Mosaic Covenant (Part 1) - Baptist Covenant Theology Week 8

3 views

See more here: https://providencebaptistar.com/imi_sermon-series/baptist-covenant-theology/

0 comments

The Mosaic Covenant (Part 2) - Baptist Covenant Theology

The Mosaic Covenant (Part 2) - Baptist Covenant Theology

00:02
All right, Baptist Covenant Theology week eight, and we embark tonight upon the
00:09
Mosaic Covenant. Let me say a few things to start out. First, you need to know that what we're trying to do is understand how the
00:22
Bible fits together. That's what we're trying to do. There are differing views on this.
00:29
This is not a matter of I'm saved, I'm not saved. But this,
00:34
I believe, will open up our minds and hearts to understand, number one, I think this shines forth the beauty of the gospel all the more.
00:43
It also makes the Bible make sense. If you fit it as you understand your reading, how it fits into this framework.
00:52
By the way, this is not a framework that we come outside the scripture and impose upon the text.
00:58
This is a biblical framework that the scripture teaches us. So do a little bit of review because it's been a few weeks.
01:05
So just a quick review. We talked about the covenant of redemption, and we talked about that that's a plan outside of time, if you will, for God to redeem a people for himself.
01:21
He's going to have a people from every tribe and tongue and language and nation. The Bible promises that.
01:27
The Bible teaches us the father gave the son a people, the son accepted this gift and pledged himself to be their redeemer, to be their surety.
01:38
And the Holy Spirit promised and guaranteed that he would apply the redemption of Christ to the elect.
01:45
This is just the scripture, this is what the Bible teaches. Then we move to the covenant of works. So now this plan begins to unfold in time.
01:53
You have the covenant of works in the garden. Adam was obligated to obey God even as a creature, but in the covenant of works,
02:01
God covenants to grant life to Adam if he fulfills all righteousness.
02:07
Adam and Eve fail, and as Adam being our federal head, they plunge all humanity into ruin.
02:15
And so now we're born in a state of sin and misery. But in Genesis 3 .15, God promises a redeemer that is going to do what?
02:26
Crush the serpent's head, and he will be the seed of a woman. This is the
02:32
Messiah. So it's very important that you hear this. It is by virtue of this promise that all the believers in the
02:41
Old Testament are saved. The promise of the gospel. Pointing forward to the
02:46
Messiah and his work in the gospel, his perfect life, his substitutionary death as a propitiation, his resurrection, right?
02:56
Then we moved into the Noahic covenant. The covenant with Noah. We said that this covenant keeps the world in order, keeps going on so that things do not spin out into chaos.
03:07
You can picture it as rails if you want. And so that the Lord has promised that he will not destroy the world in summer and winter and seed time of harvest.
03:16
All these things will remain. We looked at all those things in the Noahic covenant until redemption is complete.
03:22
And then that gets us to last time, which I think was like three or four weeks ago because we paused. But that's the
03:29
Abrahamic covenant. Now in the Abrahamic covenant, we now see this family from all the earth that the
03:36
Messiah is gonna come from. Not a trick question. What family is the promised Christ going to come from?
03:44
The family of who? Yeah, that's right. But even bigger, even before David, the family of who?
03:52
Abraham, okay? So God is from all the nations of the world, God's chosen one family, one physical lineage that the
04:01
Messiah is going to come through, and that's the family of Abraham. He is promised a seed, a land of rest, that is
04:09
Canaan, to be the father of many nations, and that Abraham's children are God's children.
04:15
And we looked at all that, and we noticed that's ultimately last time fulfilled in spiritual children.
04:21
Nehemiah Cox reminded us, Abraham is to be considered in a double capacity.
04:26
He is the father of all true believers and the father and root of the Israelite nation.
