The Grace That Saves Precedes the Law That Commands
Exodus 20:1–21
Text: Exodus 20:1–21
Introduction: Context and Reading of Exodus 20
📖 Scripture: Exodus 19:16; Exodus 19:8; Exodus 24:7; Exodus 20:1–21; Exodus 20:22–23:33
Good morning. I love listening to you sing.
If you have your Bible, I invite you to turn with me to the book of Exodus.
Our time together this morning will be greatly helped and far more enjoyable if you follow along in a copy of God's Word. If you do not have a Bible with you or came without one, you can find Exodus chapter 20 on page 61 of a Bible underneath the seat in front of you or near you. If you don't have a copy of God's Word that you can call your own, we'd love for you to take one of those home with you. Just consider that a gift from our church to you today. I'm actually going to begin reading just before our passage in chapter 19, verse 16, as a way to kind of set us up in the context.
But before I do, I want to situate us briefly one more time. You might remember that God has delivered the people of Israel out of slavery, and He's provided for them on this incredible journey that He's been taking them on through the desert wilderness. Setting the stage for Mount Sinai, where He would establish this covenant relationship with them. And as you may remember, at Mount Sinai, we find the people of Israel at their final destination in the book of Exodus. They're here for the remainder of the book, all of the book of Leviticus, and a large section of the book of Numbers, about a year of their life.
And now while here at the foot of this mountain, we begin to learn what they receive, the law, from chapter 20, verse 1, all the way to chapter 23, verse 33, the book of the covenant. The law that was surrounded, as we saw last time, with this narrative at the front, and as we'll see soon, a narrative on the backside, where the people are preparing for and confirming their covenant relationship with God. At the beginning and the ending of this section, where we receive the law, the book of the covenant, we see the people committing themselves to live according to God's word. Exodus chapter 19, verse 8, all the people answered together and said, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. Chapter 24, verse 7, then he took the book of the covenant and he read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do and we will be obedient.
As we come to Exodus 20 this morning, we begin to see some of what it is that the people committed themselves to do, as these commands shape not only their behavior individually, but their life corporately as a nation. And it begs the question, must they obey these commandments? It's actually the question you need to answer today. Must you obey these commandments in order to be God's people? Or do you obey these commandments because you are God's people?
How we answer that question changes everything about the way we read Exodus chapter 20. Moses writes, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and he speaks to us with the same authorities of Jesus Christ himself, we're here speaking to us today. Chapter 20, verse 1. And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but on the seventh day it is the Sabbath to the Lord your God.
On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God has given you. You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's.
Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled and they stood far off and said to Moses, You speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us lest we die. Moses said to the people, Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin. The people stood far off while Moses drew to the thick darkness where God was.
Prayer of Illumination
Let's pray. O God, we need your help as we come to these sacred words and in so many ways very familiar words to a great many of us. We pray that you would help us to understand. Help us to understand and help us to apply these truths to our lives that we might walk in the fullness of salvation. We pray that we would leave here different people having a right understanding of our relation to your word, to your law.
And we ask all of this in Christ's name. Amen.
[Transition] I didn't grow up in a Christian home with Christian parents. I didn't even know what a Christian was or that people could be saved. So needless to say, after becoming a Christian, I was extremely happy because I had been told incredible things. That all my sins had been forgiven by Jesus, even the ones that I was most ashamed of. That I was a new creation in Christ. The old was gone and the new had come. Whatever that meant, it sounded good. That I'd been given a faith family in the context of the church and as a first generation Christian, that was thrilling. That Jesus was always with me, which was nice because I've always hated to be alone. And unbelievably, that there was so much more to learn about all the desires in Christ.
So I resolved to learn it. I spent as many waking hours as I possibly could that spring around school and tennis practice in the sanctuary where I'd walked the aisle so that I could read the new book that had been given to me upon my profession of faith. A duct-taped NIV study Bible that somebody bought for the kid coming to church by himself at a yard sale. But when I wasn't reading it, mostly because as a new Christian, I had a hard time understanding it even with the study notes, I was following the youth pastor around, peppering him with questions, asking him to show me his answers with a verse because everybody else was saying that. And when he wasn't around or was hiding from the new inquisitive convert, I sat in the sound booth to reread the PowerPoint slides from Sunday as an excuse to study the sermon notes because the preaching thing had changed my life.
