we put faith that Jesus’ death was sufficient once and for all, so the only meat of animals we bring to the church are when we are going to prepare them in delicious dishes for a fellowship meal.

We are not required to be circumcised, we are not required to keep the passover and other feasts that God required of Israel.

Thank God we are not subject to all of those laws!

But we are subject to the moral laws, for they are eternal.

We cannot throw out the Ten Commandments as some old rules for one society in past history.

God reveals himself to all people through His creation: Romans 1:18-20

The moral law is indeed written on our hearts.

Romans2.14-15

Our righteousness is not in keeping the commands, because we are unable to perfectly keep them, and if we break any part of the moral law, we have broken all of them.

So where does our righteousness come from?

Christ alone.

But we know that Paul also teaches that though our righteousness comes by faith, and not through keeping the law, that does not give us any license to sin.

Rom6.1-2

So God’s Moral Law as found in the Ten Commandments are still valid today.

This is why Christians have so often posted the Ten Commandments in visible places.

They used to teach them in public school, and they would be on the wall of many classrooms, and on the walls of people’s homes, and the tradition of listing those certainly goes to Deuteronomy 6, which we will be getting into next week, but includes a command of God that the people of Israel write His laws on the very doorposts of their house and on their gates.

Now, until now, this has just been my introduction to our passage.

A quick recap: Moses is reminding the Israelites about to enter the promised land of how God gave the commandments.

This would be, in literature, a flashback.

So after listing the commandments, Moses continues:

3 Observances:

The Commandments (Words) were audibly heard

The people wanted a mediator

Their response earns God’s approval

The commandments were audibly heard.

This is very significant.

What is referred to as the Ten Words, and we call the Ten Commandments, was heard audibly from the mouth of God to the people of Israel.

There are not many examples of a group of people all hearing the audible voice of God.

But these people heard His voice.

The people present at the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist heard the audible voice of God, when He proclaimed that Jesus was His beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased.

Now, there are people who claim to have heard the voice of God audibly, and since God can speak however He pleases to people, I will not deny it can happen.

Some of them we know are lying because they claim God said something that either does not align with scripture, or is a prophetic claim of something that will happen and does not happen, they are liars.

In Jeremiah 23 there are some serious warnings to those who would claim to have a word from the Lord.

Do not ever flippantly say the Lord has told you something that you are to tell others.

I’ve seen it many times in the church, but many times it amounts to what is spoken of in Jeremiah, where Jeremiah is rebuking those who have a “burden of the Lord”, or in other words, a word form the Lord.

Some people in the church will say they have a word of knowledge.

But Jeremiah says to those false prophets, the liars, Jer23.34-36

Does God speak audibly to people?

He can do whatever He wants, so I cannot say He does not or can not.

However, scripture is full of warnings to those who would claim to speak for him.

But thankfully, we do not need to rely on modern day prophets to tell us a word from the Lord, for He has given us his Word.

There is a reason so many people have fought to get the Scriptures into the hands of people, from Luther and Tyndale to the Gideons today, the realization that the Word of God is the only reliable source to know for certain the will of God has driven men and women to risk their very lives to put a copy of this word into the hands of people.

If you want to hear God’s Word audibly, read your bible out loud.

Or listen to someone else read it.

It you want to see in writing God’s will for your life, read the Bible.

We may not hear as a congregation the actual voice of God like the Israelites did, or those who heard him at the baptism of Jesus, but we can know for certain God’s Word, delivered to us in written form.

We are privileged to have access to the Word, most of us, at any moment in time.

You don;’t even have to carry a book around with you.

Most of us have phones that we can look at scripture on.

They heard the commandments given audibly, and that ought to make us realize that these ten commandments, or ten words, are very important.

The rest of the rules God had for the people he gave through Moses, but the Ten Commandments were given verbally to the people by God and also written on stone tablets.

And here in Deuteronomy we see that even if we heard the audible voice of God, we probably could not bear it.

For Moses recalls to the people that as soon as they heard the voice, they came to Moses in fear.

You see, their response to witnessing the power of God, the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, they realized two things.

First, that a rare thing had just happened.

They saw God speak with man, and man still lived.

They realized the power and majesty and holiness of God was too much for them.

They realized this is a rare occasion, when God spoke to man and man still lived.

But in the same breath, they state their understanding that this is not sustainable, they realize they cannot meet the standard of holiness, they need a mediator.

They see that they cannot stand before God.

They know this can’t continue, that if they stayed in the presence of God, they would die.

Deut 5.25

Do you tremble at the thought of God’s holiness?

You ought to.

Christians have the privilege of access to this holy God because we wear the cloak of righteousness that comes from Jesus.