04:32
All right, now this is on your sheet. I'm gonna read it. A quote by Sam Rinahan. It's really about the Abrahamic covenant, but I think it's important kind of a transitionary quote as we move into the
04:43
Mosaic covenant tonight. We're just gonna do this a couple of weeks. Mosaic covenant's so big. Like the Mosaic covenant, when you talk about the old covenant, that's usually what you're referring to, the old covenant, the
04:54
Mosaic covenant. This is a big one, so we'll take a couple of weeks, but here's what Rinahan says. The apparent tension between God's guaranteed promises and the threats of expulsion from the kingdom for disobedience is resolved in that although the promises were nationally guaranteed, they were not individually guaranteed.
05:15
God, this is very important, God kept his promises. So some people today say things like, well, what about all these promises to the physical people of Israel?
05:24
God's kept his promises. He's fulfilled his promises. I'll go on. Rinahan says, Abraham's descendants did multiply.
05:31
They did inherit Canaan. The promised seed was born, but not every Israelite enjoyed the full benefits of God's blessing.
05:38
They did not fulfill their commitments. The promises were nationally guaranteed, but not individually guaranteed.
05:44
The wilderness generation and Moses are good examples of this. The wilderness generation did not enter
05:49
Canaan because of their disbelief at their first arrival. Moses did not enter the promised land because he disobeyed
05:56
God's command about speaking to the rock and struck it instead. Yet God fulfilled his promises corporately and nationally to Israel though individuals cut themselves off from the covenant through unfaithfulness.
06:10
The Bible itself declares that God discharged his duties and fulfilled his obligations completely.
06:17
So, this brings us tonight to Exodus chapter six. We turn there. Exodus chapter six.
06:26
Now, we could probably spend weeks on the Mosaic covenant. I mean, multiple weeks.
06:32
We're only gonna spend two weeks, but we could spend a lot of time on the Mosaic covenant.
06:38
But just this class is really just more of an overview. We'll spend two weeks. We'll start in Exodus chapter six.
06:47
Verses one through five. The Lord said to Moses, now you shall see what
06:53
I will do to Pharaoh. For with a strong hand, he will send them out. With a strong hand, he will drive them out of his land.
07:00
God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God almighty but by my name, the
07:12
Lord or Yahweh, I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners.
07:22
Moreover, I've heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves and I have remembered my covenant.
07:29
Say therefore to the people of Israel, I am the Lord and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the
07:34
Egyptians and I will deliver you from slavery to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.
07:42
I will take you to be my people and I will be your God and you shall know that I am the
07:47
Lord, your God who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.
07:56
I will give it to you for possession. I am Yahweh. Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel but they did not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.
08:10
It's a big covenant to consider. This is the beginning here and God's promise to remember what he told
08:15
Abraham and now he's gonna enter eventually into covenant with these people. So what we're gonna do with the
08:21
Mosaic covenant was gonna break it down into three headings. We're gonna talk about its nature, its purpose and its fulfillment.
08:29
Here's a spoiler. The Mosaic covenant is not in, what word am
08:36
I looking for? It's been abrogated. It's been done away with because it's been fulfilled in Christ.
08:45
So like, well, the Jews today, they're under the Mosaic covenant. No, they have been practicing some parts of the
08:53
Mosaic covenant but they're not under the covenant, right? Because the covenant has been fulfilled in Christ but that will be a different lesson, okay?
09:00
Today, let's start out talking about its nature, okay? I'm really trying not to run too fast.
09:06
So first, its nature. The first thing we want to consider and we look to Exodus 6,
09:12
I'm gonna ask you a question like I ask with Abraham. Is this covenant, is this covenant with Moses and the people of Israel conditional or unconditional?
09:22
What do we mean by those words? Conditional means what? There are stipulations that must be met.
09:33
There are conditions that must be met, okay? So is it conditional or unconditional?
09:42
Yes. Now, undeniably, there is a gracious aspect to it.
09:48
We read in Exodus 6, God says, I will, I will,
09:53
I will. In fact, we heard a sermon the other night from Pastor Randall Easter about how Exodus 6 points us to the gospel.
10:01
And we will discuss how the Mosaic covenant actually does point us to the gospel.
