Turn in your Bibles to the book of Exodus, chapter 20. We've been here for a couple of Sunday evenings, and now we come to the end of the chapter. We're really moving into the detail now. What has preceded this has been the summary document of the Old Covenant. And we get to this very interesting passage in verse 22 and following down to the end of the chapter. And when I was coming into the study and first thought about the end of the chapter here, I really didn't think it had a whole lot to say. As is often the case when you slow down your study of the Word of God, you find many treasures there that just need to be unpacked, and I trust you'll be blessed as a result of that and as a result of the study that I have undertaken. The ESV has put a title on top of this short portion of God's Word, Laws About Altars. I've just taken my title from one little clause in this text, an altar of earth, and that is rich if you meditate on it for any length of time and if you link it to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. So all that is a little bit of preamble. Now let's read the text and pray again and then enter in. So the Word of God, Exodus chapter 20, beginning to read at verse 22. And the Lord said to Moses, thus you shall say to the people of Israel, you have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold. An altar of earth you shall make for me. Sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you. If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it, you profane it. And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it. This is God's word, and we thank him for it. Let's pray. Indeed, Heavenly Father, we have already prayed. Speak, O Lord, as we come to You to receive food from Your holy Word. We do pray that it would shape us. We do pray that we would be amazed at Your great condescension in bringing us into relationship with You through the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that this Old Testament text, this Old Covenant text would just cause us to marvel at that relationship and at the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. If you've ever been to my house, I've got a little place downstairs. There's kind of a landing down there. I've got a bookshelf, and on the bottom shelf are all these little kids' books. I began collecting some kids' books long before any grandkids came into the picture because I had that expectation that eventually I would be sitting down in that nice big chair reading to them from some of these books. One of my favorite kids' authors, and this is totally outside of things like arch books or Bible stories, was Bill Peat. Anybody remember Bill Peat? He was an illustrator for Disney, and he broke away from Disney, and he started writing kids' books like A Huge Herald. And I've had a collection of these books, and every time Christmas comes around, I've got on my Amazon wish list some books by Bill Pete that I don't have yet. And one of the ones that I don't have yet is The Ant and the Elephant. They're wonderfully illustrated. They're stories with really good morals, often morals that we can find links to in the Scriptures. You can probably guess what The Ant and the Elephant is all about. It's all about a really unusual relationship and a really surprising relationship and a friendship between this tiny, tiny creature and this very, very large creature in God's creation. And I don't have to detail the rest of the story for you to figure that out from the title. But as I was thinking about what's going on here in the text, and then just God's condescension on Mount Sinai, and this entering into covenant with the people of Israel, I thought, this is so much like our God, although this doesn't compare at all to that kind of condescension. And I wondered to myself, and I asked this question to myself, are you amazed that you have a relationship with the living God by His grace and through the finished work of Jesus Christ alone. It is an unlikely and surprising friendship of these two parties, ourselves as human beings and the living God who created us. And I think we cease to be amazed at this unlikely relationship and friendship for a couple of reasons. Number one, what we often do is we tend to make God really small. We understand from the Bible that God is imminent. Yes, He is close by. He is a friend that sticks closer than a brother. But we don't think of Him too much as that transcendent creator of the entire cosmos, do we? And I think we need to always strive for that balance between His imminence and His transcendence. The second issue, why we are not amazed at this relationship, is we make ourselves quite big. We make ourselves altogether worthy of God's affections. And we need, brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, to be governed by the truth of God's revealed Word as it relates to who He is and as it relates to who we are. And when we do that, we're in the Word, we're seeing the gospel all over the place, we will be gobsmacked at this relationship, I am convinced. When we come to passages like we have in our morning series in John chapter 4, and we read a phrase like, God is seeking worshipers, that should just really arrest us. This God is seeking worshipers. This God is seeking relationship. He doesn't need that relationship to bring Him more glory, but He is seeking it nonetheless. It is a marvelous thing to consider and think about and meditate on our relationship with the infinite God, the triune God of the universe, and how that relationship comes about through the life and the death of His Son. Well, I think this passage of Scripture is going to help us in