Moses on the Mountain with the Lord - Part 1
Exodus 19:1-7
Sermon by Rick Crandall
McClendon Baptist Church - June 2, 2010
BACKGROUND &INTRODUCTION:
*The Lord is with us here tonight. God’s Word makes that clear. And it is a wonderful truth of the Christian life. But one day, Christians, we will see Jesus face to face. It will be amazing, an indescribable blessing! Think about the wonder of seeing Jesus, as we continue to study the Old Testament appearances of Christ.
*In Exodus 3&4, the Lord appeared to Moses in a burning bush. There God called Moses to lead His people out of slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land.
*Then in Exodus 4, Moses began to carry out the Lord’s mission. But the Lord met Moses in the way, and almost killed him, because Moses had not circumcised his younger son. Moses’ wife Zipporah stood in the gap for her husband and performed the covenant ritual. -- Then Moses began to carry out his mission.
*When the Lord first called Moses, He foretold that Pharaoh would resist letting the people go. So God promised to send terrible judgments on Egypt. In Exodus 3:18-20, the Lord said to Moses:
18. . . . “You shall come, you and the elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt; and you shall say to him, `The Lord God of the Hebrews has met with us; and now, please, let us go three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.'
19. I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go, no, not even by a mighty hand.
20. So I will stretch out My hand and strike Egypt with all My wonders which I will do in its midst; and after that he will let you go.
*Those wonders came in the form of 10 terrible plagues that God sent on Egypt. Water turned to blood. Then God sent plagues of frogs, lice, flies, severe pestilence on their animals, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and finally the death of the firstborn of all men and beasts, except those protected by the blood of the Passover.
*Pharaoh then let God’s people go, but quickly changed his mind, and planned to crush them when they were trapped against the Red Sea. But God miraculously parted the sea so that His people could safely cross over. Pharaoh’s army was then crushed by the collapsing wall of water that had been held back by the Lord. Now 3 months have gone by, and just as He promised in Exodus 3, the Lord has led His people back to the mountain where He first appeared to Moses.
*With this background in mind, let’s read Exodus 19:1-7.
1. In the third month after the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on the same day, they came to the Wilderness of Sinai.
2. For they had departed from Rephidim, had come to the Wilderness of Sinai, and camped in the wilderness. So Israel camped there before the mountain.
3. And Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain, saying, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel:
4. 'You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself.
5. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine.
6. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel."
7. So Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before them all these words which the LORD commanded him.
*Over the course of the summer, we will see that Moses went up the mountain seven times to meet with the Lord. Each of these meetings has a message for you and me. And in this first meeting, the Lord has four things to say to us.
1. First: God confirms His salvation.
*God confirmed His salvation to the Children of Israel. And the Lord wants to confirm His salvation to us. This is the message of vs. 3-4:
3. And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel:
4. `You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself.
*There was absolutely nothing the Children of Israel could ever do to escape the cruelty of slavery in Egypt. But their deliverance was never in doubt, because God is in control. Nothing could have kept those people in bondage: Not Pharaoh, not the strongest army in the world, not the depths of the Red Sea.
*Christians, through the cross of Jesus Christ, God has given us an infinitely greater salvation. I love the way God’s Word puts it in Hebrews 7:25, where it tells us that Jesus “is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He ever lives to make intercession for them.”
*I also love the way God put it here in vs. 4, where He said: “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself.” Here the Lord was reminding them (and us) of His love, deliverance and protection.
*“I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself.” Don’t you love that expression? -- Joseph Marshall explained: “The meaning of life is that God brings us unto Himself. This is what the Lord wants. He wants us to come to Him.” As the Lord Jesus said in Matt 11:28, ‘Come to me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” The Lord wanted Moses to understand that He was not so much bringing His people to a land, as He was bringing them to a Person, to Himself.
*And He carried them on eagles’ wings. As baby eagles learn to fly, they flutter their wings and make it for a moment. Then they falter, but mother eagle is carefully watching, and takes off like a rocket, zooming under her baby, catching it safely on her wings, taking her baby higher and higher. Then she lets him try again, until he finally learns to fly.
*Joseph Marshall said: “In all of the recorded studies of eagles, researchers have never found that even one eaglet has fall to his death because he was not caught on his mother’s wings!” (1)
*How much more sure are the wings of the Lord! We may falter, but He will never let us fall! And the Lord wants us to know it!
-So John 3:36 says, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
-And in John 6:47 Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.”
*We love to sing “Amazing Grace,” but listen to these words from another song by John Newton:
“Saved by grace, I live to tell
What the love of Christ hath done,
He redeemed my soul from hell,
Of a rebel made a son;
Oh! I tremble still to think,
How secure I lived in sin;
Sporting on destruction's brink,
Yet was saved from falling in.” (2)
*Have you been saved from the fall? -- Have you put your faith in Jesus Christ?
-Let the Lord carry you on His eagles’ wings and bring you to Himself.
-Then He will confirm His salvation to you.
*God confirms His salvation.
2. And He challenges us to obey His voice.
*This message for the Children of Israel is in vs. 5, where the Lord told Moses: “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine.”
*Our obedience has always been a priority to the Lord. On the night before the cross, in John 15, Jesus said:
12. "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
13. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.
14. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.