10:07
But we have to establish here that the Mosaic covenant is not the gospel, nor, and this is very, very important, nor is the
10:19
Mosaic covenant an administration of the covenant of grace, okay?
10:26
The Mosaic covenant, just saying this, you're Baptists in here, so most of you probably, I don't know, maybe 50 -50, you're like,
10:33
I don't even 100 % understand what that means. But there would be some that would say the Mosaic covenant is just another administration of God's covenant of grace.
10:42
But it's not, and I'll show you, let's look at the Bible, okay? So let's look at Exodus 19.
10:47
We're gonna look at Exodus 19 and Exodus 24. It is absolutely, unequivocally a conditional covenant.
10:56
We're not denying that God is gracious in it. Of course, God is gracious to enter into covenant, but it's not a covenant of grace in any sense of the term.
11:08
So Exodus 19, verses three through eight, while Moses went up to God, well, sorry, that's kind of half a sentence, but the
11:18
Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, thus, you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the people of Israel, you yourselves have seen what
11:26
I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself.
11:32
Now listen to verse five. Now, therefore, if you will indeed, what? Obey my voice and what?
11:43
Keep my covenant. What's your say? Did you say keep out? Verse five.
11:52
Yeah. If you will obey and if you will keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples for the earth is mine, okay?
12:04
That is the condition. What is the condition Israel must do? They must obey or listen.
12:13
And by listen, the text means obey, right? You understand the difference between hear and listen.
12:21
Yeah. I hear what you're saying. That's not the same as listening. You know the difference.
12:26
You have children, you know the difference between hear and listen. So obey and keep.
12:32
Is that conditional? Yes. I'm just showing you. All right, look at Exodus 24. We see the people here.
12:40
They're going to agree with this. So let's also verse three, Exodus 24, verse three.
12:46
Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules.
12:52
And all the people answered with one voice and said, all the Lord, all the words that the
12:59
Lord has spoken, we will, what? We will do.
13:06
Spoiler alert, meh, right? But they have made a agreement here.
13:14
They've understood. They've entered into this. God says, you have to obey.
13:20
They says, they say, okay. So is the Mosaic covenant conditional or unconditional?
13:26
It is conditional. It is a covenant of works. In fact, we'll tease this out for a minute.
13:34
John Owen calls it the covenant of works revived. Now we're going to play with that for just a moment.
13:41
And I'm even trying to really in my own theology, be able to really hammer out the best way.
13:48
It's in my mind really good, I think, but the best way to say this, the most precise way to say it.
13:53
So let me give you some quotes and then I'll kind of, I'll give you my spin. So Phillip Griffiths says this, we believe the
14:01
Mosaic covenant to be essentially a revival, reiteration or republication of the covenant of works with one vital caveat.
14:11
There could be no possibility of any spiritual life resulting from man's obedience, typo, my bad.
14:18
Let me ask you this. What is he saying? What is he saying? He's saying it is a revival, reiteration or republication of the covenant of works, which is what?
14:30
The covenant with, that's not a trick question, the covenant with Adam. But there's an important caveat and I'm agreeing here.
14:37
What is the important caveat? Adam could do what? Adam could keep that.
14:43
That was the whole point. But can Israel? No, they can't gain spiritual life there.
14:49
All right. Sam Rinahan writes, the Mosaic covenant echoes Adam's covenant in Eden and revives the covenant of works in key ways, but it is not the same covenant.
14:59
A .W. Pink notes, though the, how do you say this word? Sinaitic? Though the
15:05
Sinaitic compact was not identical with the covenant works made with Adam, yet in some respects, it closely resembled it.
15:13
It was analogous to it only on a lower plane. All right, so I'm in pretty much agreement with these things, but let me just work out how to articulate.
15:22
So a couple of passages, Romans 9 and Matthew 19. These are both in the New Testament, but I wanna show you something here because I do think some people miss this, some good brothers actually,
15:32
I think miss this a little bit because there's some people that wanna say that this covenant only pertained to physical blessings and absolutely it did pertain to physical blessings, but I want you to listen, oh,
15:49
I'm in Matthew, sorry. I was listening to Romans. Romans is the first one on there, but listen to what the, it didn't only point to physical blessings.
