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We've been looking at the main covenants
in the Bible. We've talked about already the
Edenic, the Adenic, the Noahic, the Abrahamic, the Land Covenant,
the Davidic Covenant. We're in the midst of the Mosaic
Covenant and actually we're We've been looking at Moses' life in
preparation to go into the Mosaic Covenant. We came to the burning
bush, and we mentioned several things that happened at the place
where the burning bush was. Exodus 3.1 says, Now Moses kept
the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he
led the flock to the backside of the desert. Anybody remember
what the backside of the desert is? That's the what side? the
west side, because in the Jewish mind, east is always forward,
and so the back side of the desert would be the west side. And it
says, "...and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb." Now in
the Bible, when you see the word Horeb, and then you see the word
Sinai, it's one and the same. God uses it interchangeably.
So he's come to the mountain of God, even to Horeb, or Mount
Sinai. And verse 2 says, And the angel
of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the
midst of a bush. And he looked, and behold, the
bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And so
we looked last week briefly at some different highlights that
happened at Mount Sinai, or Mount Horeb, as far as in connection
with Moses himself. That became a special place for
Moses. First off, he meets God at the
burning bush, like we read, and then Moses in the rock at Horeb. Remember when they showed a visual
complaining because they were thirsty, and God had them go
out and strike that rock? Well, that happened at Horeb,
Exodus 17, 6. Behold, I will stand before thee
there upon the rock in Horeb. and now shalt smite the rock,
and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink.
And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel." So
he met God at that burning bush at Horeb. Moses and the rock,
when the water came forth, that was at Horeb. And of course,
he went up into the mount to get the law, Exodus 19, 17. and
Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with
God, and they stood at the nether part of the mount, and Mount
Sinai was altogether on the smoke." I like the way it says that the
mountain was having a smoke, you know, so, you know, you could
use that. Well, the mountain was smoking. But anyway, the
mount was on a smoke, and thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace,
and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet
sounded long and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and
God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down unto Mount
Sinai, and the top of the mount, and the Lord called Moses up
to the top of the mount, and Moses went up." So, Mount Horeb,
or Mount Sinai, was a special place in Moses' life. But today
we want to look a little bit at something else. We're going
to move into a specific phase, or a specific phrase, if you
will, of what's going on in Exodus chapter 3. And you can see it in verse 2,
it says, And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame
of fire out of the midst of the bush, and he looked, and behold,
the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. But
we go a little bit further, verse 4 says, And when the Lord saw
that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the
midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses, and he said, here
am I, that would be a good thing to answer God. But verse 5 says,
and he said, draw not nigh hither, put off thy shoes from off thy
feet, for the place wherein thou standest is holy ground. It's holy ground. So, when Moses went up to this
bush that was on fire, and God told him to take his shoes off,
and he said the reason he wanted to take his shoes off is because
the place he was approaching was holy ground. Holy ground. It was holy. Now, by the way, in the King
James Bible, the first time the word holy is used is right here. I mean, it's not used in Genesis
at all. You won't find the word holy in Genesis at all, at least
not in the King James Bible. Now there are some passages that
allude to holiness in fact if you Look up the first mention
of holy in the Bible And if you if you google it you may come
up with something that goes along with in Genesis chapter 2 in
Genesis 2 2 It says on the seventh day, you know after God had created
everything On the seventh day ended his work which he had made
and he rested on the seventh day from all his work Which he
had made and God blessed the seventh day and then here's a
word and sanctified it He sanctified it because that in it he hath
rested from all his work which God created and made." The Strong's
Concordance. Ever know what a Strong's Concordance
is? That's a good concordance to have. But the Strong's Concordance,
they did us a great favor. What they did is they numbered
all the words, all the Hebrew and the Greek words, so we wouldn't
have to learn Greek. and learn Hebrew. They numbered
them all. So we can just go to the numbers, you know. You just
go to the number and, oh yeah, there's that word. You don't
know what it says, because if you're not, if you can't read
Greek and you can't read Hebrew, you have no idea what the word
is. But you can find it, because they're all numbered. It's a
good system. Anyway, the number for the word
holy in the Old Testament is 6944. So there's 8,000 and some,
I forget exactly, but it's 8,000 and something words in Hebrew. And then sanctified is 6942.
