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Good morning, everybody. Let's
turn in our Bibles to Exodus chapter 20. We're gonna be reading
verses one through three. Again, this is our third shot
at the first commandment. Hopefully you guys are not getting
bored. This is called the blessing and
the first word, the directive use of the first commandment,
starting in verse one, Exodus chapter 20. And God spoke all
these words saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you
out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You
shall have no other gods before me. Grass withers and the flower
fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Father,
you have done far more for us than merely bringing us out of
the land of slavery and merely bringing us out of the land of
Egypt. You have redeemed us from the power of the devil, from
the debt of sin that we owed, and from death itself. And so,
Lord, we thank you that you have claimed us as your people, that
you are our God. Help us now, Lord, to put you
before us that we would have no other gods before you. In
Jesus' name, amen. All right, you may be seated. So last week we looked at the
evangelical use of the first commandment and what that meant
was that we held the first commandment up to our souls like a mirror
and we saw how corrupt and sinful and polluted that we are. It
showed us how much we are bound to Jesus Christ for redeeming
us from the curse of the law, for standing in our place. This
morning, we're going to turn to the directive use of the law. So in the directive use, Martin
Luther says this, quote, here the law teaches us Christians
what we should do and should not do to lead a God-pleasing
life, end quote. So if the evangelical use of
the law is a mirror that is held up to our soul, the directive
use is a map. that leads us where to go. So
we don't get rid of the law once we're saved. Paul said, since
we're now justified by this faith, do we nullify the law? And he
said, God forbid, we establish the law. So this law is for Christians. Now that I'm a Christian, how
do I lead my life? All right, so that's what we're
looking at. Let's turn to our exposition.
Now, in the Ten Commandments, we see that eight of them are
negative, meaning that they say, thou shalt not. One of them is
positive, Fifth Commandment, honor your father and your mother.
The fourth is a mixed commandment. It says, positively, remember
the Sabbath, and then it says, negatively, don't do any work.
The first commandment is one of those negative commandments.
You shall have no other gods before me. So my question here
is, do the negative commandments only forbid things? Do they not
also require something from us positively? So children, boys
and girls, if your parents tell you don't hit your little brother
or your little sister, do they only require you to obey that
negative command? No, what do they require? That
you love your little brother or your little sister. It's not
enough to just simply say, well, I'm not gonna hit him. No, the
requirement is love. Jesus himself summarized the
10 commandments by two positive commands. You shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your mind, with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor
as yourself. And what this means is that whenever the Ten Commandments
forbid something, you shall have no other gods, for instance,
the opposite duty is required. So what positive duty is required
in the First Commandment? That you take God to be your
God, that you love him with your heart and soul and mind and strength. So what does that look like?
What does it look like positively to take God to be our God? Well, let's remember where we're
at in this story. So where is Israel right at this moment?
They're at Mount Sinai, right? And if you remember, we've said
that mountains are so significant in scripture, you can actually
trace redemption from mountaintop to mountaintop. So God saved
Noah from the flood and rested the ark on a mountain, Genesis
8.4. The promised seed Isaac was saved
on a mountain, Genesis 22.2. Solomon built the temple where
the covenant of grace was administered on a mountain, 2 Chronicles 3.1. Jesus Christ was crucified for
the sins of the world on a mountain, John 19.17. Daniel the prophet
calls Christ's kingdom a mountain that will continue to grow until
it fills the earth, Daniel 2.36. And right now, the scripture
says in Hebrews 12.22, that we have arrived at Mount Zion as
we come to worship. So here, Israel's at Mount Sinai,
we see this negative command, don't have any other gods. Is
there another mountain where perhaps this positive command
is better illustrated for us? And I would say the answer is
yes. The Garden of Eden was on a mountain. Ezekiel 28, 13, and
14 says, you were in Eden, the garden of God, you were on the
holy mountain of God. So let's see how the Garden of
Eden will help us to understand the first commandment positively. Please turn with me to Genesis
2, 15 through 17. And my argument here as we turn
there is this, that God speaking to Israel at Mount Sinai is an
echo of God speaking to Adam on Mount Eden. What my argument
is is that these two commands are essentially the same command. So Genesis 2, 15 through 17,
the Lord God took the man, put him in the garden of Eden to
work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the
man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden,
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not
eat for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. So here we see the negative requirement
at the end of the verse. Don't eat of this tree. And perhaps
you think that this is a rather odd commandment, but this is
actually the first commandment. He's saying, don't have any other
gods. Don't eat of the tree equals you shall have no other gods
before me. It's the Torah or the law of
God in the middle of the garden. Remember, this was a test for
Adam. Did Adam need any knowledge of good and evil to be a human
being? Proverbs 1.7 says that the beginning of knowledge is
the fear of the Lord. If he just trusted God and feared
God, he'd have all the knowledge of good and evil that he would
possibly need. To eat from this tree would be to declare that
he himself is his own authority, that he himself is his own God.
