God Revealed: I am
Exodus: Joining God To Set Them Free • Sermon • Submitted
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· 4 viewsGod reveals Himself to Israel for the first time at the mountain. Through this revelation, He challanges the cultural understanding of what a God is and identifies Himself with Israel to change the cultural understanding of who they were. God's preeminance in our lives transforms us into a holy people that communicate the truth of who He is by the way we live.
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“The golden rule to follow to obtain spiritual understanding is not one of intellectual pursuit, but one of obedience. If a person wants scientific knowledge, then intellectual curiosity must be his guide. But if he desires knowledge and insight into the teachings of Jesus Christ, he can only obtain it through obedience. If spiritual things seem dark and hidden to me, then I can be sure that there is a point of disobedience somewhere in my life. Intellectual darkness is the result of ignorance, but spiritual darkness is the result of something that I do not intend to obey.
No one ever receives a word from God without instantly being put to the test regarding it. We disobey and then wonder why we are not growing spiritually. Jesus said, “If you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24). He is saying, in essence, “Don’t say another word to me; first, be obedient by making things right.” The teachings of Jesus hit us where we live. We cannot stand as impostors before Him for even one second. He instructs us down to the very last detail. The Spirit of God uncovers our spirit of self-vindication and makes us sensitive to things that we have never even thought of before.
When Jesus drives something home to you through His Word, don’t try to evade it. If you do, you will become a religious impostor. Examine the things you tend simply to shrug your shoulders about, and where you have refused to be obedient, and you will know why you are not growing spiritually. As Jesus said, “First…go….” Even at the risk of being thought of as fanatical, you must obey what God tells you.” - The Way to Knowledge | My Utmost For His Highest. https://utmost.org/the-way-to-knowledge/
Introduction:
Introduction:
Last week we talked about our call from God to make things personal.
We are called to be personal with those that God has called us too because He was personal with us.
We looked at how God used Moses to prepare Israel to know Him, by experience, through consecrating them.
We applied that to our relationships and considered that God uses us to prepare people to experience Him.
We discussed the necessity for authenticity and vulnerability in our lives and conversations so that we can both be known, and know others.
Lastly, we talked about the fact that we cannot lead someone to a place that we haven’t been.
This idea, in particular, has stuck with me and why I felt that this devotion by Oswald Chambers was so fitting for us today.
Up until this point, the text has been the narrative story of God freeing Israel from slavery, but now, it focuses on the covenant that God is making with the people of Israel so that He can restore the relationship with His people.
1 And God spoke all these words, saying,
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
God shares His identity with those who claim Him.
God shares His identity with those who claim Him.
By delivering Israel, God tied them into his identity.
When people think of Israel, they immediately think of their God because of what He has done for them.
The reverse of that idea is similar. From this point forward, anytime YHWH is mentioned, Israel also comes to mind.
Because of the way he delivered them from the mightiest army in the world.
The same is true for us, and the implications of this are incredibly staggering for us all.
Consider the ramifications of this idea, and it will become apparent why it is so important to God that we are made holy.
If you have ever worked with anyone as part of a team, you understand that the way each person toils, communicates and presents themselves affects the entire team.
Ultimately all of those individual actions, in conjunction with all the team members, form the character of that group.
Whether or not that team gets a call back is dependent on how they perform.
As part of the church, we are incredibly aware of this fact right now.
There has, unfortunately, been so much bad press recently because of the actions of a few.
How we live, individually, has a significant impact on how the people around us view us, the church, and ultimately God.
Choosing to live in an unholy way makes God appear to be unholy.
How has “christian” culture affected the way people view God?
How does the way we live change that perception?
It’s not that we want to live unholy lives, we just have a hard time letting go of our own plans and desires.
But there are so many people in our lives that want nothing to do with the church because of the experiences they or loved ones have had with it.
Part of our call as a people that are going to Join God To Set Them Free, is to share the truth about who God is not only with our words, but also by the way we live.
If we identify ourselves as followers of Christ but are not obeying his commands, we give God the identity of being untrustworthy, unreliable, and ultimately we make Him undesirable.
