A Holy God and a Holy Nation - Pastor Tom Loghry
Exodus 19 shows that God's holiness is so overwhelming that sinful humans cannot approach Him on their own merit. Jesus Christ—our perfect high priest—has torn the barrier so we can draw near to God by His blood, not our own efforts.
Transcript:
Today's reading is from Exodus chapter 19, verses three through six. "Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, 'This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob, and what you are to tell the people of Israel: You yourselves have seen what I did in Egypt, and how I carried you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites."
Let us pray as we come before God's Word. Dear Father, as we come before the testimony of Scripture this morning, we pray that you would impress upon us by your Holy Spirit the depths of your righteousness and perfection and holiness.
And Father, as we are confronted by who you are, Father, we pray that you'd expose to ourselves who we are, and that you would open our eyes to see our need for Jesus Christ. We ask this, Father, in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen. You may be seated.
Meeting people who are powerful and famous and in, who are in some cases are our heroes can be an intimidating experience. As, as confident as we might be in ourselves in our day-to-day lives, if any one of us was invited to the Oval Office or maybe to the Vatican or to Buckingham Palace, we can imagine that we might be a little nervous walking into the presence of a global figure.
We of course see this in children around Christmas time when their parents encourage them to go sit on the knee of the local Santa. They might want to share their Christmas wish, but they can be awfully afraid at the same time, too nervous to even approach him. We understand those feelings, and from a human perspective, they sometimes make sense.
But we also recognize that they are often a bit out of proportion. After all, all these people are human beings just like you and me. They just have a bit more fame and power. But it does give us a reference point for considering how we might feel approaching God. Even at his invitation, we may wonder how we would dare to come before our maker, the creator of the universe, the one who knows everything about us.
In Exodus 19, we see God offer this very invitation to the people of Israel. And as we'll see, God does not put them at ease, but rather heightens their trepidation in drawing before his presence. So we continue this morning in Exodus 19, verse one. On the first day of the third month after the Israelites left Egypt, on that very day, they came to the desert of Sinai. After they set out from Rephidim, they entered the desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain. Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said: "This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: 'You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites." So as you'll recall, if you've been with us in these past few weeks, you'll know that the Israelites have been traveling through the desert of Sinai.
And they've been traveling through this area, and they have now actually been pretty close to Mount Sinai, otherwise known as Mount Horeb. The names are interchangeable, most scholars believe. And, but now they're going to be actually drawing to the very foot of it, whereas they had been staying a bit off from it, encamped.
And if you wanted to imagine what it looks like, you can actually get pretty close on Google Maps, and you can see that's what it looks like. It's a very kind of desert-ish sort of, sort of mountain. And you can see, you can imagine the people maybe gathering down there ultimately as God invites them to come before His presence. So God calls Moses to deliver a message to the people.
He recalls what has happened, how he's delivered the people from Egypt. He tells Moses, You remind them of this, and then I want you to communicate this invitation, this command to them, that they would obey me fully and keep my covenant, and that in so doing, he, they will be his treasured possession.
Now, there's a bit of a, there's something really interesting here because we know that the people of Israel had done nothing in order to receive God's favor. God had chosen them, but in choosing them, God chose them with a purpose in mind. And the purpose that he lays out here is this, is that they would be for him a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
Now, when we think about a priest, we're thinking about someone who serves as an intermediary, a mediator between the people and God. In saying that Israel was to be a kingdom of priests, we can see that in a real way, they were supposed to be intermediaries between the whole of creation and their one holy God, selected from all of humanity, and that they were to be a holy people.
Now, we might ask, well, why? Why are they called to be a holy people, a holy nation? It's because their God is holy. And when we're talking about holiness, we're talking about God's perfect righteousness, his perfect goodness, his moral attributes. And when we're thinking about ourselves as human beings, we have to recall, just generally speaking, we've been created in the image of God.
We've been created to reflect who God is in our lives. Now, as we know, Adam and Eve rebelled and humanity fell away, and so they weren't reflecting who God is in, in their lives. And so in calling the people of Israel to himself as his treasured possession to be this kingdom of priests, God is setting that expectation that in fact they would reflect who he is.