And on one occasion, while in that sound booth, I overheard a conversation by two adults about me who were working with the youth. Who's the new kid? The Johnson boy. He's a Christian now? You know how he's lived. We'll see. It was incredibly discouraging. It was a conversation that actually reinforced all of the fears that I had as a new Christian. That no one believed me. That I actually didn't really belong. That I hadn't changed after all. But I didn't want to tell anybody that I had heard that conversation or that I had any of those fears. So I did the only thing that I've ever really known how to do. Work. I worked to prove them wrong.
I read and I listened and I memorized. I made sure that I knew all of the information. I worked to prove that I had changed. I came early. I left late. I mimicked the behavior of the kids that I thought were doing it right in the youth group. I worked to hold it all together and I worked to hold it all in because if they saw me do the right things and did not know what I was thinking, then there was no way they could bring an indictment on my behavior. I worked to get them to accept me. And I worked to make sure that God loved me. And everything was going fine until it wasn't.
I collapsed under the weight and the pressure of my inability to work my way out of every trial and temptation as a new Christian only to learn that I had been relying on everything except the grace that saved me to begin with. It was and is a crucial lesson for every Christian. And it is the same lesson that Moses teaches in Exodus 20 when he teaches us that the grace that saves precedes the law that commands. The very thing that I want to persuade you of this morning as we give our attention to Exodus 20 verses 1 to 21. The grace that saves precedes the law that commands.
And I want to persuade you of this because if you're not a Christian and you miss this lesson, you'll relate to the Ten Commandments as a list of do's and don'ts to obey to make God love you. And you'll come to books like this and try to do all the right things to get people to accept you. I want to persuade you of This lesson, as we make three observations in this chapter at the foot of Mount Sinai, continue our study of Exodus.
Rescue by God, rules from God, reverence for God.
I. Notice First: Rescue by God
📖 Scripture: Exodus 20:1–2; Exodus 19; Ephesians 2:8–10; Ephesians 1:1; Ephesians 2:1–2; Romans 5:8; 1 Peter 1:3 (possible) 🔗 Other: Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Solus Christus, Soli Deo Gloria, Sola Scriptura; unnamed commentator — "grace all the way"
Notice first, rescue by God, as we reread Exodus 20. Look again at verse 1. And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Standing at the foot of Mount Sinai, the Israelites witness a dramatic arrival of the Lord in chapter 19. And after Moses descends to them, a voice sounds from the summit in verse 2 of chapter 20.
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. In all, the Israelite people listen as God, for the first time, speaks directly to them. And starts to set out obligations for them that will form the basis of the covenant about to be sealed with them when, verse 1, God spoke all these words. If you go back and you read chapter 1 through chapter 19 again closely, you'll see that up to this very moment in the book of Exodus, the Lord has always communicated to the people through Moses. But now, speaking directly to the people, God underlines the importance of, verse 1, these words, these covenant obligations, these things that he's telling them directly, specifically, personally.
Covenant obligations that come after, he says, verse 2, I am the Lord your God. Before he gives them the commandments to obey, God says that he is their God now. By virtue of, verse 2, what he has already done for them, he brought them out of the land of Egypt, delivering them from their oppressors. He brought them out of the house of slavery, setting them free. The rules were not to bind them, the rules were to set them free to live a better life.
The Ten Commandments have been so absolutely successful as a set of moral standards that we actually forget that they do not begin with commandment number 1. They begin by God telling us that grace that saves precedes the law that commands. And in so doing, help us see that at the very heart of the covenant, of the Mosaic covenant, of this law, is the establishment of a very unique relationship between God and the Israelites, between God and his people, and what he has done for them, not what they have done for themselves by keeping all of the rules to make God love them. Verse 2, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Dear brothers and sisters, as we come to Exodus chapter 20, if you see nothing else, you need to see that God's commandments are connected to God's grace.