Have you ever considered that your life, identified as a believer, could impact the world around you for both good and bad?
We all know people like that. We read about them with disgust, but are we those people?
1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples,
2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat,
3 so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.
4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.
5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long,
6 and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues
7 and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.
8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers.
9 And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.
10 Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.
11 The greatest among you shall be your servant.
12 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.
15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
The way we live, as identifiers of Christ, forms the opinions of others about the truth of who God is.
Saying one thing and living another is what Jesus is calling out about the scribes and Pharisees.
They were all about trying to fix everyone else’s sins but were unwilling to consider their own.
As image-bearers of God and followers of Christ, we must be holy, and we must obey his commands because that informs people about the kind of God we serve.
We are all very aware of the fact that we are utterly incapable of either sanctifying or obeying in our own power.
We must rely on the power of the Holy Spirit for both our righteousness and desire for obedience.
That fact doesn’t negate our need for the law though. God needed to set the standard so that we would have a hard and fast understanding of what it means to be in relationship with a Holy God.
By God identifying Himself as our God, He requires that we are a holy people.
Not only does he demand it, but he provides the only way for it to happen and he gave it to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus!
Why does any of this matter? If God makes a requirement and then fulfills it Himself, why are we even concerned or involved?
It matters because it reveals to us and the world the incredible love that He has for His creation.
This means everything! God created us, we choose to sin and separate ourselves from Him, but he doesn’t give up on us.
He remembers! He remembers that He created us to enjoy Him.
Just like a parent will do anything to take care of their child, God will did whatever was necessary to bring us back into His presence.
God’s preeminence must be recognized.
God’s preeminence must be recognized.
In Near Eastern cultures, having many gods was the norm.
God declaring Himself as the only God would be odd for those in that culture.
By doing so, God is setting Himself apart from all other gods.
A common misunderstanding of early Israel is that they were monotheistic.
However, this idea cannot be supported as we look at scripture because the two primary words that are used by OT writers, elohim and elim, could refer to many different entities.
Yahweh, the gods of yahweh’s council, the gods of foreign nations, demons, spirits of dead people, angels, etc.
So for God to draw a line in the sand and tell Israel that they are not allowed to have any other Gods is transformative of how they view God and the world around them.
God is separating Himself from this cultural norm in order to make the distinction between Him being the one and only God and the many man made gods.
Why is it necessary for God to separate Himself from cultural norms and what is our role in that process?
“Before me” literally means “to my face” and is used to describe a man marrying a second wife while the first is still alive.
It expresses the breach of an exclusive relationship in a very personal way.
God is not only their creator, but also their deliverer and sanctifier.
He has loved them from the beginning and is working to restore the relationship he created them to have.
Israel living in and sharing this truth about God puts God in a league of his own in a world that was full of false gods.
This is the very first command and God is demanding that Israel hold him in his proper place as foremost in their lives.
Because we are created beings, we long to worship something.
God didn’t first tell them that they need to worship something and then tell them that He need to be that thing.
It is in our nature to worship and God is telling us that He is to be worshiped.
Not worshiped first.
Worshiped exclusively with no exceptions.
This command not only sets God apart from idols, but it also sets Israel apart from all other people.
God’s nature, expressed through his commands, and obeyed by His people reveal a very different life than was the cultural norm.
That was true for Israel and it is certainly true for us today.
As we are considering Joining God, we must consider if we are leading people to God.
Are we declaring the nature of who God is by the way we live and the things we choose to obey?
What do you find yourself obsessing over?
What do you find yourself talking about the most?
Whatever is consuming our time, thoughts, and resources is what we are worshiping.
Now we all knew that statement was coming.
Right?
We’ve been probably all been down this road before.
Growing up in the bible belt, we’ve all heard many teachings on the ten commandments.
Many in the room immediately think of the actor Charles Heston, who played Moses in the 1956 movie.
For me, this commandment in particular reminds me of camp and all the teenagers being guilt-ed into destroying all their secular cd’s.
How long did that last? for me personally, about two weeks… each summer... until i graduated.
So why didn’t it stick?
Why is it so hard for us to live under this commandment?
