Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Exodus 20:18

Clarke's Commentary

Verse Exodus 20:18. And all the people saw the thunderings, c. — They had witnessed all these awful things before, (see Exodus 19:16), but here they seem to have been repeated probably at the end of each command, there was a peal of thunder, a blast of the trumpet, and a gleam of lightning, to impress their hearts the more deeply with a due sense of the Divine Majesty, of the holiness of the law which was now delivered, and of the fearful consequences of disobedience. This had the desired effect; the people were impressed with a deep religious fear and a terror of God's judgments; acknowledged themselves perfectly satisfied with the discoveries God had made of himself; and requested that Moses might be constituted the mediator between God and them, as they were not able to bear these tremendous discoveries of the Divine Majesty. "Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die;" Exodus 20:19. This teaches us the absolute necessity of that great Mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus, as no man can come unto the Father but by him.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

Correct attitudes in worship (20:18-26)

Moses was satisfied when he saw that the people, having witnessed the frightening events connected with God’s coming to Mount Sinai, were suitably humbled. They became aware of their shortcomings and at the same time developed a greater fear of God (18-21).
People were to show a similarly humble attitude when they built altars at places of God’s special revelation (e.g. 17:14-16). Because Israel was a wandering people, such altars were not to be permanent; because Israel was a sinful people, the altars were not to be lavish. They were to consist of simply a mound of earth or a heap of loose rocks, depending on which material was available in the region. The altars were not to be so high that they required steps, in order to avoid any immodesty that might occur if people lifted up their robes while climbing the steps (22-26; cf. 28:42-43).

Characteristics of Hebrew laws

Hebrew laws were mainly of two kinds. The first kind we have met in the Ten Commandments. These were absolute standards, usually in the negative (e.g. ‘You shall not steal’). The second kind, which we shall meet repeatedly in the next three chapters, consisted of laws that probably resulted from cases where Moses or his assistants had given judgments, and those judgments now became standards for use in future cases (e.g. ‘If a man borrows anything from his neighbour, and it is hurt or dies . . . he shall make full restitution’). Laws of the first kind may be considered basic principles; those of the second kind, the application of those principles to specific circumstances.
When reading the Hebrew law code, we should remember that it was designed to suit the cultural and social habits of the time. It’s purpose was to maintain order and administer justice among a people whose way of life was already established. For example, it did not immediately outlaw slavery, for the social, economic and political order of the age was so constructed that slavery could not be instantly abolished. But Hebrew law introduced attitudes of consideration for the welfare of others that were unknown in most other ancient cultures, and so began the process that eventually brought an end to slavery.

Hebrew law was in some ways similar to other law codes of the ancient world, but it also had some important differences. A fundamental requirement was that the punishment had to fit the crime. There was not the brutality found in some ancient nations, where punishments were out of all proportion to the crime (21:22-25; Deuteronomy 25:3). Also, justice was the same for everyone, regardless of status. Laws did not favour the upper classes, but guaranteed a fair hearing for all (23:3,6; Leviticus 19:15).

In particular the Hebrew law code protected the rights of the defenceless and disadvantaged, such as the poor (23:6), foreigners (23:9), widows and orphans (22:22), debtors who sold themselves into slavery (21:1-11) and even those who were born slaves (23:12).
The basic reason for these differences was no doubt that the Hebrew law came from God, a fact that is stated repeatedly. Legal, moral and religious matters were not separated as in some law codes, for in the community of God’s people all areas of life were relevant to each other. The people viewed everything in the light of their understanding of God and their relation to him.

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

THE END OF THE NOTES ON THE DECALOGUE

Several other things of importance are also included in this chapter.

"And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they trembled, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die. And Moses said unto the people, Fear not; for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before you, that ye sin not. And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was."

"These verses form the introduction to `the book of the covenant,' that body of laws given in Exodus 20:18 to Exodus 23:33. There are numerous enlargements upon the Ten Commandments, but it is more than just that. It is called the `book of the covenant' in Exodus 24:4; Exodus 24:7."Wilbur Fields, Exodus (Joplin, Mo.: College Press, 1976), p. 439. This little paragraph is also the beginning of the rejection by Israel of the privileges of priesthood for all of them. They preferred that another stand between them and God, and significantly God allowed that, but it meant eventually the loss of that priesthood for all except a chosen class, as subsequent chapters in Exodus will reveal.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

Compare Deuteronomy 5:22-31. Aaron Exodus 19:24 on this occasion accompanied Moses in drawing near to the thick darkness.

Exodus 20:22 to Exodus 23:33 is a series of laws which we may identify with what was written by Moses in the book called the book of the covenant, and read by him in the audience of the people Exodus 24:7.

The document cannot be regarded as a strictly systematic whole. Portions of it were probably traditional rules handed down from the patriarchs, and retained by the Israelites in Egypt.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Chapter 20

And God spake these words, saying ( Exodus 20:1 ),

Now the people said, "All that the Lord commands, we will do." All right this is what the Lord has spoken. Now these are the commandments of God.

I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me ( Exodus 20:2-3 ).

First of all, "I am Jehovah thy God." The word Jehovah is a beautiful word; it is a verb which means, "the becoming one". A word by which God expresses Himself and that which, in that which He desires to be to His people. God wishes to become to you whatever your need might be. "The becoming one", Yahweh, a verb "to be". So God becoming to you, "I am Yahweh thy God who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

Now as we said this morning, that doesn't mean that God has to, you know, that God is first in your life, and then you can have all other kinds of gods, as long as He's first God in your life, before in a sense of precedence. "I've got to be the greatest God of your life, and then you can have all kinds of gods under me." No. Before, that is, "in the presence of Me, you're to worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." You're not to have any other gods. He is to be the exclusive God of your life. "You shall have no other gods in the presence of me, before me."

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And showing mercy unto the thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments ( Exodus 20:4-6 ).

So the prohibition of making graven images. And it goes actually of any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, which would include then the angelic beings, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth, whatever those creatures might look like. "Thou shalt not make them, thou shalt not bow down thyself to them."

Now men, as we pointed out this morning, have always been guilty of making their own gods. Man is conscious of God. The heavens declare the glory of God, the earth shows forth His handiwork, and there's a universal consciousness of God in every culture of man. Concepts, ideas of God exist.

Now many men have been guilty of making their own gods. A man, when he makes his own god usually starts out with this premise, "If I were God, this is what I would be. This is what I would do. This is how I would respond. This is how I would react." So the Greeks made their own gods. In your Greek mythology, you have their concepts of god, which are really an expression of what they would be if they were God.

Now some fellow having been in love with a girl, and another suitor won her away from him, "If I were God, you know, I could live up there and I could bring magic potions, and I could use my powers and then she would be mine instead of his." So you have your gods that are entwining themselves in the love affairs of man, and all of these kinds of things. Because, "If I were God I would use these powers for an advantage in my relationship with men." And thus, you find that is sort of a basis of your Greek mythology, men creating their own gods.

When a man makes a god, he actually makes the god like himself. A man's god is usually a projection of himself. A man is oftentimes worshiping himself, a projection of himself, and that is what he is worshiping. Most generally when a man rejects the true and the living God, his god is just a projection of himself.

This is why I sort of cringe whenever anybody comes up to me and says, "Well, I don't know why God would do this". What they are saying is, "If I were God I wouldn't do that. I could sure figure out a better way of doing it than this way." That person is close to creating his own god.

"If I were God this is what I would do. If I were God this is how I would respond". And if God doesn't respond the way I would respond, then I get angry, and I say, "Well I can't understand why God did that, why God allowed that." As though God has made a real blunder. "He really goofed on this one. I don't know how God could be so stupid" is really what you're saying. "I can see so much better than that. I could work it out in such a much better way. Oh, if I were only God, what I could do." If you were God, I'd hate to be in this universe very long.

When Job and his friends were talking about God, "Well God is this, and if I were God, that", you know, and they were giving all their ideas about what God was, and what God was doing and so forth, which were projections of their own selves, their own concepts, putting them in the mind of God, sort of.

When God came on the scene, after these guys had all expressed their concepts of God, and how God works, et cetera, when God came on the scene, "All right, Job, gird yourself like a man, you've been talking about things that you really don't know anything about. I'm gonna ask you a few questions. First of all Job, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you think you know so much. How would you like to guide our tourists through the sky?" How would you like to guide our tourists through the sky? Our tourists is known as the runaway star. Its speed is estimated at a hundred and fifteen miles a second. How would you like the job of guiding that big old thing through the sky? Wheeling that thing around at that kind of speed?

"Tell me", God says. "Can you bind the sweet influence of the Pleiades?" And He went on and, Job said, "Hey, that's all right God you just keep running it. I don't know anything about it." Yes, we'd have a difficult time running this universe, I'll tell ya. We have enough problems just running our own lives.

So man makes a god like himself. But then he often makes the god less than himself. As David points out, "The gods of the heathen are vain. They cut them out of the forest. Eyes they have, but they cannot see, ears they have but they cannot hear, feet they have but they cannot walk, mouths they have, but they cannot speak." Man made a god like himself. He carved his god out of a piece of tree limb.

Sat there day after day, carving out his little gods. He carved ears on his little god. He carved eyes on his little god. He carved a nose on his little god. He carved a mouth, he carved feet. But the thing is, the eyes that he carved on his little god can't see. The ears that he carved on his little god, can't hear. The mouth that he carved on his little god, can't speak.

So a man made a god, he made him like himself. Because I have ears, I put ears on my god. Because I have a mouth, I put a mouth on my god. Because I have feet, I put feet on my god. But though I made him like myself, I made him less than myself. Because the feet I've put on my little god can't walk, thus he is less than I am. His eyes can't see, thus he is less than I am.

Then David said, "They that have made them have become like the gods they have made." In other words, a man becomes like his god, and if you make a god less than yourself, you are being degraded. You're on the road down. You are becoming less than what you were. If your god can't see, you soon become blind to the things of God. If you can't-if your god can't hear, you soon become deaf to the voice of God. You become insensate, as your god is insensate. That's the danger of making gods. You become like them. But yet, they are less than yourself.

So God strictly prohibited trying to make any likeness or representation of Himself. Now in the light of that, why is it that in the church we have statues of Jesus Christ or even pictures which constitutes a likeness?

What is a man signifying when he makes an idol? He is signifying the loss of the consciousness of the presence of God in his life. Whenever I make an idol, a reminder, it is only indicating that I have lost something vital in my relationship with God, and I need this little relic as a reminder of God because I've lost the consciousness of His presence. If I'm living in the consciousness of the presence of God, I don't need any little relic to remind me of God. But the making of the relic not only indicates the loss of the consciousness, but somehow there is a desire to regain that which I've lost, and somehow I would like to be conscious of God again, so I make a reminder so that I can be conscious of God. But it is always an indication of a degraded spiritual state.

Now people can make idols out of many different things. "The place in the church where I was sitting when I came into the consciousness of God, ooh." You'd be amazed how many people come back and they sit in that same place trying to regain that which was lost at that place. "I was sitting here, right in this spot when I really became conscious of the presence of God. Oh it was so glorious I just, ooh", you know. And so you'll return and try to duplicate a past experience of God's consciousness, thinking that it relates to a place. "While I was wearing those shoes" so you dig around, find the old shoes again, you know. "As I was wearing these shoes when I became aware of the presence of God", and all.

Hey, you've lost something friend. Paul the apostle said, "In Him we live, we move, we have our being"( Acts 17:28 ). God is here. God is with you. You've lost the consciousness, not that He's not with you. You've just lost the consciousness of His presence with you. And thus, you're looking for something that will somehow remind or bring back that experience of the past. But God has new experiences for you, and He doesn't want you living in the past experiences. He wants you living in a fresh day-by-day relationship of fellowship in His love and in His grace, experiencing daily that overflowing grace of God in your life.

So the prohibiting of making first of all the likenesses. Why? Because once you've made them, the next thing is so often the bowing down to them. Then that leads to the serving of them. So the progression. You make a god, then you next are worshiping your god, then finally you're serving your god. "But no man can serve two masters" ( Matthew 6:24 ).

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that takes his name in vain ( Exodus 20:7 ).

What does that mean? It means much more than just using the name of God in a profane way. As you hear people in their conversations using the name of God in a profane way, it's much more than that. "Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain." What does it mean? It means that if you take the name of Jehovah, it means that you have placed Him as the Lord, the guide, the director of your life.

Now if you don't give Him the chance to guide and direct your life, you've taken His name in vain. So many times we say, "Oh Lord, Lord." Jesus said, "Why do you say Lord, Lord, and you don't do the thing that I command you?" ( Luke 6:46 ). If you're not obeying Him, you've taken His name in vain.

Thus the greatest blasphemy is not that which you hear on skid row, but the greatest blasphemy is that of those who make an acknowledgment of God in their words, and maybe even in their deeds by attending church and so forth, and yet God doesn't have a place in their daily life through the week. You never give God a place. You never give God a chance. You never open up your life to God during the week; it's just a Sunday relationship with Him. That is taking the name of the Lord your God in vain. That's the greatest blasphemy.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work ( Exodus 20:8-9 ).

Therefore if you're on a five-day week, you're unscriptural. If you want to really you know, be tied to the law,

The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, or maidservant, not thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, and the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it ( Exodus 20:10-11 ).

Honored it. Now there are a lot of people, who today, like to make a big issue over the Sabbath day and over worshiping on Sunday. They say, "The Sabbath day is the day you should worship God." They've even gone so far to say that Sunday worship is the mark of the beast. So you've all been guilty of taking the mark of the beast because you worship God on Sunday.

Let me say that first of all I worship God every day of the week. As far as I'm concerned, every day of the week is a great day to worship God. I do believe that for man's sake, God established a pattern of six and one. "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" ( Mark 2:27 ). That God has ordained for the body's sake, one day of rest for the purpose of recuperation. I think that you live healthier and longer if you just spend one day in bed a week, just really flaked out and sacked out in doing nothing; just a total change of pace. I would love to do it.