We see in Leviticus 19:2 that the people are told, "Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy." Now again, the people of Israel were chosen for this purpose, not because they were a great people. Far from that actually. In Deuteronomy 7, verses 6 through 8, the people are reminded by God, it says, "For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt."
Their election to being God's people, God choosing them to be His people had nothing to do with who they were. It had everything to do who, with who God is. It says that simply, "But it was because the Lord loved you." It's because the Lord loved you. And when we think about our own redemption, our own salvation, our own inclusion among God's elect, God's chosen people, we have to remember that it's not because of anything that you or I did.
I did not come to Christ because I was really smart or that because I was a better person than anyone else. You and I have only received the eyes to see Christ for who He is, the Messiah and Lord, because of a work of grace in our hearts which God has brought about by the Holy Spirit. We have been regenerated so that we might believe and be drawn out of darkness. We've been healed. So it's based on God's choice, not our, not our own.
And in choosing Israel, again though, they've received this wonderful grace, this wonderful blessing, but it has been with a purpose that they would be this holy nation. And so this is the message that God gives to Moses to bring to the people. Remind them of how I've cared for them. I've carried them on, on eagle's wings, delivered them right out of Egypt, and it's for this purpose that they would truly be my people
So continuing on in verse seven, Moses takes this word from the Lord to the people. "So Moses went back and summoned the elders of the people and set before them all the words the Lord had commanded him to speak. The people all responded together, 'We will do everything the Lord has said.' So Moses brought their answer back to the Lord.
The Lord said to Moses, 'I'm going to come to you in a dense cloud so that the people will hear me speaking with you and will always put their trust in you.' Then Moses told the Lord what the people had said, and the Lord said to Moses, 'Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes and be ready by the third day, because on that day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.
Put limits for the people around the mountain and tell them be careful that you do not approach the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain is to be put to death. They are to be stoned or shot with arrows. Not a hand is to be laid on them. No person or animal shall be permitted to live. Only when the ram's horn sounds a long blast may they approach the mountain.'" So in, in verse seven, upon hearing the message that Moses delivered to the people from the Lord. In verse seven, we see their response. They say, "We will do everything the Lord has said." And we see that, it's like, wow, do they really know what they're getting into?
And they're like, "Oh, yeah, we'll obey you, God." And it just makes you stop and think, it's like y'all have been complaining up to this point, and you, and you, you think that this is seemingly going to be easy. That's kind of the impression we're left here with just kind of their boldness, being like, "Yes, we will do everything you've said."
Now, it's the right response. That's what all of our response should be to God. As we, if you wanna know what God has said, we, we look to His Word. And as we see what God has told us in His Word, this should be our response. We will do everything the Lord has said. But of course, we know that as it stands, we have not done everything that the Lord has said. The commands of God are, can be boiled down to simply this: love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
And we can't keep those two commands. None of us have done that perfectly. We haven't loved God with the entirety of ourselves. We've chased after false idols, and we haven't loved each other in the way that we have, we should have. But the people are very confident in this moment in saying, "We will do everything the Lord has said."
And so Moses goes back. Now, he's going up and down this mountain. Moses must have been in pretty good shape to, to be, keep, you know, going up and back and forth like this. But he's, he's dedicated, he's devoted. And he goes back to the Lord, and he's told that there's going to be a dense cloud that's going to descend.
He's told that the people should maintain a distance from the mountain. And God is going to speak to Moses from the mountain. Now, all of this is, well, part of this is to demonstrate that God truly has chosen Moses to be the prophet, that they should listen to what he has said. If they're, if they're, if they have, are intending to do everything the Lord has said, Moses is his messenger, so God is confirming that.
And we also see how God is setting up a scene here in which the people may visibly come to understand the greatness of who God is, his holiness, and their own inability to just come before him. This is what we, something that we, we have to remember as we read the Old Testament is they didn't have printing presses back then, and they didn't have many written texts.
