The People Saw the Thunder
March 20, 2022
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
Exodus 19:16-20:21
19:16 On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. 17 Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain.18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. 19 And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder.20 The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain. And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.
21 And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down and warn the people, lest they break through to the Lord to look and many of them perish. 22 Also let the priests who come near to the Lord consecrate themselves, lest the Lordbreak out against them.” 23 And Moses said to the Lord, “The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for you yourself warned us, saying, ‘Set limits around the mountain and consecrate it.’” 24 And the Lord said to him, “Go down, and come up bringing Aaron with you. But do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the Lord, lest he break out against them.” 25 So Moses went down to the people and told them.
20:1 And God spoke all these words, saying,
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
13 “You shall not murder.
14 “You shall not commit adultery.
15 “You shall not steal.
16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”
18 Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off 19 and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.”20 Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” 21 The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.
For ten weeks we showed video testimonies about each of the commandments right before the sermon, and they poured blessings into our church in precious, wonderful ways. I’m so thankful for all who shared their stories in the videos and for Glenn, a member of our church, who produced them. It was no small undertaking. I’m also thankful to be back to our normal practice of reading the word of God before the preaching of the word of God. As a heads up, I’ll mention that next week we’ll take a break from Exodus to begin a short series for Easter on Psalm 23 about the Lord our shepherd who leads his people to still waters for his name’s sake. After Psalm 23 we’ll come back to Exodus to finish the book before the summer.
At the end of the sermon last week Noah asked, “What is your response when you are met with the law of God?” Let’s pray together before we talk about that. “Dear heavenly Father. We were taught to pray ‘Hallowed by your name’ . . .”
We often plan our preaching schedule six to nine months in advance, and originally we didn’t plan to have this sermon. We planned for this Sunday, of course, but not this passage and this sermon per se. I was out of the office the other day, and when I came back the guys told me they’d created and assigned me an epilogue sermon on the ten commandments. That’s not exactly how it happened, but sort of. They were right to do so. We need to encapsulate both why we did this series and what it means for us going forward. And not only did we need to do this, but Exodus 20 itself has its own epilogue in the text. So, we added an epilogue sermon. An epilogue is a fancy word for a conclusion. Epilogues are typically short and often contain a more personal address where an author speaks more directly to the readers, or in our case, listeners.
So, how, as I’ve asked, must we respond to God’s law? Our aim in spending ten weeks on God’s law was to prevent a tragedy among us, the tragedy of becoming people who know about God but don’t really know him, the tragedy of putting our “knowing” of God into a compartment called “Sunday mornings.” I’ll say it differently. The tragic temptation for believers is to walk into the Promised Land with a swagger.
Earlier in the service Nazar led us through a confession of sin written by King David after a tragic season in his life where he put God in a compartment and walked with a swagger. I want to explain more about how that story about King David relates to our passage, but first we need to back up.
An aspect of God’s law that came up many times in the sermon series, which Noah mentioned explicitly, is that while the ten commandments are mostly framed in short, negative statements, they imply a robust, positive application for our lives. “You shall not commit adultery” not only means you should not share intimacy with someone who is not your spouse but requires you to cherish your marriage and your spouse and, more broadly, to uphold the dignity of marriage. “You shall not murder” not only requires that you do not unlawfully take human life but that you do whatever you can to cherish human life.
We see this principle in the next three chapters of Exodus. In the rest of chapter 20, and all of 21, 22, and 23—and in some ways all of 24—we see how the few the words of the commandments imply a robust, positive application in the life of Israel. So, for example, God says, “Do not murder” in Exodus 20:13, and a few pages later in chapter 21 we read that if you have an animal that is accustomed to hurting people, then you must kill the animal, and you are responsible (21:28–32). That’s one way God’s people must take a robust view of the value of life. Here’s another from the same chapter. If men are fighting, and one of them accidently hits a pregnant woman, and the child in her womb dies, that’s an application of the commandment because that child in the womb is a human being, a fellow image bearer of God with dignity, value, and worth (Ex. 21:22–25). In other words, “You shall not murder” has all sorts of implications.