16:01
Romans, yeah, Romans 9, 30 through 32, says this, what shall we say then?
16:11
That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it. That is a righteousness that is by faith, but Israel who pursued a law that would lead to what?
16:24
Righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law, why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works.
16:37
They've stumbled over the stumbling stone. Okay, so the idea there that Paul is saying that they, should they have seen the law as righteousness?
16:51
Yes, but should they have thought, well, I'll just keep this and I'll be righteous?
16:57
Well, no, right? They should have seen the law and we'll get into this. They should have seen the law as leading to righteousness, meaning they're hopeless in and of themselves.
17:09
Hypothetically, you keep the law, you are what? Well, that's not hypothetically at all. If you keep the law, you are what?
17:17
That's the law. You keep the law, you're righteous. Now, I know there's some things we're gonna talk about, but just keep that thought in your mind because that paints the picture for what
17:26
Jesus says in Matthew 19. Now we understand what he's saying here, but still let's mention it.
17:32
Matthew 19, verse 16, and behold, a man came up to him saying, teacher, what good deed must
17:40
I do to have eternal life? And he said to him, why do you ask me about what is good?
17:46
There's only one who is good. Wait, what's he mean by that? Who's the one that's good?
17:55
Yeah, so Jesus is, that's the thing. Jesus is actually identifying himself. He's like, you're saying more than you know.
18:04
When you call me good teacher, you understand I'm God. Okay, that's what he's saying.
18:10
So why do you call me good? So what he said, now, here's what I expect you to say. I mean, you know, the grand theological answer.
18:19
If someone comes up to you and says, Alex, if I want to enter life, what must
18:28
I do? And if Alex says, keep the commandments, we'd be like,
18:35
Alex, right? You failed, right? That's not what you say.
18:41
You say, repent and believe the gospel. But that's not what Jesus says.
18:47
We need to think about this, right? Jesus says, if I'm reading, look, reading the text, verse 17, if you would enter life, what?
18:57
Keep the commandments. Now, does the Mosaic covenant promise life?
19:04
Don't answer that. Because it depends on what someone means by that. So God is just,
19:11
God is unchanging in his righteous standards. Should a man keep the commandments of God, he will enter into life, right?
19:23
Should a man keep the commandments of God, he will enter into life.
19:28
I disagree with that. That's what Jesus says, right? Jesus said, is
19:33
Jesus lying? No, he's not lying. He's making a point, right? But he's not lying, that would be blasphemous, right?
19:41
He's telling the absolute truth. Should a man keep the commandments of God, he enters into life. So if a man or woman, so here it is, but this is law, not gospel, so listen carefully.
19:51
If a man or woman has perfect, personal, perpetual and precise obedience, what happens?
20:03
They're justified, they're righteous, okay? So all you need to have before God in order you wanna get to heaven, here's all you have to have, perfection.
20:14
The only people allowed into heaven are perfect. You listening tonight?
20:19
That's pretty important. The only people in the heaven are those with a perfect, personal, precise and perpetual obedience.
20:30
That's the only people. But what's the problem? You can't do it.
20:37
Nobody's perfect. You can't do it. You're obligated to do it, but you can't do it.
20:44
But someone did it in your place, that's Jesus. So the
20:50
Mosaic covenant says, do this and you will live. But the reality is, this is already broken in Adam.
20:59
You cannot do this and you will not live by virtue of this covenant.
21:06
So is it the covenant of works? Yes, in a sense, it is the same covenant of works with Adam, okay, but in another sense, it's not the same because it's not actually saying that you can do this.
21:22
The point is, and we'll talk about this later, the whole point is showing you that you can't do it, right?
21:31
So to say it clearly, you cannot be saved, you cannot enter into eternal life, cannot gain redemption, salvation by virtue of the
21:42
Mosaic covenant. So how are people within the Mosaic covenant saved? Those saved under the
21:49
Mosaic covenant had to look to what the Mosaic covenant was pointing to, which is what?