But this particular law was a special law to the people of Israel as is declared in the thirty-first chapter of Exodus, verses sixteen and seventeen. "Wherefore the children of Israel will keep the Sabbath to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever. For in six days the Lord made the heaven, and the earth, the seventh day He rested." So God here plainly declares that it's a sign between Him and the children of Israel.

It is interesting that the one law that Jesus was constantly being accused of violating was the law of the Sabbath. That's what really created the ire of the Pharisees against Jesus more than anything else, is that He disregarded their Sabbath day law tradition. Walking through the cornfields, He allowed His disciples-the wheat fields actually, take the corn of wheat and rub it on their hands and eat the corn on the Sabbath day. "Why do You allow Your disciples to do that which is unlawful to do on the Sabbath day?"( Luke 6:2 ).

Now they had so interpreted the Sabbath, the bearing of burdens and so forth, that they had really made the Sabbath day extremely restricting, with all of their rules and regulations that regard the Sabbath day, what constitutes a keeping and a violating of the Sabbath day law. Instead of the day being a day of rest, it was a day of bondage. Man, everything they had laid on you was so heavy. You're so worried about violating it, that it was a bondage instead of a real rest and a day of relaxation and rest. You were so concerned about the violation of it. They made it a bondage, keeping that law.

In the early church when it was brought to the attention of the church in Jerusalem concerning the Gentile Christians that they were not walking after the law of Moses, it was determined by the early church that they would not try to put upon the church the Mosaic law. But only certain parts of it, and that which related to idolatry, and eating of meats that were sacrificed to idols, or blood, keep yourself from blood, and things strangled and so forth. But nothing was mentioned as far as the Sabbath day, and the church was concerned.

Now the law was not given to make men holy. This is our whole misconception of the law, and that is the idea "the keeping of the law will make me holy". If righteousness could come by the law, then Christ died in vain. If you could keep these Ten Commandments, and by keeping them be righteous, then Jesus wouldn't need to die. If God could take and impute righteousness to you because you kept every one of these commandments in your heart faithfully and completely, then there was no necessity for Jesus Christ. But righteousness could not come by the law even if you kept it. Righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ.

Now God related to these people, the covenant of God was related to their obedience. If they will obey and their obedience was the, uh to the law of God, was the condition upon which they could relate to God. But this old covenant failed, and it failed because of man's weakness and man's failure. Man was incapable of obeying.

Therefore God has established a new covenant that isn't predicated upon man's faithfulness, but the new covenant is predicated upon God's faithfulness, the faithfulness of God to keep His word. The first covenant, man's faithfulness to keep God's word, first covenant failed; man wasn't faithful. The second covenant that God has established through Jesus Christ is a covenant that God has now established which is predicated upon the faithfulness of God to keep His word. And His covenant shall always stand with us because God will keep His word, and my believing that God will keep His word. "So to him that worketh not, but believeth, God imputes that faith for righteousness" ( Romans 4:5 ).

Now does that mean then that I have no relationship to the law at all? I can live however I want? I can violate any of these commandments I want and still have fellowship with God? "God forbid. How can we who are dead to sin live any longer therein?" ( Romans 6:2 ). But it means that God now gives to me the new power of His Holy Spirit within my life whereby I am enabled to be what God wants me to be.

The fifth commandment some people put with the first table. They say that it belongs in the first table.

Honour thy father and thy mother ( Exodus 20:12 ):

Because you are not to consider your father and your mother on an equal, but always on a superior basis, even as God is always thought upon in a superior basis; and thus, they say it belongs in the first five words of the law instead of the second six. So they have divided the law into two categories of five and five. I don't argue with that, you know, foolish. What difference does it make? It's all part of the ten.

Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's ( Exodus 20:12-17 ).

Now covet is to desire earnestly, have a strong desire for those things. You're not to have it. Now Paul the apostle said this is the law that wiped him out. "I didn't know", he said "that coveting was sin except the law said, Thou shalt not covet"( Romans 7:7 ). Man, when he saw that, when the Spirit revealed that law to him, he said, "Man I was dead. It killed me." It was the one that condemned Paul to death. Here he had done all he could to be righteous to the law, and he could write to the Philippians concerning his past experience as a Pharisee. He said, "And concerning the righteousness which is of the law, I was blameless"( Philippians 3:6 ). But then when he saw that the law was spiritual, then he said, "Man, I was wiped out. I was dead. The law destroyed me."

Now that was the whole basis of the teaching of Christ, and that is that the law is spiritual. "Thou shalt not kill." What does that really mean? It means you're not to have hatred for anybody, because hatred is the seedbed of murder. Thus you can violate the law "thou shalt not kill", and never club a fellow at all. But if you have a hatred for him, animosity against him, you've violated the law, "thou shalt not kill".

Now the law was intended as a schoolmaster to drive us to Jesus Christ, to make us realize that we were spiritually bankrupt. To make me realize that there's no way I can pay the debt, thus drives me to Jesus Christ as my source, and my resource.

Now all the people saw the thunderings, the lightnings, the noise of the trumpet, the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Hey you go, you speak with us, and we'll listen to you: but don't let God speak with us, or we'll die. And Moses said to the people, Fear not ( Exodus 20:18-20 ):

Now here they are frightened, terrified by the manifestation of God's presence. The words of God's grace, "Fear not"

for God is come not to destroy you, he's come to prove you, ["You said you would obey Him, you'd be His people, you'd be His special people, now God has come to prove you",] that his fear may be before your faces, [that you might really reverence God] that ye sin not ( Exodus 20:20 ).

So God is just telling you what is, and what constitutes sin. This is a basic law of God, which constitutes the right relationship with God and the right relationship with your fellow man. If you don't have the right relationship with God, there's no sense of going any further. You're not gonna have a right relationship with your fellow man.

That is why when the young ruler came to Jesus and said, "Good Master what must I do to be saved?" Jesus first of all tried to draw his attention to something, He said, "Why did you call me good? There's only one good, that's God." What was Jesus saying to him? He was saying one of two things. He was saying to this young man, "Hey I'm no good" or he was saying to this young man, "I am God". He's trying to point out to the young man that he recognized in Jesus something that was true. "Why did you call me good? Think about this now young man. You've discovered a truth. When you came to me you called me good, why did you do that?" "Because you see you've recognized a truth, you called me God. Why did you call me good? There's only one good, that's God. That gives you a hint why you called me good."

We misinterpret that we think that Jesus is saying to the young man, "Why did you call me good? I'm no good, there's only one good, that's God." No, that's not at all what He is saying. "Why did you call me good? I'll give you a hint. There's only one good, that's God. That's why you called me good, because I'm God."

"What must I do to have abiding life?" "Keep the commandments." "Which ones Lord?" What did the Lord give to him? He gave to him the first table of the law, your relationship with God. Why? Because if you don't get past this, there's no sense going to the second table. If you don't pass the first four, there's no sense going on to the second six. If you don't have a right relationship with God, you're not gonna have a right relationship with your fellow man.

So Jesus reiterates the first four. "Lord I've kept all these from my youth up, what do I lack yet?" "Oh, let's come back and take a look at that. What is the first law? "Thou shalt not have any other gods before me. You say you've kept them all? All right, go out and sell every thing that you have, and take the money and give to the poor, and come and follow Me. You'll have great treasures in heaven." What was Jesus doing?

He was pointing out the folly of what the man had said. The first law, "thou shalt have no other gods before me", was the law that he was breaking because he had his possessions as a god in his life. They were his god, and they were before. They were there in the presence of his worship of God. "Lord I've kept this law from my youth up, what do I lack yet?" "Oh wait a minute. You haven't kept it from your youth up. You only say you have. But in reality, you have a god in your life that is possessing you, and it is even stronger and has a greater hold than I have upon you. Your desire for it is greater than your desire for Me."

Be careful what you say to Jesus, He's liable to put you on an examination. So much of what we say is flippant, off of the top of our heads when we come to worship God. "Oh God, everything I have is Yours." "Oh, that's wonderful. Now if you'll just sell this, and this". "Oh now Lord, I really didn't mean that. You know it's just a figure of speech." Words; empty words we're so guilty of offering to the Lord the empty words of our mouth. "Rend your hearts, not your garments unto God" ( Joel 2:13 ).

So God has laid out what sin is. He said, "This is the mark, so I've given you the law that you might know what sin is, that you'll sin not."

The people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was. And the Lord said unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, You have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. You shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall you make unto you gods of gold. An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon burnt offerings ( Exodus 20:21-24 ),

Hey, notice the Lord is not wanting them to even build ornate altars, "And if you have a-make an altar of earth to make your sacrifice, just pile up dirt for your altar."

And if you use stone, don't bring a chisel on it: because if you put a chisel on it you're gonna defile it ( Exodus 20:25 ).

God doesn't want anything to distract from Him, not even a glorious, fancy altar. He doesn't want man glorying in the works of his own hands. God help us in the church today. You go into so many churches where you've got the fancywork of man's hands, the ornate altars, the ornate buildings and all. God cannot be pleased with them. God said, "Hey, be simple. Build an altar out of earth; that's good enough. If you make it out of stone, then don't carve on the stones, don't chisel on them. If you put a chisel on it, you're gonna defile it. Leave it natural."

Natural, that's whereby the work of man's hands, man's work of his hands is not glorified when we come to worship God, only God is glorified. We don't glorify the works of man's hands. We don't say, "Oh my, this lovely sanctuary built by the hands of men." "This glorious golden altar, built by the hands of men." So many places where you go to worship God, your attention is so drawn to the architecture, or to the ornateness, or to the lavishness of it to the works of man's hands, that you fail to see God. You're lost for the works of men. God was forbidding that. He said, "Hey when you make an altar, make it out of earth." He doesn't want man to glory in His presence, the work of man's hands or anything else. God wants the glory when we come to worship Him. He wants all the glory.

God help that man who seeks to bring glory and attention to himself while doing the service of God. "The altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings"

and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thy oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee. And if you will make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if you lift up your tool on it, you've polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by the steps to my altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon ( Exodus 20:24-26 ).

In other words, don't go up steps and high where people can look up and see your bare legs or something. God just doesn't want attention drawn to anything but Him when we are worshiping God. He wants your heart and your mind to be centered upon Him, not to be distracted.

That is why we seek to keep distractions here to a minimum. We don't want anything that draws attention to man. We want our attention to be drawn to the word of God, and to God Himself when we gather together to worship Him. For God forbid that any flesh should glory in His sight.

In dealing with our Maranatha musicians one of the most difficult things we have is that of keeping them from these little antics that draw attention to themselves, even a special movement as you're playing the bass, you know. It draws attention to you, and takes the attention of the people off of what you're saying, what you're singing. "Oh man look at him, you know, really swings, really grooving, you know"

That subtle little way we have of drawing attention to ourselves. But the minute I draw attention to me, then the person's attention is taken off of God, and I am robbing God of that which is His. God will hold me accountable for it. Thus serving the Lord is always a very fine balance, because I must do it in such a way, that if possible, I be hid, and Christ be seen. If that comes to pass, then my service for God is accepted, and it is blessed and it is successful. But if we're drawing attention to other things, then the people are going out robbed of the full blessing of God, tragically so.

Next week we'll take the next five chapters.

Father, we thank You tonight for Thy Word, a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path. Lord, we thank You for Your law, the standards that You have given to us. Lord, we delight after Thy law. We consent to Thy law. We desire to fulfill Thy law, give us the power Lord, to be what You want us to be, and to do what we ought to do as Your children. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

May the Lord be with you and watch over you through the week. May you experience God's power working in your life, as He would transform you by the power of His Spirit into the image of Jesus Christ. That you with open face, beholding the glory of the Lord might be changed from glory to glory into that same image, by His Spirit working in you. In Jesus' name. "

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

3. The response of the Israelites 20:18-21

The rest of this section contains the record of the Israelites’ reaction to the giving of the Law and God’s reason for giving it as He did. He wanted the people to reverence Him and therefore not to sin (Exodus 20:20).

"It can be argued that in the present shape of the Pentateuch, the Decalogue (Exodus 20:1-17) is intended to be read as the content of what Moses spoke to the people upon his return from the mountain in Exodus 19:25. After the Decalogue, the narrative in Exodus 20:18-21 looks back once again to the people’s fear in Exodus 19:16-24. In retelling this incident, the second narrative fills the important ’gaps’ in our understanding of the first." [Note: Sailhamer, The Pentateuch . . ., pp. 56.]

Similarly Genesis 2 retells the story of creation in Genesis 1 to fill in important gaps.

"The Book of the Covenant begins technically with Exodus 20:22, having been separated from the Decalogue by a brief narrative (Exodus 20:18-21) describing the people’s response to the phenomena accompanying Moses’ encounter with Yahweh on Sinai (cf. Exodus 19:16-25). The technical term ’ordinances’ (mispatim), which describes the specific stipulations of the covenant, does not occur until Exodus 21:1, so Exodus 20:22-26 serves as an introduction to the stipulation section. This introduction underlines Yahweh’s exclusivity, His self-revelation to His people, and His demand to be worshiped wherever He localizes His name and in association with appropriate altars." [Note: Merrill, "A Theology . . .," p. 41.]

God evidently spoke the Ten Commandments in the hearing of all the Israelites (Exodus 19:9; Exodus 20:19; Exodus 20:22) to cause them to fear Him (Exodus 20:20). The people were so awestruck by this revelation that they asked Moses to relay God’s words to them from then on (Exodus 20:20), which he did (Exodus 20:21).

"This verse [Exodus 20:20] contrasts two types of ’fear’: tormenting fear (which comes from conscious guilt or unwarranted alarm and leads to bondage) or salutary fear (which promotes and demonstrates the presence of an attitude of complete trust and belief in God; cf. the ’fear of the LORD God’ beginning in Genesis 22:12). This second type of fear will keep us from sinning and is at the heart of the OT’s wisdom books (cf. Proverbs 1:7; Ecclesiastes 12:13 et al.)." [Note: Kaiser, "Exodus," p. 427.]