The eighth commandment says, “You shall not steal,” and, well, a few pages later there’s a section on slavery, where God says, “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of [the stolen person], shall be put to death” (Ex. 21:16). In other words, the kind of slavery our country practiced for a few hundred years was explicitly condemned in the Old Testament, and for that matter, in the New Testament (1 Tim. 1:10). Again, a few words with lots of applications. Speaking of the eighth commandment and stealing, look with me at the opening words of chapter 22. “If a man steals an ox or a sheep,” we read, “and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep” (Ex. 22:1).
Hummmm. Now, this verse might not mean much to you yet. If you steal a sheep, then you owe four sheep. So what? You might not see how that has anything to do with King David, who lived four hundred years after Exodus 22, or what it has to do with knowing the real God, not putting God in a compartment, or what this verse about stealing sheep has to do with preventing the tragedy believers of walking with a swagger. That might not be clear to you yet, so let’s make it clear.
In 2 Samuel 11, we read that at the time of the year when kings go out to war, David did not. He sent his general instead and stayed home. At home he saw another man’s wife, stole her, and had her husband killed. Then in the next chapter, God sends a prophet named Nathan to tell David a story. “There were two men in a certain city,” Nathan begins, “the one rich and the other poor.” Nathan continues,
The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. (2 Sam. 12:1–5)
That’s the story Nathan tells the king. And David yells back, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity” (2 Sam. 12:6).
Hummmm. A man stole a lamb, and David yells out, “Four lambs he’ll pay,” citing essentially Exodus 22:1. How will Nathan respond? He says, “You are the man!” (v. 7). Then Nathan proceeds to tell David how he broke many of the ten commandments in that season with Bathsheba and Uriah. And out of that exchange, both the story about the lamb and the preaching of David’s violation of the ten commandments, God broke through the hardness of David’s heart. God cut the arrogant swagger from David’s life, leading him to write the prayer of confession we call Psalm 51.
Have mercy on me, O God, / according to your steadfast love; / according to your abundant mercy / blot out my transgressions. / Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, / and cleanse me from my sin! (Ps. 51:1–2)
What is your response when you are met with the law of God? That’s our question. After ten weeks on the law of God, God means for you to repent of any part of your life that has an angry, arrogant swagger on the way to the Promised Land. The law of God—indeed the knowledge of God’s holiness that comes through is law—should leave each of us undone in a good way. Just think of all that the commandments require.
The first commandment requires that we love God first and most in our lives, having no other gods before him. The second commandment requires that we don’t change the real God, that is, we must not fashion the real God into our image and likeness. We must take God how he is, for that is the only way he will be taken. The third commandment requires us to not take the Lord’s name in vain, which requires far more than not using God’s name as a swear word. If you take the name of the real God, you must not change him but rather let him change you. The fourth commandment invites you not merely to cease from working one day in seven but to have a trust and faith in God such that you see him as the one who provides for all your needs. The fifth commandment about honoring your mother and father requires that your homes be places of honor and civility and, by extension, that you seek to build a society of honor and civility. The sixth prohibits murder and requires that we value all of life and repent of harboring hateful feelings toward anyone. The seventh requires faithfulness in marriage but also purity in your hearts and thoughts. And on the commandments go, week after week, word after word, law after law until, we all are, rightly, undone. There’s not a person here who would like me to have a transcript of every thought you had last week and have me read it to the congregation.
In our study we’ve asked and answered the question of why the ten commandments do not come in chapter 1. The ten commandments do not come in chapter 1 because God doesn’t come to you and say, “Well, I see you are enslaved to sin, but if you try hard to keep my law, then I’ll save you; then I’ll love you.” He doesn’t do that. This is why the ten commandments do not come in chapter 1. But I’m not sure we’ve asked and answered the question of why they do come in chapter 20. Why do you think that God gave the ten commandments here? To take away our swagger.
Everything God does in the book of Exodus is so that you would recognize that God is God. All of the events in Exodus—from the baby in the basket floated down the Nile River, to a fiery bush that doesn’t burn, and to Moses and to the plagues and the angel of death passing over the homes with door jambs painted in blood and to the parting of the Red Sea and the closing of the Red Sea, the food on the ground called Manna, the pillar of fire, the giving of the law, and the building of all that would be built for the proper worship of the God who is who he is—all of this was done so that people would know God is God. Again, the ten commandments come here in chapter 20 so that no believer will walk to the Promised Land with a swagger. God saved Israel out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. In chapter 19 we read that God reminds them how he bore Israel on eagles’ wings and brought them to himself (19:4). God tells Israel that although all the world is his, Israel is his treasured possession (v. 5) and they are to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (v. 6). What blessings, what confidence they must have had that God loved them! It’s so good for you to know that God loves you. Knowing God loves you will change your life.