Now we saw this negative part last week, didn't we? What I
wanna focus on is the positive part. What does it look like
to not eat from this tree? What does it look like to positively
obey the first commandment to have God as our God? So let's
look at verse 15. Where was this commandment given?
What does it say? What's the location? in the Garden
of Eden, right? That word, Eden, translated means
pleasure, delight, a happy land, a land of bliss. One scholar
noted here, Eden was a delightful park full of fruit trees, verse
9, rivers, verse 10 through 13, gold and gemstones, Ezekiel 28,
13. So Eden was the encapsulation
of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Michael Morales puts
it here, that this happy land, this paradise, was the fullness
of life. No matter where you turned in
Eden, life was eking out. It was leaking everywhere. And the reason why is because
God's presence was in Eden. In chapter three, verse eight,
God walked with them in the cool of the day. Eden was where all mankind, Adam
and Eve at this point, had the most intimate and intimate communion and fellowship
with Yahweh God. So that's the first picture of
what it looks like to positively obey the first commandment. It's
paradise in the presence of God. Secondly, consider verse 16.
Who is this command given to? Verse 16, we read, and the Lord
God commanded the man. Stop right there. Notice it says,
the Lord God commanded, or tzavah, the man. God's commands are given
to men and women and children. They're not given to animals.
And this is not a small point at all. My professor this last
week was going over this recently, and he pointed out that God's
commands are what enable us to be human beings. God's law is
what separates us from the animal kingdom. We're made in his image,
we're made in his likeness, which means that we can obey his commands. So he provides man the opportunity
to be fully human by commanding us so that we're not living like
an animal driven by mere animal instincts. I mean, just think
about it. What happens to men when they're
not ruled by God? Scripture shows us. They revert
to being animals, to being beastly. In Jeremiah 5.8, adulterers are
called lusty stallions, neighing after their neighbor's wife.
Fools who return to their folly are compared to dogs who eat
their own vomit, Proverbs 26, 11. False prophets are called
ravenous wolves, Matthew 7, 15. Young men who pursue the prostitute
are said to be like an ox that goes to the slaughter, Proverbs
7, 22. So in other words, to turn away from God's law is to
revert into being an animal of ones. Why do you think American
culture is like the way it is right now? Obeying the commandments is what
makes us fully human. That's what God is calling Adam
to be here. That's the second picture of
what it looks like to obey the first commandment. It means to
be fully alive, to be fully human. Thirdly, What is the positive
command itself? End of verse 16, what is the
positive command? God says, you may surely eat
of every tree of the garden. What you need to see right away
is that every command that God gives us is a blessing. Back
in Genesis 128, he commanded man to be fruitful. What was
the blessing? Marriage and sex. Within that
command, marriage demonstrates that God's commands are commands
and blessings. And here, God commands Adam to
do what? To eat, you may surely eat of
every tree of the garden, right? In the Hebrew, that word eat
here is doubled up. It contains an infinite absolute
verb, and it means it intensifies the otherwise terse command just
simply to eat, and it renders it eat, eat, you eat. And loved ones, this is the marrow
here. Adam's positive duty to make God his God was simple. Feast. Feast in paradise. In this one act we see what it
means to positively obey the first commandment. Adam, by eating
this tree, was given provision, promise, and pleasure. He was
given provision because by eating the tree, he had everything that
he needed physically to be sustained. It was given a promise because
as long as he didn't eat from the other tree, he would have
access to the tree of life and live forever. And thirdly, he
was given pleasure. Why? Because feasting is celebration. Feasting is joy. Feasting is
communion. This is why the scripture connects
redemption to feasting. There are three prominent festivals
in the Old Testament and they're all feasts. The Feast of Unleavened