And so if we think about how the people would've been instructed, well, it would've been orally, certainly, just by word of mouth. You would've had that sort of instruction. But we also see how God instructs his people with visuals in a big, in a really big way. Certainly here at Mount Sinai, we'll see this later in the tabernacle and the temple.
God visually instructs his people about who he is and who they are, and the trouble in the relationship that stands between us and him. So God gives instructions to Moses that he should go to the people, should consecrate them, which is to set them apart for the Lord, that they would be this holy people.
Now, we see them take some kind of surface level, level measures to indicate that consecration. Certainly, God is calling them to this obedience. But we also see, again, a visual here. They're supposed to wash their clothes. Was it 'cause they were really stinky? I don't know. Maybe they were a little bit, but it, it was to represent their purification, their preparation for coming before the Lord.
We can think practically. I mean, if you're coming before anyone important, you're gonna have your best clothes on, certainly. So we could reason in that way, but it's really focused on this ritual sort of purity, a very tangible sense of the holiness of God.
And that they would prepare themselves to gather at the foot of the mountain to meet the Lord. Now we also have this instruction though that they are not to go to the mountain and touch it. Not until they hear the ram's horn, and that anyone who does that, a human being or even just an animal, that they should be stoned or, or shot with an arrow.
They're not to be touched because there's going to be, if they violate that divine space in that way, they've become almost like radioactive. That's the best way I can put it. This is all a very strange concept to us because we don't think visually, spatially in these sorts of ways. But this is the way that God is reasoning with his people, helping them to think in categories that mark out the distinction between them and God.
And until we grasp that, a lot of the Old Testament is very difficult for us to understand as to why does God give the instructions that, that he does. Now, some of us might read this and say, "This seems kind of harsh." But again, we have to remember the reality of who God is and the idea of violating sacred space.
And I, and by way of analogy, I wanna work towards maybe helping you understand that. So if Mom has just cleaned the house, you do not walk in with woody, muddy shoes, do you? No. Not unless you wanna be chewed out by her, right? I mean, all of us, you remember as kids probably, there'd been points where we did that and it's like, "Uh-oh."
And we have to try to transfer that over into thinking in the moral dimensions, violating a sacred space, which can be difficult for us, I think, because there's not much that's held as sacred in our time. One thing that I might be able to kinda set before you that might help you imagine just the, the sense of the sacred is, you can imagine the image of a mother holding her child, her infant child.
And there's just something that's almost sacred and inviolable about that. And we can imagine how terrible it would seem that, if, if, let's say, a man came along and ripped that infant out of its mother's arms, and the child's screaming, we would think that he has done something profoundly wrong, like at a very deep, almost like sacred sort of sense.
And we can imagine that probably if it happened around here, a guy would get a whooping from those that might be standing around. Because something, he, he's treaded into a space where he does not belong. He's violated that sacred space. He has transgressed. And we have something like that going on here. For the people, who are sinful people, are violating that divine space by thinking they can so flippantly come before the presence of God and His perfect holiness and righteousness.
And we just fail too often to know, to, to realize and recognize the seriousness of our sinfulness. We think something's white until we see true brilliant white and we realize, oh, we're dealing with something that's off-white. It might actually look quite dingy here. And I think sometimes we think of God's holiness of, in terms of maybe the warmth of a campfire, but in truth it's, it's like the overwhelming heat and furnace of the sun. We cannot comprehend, the, the only way we can try to comprehend it is almost in that sort of visual.
It's like heat, light, size. The purity of God's holiness, it's something that we have no part in and of ourselves. And so to enter into that space, we are entering into a place in which we just don't belong
There's something about the nature of sin which just messes things up. We think the, we get the mud in the perfectly clean room, and the nature of sin is that it's deleterious. It, it twists, it perverts, it breaks, it spreads, and that's exactly what we've seen happen across the face of our earth. Adam and Eve sin, and sin spread to all of mankind.
And the way that we try to usually comfort ourselves in thinking about our sinfulness in relation to God is, is by just trying to minimize our sinfulness. "Well, it's not that bad. It's like that guy over there, you know, Hitler and Stalin, they're really bad, but what I've done isn't really that bad."