all of that, I hope. But we need to remind ourselves of where the book of Exodus is and what it is all about. So what's it all about? Again, it's a salvation story. It relates the story of Israel's redemption from bondage in Egypt. Not only that, but it also relates the story of the covenant that God initiates, the triune God, with the people of Israel. And you see these two parts being reflected in the entire book. But now we've got to place that book on God's timeline of redemption. We know it is in the Old Testament. We know that it is pointing forward to something, that it is a story that prefigures the greatest of all salvation stories, our redemption from sin and death through the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, His life and His death. And of course, if you're reading that story in the Gospels, You see, Exodus themes are even being picked up by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. When He is on the Mount of Transfiguration, and He's speaking to His inner circle of disciples, or they're actually listening, and He's speaking to Moses and Elijah, they're speaking about the Exodus that He is going to accomplish in Jerusalem. So there's a term that Jesus picks up, and of course The Exodus in the Old Testament points to that greater Exodus, as does the covenant. It points forward to something greater than itself, the better covenant that is to come in the Lord Jesus Christ. We've covered in Exodus part one of the story, that salvation story, and we're in part two, the story of the covenant, which covers chapters 19 to 40. Chapter 19, you recall, it's kind of programmatic. You read it, and you get a sense of what this covenant is designed to do and what it's designed not to do. We have that picture of the people of Israel at the foot of the mountain, and God at the summit of Sinai, and they're not actually together. The Old Covenant does not accomplish that. It points us beyond itself, again, to that greater covenant. It never achieves God with us. Again, that's by God's expressed design to point His people to the need for something greater and better. Chapter 20, the first part of it, relays to us the covenant terms in summary. Again, just to sum up what we've dealt with over the last couple of Sunday evenings, we don't look at that and we say to ourselves, by these things we will live. We ought to be like the people of God in this. By these things we are undone. all those thou shalt nots, and having no other gods before me, we are undone by that. Nobody can attain these things, and it ought to cause the faithful of God to look beyond ourselves, beyond our own righteousness to a righteousness that is alien the righteousness that God would provide Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. So we get the summary in chapter 20. Then at the beginning, or at the end rather, of chapter 20, we get into the details, the covenant terms in detail, and that will bring us all the way up to chapter 24. So as we enter the detail, and as we enter the summary being fleshed out, what do you think God's first words of detail to Moses are going to be about? We've got the summary document. What's commandment number one? Anybody? Thou shalt have no other gods before me. So the first part of the detail is obviously going to be about that. It's all obviously going to be about worship of the living God. So you've got in the summary, you shall have no other gods before me, in verse 3, and in the detail, an altar of earth you shall make for me. Don't worship anybody else besides me, and now here is God accommodating that worship. We're not surprised at this. We can't just gloss over this as if it's something insignificant. This is the first detail, very significant what happens in these few verses. These first words of detail are all about the worship of God and God seeking and accommodating the worship of His people and prescribing the way so that they might be blessed. And the way, it's all about altars. all about altars. So we're going to get to that, see what God instructs, see what He prescribes, and see in that something of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. But you've got to recall the scene. Moses is on the mount. People are down below, and he has approached the Lord in the thick darkness as the mediator of the people. We saw that back in verse 21. And notice before the Lord instructs Moses as to how the people are to worship Him, He reminds them of the extraordinary reason. Look at verse 22. And the Lord said to Moses, thus shall you say to the people of Israel, you have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. Extraordinary. I have talked with you from heaven. In the book of Nehemiah, this is recorded. You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments." Nehemiah 9, 13. God says, you have seen that I have done this. That word to see means to perceive. So let's expand on this. What did the Israelites see or perceive? What did Moses see or perceive? They saw this, that the invisible God, The holy God, the thundering God, the fear engendering God, the creator God takes the initiative in this relationship. He reveals himself and he speaks, and in that he deigns, he condescends to have fellowship with his creatures so that they might know in that relationship with him, Trinitarian joy, all-surpassing joy and life to the praise of His glory. Matthew Henry at this point comments, such was his wonderful condescension, much more than for some mighty prince to talk familiarly with a company of poor beggars. Or we could say this, much more than an elephant than with an ant. It is amazing to consider. Now, not