Peter Barnes: Exodus 19 NO AUDIO
(7 April 2019)
SERMON NOTES: APPROACHING THE GOD OF SINAI (Exodus 19)
From Exodus 1-18, we are told how God delivered His people from Egypt and looked after them in the wilderness. Exodus 19-40 tell of how God covenants with Israel that they might serve Him.
1. God’s covenant with His people.
– 19:1-6. God describes Israel as ‘My treasured possession’; ‘a kingdom of priests’; and ‘a holy nation’.
– 1 Peter 2:9. What Israel was to God in the Old Testament, the Church is in the New Testament.
2. Tremble before our holy God.
– 19:7-9. This is forever.
– consecrated – 19:10, 14-15. This was such a moment that clothes were to washed, and there were to be no sexual relations. Everything was to point to the holy nature of God.
– 19:16. In some evening services in churches these days there will be a light show and a fog machine operating.
– not at Sinai – see 19:17-18. This is not bluff and bluster, like a frog in New Guinea, which can puff itself up to frighten away predators. See 19:12-13, 21.
– Matt.5:8. That is not something light and breezy – Deut.4:24 and Heb.12:29.
3. Sinners need a mediator.
– Israel cannot even touch the mountain – 19:21-25. Moses is a kind of mediator of God’s covenant. Christ is the mediator of the new covenant (1 Tim.2:5). As God, He represents God to us, and as man, He represents us to God. Note Heb.12:18-24.