*Here is a little of what Johnny Hunt told SBC pastors in the summer of 2009: “If Southern Baptists are to be what God wants them to be, they desperately need to repent of the sins that clog their spiritual lives. I am not a prophet or a prophet’s son, but I may have to do until a prophet comes. And here’s what I want to say to the Southern Baptist Convention: There is a dire need for overwhelming repentance. I’ve never seen so many hard things said from one person to the next without any sense of grief.
*Like a flowing stream that beavers dam up over time with fallen trees and debris, a Christian becomes blocked spiritually by sins both large and small. And in the same manner, the only way for living water to flow again is for spiritual dynamite to be applied.”
*Hunt confessed that he has at times allowed his own life to get dammed up by sins that he didn’t take seriously. “Almost unbeknownst to me,” he said “I let some tree fall across the artesian well of God’s Spirit. I hardly even notice. God reminds me of it, but I just don’t take serious His mandate to be clean. Then a little trash here and a little gossip there and a little sarcasm and a little jealousy and a little envy and before you know it, our lives are dammed up and the flow of God’s Spirit stopped.
*You may be ministering, but God’s life is not being ministered through you. A person in that condition needs to pray that God would strategically place ‘a couple of sticks of holy dynamite’ and that the explosion would blow them back into a proper relationship with God.” (3)
*God challenged the Children of Israel to obey, and He challenges us today.
-God challenges us to obey His voice.
3. And He calls us to be His people.
*God calls us to be His covenant people. This is another important part of the Lord’s message from vs. 5-6:
5. `Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine.
6. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.''
*The Lord’s words here are very similar to the words God speaks to New Testament believers in 1 Peter 2:1-10. Here the Bible says:
1. Therefore, laying aside all malice, all guile, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking,
2. as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,
3. if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
4. Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious,
5. you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
6. Therefore it is also contained in the Scripture, "Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, and he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame.''
7. Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who are disobedient, "The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone,''
8. and "A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.'' They stumble, being disobedient to the word, to which they also were appointed.
9. But you (Christians) you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;
10. who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.
*God calls us to be His people.
*When we recognize that God is God, and we are accountable to Him...
-When we realize that we are lost without Him...
-When we realize that He loves us and sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for us...
-When we receive His Risen Son as our Lord and Savior...
-Then we become “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that (we) may proclaim the praises of Him who called (us) out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.”
*God calls us to be His people.
4. And He commands us to communicate His Word.
*This was the Lord’s command to Moses in vs. 6: “And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.”
*Moses took God’s command to heart, and vs. 7 says: “So Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before them all these words which the Lord commanded him.” Moses communicated God’s Word, and God commands us to do the same thing.
*Maxie Dunnam gave this example from a trip to a Christian conference about five years ago. Maxie and his wife Jeri were taking a relaxing walk in a little park. Listen to his testimony:
-“We were strolling around when we came upon a small park, quiet, cool, big beautiful oak trees with squirrels scampering all around and a few children playing kickball over in a corner, and on a bench in the middle of the park, a big man smoking a cigar.
*We greeted him as we passed, just a casual, how are you. We didn't expect his answer. In fact, we almost missed it. That's usually the case isn't it? We don't expect a person to answer us when we ask them how they are. Thank God for the Spirit making us alert that day.
*The fella mumbled something about not being well, not many words and half joking, but miraculously we picked up on it and we stopped to visit. Ah how the Spirit works when we are responsive.
*Within minutes, strangers were sharing deeply and intimately. He told us the story of his wife, ravaged with cancer, in their retirement home only a block away, dying but not knowing it because he didn't have the courage to give her the doctor's prognosis.
*A big strong man with no inner resources to face his crisis. He trembled with fear and tears rolled down his face. He apologized as though he shouldn't cry in the presence of strangers. He was as terrified of the future as a little child is of the dark night alone. He said he had nobody to talk to, nobody with whom to share.
*Now that struck me as being strange, very strange. There we were in God's square mile, supposedly thousands of Christians around, but he thought he had no one with whom to share. How ironic.
*Jeri and I became his priests that day. We witnessed to him, shared God's good news of love and care with him, and my wife, the hugger in the family, embraced him. And we had prayer together right there in the middle of the park.
*Squirrels continued to scamper around, barking in their play. Children squealed joyously in their game of kickball. But a divine transaction took place on that park bench.” (4)
*And God has divine transactions for us to make. He met with Moses on the mountain. And He meets with us here for many of the same reasons:
-God wants to confirm His salvation to you. Just be sure you have trusted Jesus as your Savior and Lord.
-God also challenges us to obey His voice.
-He calls us to be His people.
-And He commands us to communicate His Word.
*Let’s ask Him to help us do all of these things.
1. Adapted from SermonCentral sermon “On Eagles Wings” by Joseph Marshall - Exodus19:3-4 - Oct. 21, 2007
2. Newton hymn referenced by Albert P. Graves in KERUX ILLUSTRATION COLLECTION - ID Number: 15312 - SOURCE: Fredericksburg Bible Illustrator Supplements - TITLE: A Hymn of John Newton
3. Adapted from “Repentance a 'dire need' in SBC, Hunt says” - July 9, 2009 - By: Mark Kelly - Baptist Press - LOUISVILLE, KY
4. Adapted from ChristianGlobe.com sermon “The Church: Identity and Function” by Maxie Dunnam - 1 Peter 2:4-12