Bread or Passover, the Feast of Harvest, the Feast of the
Ingathering. And Israel was required, required,
commanded, for two weeks out of the year to go to Jerusalem
and have a religious party, paid vacations for two weeks a year
to feast with God. God promised that he would protect
their land and continue to provide for them. And this is why in
the New Testament, the kingdom of God is compared to a king
giving a feast for his son at his wedding day. It's why we
have a feast called the Lord's Supper. Who are these feasts
for? They're for those who have no
other God than Yahweh. It's for those who have God as
their God, their Redeemer. In other words, here at Mount
Eden, we see this positive requirement of the first commandment that
we make God our feast. Oh, taste and see that the Lord
is good. Blessed are all who take refuge
in Him. So that's the third picture of
what it looks like to obey the first commandment. It's to have
an infinite feast of the soul. So then we arrive then at our
doctrine, and here it is. The first commandment invites
us to feast our souls on the triune God. And right away, certainly someone
is thinking, why are you making this so abstract? Just make it
concrete, just shoot straight with us. Why are you talking
about feasting? Just speak to us straight. Well,
I actually think that this language is straight, and I think it's
helpful, and I think it's scriptural. So children, boys and girls,
question for you. Do you love eating? That was the most vocal. You
guys have been in a long time. Yes. So question, why do you love
eating? Because it brings the family
together? Isn't that kind of like asking,
why do you enjoy enjoyment? Or why does happiness make you
happy, right? God hardwired us to love eating
and he gave us taste buds and he gave us ribeyes and he gave
us hot Brussels sprouts with bacon and cheese and baked potatoes
and wine so that we would love feasting, right? Why do you think God designed
us to love feasting? It's a picture so that we would
know what it's like to have God as our God. Listen, feasting
is what Jonathan Edwards would have called an image of a divine
thing. An image of a divine thing. An
image of a divine thing is a physical reality that points to a spiritual
truth. I was discipling a young man
here recently and I convinced him that the sky being blue is
a divine image of God's happiness in heaven. What would it look
like if it was crimson red? What would you think about God?
Maybe you're like, I'm not buying that. Okay, fine. Marriage. Marriage
is an image of a divine thing. It's an image of Christ and the
church loving each other. How do we know that? Because
Paul says in Ephesians 5.32 that this is a mystery, this thing
called marriage, and I say that it points to Christ and the church.
God made the physical world, everything in the physical world,
to point to some spiritual truth. Now, feasting is an image that
God created, food and feasting, so that we would understand what
it's like to have God as our God. And I wanna consider two
quick proofs of this, okay? So proof number one is the gospel
feast on the mountain. The gospel feast on the mountain.
This is in Isaiah 25, six. Please turn with me there. Isaiah
chapter 25, verse six. This is what we read, Isaiah
25, six. On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all
peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of
rich food, full of marrow, of aged wine, well-refined. So what's
the first thing that you notice here, the very first thing? Not
the second thing, but what's the first thing? Where are they
at? What is he saying? What's the location? It's a mountain,
it's a mountain. This feast is taking place on
a mountain. Redemptive history can be traced from mountain to
mountain. What mountain is this? Well,
it's Mount Zion, where Christ himself reigns, where the church
herself meets with him, Hebrews 12, 22. Who is the feast maker
on this mountain? Verse 6 says, it's the Lord of
hosts. He's the one who's preparing
this feast. Who is this feast for? Verse 6, it's for all peoples. What is this feast? Well, this
is the feast of the gospel. How do we know? Well, let's read
verses 7 and 8. And He will swallow up on this
mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil
that is spread over all nations." So, quickly, what is that veil
and covering that is cast over all nations so that they're in
darkness? Sin and death, right? What is he going to do with it?