Before all we do is what God has done for us and for our salvation. That's true in the Old Testament, in the Mosaic covenant. That's true in the New Testament, in the New Covenant, because God has always saved his people the exact same way from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible throughout all of history, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, as it has been revealed in his word alone. And to show you that, we're going to turn to the book of Ephesians.
If you have your Bible, flip over there now. Ephesians chapter 2. A familiar section of scripture. Paul writes these words in chapter 2, verse 8. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.
Not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, we should walk in them.
Now, if we're not careful readers, it's tempting to think that verses 8 and 9 are the grace stuff, and verse 10 is the work stuff. But that would be to miss the very point of everything that Paul is saying that's actually very similar to what we're reading in Exodus 20. Everything is grace all of the time. Or as one commentator liked to say, it's grace all the way. So the question is, what does that actually mean?
If you go back and you read the letter of Ephesians, that would be a great thing for you to do this afternoon, spend time reading and rereading the book of Ephesians, you'll see that the focus is on the work of God from the very beginning of chapter 1, verse 1. But now, as it all reaches a crescendo in this very famous chapter where we quote these verses relentlessly and all the time and teach them to our children and crochet them and hang them on magnets in our kitchen, we see that God is at the very center of it all, both the grace stuff and the works stuff. And in Ephesians 2, verse 10, the first word in the original is his, an unusual placement that puts all of the emphasis squarely on God. We are his workmanship. We have been created by God in Christ for good works.
God has done a good work in us. We were dead, now we're alive. God has done the good work. We were not those who were his people, but now we are his people. God has done the good work.
He has caused us to be born again. God has done the good work. He's given us eyes to see. God has done the good work. He's given us ears to hear.
God has done the good work of redeeming grace and made us his people and has prepared us as those people to obey him and do good works, marking us off as his people. Clearly, works are important to Paul, but his emphasis here is on God bringing them about within us, not to make God love us. God working in us is a result of who he's made us to be in Christ. Some of you are so tired, like the teenage kid that I was, because you're working so hard to make God love you or ensure that everyone accepts you, and you are burning out left and right because you can't keep up and you were never meant to by yourself. These verses in Ephesians do a few very important things.
They give us the reason why Paul can say in verses 8 and 9 that salvation is completely a gift of God because we are God's workmanship. It's a gift that we receive. God has made us into who we are. We've been recreated in Christ Jesus. We've become born again, new people in Christ.
It is a wonderful gift that we receive while we were dead, while we were still sinners. Christ died for us.
These verses point forward to other places where we see this new creation theme in the book of Ephesians, and they help us see what God is doing as he works out his salvation in our lives. These verses actually complete the section of these famous verses for us in a fitting way by helping us contrast this new idea of walking with the way that we used to walk before we were in Christ. Let's read those verses again. Look at chapter 2 of Ephesians, verses 1 and 2. You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.
That's the path that you were on. Those were the things that you did. That's the way that you lived in this world. You walked in them, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. You were not God's.
You had a different master. You were slaves to him. Verse 10. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them a new way of life, a new way of being in the world, because we have a new master and have been set free.
And careful readers notice that between Ephesians and Exodus, the stories are very similar. The people of Israel were slaves. They were as good as dead. They were walking on one path because they had never known what it was like to be freedom. They had been enslaved for 450 years to cruel taskmasters.
But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved them, set them free and made them alive so that they could walk in a new way of life, a way of obedience to his commands. Brothers and sisters, we have been recreated in Christ for good works. And the scripture teaches us that we have been saved for the purpose of walking in those good works, and that salvation and obedience to those good works are both the work of God in our lives. Good works are never the ground of our acceptance with God. They are the fruit of our acceptance with God.
They cannot be the ground of our acceptance with God, but they are the goal of his new creation work in us. And God has prepared them for us. So how do we live? So how do we live? We are to live as free people, as those who have actually been set free, brought out of the house of slavery, who remember that it's God who saves us, and it's God who sanctifies us, and it's grace all the way.
And if you're here and you're not a Christian, this is really at the core of the gospel. If you get this wrong, you will have a completely different God. You will not have Christianity. Obedience to God's commands is never a condition of being accepted as God's people. Obedience to God's commands flows out of the unique relationship that God's people have with him.
