Exodus 20:22-26

Good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This is where every day you and I, we get together. We have a little bit of coffee. We get into God's Word and we grow in our love for the Lord together. And this year, 2023, Lord willing, we'll make it from Genesis to Leviticus. I'm so glad to be with you today. We are at a pivot point in the book of Exodus. The change has already started but now the real stuff or what's kind of going to characterize the rest of Leviticus is going to be before us. Let's go ahead and have some coffee. We'll pray and we'll wrap up chapter 20 of the book of Exodus.
Let's pray. Father, you are great and awesome, worthy of all praise. And we thank you for your word. We pray, Father, that you would please help us to understand the words that we read this morning. Please, Lord, help us to. Help us not just to understand them, but let them change our lives. In Jesus's name, Amen. All right, so we're at Exodus chapter 20. Let's go ahead and go there. This is the very last part of that chapter. Then the Lord said to Moses, thus you shall say to the children of Israel, you have seen that I have talked with you from heaven.
You shall not make anything to be with me. Gods of silver or gold or or gods of gold. You shall not make for yourselves an altar of the earth. You shall make for me and you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen in every place where I record my name. For I will come to you and I will bless you. And if you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it. Nor shall you go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness may not be exposed on it.
Well, what an interesting turn, right? We need to ask ourselves in this passage, A, what's this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do in response to this? So what I mean by a turn. We're going to see huge swaths of Exodus being about God's law, how God is going to institute his worship, how he desires to be worshiped. It's going to be intermixed with story. So we're going to find chapters of regulations, chapters of law, and we're going to find chapters of a story. That's how it's going to work, right?
And so here, we've come out of Sinai, well they're still in Sinai but that's kind of getting wrapped up and now they've told Moses you go talk to God so he does and God is speaking now instead of to everyone to Moses and and it starts this first giving of kind of the nitty gritties of the law. It's very different than the Ten Commandments. In a sense that this is more granular, this is more particular. And God is trying to pick up on how the first commandment and the second commandment go together.
Then the Lord said to Moses, thus you shall say to the children of Israel, when you have seen that I have talked with you from heaven, you shall not make anything to be with me. You hear the echoes of the first commandment, right? For I, the Lord, your, sorry, the first commandment, when he told them, you shall have no other gods before me, right?
And here he says, you shall not make for yourself anything to be with me. This idea like, it's just me, it's just me, you're not allowed to have anything else. You're not allowed to make gods of silver or gods of gold. You shall not make them for yourselves, right? Nope, no, no gods of gold, no gods of silver. It's just me. That's it. There's no representing me. There's no representing other things. Making them with images of silver and gold and bowing down to them. No, no, no, that's it. And then he says, okay, so how will you worship? If you're going to worship, but you're not allowed to have idols, no images of silver and gold, how are you supposed to, he says, with an altar. Verse 24, an altar of earth you shall make for me.
This teaches us something about God. The relationship between God and them is a relationship in which sin needs to be taken care of. Thanks needs to be given. There's going to be different sacrifices that they need to make that he's going to explain here in these books. And it's going to characterize and be this sign of the type of relationship that they have with their covenant God. It says you shall make an altar for me and you shall sacrifice on it burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I record my name, I will come to you and I will bless you. This is how God is going to interact with them. They are going to come and make their burnt offerings on an altar to him.
They're going to sacrifice to him, not because he needs to be fed, not because he's hungry, but because they need peace with him. Why do they need peace? Because Jehovah, the Lord that they have so much reverence for, who has just spoken to them from Mount Sinai, hates sin. And so they're going to make sacrifices to Him because they love Him. and they want to be in communion with him. And so they're going to make peace offerings to him.
There's also going to be later on, thank offerings and sin offerings and things like that. But his point here being, I'm going to come to you regularly. When I come to you, you're going to make sacrifices. And as you make those sacrifices, I'm going to bless you.
This is the operating mode of God. He wants to bless them. He's going to come to them. It's not a God aloof and far away, but he wants his face to shine upon them and he wants to be gracious to them. He wants to bless them. This is the relationship between them and God.
And he says, but there's something about this, right? When you make an altar, don't make it of hewn stone, don't go and chisel it out and stuff, you know? No, no, make it of rough stone, put it up, but then also don't make it so high that you have to have stairs going up to it so that a priest has to walk up there, up the stairs, and somebody looks up and accidentally sees him in his underwear, right? You don't want no peeping toms, right? That's what he's talking about here.
Nope, none, just a rough altar. Just a rough altar is what, so when you're making that sacrifice, the blood is able to drain out the fats and everything, you're able to come out and you're able to just have the sacrifice there for God. Now, sacrifices, many people think of sacrifices and they only think of whole burnt offerings, It's absolutely consumed, charred to nothing, and it's gone. It's not actually the case. What we're going to see as we go through the regulations here, as we go through how God is to be worshipped, most of the sacrifices actually are not whole burnt offerings. It's more like a barbecue, right, where people would cook the meat, the priests would eat the meat, and sometimes even the family would eat the meat. And so one of the things that is, we just think of them as whole burnt offerings all the time, but they're not always that way. We'll get into that. We'll get into that. So what's this about? This is a pivot point where God is going to start launching into his worship regulations. Why?
Because God has redeemed them to worship him. God has redeemed them to worship him. and he alone is going to be their God, no other idols. At the center of a religious community is who they worship and how they worship. And let me say it again, at the core and center of every religious community is who they worship and how they worship. And God is establishing his covenant people and telling them who they worship, it's just him, and how they worship, the sacrifices and not idolatry.
And what is it primarily based off of? The peace that God has made between them. What's the best verse to summarize this? In my Bible, I would underline verse 23 and the very last part of verse 24. In every place where I record my name, I will come to you and I will bless you. Maybe you would underline something different in your name. While I seek calling, what are we called to do? Well, what is the core of our religious community?
It is God still, this same God. But now we have an even more clear understanding of who that God is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Not that he's a new God, no. Let us make man in our image. We're worshiping the same God as in Genesis 1 and 2, but he's made it clear to us that it is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This is three person and one Godhead. The Trinity, the one true living God, and so we worship that one God. How do we worship him? Still no idols. Still no idols. Not of images of gold or images of silver or wood or stone, none of that, none of that, right? We come and we worship him in spirit and in truth.
Jesus tells the woman at the well that the father is seeking such as these. How do we get to worship him though? Because Jesus has redeemed us. Because Jesus has given us living water. Because Jesus himself is our sacrifice. And so what are we called to do today? We're to worship him in spirit and truth. We're to come to Him with the sacrifice of praise. We're to come to Him knowing that He has already come to us and He has blessed us because He's given us His Son and He's poured out His Spirit into your heart.
The one that cries out, Abba, Father. Cling to Him. Worship Him. Love Him. Have no other gods before Him. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for this day and we pray that you would please help us. Help us, Lord, to worship you wherever we go. To always have a song of praise upon our lips. Let us love you, Lord. Let us follow after you. for your face has shined upon us and you have been gracious to us. In Jesus's name, amen. May the Lord bless you. May you walk in the joy and peace that comes from knowing that Jesus Christ is the redeemer of your soul and your shepherd into all eternity. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith and your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue. Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.