Verse eight, he will swallow up death forever and the Lord
God will wipe away all tears from all faces and the reproach
of his people he will take away from all the earth for the Lord
has spoken. Who has swallowed up death? Christ,
the Lord Jesus. What does that look like for
people to come to him? Verse six, a feast of rich food. A feast of well-aged wine, of
rich food, of marrow, of aged wine, well refined. The prophet
Isaiah compared the gospel to this glorious feast on a mountain. Proof number two, the feast of
Jesus's body and blood. The feast of Jesus's body and
blood. Please turn with me to John chapter six. John chapter six, starting in
verse 48, Jesus is speaking to a multitude here and he says
in verse 48, I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna
in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread that comes
down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I
am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats
of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give
for the life of the world is my flesh. And then skip down
to verse 54. Whoever feeds on my flesh and
drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the
last day. Let's stop right there. Now,
this passage has caused a lot of problems for people because
we're thinking with our stomachs rather than thinking with our
hearts. Jesus is giving an analogy here. To feast on him is the
same thing as to believe on him, to trust in him, to hope upon
his name. See, Jesus is an infinitely genius
teacher. He's not making things abstract
and hard for us. He's actually showing us what
believing upon him looks like. What does it look like? It looks
like having your soul feast upon Jesus. Adam was offered that provision
and promise and pleasure in the garden through the tree of life,
but Christ is what that tree of life pointed to. Our provision,
our promise, our pleasure comes from him alone. That's why he
says, I am the living bread that comes down from heaven. If anyone
eats of me, if anyone eats this bread, he will live forever.
If anyone trusts in me, has their feast of their soul upon me,
he'll never die. Believing on Him is the feast
of feasts. Our souls will never hunger and
thirst again. It's to receive Him as food for
everlasting life. It's being brought into the presence
of God. Does that sound like a feast
to you? Yes, absolutely. That's why in Revelation 19,
it says, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper
of the Lamb. So loved ones, Why does God, from the beginning
of Genesis all the way to Revelation, compare having relationship with
God to a feast? Don't you see? The first commandment
is not calling us to surrender our pleasure and joy. Obeying
the first commandment is being brought back into paradise. It's
being invited to eat of the tree of life. It's being invited to
walk with God in the cool of the day. It's a feast, that's
the first commandment. And that's our doctrine, that
the first commandment invites us to feast our souls on the
triune God. So let's consider then our application.
How do we do this? Practically speaking, how do
we feast on the triune God? We will remember that the directive
use of the law directs us, it gives us a map as Christians
to know how to live our lives to please Him. So consider, how
the larger catechism answers this question in very concrete
terms. I think they're concrete. Question
104, the larger catechism, what are the duties required in the
first commandment? The duties required in the first
commandment are the knowing and acknowledging of God to be the
only true God and our God, and to worship and glorify him accordingly
by thinking, meditating, remembering, highly esteeming, honoring, adoring,
choosing, loving, desiring, fearing of Him, believing Him, trusting,
hoping, delighting, rejoicing in Him, being zealous for Him,
calling upon Him, giving all praise and thanks and yielding
all obedience and submission to Him with the whole man. being
careful in all things to please him, and sorrowful when in anything
he is offended, and walking humbly before him." I'd encourage you,
in your own time, go back to the larger catechism and look
up all of those scriptures. All of those verbs had a scripture
reference. But I wanna know, how do we do
these things on a day-by-day, week-by-week basis? Well, I wanna offer you two mountains
where we can walk with God and feast upon him, two mountains.