You can't read the Bible enough. You can't come to church enough. You can't pray enough. You can't serve enough. You can't give enough.
You can't outdo anyone else on planet Earth enough to make God love you. God never loved you because of the things that you did. He loved you because he loved you, and in his great mercy gave you eyes to see and ears to hear and brought you to himself because the grace that saves precedes the law that commands. And the free offer of the gospel is if you would repent of your sins, that is, turn away from them, and place your faith in this Christ, independent of any works that you've done, he would cause you to be born again and give you a new life in Christ and change you in your very seat. If you'd like to learn more about that, friend, that's one of the reasons that we've gathered this morning.
We're so glad you've come. I'll be standing at the back of the sanctuary following the service. We'll have people at every exit. We'd love to open the Bible with you and tell you more. As God identifies himself as the one who has already delivered the Israelites from bondage in Egypt through his prior actions, we see him teaching us the grace that saves precedes the law that commands.
Terry, this is like the third week in a row. I'm going to need a fan up here. Or like something right there.
Rescue by God.
II. Notice Second: Rules from God
📖 Scripture: Exodus 20:3–17; Matthew 22:34–40; Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18 🎵 Hymn: "Free from the Law" (possible)
Notice second, rules from God. We'll begin at Exodus 20, verse 3. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to serve them.
For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates.
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's. These commands were given to the newly redeemed people of Israel, former slaves who needed to know how to live.
We need to remember who they were and why God is giving them these commands. For 450 years they've been enslaved. For 450 years someone has been telling them how to make their way through the world. For 450 years they've been told how to live life. And now God setting them free is giving them commands to prepare them to live a new and holy life.
And though we could spend an entire sermon on each of these commandments, we're not going to do that today. There's certainly a time and a place for that in the life of the church where we should come back and maybe do a whole sermon series on each of the Ten Commandments. But I'm going to devote one part of one sermon to all ten because I want us to think a little bit about how to apply each of them individually and think about them comprehensively as a whole at the exact same time. As God demands, verse 3, the exclusive obedience of each Israelite, you shall have no other gods before me. The phrase before does not mean in order of priority.
You can have other gods as long as they're behind me. You should love me the most. God is telling them that they are not to place images of other gods anywhere in his presence because there are no other gods. It means that God's free people are to acknowledge that the Lord alone is the one true and living God. Pharaoh was not God.
All of the ashram are not God. Baal is not God. Molech is not God. There are no other gods. The Lord alone is God.
And it would have been incredibly, radically abnormal for them to live that way in a society that has so many gods. But just in case they don't get the point, the prohibition against other gods is expressed more broadly as possible and not limited merely to worshiping or bowing down before them in verse 4. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water or under the earth. We must worship God alone, commandment number one, and we must worship God only in the way that he decides for us to worship, commandment number two. We must not worship false gods because there are no other gods.
And we must worship the one true and living God in the right way and not by a false means, an image that would seem to bring God near. The whole point of the image was to give immediate access. God bans the making of images because the Lord is telling them that that's not how his presence is to be experienced in their midst. And the rest of Exodus will actually begin to teach us how they will experience his presence as he, this great God, revealing himself at Sinai in this terrible and profound way would draw near to the people in the tabernacle and be with them, traveling with them as he has with the pillar of cloud and fire and now in the presence of the tabernacle. And they will give him praise for it, but verse 7, they shall not misuse his name.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. They must not attach God's name to anything that contradicts or impeaches God's character, whether it's blasphemy or foul language.
It's not simply about not saying a curse word. It's about impugning something to God that is untrue, and they must be very careful on how they use his name, using his name in praise, in reverence, giving him thanks for what he has done because he has freed them, honoring him alone as holy, and they must remember always that they're on God's agenda, verse 8. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord your God. They must rest from work to communicate their absolute dependence upon God.
God saved them, depend on God. God provides for them, depend on God. God is the one preserving them, depend on God. And the only reason people will actually keep this commandment and rest and not work is because they believe that they can actually depend upon God. They must rest and communicate absolute total dependence on this God.