21:57
Christ. The need for and the promise of a Messiah. I would make the case that it's quite easy to see in the
22:05
Old Testament that the majority of physical Israel, now some people get mad when you say this. I just think,
22:11
I don't see how you read the Old Testament and come away with a different conclusion. But the majority of Old Testament Israel did not believe the promise of the
22:18
Messiah. They either sought to gain righteousness before God, as Paul says, by virtue of the
22:26
Mosaic covenant. Can you do that? No, no, no, no, no, no.
22:32
Or sometimes they disregarded God's ways altogether, and forgive me for this word, but I think it's helpful, prostituted themselves to false gods and idols.
22:42
That's just the scriptures, right? This is just what the Bible says. So those who put their hope of salvation in the
22:51
Mosaic covenant die. Those who look to the promised Messiah, understand their need for him and his atonement, they live.
22:59
So listen again to Philip Griffiths, this is a good quote. Those saints who lived before the incarnation knew that through the
23:09
Sinaitic covenant, there was no possibility of salvation. They, like their father
23:15
Abraham, put their faith in God's promised Messiah, whom they saw from afar, and in so doing, became recipients of new covenant blessings.
23:26
I have Hebrews 10, one there. You can look at that on your own time. For sake of time, we'll just push on.
23:34
So that is the nature of the Mosaic covenant. It's not a covenant of grace. It is a covenant of works.
23:40
In some senses, it is a republication with more positive laws of the covenant works, though it's not actually promising life in the sense that do this and you'll, you just actually just do this and you'll live.
23:58
It's not actually, it's hypothetical. The point is someone else has to complete this, right?
24:07
So it is showing the high standard of God's requirements. And now that gets us to the next point.
24:14
So what is the purpose of the Mosaic covenant? Now, I probably have too many points here, but you're used to that, like a barbed wire fence, right?
24:22
It's too many points. But I have 10, and we're not gonna get through all of them tonight, but I just want to lay out for you, why does the
24:30
Mosaic covenant exist? Big picture, I'll make a comment from Brandon Adams. He says this, like a terrarium is a miniature ecosystem, a model of the world, so too is the land of Canaan, a miniature model, an analogy of creation.
24:46
It echoes the covenant with Adam in the garden, a land flowing with milk and honey, and it points forward to the new covenant in Christ.
24:54
God chose us to uniquely dwell in the land of Canaan in a way that he did not dwell in the rest of creation.
25:03
So this is what God's gonna do, he's gonna bring his people into the land of Canaan. This is a microcosm of the whole world, you see there.
25:13
But in order for Israel to access and keep the land of Canaan they had to meet some requirements.
25:22
We can sum it up, Luke Leviticus 19 too. Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, you shall be holy, for I the
25:31
Lord your God am holy. Now in Leviticus 26, why don't we go ahead and turn there.
25:39
I'm tempted to read the whole chapter, but I think it's like 40 verses. I'm not gonna read the whole chapter, but we'll read some verses, because in Leviticus 26 we see that the
25:49
Mosaic covenant promises both blessing and what? Blessing and curses.
25:59
So Leviticus 26, verse three, the
26:05
Lord says, if you will walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, then
26:10
I will give you your rains in their season and the land shall yield its increase and the trees of the field yield their fruit.
26:19
And he goes on and on and on. If you listen, if you obey, I will bless. Okay, what if you disobey?
26:25
Look at verse 14. But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes and if your soul abhors my rules so that you will not do all my commandments but break my covenant, then
26:42
I will do this to you. I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache and you shall sow your seed in vain for your enemy shall eat it.
26:55
Listen to verse 17. I will set my face against you and you will be struck down before your enemies.
27:02
Those who hate you shall rule over you and you shall flee when none pursues you. So the idea here is in the
27:09
Mosaic covenant, there's both promises of blessing for obedience and curses for what?
27:15
For disobedience, okay? So why is the Mosaic covenant given?
27:22
10 reasons. Number one, no way I'm alliterating all these, all right.