So mountain number one, to walk this out practically, is daily
scripture reading. Mountain number one is daily
scripture reading. I'd encourage you, do a word
study and just see that when Jesus spoke God's word, he often
did it from a mountain. For instance, when he preached
the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, one through two, it says,
seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain and he opened
his mouth and taught them. My point here is to challenge
you to see that daily Bible reading is meeting with God on a mountain. When you feast off his word day
by day, what you're saying is, this God is my God and I will
have no other God but him. So through the empowerment of
the Holy Spirit, you'll be able to work out these verbs that
the larger catechism calls upon you. Listen, daily Bible reading
will help you to know and acknowledge God to be the only true God.
When you read the scripture, you're actually coming so close
to God that you can feel His breath. Because 2 Timothy 3.16
says that the Bible is God's breath. All scripture is breathed
out by God. Daily Bible reading will help
you to believe and trust and hope in Him more. Some of you
are struggling with believing God on a day-by-day basis. How
do you grow your faith? Where does faith come from? Romans
10, 17, faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word
of Christ. Reading your Bible daily grows
your faith. Daily Bible reading enables you
to think upon, to meditate upon, to remember the Lord your God
throughout your day. Psalm 119, 11 says, I've stored
up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Now, someone might say, well,
I've tried this daily Bible reading thing before and it doesn't work. So I have two answers for that. So first of all, how do you know
it didn't work? What if your child came to you
and said, dad, I don't see how eating three meals a day is working. I'm not really growing. I think
I'm gonna stop eating. How long would your son be able
to not eat before he realized, oh, that food really was doing
something? That's how spiritual food works. I would say that daily scripture
reading does powerful things. Just go to Psalm 19 and see all
the things that God says his word does to your soul when you
pick it up and read. Secondly, reading the scripture
is our duty. Jesus says in John 5 39, search
the scriptures because they bear witness about me. So even if
you think that it's not working, you should do it anyway because
God says to search the scriptures and see what blessings will come.
So if you've not done this before, if you don't know where to start,
then I would encourage you, ask a mature Christian in this body
to help you. They would love to sit down with
you and say, oh, this is how I read my Bible. This is when
I read my Bible. This is what it looks like. This
is how you study. Most generally, I would say this. Bible reading is worship. It's not, it includes all of
the faculties of your soul, of your mind, of your heart, and
of your will. It's not just an intellectual
exercise. It is that, it's not less than
that, but it's more than that. Come to your Bible like Mary
came to Jesus. Do you remember what it says
in Luke 10, 39? Mary sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his
teaching. Reading the scripture is not
like reading any other book. It's a time of worship. It's
a time of listening to the voice of the triune God. So ask the
Holy Spirit as you come to the word that he would open up the
ears of your heart so that you can hear him. Have Matthew Henry's commentary
open. You can find it online for free
so that he can help you through those more difficult passages.
He is one of those teachers that God gave to the church to help
you. Study with self-application in
mind. As you're studying, ask these
questions. How is God challenging me to live differently before
him? How am I grieving his heart?
What promises does he give me that I can trust him? Before
you put your Bible down, focus on one truth, one verse, and
say, okay, that's the verse, that's the truth I'm gonna focus
on today. I'm gonna meditate on it throughout
the day. And if you have to, write it down on a piece of paper,
fold it up, put it in your pocket. When you have downtime, open
it up and say, oh yeah, that's what God is saying to me today. So that's mountain number one.
Feast upon the triune God through daily scripture reading. The
first commandment directs us to have God as our God through
the Bible. Mountain number two, secret prayer. secret prayer. In Luke 6, verse
12, we read that, in these days, Jesus went out to the mountain
to pray, and all night he continued to pray to God. And multiple times in the Gospels,
we read something similar. Mark 6, 46, after he had taken
leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray. You can
see Matthew 14, 23, Luke 9, 28. My point here is not that we
have to go to a physical mountain to pray, although there are mountains
out there. My point is that in secret prayer,
you just are spiritually going to a mountain to commune with
God. I'm not speaking here primarily
about praying before your meals or that quick prayer that you
pray before you read your Bible. Those are great and you should
do those things. But I mean dedicated time set apart for prayer. Jesus
assumes that secret prayer will be a part of our Christian life.
