How old are you, pal? Four. Four. When's your birthday? My birthday is in October. Speaking of birthdays, whose birthday are we celebrating for Christmas? Jesus's. Um, baby Jesus. Jesus's birthday. Now, where was Jesus born? Do you remember? In the manger. In the steeple. In the steeple? Who else was in the steeple with Jesus when he was born? The animals. What kind of animals do you think? Tows and donkeys. What about tigers? You can't look to the audience for help. Was anybody else at the manger with them? God, for sure. Do you know his mommy and daddy's name? Do you know the city that Jesus was born in? Bethlehem! I just watched that movie. I watched it. That's the bright star with those two little donkeys with that bird. That Jesus was in Bethlehem with those mean dogs. But at the end of the movie, the mean dogs turn into nice dogs. That's great. That's a Christmas miracle. Is that your favorite Christmas movie? Uh-huh. I watched it when I had a sleepover with my Nana and Papa. Sorry, Kendall. I'm sick. How did the shepherds know that Jesus had been born? Because they were smart boys. Now the wise the soul of Bethlehem. The wise men. I don't know what, but I think you gotta tell me. Um, those, links and more. Kendall, you might be the smartest four and a half year old I've ever met. How many wise men were there, do you know? Two. Two? You know, that's just as reasonable a guess as any other answer. First, um, Christmas, I am going to make Jesus a tank. You're going to make Jesus a tank? Oh, a cake. It'd be way better if you made him a tank. If you got to give Jesus three presents, what presents would you give him? A chew toy for when he's a baby. Sure. I'll go with my genie cup and a baby Jesus doll. Sure. I'm sure Jesus would love a baby Jesus doll. I think those are all the questions I have for you buddy. You did so good. I think I want to do one more question. Is there anything else that we should ask? Anything else? No. to meet you. I'm so glad that you're here. And like Kyle said, thanks so much for making us a part of your Christmas celebration. I know that you have a lot of options on Christmas Eve. It's the time when you're supposed to go to church. And so we're so glad that you chose to spend that with us. When we think about the Christmas story, I think all of us probably go to a very similar place, whether we're church people or not church people. If we come to churches like this a lot, or we come a little, we all kind of know where to go for the church story, right? It's Luke chapter 2, and though we might not know the reference, we know the content. We think about probably the peanuts special, right? When Linus quotes it, I think that's the one who does it, and it's the old King James, and it's, lo, they were sore afraid, the angel of the Lord shone round about them, right? And the shepherds were in the field giving watch over their flock by night. Like, that's what we think of is the Luke chapter 2. We think of Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem for the census. There's no room in any of the hotels, so they got to stay in the manger or in the steeple, which was really, really great. We've got it that they can't stay there, and the baby Jesus is born, and we celebrate it, and the wise men come, and it's a whole party, and that's the deal. That's usually what we think of as the Christmas story, and if that's what you think of as the Christmas story, then that's right. That is the Christmas story. That's what we celebrate at Christmas. But I really think that to have a deeper understanding of the Christmas story, to really understand what's happening there, what we're celebrating, what are we all gathering here to celebrate for? What are we meeting with family and exchanging gifts to celebrate? Why did the angels appear? Why do we talk about the joy of Christmas? What's really the reason for the season? When we start to ask questions like that, I think we have to take a broader look at the Christmas story. I'm so fond of telling the Christmas story in this way that my first Christmas with Grace, I told it in this way, but I so believe in it, and I believe in it helping us see the power and efficacy of what the gift is that I wanted to tell it to you again. So if you'll indulge me for the Christmas story, you got to go all the way back to Genesis chapter one. And since this is the second service, I'm going to take my time, baby. You got to go all the way back to Genesis chapter one and understand what's happening there. God's word teaches us that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, that there is a creator God and that he made this place and that he created you and I. And when he did, he said it was very good and to a good God, that means it's perfect. It was exactly as he intended. And you, whether you realize it or not, whether you've thought about it at all in 2019 or not, your soul was created to be in harmony and relationship with that creator God. And the creation was made to be in harmony with that creator God, and that's how it was perfect. Scripture tells us that lion laid down with lamb, which is a way to say that there was no violence. There was no death when God created the earth. There was no cancer. Children didn't survive. Parents didn't survive their children when God created the earth. Divorce wasn't a thing in the Garden of Eden. Abuse didn't happen. Greed wasn't there. Malice and poor intent and evil and violence, that didn't exist. Selfishness did not exist. It was perfect until sin entered in and broke God's creation. And when we think of sin, for those of us that know the Bible at least a little bit, we know about the garden and they ate the fruit and that was kind of against the rules and they shouldn't eat the fruit and she did and that's a bummer. But really what's going on there is the sin of pride. What's happening with Adam and Eve is God said don't do this thing and they said, you know what? God, I hear you. I appreciate that. But I actually trust my judgment and my own life to determine what's best for me. And right now what's best for me is to eat that fruit. So that's what we're going to do. And they elevated themselves to the position of God in their life. And that's what sin is. And sin broke God's good creation. The first thing it broke is our souls that were again created to be in harmony with creator God. And as soon as sin entered the world, their souls were out of harmony with God, and as we're born into this world, our souls exist in disunity with our Creator God. That's why if we don't know Jesus, if we're not in harmony with our Creator and with our God, in our quiet moments, we have this sense within us. There has to be more to life. There has to be more to what's happening here. This feels broken. This doesn't feel right. I would argue that if we have a soul that's not in harmony with our creator God as it was intended to be, that we will scratch and claw for that happiness and for that fulfillment in any way that we know how, and what we really need is for God to rush in. What we really need is reconciliation because we're broken. And it's not just us and our souls that got broken when sin entered the world. I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but the world itself, creation itself broke. Do you understand that in the Garden of Eden there was no cancer and now there's cancer? In the Garden of Eden there was no abuse and now there's abuse. In the Garden of Eden there was no violence and now there's violence. In the Garden of Eden, lion lay down with lamb and now that is not the case. So the creation was perfect too and it was broken down by our imperfect decisions. And I think, I think Christian or not, whatever your background is, to be alive and aware is to know and to feel that there's something broken here. To be alive and paying attention is to get a sense there are some things here that are not right. There's some things that happened even in this last year that we look at that and no matter what your background or your worldview, you look at that and you go, that doesn't make any sense that that could happen. That shouldn't be so. That's not right. This place has to be broken. I saw on Twitter a couple weeks ago, one of those videos, it's like those heartwarming videos, right? That you watch it and there's like a bunch of cry emoji in the comments. And normally I don't watch those. My heart is as warm as it can be. And I just don't need any auxiliary help. But on this one, I thought, let me give it a whirl. And so I watched it, and it's these two children. They were probably seven or eight or younger, and they have cancer, and they're clearly in a children's hospital. And one was better able to get around than the other. And so the little boy that was able to get around takes the little girl that really couldn't move very well and sets her in his wagon and puts blankets over her lap and makes sure that the IV thing can follow. And he walks her down the hallway so that she can take a walk. And everybody watches that and they go, oh, that's amazing. That's great. This is what the internet is for. And I watched that and I thought, yeah, that's beautiful, but that's broken, man. Life shouldn't be like that. Kids shouldn't get cancer. That doesn't feel right. Why does that happen? And we felt the same way too. To be alive and aware is to feel that at times this place is broken. And Scripture agrees with that. In Romans 8, the Apostle Paul tells us that all of creation groans for its return, for its restoration to creation as God intended. All of creation cries out from the rocks and from its core. This is not right. There's something better. This is broken. This has to be fixed. This doesn't make sense. Life shouldn't look like this. All of creation groans along with you. When you see something in your Twitter feed or on the news or someone shares something with you and in your soul, you go, gosh, this just isn't right. This feels broken. Creation groans with you. And God himself agrees with you. Which is why in Genesis chapter 12, he enacted a grand plan to fix the broken things and to make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And to enact this plan, he went to a man named Abram, who would later become Abraham. And he made Abraham three promises. He says, you're going to be my guy and your descendants are going to claim these promises that I'm going to give you. And he promised Abraham the promised land that we now know as Israel. He said, your descendants are going to be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore. And then he said, and one of your descendants is going to bless the whole earth. And Abraham might not have known it at the time, but we know it now. That was the promise of the Messiah, that one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. That was God promising, and one day, one of your descendants is going to fix all this stuff. That feeling in your core that things are broken, that disunity in your soul that longs for me, one day I'm going to send somebody who's going to be one of your descendants and they are going to fix these wrong things. I'm going to make this right. I'm going to fix it and I'm going to reconcile your soul to me. And it's going to happen through you, Abraham. And thus began the practice of Abraham and all of his descendants watching and waiting and hoping for the fulfillment of that promise. When is this going to happen, God? And it was funny for Abraham to receive that promise because he didn't have any kids. So if he's gonna have all this land and he's gonna have all these descendants and then one of those descendants in the distant future is gonna bless the whole earth, it would be pretty good to have like one. And he doesn't. And it takes longer than he thought it should. And his faith wavers. And he gets nervous. and he makes a mistake in his 80s, and he has a kid, and that kid is not the one that was promised to him, and so he waits more, and he has another kid in his 90s, and that was the one that was promised to him. His name is Isaac. No doubt in my mind, Abraham told Isaac of all the promises. Abraham told Isaac that he was a claimant to the things that God told him. That said, Isaac, you're going to have massive descendants. You're going to have this land and one of your descendants is going to fix all the broken things and is going to reconcile us back to our God. And so Isaac is now the carrier of that promise and he joins in Abraham and watching and waiting and hoping. And Isaac has two sons, one of them named Jacob. Jacob's name is later changed to Israel, the namesake of the nation. He has 12 sons, and they make up the 12 tribes of Israel. The youngest son was a guy named Joseph. Joseph ends up in Egypt. And through a series of events that's really incredible in the book of Genesis, he ends up as the second most powerful man in the world. From an obscure nomadic tribe to second most powerful man in Egypt, therefore the world. And he is in control of all the food stores for that part of the world. No one survives the seven-year famine without going and seeing Joseph. He's estranged from his family. They don't know who he is. They don't know that he's there, but they are the remnant. They are the descendants of Abraham who are clinging to the promise of God that one day this will make sense and that one of our descendants will bless the whole earth and fix the broken things. That's what we know. And they're watching and they're waiting and they're hoping. Because of the famine, they have to go down to Egypt and they have to see the guy that's in charge of all the food. And they find out that when they get there, that that's their long lost brother, Joseph. Look at him. Look at his power. Look at how he provides. Look at how he fixes the broken things. And you have to know that his brothers and their little kids and the whole family and the whole clan wondered, yo, is Uncle Joseph the guy? Is he the one? Is he the one that was promised by God to our great-grandfather Abraham? Is he the one? But Joseph dies, and his bones are buried in the land of Goshen where his ancestors put down roots. And then as the people of God wait for the fulfillment of the promise, the Bible goes silent for 400 years. In between Genesis and Exodus, there's 400 years where we don't know what happens, where God doesn't speak, where the remnant of Abraham is left holding on to and claiming the promise, clinging to the hope of God. And at the beginning of Exodus, there's a guy named Moses who shows up. And I would imagine in the time of Moses that it was pretty difficult to continue to believe in the promise because Abraham's descendants, the Hebrew people, are now slaves to the Egyptian people. They are hopelessly in slavery. The Egyptians are the most powerful nation in the world. They are the slaves of the most powerful nation in the world. None of the nations around them care about them or are going to go in to rescue them, okay? There was no UN. They have no hope. They're just there. And I would imagine that to grow up a slave in Egypt made it pretty difficult to buy it when your grandpa told you about the promises that were made to your forefather Abraham. Hey, listen, I know it looks dark now. I know you've got to make all these bricks, but listen. God made a promise to your great, great, great, great grandfather. And we're his people. And one day, one of us is gonna fix the broken things and is gonna restore creation back to him and is gonna bring harmony to your soul. One day, that will happen, cling to those promises. I bet it was tough to cling. I bet it was difficult to have faith. But a faithful few, a faithful remnant