"Whereas Exodus 19:16-24 looks at the people’s fear from a divine perspective, Exodus 20:18-21 approaches it from the viewpoint of the people themselves. What we learn from both narratives, therefore, is that there was a growing need for a mediator and a priesthood in the Sinai covenant. Because of the people’s fear of God’s presence, they are now standing ’afar off’ (Exodus 20:21). Already, then, we can see the basis being laid within the narrative for the need of the tabernacle (Exodus 25-31). The people who are ’afar off’ must be brought near to God. This is the purpose of the instructions for the tabernacle which follow this narrative." [Note: Sailhamer, The Pentateuch . . ., pp. 56-57.]

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings,.... That is, they heard the one, and saw the other; they heard the dreadful volleys of thunder, and saw the amazing flashes of lightning, which were like lamps and torches, as the word used signifies; by a communication of senses, one sense is put for another, and the sense of sight being the principal, as Ben Melech observes, it is put for the rest, and so in the following. It is an observation of Austin's o that to "see" is used of all of the five senses, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling:

and the noise the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: they the sound of the trumpet, which made them tremble and saw the mountain all in a smoke, which made it look very terrible. Though the words may be rendered, as they are by some, "they perceived the thunders", c. p had a sensible perception of them with their eyes ears, which greatly affected them, and made strong impressions upon their minds, and filled them with fear and dread:

and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off; their minds were not only terrified and distressed, and their bodies shook with fear; but they could not stand their ground, but were obliged to retreat, who but just before were curious to draw near, and gaze and see what they could, to prevent which bounds were set; but now these were needless, what they saw and heard were sufficient to keep them at a distance, nay, obliged them to quit their places; they were at the lower part of the mount before, and now they removed a good way from it, even to their camp, and to their tents in it, see Deuteronomy 5:30. The Targum of Jonathan says, they removed twelve miles; and so Jarchi, who observes, that this was according to the length of their camp.

o Confess. l. 10. c. 35. p ראים "percipiebant", Junius Tremellius, "intelligebant" so some in Drusius.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

        18 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.   19 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.   20 And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.   21 And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.

      I. The extraordinary terror with which the law was given. Never was any thing delivered with such awful pomp; every word was accented, and every sentence paused, with thunder and lightning, much louder and brighter, no doubt, than ordinary. And why was the law given in this dreadful manner, and with all this tremendous ceremony? 1. It was designed (once for all) to give a sensible discovery of the glorious majesty of God, for the assistance of our faith concerning it, that, knowing the terror of the Lord, we may be persuaded to live in his fear. 2. It was a specimen of the terrors of the general judgment, in which sinners will be called to an account for the breach of this law: the archangel's trumpet will then sound an alarm, to give notice of the Judge's coming, and a fire shall devour before him. 3. It was an indication of the terror of those convictions which the law brings into conscience, to prepare the soul for the comforts of the gospel. Thus was the law given by Moses in such a way as might startle, affright, and humble men, that the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ might be the more welcome. The apostle largely describes this instance of the terror of that dispensation, as a foil to set off our privileges, as Christians, in the light, liberty, and joy, of the New-Testament dispensation, Hebrews 12:18, c.

      II. The impression which this made, for the present, upon the people they must have had stupid hearts indeed, if this had not affected them. 1. They removed, and stood afar off,Exodus 20:18; Exodus 20:18. Before God began to speak, they were thrusting forward to gaze (Exodus 19:21; Exodus 19:21); but now they were effectually cured of their presumption, and taught to keep their distance. 2. They entreated that the word should not be so spoken to them any more (Hebrews 12:19), but begged that God would speak to them by Moses, Exodus 20:19; Exodus 20:19. Hereby they obliged themselves to acquiesce in the mediation of Moses, they themselves nominating him as a fit person to deal between them and God, and promising to hearken to him as to God's messenger; hereby also they teach us to acquiesce in that method which Infinite Wisdom takes, of speaking to us by men like ourselves, whose terror shall not make us afraid, nor their hand be heavy upon us. Once God tried the expedient of speaking to the children of men immediately, but it was found that they could not bear it; it rather drove men from God than brought them to him, and, as it proved in the issue, though it terrified them, it did not deter them from idolatry, for soon after this they worshipped the golden calf. Let us therefore rest satisfied with the instructions given us by the scriptures and the ministry; for, if we believe not them, neither should we be persuaded though God should speak to us in thunder and lightning, as he did from Mount Sinai: here that matter was determined.

      III. The encouragement Moses gave them, by explaining the design of God in his terror (Exodus 20:20; Exodus 20:20): Fear not, that is, "Think not that the thunder and fire are designed to consume you," which was the thing they feared (Exodus 20:19; Exodus 20:19, lest we die); thunder and lightning constituted one of the plagues of Egypt, but Moses would not have them think they were sent to them on the same errand on which they were sent to the Egyptians: no, they were intended, 1. To prove them, to try how they would like dealing with God immediately, without a mediator, and so to convince them how admirably well God had chosen for them, in putting Moses into that office. Ever since Adam fled, upon hearing God's voice in the garden, sinful man could not bear either to speak to God or hear from him immediately. 2. To keep them to their duty, and prevent their sinning against God. He encourages them, saying, Fear not, and yet tells them that God thus spoke to them, that his fear might be before their face. We must not fear with amazement--with that fear which has torment, which only works upon the fancy for the present, sets us a trembling, genders to bondage, betrays us to Satan, and alienates us from God; but we must always have in our minds a reverence of God's majesty, a dread of his displeasure, and an obedient regard to his sovereign authority over us: this fear will quicken us to our duty and make us circumspect in our walking. Thus stand in awe, and sin not,Psalms 4:4.

      IV. The progress of their communion with God by the mediation of Moses, Exodus 20:21; Exodus 20:21. While the people continued to stand afar off, conscious of guilt and afraid of God's wrath, Moses drew near unto the thick darkness; he was made to draw near, so the word is: Moses, of himself, durst not have ventured into the thick darkness, if God had not called him, and encouraged him, and, as some of the rabbies suppose, sent an angel to take him by the hand, and lead him up. Thus it is said of the great Mediator, I will cause him to draw near (Jeremiah 30:21), and by him it is that we also are introduced, Ephesians 3:12.

Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible

The Mediator The Interpreter

July 28th, 1889 by C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892)

"And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die. And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that His fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not." Exodus 20:18-20 .

The giving of the law was glorious with pomp of power. The blaze of splendor was intended to impress the people with it sense of the authority of the law, by letting them see the greatness of the Lawgiver. It was meet that with great solemnity the law of the Most High should be proclaimed, that Israel might have a holy reverence for its commands. This terrible grandeur may also have been intended to suggest to the people the condemning force of the law. Not with sweet sound of harp, nor with the song of angels, was the law given; but with an awful voice from amid a terrible burning. Not in itself is the law condemnatory; for if there could have been life by any law, it would have been by this law: but by reason of man's sinfulness, the law worketh wrath; and to indicate this, it was made public with accompaniments of fear and death: the battalions of Omnipotence marshaled upon the scene; the dread artillery of God, with awful salvos, adding emphasis to every syllable. The tremendous scene at Sinai was also in some respects a prophecy, if not a rehearsal, of the Day of Judgment. If the giving of the law, while it was yet unbroken, was attended with such a display of awe-inspiring power, what will that day be when the Lord shall, with flaming fire, take vengeance on those who have willfully broken His law? To us, that day at Horeb is a type of the action of the law in our nature: thus doth the law deal with our consciences and hearts. If you have ever felt the law spoken home to you by the Spirit of God, you have heard great thunderings within. You have been forced to cry with Habakkuk, "When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones." And God intended it to be so, that you might look to the flames which Moses saw, and abandon forever all hope of acceptance by the works of the law. The glorious majesty which surrounded the institution of the law is not, however, our subject at this time. I shall handle the text in another manner. The Lord God, in this instance, came as near to man as was possible; yea, He came nearer than man could bear. Until a Mediator was found, the approach of God brought to man nothing but terror. Although under no great apprehension of guilt at the time for they had only then heard the law for the first time yet the people removed, and stood afar off, and cried out, "If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, then we shall die." God was near them in special condescension; for Moses said, "Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live?" Yet this memorable manifestation caused them alarm. Does it ever happen now that the Lord comes to His people in a way which dismays them? I think so. It is not really so, that God will fight against His people; but, to our apprehension, so it seems at certain times. Of these tempestuous manifestations of the Lord to our hearts I am going to speak at this time; and may the heavenly Comforter use it to the spiritual profit of his tried family! Our first head is this: the Lord has ways of communing with His people which fill them with fear; but, secondly, this endears the Mediator to them; and thirdly, this Mediator teaches them to interpret wisely the Lord's darker dealings with them. When we have thought upon these things, we shall close by saying to you that this sacred art of interpretation should be practiced by us now. 1. First, let me remind you that THE LORD HAS WAYS OF COMMUNING WITH HIS PEOPLE WHICH FILL THEM WITH FEAR. You must not think that the Lord always appears to His people in robes of light: sometimes He enrobes Himself in clouds and darkness. His paths drop fatness, and yet He often hath His way in the whirlwind. True, He manifests Himself to us as He doth not unto the world; but in the brightest of those manifestations He may make us fear as we enter into the cloud. It is not every revelation of God which inspires the saints with joy; for in many cases it is far otherwise, even as with Daniel, who said, "I saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength." This experience may not have occurred to some of you; it is, however, known to many of the people of God, who have had long dealings with Him. If any of you do not understand this matter, lay the sermon by till you do. Sometimes the near approach of the Lord fills His people with apprehension and alarm; and this sure to be the case when His coming includes a close application of the law to their hearts. We used to talk of "law-work" in days which are not past, and are by moderns looked upon with contempt; and, my brethren, our talk was not without good reason, for there is such a work, and it ministers greatly to our good. Certain servants of God, who had experienced this law-work to a very deep degree, fell into the error of regarding a marked measure of it as absolutely necessary to every child of God. We will avoid that evil, for it was a grievous cause of uncharitableness; but we will not conceal the fact that many souls, in coming to God, and in God's coming to them, have been made to feel a hewing and burning work from the law of God. The law has rent them in pieces, because they themselves have rent in pieces. The law has wrought in them a sense of bondage, burden, and despair. Even after we have fled for refuge to the hope set before us in the gospel, after we have a full assurance that our iniquities are put away, the Lord sometimes works in us a further work of the law, in which He makes us to see its exactness, its spirituality, strictness, and infinite compass. It is no little thing to see how the law judges the thoughts, desires, and imaginations of the heart. As the plummet of the holy law is held up, we see how out of the perpendicular we are, and we are therefore distressed. Brethren, when I have carefully considered, and inwardly perceived, the holiness of God's law, I have felt as though the sharp edge of a saber had been drawn across my heart, and I have shivered and trembled. Though the law did not actually cut or wound, yet its very presence, in all the keenness of its two edges, has made me shudder. So pure, so just, so uncompromising is the law of God, that when it is really understood, it makes us quail, and brings us to our knees. The law searches to the dividing asunder of joints and marrow, and it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Its excessive light strikes us, like Saul of Tarsus, to the earth, and makes us cry for mercy, When you begin to judge yourself, and estimate your actions by its infallible rule, you cease from boasting, and are filled with self-abhorrence. I believe it to be one of the best means to growth in humility, to be well instructed in the law, in the force and power of it. No man knows the brightness of the gospel till he understands the blackness of those clouds which surround the law of the Lord. Much of the shallowness of current religion is the result of a failure to apprehend the demands of divine justice, and a want of clear perception of the heinousness of disobedience. Let but God set up the throne of His law in your heart, and make you feel the power of that law in any one item of your daily conduct, much more in the whole circle of your life, and you will feel as the Israelites did when they could not abide the presence of the Most High. The Lord also may most truly and profitably come to a man, and in His coming may unveil to him the depravity of his nature. If any man could see his own heart as it is by nature, he would be driven mad: the sight of our disease is not to be borne unless we also see the remedy. When the Lord permits the fountains of the great deep of our depravity to be broken up, then are the tops of the hills of our self-sufficiency drowned in fear. When we see what we are capable of being, apart from divine grace, our spirit sinks. When believers are allowed to see how much there is still about them that is akin to hell, when sin becomes exceeding sinful, and we feel that the taint of it has defiled our whole nature, then it is that we are horrified and appalled. What an abyss of evil is within our bosoms! Probably some of you know very little about it. I pray that you may never discover it by its painful results; but I desire that you may believe it, so as to take a firmer grip upon the doctrines of grace, and exercise greater watchfulness over your hearts. Sin which dwelleth in us is no enemy that we can safely despise. Even in one single member of our fallen nature, namely, the tongue, there dwells a world iniquity: "It defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell." What poor creatures we are! The best of men are men at the best; and, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, and the power of divine grace, hell itself does not contain greater monsters of iniquity than you and I might become. Within the magazine of our hearts there is powder enough to destroy us in an instant, if omnipotent grace did not prevent. When this is distinctly perceived, we are troubled before the presence of the thrice holy God. Standing before the Lord, we cry with the prophet, "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips." This is a true manifestation of God; but it is by no means a cause of comfort to us. The Lord may also come to us, and lead us, by His light, to a discovery of actual sin in our life. We may sit here, and think ourselves very good; but if so, we are in the dark. If a beam of divine light is now entering our mind, our apprehension of our own character will be changed, The sins of a single day, if fully known in all their bearings, would drive us to despair, apart from the infinite grace of God. Apart from the divine plan of justifying the ungodly in Christ Jesus, any one hour would shut us up in hell. Beloved, think a minute of your omissions during the past week, how much you might have done, and ought to have done, which you have not done. It is on the side of omission that some of us are most vulnerable. Honestly looking down upon our lives, we may be able to say that we do not know of any overt offense against God, and for this we bless the divine grace; but when we come to think of what we have left undone, we feel like a traveler who, when crossing a glacier, suddenly sees an unfathomable crevasse opening just before him, and widening fast as he looks down into its blue depths of frozen death. Oh the sadness of that confession, "We have left undone the things which we ought to have done!" There is as much of lamentation in it as in the cry which precedes it "We have done those things which we ought not to have done." When we think of all our omissions, how can we stand before the Lord? Think again of your failure in what you have done. Brethren, you have prayed this week. I only refer to this week; for seven days are more than enough for my purpose. You have prayed: you have kept your regular times for devotion. But how have your prayed? With fervency? With careful consideration? With concentrated mind? Brethren, have you prayed with faith? With importunity? Surely, each of these questions must cut into you like a whip of wire. If you are as I am, you cannot answer to this examination without wincing. Why, even in the one matter of prayer, the sins of our holy things may shrivel us up before the burning eye of the Lord, who searcheth the heart. Your Bible also: you have read your Bible, of course you have; but with what attention? with what intention? with what devout belief? with what resolve to feel its force, and obey its commands? Have we not sinned against this Book enough to cast us into the lowest hell in the space of four-and-twenty hours? When the Lord begins to take a man to pieces by coming near to him, another matter will often trouble him, and that is his falseness, even were, in a measure, he is sincere. You prayed in public, and expressed most proper emotions and desires; but were they really your own emotions and desires, or did you steal the expressions of another man? You preached about the things of God; did your testimony come from your heart? Do you act in accordance therewith? You, my Christian friend, expressed yourself strongly, but, in your heart of hearts, can you justify the expression? Do we not often go further with our lips than we go with our hearts? Is not this, to some degree, hypocrisy? Must it not be very displeasing to God that we should use words towards Him which we have not weighed, and which are not fully true, as we use them? O brethren, if the Lord sets out secret sins in the light of His countenance, we too, like Israel, shall start and shrink from the presence of the Lord. If we add to these apprehensions of our own unworthiness a sense of the divine glory, then we cower down and hide ourselves in the dust. When a peal of thunder rends the heavens, and is followed up by a crash, as if the house would fall about your ears, while flames of fire blind you with their excessive brilliance, you feel that the Lord is terrible out of His holy places. God's nearness has inspired you with an awe which has been shaded with dread. The one attribute of power suffices to make the strongest believer feel that Jehovah is to be feared above all gods. But, my brethren, if properly apprehended, God's omniscience inspires an equal awe, while His goodness, His love, and His holiness are even more overwhelming when fully realized. One might possibly stand with unblanched cheek in the presence of divine power; but when the Lord reveals His holiness, a man might far sooner gaze into the sun than look into the face of God. Even His love is as the fire of a furnace to our unloveliness. At the sight of our God we say with Job, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seethe thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." The nearness of God to sinful man is a killing thing, and those who have known it will confess that it is so. What, my brethren, if, in addition to this, there should come to you a succession of alarming providences? These Israelites not only knew that God was near, but they heard the thunder, they saw the lightning, they looked into the thick darkness, they marked the mountain altogether on a smoke, and by all this they were horror stricken. Has it come to pass that the lord has laid many blows upon His servant? Has He taken away the desire of thine eye with a stroke? What if there be one, two, three little graves in yonder cemetery? What if love and friend have forsaken thee? What if thy business fail thee, and if thy health fail thee also? What if thy spirits sink? Oh, then, indeed I marvel not that thou art scared with forebodings of still worse calamities, and art ready to give up the ghost! Now art thou afraid because of the nearness of the great God, who is trying thee. If to this be added an apprehension of speedy death, as in the case of the Israelites, who cried, "This great Fire will consume us"; then, indeed, it is difficult to remain calm and hopeful. It will be no trifle to stand before the face of the Eternal. Since heaven and earth shall flee from thy face, and rocks shall melt, and stars shall fall, and the moon shall be turned black as sackcloth of hair, who shall stand before Thee, thou great and glorious One! Thus have I spoken to you upon the fact that our God does sometimes commune with His people in a way that fills them with overwhelming dread; let us advance to our net theme. II. Secondly, ALL THIS ENDEARS TO US THE MEDIATOR. The Israelites turned at once to Moses. They had already murmured against him: they afterwards said, "As for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him"; once they took up stones to stone him; but now they are of another mind. Terrified by the presence of God, they cry to Moses, "Go thou near, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say: and speak thou unto us all that the Lord Our God shall speak unto thee." The Mediator is everything to them now. They had found out by experience the necessity for an interposer; and they had not made a mistake either, for God Himself said they had well spoken what they had said. There is in God's esteem an urgent need for a Mediator. When we sang just now