I want you to see this. So please turn quickly to Matthew
chapter six. My claim is that Jesus assumes
that secret prayer will be a normal part of our Christian life. Matthew
6, he's contrasting the hypocritical prayers of the Pharisees to the
way that we should pray. Matthew 6, verse 6, he says,
but when you pray, Go into your room, shut the door, pray to
your father who is in secret, and your father who sees in secret
will reward you. Now, consider three things here.
Number one, he says, but when you pray, do you see? He's assuming that prayer is
just gonna be something that you do. Two, he instructs us
how to do this. Go into your room, shut the door,
pray to your father who is in secret. So this is a command
that we would have set aside times of private prayer. And then thirdly, he promises
a great reward. And your father who sees in secret
will reward you. And loved ones, oh, the reward
that we miss when we don't pray like this. The catechism puts
it in these terms, call upon Him, give Him all praise and
thanks, highly esteem Him, honor Him, adore Him, choose Him, love
Him, desire Him, fear Him, delight in Him, rejoice in Him, be zealous
for Him. The private prayer is the best
time to vent all of those things out of your heart. And I would
say that's the challenge in our prayer life, loved ones. I would
bet that most of us, when we hear the word prayer, we're thinking
of asking God for something. Well, that's called supplication,
and we should have supplication as part of our prayer, but supplication
is not the main part. How do we know that? Because
Jesus taught us how to pray in the Lord's Prayer. What is the
very first petition in the Lord's Prayer? So it's our Father who
art in heaven, Hallowed be your name. That's the first petition.
Jesus is saying the main thing of prayer is that we would ask
God to bring glory to himself. The first and foremost thing
of prayer is that when we come to pray, we're joining with the
angels in heaven, and we're saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord
God Almighty, who was and is to come. We're saying, Lord,
worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor
and power. How do we do that? I mean, we
can say those words, but I actually think that this is challenging,
because how often when we come to prayer, 30 seconds later,
we run out of words and our mind is floating somewhere in the
ether, right? So how do we pray like this? Well, let me just offer you the
method that I use. I pray with my Bible open and
my Westminster Shorter Catechism close at hand. And the reason
why I do that is because I run out of words. And we can open
the Bible and we can read a couple lines and we can pray those lines. The Westminster Catechism is
especially helpful because it gives you those truths of God
systematized and then the scriptural footnotes underneath. And so
all the prayer that I need, all that fuel is right there. So
I pray, I read a line, I pray. I read a line, I pray. And then
somebody might say, well, that's awkward and weird. What's more
awkward and weird, reading and praying, reading and praying,
or I don't have anything? I'm out
of words. My mind is wandering. This is
fuel, loved ones. This is fuel. Someone might say,
well, I just, I don't really have, I don't really have time
to have a secret prayer life. Friends, do you have time to
talk with your husband or your wife whom you love? Yes, of course
you do. And Christ, our Redeemer, has
given us His own life. We should have all the time in
the world to dedicate to speaking with Him. Or think of the great
men of Scripture, Abraham and Moses and David. These were very
busy men. One of them was a patriarch,
one of them was the slave rescuer from Egypt, and one of them was
the king of Israel. And they regularly spent time
in prayer. These men were busier than us,
and they set aside a time because they saw that prayer is a vital
duty of having God to be our God. I would just say that the
chief characteristic of the unregenerate man is that he doesn't pray.
Psalm 14.4 says, they do not call upon the Lord. So loved
ones, start here, do this. Schedule a time to pray. Like
you would schedule someone to come over to your house. Like
you would schedule a vacation. Like you would schedule any other
thing. I'm gonna schedule this time to pray every day. Just
start for 15 minutes and build from there. And oh, see how he
will reward you. Make praise and honor the chief
part of your prayer time and you'll discover what Thomas Brooks,
the Puritan, said, the secret key to heaven. Brooks says that,
ah, how often has God kissed a poor Christian at the beginning
of private prayer and spoke peace to him in the midst of private
prayer and filled him with light and joy and assurance upon the
close of private prayer. Just look in scripture, see how
many times God blessed the saints when they prayed to him. Look
at Jacob. When he prayed, what happened?