surprising, that leads to repeat of command number two, which we found in verse four. God says, you shall not make gods of silver to be with me, or, another translation, to be alongside me, or, as another translation said, no rivals. Nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold." Now, why the reiteration in the detail? Well, it may have been because of Israel's proneness to fashion idols, and it may be a little bit of a preview of chapter 32 of Exodus, and you know what happens there. They fashion an idol. Moses lingers on the mountain. They prevail upon Aaron. Aaron, in his weakness, condescends to their request, and they build a golden calf. And Calvin Himself said that the human heart is indeed an idle factory. But in the immediate context, God has said He has spoken, and He has demonstrated that He is with them, and they have seen it, and therefore there is no need to fashion anything to represent Him. To quote Matthew Henry again, he had given them sufficient demonstration of his presence among them. They needed not to make images of him as if he were absent. So that's all preamble. It's important preamble. God is. He has revealed himself to a people in speaking. He seeks their worship. The Lord now moves to instruct how it is his people, his sinful people, can meet with him, a holy God who is a consuming fire. Again, it's all about altars. So I want us to notice two things about these altars, these prescribed meeting places of worship with God. Number one, and point number one, they are places of substitutionary sacrifice. And number two, they are places almost wholly bereft of any kind of human effort. So number one, places of substitutionary sacrifice. This is verse 24. Let's read it again. In just the first part here, an altar of earth, God says, you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt or your ascension offerings and your peace or your fellowship offerings, your sheep and your oxen. So that wouldn't have been a surprise to the people of Israel. Altars do not appear at this point in redemptive history as something new that just breaks on the scene. Well, what's that? What is an altar? The place of meeting with God through the death of a substitute had been an institution from the beginning." Now, how can I say that? Class, where do you get a hint of it, though not expressly? The garden? And where exactly in the garden? What does God do for Adam and Eve? He makes clothes for them. There's sacrifice that happens there. And then in Genesis chapter 4, we get the boys doing something, offering sacrifices to God upon altars. So it's there right from the beginning. we can have relationship with the living God. It is through this place of an altar, this place of substitutionary sacrifice. And the pattern was followed repeatedly. You see it in Noah in Genesis 8.20. You see it in the patriarchs, in Abraham, Genesis 12, 7, Genesis 22, 9. We have it in Isaac, Genesis 26, verse 5. We have it in Jacob, Genesis 35, verse 1. And we even see it a little bit earlier on in Exodus in Moses himself after that victory over the Amalekites. They raise up Ebenezer, Exodus 17, verse 15. Hitherto has the Lord helped us. So when the Lord instructs the people to erect an altar of earth for Him, they know exactly what He's talking about. Now we're going to come back to the reason why the Lord instructed them to build an altar of earth. That's very interesting. What I want to focus on is this element of substitutionary sacrifice. This meeting place, this place of worship, this place of relationship prescribed by God is a place where a death has to occur. Look at it again. an altar of earth you shall make for me, and sacrifice on it your ascension offerings and your fellowship offerings, your sheep and your oxen." Notice the two offerings that were offered, ascension offerings. So a death occurs. But what was the ascension offering? One writer said the Hebrew name for this offering is Ola, which simply means to go up, to ascend, as a burnt offering would. So named because the focal point of this offering was the smoke that would rise up from the burning offering toward heaven. Heaven is in view. Relationship with God is in view. Now, note this. With most offerings, only part of an animal was burned up, and part was saved to feed the priest who offered it. However, the olah involved burning the entire animal, representing costly and total surrender to Yahweh. Do you detect in that some elements of the gospel of Jesus Christ? I hope you do. But not only that, peace offerings were to be offered, or fellowship offerings. To quote the same writer, the peace offering in Hebrew, I'm going to probably butcher this, zabak shalamim, gets its name because shalamim is the same root word as the Hebrew word for what? peace, shalom. And it gives us a visual depiction of the biblical understanding of shalom. In the peace offering, again, there's a sacrifice. There's a death that happens. The presenter keeps all the valuable meat. He shares some with the priest and then throws a dinner party for widows, orphans, and the rest of their family. Shalom is not just the absence of conflict, but the presence of relational harmony and abundance. So I find that really interesting. So you have an ascension offering, and then you've got an offering that issues in fellowship. So God, in essence, says, on an altar, kill oxen or sheep. This will satisfy Me, and this will issue in fellowship. broad ideas are being put in here in this Old Covenant detail by the Spirit of the living God that we might better understand what Jesus Christ has accomplished for us. Now some questions would naturally arise here. Within