"Till God in human flesh I see, My thoughts no comfort find; The holy, just, and sacred Three Are terrors to my mind,"

we did not give utterance to morbid or ungrounded fear. It is so in truth; and the next verse is accurate also:

"But if Immanuel's face appear, My hope, my joy begins; His name forbids my slavish fear, His grace removes my sins."

It is a matter of fact that we need a Mediator; and these people were driven to see it. Brethren, be sensible of your sin, and you will no more attempt to approach an absolute Deity than you would walk into a volcano's mouth. You will feel that you need a sacrifice, a propitiation, a Savior, a Mediator. Perceive the infinite difference between your nothingness and the divine infinity, and you will feel that there is no drawing nigh to the Eternal but by Jesus Christ. How can we, of ourselves, draw nigh unto God? It is wisdom to say unto the Well-beloved, "We pray thee, stand between the Lord and us." When your trembling is upon you, when your heart faints with awe, then you perceive how much you need an Advocate. Bless God that He has appointed one to be High Priest for you, who can safely go into the thick darkness, and stand in the presence of the Thrice Holy Majesty, and represent you without fail. Moses was well fitted to be the type of the true Mediator of the gospel covenant. He was himself in great favor with God, so that the Lord hearkened to his voice. Behold his dauntless courage in the presence of God, and, at the same time, his intense tenderness towards the people. Mark his faithfulness Godward as a servant over all his Master's house, and then note his self-sacrifice for Israel, so that he once said, "Blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written." He offered himself to be a sacrifice for them. But, O beloved, consider Jesus Christ our Mediator. Where is the like of Him? He is man, like ourselves; in all respects a sufferer, poor, needy, knowing even the pangs of death; and therefore He can lay His hand upon us with a warm, brotherly love. But then He is "God over all, blessed forever," equal with the Most High, the Well-beloved of the Father; and thus He can give His hand to the eternal God, and so link our humanity with God. I feel most safe in trusting all my concerns with that dear Advocate, that Interpreter, one of a thousand. O Jesus, who can rival thee?

"God, and yet man, thou art, True God, true man, art thou; Of man, and of man's earth a part, One with us thou art now."

Into the thick darkness our Mediator went. Forth from it He came. He interprets to us the language of the Eternal, and He takes our petitions up to heaven, and translates them into the tongue of the Holy One, so that God hears us and accepts us in the Well-beloved. I know that some of you imagine that you would believe the gospel if God were to speak to you out of the skies. Do not wish for it. The terror of His voice would overwhelm you, but it would not convert you. The Israelites were happy with a Mediator, and so will you be. If you hear not Jesus, neither would you hear though God should thunder. A Mediator is provided. Could you, with all your wit, suggest a better Mediator than Christ? I entreat you, accept the gospel in Christ, and come to God through Him. As there is no other way, so assuredly there could be no better way. If you had all wisdom and all power in your hands with which to make a way of acceptance with God, could you devise one more pleasant, more simple, more perfect, more adequate, more exactly what you need? Come, then, dear heart, come at once to God in Christ; and remember, Jesus says, "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out"; "No man cometh unto the Father, but by me." III. Now I come to my third point, upon which I would lay stress: THE MEDIATOR TEACHES US TO INTERPRET WISELY THE LORD'S DEALINGS. Moses became an interpreter of the Lord's terrible appearance to the trembling people, and he put a cheering construction upon it. You, to whom God has been speaking in a way of terror, and I know there are such here, for I have had to comfort them; you have a Mediator to explain to you the ways of the Lord. Be ready to learn the lesson which He teaches you: it is this "Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not." These rough dealings of God with your conscience, with your body, with your family, and with your estate, are not for your destruction, but for your instruction: not for your killing, but for your healing. As He came in tempest and thunder to teach the children of Israel, so has He come to you. If God is teaching you, He cannot mean to destroy you: the law does not provide a schoolmaster for a convict who is to be hanged tomorrow. The discipline in God's house, however severe it may be, is a sure proof of love. We educate sons, and not enemies. The Lord is teaching you what you are, and what He is. If He had meant to destroy you, He would not have showed you such things as these, If a criminal must needs die, we do not put him through a rehearsal of the pains of death. No, no, there would be no use in such a course-it would be sheer cruelty, and depend upon it, the Lord will not show you His own greatness merely to make you miserable, nor reveal to you your own ruin merely to drive you to despair. He does not afflict willingly. Infinite love dictates the apparent severity with which He afflicts your conscience. You are being judged here, that you may not be judged hereafter with the ungodly; you are now made to abhor yourself, that the Lord may not abhor you in the day of the judgment of the wicked. The Mediator here explains to trembling Israel that God had come to test them. We all need testing, do we not? Would you like to cross a railway bridge if it was reported to you that it had never been tested by a train? When the first Exhibition was built, I remember how they marched troops along the galleries to test them. Do you not desire to have your hope for eternity tested? The Lord draws near to us in ways which inspire our fears because He would test us. What is the result of the test? Do you not feel your own weakness? Does not this drive you to the strong for strength? You feel your own sinfulness; and you fly to the Lord Jesus for righteousness. Testing has a practically good effect in slaying self-confidence, and driving you to put your confidence where God would have it rest. When God came to these people in cloud and storm, it was to impress them, to put depth into their thought and feeling. We are filled with fear at times on purpose that our religion may not be a flimsy, superficial thing. Our tendency is to slur spiritual work. We easily get to be trifling and careless. Levity in religion is an easily-besetting sin with many; but when we are made to see the plague of our heart, and the awful majesty of God, that fear of the Lord which endureth forever soon drives out the triflers from the temple. Fear plows deep, and then faith sows, and love reaps; but godly fear must lead the way. Godly fear makes prayer to be fervent prayer; it makes the hearing of the word to be quite another thing from listening to the chatter of the world's vanity. Holy awe of God makes preaching to me to be the burden of the Lord. It may be light work to your men of genius and learning; but to me it is life and death work. Often have I thought that I would rather take a whipping with a cat-o'-nine-tails than preach again. How can I answer for it at the last great day unless I am faithful? "Who is sufficient for these things?" When I have felt the dread responsibility of souls which may be lost or saved by the word they hear, the fact that God is so near has made my flesh creep, and made me wish that I had never ventured on so bold a life-work. How shall I give in an honorable account of my commission at last? Beloved, God, by such apprehensions as these, is deepening in us the work of His grace, making us more alive to our position, and better fitting us for it. It is all in love that He allows our awe of Him to darken into dread, our sense of weakness to deepen into faintness of heart. Above all, it is explained to us that the dealings of the Lord are meant to keep us from sin. What does David say? "Before I was afflicted, I went astray: but now have I kept thy word." Does not Hezekiah tell us that by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of our spirit? We are so worldly, that we need our nest to be stirred to keep us on the wing. Six days we are taken up with business, mixing with those who despise heavenly things; and we should come to think lightly of them too, were it not that God comes to us in His dread majesty and makes us think, consider, and fear. This holy trembling drives off the shams which else would grow over us like mold on decaying matter. Our inward tempests clear the air, and keep us from stagnation and the pestilence which breeds in it. God's love will not suffer us to settle down in mere pretenses, and so glide into gross sins: He empties us from vessel to vessel, and thus discovers our evil sediment, and cleanses us from it. Many people, when they hear a sermon, say, "How did you enjoy it?" If you always enjoy sermons, the minister is not a good steward. He is not acting wisely who deals out nothing but sweets. God's people need that the word should at times be medicine to them, and we do not enjoy medicine. The word is as fire, and the iron does not like the fire; yet it is needful to its melting. It is as a hammer, and the rock does not love the hammer; yet it is needful to its breaking. Experiences which are painful may be therefore all the more profitable. That which makes us hate sin is a thing to be valued. I pray you, after this manner read the dispensations of God with you. When He chides He loves; when He chastens He shows fatherly affection; and when He scourges He receives into peculiar familiarity. Do not therefore run away from a chastening God. If fear drives thee away, let faith draw thee near. He means thy highest good. Never doubt it. Steadfastly believe that His heart loves even if His face frowns. IV. I close by asking you to PRACTICE THIS ART OF SACRED INTERPRETATION. Whensoever thy Lord speaketh with thee in thunder and writeth bitter things against thee, by faith read between the lines, and after the example of Moses, the mediator, put a comfortable construction upon rough words. Faith sees many reasons for refusing to read as fear would suggest: here is one of them. When the Lord spoke to these people with the voice of trumpet and thunder, He did not speak in anger after all, but in love; for His first words set the key-note. Here they are: "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of Bondage." What gracious words! What happy memories they arouse! What loving-kindnesses they record! It is true that your Lord has taken your wife or your child away, or has made you sick, or has tried your soul by the hidings of His face; but it is not an enemy who has done this. It is your God who has done it, even the same God that delivered you from the power of sin, and made you free in Christ Jesus. The Lord of love has chastened you, and chastened you in love. Learn Job's philosophy, and say from your heart, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Think of His former loving-kindness. Consider what He has done for you through the Lord Jesus and His death on your behalf. He brought you out of the bondage of your natural depravity, and He set you free from the Pharaoh of your evil passions. He has washed you from your sins, and brought you through the Red Sea of your fears by His own right hand. Can you not believe that He means well to you? What if He does speak roughly; may He not do so without being distrusted? He is the same God: He changeth not, and therefore you are not consumed: can you not rely on His faithful love? Will you take good from His hand, and will you not also take evil? He who humbles us is our covenant God, bound to us by His promise and His oath. He gave His Son to redeem us, He cannot now do us a displeasure: let Him do as seemeth Him good. We give Him carte blanche to do what He wills, for His love is beyond dispute. He died that I might live, and now it is impossible for Him to mean anything other than good towards me. I sometimes think that if I never had a gleam of love from His face again, I would live on that one text: "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Salvation from sin and death and hell should make us interpret every trying revelation, and every afflicting providence, and every painful experience, by the key of His ancient love; and so interpreted, every sorrowful line is sweetened. Notice next, dear friends, in your process of interpretation, that God cannot mean to destroy us, since this would be contrary to His word. He hath said, "He that believeth in him hath everlasting life." Can "everlasting life" be destroyed or die? How, then, could it be "everlasting life?" Can God declare it everlasting, and yet end it? Yes, He has given us everlasting life in His dear Son; and, what is more, He has laid up that life in Christ; for "your life is hid with Christ in God." Can He destroy the life which He has hid in His own immortal Son? Does not Jesus say, "Because I live ye shall live also?" What are you afraid of, then? God cannot destroy you. He has said, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." What if He speaks severely to thee, it is that He may deliver thee from sinning. Wilt thou not bless Him? He will not curse thee, for He hath blessed thee in His Son, and "there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." Bow thyself, and take from thy Father's hand whatever He appoints. Remember, that you are not, after all, in the same condition as Israel at the foot of Horeb. Though I have drawn a sort of parallel this morning, yet there remains a wonderful difference. "Ye are not come unto the mount that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest." Ye are not come to a terrible voice which mortal ears could not endure. "But ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels. And to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel." You are come to the land of pardon, peace, and promise: you are in the home of life, love and liberty. You have come to the Lord of adoption, acceptance and glory. Wherefore, do not, I pray you, construe the acts and dealings of God with your soul after the mean and slavish manner which unbelief suggests to you, but believe your God in the teeth of all you hear, or see, or feel. The Lord hath come to prove thee, to put His fear before thy face, and to keep thee from sin; wherefore look for sweet fruit from the bitter tree of thy present grief, and flee not from thy God. Again, dear friend, here is our great comfort: we have a Mediator. When God dealeth with thee by the law, or by His rod, or by His searching Spirit, thou art apt to say, "How can I endure His hand?" Hide behind the Mediator. Let Jesus be thy shield, even as He is the Lord's Anointed. Beseech the Lord God not to look on thee as thou art in thyself, but to see thee in Christ Jesus. Say

Him, and then the sinner see, Look through Jesus' wounds on me.