But we're just telling stories to ourselves. It is that bad. And we see that when we recognize the true holiness of who God is. And until you recognize that, until you recognize His perfect holiness and righteousness, I don't know that you can really appreciate the depths of your own sinfulness.
And this is a problem for us, I think, in the church sometimes because when we come to follow Christ, a lot of the big ticket sin items, sometimes those get knocked out, and then we think that we're okay. But if you know the true holiness of God, then you will examine yourself and see I'm still not there. I'm still a sinner in need of, of grace.
Now, this is a lesson, again, like I said, that is going to be played out across the Old Testament of God's holiness and humanity's sinfulness, and it's working its way towards Christ. I'm gonna draw that out further as we go along here.
Having received these instructions from the Lord, Moses again heads back down the mountain to instruct the people. Verse 14, "After Moses had gone down the mountain to the people, he consecrated them and washed, and they washed their clothes. Then he said to the people, 'Prepare yourselves for the third day. Abstain from sexual relations.' On the morning of the third day, there was thunder and lightning with a thick cloud over the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the Lord descended on it in fire.
The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him. The Lord descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went up, and the Lord said to him, 'Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way to see the Lord and many of them perish. Even the priests who approach the Lord must consecrate themselves, or the Lord will break out against them.' Moses said to the Lord, 'The people cannot come up Mount Sinai, because you yourself warned us, 'Put limits around the mountain and set it apart as holy.' The Lord replied, 'Go down and bring Aaron up with you. But the priests and the people must not force their way to come up to the Lord, or he will break out against them.' So Moses went down to the people and told them."
So we see that Moses goes down, consecrates the people. Yes, they wash their clothes. And we see that they're commanded to refrain from sexual relations. Now, sometimes when, when we read something like this, we might be put under the impression that maybe there's something, like, inherently sinful or, like, wrong about those marital relations, but that's not the case.
When we get into that sphere in the Old Testament, we have to put ourselves into the world of the ancient Israelites. And when we're talking about dead bodies, relations, things like that, we're entering into a space of life and death. I know it's weird for us to think about that, but it's the sort of this in-between sort of space, and anything which represents the possibility of death is unclean to God.
It, it's, it's a pollutant. Now we can, we can appreciate the, the larger message here, that God created us so that we might live with Him forever, and that death is not part of His good plan. And so it has no place before His holy presence. And so while it's a little difficult for us to wrap our, our minds around that, the, how life-death dynamic is caught up in sexual relations, and this is part of the reason why they are told to refrain from that in preparing to come before the Lord.
And as promised, there's thunder, there's lightning, there's a thick cloud, there's a loud trumpet blast, and the people are terrified. They're trembling. And added to this is, is fire. So, so you imagine thick, billowing smoke, flame. And from all of this, at the top of this mountain, Lord speaks to Moses
And God fulfills his word. He's making this demonstration so that the people would believe that Moses is in fact God's prophet. Now Moses is called up again to walk up the mountain, and the message that he receives from the Lord is that the people should not force themselves to see the Lord. Because if they do, they're going to perish. And we see that this is gonna, this, this is a threat not just to the people, but also to the priests among them, that if they would dare come before the Lord as they are, the Lord might break out against them. And what that means, I mean, we can imagine they'd be consumed by, by flame, by fire.
Now, in talking with the Lord, Moses recalls that in obedience to what the Lord had commanded, they had set limits so that the people couldn't just come before him. Now, it's not stated explicitly here, but implicitly, the reason would seem to be is that the people are just not holy enough to come before God.
They've gone through these steps of preparation. They've changed their clothes. They've refrained from the sexual relations. They've done all that. They still can't come before God. Their efforts are insufficient.
And there's a, an abiding lesson for us in that. There's a lesson for us in that today. That we must remember that it is not by our efforts that we are able to come before God. That insofar as we depend on our own preparations, we still gotta stay at the foot of the mountain. In the end, only Moses and Aaron are invited up, not even the priests.
And, and so what we see again and again in the Old Testament is, is this distance between God and man these barriers that are set up. And in truth, out of mercy to the people.
