10/15/23 Exodus 19:3-6, 10-16 “And the Mountains Shake”

12 Oct 10/15/23 Exodus 19:3-6, 10-16 “And the Mountains Shake”

10/15/23    Exodus 19:3-6, 10-16       “And the Mountains Shake”

We have been covering a lot of ground these past few weeks and we will cover much more in the future.  I know that this bothers some of you because we are leaving a lot out.  I would like you to think about this for a minute.  I have been preaching for about 17 years and I have not given the same sermon twice in a church even though it might come from the same Scripture reading.  Many of you have been listening to sermons all your life and I would be willing to bet, if I wasn’t a Methodist, that you have not heard the same sermon twice.  That is part of the beauty of the Bible.  Every time you read it, every time I preach it, the message comes out different.  There is not another book in the world that can continuously talk to you from cover to cover.  In this series of ‘The Story’ we are trying to cover some of the high points so that the words will mean more to you when you read them.  Today, we are going to look at the covenant at Sinai.  Then I would like to try to show you that even though this comes from the Old Testament, this covenant is still important to us today.

I think that we live in a world today that my grandparents wouldn’t recognize.  I have talked before about all the modern inventions that have come in the last 50 years due to electricity and computers.  Then I would like you to think about all the advances we have made in the field of medicine.  Doctors do things today that we would have thought not possible when I was a kid.  And then look at all the wealth we have.  I think that most of the poor people in this country would be considered to be millionaires in places like Haiti.  We are a very rich nation and we have come a long ways in the last few decades.

However, there are some areas where we seem to have lost something.  We have a much more violent society than we did 100 years ago.  They try to tell us that the crime rate is down but I know that it is way, way up since I moved into this area in the 1970’s.  I never thought of it but maybe I’m the problem?  Anyway, we are much more vulgar and coarse.  We are more intolerant than we were 20 years ago.   Television and internet pornography are everywhere.  We are more deviant and have more mental illness than ever before.  Our popular culture is trying and succeeding to rob our children of their innocence with its violence and decadent immorality.  We are a mess.  We need some sort of guidelines to help us.  We cannot be free from God and survive.  We need to go back to our roots.  We need this particular covenant at Sinai which gave us the 10 Commandments.

A few years back a TV mogul named Ted Turner told us that the 10 Commandments were obsolete and should be replace by his Ten Voluntary Initiatives some of which were to help the downtrodden, to love and respect the planet earth and to limit families to 2 children.  We are also told to legalize drugs but use clean needles.  We are told marriage is obsolete.  The list just goes on and on and all of it, all of it is just plain wrong.  The Ten Commandments are not obsolete.  As a matter of fact, and I do mean this as a fact, we need them more than ever in this crazy, decadent world we live in.

In our reading in Ex. 19:4 we see that the first thing that God does is that He reminds His people of all that He has done for them already.  These people had just witnessed some of the biggest miracles in the history of the world.  They lived through the plagues in Egypt.  They actually saw this strange pillar of cloud that led them and the pillar of fire.  These people had the honor of walking through the Red Sea after God had parted it.  This was not some wind phenomena in shallow water that modern atheist scientists have made up.  God parted the Red Sea.  Then they saw the Egyptian army get swallowed up by the Red Sea.  God reminds His people of His greatness, His power.

This is a theme that will get repeated over and over in our readings.  This is what we need today when we start to talk about God.  We need to remind ourselves and others of all that God has done for us.  You need to come to worship and have so many God moments that I have to cut you off so we can get done.  God is everywhere and He is working in everyone’s life.

You see, our modern atheist scientists are trying to tell us that none of this is possible therefore there must be another explanation.  So they have come up with what might have happened as an alternative to the facts.  The trouble comes in because we have become such a decadent society that we believe their rubbish.  And then because we believe this modern version of baloney, we feel that we don’t have to believe in the Ten Commandments either.  This opens the door for modern lists like Ted Turner’s ridiculous alternative.  If everything Moses did up to this point is false, then the commandments must be false also.

But this stuff is the real deal.  The Bible has with stood the test of time and it will into the future.  When you are struggling, remind yourself all that God has done for you.  When you are talking to someone who doesn’t know God or is new to the faith, remind them of all that God has done for them.  There isn’t a thing in their lives that is not a direct result of God.  And when you start to go off on some bad science or believe some heresy from non-believers, stand up for your faith.  Stand up for God.  A question that will disarm many if not most critics of Jesus Christ is “How many times have you read the Bible?”  You will find that they haven’t read the Bible at all but are just going on a rant.  I’m here to tell you today that Jesus Christ is right.  The Ten Commandments are right.  The Bible is right.  All you have to do is stand up for what is right.

The second thing that God tells Moses to tell the people is that they are special.  If they keep the covenant with God, then they will be God’s treasured possession.  They will become Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation.  One would almost think that after seeing all the miracles that these people had seen, this would be a slam dunk.  Unfortunately, even slam dunks sometimes miss and so did the Jewish nation.  But even though they mess up, and this is important, God is still there for them.  Every time this happens He wants them to come back to Him.  This concept is still alive today.  This is why I can always say that Jesus Christ is waiting to hear from you.  When you sin, He is waiting for you to come back.  You are that special to the most powerful being in the universe.

God tells His people these things because He wants to have a relationship with them.  The personal relationship didn’t begin with Jesus 2000 years ago.  It began long before as we can see in the Garden of Eden where God wanted to be with Adam and Eve.  This has been around forever.  So He wants us in this personal relationship with Him as He changes us to priests of a holy nation.