The angel of the Lord showed up and said, I'm going to bless
you. Look what happened when Daniel
prayed. In Daniel chapter 9, God unfolded
the mysteries of the gospel to him in the future. When Cornelius
prayed, God sent a gospel minister to his house so that his household
could be saved. When Jesus prayed, God empowered
him to redeem the world. Luke chapter 22, 39 and 36. Loved
ones, a feast awaits you. A feast awaits you. So that's
mountain number two. Feast upon the triune God through
secret prayer. The first commandment directs
us to this. That's how we make God our God. Jonathan Edwards wrote a letter
to his son on May 27th, 1755. Jonathan Jr. had just turned
10 years old. And he was staying with the Makikan
Indians in New York because he had learned the language of the
Indians there and he had become quite proficient. Edwards' biographers
believe that Jonathan sent his son to live on this Indian settlement
for a time, thinking about his future missionary service. And
Jonathan Edwards wrote his son a letter, just turned 10 years
old. Dear child, though you are a
great way off from us, yet you are not out of our minds. I'm
full of concern for you. I often think of you. I often
pray for you. Though you are at so great a
distance from us and from all your relations, yet this one
thing is a comfort to us, that the same God that is here is
also with you. And though you are out of our
sight and out of our reach, you are always in God's hands, who
is infinitely gracious, and we can go to him and commit you
to his care and mercy. Take heed that you don't forget
or neglect him. Always set God before your eyes
and live in his fear, and seek him every day with all diligence,
for it is he and he only can make you happy or miserable.
as he pleases, and your life and health and the eternal salvation
of your soul and all your all is this life. And that which
is to come depends upon his will and pleasure." End quote. Edwards continues for a bit more
and then he signs it, your tender and affectionate father, Jonathan
Edwards. I think that is an amazing letter.
Can you imagine sending your 10-year-old son to an Indian
settlement in the 1750s? What things would you be concerned
about? I mean, other Indian attacks. I mean, war was brewing on the
continent. I mean, Jonathan Edwards himself
later died of a smallpox inoculation. There was disease everywhere. Would you so freely send your
son away? And if you did send your son
away, what would you write to him about? Edwards' words are,
his chief concern is not dangers of circumstances, his chief concern
was that his son would meet the triune God on a mountain regularly
and feast with Him. And I would press upon all of
us, loved ones, Edwards' same words here. Always set God before
your eyes, live in His fear, seek Him every day with all diligence,
for it is He and He only that can make you happy. Let's pray. Father, in our best moments,
we confess that only you and you only can make us happy. Not,
Lord, that you would bring us to another happiness, not that
we would use you as a stepping stone, like health and wealth
peddlers to some other riches, to some other physical blessing,
but Lord, you are our blessing. You are our God. You are our
Redeemer. And God, we thank you that you
have compared serving you and having you as our God to a feast
on the mountain. So Lord, help us. Help us to
be directed by your commandment here that we would do just that,
Lord. If we're not daily reading our scripture, Lord, help us
to recommit to that. Help us to put it in our schedule.
Help us to make a date with you where we would say, OK, at this
time during the day, I'm going to open up my Bible and read
it and commune with you. And Lord, help us to do the same
thing with prayer. Help us, Lord, to graduate from
childish prayers where we just ask for things. And help us to
graduate to where we're praising you and delighting in you and
where we're lifting your name up so much where we almost don't
have time to ask you for anything. Lord, help us to learn the secret
reward that you see when we pray, Lord, that you would give to
us a greater communion with you. We thank you, God, and we ask
all of these things through your Son by the Spirit, amen.
The Blessing and the First Word: The Directive Use of the First Commandment
Series Exodus
| Sermon ID | 10162423666668 |
| Duration | 44:53 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Exodus 20:1-3 |
| Language | English |
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