the Old Covenant, was this to be a temporary thing? Was it to be eventually replaced by the temple and its altar in Jerusalem? You have some differing opinions from commentators here. And certainly we could say that Jerusalem would be the place particularly where God would place his name and the people would meet with him. You see that in the second giving of the law in Deuteronomy 12 verse five. But I agree with this commentator who said, liberty was given to Israel to build and use altars in addition to the one at the central sanctuary. And this would explain Elijah's reference to the many altars in existence in his day. Of course, corruption had happened at some of those altars, but I believe that that allowance was made even when the central sanctuary was established at Jerusalem. So that question aside, the Lord continues. Now we're in the second half of verse 24. God says, in every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you. So an altar of earth you shall make for me, sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you. So what's he saying there? in every place where I cause my name to be remembered. That is, remembered in this prescribed way, by an altar of earth, wherein you sacrifice this place of death. I will come to you and bless you. And notice blessing here. No doubt everyone wanted to know and experience this blessing, goes hand in hand with God coming to them. It's all about relationship with the living God. And indeed, we understand that that is the greatest blessing in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is knowing God Himself in the person of His Son. It's true blessing, lasting blessing, and it cannot be experienced outside of knowing Him. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, in this way I will come to you and bless you." It's all about relationship. So point number one, these altars, these prescribed meeting places of God were places of substitutionary sacrifice. It's a place where a death has to occur. A death has to occur whereby we can have relationship with this God. Of course, we see this in the gospel. We have a relationship with God. We have blessedness through the substitutionary sacrifice, the costly death of Jesus Christ. We get a lot of ION words in Christian theology, and as we were looking at the Doctrine of Christ this morning in Foundations class, I introduced one of those ION words. It actually translates a Greek word. One Greek word, one English word, we find it in places like 1 John 4, 10. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. What does that mean? Well, propitiation is a sacrifice of atonement, a death that turns away the wrath of God, making God favorable toward us. And Jesus stood in our stead, and He suffered the penalty due our sins. Theologians call this penal, there's a penalty, substitutionary atonement. It is the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is right at the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is so, so important to understand. And yet all over the place, this is being swept away. And I want to read some quotes here. from several different writers, some writers now in glory and some still present, about the importance of this gospel, because this point of penal substitutionary atonement is always, always attacked. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, let's begin with him, the Prince of Preachers. He said this, if ever there should come a wretched day when all our pulpits shall be full of modern thought and the old doctrine of substitutionary sacrifice shall be exploded, then will there remain no word of comfort for the guilty or hope for the despairing. Hush will be forever those silver notes which now console the living and cheer the dying. A dumb, unspeaking spirit will possess this dying world, and no voice of joy will break the blank silence of despair. The gospel speaks through the propitiation for sin, and if that be denied, it speaketh no more. Those who preach not the atonement exhibit a dumb, an unspeaking, and a dummy gospel. A mouth it hath, but speaketh not." The good doctor next, Martin Lloyd-Jones. penal substitutionary atonement. This is the foundation, that man by nature is dead in trespasses and sins, that he is under the wrath of God. Unless you believe that man by nature is dead in trespasses and sins, and that there is such a thing as the wrath of God upon sin, whatever else may be true of you, you are not in this holy temple in the Lord in which God dwells. But thank God it does not stop at that. It goes on to tell us about the grace of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, His person and His work. It is by His death, by His sacrificial death, by His substituting Himself for us to bear the punishment for our sins that we are saved. It is by the blood of Christ. There are people who call themselves Christians who scoff at it. There are leaders in the big denominations who say that it is scandalous to talk about a substitutionary atonement. And I am asked to be one in fellowship with them? How can I be? It is impossible. I have no choice. This is fundamental, the blood of Christ. He bore my sins in His own body on the tree. It is by that alone that I am delivered." John Stott, now with the Lord. So penal substitution is not a theory of the atonement, nor is it even an additional image to take its place as an option alongside the others. It is rather the essence of each image and the heart of the atonement itself. His friend J.I. Packer, also with the Lord, he asked a question. Has the word propitiation any place in your Christianity? In the faith of the New Testament, it is central. The