He alone is God, and they are not. And strikingly, their obedience to this command indicates the strength or not of their relationship with God. It becomes the litmus test of their relationship with him as the sign of the covenant, resting on the Sabbath day, keeping it holy to prioritize God. Rest from them was not just sleeping more hours and doing less things. It was actually working a lot on that day to give praise to God, but working in ways that were different than they did the other six days, working to worship, working to praise, working to prioritize, working to give thanks.
The careful reader observes that the first four commandments rule our relationship with God. No other gods before him, not an image, not taking his name in vain, resting and depending upon him. But now the second six turn towards our neighbor as they rule our relationships with other people, beginning with verse 12. Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. They must show respect for those who give them life, their parents, and who sustain their lives, even at the end of their lives.
Expressed positively, it highlights the special status of parents as the honor. It's more than just obeying them, but to prize them highly as gifts from the Lord. Gifts from the Lord, from the first breaths of children to the last breaths of parents, they're to show honor in a society that is marked by, verse 13, that isn't marked by, verse 13, the taking of innocent life. You shall not murder. No one may take human life without God's divine approval.
Instead, they must cherish life and protect life while also, verse 14, living morally. You shall not commit adultery. They must be faithful in marriage and chased outside of marriage because if an individual cannot be faithful to a marriage partner, he or she is unlikely to be faithful in other relationships as well. And they must not, verse 15, be those who take what isn't theirs. You shall not steal.
They must not take what isn't theirs and they must give to others what is their due as they learn, verse 17, to restrain the tongue. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. They must not say what is not true or distort what actually is true because a fair trial in a just society depends on truthful witnesses. And they must do all of this, verse 17, because they're content with what God has given to them. You shall not covet your neighbor's house.
You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's. Putting it in the perspective of the man would have been easy for them to put it also in the perspective of the woman, both of them learning that they must be content with what is theirs and not yearn for what isn't theirs. The Ten Commandments are not simply laws. They're moral principles. And the Ten Commandments in that sense are not simply to distinguish legal from illegal things, but actually point towards the type of society that God intended for them to be as they ruled our relationship with God and our relationships with other people.
And that actually helps us understand why Jesus sums them up in this way.
If you have your Bible, turn to Matthew 22. Matthew 22, when Jesus is in a debate with a religious leader about the law, we find this conversation in 22, verse 34. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind.
It's incredibly comprehensive. All of you. Nothing is off limits for God. Every bit of your life. Even the stuff you want to protect for yourself.
This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. The Ten Commandments express what Jesus teaches here, this law of double love.
Loving God, loving neighbor. The Ten Commandments are too much for us. Jesus brings it down. You don't have to know all ten. You just need to know two.
And if you have a hard time remembering two, you just need to remember love.
Ten, two, one. Love expressed appropriately toward God, toward neighbor, in this comprehensive way of life as God's people, even as the Ten Commandments teach us the grace that saves precedes the law that commands. It precedes it and empowers our obedience of it. Without the grace that saves, the Ten Commandments are incredibly burdensome as we try to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. But because of the grace that precedes, it motivates our obedience through the Ten Commandments that we can live a new and holy life as God's people.
These commandments that require us to give to God what we owe Him and to give to others what we owe them, since absolutely every sin everybody has committed in this room and anybody commits anywhere always falls into one of those two categories or both of them. Failing to give God what is His due or failing to give others what is their due or both. That's why the Ten Commandments are so powerful because they are incredibly comprehensive. They expose disordered desires. We love things, not God.
And we pine after them and we yearn after them and we kill and we murder for them. And we do not love our neighbor. We will kill our neighbor to get them out of the way so that we can get what we really want.
The Ten Commandments show us the disordered desires and disordered loves. And they call us to what God wants us to be as people set free by His grace. And if you're here and you think, I have no idea what that preacher is talking about and you think, I've done a pretty good job with all of this, read the list afresh this afternoon and come back and bring me the report on how you think you're doing. And tell me how you account for the gap that exists between what you know you should be doing and actually how you live your life. And if you're a Christian, you need to come to these and realize that though these are incredibly important, we're not really under these commandments in the same way that people were at Sinai.