Take care that thou lookest through Jesus' wounds on God; and if thou dost, thou wilt see in Him infinite love and boundless kindness. The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ is unutterable love. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him", and when they fear Him most, His pity goes out to them in streams of tenderness. If thy God use the knife on thee, it is to cut out a deadly cancer. If thy God break thee, and grind thee, it is to get away thy bran, and make thee as the fine flour of the meat-offering. He may seem to slay thee, but by this He makes thee live. Though He slay thee, still trust thou in Him. Never believe anything which would militate against the truth of His love, or the wisdom or the tenderness of it. Cling to Him when He frowns. The closer thou canst cling the less thou wilt feel the blows of His hand when He chastens. A faith which believes when it smarts will soon have done with the rod. If thou wilt have nothing but good to say of God, He will take thee out of the fire, for it is evident that thou dost not need more of it. A full and firm belief in God when He seems to be against us, is a grand mark of sanctification. To be able to spell out "love" when it is written in cruciform characters, shows a high state of spiritual education. And now, beloved, if you can take the Lord in this way, henceforth and forever believing in His love, and never staggering through unbelief, thou wilt glorify thy God and get good to thyself in every way. If thou believest, then thou wilt be strong; for faith is the backbone of the spiritual man. If thou believest, thou wilt love, and love is the very heart of the spiritual man. Believing and loving, thou wilt endure with patience, and thy patience shall be a crown to thee. Believing, loving, and enduring, thou shalt become equipped for every holy service, and in that service thou shalt acquire more and more of likeness to thy Lord, till when thou hast endured to the full, thou shalt be in all points a brother of Him who is the Firstborn. Like Him, thou shalt be able to go into the thick darkness, and have that communion with God which only they can know who have felt the consuming fire passing through them again and again, and burning up that corruption of the flesh which makes God to be a terror to men. Like our Mediator, may we be made to plead with God for men, and with men for God. May we go up into the mount and see God and eat and drink; and then come down with faces shining with the heavenly light. God give us thus to have a Mediator, to interpret our God through a Mediator, and then to grow like our Mediator by the work of his own Spirit. I have said a great deal that must be very terrible to ungodly men, since it even tries the holiest. O my hearers, if you are unconverted, I do not suppose that the terrors of the Lord, even though they make you fear, will work any lasting good in you; for I remember that those very people who trembled at Sinai were found, in a very few weeks, madly dancing before a golden calf, and saying, "These be thy gods, O Israel, that brought thee up out of Egypt." Fear alone will work no saving or sanctifying effect on the heart. It plows, but it does not sow. In the child of God, mixed with faith, fear becomes a holy tonic, a salutary medicine; but, as for you who have cause for fear, there is something else for you. Flee to the Mediator, trust in Christ Jesus, who stands between man and God, look unto Him at once, and looking you shall live. To our adorable Mediator be glory forever and ever. Amen, and Amen.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

"In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai." Up to this point all the dealings of God have been the simple application and outflow of His own grace. This is all the more striking too, because even after the redemption of the people from Egypt there are grievous faults, unbelief, complaints, and murmurs; nevertheless, not a blow, not a single answer on God's part save in tender mercy towards a poor and failing people. All changes now.

The reason is manifest. They left the ground of the grace of God, which they had in no wise appreciated. Their conduct proved that His grace had not at all entered into their hearts. It was a perfectly righteous thing therefore that God should propose terms of law. Had He not done so, we should not have had duly raised the solemn question of man's competence to take the ground of his own fidelity before God. Not a soul that has been since brought to the knowledge of God but what at least ought to have profited in point of fact, must have profited by this grave lesson. It is true that God had taken every care to show His own mind about it. From the time that man fell, He presented grace as the only hope for a sinner. But man was insensible, and therefore, inasmuch as his heart was continually taking the place of self-righteousness, God's law put him thoroughly to the test. This accordingly was proposed. Had there been any true understanding of their own state in the sight of God they had confessed that, however righteous the obligation to render obedience to the law, they being unrighteous could only be proved guilty under such a proof. The test must have brought inevitable ruin. But they had no such thoughts of themselves, more than real knowledge of God.

Hence therefore, no sooner does God propose to them that they should obey His law as the condition of their blessing at His hands, than they at once accept the terms: "Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine." The result soon appears in their ruin; but Jehovah shows that He knew from the first, before any result appeared, their inability to stand before Him: "Lo," says He to Moses, "I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee for ever." But in this chapter, and indeed in the next still more, the people entreat that God's voice should not speak to them any more.

Then (Exodus 20:1-26) are uttered those wonderful ten commandments which are the great centre of divine communications through Moses the fundamental expression of God's law. On this, being so thoroughly familiar to all, I of course do not enlarge. We know from our Lord Jesus its moral summary and essence the love of God, and the love of man. But it was presented here for the most part in a way that betrayed the condition of man not in positive precepts but in negative ones a most humbling proof of man's estate. He loved sin so well that God had to interdict it. In the greater part of the ten commandments, in short, it was not "Thou shalt," but "Thou shalt not." That is, it was a prohibition of man's will. He was a sinner, and nothing else.

A few words on the law may be well here. It may be looked at in its general and historical bearing, more abstractly as a moral test.

First, God was dealing with Israel in their responsibility as witnesses of Jehovah, the one true self-existing God, the almighty God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. His relationship was with them as they then were, redeemed from Egypt by His power and brought to Himself indeed, but only after an outward sort, neither born of God, nor justified. They were a people in the flesh. They had been wholly insensible to His ways of grace in leading them out of Egypt to Sinai. They lost sight of His promises to the fathers. They stood in their own strength to obey the law of God, as ignorant of their impotence or of His holy majesty. Accordingly we may regard the law as a whole, consisting not only of moral claims but of national institutes, ordinances, statutes, and judgment) under which Israel were put. These consequently were to form and regulate them as a people under His special government, God suiting them to their condition and in no way revealing His own nature as He afterwards did personally in the Word made flesh in the New Testament as a full display of His mind, and in the Christian individually or the church corporately as responsible to represent Christ, like Israel in relation to the tables of stone. (2 Corinthians 3:1-18) Hence we can understand the earthly, external, and temporal character of the legal economy. There were believers before it and all through; but this of course wholly distinct from Judaism. It was now a question of a nation, and not of individuals merely, thus governed of one nation in the midst of many which were to behold in it the consequences of fidelity or the lack of it toward the law of Jehovah. The Old Testament proves, and indeed the New Testament also, how utterly Israel failed, and what the consequences have been alike in the justice and in the grace of God.

But, secondly, the law is a test morally and individually. This always abides; for the law is lawful if a man use it lawfully. Christianity teaches its value instead of neutralising it. It is false that the law is dead. It is not thus that the believer, even if a Jew and therefore under law, was withdrawn from its condemning power. By the law he died to the law that he might live to God. He is crucified with Christ and nevertheless he lives, yet not himself but Christ in him. He underwent death to the law by the body of Christ that he should belong to another Him that was raised from the dead in order that we should bear fruit to God. But it is as far as possible from the truth that "the discipline of the law comes in to supply the deficiencies of the Spirit, and curb the still remaining tendencies to sin."* Such was no doubt the doctrine of those whom the apostle censures as wishing to be law-teachers, understanding neither what things they say nor whereof they stoutly affirm. It is not Christianity to talk of "deficiencies of the Spirit," any more than of "still remaining tendencies to sin;" still less to call in the discipline of the law to mend matters. Is it not known that for a righteous man (which assuredly the believer is) law is not in force, but for lawless and insubordinate, the ungodly and sinful. They that are of Christ Jesus crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts. It is a question of mortifying our members which are on earth, on the ground of our being dead, and of walking by the Spirit, even as we live by Him, and of those not in anywise fulfilling flesh's lust. Thus, if the law be the power of sin, grace is of holiness. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory by our Lord Jesus Christ.

* Dr. P. Fairbairn's Typology, ii. p. 190.

However, we find that God was pleased to give subsequently and separately, but yet in connection with the ten words, certain ordinances which concerned Israel in their worship.

All the people then saw the thunderings and the lightnings, and the voice of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, and stood afar off, asking that not God but Moses should speak with them. He accordingly drew near into the thick darkness; for so God dealt with Israel as a people in the flesh. For the Christian it is not so. The veil is rent; and we walk in the light as He is in the light. Yet even then Jehovah, while warning against making gods of silver and gold, deigned to direct them to make to Him an altar of ground for burnt-offerings and peace-offerings: if of stone two prohibitions instruct His people. It must not be of hewn stone, as their work would profane it; neither must the Israelite go up by steps, as thereby his nakedness would be manifested. Grace covers through the expiation of Christ, as it flows in virtue of God's work and in maintaining God's order.

In the beginning ofExodus 21:1-36; Exodus 21:1-36 we find the type of the servant. There cannot be a more striking illustration of the truth that Christ is the continual object of the Holy Ghost than that, even in these temporary ordinances, God cannot refrain from looking onward to His Son. No doubt it was connected with the earth, and what was in itself anything but a condition suitable to the mind of God. It is the condition of a slave; nevertheless even there God has Christ before Him. If a Hebrew servant were bought, he was to serve for six years, in the seventh to go out free for nothing "If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for ever."

Such was the choice of Jesus not to be merely a servant here on the earth for a time He has chosen of His own gracious will to be servant for ever. No doubt He cannot but be a divine person, the Son, as He is also the exalted Lord; but He is nevertheless by His own grace the servant for ever. Even in glory we shall know Him thus. What is He doing now? He gave a sample of it before He went up on high. When the time was come, He took a basin of water and a towel, and washed His disciples' feet. What they knew not then, they were to know hereafter, as we know it now. Intimacy with what is unseen and heavenly is quite as much the portion of a Christian and even more characteristically so than the knowledge of what passes around us now. We ought to know heaven better than the earth. We may know and ought to judge what is passing in the world, though it be through an imperfect medium; but we know heaven and heavenly things from God. It is not merely as having the word that reveals heaven; but we know it from Him who comes from heaven and is above all, and testifies what He has seen and heard; we know it through the Holy Ghost who has come down from it, and hence should know it better than the earth, and the things of the world which ensnare the flesh. But looking onward to the day of glory that is coming, when the Lord will be publicly manifested, and we manifested with Him, changed into His glorious likeness, it might have been thought that surely His service will cease then. But not so: it will take a new shape. He is the servant of His own choice for ever. As He will never cease to be God, He will never cease to be man. In His love He is become a servant for ever; and He loves to be so.

After this follow the general institutions of the law, which mainly insist on retribution. Advantage must not be taken of the weak or subject; violence cannot go unpunished, any more than dishonour where we owe reverence; responsibility for what is allowed, were it but a mischievous brute; restitution must be made, and this double, fourfold, or even fivefold, according to the wrong; neither a witch nor an offender unnaturally could live; neither stranger nor widow nor orphan must be vexed or afflicted; neither poor must be burdened, nor judges reviled; but God is to be honoured with the first of the fruits, and of the sons, as well as of the cattle. Israel are to approve themselves as holy men to God. False report and testimony are forbidden, were a multitude to lead the way; as on the other hand there must be no partiality to the poor man's cause, nor a refusal to help an enemy, nor falsehood, nor bribery, nor oppression. The seventh year was to be enjoyed as the land's Sabbath, even as the seventh day by each Israelite, who must avoid naming false gods, but keep the due feasts thrice a year to the true God, not offering blood with leavened bread, nor letting the fat remain till the morning A prohibition occurs of a peculiar kind, and is repeated not only in a later part of this book, but also in Deuteronomy: "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk." God would guard His people from an outrage in comeliness, were it even about a dumb or dead animal; as Satan triumphs in all that is abnormal and unnatural in the superstitions which usurp the place of the truth, and are bound up with idolatry. His angel is promised, not only to keep and lead Israel, but to bring them in, spite of the doomed Canaanites, who should be driven out: they should have no covenant with them or their gods. (Exodus 21:1-36; Exodus 22:1-31; Exodus 23:1-33) These points do not call for particular remarks.