I mean, it's right next to it, very, very close. And so it's
a very close word, but the word holy, the word holy, the first
time you find the word holy in the King James Bible is in Exodus
3. It's not used in Genesis at all.
I was kind of surprised by that when I was looking it up. I looked
up the word, and when I usually look up words, I look at it from
the Hebrew word, and then go look, because oftentimes in English,
the same Hebrew word is translated into a whole bunch of different
words. So I usually look at the Hebrew word, and I said, wow,
really? So I started looking at it, and
sure enough, the first time, The first time the word holy
is found in the King James Bible, at least if you start in Genesis
1-1 and start pushing through, the first time you find it is
in Exodus 3 verse 5. So, and if you stick with the
King James Bible, and I think you ought to, that would be the
first time the word holy shows up. So, all that said, here's
the crux, here's the root, here's the bottom line, if you will.
The ground was holy. The ground was holy and the reason
the ground was holy is because God was there You got to get
that in mind the reason how come the the ground was holy because
God was there And while we're here, I want to explore the holiness
of God for a bit. And some of this is going to
be kind of old hat for some of you. But if you'll just keep
with me through the end, maybe we'll show you something at the
end that maybe you hadn't quite thought of before. But God's
very presence, God's very attendance to this event, God's very proximity
to what's going on here makes this place, makes this plot of
ground, makes this parcel of land, it's holy because God's
there. God's presence shows up and it
becomes holy. Now, there's not anything innately
holy or intrinsically holy or inherently holy about this particular
ground. I mean, it's ground. It's land. So there's nothing particularly
holy about that land, but God's presence is there. And because
God's presence is there, it becomes a holy ground. So, Think with
me a little bit. Holy versus unholy. If we look
in the Bible, and we'll use some other illustrations as well,
but if we look in the Bible, it takes great pains to show
that there's a difference between holy and unholy. It takes great
pains. It goes in quite a detail. And we can just look at a few
verses to show the opposite position, or the opposing sides, or the
otherwise view, if you will, of holiness versus unholiness. In Leviticus 10.10, it's one
of the clearest ones, it says that, and that ye may put difference. The word difference there sometimes
is translated separated. Thank you. At least one person
was watching. Amen. So, sometimes that word
means separated, and so God is trying to put a division, a separation. He's trying to put some space.
He says that ye may put difference between holy and unholy. and between unclean and clean. So he's talking about putting
a difference, putting the dividing line, putting a difference between
holy and unholy. And notice it also connects clean
and unclean. between holy and unholy and between
unclean and clean. Leviticus 22.4 says, "...what
man soever of the seed of Aaron is a leper or hath a running
issue, he shall not eat of the holy things until he be clean."