love of God, the taking of human form by the Son, the meaning of the cross. In saying this, we swim against the stream of much modern teaching and condemn at a stroke the views of a great number of distinguished church leaders today, but we cannot help that. Paul wrote, even if we or an angel from heaven, let alone a minister, bishop, college lecturer, university professor, or noted author, Should preach a gospel other than the one we preached you, let him be eternally condemned. And a gospel without propitiation at its heart is another gospel than that which Paul preached. The implications of this must not be evaded." Some living writers, too. John Piper. Well, not much more, he says, could be more important than the question of whether Christ was, in fact, a just and merciful substitute for sinners, so that when he died for his elect, he actually bore their punishment so that they can experience no condemnation. That is the heart of the Christian gospel. If that goes, everything goes. Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we perish. Last quote, Thomas Schreiner. The theory of penal substitution is the heart and soul of an evangelical view of the atonement. I am not claiming that it is the only truth about the atonement taught in the Scriptures, nor am I claiming that penal substitution is emphasized in every piece of literature, or that every author articulates clearly penal substitution. I am claiming that penal substitution functions as the anchor and foundation for all other dimensions of the atonement when the Scriptures are considered as a canonical whole. I define penal substitution as follows." And this is good. The Father, because of His love for human beings, sent His Son who offered Himself willingly and gladly to satisfy His justice. so that Christ took the place of sinners. The punishment and penalty we deserved was laid on Jesus Christ instead of us, so that in the cross both God's holiness and God's love are manifested." And I belabor all of that because of how vitally important it is. We ought to be comforted in that, as these writers indicate. No condemnation now, I dread. Jesus and all in Him is mine. He paid the penalty due our sins. Amen? It's glorious. You don't have that, and if you're just touting something like Christus Victor. It's a theory of the atonement. It is true, but it is not central. It is not central. This is what is central. Second point in our text, beyond substitutionary atonement, verses 25 and 26, places bereft of human effort. In a predominant way, we see this in both those verses. Verse 25, let's consider that one first. If you make me an altar of stone, God says, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it, you profane or defile it. So in the instructions, God seems to prefer, given it's the first thing that is mentioned, build an earthen altar or dig it out, seems to prefer earthen altars, but permitted unworked stone altars. So what do earthen altars and unworked stone altars have in common? Neither had a man's hand on them working them, for the most part. Why was that? This was so it could be seen that God and God alone had fashioned or created this meeting place with him. That's obvious in the text. One writer put it this way, God wanted his people to make altars of earth or stones, but he forbade them from getting fancy by using carved stones or gold or silver. They were to use only natural materials. They could use only what God had already created. Those earth and rock altars would not have been very impressive or attractive. Some craftsmen could have improved on the looks of those altars, so why didn't God allow them to? Quite simply, God's rules took the people's skills, their talents, their wealth, and their egos completely out of the picture. They couldn't show off. They couldn't make the sacrifice or altar about them or turn it into a competition about having a better altar than the people down the street. When the people came to worship, God did not want them to be dazzled by what they had done for God, but only by what God had done for them. It's glorious. Gospel right there in that little verse. You're going to make it out of rocks. Don't put a tool to it. You would defile it. You'd obliterate the type, the picture of the gospel that is to come. And he doubles it by continuing in his instructions. And this one's really strange. It's all about steps. And you shall not go up by steps to my altar that your nakedness be not exposed on it. We see steps all over the place, don't we, coming up to churches? It's created all sorts of problems for churches that were built kind of like back in the 40s and 50s, like this one isn't too bad, but you see churches like the old Eastern Orthodox Church on Exmo. Man, how many steps are there? And it really doesn't, really doesn't symbolize well what God condescended to do for his people. Let's talk about that a little bit more. The instructions here are very basic. You're going to build one of these altars? Don't make any steps up to them. They were to have no steps. Why no steps? And our text says why? That your nakedness be not exposed on it. So you're reading the commentaries on this, and they're really interesting. One commentator said, so there could be in the future no indecent exposure of the bodies of the priests. You know, you would see them going up on the steps, and you'd be standing back, and you would have to look away. I think there is more here than this. Having steps up to the altar optically would indicate that there is something man can do to get to God. God always demonstrates that you can do nothing to get to Him. He has to do everything for us