We're under the new covenant in Christ. We're free from the law, as we sang earlier in this service, including, in a sense, even the Ten Commandments. But they do reveal God's righteous character and they remain authoritative as both a gift from God and as a guide on how to live wisely and rightly. Rescued by God, rules from God, notice third reverence for God. Look at verse 18.
III. Notice Third: Reverence for God
📖 Scripture: Exodus 20:18–21; Exodus 20:22–23:33 🔗 Other: The Greatest Showman (2017 film), song "From Now On"
Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled and they stood far off and said to Moses, You speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us lest we die. Moses said to the people, Do not fear, for God has come to test you, but the fear of him may be before you that you may not sin. The people stood far off while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. Exodus chapter 20, verses 18 through 21 forms a bit of an important bridge between the Ten Commandments and the book of the covenant. That's Exodus chapter 20, verse 22, all the way to chapter 23, verse 33.
Not only do verses 18 through 21 separate the two sets of obligations, but most importantly, they explain why the Ten Commandments alone are spoken to the people directly by God. It's the people's fear. Look again at verse 18. Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and they trembled and they stood far off. Due to the people's fear, the book of the covenant is mediated by Moses as Moses teaches them that God has come to actually train them or test them.
Verse 20, Moses said to the people, Do not fear, for God has come to test you, but the fear of him may be before you that you may not sin. God is training the people and testing the people that they might learn that the terrifying God of Sinai is the tender God of the Exodus and that the same grace that delivered them from Pharaoh is the same grace that would lead them safely into his presence because the grace that saves precedes the law that commands. Last summer, my kids introduced me to a new movie. At least it was a new movie to me at the time, The Greatest Showman. Now, I don't really know how you feel about musicals and quite frankly, I don't really care because I think it's incredibly impressive that the same guy that can play Wolverine can also play P.
T. Barnum in a sing-along. And though the entire musical is actually worth your time, the last song, From Now On, is my personal favorite and it's the most important in the movie because it's Barnum's song of repentance. And as an aside, for anybody who actually likes the movie, if you've never watched when Hugh Jackman just kind of breaks off and sings when they're trying to get the movie greenlit a few days after he had 80 stitches put in his nose, it's an incredible thing. Just YouTube it and thank me later.
For years and years, he sings. He chased the cheers of others at the crazy speed of always needing more. As he worked, Barnum worked to prove everybody wrong about him. He wasn't a nobody from nothing that he could amount to something and do something meaningful with his life. He worked to prove that he had changed.
He's different. He's an elite. He has status. He was a somebody from something and the things that he did actually mattered in this life. He would be remembered.
He worked to hold it all together and to hold it all in and in so doing, he was missing the greatest show that was right before him. He worked to get everybody to accept him. He worked to make sure that they loved him. loved him.
But from now on, it wouldn't be that way anymore because he realized that that was not what made his family love him in the first place. And friends, the exact same is true for us in our relationship with God. All that work, all that effort, all that good did not make God love you in the first place. All those tears, all the repentance, all the trying did not make God love you in the first place. While you were still a sinner, dead, hopeless, lost, without Christ, with nothing and no hope in the future, God loved you and brought you to himself.
The grace that saves precedes the law that commands. And Exodus teaches us we can joyfully obey and come into the terrifying presence of the God of Sinai because of the grace that saves and will bring us safely home as we press into deeper repentance and deeper faith.
Closing Prayer
Let's pray. God in heaven, we thank you so very much for the gospel, the good news that saves. And we pray, God, that you would help us to believe that gospel, that good news. We pray, Father, that we would actually trust that the grace that saves does precede the law that commands and that that would actually govern the way that we relate to you. We pray that you would forgive us for those of us who are in Christ for trying to be people who earn our way to God, distinguishing ourselves by the things that we do for God.
We pray, Father, that you would give us something more sure, a more concrete and certain hope in Christ. Father, we pray for those who are here who have not been set free from the captivity of trying to save themselves. Right now, here, as we sing this next song, you would do the good work of redeeming grace and call them to yourself in Christ. Amen.
Please stand and continue in worship with us.
Transcript processed May 18, 2026