Along with them there is the greatest possible care for the maintenance of one true God an immense principle. No doubt the time was not yet come for God to reveal Himself as He is. Into that wondrous knowledge we are brought by the Son come down here below; and above all by the Holy Ghost, now that Christ is gone up on high For in point of fact, when God was only known as the one God, however true this may be, He could not really be known as He is. Now we do so know Him. We know Him better than even His earthly people will know Him by and by. The knowledge of Israel in the millennium will be genuine, for they shall be all taught of God. But there is now an intimacy of acquaintance with the God and Father of the Lord Jesus which none on earth can ever know as a Christian ought to know it. The reason is manifest; for the proper knowledge of the Christian is such knowledge as the Son, speaking according to His own communion with His Father, communicates to us.

Now the Lord Jesus will not be dealing then as Son, though then as evermore the Son of God. He will not undertake to unfold His Father's words to men in the millennium. He will reign as the great King King of kings and Lord of lords, but still as King. It would not be suitable to such a position that there should be undue familiarity. The very notion of a king and a kingdom puts the subjects at a greater distance. A certain reserve becomes requisite to majesty; whereas such considerations disappear in the nearness of relationship He is pleased to enter into with us. It is true He was born King of the Jews, and He never can cease to be really so; but it is not so that we know Him. The Son of the Father, He brings us into the knowledge of the true God as the Son knew Him in heaven, as the Son still of course knew Him on earth. And the Holy Ghost completes this wonderful circle of divine intimacy. If I may venture on such an expression without irreverence, it is the introducing us into the family circle of the heavens the Father made known in the Son by the Holy Ghost. This I maintain to be peculiar to Christianity in all its fulness. When God the Father shall have accomplished His present purpose here below, then will be caught up to meet the Lord those among whom the Spirit is thus making known God; and after that the ordinary dealings of God will resume their course through this world. No doubt all was advancing as regards the world; but that which was brought to us now was before the world, and altogether above the world in its own nature. How greatly blessed then is the Christian, and what the manner and measure of the worship and the walk which become those to whom grace has given such a knowledge of God!

At the end of these communications a call is given Moses to come up to Jehovah. (Exodus 24:1-18) "And he said unto Moses, Come up unto Jehovah, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship ye afar off." There is distance, even though they are called to this place of distinction. "And Moses alone shall come near Jehovah, but they shall not come nigh, neither shall the people go up with him." And there the solemn compact into which Israel had passed is renewed. All the people answer when the words and judgments are pronounced, "All the words which Jehovah hath said will we do." They promise obedience, but it is obedience of the law. Now we must always bear in mind that, though in the Christian walking aright the righteousness of the law will surely be fulfilled, never has Christianity either a legal principle or a legal character: not a legal principle because it flows from the known grace of God to the soul; not a legal character because it is consistency with Christ risen from the dead, not merely with the Ten Command meets. But inasmuch as Christ differed from Moses, as grace differs from law; as that which suits God the Father known in heaven, though manifesting Himself upon earth, differs from a process of mere dealing with the first man according to righteous claim; so it is with the Christian man: while faithful to Christ, as he knows Him, he will never do anything which the law could possibly condemn. Against the fruits of the Spirit there is no law, as the apostle so emphatically says to the Galatians. But then the fruits of the Spirit can never be attained by the law; nor are they even contemplated by a legal measure.

In short therefore the children of Israel stood on the ground of man in the flesh; and man in the flesh, as he is a sinful being, can neither deny nor accomplish his obligation to do the will of God. As surely as God is, man's conscience bears witness to Him. If the true God deigns to give a law to man, it must be an unimpeachably wise and worthy law adapted to the condition of man, as far as a law possibly can be; and such is God's law holy, just, and good. But the difficulty is this, that man being a sinner is as far as possible from ability to meet God's law; for how indeed can there be any real stable bond between a bad man and a good law? There lay the insuperable difficulty once; but now grace perfectly meets it, and meets it in a way which evinces alike the goodness and the wisdom of God.

Law is essentially incapable of helping, because being only a claim on God's part, and a definition of His demands, it can only condemn him whose condition makes due obedience impossible. It is evident that law as such, first of all, has no object to present to man. It can press duty to God and man on pain of death, but it has no object to reveal. Secondly, it cannot give life; and this is another necessity of man. In addition to atonement, these are the two urgent wants of fallen humanity. Without life it is impossible for one to produce that which is according to God; and without a worthy object, nay without a divine object presented, there can be nothing to draw out divine affections. As divine life alone can have affections according to God, so a divine object alone can either act on those affections or minister to them. Now this is exactly what grace does in Christ. He who has wrought expiation for our sins is our life, and at the same time He is the object whom God has revealed to our faith. This shows the essential difference between law and grace, which last means God giving in Christ all that man really needs for His own glory.

Undoubtedly there is another measure of responsibility. A few words on this subject may not be amiss for any souls that have not adequately considered the matter, as there is hardly anything on which men are so much at fault as this question. Some seem on the very verge of denying it altogether, in their one-sided zeal for the grace of God; others who stand stoutly and so far well for the responsibility of man misuse this truth so as apparently to swamp God's grace. Scripture never sacrifices one truth to another. It is the peculiar property and glory of the word of God that it communicates not merely a truth here and there, but the truth; and this in the person of Christ. The Holy Ghost is the only power for rightly using, and applying, and enjoying the truth; and therefore He is called "the truth" no less than the Lord Jesus. He is the intrinsic power by which the truth is received into the heart, but Christ is the object. Where Christ is thus received in the Holy Ghost, a new kind of responsibility is created. The measure of it for the Christian is based on the fact that he possesses life, and that he has Christ Himself, the object which shows him the position in which he stands, and consequently the character of the relationship that attaches to him. His relationship is that of a son, not merely of one adopted into that place with no more reality than he obtains in human things. We are adopted sons; but then we are more than that. We are children, members of the family of God. That is, we are children as having God's own nature. We are born of God, and not merely adopted as if we were strangers to Him. Every Christian has a nature that is intrinsically divine, as we are told in 2 Peter 1:1-21.

Thus, it is plain, nothing can be more complete. We have a nature which answers morally to God whom we imitate as well as obey in light and love, in holy and righteous ways, in mercy, truthfulness, and humility. We have the position of sons, a relationship which the Lord Jesus had in all its perfection, and in an infinitely higher sense, in which no creature can share it along with Him. Still Christ does bring us into His own relationship as far as it is possible for the creature to possess it. Hence, as duty is ever measured by responsibility, that of the Christian is according to the place in which grace has put him. It is certain therefore that all the common-places about the law as the rule of the Christian's life are practically a denial of what Christianity is. Those who reason from Israel to us, without intending it, ignore the relationship of the Christian, and set aside the bearing of redemption on our walk: so serious is that error which to many seems a pious thought, and I am sure taken up by them with the desire of honouring God and His will. But sincerity will not serve in lieu of His word; and our own thoughts and desires can never be trusted as a standard of principle or of practice. God has revealed His mind, and to this, if wise, we must needs be subject. In divine things there is nothing like simplicity; by it we enjoy a wisdom far higher than our own and real power to strengthen and guide the heart.

In Israel's case it was not so. First of all they promised obedience; but it was the obedience of the law. Secondly, when the blood of the victims was shed, it was sprinkled on the book as well as on the people (verses 7, 8). What was the meaning of the blood? Not atonement. The prime idea in blood seems always to be the life given up, i.e., death, in acknowledgment of the guilt of the one concerned. This is true, no doubt; but unless it goes farther than this, it is a declarative sanction of God's punishing in case of failure to meet His demands. The grace of God applies the blood of Christ in a totally different way; and this is what is referred to in1 Peter 1:2; 1 Peter 1:2. He describes the Christian in terms which at once recallExodus 24:1-18; Exodus 24:1-18. He says that we are elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. The Israelites were elect as a nation according to the sovereign call of Jehovah the known God of their fathers. Ignorant of God as well as of themselves, they dared to take their stand on His law. Accordingly they were severed by the ordinance of circumcision and other rites. They were sanctified from the nations by this fleshly separation to obey the law under its solemn and extreme penalty. The blood threatened death on every one who transgressed. The Christian position is altogether different: we are elect as children "according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit," meaning by this the separating power of the Holy Ghost from the very first moment of our conversion. This vital separation to God, and not practical holiness, is what is here called sanctification of the Spirit the most fundamental meaning of it indeed anywhere. But practical sanctification there is, and amply insisted on elsewhere; but it is not the point here, and if we attempt to bring practical sanctification into this verse, we destroy the gospel of grace. Nobody doubts the good intentions of such as interpret it thus; but these are not enough with the word of God.

We must take care that we receive the sense which God intends, otherwise we may err seriously, to His dishonour and to our own hurt and that of others. Let us then bow to God instead of forcing our own meaning on scripture. What for instance would be the meaning of our being practically sanctified to obedience as well as to have the blood of Jesus sprinkled upon us? It simply proves that he who expounds unwittingly sets aside the gospel. Practical sanctification for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus! What do people mean by restricting themselves to a sense of sanctification which necessarily involves in it so portentous a conclusion? Evidently the language of the Spirit of God is as unambiguous, and the construction as plain and simple as possible.

Take a case in illustration. A man hitherto has been altogether indifferent to the word of God. He hears it now; he receives Jesus as the gift of God's love with all simplicity. Perhaps he has not peace at once, but at any rate he is thoroughly arrested; he desires earnestly to know the gospel from the very first. If the Spirit of God has thus wrought in him, he is separated to God from what he was. This is here called "sanctification of the Spirit." For, as we said, the sanctification is "to obedience;" and this is the very first desire implanted in a soul from the moment that there is a real divine work in him. Such an one may be very ignorant, no doubt; but at any rate his heart is made up to obey the Lord his desire is Godward. It is not a merely legal way of escaping the dreadful doom that he sees is the just portion of those that despise God. The truth has touched his conscience by grace, and God's mercy, however dimly seen, is enough to attract his heart to obey. Thus he is sanctified by the Spirit unto the obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. He would now obey, because he has the new nature through receiving the name of the Lord Jesus, and would enter into the grace of God that sprinkles the guilty with the blood of Jesus. He would obey like Jesus, not under compulsion like a Jew, and is sprinkled with His blood in remission for his sins, instead of having the blood sprinkled on him as a menace of death in case of disobeying the law. The Christian loves to obey, and is already forgiven through faith of Jesus and His blood. This I believe to be the true meaning of the passage, and especially of the term "sanctification of the Spirit" here; though it is frankly and fully allowed that this is not the only meaning of "sanctification" in scripture.

The sanctification here in question then applies from the start of an effectual inward work even before a soul knows pardon and peace, but there is also room for the practical power of the Holy Ghost in subsequent work in heart and conscience severing us more and more by the truth to the Lord. The latter is practical sanctification, admits of degrees, and is thus relative. But in every soul there is the absolute separation of the Holy Spirit from conversion. Thus there are plainly two distinct senses of sanctification: one absolute, in which a man is severed once for all from the world to God; the other relative, as being practical and hence differing in measure in the after career of each Christian. "But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." Here it seems in substance the same thing as in 1 Peter 1:2. "Sanctified" in this sense is clearly before justification; and so the apostle puts it. It is of no use to decry the plain meaning of the scripture because the Romanist theologian perverts the fact more fatally than the Protestant. If the Spirit of God here puts "sanctified" before "justified," our plain duty is to learn what is meant, not to wrest His word because of Popish misuse of it a misuse due largely to the common ignorance of the primary force of sanctification. Why should souls be driven from the truth by prejudice or clamour? It is not to be allowed that God's word makes mistakes: man does, but is it with the Spirit of God? Does not He mean what He says? When He says they were washed, He is referring to the water of the word used by the Spirit of God to deal with man. This looks more at evil; "sanctified" to the good which attracted the heart now. But these are not the only things. "Justified" is not when the prodigal son returns to his father, but when the best robe is put upon him; then he is, according to1 Corinthians 6:1-20; 1 Corinthians 6:1-20, not washed and sanctified alone but "justified." It is the application of the full power of the work of the Lord Jesus. It is not always immediate on conversion It may be, and, if you please, ought to be, soon; but still it is far from being always so; and in fact there is and perhaps must be always an interval more or less before comfort or peace is enjoyed. It may be ever so minute, but there is habitually a dealing of Christ between the touch that stays the issue and the word which declares with no less authority than love, "Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace." Very often it is not so little a while, as many of us know to our cost. But it remains always true that there is this difference. And it seems well to remark it, because it is of considerable practical and also doctrinal importance, contrasting as it does the place of the Christian with that of the Jew. The tendency of some to insist on the whole in an instant is a reaction from the popular unbelief, which, if it allow peace at all, allows it as a matter of slow, laborious and uncertain attainment. But we must not be driven into any error, even the least to avoid the greatest; and it is certainly an error to swamp in one all the ways of God with the soul.

In the latter part of the chapter we have clearly the legal glory. This does not take them out of their condition of flesh and blood and all that pertains to it. It is in no way the glory which is the hope of the Christian.

Exodus 25:1-40 introduces us to a new order of figures, not only earthly ordinances, but that which appertains to the tabernacle. Undoubtedly in itself it composed a worldly tabernacle; but this does not hinder these figures from typifying what was to be for the most part of a heavenly character.

After the call to the people to bring their offerings, we find the use to which they were to be applied First and foremost stands the centre of Levitical worship the ark. We must remember that they are but shadows, and not the very image of the thing. In none of these types can one find the full truth of Christ and of His work. They are only a faint and partial adumbration of the infinite reality, and could not possibly be more. Hence they have the imperfection of a shadow. In fact we could not have the full image till Christ appeared and died on the cross and went to heaven. As Christ is the true and perfect image of God, so is He the expression of all that is good and holy in man. Where will one find what man should be but in Christ? Where the faultless picture of a servant but in Him? And so one might go through every quality and every office, and find them only in perfection in our Lord Jesus. There indeed is the truth. The legal ordinances and institutes were but shadows; still they were types distinctly constituted; and we should learn by them all.