to come to Him. Do you remember a little account that happened a little bit earlier on in the Pentateuch in the book of Genesis, Genesis chapter 11? That little story there that happened, all the people of the world got together and what did they try to build? A tower. God will have none of that. None of that. Don't try to get up to me. Don't try to make yourself as gods. Only I can do that. What about this bit about nakedness, exposing that? Well, listen to this. Listen to the argument here that I'm going to make. If steps were added to this construct of the altar, then man's falling short of God's glory, his sin, his nakedness would certainly be exposed by God, and he would be left undone. That's how I read the text. There, therefore, could be no steps. In mercy God instructs, let no display be made of any assent on Israel's part, for that would lead them to ruin. It's God who condescends to His people to bring them to Himself." Of course, that's a picture of the gospel and what Paul communicates. Jacob saw this in a vision, didn't he? A ladder going up to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it. And Jesus says, that's me. God condescends to bring us up. Paul communicates this in Romans 10, verses 6 to 9. The righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart, build steps. Who will ascend into heaven? That is to bring Christ down. That is not the righteousness based on faith. That is a kind of righteousness that's based on your own works. Nor does it say who will descend into the abyss? That is to bring Christ up from the dead. What does it say? The Word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. That is the Word of faith that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. We confess as Christians, no steps. Jesus did all the work. He is the one who brings us to God. So these altars, these prescribed meaning places of God, were places of substitutionary sacrifice, a place where a death had to occur, and they were a place bereft of any human effort or work. These places of blessedness were all of God's work. Let's wrap it up. And just consider that phrase once more, an altar of earth you shall make for me. This was the way God prescribed so that His people could approach Him and have relationship with Him and be blessed. And it comes to the full in the gospel of Jesus Christ. I just want us to focus as we close on that prescription of an altar of earth. It's the thing that God fashioned where a sacrifice, wherein a sacrifice was made. Let me read the text again. An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you. Any guesses as to what the Hebrew is for that word earth? Who was your first daddy? What was his name? Adam. The word here is adamah. It has the same root as the name of our first father, our first federal head that we were born under, Adam. And oh, the horror of being in him. Would you agree? As in Adam, all die. 1 Corinthians 15.22, but oh, the glory of the gospel of which the second Adam, our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God, testified before He came into the world. What did He testify? Hebrews 10.5, consequently, I'm going to read this in two different ways. When Christ came into the world, He said, "'Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for Me.'" Here's the second reading. "'Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have dug out for Me.'" Psalm 40 verse 6 is where that reference is taken from. Do we see then in this old covenant requirement of an altar of earth a foreshadowing of the provision God the Father would make in His Son so that we could have relationship with Him? God fashioned for His Son a body, a human nature. He dug out an altar of earth, as it were, so that He could be the second Adam, that through Him, through that altar of earth, through His sacrifice and death on the cross, our sins are atoned for, and we have fellowship with God. Glorious gospel. The account here all began with the reminder to Moses to say to the people, I've revealed myself, I have spoken. The writer of the Hebrews actually picks that up in thinking about the new covenant in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he says these words, and it's both for the Christian and for the non-Christian. See that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused Him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject Him who warns from heaven. This God who speaks desires relationship with us. It only comes through the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not refuse Him. Continue to believe if you're a believer. See in the altar of earth, in Jesus Christ, God's sufficient provision to have eternal life with Him. So the application, if you're not a Christian, believe, don't refuse Him, and be saved. The application for the Christian, continue to believe and rest in our sufficient Savior, and be saved to the uttermost. Well, amen. We thank God for His word. Let's pray together. Thank You, Heavenly Father, for Your Word, how rich it is. It is such a delight to mine it and find those riches. We pray that you would continue to be with us as we progress in this series and we come across some, well, they read us pretty strange things to us living in the 21st century, but we know your Word is an abiding Word. So be my help as I do that preparation that all of us might be encouraged in our walk with the Lord Jesus Christ, marveling, marveling at what he has done, marveling at his completely sufficient work, and marveling that we mere creatures, sinners, have been saved by your grace to have relationship with you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.