Because to come before our holy God whilst one is still caught up in rebellion and their sin invites punishment, invites destruction. So who can ascend the hill of the Lord? In saying that, that question for some of you that might have brought to mind a Psalm, because we have a Psalm that, In which we find that phrase.
Psalm 24, verses three through four. It says, "Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god." The one who is holy can ascend the hill of the Lord. The one who is holy can draw before God's presence.
But the question is, is can that be said of any of us? Is there any hope for us? In Matthew 5, verses 20 and 48, we see that Jesus tells his disciples, tells those that are gathered there to hear his teaching. He says, "Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." And then he says, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
You have to remember, when Jesus showed up, he didn't lower the standards. He didn't say, "Okay, you don't really need to be holy before, you know, to come before God." That's not, that's not what he came to do. That's not what he taught. Perfection is required to come before God. So the question is, well, what can be done about it?
Well, Jesus tells us in Matthew 20 verse 28. Jesus tells us that he came to give his life as a ransom for many.
We can only draw near to God because of what Jesus has done for us. He has gone ahead of us. On the day that Christ was crucified and died on the cross, we see the curtain in the temple separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the precincts of the sanctuary and the temple grounds. It was split in two.
We can now come before God because of Jesus Christ. I wanna share with you some passages from Hebrews. I'm not gonna get into the nitty-gritty of them, but I wanna share them with you because they really impress upon us that the only way that we can come before God is in Christ. In Hebrews 4, verses 14 through 16, the writer says, "Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weakness, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet he did not sin." You see, that's the key. Yet he did not sin, and that's why he can be our great high priest. And so then we have this invitation. "Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."
It's because Christ has gone before us that we are now invited into the presence of God. Because of his holiness, not because of our holiness. We can be bold, not on our account, but because of what Christ has done. In Hebrews 10, verses 19 through 22, it says, "Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great high, a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water."
Just notice the disparity here between what we're reading here in Hebrews and what we find here at Mount Sinai. The people are told, "Stay at the foot of the mountain. You cannot draw near." But now here in Hebrews on the other side of the cross, we are told, "Come, draw near. Come before God's presence because of what Christ has done for you and for me."
Now this grace that has been offered us in Christ has been given so that we might become a holy people. God has given us grace not so that we might remain in our sins and say, "Oh, this is, this is great. Got my fireproof insurance, you know, ticket out of jail kind of thing, and now I can just do whatever I want."
No, it was so that God could fulfill us to the purpose for which he created and called us. In Titus 2:11-14, the Apostle Paul tells us, "For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people and teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good."
I want you to notice that last verse there. Yes, Christ came so that we might be forgiven, yes. But notice he came to redeem us from our wickedness, from our sinfulness. Not just from our sins, not just from the wrong things that we've done, but the actual condition, our condition of wickedness. He came to redeem us from that and to purify us so that we might belong to Him, so that He might say, "Yeah, that's my people."
When we look to the first letter of Peter, 1 Peter 2:4-5 and 9, we see a, a direct parallel raised between Israel and whom, who we are now in Christ as this kingdom of priests. Peter tells us, "As you come to him, the living stone," he's talking about Jesus here, "rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light." I, I, I love the visual that Peter gives us here. You imagine a cornerstone. Jesus is that cornerstone. Now, God is stacking us on top of Christ, our cornerstone, to be this living temple. And how do we praise God?
Not merely by singing songs. It's not merely by giving thanks to Him, though those are things that we should do It's by living holy lives. That's the way that we truly worship God.
I wanna take us back to Hebrews, and this is gonna be a longer reading. And again, I'm not going to break it down piece by piece. I want you to really just pay attention to what the writer is saying because he's drawing a direct parallel between Mount Sinai and now Mount Zion, the heavenly city of God
And how we should be just as God-fearing today as they were then. In Hebrews 12, verses 18 through 29, it says, "You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded. 'If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.' The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, 'I am trembling with fear,' but you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven.
You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. See to it that you do not refuse him who, him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, 'Once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.' The words 'once more' indicate the removing of what can be shaken - that is, created things - so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire."