of believers clung to the promises and held true to them and believed that God would keep his word and believed that God would keep his promises. And in the midst of clinging to that hope, Moses comes back from the desert. He had been exiled for 40 years. He comes back, and when he comes back, he's got the power of God with him, man. And he, God, through Moses, puts the 10 plagues on Egypt. They convince Pharaoh to let his people go, and now the people of Abraham go out into the desert, and they watch their savior, Moses, who delivered them from slavery and impossible bondage, part the Red Sea and defeat the armies of Egypt and miracle after miracle, day after day in the desert. And they watch as Moses goes up on the mountain and sees the presence of God and glows for days and brings down with him the 10 commandments and hands them a new religion. And they had to wonder, you can't tell me that they didn't. Is this the guy? Is this the one? He's got to be. He has to be the promised one. He's a descendant of Abraham. He's delivered us. He's begun to heal up our wounds and restore things to us. He's showing us how to be right with God, to unite our souls to him. This has got to be the one. But Moses dies before they ever enter the promised land. And he's not the one. And so Israel waits. And Israel watches. And Israel hopes that one day God will keep his promise. After Moses comes Joshua, they sweep into Israel and take it over, and that promise is fulfilled. Now the land is theirs. The problem is they don't have the infrastructure to be able to defend it, and so Israel kind of spirals down into this dark period in their history called the Judges, where all the different neighbors of Israel would come in and oppress them and take their stuff and bully them and make them give it to them, right? They couldn't keep their crops. They couldn't feed their kids. It was a tough time in the nation of Israel. And during that time, God would send judges to overthrow the oppressors and restore Israel to what it needs to be. And they had to wonder in the midst of this turmoil with every judge, is this the person? Is Gideon the one? Is Jephthah the one? Is Ehud the one? Maybe it's Deborah. Maybe it's Samson. They had to wonder, are these the people that God promised that are going to rescue us? Because it seems like they're doing it, but they weren't. The power of each judge was finite, and the timing of them was fleeting. The judges aren't the ones. And again, I wonder what it would be like to be one of the faithful remnant, clinging on to the promises that were passed down to them by their forefathers, when they can't even keep their own wheat harvest, when things feel really broken and life doesn't make sense. I bet faith was scarce in the time of the judges. Out of the time of the judges, Israel demands a king, and so they appoint a man named Saul. Saul was the guy that you would choose. He was head and shoulders above everybody else. He was very good looking. When you think of Saul, you can think of me. That's probably a good representation of who he was. But Saul was a terrible king. He was arrogant, and he used it for himself, and he wasn't the guy. But after Saul, there's a guy named David. David was the eighth son of Jesse. He was a little shepherd boy. But the last great prophet, a guy named Samuel, was directed by God himself to go and anoint David the next king. And what was said about David was that he was a man after God's own heart. And the mythology of David builds as he goes and he slays the giant Goliath. And all of Israel pays attention to him. And they make up songs about David and they celebrate him. And then he goes and he defeats their enemies. And he brings back the presence of God, the Ark of the Covenant. And he dances before it and he restores Israel, brings Israel to a place of international prominence that it had never seen. David's rule was so profound that he's the greatest king they've ever had and his star still flies over Israel to this day. He wrote the largest book in the Bible, the book of Psalms. And they had to go. David's gotta be be the guy. He's got to be the one. This has to be the one that was promised to us. Look, he's redeeming us. He's saving us. He's restoring us. He's fixing the broken things. This has to be him. But David wasn't the guy. David sinned profoundly. And I wonder how much faith wavered. But God, in the middle of David's life, in 2 Samuel 7, makes David a promise. He says, David wanted to build the temple. And God goes to David and says, you're not going to be able to build the temple in your lifetime. I'm going to let your son do that, but I've got something better for you, David. I still am going to keep my promise to your forefather, Abraham. I'm still going to send the Messiah. I'm still going to send the King of Kings. And when he comes, David, he's going to sit on your throne. And then this promise is a renewal of the hope of Israel. That God has not forgotten his promise that he made a thousand years ago to Abraham, that he still remembers. He's not forgetful of the things he said he would do. He still intends to keep his word. And when he does, he's going to sit on the throne of David and the hope of Israel is renewed. And it's good that it was renewed because after David comes Solomon. And then after Solomon, the country splits into a civil war from which it never recovers. And the northern kingdoms and the southern kingdoms have bad king after bad king after bad king after bad king. And the remnant gets smaller and the faithful get fewer. And there are fewer and fewer people who still cling to the promises of Abraham and follow the religion that was imparted on them by their forefathers. And then each of the kingdoms get drug off into slavery, one by Babylon and one by Assyria. And I can only imagine how difficult it would be to grow up as a slave in Babylon or a slave in Assyria and hear your grandfather or your grandmother or your mom or your dad tell you, hey, hang in there, be faithful. You should follow these laws and these rules because they were given to us by a God that made a promise to your forefather, Abraham. It would be really difficult to not look at those promises growing up as a slave in Assyria and go, yeah, what are those promises now? Because we're not on that land and no one's coming save us, and we're slaves. I imagine faith was pretty tough in the time of exile for Abraham's followers. And because it was a hard time, because even the return and the restoration was a hard time, God spoke to them through the voices of the prophets that told them more about their Messiah. And we see these great prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Habakkuk and Zephaniah and Malachi and all the ones at the end of the Old Testament that are proclaiming the coming Messiah. And they tell us things like when he comes, he's gonna bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted. When he comes, he's going to give good news to the poor. When the Messiah gets here, the blind will see and the lame will walk and the deaf will hear and the prisoners will be set free and the slaves will be released. When he gets here, he's going to make the wrong things right. He's going to fix this broken place. He's going to reconcile your soul to your God, and he's going to fix this creation that our sin has broken. He's going to do it. Hang in there. Be faithful. The Messiah is coming. Wait and watch and hope. And the faithful remnant did. Generation after generation, voice after voice, until we get to the end of the New Testament. And in the middle of this waiting and watching and hoping and clinging to the promises made by God to their forefather Abraham, there's another 400 years of silence at the end of the Old Testament. Malachi speaks and closes out that part of the Bible. And then in this darkness and in the silence, Israel waits and they watch and they hope. And they wonder, is our God going to keep his promise? Or are we foolish for this? And in the midst of that silence, there's a righteous man named Simeon. And we meet Simeon in Luke chapter 2. The Bible says this about Simeon. It says, now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. And this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. And the Holy Spirit was upon him. Listen, Simeon was waiting for the consolation of Israel. He is the personification of all of the hope, of all of Israel, of all of his ancestors for all time up until this moment. He is representative of the nation of Israel and those who are paying attention, the rest of the world, groaning for the restoration, groaning for things to be made right and for the broken things to be repaired and for their souls to be reconciled to their creator. He is the personification of their hope. He is representative of the thousands of years of history that lead into this moment. And in his righteousness, he prays. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. How crazy do people think Simeon was? I wonder how many of his friends he told. The promised one's coming. The Messiah is going to be here. God told me. I'm not going to die until I see him. How crazy would you have thought Simeon was? And he came in the spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him, according to the custom of the law, on the eighth day of the life of a Hebrew boy, you take him to the temple and he is circumcised. And so moved by the spirit, Simeon goes to the temple to intersect with Jesus there. He took him up in his arms and he blessed God. And he said, I imagine the Simba moment as Simeon holds up baby Jesus and blesses God. And this is what he says, Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people, Israel. Simeon says, God, I can die in peace. I'm holding the fulfillment of your promise. Do you understand what's happening in this moment with Simeon? Do you understand that he holds the promise, the ones that the faithful remnant clung to, generation after generation after generation, all the people before him that the culture told, you're foolish, you're dumb. God's not going to do that. If he's so powerful, if he's so good, if he keeps his promises, then why is this happening? All the people that ever asked that and got in clung to faith anyways, God is, Simeon is holding the fulfillment of that promise. He is holding the gift from God that through this Messiah, he is going to live a life in such a way that is perfect. And he is going to bear our iniquities and our transgression. And he is going to take our sin and our shame and all the things that break down our relationship with God. And he is going to hang on the cross for me and for you to reconcile our souls back to our creator God. That's what this baby boy is going to do. And that's what Simeon holds. And that's what he knows. But he doesn't just know that. He knows that everything else, this broken world, all the things that hurt and don't make sense and seem like they're broken, this baby boy is going to restore those as well. And so Simeon holds him up and he says, God, I can die. I understand. I get it. You have kept your promise. So let Christmas remind you that your God always keeps his promises. He always keeps his promises. Even when our life feels like the life when we're in the judges and we're getting oppressed by one thing after another, we're getting influenced by one thing after another, our faith is getting beaten up. It feels foolish to cling to it. We don't know if it's actually true. Remember, Christmas tells us that God always keeps his promises. Even when faith doesn't make sense to those who grew up as slaves in Egypt and are told about their powerful God and they say, if he's so powerful, why am I here? Jesus is a reminder that God kept his promises to them and he will keep his promises to you. And just like Israel went through dark times and had to cling to the promise, so do we. Sometimes life erodes our faith. Sometimes life picks away at our faith. Sometimes it makes it seem pretty impossible, but Christmas reminds us that for the faithful remnant that cling to the promises of our God, that he always keeps his promises. He will never let us down. And not only does that boy come to reconcile our souls to him, but he's going to grow up, he's going to become a man and go back to heaven, and one day he's coming back to fix everything else. And Christmas looks forward to that day too. So when we celebrate Christmas, go drink eggnog. Put a little something in it. Go nuts. Open the gifts. Enjoy your family. Celebrate all the blessings that we have. But know that this is what we celebrate. Know that we give each other gifts, not just because Jesus came to make salvation possible for you, but to make it possible for everyone to reconcile the soul back to its creator and that one day he's coming again and he's gonna fix everything else. He already came to fix your soul and he's going to come back again and fix creation and we cling to that promise. So let Christmas remind us that we cling to the promises just like the ancestors of Abraham and we anticipate the promise just like the followers of Abraham and that God always keeps His promises. That's why the angels sing. That's why they showed up in the sky. That's why the wise men came. That's why we celebrate it every year. Because the baby Jesus came and he restored your soul. And the son of God is coming back and he's gonna restore all of this. And so we cling to that hope. And Christmas is a reminder of that. That's the joy of Christmas. Let's pray. Father, you are good. And we are humbled by your gift. We confess, God, that sometimes things do feel broken to us. Sometimes it's hard to make sense of things. God, for some of us, even this year, even 2019 was one that has, if we're honest, eroded our faith. May we be reminded of the faithful remnant that clung to your promises, and may we be like them and cling to you as well. God, for those who are struggling, be with them. For those for whom this season is difficult, may they feel your presence. For those for whom this season is joyous, may they see with fresh eyes your blessings. God, may we never again reduce the gift of your son to a baby and a manger, but understand him for the God that he is. We thank you for Christmas and all that it represents. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. So grateful for this church and for Grace folks this morning. We are continuing in our series on Moses. This is the penultimate week. We'll do this week and then next week, Labor Day Sunday. And then we're going to start a new series. I don't, Gibby, what are we calling the series, or Carly? We're going to call it Gentle and Lowly? Okay. I never know. I just say here's what we're going to talk about, and then the graphics department, they tell me what it's called. It's going to be called Gentle and Lowly. It's based on a book by Dane Ortlund, which is, to me, a tremendously impactful book, And I know that some of our small groups have gone through it in the past. And so as a church, I think it's a really wonderful thing whenever we can have a shared experience and we can be reading through a book and everyone's thinking about it and we're talking about it. And this is an experience that we share. I think it's a good thing. So from time to time, we like to encourage those. And so the Sunday after Labor Day, we're going to start this new series called Gentle and Lowly. It's going to be an eight-week series. It's like a 16-chapter book, and I've just chosen to highlight eight of the chapters. But we're going to have a reading plan for that book, and it's available on the table which is which is right behind that wall right there and just grab those are ten dollars grab them on the honor system put put a 10 in the acrylic things that hang next to the doors or a 20 and then make change for yourself we trust you or just donate $20 for the book because someone else is going to steal one and you want to cover for them. You can Venmo me $10 and just we'll see if that ever makes it to the church. But we'll just, they're out there. Take them. Pay for them however you want. And then if we run out, we'll order more or you can order them online. But that's going to be, I think, an important thing for us in the fall. Before I just dive into this Moses sermon this morning, we do have a fun announcement. And I'll just be honest with you. I'm a mess about this. I talked with Kyle Tolbert, our student pastor, now family pastor. He's a dad now. Here's Hayes. I'm not faking it, I literally can't look at it. Jen, when we were worshiping, she said, did you talk to Kyle this morning? And I said, yeah, it was a huge mistake. Kyle worked. This is indulgent, and I'm sorry, but just so you understand why I can't keep it together right now. He worked for me at my last church. Kyle and I have worked together for 10 plus years. He's a little brother. And so this is great. Hayes is his name. Women care about this. He was eight pounds, eight ounces. I don't know why that matters to you, but you always ask, what did the baby weigh? It's like, who cares? But you do, so there you go. We're so excited. We're thrilled for them. Everybody's happy and healthy, so that's good. This is the reason for the tissues. Also, I don't anticipate crying during the sermons. I might. I might. I don't know. We'll find out together. Okay. Moses. A good friend said to me, last week we talked about the law and what that means and how it points towards Jesus. And I was on the phone with a friend who I care about very much and I trust their judgment very much. And they said, hey, and they were being honest. They said that was a good sermon. Always nice to hear. They said, but it really didn't have a lot to do with Moses. So like, what are we doing here? Because the theme is the life of Moses. And I said to him, yeah, sometimes I'll tell Jen what I'm going to be preaching about. And she was like, that sounds like a good sermon, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the series. So like, why are you doing that one? And I'll be like, I don't care. Like, I'll just do the sermon anyways. This also does not have a lot to do with Moses this morning. I'll just tell you. It's a little bit. It leans esoteric and professorial. And it's not. There are some sermons that are like, hey, how do we have better faith? How can I be a better dad? You know, like, how do I be a better employee or something like that? This is not that. The goal of this sermon this morning is for us to understand in a greater way the way that the Bible is miraculously woven together for this incredible, sovereign, articulated picture that God has intended since before time began. So you may not walk away from here being like, well, that's how I'm going to be a better father. But I hope that you'll walk away from here with a greater understanding of what the Bible is and what it articulates. And I think we find that focal point in the delivery of the law and God's request after that. So that's where we're going this morning. Before we go there, I want to take us back to 1992. In 1992, at some point that year, I became 12 years old, or maybe it was 1993. And my dad and mom made an agreement with me. It was time for dad to buy a new car. And so he said, hey, listen, I'm going to buy a new car. I want you to pick it out with me. Because when you turn 16, if you'll commit to washing it every other week for the next four years, when you're 16, I'll hand you the keys. That was the agreement. And so we went out and we looked at cars. We looked at a Mazda. It was stupid. We looked at a Mitsubishi Eclipse. Do you guys remember those? Yeah, there we go. David, did you have one of those or do you just like them? I wanted one. Yeah, me too, pal. Me too. I couldn't convince dad to do, he's a respectable accountant. He can't drive around in a sports car. That's not what accountants do. They drive Accords. And so that's what we bought. Incidentally, I did the math a few weeks ago. I've driven seven versions of an Accord. That's how big of a nerd I am and how much I like reliability. Those are my priorities. Anyways, we bought an Accord, but it was pretty cool. It was black. It was two-door. It's a coupe. It had a spoiler. It was a sport. That was the class, Accord EX Sport or whatever it is. And this thing for me, it's pretty sweet. And I used to love riding in it, knowing one day this is going to be my car. And so the agreement was, son, if you watch this every other weekend, when you're 16, I will give it to you. What we entered into there, and this is what I want us to understand this morning is, I entered into a covenant with my parents. And a covenant is this, and this is important to understand. A covenant is two parties commit binding actions to one another. A covenant is when two parties enter into an agreement and they commit binding actions to one another. Meaning, if you do this, I will do this. If you agree to these terms, if you agree to this behavior, I will agree to this behavior. And so between my parents and I, it was, if you wash this car every other week, then we will agree to give you the keys when you're 16. That will be our behavior. So we entered into a covenant. And it's important that we understand this morning what a covenant is because that's what the whole sermon is about. Just to tie a bow on the story of my covenant with my parents, I washed that Honda Accord about four times in four years. And when I turned 16, my dad sold it, bought a car that he wanted, and didn't give it to me. He kept his, yeah, yeah. He kept his end of the bargain too. And he should have. That's funny. I've been preaching to you guys for eight years. The only time I've ever heard applause is for my dad not giving me a car. Okay. That's what a covenant is. And it's important this morning that we understand what covenants are. Because I don't know if you know this or not about your Bible. And, you know, if you're here and you're not a believer this morning, I'm going to say things like your Bible and your faith, and it may not be yours. And I don't want to attribute that to you. But if you are a believer and you do believe in the Bible as God's word, then what I can share with you, or if you're just curious and you want to understand the Bible better anyways, the Bible is actually divided into five major covenants. Five covenants that God makes with mankind, with his people, with humans. And so I want us to understand what a covenant is, because whether you realize it or not, the faith to which you ascribe, that you give yourself to, the text that is the foundation of that faith is divided into five of those agreements. Agreements that are, I will bind myself to you by these actions and you will bind yourself to me by these actions. The five covenants are, you don't need to know this or write this down, but I just want us to have a framework for where we're going. And I've told you at the beginning that this is professorial, so I'm giving myself an excuse to be a little bit nerdy here. The five covenants that we break down the Bible with begin with Noah. It's the Noahic, the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, the Davidic, and the New Covenant. Now let's go back. Noahic Covenant. It's the covenant with Noah. God floods the earth. At the end of the flood, he puts them on dry land. He puts the rainbow over and he says, I'm never going to destroy the earth like this again. I promise you that. That's God making a covenant with Noah. And what's interesting about this covenant is that it doesn't require a binding action from Noah. He just says, hey, I'm going to do. I'm going to do this. And so he does it. Then there's the Abrahamic. The Abrahamic covenant is in Genesis chapter 12. And he says, hey, Abraham, here's your binding action. Move. Go to this place where I will show you. But after that, there's no other binding action for Abraham. That's all he has to do. The binding action for God is, I will make your descendants like the sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky. I will give you this land, Israel, which we still see God's faith in today. And then I will, one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. That's the threefold promise that God makes to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. That's the Abrahamic covenant where God says, you do this, you move, which Abraham already had. And I will do this. This is my binding action. Then the next one is the Mosaic covenant, which we're going to talk about this morning. We're going to see what that promise is and what the two binding actions are. Then after that is the Davidic. And the Davidic covenant is in 2 Samuel chapter 17 that he makes to King David where he says, the Messiah will sit on your throne. He promises that to David. Interesting about that covenant, no reciprocal binding action required. David, you don't have to do anything to keep this covenant. You don't have to do anything to make this true. The Messiah will sit on your throne. Then the last one is the new covenant. That's Jesus. And God makes a promise to us with Jesus, which is simply this. You believe in him. And I will redeem you. That's Jesus. And we're going to talk about that a lot more. But what I want us to see this morning is how those covenants all tie together and what the relationship is between the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant, because I think it's very compelling. So let's look at that Mosaic covenant. What was it that God promised to the people? And what binding action did he ask of them? And what binding action did he promise in response to theirs? What is the Mosaic covenant? And I think answering that question is probably more important to you than you thought it was when you walked in this room. So let's look at it and let's understand the Mosaic covenant. Here's what's happening before God says this. We're going to go to two different places. So what's happening is God has descended on Mount Sinai. And we talked about this last week with the law and the week before that with the fear of God being the beginning of wisdom. But God has descended on Mount Sinai. His presence is before his people. And he's asked Moses and Aaron to come up and talk to him. And they go back down the mountain holding the tablets of the Ten Commandments. And they issue the law to the people. And they say, this is the law. This is what we do to make ourselves right with our God. And so it's this really kind of pregnant moment in the Old Testament and really in history. And so God gives them the law. And in response to the law, here's what he says in Exodus chapter 25 verses 8 and 9. And this is going to feel out of context, but I'll contextualize it for you. Chapter 25 of Exodus verses 8 and 9, as after he gives all of the instructions, and Zach, you're fine, just leave it up there. After he gives all of his instructions, here's what I want you to do, here's how I want you to follow the law. on from here. And he says, to host my presence, I want you to build an ark, which is just a fancy chest. It's a thing that opens that you put blankets in. But except for blankets, it's the staff and the law and manna. And then over this ark, they were told to build two golden angels whose wings touch in the middle. And the surface that those wings formed was referred to as the mercy seat. And this was the seat of the very presence of God for the Hebrew people and for our people. So after God, and this is what we need to pick up on, after God says, here's the law. If you read through chapter 24, what he's telling Moses is go down the mountain and go tell everyone that they have to obey this law. Keep faith in me. Put no other gods before me. Obey me. Follow these rules that I'm giving you. This is your binding agreement. And my binding agreement is this. I will be present with you. So here's the Mosaic covenant, okay? Obey me, and I will be present with you. That's the agreement. I just gave you all the laws. You walk down the mountain with them. You're going to read them to the people. And you tell them, if you follow these laws, I will be present with you. And just so we're clear, here's what that presence means. We have this in Deuteronomy. And Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible are the books of Moses, the books of the law. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy, that word means the law repeated. So Deuteronomy is kind of a synopsis of everything that just happened in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. And if you've ever done one of those read through the Bible programs, you know those can be tedious books. So we're grateful for Deuteronomy because sometimes it summarizes things in a more succinct way that makes them more approachable. In this case, this is true. So in Deuteronomy chapter 11, we see God again talking about the Mosaic covenant. And he says, this is just a snippet, but here's the sentiment. Talking about what it means, why it matters that God offers to be present with us. Chapter 11, verse 13, he says, so if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today to love the Lord your God and to serve him with your heart and your soul, then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn he goes on and he says, And he basically says, hey, if you obey me, I will offer you my presence. And in my presence, here's what that means, your fields will flourish. I will care for you. I will protect you. And if we just want to boil it down to really simple thoughts so that we can understand it together and move on with the greater principle, then what we do is what God is saying here, hey, if you'll obey me, I'm going to do God's stuff for you. Right? I'm going to protect you. I'm going to make sure you flourish. You're going to win wars like this nation will exist. So what we see here in the Mosaic covenant that happens at length in Exodus 19 to 25, we see synopsized for us in Deuteronomy 11. But the ethos of it is, here's the binding agreement. If you obey the laws that I just gave you, then I will offer you my presence. And here's what we might not understand about God's presence. When we see it in this context, he doesn't mean just today. You know? He means for eternity. The Hebrew mind didn't, they didn't grasp that. And our minds at first blush don't either. But God means it for eternity. You obey me and I will offer you my presence. Not just now for protection, but in eternity so that we no longer fear sin or death. Right? I had somebody this week, a dear friend at the church. I was on the phone with her yesterday. And she lost her mom. It was an expected thing. But in speaking with her, I said, how you doing? And she said, I'm good. Mom's in the presence of God now. So when God says, I'm offering you my presence, build some space for it, he doesn't just mean today. He means forever. So the Mosaic covenant is you follow my laws in this life and I will be present with you for all of life, for the next one too. That's what this means. And I don't think we noticed that at first reading, but that's what it means. And so here's the thing that's always been tricky for me about the Mosaic covenant. I know we're very far in the weeds now, but hopefully you're thinking along with me. A covenant is when two parties agree to binding actions. And one person's or one party's