27:28
Number one, the Mosaic covenant is given to preserve the line of the
27:33
Messiah, okay? A .W. Pink writes this, a temporary arrangement such as Judaism provided was essential to preserve a pure stock from which the
27:47
Messiah should issue. In this end, the Sinaitic covenant with its promises and penalties did effect.
27:55
So you have the Abrahamic covenant made 2000 years before Christ and then some 400 plus years later, you have the
28:02
Mosaic covenant that assures that this family that was promised to bring forth the
28:07
Messiah by the time the Messiah gets here is still going to exist. Does that make sense?
28:14
So this is not everything that the Mosaic covenant is doing but one of the reasons the laws and customs and statutes of the
28:21
Mosaic covenant are put into place is so that there will be a line from Abraham that it remains to produce the
28:29
Messiah. Think about this, there almost wasn't a line even with the Mosaic covenant. You understand?
28:36
By the time you get to Jesus, how many tribes had gone apostate by the time you get to Jesus' day?
28:43
The Northern 10 tribes, right? And so, by the way, we call them
28:48
Jews. Why do we call them Jews? Where does that come from?
28:57
Judah, Judah, that's how many tribes is Judah? One, the point is even with the
29:05
Mosaic covenant, you get all the way down to the time of Jesus and even with the Mosaic covenant,
29:12
I'm putting air quotes, you barely have a line left but the point is the Mosaic covenant is given to protect that line until we get to Messiah.
29:21
Jeff Johnson says this, the Mosaic covenant was not given to change but to restrain the uncircumcised hearts of the children of Israel.
29:30
The law was given not to make the children of Israel righteous but to safeguard the coming seed of the woman by placing outward restraints upon the physical descendants of Abraham.
29:43
Have you ever watched a group of toddlers that's not your own?
29:49
Like a whole mess of toddlers, maybe Tiffany's saying yes. And you're like, sometimes, now,
29:54
Stephanie's way better than this but sometimes you're just like, these people are out of control. You know what? I'm just gonna keep the place from burning down.
30:01
That's my goal, right? And so the idea, not that God can't do greater than that but that's just an analogy.
30:09
Israel's wicked, right? Uncircumcised in heart, like they need to be born again and God puts these boundaries around them in order to keep the line of the
30:21
Messiah going, okay? Number two, to distinguish God's people from the rest of the world.
30:29
Now, I'm not gonna read all this from the confession because it'll just take a long time but I put on there, you can read it yourself.
30:34
This is from chapter 19 of the confession and this is biblical to remember. Some would push back on this.
30:41
I think it's very clear as you understand the Mosaic covenant. There are three types, if you will, of laws in the
30:50
Old Testament. There's a threefold division, I should say. That's the proper way. A threefold division of the law.
30:57
That is, there is the moral law. That is the law that always stands as it's summarized in the 10 commandments.
31:03
There is the ceremonial law. What would that mean? Ceremonial law in the Mosaic covenant. What is that? Like, I don't know.
31:12
I don't know if Pop, let's use Pop, for example. If Pop was under the Mosaic covenant, perhaps he's breaking it right now because I don't know what your shirt's made out of.
31:21
Is it mixed fabric? Is it polyester and cotton? You understand? That's an aspect of, ceremonial aspect of the law, right?
31:32
And then there's, and then you have the feast and the sacrifices and all that. And then you have the judicial law, right?
31:38
So the theocratic law. We see these divisions in the Mosaic covenant.
31:44
But the point is, these laws, like, why did they say, why could they not eat pork, right?
31:50
Pete, you ever had someone ask you that? You know, like, oh, you don't believe in homosexuality, but I bet you eat bacon.
31:58
The Bible says you're not supposed to eat bacon. Does the Bible say you're not supposed to eat bacon? Depends on what you mean by that.
32:05
Did the Bible, did God command his, the people under the
32:12
Mosaic covenant not to eat pork? Yes. Okay, why? To distinguish them, to set them apart, right?