and whoso toucheth anything that is unclean by the dead, or a
man whose seed goeth from him." And God is showing that there's
this difference between holy and unholy and clean and unclean. If a clean person touches an
unclean person or something that's unclean, then that person becomes
unclean. There's this difference, and
really God takes great pains to show the difference between
holy and unholy and clean and unclean. And I can read dozens
of verses that show this, but we'll be satisfied with a few
that we read. In fact, in the days of Israel,
particularly later on in the king's ages, lepers, they had
to cry, in Israel, they had to cry, unclean! unclean Unclean
when they're going through where there was people there because
everybody had back away. They weren't touching because
they were contagious They were catchy they had cooties
And they didn't want to get none, you know, so they're unclean,
unclean. Because it would pass from the unclean to the clean
if you did. So, again, there's this difference
between holy and unholy and clean and unclean. Here's a couple
earthy examples, if you will. How about influenza? That's been
big these days. I had the flu a month ago or
so. I believe my wife did, too. Let me ask you this, when a person
has the flu, and they did a swab on me and everything, and they
said, oh yeah, you got flu A, whatever that is. So, let me
ask you this, when you got a person with the flu, do you take them
and put them in a room full of healthy people so that the person
with the flu can get healthy? No. In fact, what they try to
do is they try to, you know, They diagnosed me with the flu
on Tuesday, so I went home and I started taking my Tamiflu like
I was supposed to. And by Thursday, I was feeling
pretty good, so I went back to work. My doctor saw me and said,
what are you doing here? Go home. They ran me off. I mean, they dissed me and sent
me home. I couldn't come back till the
following week. They sent me home. They didn't
want me around people. Why? Because I could contaminate
somebody. I was contagious. They wanted
me quarantined. So when a person gets the flu,
not only do we not put them around healthy people, we try to keep
them away from healthy people so the healthy people won't get
it. Because it's catchy. You follow so far? How about
a dog with a mange? I mean, they look bad. But let
me ask you this. If you see another dog with a mange, do you take
your dog over there to meet up with that dog with a mange so
that your healthy dog can make that unhealthy dog healthy? Call the parents and say, we've
got this dog over here with a mange. I don't want my dog to be getting
it now. Come and get this thing. Because it's contagious. You
treat the mange, but you separate the dog from the healthy dogs.
Because it's catchy. Communicable diseases. Years
ago, it must have been 30 years ago now, Brother Joe West, he
sponsored a protest, if you will. Joe West, by the way, is Larry
West's father. And Larry got diagnosed with
stomach cancer this past week. He had a PET scan done Friday.
He's supposed to meet with a physician sometime this week to decide
how they're going to proceed. But anyway, he had this protest,
a downtown gathering, an educational assembly. And what he was trying
to do, his idea was to educate folks. You say, what was he educating
about? You see, the news media and the
government, even city officials, were trying to make AIDS, AIDS,
a social issue. AIDS is not a social issue. AIDS
is a health issue. Because it's contagious. And
we don't want other people to get it now from what they tell
me I've done some reading about it and and I work with folks
and so Had to do some reading about it and evidently it's not
a very strong virus Now if you get it you're in trouble But
it's not a very strong virus and people that have it the the
health professionals They teach them how to clean all their stuff
and use a lot of bleach. I clean all that stuff off to
kill all of that virus. But he had this big meeting down
there and he was trying to raise awareness that AIDS was a medical
problem. It's a contagious problem. It's
a transmittable disease. It's not a social issue. It's
not a minority issue. It's a disease. And we need to
protect ourselves. That was the whole thing. It
was funny there, I forget how many people were down there,
but there was about a handful of folks on the other side, you
know, and I stayed away from them because I'm afraid they
might have AIDS. But the news media, they gave them just about
as much time as they gave the big gathering down there. But he was trying to raise awareness
to this idea that it's a health issue, not a social issue. When we do what they call bronchoscopies,
they take a flexible, lighted scope and go down in a person's
lung, and one of the problems with AIDS people is they get
pneumonias. And so they want to find out
what type of pneumonia it exactly is and how to treat it, so they
go down there and take samples. But anyway, you should see folks
when they go in there. I mean, they got booties on.
protect their feet, they got long gowns on to protect themselves,
and they're impermeable gowns, so that the person's stuff won't
get on them. They wear not only masks, but
they have shields. Years ago, we were in a bronchoscopy,
the guy didn't wear a shield, and he was looking in the scope,
and some saliva came back up in his eye. I said, oh Lord,
you better go get some, you better go get some bleach. He didn't
go wash his eye out and he didn't have any issues. But, but, you
know, hmm, wow. But, so we wear shields, I mean,
and we wear caps, I mean, gloves, I mean, we're, I mean, from top
to bottom. Because it's a disease and it's
communicable and we don't want to get it. So you getting the idea of this
unclean and clean? When clean and unclean are put
together, the clean does not make the unclean clean. Did you get that? When the clean
does not make the unclean clean, rather, the unclean makes the
clean unclean. Doesn't that make sense? 1 Corinthians 1533 says it this
way, be not deceived, evil communications, that means who you run with,
evil communications corrupt good manners. You need to stay away
from folks that don't have good character, because some of their
stuff will jump off on you, and you don't want that to happen.