But we have to remember that this only happens on God’s timetable.  We see this as God gives the Jewish people commands as to how to prepare for His coming to them.  They have to wash their clothes and be ready.  They were not permitted to touch the mountain where God was coming and they were to refrain from sexual relations.  God doesn’t put these restrictions on the people just so they can have more rules to follow.  He does this so that they can be protected and He gets their attention.

God has just shown them a small minute part of His power in all the miracles He just performed.  They have a little bit of an idea as to what God is like.  God gives these rules for this situation so that the people will focus on Him.  If everything they do for 2 days before His coming points to God, then they will have the right heart to receive God.  What God is trying to achieve here is the total attention of the people.

We even see this when we look at the story of Jesus and it might be a bit easier to understand.  Jesus tells us that you cannot come to Him unless you have been born again.  In order to be born again you have to have your total attention on Jesus Christ.  This happens when you confess your sins to Him.  This puts your attention on Jesus and cleanses you.  And you have to be cleansed before you can come into the presence of Jesus.  It was the same way in the time of Moses.  These people had to be cleansed before God would come to them.  Washing and not touching the mountain were part of the cleansing process for these early Jews.

So if this is the way to come to God that has been around forever, why do we have such a hard time cleansing ourselves today?  The answer may be that we are just too independent.  We have taken the word freedom to mean that we are free to do anything.  This is not true or we would live in chaos.  There have to be some rules to live by but we really want nothing to do with these either.  Anyway, we have so many freedoms that we cannot imagine bowing down to anyone, especially God.  This whole mindset just blows me away.

Now this is what happened.  The Jewish people woke up on that third day to thunder and lightning.  The mountain was covered with thick smoke.  And there were very loud trumpet blasts.  Then God came down to the mountain and the whole mountain shook.  It trembled violently and the trumpet blasts became louder and louder.  The people were scared.  I would be too.

This is the same God that we command that we have to change the Bible because it doesn’t fit into today’s world.  This is the God who I tell that I can’t believe in because He won’t do things my way.  I can only say that we have to be very careful about what we say and do because this God can make thunder, lightning and mountains shake at any time.

But the Good News here in short story form, is that God still loves us even when we are as disobedient as we are.  His love is always there and He is always calling us.  This is why I say that you should put your full attention on Jesus, cleanse yourself by confessing your sins to Him.  Then ask Him to live in your heart.  Today, we are sitting at the base of the mountain and it is shaking violently as God waits for your answer.  Where you end up for eternity is entirely up to you and not God.  You have to make the decision.  Choose God and let your life open up.

After this scene, God gives us the Ten Commandments.  There have been thousands of sermons on the Ten Commandments and I’m sure that you have heard a few.  This is the beginning of the Law which God spells out as we read on in Exodus and Leviticus.  These are the books of the Bible that we like to skip or skim.  They are rather tedious but they are important even if we don’t cover them today.  Today, as we look at just the 10 Commandments, we see that these are ways to live a good life, a very good life.

They begin with the first 4 Commandments being ways to honor God.  Notice that we always start with God.  This applies to our personal life also.  Always start with God and go from there.  I might get in a little trouble here but I think that most people in this country want to just give a little lip service to God and move on to the last 6 Commandments.  We don’t want to honor God.  We don’t want to worship God.  And even if we just try to live by the last 6, we find that they are impossible to keep.  I think that we are not going to go out to murder and steal for the most part.  Maybe some people have a little trouble with adultery.  Some people have a tough time honoring their parents.  We start to really break down when are not supposed to lie about our neighbors.  Look at our political campaigns.  And we totally disregard the part that says not to covet.  We have rewritten this one in Ted Turner language to now read that we should covet everything.

So why did God give us these Commandments?  First of all, He gave us these because He loves us so much.  I have told you over and over how much He wants you to have a better life.  If you just try your best to follow these simple commandments, your lives will be better.  I should hear and ‘amen’ to that.

He also gave us the Ten Commandments so that we know that we have to be cleansed.  There is absolutely no way that we can keep all of these all the time.  It can’t be done.  In other words, we need to be cleansed all the time. You will always fall short of the glory of God.  You need a way to get clean so you can come before God.

Today, we don’t have to worry about sacrifices and all the ways that the ancients had to get clean.  2000 years ago, God sent His Son, Jesus, so that we would always have a way to be cleansed.  Jesus took all the sins of the world with Him when He went to the cross.  He died with your sins.  When someone asks who put Jesus on the cross, I can only answer, ‘it wasn’t the Jews or the Romans; it was me.  I put Him there and now Jesus stands here every day waiting for my confession to Him.  He is waiting for you also.

All these things had to happen so that you could be here today.  You are to try to live by these Commandments as they point to your continuous need for Jesus Christ.  Sometimes these Commandments get a little out of focus.  This happens because we see that everyone around us is sinning so we might as well do it also.  We get caught up with the crowd.  The Ten Commandments help you to see a better way, the right way.  These people who insist on sinning all the time will not be what you are.  You are a part of the Royal Priesthood.  You are part of the Holy Nation.  You are a treasured possession of the one who made the world, the one who keeps order for 7 billion people, who makes mountains shake and who knows the number of hairs on your head.  That is what I call love.  Jesus loves you more than I can ever explain.  He wants to share all He has with you.  He wants you to have the best life ever.  He loves you this much.  Thank you Jesus for this love we don’t deserve.  Let’s pray.