In these shadows* we may see two very different characters or classes, we may say, into which they are divisible. The first and foundation of all the rest is this: God would disclose Himself in some of them to man, as far as this was possible then; secondly, founded on that and growing out of it, man would be taught to draw near to God. Impossible for such access to exist and be enjoyed till God had drawn near to man and shown us what He is to man. We can see therefore the moral propriety and beauty of this distinction, which at once separates the shadows of the latter part of Exodus into two main sections. The ark, the golden table, the golden candlestick, the tabernacle with its curtains, the veil, the brazen altar, and the court, form the first division of the types, the common object of them all being the display of God in Christ to man.

*Dr. Fairbairn's "Typology" is here, as in general, poverty itself. He considers that distinct meanings to be attached to the materials, colours, etc., can have no solid foundation, and are " here out of place"! Even the force of the silver redemption-money he thinks disproved by the fact that the sockets of the door were made of brass. This is the way to lose all but a minimum of truth.

Of these the highest is the ark. It was the seat of Divine Majesty in Israel; and as all know (and most significant it is), the mercy-seat was pre-eminently that throne of God the mercy-seat which afterwards we see with blood sprinkled on it and before it the mercy-seat which concealed the law destructive to the pretensions of man, but maintained it in the place of highest honour, though hidden from human view. Was this nothing? Was there not comfort for any heart which confides in God, that He should take such a seat as this, and give it such a name, in relationship with a guilty people on the earth?

Next came the table,* and upon it a defined supply of bread. For what was presented there? One loaf? No such carnal thought entered as if God had need of bread from man. The bread that was set on the golden table consisted of twelve loaves in evident correspondence with the twelve tribes of Israel, but this assuredly in connection with Christ, for He is ever the object of God's counsels. It is God displaying Himself in Christ; but those who had this connection with Christ were Israel. Of them He came, and He deigned to have the memorial of them on this table before God.

*Dr. Fairbairn views Christ's whole undertaking as symbolized already in the furniture and services of the Most Holy Place, and therefore considers the things belonging to the Holy Place as directly referring only to the works and services of His people. The consequence of such a division is indeed lowering in the extreme.

In the candlestick another truth comes before us. It is not God who thus deals with humanity, of which Israel was the chosen specimen, and the one remembered before Him; but in the seven candlesticks, or rather the candelabrum with its seven lights, we clearly see the type of Christ as the power and giver of the Holy Ghost in testimony for God. This is in connection with God's sanctuary and presence. Now, in all these things it is the display of what God is to man; God Himself in His own sole majesty in the ark, God Himself associated with man, with Israel, in the show-bread, God Himself with this light of the sanctuary or the power of the Spirit of God.

All this was plain, but in the tabernacle we have more than this. (Exodus 26:1-37) Christ is set forth in various ways by the curtains Christ in His human purity and righteousness Christ in what was heavenly Christ in His glory whether Jewish or extending over Gentiles also, with His judicial title asserted. The goats' hair would seem to speak of Christ in His prophetic separateness; the rams' skins dyed red point to His absolute consecration to God; as the power which kept out all evil would appear to be meant by the badgers' or tachach skins, which covered the tent above. The reference is to the fine linen and blue, etc., with the various coverings of goats' hair and badger skins. All these, I have no doubt, have their own proper significance, as manifesting the character of Christ here below.

Next (versesExodus 26:15-30; Exodus 26:15-30) follows the account of the acacia boards with their tenons and bolts, the sockets of silver and the rings of gold.

Then we have the veil and screen. Now we know what these mean. Scripture is positive that the veil is His flesh, but then it is as manifesting the Lord as man here below. As long as this was the case only, man could not come to God. When the veil was rent (namely, by Christ dying as a man), man could go into the presence of God, at least the believer. I do not mean man as man, but that there was no bar to man. The way was now open into the presence of God.

In the brazen altar it is the same side of truth, but there is this characteristic difference. (Exodus 27:1-21) Not less than the ark, the golden throne of God in the most holy place, it shows us God's righteousness; but with this difference between them that gold is the righteousness of God for drawing near where God is; brass is the righteousness of God for dealing with man's evil where man is. Such is the line which divides them. It is the display of God in both cases the one in the presence of God where He manifests Himself; the other in dealing with man and his wants in this world. Hence we find, for instance, the righteousness of God in Romans. If we consider with any care Romans 3:1-31, it is the righteousness of God presented to man as a sinful being in this world. But if I look at the passage where it is said, "He made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him," it is evident that we are brought into the very presence of God. Thus 2 Corinthians 5:1-21 corresponds with the ark rather than the brazen altar. Everything has its beautiful and perfect answer in the word of God; but then all is useless to the soul, except just so far as one sees and receives the Lord Jesus Christ.

Next, from the latter part ofExodus 27:1-21; Exodus 27:1-21 we have a change evident, and of more weight.

The last two verses are, I think, transitional. They prepare the way for types which, instead of displaying God in Christ to man, set forth rather man drawing near by the appointed channel to God. They are occupied with the provision of light where God manifested Himself, and in order to the due service of those who entered the sanctuary. "And thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamp to burn always." It may be added here, as some have found an apparent inconsistency in comparing the passage with 1 Samuel 3:3, that the Hebrew means not "always" in the absolute sense, but continually or constantly. It was from evening to morning" and of course uninterruptedly for that time. "In the tabernacle of the congregation without the veil, which is before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall order it from evening to morning before Jehovah." This is greatly confirmed by what follows.

In Exodus 28:1-43; Exodus 29:1-46 is given the prescribed ceremonial in consecrating the priesthood. And what was the object of the priesthood? Clearly it was for drawing near to God. This is the new division brought in and what might seem at first sight a notable irregularity, as has been observed before, is simply an effect of the perfect arrangement of God's mind. Doubtless to a superficial glance it appears somewhat unaccountable, in the midst of describing the various parts of the sanctuary, to interrupt the course of it by dragging into the very midst of it the consecration of Aaron and his sons. But if there be two separate objects in these types first, God displaying Himself to man; and, secondly, man in consequence drawing near to God the way of all is clear. The priesthood undeniably consisted of that class of persons who had the privilege and duty of going into the sanctuary on behalf of the people. And the vessels of the sanctuary described after the priesthood are those which preserve the same common character of presenting the service due to God approached in His sanctuary. Now, let me ask, what mind of man could ever have thought of a decision so excellent, though surely far below the surface? As the foolishness of God, says the apostle, is wiser than man, so (may we not say?) the seeming disorder of God is incomparably more orderly than man's best order.

Thus it will always be found in the long run. We may have absolute confidence in the word of God. Our only business is to learn what He is, what He says, and, more than that, to confide in Him; and when we do not know what He means, always to take the ground of faith against all adversaries. We may be ignorant, and unable to expose them; but we may rest perfectly sure that God is never wrong and man ever untrustworthy. The habitual means whereby God gives proof that He is right, graciously enabling us to understand is by His word. There is no other means of knowing the mind of God; the power for understanding is the Spirit of God; and the object in whose light alone it can be understood is Christ. But the written word of God is the sole instrumental means and the revelation of it all.

Then, after the priesthood has been fully brought before us, we have the various portions of their dress. A few words will suffice here before passing on. A remarkable provision is that the ephod of the high priest, which was the most important part of his costume, had the names of the children of Israel twice over. One inscription was in the shoulder-pieces. There were the names in a general way six on one shoulder, six on the other. Besides this their names were written on the breastplate. There the names were all found together on his heart. He who cannot appreciate the blessedness of such a place, with the great high priest bearing up thus the names of God's people before God, must be very insensible to the highest favours. But God, who showed how He would continually remember those He loved, and who could not have a high priest without having their names in honour and love before Him that blessed God has given us much more. He ordered that there should be the Urim and the Thummim connected with the high priest's breastplate; that is the means of divine guidance for the people. The Christian has it also, and in a far better way. The Jew had it after this outward sort, all being comparatively external in Israel. We have it intrinsically by the Holy Ghost Himself. It is in vain for any person to pretend that it was better to have the Urim and Thummim, for which one had to seek the priest from time to time when wanted, than to be indwelt always by One who knows all the truth. May Christians believe and use for God the portion each has in Christ!

But besides, when the high priest went into Jehovah's presence, there was the sounding of the bells between the pomegranates of blue, and purple, and scarlet on the skirts of his garment. Such is the effect, it is to be observed, "when he goeth in" and "when he cometh out." Under this falls the Christian testimony now, as the result of the entrance of Christ into heavenly places; and under this will fall the future fruit-bearing portion and testimony of Israel in the day when Christ will appear in glory from the heavens. The bells give their sound when the high priest goes in and when he comes out. When Christ went into the presence of God, what a mighty effect did not the Spirit produce! The church comes under that now. When Christ returns the Spirit will be poured out once more on all flesh, and Israel will be brought into the blessed position of bearing fruit in testimony for God. But, again, Aaron with the golden plate (engraved "Holiness to Jehovah") always on his forehead, bears the iniquity of Israel's holy things that they may be accepted; an important consideration, especially when we know the seriousness and the facility of iniquity therein. Is it not true that there is scarce anything in which we feel more the need of gracious care than in the holy things of God? We know His tender mercy in the smallest matters; but in that which so nearly concerns His honour, it is indeed a truly merciful provision that the Great High Priest bears the iniquity of holy things, where other wise defilement would be fatal. The coat of fine linen embroidered means personal righteousness in ways, set off with every beauty of grace. Aaron's sons were to have coats, priests' girdles, and bonnets for glory and for beauty. It is Christ put on us. Then follows the ritual required in the act of consecrating Aaron and his sons.

In the hallowing of the priestly family the following points are observable. First, they were all washed in the water, Aaron and his sons. "He who sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one." Christ is essentially apart from sin and sinners; we by grace are set apart. Further, our Lord says, "For their sakes I sanctify myself ( i.e. on high), that they also might be sanctified by the truth." Then Aaron is duly clothed; as in the priestly character Christ appears before God for us. Then the high priest alone was anointed; as we know Christ could be and was sealed of God the Father without blood, the Spirit thus attesting both the absolute purity of His person and the truth of His Sonship as man. Aaron's sons were then clothed, and girded for priestly work. The blood of the bullock for a sin-offering was put on the horns of the altar; the blood of one ram for a burnt-offering was sprinkled round about upon the altar; and the blood of the other ram for consecration was put on Aaron's right ear, and that of his sons, on their right thumb and right great toe. It was necessarily so with the high priest taken from among men, after the witness already given to Christ's exceptional place. So Christ entered by His own blood entered in once for all into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption that we might have a common place with Him by blood and in the Spirit's power. Grace binds us with Christ as Aaron with his sons. As no sacrifice was absent here, so we enjoy all the value of Christ and His work.

But after the form of hallowing the priests, the Spirit prescribes in the end of Exodus 39:1-43 (ver. Exodus 39:38-43) the sacrifice of the daily lambs which presented the continual acceptance of the people of God, with the renewed and most express assurance of His dwelling among them. Exodus 30:1-38; Exodus 30:1-38 resumes the account, for a reason already explained, of the various vessels of the sanctuary which had to follow the priesthood, and pursue the truth meant by it, namely, the means of access to God.

Among the vessels of the sanctuary the altar of incense stands first (versesExodus 30:1-10; Exodus 30:1-10). Who does not know that this was to secure the people always being acceptable before God! It is the type of Christ interceding for us, and along with this the high priest's work that the manifestation of the Spirit be not hindered.

In verses 11-16 is introduced the ransom money of the people, rich and poor alike, as an offering to Jehovah, their atonement money for the service of the sanctuary (for this is the great point here), the link of all with the priests who actually entered on their behalf.

But there was another requisite next set forth. The brazen laver judged sin by the word of God, just as the brazen altar judged it sacrificially. We need "the washing of regeneration" and generally the washing of water by the word. This follows here. The former in its scriptural usage is not merely, I apprehend, that we are born of God, but goes beyond new birth. It is the putting the believer into an entirely new place before God, which is a different thought from his receiving a new nature. As being a position, it may have so far a more external sound, but it is a real deliverance, which grace now confers on us in Christ Jesus, not merely the communication of a life which hates sin, but the putting one according to the new place of Christ Himself before God. With this goes also the action of the Spirit of God in dealing with us day by day according to such a beginning. This we need, the application of the word of God by the Spirit to deal with every kind of impurity. Just as in the type the priests had not only to be washed completely in the laver in order to be consecrated; but whenever they entered into the presence of God, they washed their hands and feet. We have what answers to it. Let us not forget it.

Then we have the holy anointing oil, which also had to do with fitting the priests for drawing near to God. It was the power of the Spirit. It was not merely a new nature or a new position, but it was a corresponding power of the Spirit of God. For the bare possession of a new nature or place would not enable us to do the will of God. It would make us feel what ought to be done, but gives not of itself the power to do it. The Spirit given to the Christian is of power, love, and a sound mind. A new nature finds its great characteristic in dependence in weakness, or sense of weakness certainly; but the Holy Ghost gives the consciousness of power, though no doubt exercised in dependence. The new nature accordingly has right affections and gracious desires; but there is power in the Spirit through Christ Jesus. God "hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

The last of these types is the holy perfume. Here it seems to be not so much what we have by Christ, but that fragrance in Christ Himself of which God alone is the adequate judge, and which rises up before Him in all its perfection. How blessed for us! It is for us, but it is only in Him before God.

In Exodus 31:1-18 we have all this closed with two facts the Spirit of God empowering man to make a tabernacle according to the pattern, and the Sabbath-day connected with the order of the tabernacle. It has been remarked by another, and it is perfectly true, that in this book when we meet with any dealing of God, of whatever kind it may be, the Sabbath-day is always introduced. For instance, in the earlier half of Exodus, where we have God's dealings in grace, the Sabbath-day is brought in, marked out by the bread God provided for His people, the manna the figure of Christ come down from heaven to be the food of the hungry on earth: then followed the Sabbath at once. Next, when the law was given, in the very centre of its requirements stands the Sabbath-day. Again, in these various figures or institutions of good things to come, the Sabbath re-appears. Thus it is evident that, no matter what the subject may be, the Sabbath has always a place assigned to it. God therefore makes much of the sign. The reason is that He would impress on His people that all His dealings, varied as they may be, are intended to keep before their minds that rest to which He was steadily working, and into which He means to bring His own in due time. Therefore whatever the work introduced meanwhile whether of grace, as the effectual working of God, or whether of law as proving the inefficiency of man He always holds out His rest, to which He would also direct the eyes of all who love Him.