And I love that this passage is included in the letter to the Hebrews because we see this dynamic of, of, we are invited to come boldly before God in Christ. And yet we should be not an iota less God-fearing, and we should feel the full weight of the holiness of who God is.
That yes, we should be thankful that we are accepted, but we should also come with lives of worship, living obediently because we recognize that our God is a consuming fire, that all must answer to Him. It's this dynamic where we are assured in Christ that we are saved, that we are accepted because of what He has done
But we know that the purpose for which he came was to make us a holy people. And so we dare not, we dare not trample upon the blood of Jesus Christ by living in a flippant manner. By saying, "Thanks, Jesus, for dying for me. Now I'm going to go walk in the way of Satan." It doesn't add up.
Bad fruit does not come from a good tree. If we have been joined to Jesus Christ, that good fruit should begin to manifest itself in our lives. Though it is not from ourselves, it's from Christ.
And so when we think about our lives, we should, we should recognize who we are approaching and, in fact, who is approaching us 'cause Christ is coming again.
And how we should prepare? Prepare ourselves like a bride. You know, people at Mount Sinai, they were washing their, their clothes to come before the foot of Mount Sinai. We are called to prepare ourselves like a bride as she awaits the coming of her groom. And what does that mean? It doesn't mean to stand up on a hill looking for Jesus to come. It means that we walk in the ways of Christ.
But again, it bears repeating: It will not do if we try to force our way into God's presence on our own account. Our sinfulness cannot withstand His holiness. God in His perfect righteousness cannot condone evil in His presence. This divide between us, between us and God, is not the way that things are supposed to be.
We were not created to live apart from Him. We cannot force our way to Him, though while we cannot force our way to Him, we have been invited into His presence. We see even here in Exodus how God desires His people to draw near.
Whereas the Israelites at that time had to maintain their distance, we have been welcomed to draw near the throne of grace because of the finished work of Jesus Christ. We can come before our holy God because Christ himself was perfectly holy and united with him by faith, we are forgiven. Our guilt is covered by his righteousness.
And that's not all. United with Christ, we are not merely covered by his holiness, by his righteousness. We are being transformed to become a holy people. The Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5, verses 17 and 21, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old is gone. The new is here! God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." This is the complete promise of the Gospel. An invitation to draw near, not to remain as we are, but to be transformed in Jesus Christ. God does take us as we are, but He doesn't leave us how He found us.
We must not forget that in saving us, God is about the work of restoration. That is the end to which everything, everything that God is doing is driving. So we have confidence in Christ of our salvation, but we are not at all lackadaisical. We are drawing near to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.
The return of Christ is approaching, and so we live in anticipation of that day with both hope and a right and holy fear because our God is a consuming fire. And so I say: Abandon your sin, turn to Christ, and be forgiven. And let your life be driven by the pursuit of holiness. Let us pray.
Father, we come before you confessing our weakness and our sinfulness.
And sometimes it's, it's tough to know the difference between the two, Father. At the very least, Father, we are weak because it's so difficult for us to truly comprehend the magnitude of who we are, of your perfection, of your utter holiness. And Father, we confess that we've tried to make ourselves too comfortable at times by minimizing our sinfulness, making light of it, to make ourselves feel good as though we're all right.
Father, we pray that our only comfort would be Christ.
We pray, Father, that as we put our faith in Jesus Christ, that we would have the comfort and insurance, assurance of our forgiveness, and the confidence that we are accepted by you in Him. And that what's more, Father, that in Christ you can indeed transform us. You can indeed make us into your holy people.
And so, Father, we pray that you would be purifying us today, cleansing us, so that we truly would be a kingdom of priests here in this time.
And Father, we look forward to the day when that work will be brought unto completion at the day of Christ's return, when we will be perfectly holy.
Even so, Father, we are grateful for our acceptance under the blood of Jesus Christ and His perfect holiness and His perfect righteousness. We give you praise, Father, and thanks in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from the Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us in person or virtually this Sunday as we worship God together. It's our joy to welcome you into our community
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)