32:20
It's an unclean meat, right? And there actually is a lot of practical, I'm gonna eat bacon, but there's reasons and things that, if you don't cook pork well, you know, make you sick.
32:32
But anyway, the point is, part of the reason the Mosaic covenant is given to distinguish God's people.
32:38
Thirdly, it showed the necessity of perfect righteousness.
32:44
Let's just jump over to Deuteronomy real quick. Deuteronomy 6. It showed the necessity, the
32:50
Mosaic covenant showed the necessity of perfect righteousness. So Deuteronomy 6, 24 and 25.
32:58
And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always, that he might preserve us alive as we are this day, and it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to do all this commandments before the
33:11
Lord our God as he has commanded us. Again, Jeff Johnson, I think is helpful here in his book.
33:18
Mount Sinai, listen to this. This is really a really beautiful way to say it in my opinion.
33:25
Mount Sinai was waiting for the Israelites on the other side of the Red Sea. For without the law, there's no land of rest.
33:34
Before man is allowed back into the presence of God, he must be just. The first Adam was driven out of the garden for breaking the law.
33:42
The second Adam, I think more accurately say the last Adam, would have to open the way to the heavenly rest by keeping the law.
33:49
In this case, Israel was required to camp at the base of Mount Sinai before they were to find rest in the promised land.
33:57
So I think this is a really beautiful picture. So real quick in your mind, just visualize this. God rescues his people out of Egypt across the
34:07
Red Sea, but before they enter into the promised land, what's in front of them?
34:15
Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai is where God gave what? The 10 commandments. I think there is something there to this quote.
34:22
I think there is something there to visualize in our mind. Before we enter into the rest of God, the commandments must be kept.
34:30
You understand? There's vision. And so obviously we understand. Well, let me put it this way.
34:37
Do not think of the Mosaic covenant as God saying, well, Adam couldn't do it. So I've devised a new way for you guys to do it, right?
34:46
So Adam can't get this, but now you guys can because I have this new way. No, it's not like Adam couldn't do it.
34:53
Let me try again with... No, he can't do it. Let me try again. No, the requirement to enter into the promised land.
35:01
I cannot emphasize this enough. The requirement to enter into the promised land. Perfect, perpetual, personal, and precise obedience.
35:13
If that's all you hear, that should beat you up. That should weigh you down. Why? Why?
35:21
If I said all you gotta do to get into heaven is perfect, personal, precise, and perpetual obedience. That's all you gotta do.
35:28
Just love God, love your neighbor perfectly. That's all you gotta do. That should beat you up.
35:33
Why? You've already broken it. And even if this day going forward, you could do it, you can't pay for what you've already broken.
35:42
And the reality is you can't do it going forward. Okay, last one. So this is the point and we'll end here.
35:47
It showed the hopelessness of working to God. Again, Jeff Johnson's been helpful in his book.
35:53
The law was given to show Israel just how demanding and impossible it was to love
35:59
God with all their hearts, minds, and souls. For the law deals not just with outward performance, but with inward motives.
36:07
Let me end where I began, or close to where I began. The idea here is here's the standard, you cannot meet it.
36:15
That's the point of Jesus to the rich, young ruler in Matthew 19. So remember that dialogue between Jesus.
36:21
So he says, why do you call me good? There's no one good except God alone. The idea is if only
36:28
God is good, how are you gonna gain righteousness if you're not good? And Jesus says, we'll keep the commandments.
36:38
Not because he's lying, but because he is exposing that this man is unrighteous.
36:44
How many commandments did the man say he kept? He was like, oh, I've done that. But Jesus is showing you haven't even kept which commandment?
36:52
You haven't even kept the first one. If we were gonna go down the list of commandments and check off which ones you've done, because you've said, oh,
37:01
I've honored my father. I've done these things. You didn't even meet number one, which is you shall have no other gods before me.
37:09
Because what was this man's God? Money. All right, so that's where we're gonna stop tonight.
37:15
We have covered the nature and about almost half the purpose of the Mosaic covenant. And we'll finish the purpose next week and then discuss the fulfillment.