The same reason it’s hard for us to live under any of them.
When we try to fulfill the law, under our own power, we come up short.
Which, ironically, is the point of the law.
then we feel guilty for failing and recommit ourselves to God in order to feel better about our selves and to prove to God that we are better than that.
Round and round we go until we are completely frustrated with ourselves and God.
All of this is because we have misunderstood why the law was given.
We cannot fulfill the law on our own. We must allow Christ, through the Holy Spirit to both speak and to will us to be obedient to Him.
Remember what we heard from Oswald this morning?
“When Jesus drives something home to you through His Word, don’t try to evade it. If you do, you will become a religious impostor. Examine the things you tend simply to shrug your shoulders about, and where you have refused to be obedient, and you will know why you are not growing spiritually.”
Our call is to obey. Just obey and leave the results to him.
What is it in our life that is consuming you? What is the Holy Spirit showing you that needs correction?
I know it’s hard to give up things. Usually, the thing we are worshiping in place of God, we really enjoy.
I don’t know what that thing is for you, and you may not even enjoy it, but if it is consuming your life, we must allow God to deal with it.
One of these things for me was PUBG.
I really enjoy it and I’m really good at it. However, it was consuming me...
God told me to get rid of it.
Through the giving of His commandments, God is freeing Israel from sin so that they can enjoy God.
God revealing to you and I what we are slaves too, is freeing us to enjoy Him as well.
Our church culture has had an obsession with what they thought this law was about.
It has been assumed, by so many, that by focusing on the law, we can become righteous.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
1 What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh?
2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.
3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”
4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.
5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,
The Law is simply there to help us to see that we are actually slaves.
Before knowing Christ, we are slaves to sin, slaves to lies that have been whispered in our ears from the time we were born until now.
God wants to set us free to enjoy the relationship He created us to have, but we would rather keep living in the lie that whatever we are currently worshiping will bring us more joy and contentment than God can.
We cannot lead people to freedom that we don’t have.
God demands that we put Him first in our lives because that is what we were created for. It is the missing piece in our lives that we are always trying to fill with something else and never feeling satisfied.
I may have used this example with you guys before so forgive me if I have.
As a kid I got fussed at all the time for using a tool in a way other than it was intended.
I have a buddy that refers to using a “crescent hammer” on things. For those who don’t know, a crescent wrench is used to loosen or tighten bolts and nuts. A hammer is used for driving nails.
Can you use a crescent wrench as a hammer? Sure, but it won’t work very well and the quality of the job will suffer. Not to mention the wrench will be beat up.
Us trying to fill a God shaped whole with anything other than God is like using a crescent hammer.
It’s just dumb and lazy.
The freedom that we have experienced here at TGP, is a freedom from being slaves to the law, that is provided for by God’s grace, through Jesus.
We have understood, like Paul is communicating, that fulfilling the law would only get us our due wage, but God, in his greatness would rather give us what we don’t deserve.
That is the Grace of God, unmerited favor!
That is freedom!
We experience that freedom by submitting ourselves to God’s commands and THEN Relying on HIM to bring us in to righteousness.
We Join God to set People free by first living in that freedom ourselves and then inviting people into our lives so that they can see the work of God’s grace and thereby learn the truth about who He is.
I cannot tell you how often I see a news article in my feed that I literally cannot stomach to finish.
This matters because we are surrounded by people who are in desperate need of the truth about God.
They have been lied to, mistreated, abused, and left in hopelessness.
Unfortunately, the church, and therefore, from their perspective, God, have been unresponsive, at best, and enabling, at worst, of the tragedy in people's lives.
The way we live and respond communicate to the world who God is.
If we are claiming Christ as our identity, but living for ourselves, we are sharing a false gospel.
The way we live, the decisions we make, and the words we speak are of eternal importance.
We must allow God to be preeminent in our lives.
We must allow the Holy Spirit to speak into our lives and then follow His leading.
Christ is the only hope any of us have, we cannot keep that to ourselves.
When we are heartbroken by a story we read, we have not even begun to taste the devastation that the person is living in.
We have within us, as believers, the hope that their lives are depending on.