fidelity to that action necessarily binds you to yours, right? But here's the problem with the Mosaic covenant. And here's what it's hard to make sense of. I can see some of you smiling. You know what I'm going to say. They didn't do their part. We didn't do our part. They didn't follow the law. God said, here's 630 laws. Follow them perfectly and I will offer my presence to you. And they immediately, golden calf, while God was still on the mountain and they could see his presence, they immediately got right back to the business of sinning and breaking the law. No one has ever kept their part of the deal worse than humans. Ever. They broke it. They didn't perform their binding action, but God continues to perform his because he has a fidelity to this promise. And so we go, well, why did God keep his side of the deal? Why did God's presence remain with his people? Why does God's presence remain with us? And why do we have access to God's promise still, even though we haven't performed our binding action? And it's always bugged me as I've thought about it, because the others, Noahic, Abrahamic, Davidic, those covenants, God says, I'm just going to do for you. The Mosaic covenant is the only covenant in the Old Testament that requires a performance from the other side. God says, your binding action is existing. My binding action is to do this for you. And then he does it. But for the Mosaic covenant, he says, no, your binding action is to obey me perfectly. And mine is to offer you my presence. And then we immediately fail. So why does God continue to offer his presence? Here's why. Because he knew this. One day, someone will fulfill their part of the deal. God knew what they did. He knows what we might not immediately think of when we read the Mosaic Covenant. And a casual reading of Exodus 19 through 25 might not bring us to this point, but it's important that we express it now. God knew that one day he was going to send his son and that his son was going to fulfill the covenant on our behalf. He was going to perfectly execute the law to excuse anyone who had never done that, which is everyone, and be redeemed by God. God knew. So when we ask the question, why does God remain faithful to this promise to which we remain unfaithful? Because he knew that one day someone would be faithful to it and that that would fulfill the binding action. He knew he was going to send his son Jesus to fulfill the promise that we fall short of. And what's wonderful about God's foreknowledge in that is to be able to see this, that this feels like a clumsy point, but I'll tell you more about it. Everything points to Jesus. The Mosaic Covenant is designed to point us to Christ. Last week, I did a whole sermon about the law, and I said the whole point of the law is to point us to the cross. The whole point of these covenants is to point us to Jesus. God made the Noahic covenant. He said, I'll never destroy the world like this again. You know how he knew he could make that covenant, that promise? Because he knew that he was going to send his son who was going to redeem the earth back to what it was intended when it was created. And he knew what was happening at the end of time. The Noahic covenant points us to the relief and the redemption of Christ. When he promises Abraham, I'm going to make you a great nation and one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. Do you know who that descendant was? Jesus. The Abrahamic covenant points us to Christ. The Mosaic covenant, follow this law perfectly and I will always offer you my presence. And who followed that law for us was Jesus because we can't do it because the law points us to our need for him. And when he makes the Davidic covenant, do you know who that points to? Do you know who the Messiah is that's going to sit on the throne of the universe? Jesus. And the new covenant and the New Testament, I don't know if you know this or not, but the whole new testament is about Jesus. All of it points us to Jesus. The covenants that make up the Bible and our faith all point us to Jesus. He's the point. It is to him that our gaze should be directed. And if we read the Bible carefully, what we find is that every part of it is trying to gently grab our little baby faces and point them towards our Christ and point them towards our Savior. The point of the Mosaic Covenant is to focus us on Jesus. And here's what occurred to me this week that I just think is frigging awesome. Okay. Do you understand that Jesus fulfills both sides of this covenant? Think about the Mosaic covenant, what it is. Think about what I just articulated to you. You follow my law perfectly and I will offer you my presence. Jesus followed the law perfectly by being present with us. Do you see? He followed the law perfectly by being present with, by offering us his presence. And then in an ongoing way through the Holy Spirit, he is with us every day. Jesus is with us in this moment here. Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I will be also. Jesus is here with us now. His presence rests and resides in this room. He is with us. The promise that God made his people is true. And it's true because Jesus fulfills both sides of that promise by both following the law perfectly and fulfilling it for us. And also by being present with us here in this day, in this moment, and not just present here, but present in heaven, advocating for us, whispering in the ear of God, the father, bringing us into eternity where we will spend forever with him in his presence, which is what is promised in the Mosaic covenant. And I don't have anything for you to go do this week. So this week, think about this. I don't have an application to this sermon. I just want you to see how beautifully woven, not just scripture, but history is by the intentionality and the sovereignty of our God who knew when he made this binding agreement with us that we would not do our part. And he already knew how to fulfill both sides of that promise by allowing his son to become human and to fulfill it for us and be the very presence that he promised for all of eternity. And I happen to think that's pretty neat. Let's pray. Father, thank you for making promises with us when you know that we can't keep up our part. Thank you for loaning things to us when you know that we won't pay you back. Thank you for agreeing to deals that you know we will not hold up. And then for loving us anyways. And for holding up our part too. Thank you for the promises that you made to Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and to us. Thank you for upholding them. Thank you for that odd music during my prayer. God, we love you. We are grateful for you. We are grateful for the ways that you love us. And God, I pray that maybe today we would just be astounded by your love. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. So grateful for this church and for Grace folks this morning. We are continuing in our series on Moses. This is the penultimate week. We'll do this week and then next week, Labor Day Sunday. And then we're going to start a new series. I don't, Gibby, what are we calling the series, or Carly? We're going to call it Gentle and Lowly? Okay. I never know. I just say here's what we're going to talk about, and then the graphics department, they tell me what it's called. It's going to be called Gentle and Lowly. It's based on a book by Dane Ortlund, which is, to me, a tremendously impactful book, And I know that some of our small groups have gone through it in the past. And so as a church, I think it's a really wonderful thing whenever we can have a shared experience and we can be reading through a book and everyone's thinking about it and we're talking about it. And this is an experience that we share. I think it's a good thing. So from time to time, we like to encourage those. And so the Sunday after Labor Day, we're going to start this new series called Gentle and Lowly. It's going to be an eight-week series. It's like a 16-chapter book, and I've just chosen to highlight eight of the chapters. But we're going to have a reading plan for that book, and it's available on the table which is which is right behind that wall right there and just grab those are ten dollars grab them on the honor system put put a 10 in the acrylic things that hang next to the doors or a 20 and then make change for yourself we trust you or just donate $20 for the book because someone else is going to steal one and you want to cover for them. You can Venmo me $10 and just we'll see if that ever makes it to the church. But we'll just, they're out there. Take them. Pay for them however you want. And then if we run out, we'll order more or you can order them online. But that's going to be, I think, an important thing for us in the fall. Before I just dive into this Moses sermon this morning, we do have a fun announcement. And I'll just be honest with you. I'm a mess about this. I talked with Kyle Tolbert, our student pastor, now family pastor. He's a dad now. Here's Hayes. I'm not faking it, I literally can't look at it. Jen, when we were worshiping, she said, did you talk to Kyle this morning? And I said, yeah, it was a huge mistake. Kyle worked. This is indulgent, and I'm sorry, but just so you understand why I can't keep it together right now. He worked for me at my last church. Kyle and I have worked together for 10 plus years. He's a little brother. And so this is great. Hayes is his name. Women care about this. He was eight pounds, eight ounces. I don't know why that matters to you, but you always ask, what did the baby weigh? It's like, who cares? But you do, so there you go. We're so excited. We're thrilled for them. Everybody's happy and healthy, so that's good. This is the reason for the tissues. Also, I don't anticipate crying during the sermons. I might. I might. I don't know. We'll find out together. Okay. Moses. A good friend said to me, last week we talked about the law and what that means and how it points towards Jesus. And I was on the phone with a friend who I care about very much and I trust their judgment very much. And they said, hey, and they were being honest. They said that was a good sermon. Always nice to hear. They said, but it really didn't have a lot to do with Moses. So like, what are we doing here? Because the theme is the life of Moses. And I said to him, yeah, sometimes I'll tell Jen what I'm going to be preaching about. And she was like, that sounds like a good sermon, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the series. So like, why are you doing that one? And I'll be like, I don't care. Like, I'll just do the sermon anyways. This also does not have a lot to do with Moses this morning. I'll just tell you. It's a little bit. It leans esoteric and professorial. And it's not. There are some sermons that are like, hey, how do we have better faith? How can I be a better dad? You know, like, how do I be a better employee or something like that? This is not that. The goal of this sermon this morning is for us to understand in a greater way the way that the Bible is miraculously woven together for this incredible, sovereign, articulated picture that God has intended since before time began. So you may not walk away from here being like, well, that's how I'm going to be a better father. But I hope that you'll walk away from here with a greater understanding of what the Bible is and what it articulates. And I think we find that focal point in the delivery of the law and God's request after that. So that's where we're going this morning. Before we go there, I want to take us back to 1992. In 1992, at some point that year, I became 12 years old, or maybe it was 1993. And my dad and mom made an agreement with me. It was time for dad to buy a new car. And so he said, hey, listen, I'm going to buy a new car. I want you to pick it out with me. Because when you turn 16, if you'll commit to washing it every other week for the next four years, when you're 16, I'll hand you the keys. That was the agreement. And so we went out and we looked at cars. We looked at a Mazda. It was stupid. We looked at a Mitsubishi Eclipse. Do you guys remember those? Yeah, there we go. David, did you have one of those or do you just like them? I wanted one. Yeah, me too, pal. Me too. I couldn't convince dad to do, he's a respectable accountant. He can't drive around in a sports car. That's not what accountants do. They drive Accords. And so that's what we bought. Incidentally, I did the math a few weeks ago. I've driven seven versions of an Accord. That's how big of a nerd I am and how much I like reliability. Those are my priorities. Anyways, we bought an Accord, but it was pretty cool. It was black. It was two-door. It's a coupe. It had a spoiler. It was a sport. That was the class, Accord EX Sport or whatever it is. And this thing for me, it's pretty sweet. And I used to love riding in it, knowing one day this is going to be my car. And so the agreement was, son, if you watch this every other weekend, when you're 16, I will give it to you. What we entered into there, and this is what I want us to understand this morning is, I entered into a covenant with my parents. And a covenant is this, and this is important to understand. A covenant is two parties commit binding actions to one another. A covenant is when two parties enter into an agreement and they commit binding actions to one another. Meaning, if you do this, I will do this. If you agree to these terms, if you agree to this behavior, I will agree to this behavior. And so between my parents and I, it was, if you wash this car every other week, then we will agree to give you the keys when you're 16. That will be our behavior. So we entered into a covenant. And it's important that we understand this morning what a covenant is because that's what the whole sermon is about. Just to tie a bow on the story of my covenant with my parents, I washed that Honda Accord about four times in four years. And when I turned 16, my dad sold it, bought a car that he wanted, and didn't give it to me. He kept his, yeah, yeah. He kept his end of the bargain too. And he should have. That's funny. I've been preaching to you guys for eight years. The only time I've ever heard applause is for my dad not giving me a car. Okay. That's what a covenant is. And it's important this morning that we understand what covenants are. Because I don't know if you know this or not about your Bible. And, you know, if you're here and you're not a believer this morning, I'm going to say things like your Bible and your faith, and it may not be yours. And I don't want to attribute that to you. But if you are a believer and you do believe in the Bible as God's word, then what I can share with you, or if you're just curious and you want to understand the Bible better anyways, the Bible is actually divided into five major covenants. Five covenants that God makes with mankind, with his people, with humans. And so I want us to understand what a covenant is, because whether you realize it or not, the faith to which you ascribe, that you give yourself to, the text that is the foundation of that faith is divided into five of those agreements. Agreements that are, I will bind myself to you by these actions and you will bind yourself to me by these actions. The five covenants are, you don't need to know this or write this down, but I just want us to have a framework for where we're going. And I've told you at the beginning that this is professorial, so I'm giving myself an excuse to be a little bit nerdy here. The five covenants that we break down the Bible with begin with Noah. It's the Noahic, the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, the