Exodus 32:1-35 reveals a sad interruption after the wonderful communications of God to His servant. Here at least the people are at their work earnestly at work in dishonouring God striking at the very foundation of His truth and honour to their own shame and ruin. Poor people! the objects of such countless favours, and of such signal honour on God's part. They, with Aaron to help them, aimed a blow at the throne of God by making a golden calf. It is needless to linger on the scene of the rebellion. Jehovah directs the attention of Moses to the camp, saying, "I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them; and I will make of thee a great nation." He wanted to prove and manifest the heart of His servant. He loved the people Himself, and delighted in Moses' love for them. If the people were under the test of law, Moses was under the test of grace.

"And Moses besought Jehovah his God and said, Jehovah, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and [not merely Jacob, but] Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever."

See the ground Moses took the unqualified promises of God's mercy, the grace assured to the fathers Impossible for Jehovah to set aside such a plea Nevertheless Moses comes down with the two tables in his hand, the work of God. He hears the noise, which Joshua could not so well understand, but which his own keener and more practised ear fails not to interpret aright; and as soon as he came near, and saw the confirmation of his fears the calf and the dancing his "anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it."

At once we find him reproaching Aaron, the most responsible man there, who makes a sorry excuse, not without sin. But Moses took his stand in the gate and said, "Who is on Jehovah's side? Let him come unto me." Thus he who rejected every overture for his own advancement at the expense of the people now arms the Levites against their brethren. "And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men." Yet we know on the best authority that Moses loved the people as not another soul in the camp did. There is hardly a subject on which men are so apt to make mistakes as the true nature and application of love. Moses loved Israel with a love stronger than death; yet he who thus loved them showed unsparingly his horror of the leprosy that had broken out among them. He felt that such evil must at all cost be rooted out, and banished from amongst them. But the same Moses returns to Jehovah with the confession "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin -; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written."

Jehovah however stands to His own ways, and says to Moses, "Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book. Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, mine angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them. And Jehovah plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made." Nevertheless Moses persists in his plea with Jehovah, who does not fail to try him to the utmost by adopting the language of the people. They had denied God, and attributed their deliverance merely to Moses: so Jehovah takes up these very words, and says, "Depart and go up hence, thou and the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it." He reproaches them once more with being a stiff-necked people; He will not go up in the midst of them, lest He should consume them in the way. The people thereon mourn; and Moses has recourse to a remarkable act. He takes and pitches the tabernacle, it is said, "without the camp, afar off from the camp, and called it the Tabernacle of the Congregation." After this follow two things worthy of all heed, a nearness of communication between Jehovah and His servant never enjoyed before, and more than that, a blessing secured to the people never vouchsafed before.

From this moment a new plea is urged: the faultiness of the people is used as a reason why God should go up the very reason which righteousness made a ground for refusing to go with them, lest His anger should burn against such a stiff-necked people. But, argues Moses, for this very reason, we most of all want Jehovah's presence. Astonishing is the boldness of faith; but then its pleading is grounded on the known grace of God Himself. Moses was near enough to God in the tabernacle, outside the camp, to get a better view of His grace than he ever enjoyed before. And so it always is No doubt there was large and rich blessing and of the most unexpected kind when God sent down the Holy Spirit here below, and His church was first seen. But is it a fact that the church at Jerusalem had the deepest enjoyment of God in apostolic times? This, one may be permitted to question. I grant you that, looking at the Pentecostal saints, in them we see the most powerful united testimony that ever was borne in this world; but it was borne in what was comparatively not the severest trial in earthly things chiefly, the superiority of those who had been newly created in Christ to the wretched selfishness of human nature. But is that the highest form of blessedness? Is that the way in which Christ was most glorified?

When the earliest phase of things passed away when not merely there was the unbelief of the Jewish people but the unworthy sights and sounds which Satan introduced among that fair company God, always equal to the occasion, acts in the supremacy of His own grace, and brings out a deeper understanding of His truth more difficult to appreciate; not striking the people of the world perhaps in the same way, but that which I think has a more intimate character of communion with Christ Himself than anything that was found before. It will scarcely be affirmed that what we discern in the church, while limited to the circumcision, had the same depth and heavenly character stamped upon it, as what was found when the full grace of God broke all barriers and flowed freely among the Gentiles. It is in vain to argue that the fruit of the teaching of Peter or of James had the same power with it as the fruit of Paul not very long after, or of John latest of all. I grant you this that, looked at as a whole, distressing failure was setting in just as it was here; yet as here the very failure isolated the truehearted, but isolated them not in want of love but in the strongest possible manifestation of divine charity and sense of God's glory. Assuredly Moses in the tabernacle outside had not less love for the people, nor more loyalty to God, than within the borders of Sinai when the ten commandments were uttered.

In the scene which follows we have the magnificent pleading of Moses still more touchingly, and, I am persuaded, in advance on what went before. This is not the time to enter into details; but hear what Moses says to Jehovah now: "See, thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people: and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight." What can be more lovely, more according to Christ, than this? He uses all the personal confidence that God had in him on behalf of the people. That is the bearing of it all. "Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thine." He will not give up his love and desire for Israel. God may treat them as the people of Moses, and say, "They are the people you have brought up: they are your people." "Oh no," says Moses, "they are Thine; and Thou art their only hope." He will not be put off. Jehovah loves to surrender to Moses, as of old to Jacob with far feebler forces. Faith, hope, and charity abounded in the mediator; and if the people were to be blessed, from God he drew on every spring of the blessing for His own glory. Mark the answer of Jehovah: "And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest. And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence." Moses wanted` nothing apart from the people; even if he went out of the camp, it was to gather so much more of blessing for the people that he had left behind. "And Jehovah said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou has spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by thy name." He asked to see His glory. This was impossible yet. It awaited the coming of a greater than Moses. But at any rate His goodness is caused to pass before him, which in Exodus 34:1-35 he sees.

But here we must take care. It is a great mistake to suppose that the proclamation of divine goodness in this scene is the gospel. They greatly err who in this sense quote "Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin," and stop there. God does not stop here. He immediately adds, "and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." There is no doubt that it is the goodness and mercy of God; but it is to a people still under the government of the law. This is the peculiarity. What we find here then is not law pure and simple, but law with mercy and goodness and long-suffering in the government of God His condescending love and patience mingled along with law. Hence we see its character and the reason why it appears here. Without it the guilty people never could have been spared, but must have perished root and branch, as it was in consequence of this change that a new generation of the people of Israel entered into the land at all. Had He dealt on the ground of pure law, how could it have been? They were guilty, and must have been cut off.

Now this mingling of grace with the law is the kind of system which Christians have accepted as Christianity. No real believer ever takes the ground of pure law. They take a mingled system; they mix up law and grace together. This is what is going on every day now in Christendom. It was the state in which the children of Israel were put here, and was a very great mercy for them in a certain sense. It is no less a misfortune for the Christian, because what those in Christ are called to is neither law, nor the mingled system of law interspersed with the gracious care of those under it (who must have been consumed had law reigned alone), but pure grace in Christ without the law. At the same time the righteousness of the law is fulfilled so much the more in those that "walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit."

In answer to Moses who advances in his demands, yet withal no less suiting them to the divine glory than to the people's wants according to the light then vouchsafed, God makes a covenant different from what went before. (Exodus 34:10) Moses had prayed Him as Adonai to "go among us; for it is a stiff-necked people; and pardon our sin, and take us for thine inheritance." Thus he avails himself of the special affection God had shown him to put himself with the people, and to secure God's presence going with the people, who otherwise could never enter the land. It was bold faith, working in unfeigned love of the people, and with a deep sense of what God is spite of all demerits; yet its highest petition is based on revealed grace, and is therefore the very reverse of human presumption.

The Lord accordingly hearkens in grace, and undertakes for Israel against the Canaanites, warning them against a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and insisting on His own sole worship, His feasts, His firstlings and firstfruits; on His sabbaths, on the absence of leaven and unseemly ways, the fruit of Satan's wiles among the heathen.

This is pursued to the end of the chapter, and in a very interesting way. We have a figure to which the apostle refers (2 Corinthians 3:1-18), confirming what has just now been stated. For the first time the face of Moses shines after communications with God. There was no such effect when it was merely the ten commandments or the ordinances connected with the people and the land; but after the communications of heavenly shadows and the mercy of God which intermixed itself with the law, Moses' face shines, and the people of Israel could not bear it. The glory of God, or at any rate the effect of seeing His goodness, was brought too near to them. He had to put a veil on his face. The apostle uses this to show that, as the veiled Moses speaking to the people of Israel is the most apt possible figure of the actual state in which they were placed (that is, not law simply, but with gracious care for the people mingled with it), so the condition of the Christian is in marked contrast. For our position the true image is Moses not when speaking to the people, but when he goes up into the presence of God. In him unveiled there we have our figure, not in Moses veiled, still less in Israel The Christian in his full place is nowhere set forth by the Jew. Certain things which happened to Israel may be types for the Christian, but nothing more. As far as this figure is concerned, then, our place is represented by Moses when he takes off the vail and is face to face with the glory of God Himself. What a place for us, and for us now! Surely this is a wondrous truth, and of the greatest possible importance. We should remember that we are heavenly now (1 Corinthians 15:1-58) as truly as we ever shall be. More manifestly we shall be heavenly at the coming of Christ, but not more really than at present. I speak of our relationship and title. "As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly." By and by we shall bear the image of the heavenly. This is another thing, and only a consequence when the due moment arrives. For the soul the great change is a fact; it remains for the body when the Lord comes.

The rest of the book of Exodus consists of the people's response, and the actual accomplishment of the directions that were given inExodus 25:1-40; Exodus 25:1-40; Exodus 26:1-37; Exodus 27:1-21; Exodus 28:1-43; Exodus 29:1-46; Exodus 30:1-38, and calls for no lengthened remarks in such a sketch as this. But we may refer toExodus 35:1-35; Exodus 35:1-35 as the witness to the zeal of the congregation for the construction and service of the sanctuary, opened by the law of the sabbath stated here for the last time in the book. Whatever be the work of God, His rest remains for His people. The utmost alacrity in answer to the call for material, useful and ornamental, common or costly, is shown by all. "And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought Jehovah's offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, and for all his service, and for the holy garments. And they came, both men and women, as many as were willing hearted, and brought bracelets, and earrings, and rings, and tablets, all jewels of gold: and every man that offered offered an offering of gold unto Jehovah. And every man, with whom was found blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair, and red skins of rams, and badgers' skins, brought them. Every one that did offer an offering of silver and brass brought Jehovah's offering: and every man, with whom was found shittim wood for any work of the service, brought it. And all the women that were wise hearted did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen. And all the women whose heart stirred them up in wisdom spun goats' hair. And the rulers brought onyx stones, and stones to be set, for the ephod and for the breastplate: and spice, and oil for the light, and for the anointing oil, and for the sweet incense. The children of Israel brought a willing offering unto Jehovah, every man and woman, whose heart made them willing to bring for all manner of work, which Jehovah had commanded to be made by the hand of Moses" (verses Exodus 35:21-29).

Nevertheless, here as everywhere God maintains His right to call, and gives the requisite gifts. "And Moses said unto the children of Israel, See, the Lord hath called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; and he hath filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship; and to devise curious works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in the cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of wood, to make any manner of cunning work. And he hath put in his heart that he may teach, both he, and Aholiab, the son of Abisamach, of the tribe of Dan. Them hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of them that do any work, and of those that devise cunning work" (versesExodus 35:30-35; Exodus 35:30-35).

Exodus 36:1-38 shows us the chosen workmen engaged in their allotted tasks, and even begging Moses to check the over-abounding supplies of Israel's liberality. The work is described with as much minuteness, in the execution as in the plan, throughoutExodus 36:1-38; Exodus 36:1-38; Exodus 37:1-29; Exodus 38:1-31; Exodus 39:1-43 till Moses, inspecting all and seeing that they had done it as Jehovah had commanded, blessed them.

It is of great interest to observe that the silver paid in by the children of Israel, a bekah or half shekel each, was applied to the production of the silver sockets of the veil, and the hooks of the columns. Now if gold represents God's righteousness which we approach within; and if brass or rather copper means, when thus symbolically viewed, His righteousness as applied to man outside in His immutable judgment, what is the force of silver in this connection? Is it not His grace shown in man, even in the man Christ Jesus? Thus the redemption price was the basis; and on hooks made of the silver expiation money were suspended the hangings of the court which separated the sanctuary service of God from the world. The judgment of One who could not bear sin was represented in the copper sockets of the boards which gave immutable stability; but grace in redemption was that on which all hung and shone in the chapiters and fillets also, the ornament of the work. Both unite in Christ and His atoning death.

The last chapter records, first, Jehovah's call to Moses to set up the dwelling of the appointed tent on the first day of the first month (i.e., in the second year, ver. Exodus 40:17), with all its parts and vessels in due order; secondly, the obedience of Moses according to all that Jehovah commanded him. It is remarkable that on this occasion the tabernacle and all within it were anointed with oil. Thus, whatever sin on our part may call for, we have here the whole scene of creation, all things in heaven and all things on earth, claimed in the power of the Spirit in virtue of Christ's person and title, just as He was in fact anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power apart from blood-shedding.

Finally, when the work was finished and all duly set up, a cloud covered the appointed tent, and the glory of Jehovah filled the dwelling. And Moses was not able to enter because the cloud dwelt thereon, and the glory filled the tabernacle. Thus solemnly did Jehovah mark His dwelling-place in the midst of His people redeemed from Egypt; and He deigned to guide their journeys through the desert also by the same sign; for when the cloud was taken up, they journeyed; and if not taken up, they abode till it was. But cloud by day and fire by night, the token of is presence was ever before all Israel (versesExodus 40:34-38; Exodus 40:34-38).