And then at the base of a mountain called Sinai in the middle of the wilderness, the Israelites look up to see a mountain on fire with smoke and lightning and thunder. They hear God’s voice call Moses up to talk. Moses goes up and has to come down again to remind them that they are not to come up (19:21). By the time God gives the law and Moses comes down, there’s no danger of them coming up. Look again at our passage.
Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” (Ex. 20:18–19)
It’s like a Black Friday shopping event at Target. At first, everyone tries to barge into the store to get what they want. Then a gun goes off in the store, panic ensues, and people run away. “We don’t want nothing to do with that,” they say to Moses. “You, Moses, must be our mediator because God has a holiness beyond anything we could have imagined.”
Look how Moses responds in v. 20. Moses agrees and doesn’t agree at the same time. He says, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin” (Ex. 20:20). This is a strange response. He seems to be saying two things at once because he is. The fear you have—this debilitating fear, this paralyzing fear, the fear of fire and the smoke and lightning—is not the kind of fear meant to last. This terrible, debilitating fear serves a temporary good if it leads you to a kind of humility before God that causes you to know him as he is. The law of God, all that thunder and fire and smoke, helps us remember we really need a savior. All the weight and holiness of God—knowing him as he really is—keeps us remembering what should not be forgotten on our way to the Promised Land.
Years ago I met a guy named Berry who told me a story. The story goes like this. When Berry was sixteen, he and a buddy lived in a place like here where people rake leaves to the edge of their yard every fall, and a truck comes to suck up those leaves. Well, Berry and his buddy had the blessing of a new sports car, and they went tearing through the neighborhood, driving right through the piles of leaves, having a blast. They come to a corner, see the mother of all leaf piles, and his buddy says, “Get it!” Berry gives it the gas, and as they get close, out of the corner of his eye, he sees the storm door open and a woman walking out, which gives him just enough pause to take his foot off the gas, which gives him just enough time to see a child stand up in the pile of leaves, which causes him to swerve out of the way. Berry drives around the corner, puts the car in park, shuts off the engine, and begins to weep over what could have been but wasn’t by the grace of God. A kind of holy terror overwhelms him as he is undone. When the initial terror fades away, what remains is a different but an abiding fear, a healthy fear, we might say, a fear that keeps one grounded. They’ll be no more driving with a swagger the rest of his life.
From time to time our pastor-elders dedicate a season to think and pray about what mission God might be calling our church to in the coming years, so some time ago we had an evening where we gave each leader time to share what passions God had been laying on our hearts. As we went around, one volunteer pastor said something we felt compelled to write down and put into our goal writing documents used by our staff and elders. He wanted us to be a church that would “speak like we remember what it was like before God saved us.” It’s very similar to what God tells Israel after the ten commandments. In Exodus 22:16, we read, “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” We might paraphrase this to say that God wants his people to speak and act like we remember what it was like before God saved us.” Or maybe we’d say that God wants you and me to respond to the law of God by seeing our need for forgiveness in Jesus and find that forgiveness in Jesus, the one who takes away our punishment.
All the smoke and fire and thunder and holiness of God’s law came crushing down upon Jesus on the cross. On the cross, Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath. There’s nothing left for you.
So, if you see your need for a savior, and you know you have a wonderful savior in Jesus, then you’ll spend the rest of your life not walking with a swagger into the Promised Land, but you will walk to the Promised Land.
Let’s pray . . .
Family Discussion Questions
Can you list all the ten commandments without looking? If you missed any of them, which ones did you miss? Why do you think that was? What were your favorite moments from our study in the ten commandments?
Have you ever been afraid of God? What might be good, and what might be bad, about your fear of God?
Pastor Benjamin spoke about the temptation to “swagger into the Promised Land”? What did he mean by this? How is this a temptation for you?
How should a study of the law of God make us more thankful for Jesus?