Davidic, and the New Covenant. Now let's go back. Noahic Covenant. It's the covenant with Noah. God floods the earth. At the end of the flood, he puts them on dry land. He puts the rainbow over and he says, I'm never going to destroy the earth like this again. I promise you that. That's God making a covenant with Noah. And what's interesting about this covenant is that it doesn't require a binding action from Noah. He just says, hey, I'm going to do. I'm going to do this. And so he does it. Then there's the Abrahamic. The Abrahamic covenant is in Genesis chapter 12. And he says, hey, Abraham, here's your binding action. Move. Go to this place where I will show you. But after that, there's no other binding action for Abraham. That's all he has to do. The binding action for God is, I will make your descendants like the sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky. I will give you this land, Israel, which we still see God's faith in today. And then I will, one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. That's the threefold promise that God makes to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. That's the Abrahamic covenant where God says, you do this, you move, which Abraham already had. And I will do this. This is my binding action. Then the next one is the Mosaic covenant, which we're going to talk about this morning. We're going to see what that promise is and what the two binding actions are. Then after that is the Davidic. And the Davidic covenant is in 2 Samuel chapter 17 that he makes to King David where he says, the Messiah will sit on your throne. He promises that to David. Interesting about that covenant, no reciprocal binding action required. David, you don't have to do anything to keep this covenant. You don't have to do anything to make this true. The Messiah will sit on your throne. Then the last one is the new covenant. That's Jesus. And God makes a promise to us with Jesus, which is simply this. You believe in him. And I will redeem you. That's Jesus. And we're going to talk about that a lot more. But what I want us to see this morning is how those covenants all tie together and what the relationship is between the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant, because I think it's very compelling. So let's look at that Mosaic covenant. What was it that God promised to the people? And what binding action did he ask of them? And what binding action did he promise in response to theirs? What is the Mosaic covenant? And I think answering that question is probably more important to you than you thought it was when you walked in this room. So let's look at it and let's understand the Mosaic covenant. Here's what's happening before God says this. We're going to go to two different places. So what's happening is God has descended on Mount Sinai. And we talked about this last week with the law and the week before that with the fear of God being the beginning of wisdom. But God has descended on Mount Sinai. His presence is before his people. And he's asked Moses and Aaron to come up and talk to him. And they go back down the mountain holding the tablets of the Ten Commandments. And they issue the law to the people. And they say, this is the law. This is what we do to make ourselves right with our God. And so it's this really kind of pregnant moment in the Old Testament and really in history. And so God gives them the law. And in response to the law, here's what he says in Exodus chapter 25 verses 8 and 9. And this is going to feel out of context, but I'll contextualize it for you. Chapter 25 of Exodus verses 8 and 9, as after he gives all of the instructions, and Zach, you're fine, just leave it up there. After he gives all of his instructions, here's what I want you to do, here's how I want you to follow the law. on from here. And he says, to host my presence, I want you to build an ark, which is just a fancy chest. It's a thing that opens that you put blankets in. But except for blankets, it's the staff and the law and manna. And then over this ark, they were told to build two golden angels whose wings touch in the middle. And the surface that those wings formed was referred to as the mercy seat. And this was the seat of the very presence of God for the Hebrew people and for our people. So after God, and this is what we need to pick up on, after God says, here's the law. If you read through chapter 24, what he's telling Moses is go down the mountain and go tell everyone that they have to obey this law. Keep faith in me. Put no other gods before me. Obey me. Follow these rules that I'm giving you. This is your binding agreement. And my binding agreement is this. I will be present with you. So here's the Mosaic covenant, okay? Obey me, and I will be present with you. That's the agreement. I just gave you all the laws. You walk down the mountain with them. You're going to read them to the people. And you tell them, if you follow these laws, I will be present with you. And just so we're clear, here's what that presence means. We have this in Deuteronomy. And Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible are the books of Moses, the books of the law. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy, that word means the law repeated. So Deuteronomy is kind of a synopsis of everything that just happened in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. And if you've ever done one of those read through the Bible programs, you know those can be tedious books. So we're grateful for Deuteronomy because sometimes it summarizes things in a more succinct way that makes them more approachable. In this case, this is true. So in Deuteronomy chapter 11, we see God again talking about the Mosaic covenant. And he says, this is just a snippet, but here's the sentiment. Talking about what it means, why it matters that God offers to be present with us. Chapter 11, verse 13, he says, so if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today to love the Lord your God and to serve him with your heart and your soul, then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn he goes on and he says, And he basically says, hey, if you obey me, I will offer you my presence. And in my presence, here's what that means, your fields will flourish. I will care for you. I will protect you. And if we just want to boil it down to really simple thoughts so that we can understand it together and move on with the greater principle, then what we do is what God is saying here, hey, if you'll obey me, I'm going to do God's stuff for you. Right? I'm going to protect you. I'm going to make sure you flourish. You're going to win wars like this nation will exist. So what we see here in the Mosaic covenant that happens at length in Exodus 19 to 25, we see synopsized for us in Deuteronomy 11. But the ethos of it is, here's the binding agreement. If you obey the laws that I just gave you, then I will offer you my presence. And here's what we might not understand about God's presence. When we see it in this context, he doesn't mean just today. You know? He means for eternity. The Hebrew mind didn't, they didn't grasp that. And our minds at first blush don't either. But God means it for eternity. You obey me and I will offer you my presence. Not just now for protection, but in eternity so that we no longer fear sin or death. Right? I had somebody this week, a dear friend at the church. I was on the phone with her yesterday. And she lost her mom. It was an expected thing. But in speaking with her, I said, how you doing? And she said, I'm good. Mom's in the presence of God now. So when God says, I'm offering you my presence, build some space for it, he doesn't just mean today. He means forever. So the Mosaic covenant is you follow my laws in this life and I will be present with you for all of life, for the next one too. That's what this means. And I don't think we noticed that at first reading, but that's what it means. And so here's the thing that's always been tricky for me about the Mosaic covenant. I know we're very far in the weeds now, but hopefully you're thinking along with me. A covenant is when two parties agree to binding actions. And one person's or one party's fidelity to that action necessarily binds you to yours, right? But here's the problem with the Mosaic covenant. And here's what it's hard to make sense of. I can see some of you smiling. You know what I'm going to say. They didn't do their part. We didn't do our part. They didn't follow the law. God said, here's 630 laws. Follow them perfectly and I will offer my presence to you. And they immediately, golden calf, while God was still on the mountain and they could see his presence, they immediately got right back to the business of sinning and breaking the law. No one has ever kept their part of the deal worse than humans. Ever. They broke it. They didn't perform their binding action, but God continues to perform his because he has a fidelity to this promise. And so we go, well, why did God keep his side of the deal? Why did God's presence remain with his people? Why does God's presence remain with us? And why do we have access to God's promise still, even though we haven't performed our binding action? And it's always bugged me as I've thought about it, because the others, Noahic, Abrahamic, Davidic, those covenants, God says, I'm just going to do for you. The Mosaic covenant is the only covenant in the Old Testament that requires a performance from the other side. God says, your binding action is existing. My binding action is to do this for you. And then he does it. But for the Mosaic covenant, he says, no, your binding action is to obey me perfectly. And mine is to offer you my presence. And then we immediately fail. So why does God continue to offer his presence? Here's why. Because he knew this. One day, someone will fulfill their part of the deal. God knew what they did. He knows what we might not immediately think of when we read the Mosaic Covenant. And a casual reading of Exodus 19 through 25 might not bring us to this point, but it's important that we express it now. God knew that one day he was going to send his son and that his son was going to fulfill the covenant on our behalf. He was going to perfectly execute the law to excuse anyone who had never done that, which is everyone, and be redeemed by God. God knew. So when we ask the question, why does God remain faithful to this promise to which we remain unfaithful? Because he knew that one day someone would be faithful to it and that that would fulfill the binding action. He knew he was going to send his son Jesus to fulfill the promise that we fall short of. And what's wonderful about God's foreknowledge in that is to be able to see this, that this feels like a clumsy point, but I'll tell you more about it. Everything points to Jesus. The Mosaic Covenant is designed to point us to Christ. Last week, I did a whole sermon about the law, and I said the whole point of the law is to point us to the cross. The whole point of these covenants is to point us to Jesus. God made the Noahic covenant. He said, I'll never destroy the world like this again. You know how he knew he could make that covenant, that promise? Because he knew that he was going to send his son who was going to redeem the earth back to what it was intended when it was created. And he knew what was happening at the end of time. The Noahic covenant points us to the relief and the redemption of Christ. When he promises Abraham, I'm going to make you a great nation and one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. Do you know who that descendant was? Jesus. The Abrahamic covenant points us to Christ. The Mosaic covenant, follow this law perfectly and I will always offer you my presence. And who followed that law for us was Jesus because we can't do it because the law points us to our need for him. And when he makes the Davidic covenant, do you know who that points to? Do you know who the Messiah is that's going to sit on the throne of the universe? Jesus. And the new covenant and the New Testament, I don't know if you know this or not, but the whole new testament is about Jesus. All of it points us to Jesus. The covenants that make up the Bible and our faith all point us to Jesus. He's the point. It is to him that our gaze should be directed. And if we read the Bible carefully, what we find is that every part of it is trying to gently grab our little baby faces and point them towards our Christ and point them towards our Savior. The point of the Mosaic Covenant is to focus us on Jesus. And here's what occurred to me this week that I just think is frigging awesome. Okay. Do you understand that Jesus fulfills both sides of this covenant? Think about the Mosaic covenant, what it is. Think about what I just articulated to you. You follow my law perfectly and I will offer you my presence. Jesus followed the law perfectly by being present with us. Do you see? He followed the law perfectly by being present with, by offering us his presence. And then in an ongoing way through the Holy Spirit, he is with us every day. Jesus is with us in this moment here. Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I will be also. Jesus is here with us now. His presence rests and resides in this room. He is with us. The promise that God made his people is true. And it's true because Jesus fulfills both sides of that promise by both following the law perfectly and fulfilling it for us. And also by being present with us here in this day, in this moment, and not just present here, but present in heaven, advocating for us, whispering in the ear of God, the father, bringing us into eternity where we will spend forever with him in his presence, which is what is promised in the Mosaic covenant. And I don't have anything for you to go do this week. So this week, think about this. I don't have an application to this sermon. I just want you to see how beautifully woven, not just scripture, but history is by the intentionality and the sovereignty of our God who knew when he made this binding agreement with us that we would not do our part. And he already knew how to fulfill both sides of that promise by allowing his son to become human and to fulfill it for us and be the very presence that he promised for all of eternity. And I happen to think that's pretty neat. Let's pray. Father, thank you for making promises with us when you know that we can't keep up our part. Thank you for loaning things to us when you know that we won't pay you back. Thank you for agreeing to deals that you know we will not hold up. And then for loving us anyways. And for holding up our part too. Thank you for the promises that you made to Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and to us. Thank you for upholding them. Thank you for that odd music during my prayer. God, we love you. We are grateful for you. We are grateful for the ways that you love us. And God, I pray that maybe today we would just be astounded by your love. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. So grateful for this church and for Grace folks this morning. We are continuing in our series on Moses. This is the penultimate week. We'll do this week and then next week, Labor Day Sunday. And then we're going to start a new series. I don't, Gibby, what are we calling the series, or Carly? We're going to call it Gentle and Lowly? Okay. I never know. I just say here's what we're going to talk about, and then the graphics department, they tell me what it's called. It's going to be called Gentle and Lowly. It's based on a book by Dane Ortlund, which is, to me, a tremendously impactful book, And I know that some of our small groups have gone through it in the past. And so as a church, I think it's a really wonderful thing whenever we can have a shared experience and we can be reading through a book and everyone's thinking about it and we're talking about it. And this is an experience that we share. I think it's a good thing. So from time to time, we like to encourage those. And so the Sunday after Labor Day, we're going to start this new series called Gentle and Lowly. It's going to be an eight-week series. It's like a 16-chapter book, and I've just chosen to highlight eight of the chapters. But we're going to have a reading plan for that book, and it's available on the table which is which is right behind that wall right there and just grab those are ten dollars grab them on the honor system put put a 10 in the acrylic things that hang next to the doors or a 20 and then make change for yourself we trust you or just donate $20 for the book because someone else is going to steal one and you want to cover for them. You can Venmo me $10 and just we'll see if that ever makes it to the church. But we'll just, they're out there. Take them. Pay for them however you want. And then if we run out, we'll order more or you can order them online. But that's going to be, I think, an important thing for us in the fall. Before I just dive into this Moses sermon this morning, we do have a fun announcement. And I'll just be honest with you. I'm a mess about this. I talked with Kyle Tolbert, our student pastor, now family pastor. He's a dad now. Here's Hayes. I'm not faking it, I literally can't look at it. Jen, when we were worshiping, she said, did you talk to Kyle this morning? And I said, yeah, it was a huge mistake. Kyle worked. This is indulgent, and I'm sorry, but just so you understand why I can't keep it together right now. He worked for me at my last church. Kyle and I have worked together for 10 plus years. He's a little brother. And so this is great. Hayes is his name. Women care about this. He was eight pounds, eight ounces. I don't know why that matters to you, but you always ask, what did the baby weigh? It's like, who cares? But you do, so there you go. We're so excited. We're thrilled for them. Everybody's happy and healthy, so that's good. This is the reason for the tissues. Also, I don't anticipate crying during the sermons. I might. I might. I don't know. We'll find out together. Okay. Moses. A good friend said to me, last week we talked about the law and what that means and how it points towards Jesus. And I was on the phone with a friend who I care about very much and I trust their judgment very much. And they said, hey, and they were being honest. They said that was a good sermon. Always nice to hear. They said, but it really didn't have a lot to do with Moses. So like, what are we doing here? Because the theme is the life of Moses. And I said to him, yeah, sometimes I'll tell Jen what I'm going to be preaching about. And she was like, that sounds like a good sermon, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the series. So like, why are you doing that one? And I'll be like, I don't care. Like, I'll just do the sermon anyways. This also does not have a lot to do with Moses this morning. I'll just tell you. It's a little bit. It leans esoteric and professorial. And it's not. There are some sermons that are like, hey, how do we have better faith? How can I be a better dad? You know, like, how do I be a better employee or something like that? This is not that. The goal of this sermon this morning is for us to understand in a greater way the way that the Bible is miraculously woven together for this incredible, sovereign, articulated picture that God has intended since before time began. So you may not walk away from here being like, well, that's how I'm going to be a better father. But I hope that you'll walk away from here with a greater understanding of what the Bible is and what it articulates. And I think we find that focal point in the delivery of the law and God's request after that. So that's where we're going this morning. Before we go there, I want to take us back to 1992. In 1992, at some point that year, I became 12 years old, or maybe it was 1993. And my dad and mom made an agreement with me. It was time for dad to buy a new car. And so he said, hey, listen, I'm going to buy a new car. I want you to pick it out with me. Because when you turn 16, if you'll commit to washing it every other week for the next four years, when you're 16, I'll hand you the keys. That was the agreement. And so we went out and we looked at cars. We looked at a Mazda. It was stupid. We looked at a Mitsubishi Eclipse. Do you guys remember those? Yeah, there we go. David, did you have one of those or do you just like them? I wanted one. Yeah, me too, pal. Me too. I couldn't convince dad to do, he's a respectable accountant. He can't drive around in a sports car. That's not what accountants do. They drive Accords. And so that's what we bought. Incidentally, I did the math a few weeks ago. I've driven seven versions of an Accord. That's how big of a nerd I am and how much I like reliability. Those are my priorities. Anyways, we bought an Accord, but it was pretty cool. It was black. It was two-door. It's a coupe. It had a spoiler. It was a sport. That was the class, Accord EX Sport or whatever it is. And this thing for me, it's pretty sweet. And I used to love riding in it, knowing one day this is going to be my car. And so the agreement was, son, if you watch this every other weekend, when you're 16, I will give it to you. What we entered into there, and this is what I want us to understand this morning is, I entered into a covenant with my parents. And a covenant is this, and this is important to understand. A covenant is two parties commit binding actions to one another. A covenant is when two parties enter into an agreement and they commit binding actions to one another. Meaning, if you do this, I will do this. If you agree to these terms, if you agree to this behavior, I will agree to this behavior. And so between my parents and I, it was, if you wash this car every other week, then we will agree to give you the keys when you're 16. That will be our behavior. So we entered into a covenant. And it's important that we understand this morning what a covenant is because that's what the whole sermon is about. Just to tie a bow on the story of my covenant with my parents, I washed that Honda Accord about four times in four years. And when I turned 16, my dad sold it, bought a car that he wanted, and didn't give it to me. He kept his, yeah, yeah. He kept his end of the bargain too. And he should have. That's funny. I've been preaching to you guys for eight years. The only time I've ever heard applause is for my dad not giving me a car. Okay. That's what a covenant is. And it's important this morning that we understand what covenants are. Because I don't know if you know this or not about your Bible. And, you know, if you're here and you're not a believer this morning, I'm going to say things like your Bible and your faith, and it may not be yours. And I don't want to attribute that to you. But if you are a believer and you do believe in the Bible as God's word, then what I can share with you, or if you're just curious and you want to understand the Bible better anyways, the Bible is actually divided into five major covenants. Five covenants that God makes with mankind, with his people, with humans. And so I want us to understand what a covenant is, because whether you realize it or not, the faith to which you ascribe, that you give yourself to, the text that is the foundation of that faith is divided into five of those agreements. Agreements that are, I will bind myself to you by these actions and you will bind yourself to me by these actions. The five covenants are, you don't need to know this or write this down, but I just want us to have a framework for where we're going. And I've told you at the beginning that this is professorial, so I'm giving myself an excuse to be a little bit nerdy here. The five covenants that we break down the Bible with begin with Noah. It's the Noahic, the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, the Davidic, and the New Covenant. Now let's go back. Noahic Covenant. It's the covenant with Noah. God floods the earth. At the end of the flood, he puts them on dry land. He puts the rainbow over and he says, I'm never going to destroy the earth like this again. I promise you that. That's God making a covenant with Noah. And what's interesting about this covenant is that it doesn't require a binding action from Noah. He just says, hey, I'm going to do. I'm going to do this. And so he does it. Then there's the Abrahamic. The Abrahamic covenant is in Genesis chapter 12. And he says, hey, Abraham, here's your binding action. Move. Go to this place where I will show you. But after that, there's no other binding action for Abraham. That's all he has to do. The binding action for God is, I will make your descendants like the sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky. I will give you this land, Israel, which we still see God's faith in today. And then I will, one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. That's the threefold promise that God makes to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. That's the Abrahamic covenant where God says, you do this, you move, which Abraham already had. And I will do this. This is my binding action. Then the next one is the Mosaic covenant, which we're going to talk about this morning. We're going to see what that promise is and what the two binding actions are. Then after that is the Davidic. And the Davidic covenant is in 2 Samuel chapter 17 that he makes to King David where he says, the Messiah will sit on your throne. He promises that to David. Interesting about that covenant, no reciprocal binding action required. David, you don't have to do anything to keep this covenant. You don't have to do anything to make this true. The Messiah will sit on your throne. Then the last one is the new covenant. That's Jesus. And God makes a promise to us with Jesus, which is simply this. You believe in him. And I will redeem you. That's Jesus. And we're going to talk about that a lot more. But what I want us to see this morning is how those covenants all tie together and what the relationship is between the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant, because I think it's very compelling. So let's look at that Mosaic covenant. What was it that God promised to the people? And what binding action did he ask of them? And what binding action did he promise in response to theirs? What is the Mosaic covenant? And I think answering that question is probably more important to you than you thought it was when you walked in this room. So let's look at it and let's understand the Mosaic covenant. Here's what's happening before God says this. We're going to go to two different places. So what's happening is God has descended on Mount Sinai. And we talked about this last week with the law and the week before that with the fear of God being the beginning of wisdom. But God has descended on Mount Sinai. His presence is before his people. And he's asked Moses and Aaron to come up and talk to him. And they go back down the mountain holding the tablets of the Ten Commandments. And they issue the law to the people. And they say, this is the law. This is what we do to make ourselves right with our God. And so it's this really kind of pregnant moment in the Old Testament and really in history. And so God gives them the law. And in response to the law, here's what he says in Exodus chapter 25 verses 8 and 9. And this is going to feel out of context, but I'll contextualize it for you. Chapter 25 of Exodus verses 8 and 9, as after he gives all of the instructions, and Zach, you're fine, just leave it up there. After he gives all of his instructions, here's what I want you to do, here's how I want you to follow the law. on from here. And he says, to host my presence, I want you to build an ark, which is just a fancy chest. It's a thing that opens that you put blankets in. But except for blankets, it's the staff and the law and manna. And then over this ark, they were told to build two golden angels whose wings touch in the middle. And the surface that those wings formed was referred to as the mercy seat. And this was the seat of the very presence of God for the Hebrew people and for our people. So after God, and this is what we need to pick up on, after God says, here's the law. If you read through chapter 24, what he's telling Moses is go down the mountain and go tell everyone that they have to obey this law. Keep faith in me. Put no other gods before me. Obey me. Follow these rules that I'm giving you. This is your binding agreement. And my binding agreement is this. I will be present with you. So here's the Mosaic covenant, okay? Obey me, and I will be present with you. That's the agreement. I just gave you all the laws. You walk down the mountain with them. You're going to read them to the people. And you tell them, if you follow these laws, I will be present with you. And just so we're clear, here's what that presence means. We have this in Deuteronomy. And Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible are the books of Moses, the books of the law. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy, that word means the law repeated. So Deuteronomy is kind of a synopsis of everything that just happened in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. And if you've ever done one of those read through the Bible programs, you know those can be tedious books. So we're grateful for Deuteronomy because sometimes it summarizes things in a more succinct way that makes them more approachable. In this case, this is true. So in Deuteronomy chapter 11, we see God again talking about the Mosaic covenant. And he says, this is just a snippet, but here's the sentiment. Talking about what it means, why it matters that God offers to be present with us. Chapter 11, verse 13, he says, so if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today to love the Lord your God and to serve him with your heart and your soul, then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn he goes on and he says, And he basically says, hey, if you obey me, I will offer you my presence. And in my presence, here's what that means, your fields will flourish. I will care for you. I will protect you. And if we just want to boil it down to really simple thoughts so that we can understand it together and move on with the greater principle, then what we do is what God is saying here, hey, if you'll obey me, I'm going to do God's stuff for you. Right? I'm going to protect you. I'm going to make sure you flourish. You're going to win wars like this nation will exist. So what we see here in the Mosaic covenant that happens at length in Exodus 19 to 25, we see synopsized for us in Deuteronomy 11. But the ethos of it is, here's the binding agreement. If you obey the laws that I just gave you, then I will offer you my presence. And here's what we might not understand about God's presence. When we see it in this context, he doesn't mean just today. You know? He means for eternity. The Hebrew mind didn't, they didn't grasp that. And our minds at first blush don't either. But God means it for eternity. You obey me and I will offer you my presence. Not just now for protection, but in eternity so that we no longer fear sin or death. Right? I had somebody this week, a dear friend at the church. I was on the phone with her yesterday. And she lost her mom. It was an expected thing. But in speaking with her, I said, how you doing? And she said, I'm good. Mom's in the presence of God now. So when God says, I'm offering you my presence, build some space for it, he doesn't just mean today. He means forever. So the Mosaic covenant is you follow my laws in this life and I will be present with you for all of life, for the next one too. That's what this means. And I don't think we noticed that at first reading, but that's what it means. And so here's the thing that's always been tricky for me about the Mosaic covenant. I know we're very far in the weeds now, but hopefully you're thinking along with me. A covenant is when two parties agree to binding actions. And one person's or one party's fidelity to that action necessarily binds you to yours, right? But here's the problem with the Mosaic covenant. And here's what it's hard to make sense of. I can see some of you smiling. You know what I'm going to say. They didn't do their part. We didn't do our part. They didn't follow the law. God said, here's 630 laws. Follow them perfectly and I will offer my presence to you. And they immediately, golden calf, while God was still on the mountain and they could see his presence, they immediately got right back to the business of sinning and breaking the law. No one has ever kept their part of the deal worse than humans. Ever. They broke it. They didn't perform their binding action, but God continues to perform his because he has a fidelity to this promise. And so we go, well, why did God keep his side of the deal? Why did God's presence remain with his people? Why does God's presence remain with us? And why do we have access to God's promise still, even though we haven't performed our binding action? And it's always bugged me as I've thought about it, because the others, Noahic, Abrahamic, Davidic, those covenants, God says, I'm just going to do for you. The Mosaic covenant is the only covenant in the Old Testament that requires a performance from the other side. God says, your binding action is existing. My binding action is to do this for you. And then he does it. But for the Mosaic covenant, he says, no, your binding action is to obey me perfectly. And mine is to offer you my presence. And then we immediately fail. So why does God continue to offer his presence? Here's why. Because he knew this. One day, someone will fulfill their part of the deal. God knew what they did. He knows what we might not immediately think of when we read the Mosaic Covenant. And a casual reading of Exodus 19 through 25 might not bring us to this point, but it's important that we express it now. God knew that one day he was going to send his son and that his son was going to fulfill the covenant on our behalf. He was going to perfectly execute the law to excuse anyone who had never done that, which is everyone, and be redeemed by God. God knew. So when we ask the question, why does God remain faithful to this promise to which we remain unfaithful? Because he knew that one day someone would be faithful to it and that that would fulfill the binding action. He knew he was going to send his son Jesus to fulfill the promise that we fall short of. And what's wonderful about God's foreknowledge in that is to be able to see this, that this feels like a clumsy point, but I'll tell you more about it. Everything points to Jesus. The Mosaic Covenant is designed to point us to Christ. Last week, I did a whole sermon about the law, and I said the whole point of the law is to point us to the cross. The whole point of these covenants is to point us to Jesus. God made the Noahic covenant. He said, I'll never destroy the world like this again. You know how he knew he could make that covenant, that promise? Because he knew that he was going to send his son who was going to redeem the earth back to what it was intended when it was created. And he knew what was happening at the end of time. The Noahic covenant points us to the relief and the redemption of Christ. When he promises Abraham, I'm going to make you a great nation and one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. Do you know who that descendant was? Jesus. The Abrahamic covenant points us to Christ. The Mosaic covenant, follow this law perfectly and I will always offer you my presence. And who followed that law for us was Jesus because we can't do it because the law points us to our need for him. And when he makes the Davidic covenant, do you know who that points to? Do you know who the Messiah is that's going to sit on the throne of the universe? Jesus. And the new covenant and the New Testament, I don't know if you know this or not, but the whole new testament is about Jesus. All of it points us to Jesus. The covenants that make up the Bible and our faith all point us to Jesus. He's the point. It is to him that our gaze should be directed. And if we read the Bible carefully, what we find is that every part of it is trying to gently grab our little baby faces and point them towards our Christ and point them towards our Savior. The point of the Mosaic Covenant is to focus us on Jesus. And here's what occurred to me this week that I just think is frigging awesome. Okay. Do you understand that Jesus fulfills both sides of this covenant? Think about the Mosaic covenant, what it is. Think about what I just articulated to you. You follow my law perfectly and I will offer you my presence. Jesus followed the law perfectly by being present with us. Do you see? He followed the law perfectly by being present with, by offering us his presence. And then in an ongoing way through the Holy Spirit, he is with us every day. Jesus is with us in this moment here. Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I will be also. Jesus is here with us now. His presence rests and resides in this room. He is with us. The promise that God made his people is true. And it's true because Jesus fulfills both sides of that promise by both following the law perfectly and fulfilling it for us. And also by being present with us here in this day, in this moment, and not just present here, but present in heaven, advocating for us, whispering in the ear of God, the father, bringing us into eternity where we will spend forever with him in his presence, which is what is promised in the Mosaic covenant. And I don't have anything for you to go do this week. So this week, think about this. I don't have an application to this sermon. I just want you to see how beautifully woven, not just scripture, but history is by the intentionality and the sovereignty of our God who knew when he made this binding agreement with us that we would not do our part. And he already knew how to fulfill both sides of that promise by allowing his son to become human and to fulfill it for us and be the very presence that he promised for all of eternity. And I happen to think that's pretty neat. Let's pray. Father, thank you for making promises with us when you know that we can't keep up our part. Thank you for loaning things to us when you know that we won't pay you back. Thank you for agreeing to deals that you know we will not hold up. And then for loving us anyways. And for holding up our part too. Thank you for the promises that you made to Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and to us. Thank you for upholding them. Thank you for that odd music during my prayer. God, we love you. We are grateful for you. We are grateful for the ways that you love us. And God, I pray that maybe today we would just be astounded by your love. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. So grateful for this church and for Grace folks this morning. We are continuing in our series on Moses. This is the penultimate week. We'll do this week and then next week, Labor Day Sunday. And then we're going to start a new series. I don't, Gibby, what are we calling the series, or Carly? We're going to call it Gentle and Lowly? Okay. I never know. I just say here's what we're going to talk about, and then the graphics department, they tell me what it's called. It's going to be called Gentle and Lowly. It's based on a book by Dane Ortlund, which is, to me, a tremendously impactful book, And I know that some of our small groups have gone through it in the past. And so as a church, I think it's a really wonderful thing whenever we can have a shared experience and we can be reading through a book and everyone's thinking about it and we're talking about it. And this is an experience that we share. I think it's a good thing. So from time to time, we like to encourage those. And so the Sunday after Labor Day, we're going to start this new series called Gentle and Lowly. It's going to be an eight-week series. It's like a 16-chapter book, and I've just chosen to highlight eight of the chapters. But we're going to have a reading plan for that book, and it's available on the table which is which is right behind that wall right there and just grab those are ten dollars grab them on the honor system put put a 10 in the acrylic things that hang next to the doors or a 20 and then make change for yourself we trust you or just donate $20 for the book because someone else is going to steal one and you want to cover for them. You can Venmo me $10 and just we'll see if that ever makes it to the church. But we'll just, they're out there. Take them. Pay for them however you want. And then if we run out, we'll order more or you can order them online. But that's going to be, I think, an important thing for us in the fall. Before I just dive into this Moses sermon this morning, we do have a fun announcement. And I'll just be honest with you. I'm a mess about this. I talked with Kyle Tolbert, our student pastor, now family pastor. He's a dad now. Here's Hayes. I'm not faking it, I literally can't look at it. Jen, when we were worshiping, she said, did you talk to Kyle this morning? And I said, yeah, it was a huge mistake. Kyle worked. This is indulgent, and I'm sorry, but just so you understand why I can't keep it together right now. He worked for me at my last church. Kyle and I have worked together for 10 plus years. He's a little brother. And so this is great. Hayes is his name. Women care about this. He was eight pounds, eight ounces. I don't know why that matters to you, but you always ask, what did the baby weigh? It's like, who cares? But you do, so there you go. We're so excited. We're thrilled for them. Everybody's happy and healthy, so that's good. This is the reason for the tissues. Also, I don't anticipate crying during the sermons. I might. I might. I don't know. We'll find out together. Okay. Moses. A good friend said to me, last week we talked about the law and what that means and how it points towards Jesus. And I was on the phone with a friend who I care about very much and I trust their judgment very much. And they said, hey, and they were being honest. They said that was a good sermon. Always nice to hear. They said, but it really didn't have a lot to do with Moses. So like, what are we doing here? Because the theme is the life of Moses. And I said to him, yeah, sometimes I'll tell Jen what I'm going to be preaching about. And she was like, that sounds like a good sermon, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the series. So like, why are you doing that one? And I'll be like, I don't care. Like, I'll just do the sermon anyways. This also does not have a lot to do with Moses this morning. I'll just tell you. It's a little bit. It leans esoteric and professorial. And it's not. There are some sermons that are like, hey, how do we have better faith? How can I be a better dad? You know, like, how do I be a better employee or something like that? This is not that. The goal of this sermon this morning is for us to understand in a greater way the way that the Bible is miraculously woven together for this incredible, sovereign, articulated picture that God has intended since before time began. So you may not walk away from here being like, well, that's how I'm going to be a better father. But I hope that you'll walk away from here with a greater understanding of what the Bible is and what it articulates. And I think we find that focal point in the delivery of the law and God's request after that. So that's where we're going this morning. Before we go there, I want to take us back to 1992. In 1992, at some point that year, I became 12 years old, or maybe it was 1993. And my dad and mom made an agreement with me. It was time for dad to buy a new car. And so he said, hey, listen, I'm going to buy a new car. I want you to pick it out with me. Because when you turn 16, if you'll commit to washing it every other week for the next four years, when you're 16, I'll hand you the keys. That was the agreement. And so we went out and we looked at cars. We looked at a Mazda. It was stupid. We looked at a Mitsubishi Eclipse. Do you guys remember those? Yeah, there we go. David, did you have one of those or do you just like them? I wanted one. Yeah, me too, pal. Me too. I couldn't convince dad to do, he's a respectable accountant. He can't drive around in a sports car. That's not what accountants do. They drive Accords. And so that's what we bought. Incidentally, I did the math a few weeks ago. I've driven seven versions of an Accord. That's how big of a nerd I am and how much I like reliability. Those are my priorities. Anyways, we bought an Accord, but it was pretty cool. It was black. It was two-door. It's a coupe. It had a spoiler. It was a sport. That was the class, Accord EX Sport or whatever it is. And this thing for me, it's pretty sweet. And I used to love riding in it, knowing one day this is going to be my car. And so the agreement was, son, if you watch this every other weekend, when you're 16, I will give it to you. What we entered into there, and this is what I want us to understand this morning is, I entered into a covenant with my parents. And a covenant is this, and this is important to understand. A covenant is two parties commit binding actions to one another. A covenant is when two parties enter into an agreement and they commit binding actions to one another. Meaning, if you do this, I will do this. If you agree to these terms, if you agree to this behavior, I will agree to this behavior. And so between my parents and I, it was, if you wash this car every other week, then we will agree to give you the keys when you're 16. That will be our behavior. So we entered into a covenant. And it's important that we understand this morning what a covenant is because that's what the whole sermon is about. Just to tie a bow on the story of my covenant with my parents, I washed that Honda Accord about four times in four years. And when I turned 16, my dad sold it, bought a car that he wanted, and didn't give it to me. He kept his, yeah, yeah. He kept his end of the bargain too. And he should have. That's funny. I've been preaching to you guys for eight years. The only time I've ever heard applause is for my dad not giving me a car. Okay. That's what a covenant is. And it's important this morning that we understand what covenants are. Because I don't know if you know this or not about your Bible. And, you know, if you're here and you're not a believer this morning, I'm going to say things like your Bible and your faith, and it may not be yours. And I don't want to attribute that to you. But if you are a believer and you do believe in the Bible as God's word, then what I can share with you, or if you're just curious and you want to understand the Bible better anyways, the Bible is actually divided into five major covenants. Five covenants that God makes with mankind, with his people, with humans. And so I want us to understand what a covenant is, because whether you realize it or not, the faith to which you ascribe, that you give yourself to, the text that is the foundation of that faith is divided into five of those agreements. Agreements that are, I will bind myself to you by these actions and you will bind yourself to me by these actions. The five covenants are, you don't need to know this or write this down, but I just want us to have a framework for where we're going. And I've told you at the beginning that this is professorial, so I'm giving myself an excuse to be a little bit nerdy here. The five covenants that we break down the Bible with begin with Noah. It's the Noahic, the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, the Davidic, and the New Covenant. Now let's go back. Noahic Covenant. It's the covenant with Noah. God floods the earth. At the end of the flood, he puts them on dry land. He puts the rainbow over and he says, I'm never going to destroy the earth like this again. I promise you that. That's God making a covenant with Noah. And what's interesting about this covenant is that it doesn't require a binding action from Noah. He just says, hey, I'm going to do. I'm going to do this. And so he does it. Then there's the Abrahamic. The Abrahamic covenant is in Genesis chapter 12. And he says, hey, Abraham, here's your binding action. Move. Go to this place where I will show you. But after that, there's no other binding action for Abraham. That's all he has to do. The binding action for God is, I will make your descendants like the sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky. I will give you this land, Israel, which we still see God's faith in today. And then I will, one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. That's the threefold promise that God makes to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. That's the Abrahamic covenant where God says, you do this, you move, which Abraham already had. And I will do this. This is my binding action. Then the next one is the Mosaic covenant, which we're going to talk about this morning. We're going to see what that promise is and what the two binding actions are. Then after that is the Davidic. And the Davidic covenant is in 2 Samuel chapter 17 that he makes to King David where he says, the Messiah will sit on your throne. He promises that to David. Interesting about that covenant, no reciprocal binding action required. David, you don't have to do anything to keep this covenant. You don't have to do anything to make this true. The Messiah will sit on your throne. Then the last one is the new covenant. That's Jesus. And God makes a promise to us with Jesus, which is simply this. You believe in him. And I will redeem you. That's Jesus. And we're going to talk about that a lot more. But what I want us to see this morning is how those covenants all tie together and what the relationship is between the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant, because I think it's very compelling. So let's look at that Mosaic covenant. What was it that God promised to the people? And what binding action did he ask of them? And what binding action did he promise in response to theirs? What is the Mosaic covenant? And I think answering that question is probably more important to you than you thought it was when you walked in this room. So let's look at it and let's understand the Mosaic covenant. Here's what's happening before God says this. We're going to go to two different places. So what's happening is God has descended on Mount Sinai. And we talked about this last week with the law and the week before that with the fear of God being the beginning of wisdom. But God has descended on Mount Sinai. His presence is before his people. And he's asked Moses and Aaron to come up and talk to him. And they go back down the mountain holding the tablets of the Ten Commandments. And they issue the law to the people. And they say, this is the law. This is what we do to make ourselves right with our God. And so it's this really kind of pregnant moment in the Old Testament and really in history. And so God gives them the law. And in response to the law, here's what he says in Exodus chapter 25 verses 8 and 9. And this is going to feel out of context, but I'll contextualize it for you. Chapter 25 of Exodus verses 8 and 9, as after he gives all of the instructions, and Zach, you're fine, just leave it up there. After he gives all of his instructions, here's what I want you to do, here's how I want you to follow the law. on from here. And he says, to host my presence, I want you to build an ark, which is just a fancy chest. It's a thing that opens that you put blankets in. But except for blankets, it's the staff and the law and manna. And then over this ark, they were told to build two golden angels whose wings touch in the middle. And the surface that those wings formed was referred to as the mercy seat. And this was the seat of the very presence of God for the Hebrew people and for our people. So after God, and this is what we need to pick up on, after God says, here's the law. If you read through chapter 24, what he's telling Moses is go down the mountain and go tell everyone that they have to obey this law. Keep faith in me. Put no other gods before me. Obey me. Follow these rules that I'm giving you. This is your binding agreement. And my binding agreement is this. I will be present with you. So here's the Mosaic covenant, okay? Obey me, and I will be present with you. That's the agreement. I just gave you all the laws. You walk down the mountain with them. You're going to read them to the people. And you tell them, if you follow these laws, I will be present with you. And just so we're clear, here's what that presence means. We have this in Deuteronomy. And Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible are the books of Moses, the books of the law. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy, that word means the law repeated. So Deuteronomy is kind of a synopsis of everything that just happened in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. And if you've ever done one of those read through the Bible programs, you know those can be tedious books. So we're grateful for Deuteronomy because sometimes it summarizes things in a more succinct way that makes them more approachable. In this case, this is true. So in Deuteronomy chapter 11, we see God again talking about the Mosaic covenant. And he says, this is just a snippet, but here's the sentiment. Talking about what it means, why it matters that God offers to be present with us. Chapter 11, verse 13, he says, so if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today to love the Lord your God and to serve him with your heart and your soul, then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn he goes on and he says, And he basically says, hey, if you obey me, I will offer you my presence. And in my presence, here's what that means, your fields will flourish. I will care for you. I will protect you. And if we just want to boil it down to really simple thoughts so that we can understand it together and move on with the greater principle, then what we do is what God is saying here, hey, if you'll obey me, I'm going to do God's stuff for you. Right? I'm going to protect you. I'm going to make sure you flourish. You're going to win wars like this nation will exist. So what we see here in the Mosaic covenant that happens at length in Exodus 19 to 25, we see synopsized for us in Deuteronomy 11. But the ethos of it is, here's the binding agreement. If you obey the laws that I just gave you, then I will offer you my presence. And here's what we might not understand about God's presence. When we see it in this context, he doesn't mean just today. You know? He means for eternity. The Hebrew mind didn't, they didn't grasp that. And our minds at first blush don't either. But God means it for eternity. You obey me and I will offer you my presence. Not just now for protection, but in eternity so that we no longer fear sin or death. Right? I had somebody this week, a dear friend at the church. I was on the phone with her yesterday. And she lost her mom. It was an expected thing. But in speaking with her, I said, how you doing? And she said, I'm good. Mom's in the presence of God now. So when God says, I'm offering you my presence, build some space for it, he doesn't just mean today. He means forever. So the Mosaic covenant is you follow my laws in this life and I will be present with you for all of life, for the next one too. That's what this means. And I don't think we noticed that at first reading, but that's what it means. And so here's the thing that's always been tricky for me about the Mosaic covenant. I know we're very far in the weeds now, but hopefully you're thinking along with me. A covenant is when two parties agree to binding actions. And one person's or one party's fidelity to that action necessarily binds you to yours, right? But here's the problem with the Mosaic covenant. And here's what it's hard to make sense of. I can see some of you smiling. You know what I'm going to say. They didn't do their part. We didn't do our part. They didn't follow the law. God said, here's 630 laws. Follow them perfectly and I will offer my presence to you. And they immediately, golden calf, while God was still on the mountain and they could see his presence, they immediately got right back to the business of sinning and breaking the law. No one has ever kept their part of the deal worse than humans. Ever. They broke it. They didn't perform their binding action, but God continues to perform his because he has a fidelity to this promise. And so we go, well, why did God keep his side of the deal? Why did God's presence remain with his people? Why does God's presence remain with us? And why do we have access to God's promise still, even though we haven't performed our binding action? And it's always bugged me as I've thought about it, because the others, Noahic, Abrahamic, Davidic, those covenants, God says, I'm just going to do for you. The Mosaic covenant is the only covenant in the Old Testament that requires a performance from the other side. God says, your binding action is existing. My binding action is to do this for you. And then he does it. But for the Mosaic covenant, he says, no, your binding action is to obey me perfectly. And mine is to offer you my presence. And then we immediately fail. So why does God continue to offer his presence? Here's why. Because he knew this. One day, someone will fulfill their part of the deal. God knew what they did. He knows what we might not immediately think of when we read the Mosaic Covenant. And a casual reading of Exodus 19 through 25 might not bring us to this point, but it's important that we express it now. God knew that one day he was going to send his son and that his son was going to fulfill the covenant on our behalf. He was going to perfectly execute the law to excuse anyone who had never done that, which is everyone, and be redeemed by God. God knew. So when we ask the question, why does God remain faithful to this promise to which we remain unfaithful? Because he knew that one day someone would be faithful to it and that that would fulfill the binding action. He knew he was going to send his son Jesus to fulfill the promise that we fall short of. And what's wonderful about God's foreknowledge in that is to be able to see this, that this feels like a clumsy point, but I'll tell you more about it. Everything points to Jesus. The Mosaic Covenant is designed to point us to Christ. Last week, I did a whole sermon about the law, and I said the whole point of the law is to point us to the cross. The whole point of these covenants is to point us to Jesus. God made the Noahic covenant. He said, I'll never destroy the world like this again. You know how he knew he could make that covenant, that promise? Because he knew that he was going to send his son who was going to redeem the earth back to what it was intended when it was created. And he knew what was happening at the end of time. The Noahic covenant points us to the relief and the redemption of Christ. When he promises Abraham, I'm going to make you a great nation and one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. Do you know who that descendant was? Jesus. The Abrahamic covenant points us to Christ. The Mosaic covenant, follow this law perfectly and I will always offer you my presence. And who followed that law for us was Jesus because we can't do it because the law points us to our need for him. And when he makes the Davidic covenant, do you know who that points to? Do you know who the Messiah is that's going to sit on the throne of the universe? Jesus. And the new covenant and the New Testament, I don't know if you know this or not, but the whole new testament is about Jesus. All of it points us to Jesus. The covenants that make up the Bible and our faith all point us to Jesus. He's the point. It is to him that our gaze should be directed. And if we read the Bible carefully, what we find is that every part of it is trying to gently grab our little baby faces and point them towards our Christ and point them towards our Savior. The point of the Mosaic Covenant is to focus us on Jesus. And here's what occurred to me this week that I just think is frigging awesome. Okay. Do you understand that Jesus fulfills both sides of this covenant? Think about the Mosaic covenant, what it is. Think about what I just articulated to you. You follow my law perfectly and I will offer you my presence. Jesus followed the law perfectly by being present with us. Do you see? He followed the law perfectly by being present with, by offering us his presence. And then in an ongoing way through the Holy Spirit, he is with us every day. Jesus is with us in this moment here. Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I will be also. Jesus is here with us now. His presence rests and resides in this room. He is with us. The promise that God made his people is true. And it's true because Jesus fulfills both sides of that promise by both following the law perfectly and fulfilling it for us. And also by being present with us here in this day, in this moment, and not just present here, but present in heaven, advocating for us, whispering in the ear of God, the father, bringing us into eternity where we will spend forever with him in his presence, which is what is promised in the Mosaic covenant. And I don't have anything for you to go do this week. So this week, think about this. I don't have an application to this sermon. I just want you to see how beautifully woven, not just scripture, but history is by the intentionality and the sovereignty of our God who knew when he made this binding agreement with us that we would not do our part. And he already knew how to fulfill both sides of that promise by allowing his son to become human and to fulfill it for us and be the very presence that he promised for all of eternity. And I happen to think that's pretty neat. Let's pray. Father, thank you for making promises with us when you know that we can't keep up our part. Thank you for loaning things to us when you know that we won't pay you back. Thank you for agreeing to deals that you know we will not hold up. And then for loving us anyways. And for holding up our part too. Thank you for the promises that you made to Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and to us. Thank you for upholding them. Thank you for that odd music during my prayer. God, we love you. We are grateful for you. We are grateful for the ways that you love us. And God, I pray that maybe today we would just be astounded by your love. In Jesus' name, amen.