the associations. We need to make sure our associations
are right. So, so anyway, so the holy versus
unholy. Second off, now let's go to God's
holiness. God is holy. He says that a number of times.
Isaiah 57 15, the first part of that verse says, for thus
saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity. What
a phrase. For thus saith the high and lofty
one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in
the high and holy place. God's holy. Isaiah 43, 15, I
am the Lord, your holy one, the creator of Israel, your king.
Leviticus 22, 32, neither shall you profane my holy name. And again, I can read dozens
of verses that say similar things or comparable things or related
things, but the idea is God is holy. He's hallowed. He's the high and lofty one.
He's the pure one. But there's a difference. See,
God tells us to be holy as well. But we can't be holy like He
is. He tells us to be holy. 1 Peter 1, 16 says, because it
is written, be holy for I am holy. Now, we can't be as holy
as God is. By the way, that's a quote from
the Old Testament, Leviticus 11. But God is totally holy. Now, He wants us to be holy,
He wants us to live righteously, He wants us to live a good life,
but we can never be where He is. There's three words in the
Bible that essentially mean the same thing, holy, sanctified,
and saint. And it's more so in the New Testament,
even in the Old Testament, holy and sanctified are used interchangeably,
and saint is in there, well, even in the Old Testament, Psalm
34, sing unto the Lord, O ye saints. of His and give thanks
at the remembrance of His holiness. So, even in the Old Testament,
but the words holy, sanctified, and saint, they essentially mean
the same thing. And it means to be set apart. And you've heard this before.
During the summertime, we oftentimes play softball on Sunday night.
And teams are chosen, but there's at least one position that's
set apart from everybody else. Brother Block, you didn't know
Brother Block. He's always the pitcher. He sets himself apart
as the pitcher. He's the pitcher for one team.
He's the pitcher for the other team. He likes to be in the middle
of everything so he can control the pace and control everything
that's going on. And so he likes to be in the
middle of it. And so he sets himself apart from the other
teams. He's by himself. He sets himself apart from all
the other folks there as being the only pitcher. So he set apart. Well, that's essentially what
that word means that holy being set apart You know when we get
saved or we're going the world's way and and we repent We change
and to change your mind about stuff and and look to Jesus and
start going now. We're going his way so it's this
change this setting apart and When we get saved, at that moment
that we get saved, God declares us holy, He deems us holy, He
decrees us holy, but we're still not holy like He is. In His sight
we're holy. And He wants us to be holy, personally
righteous, but we're still not like He is. Paul said this in
Romans 7, for we know that the law is spiritual. But I am carnal,
sold under sin. For that which I do, I allow
not. For what I would, that do I not. But what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would
not, I consent unto the law that is good, and so on and so forth.
But Paul had issues with this. He said there's some things he
wanted to do he didn't do, and things he didn't want to do he did.
And he says it's because of sin that resided in him. Well, if the great apostle Paul
struggled to be perfect, I believe we probably have maybe the same
struggle. So we can never be totally pure,
at least not this side of heaven. God tells us to keep ourselves
unspotted and separated from the world and separated from
bad influences, but we can never be like God. But God, He's holy
in a special sense, in a special way, in a special manner. You see, God cannot be influenced
or changed or tarnished with sin or tarnished with unrighteousness. While one of his characteristics
is holy, there's another characteristic we mentioned a little bit ago,
immutable. God doesn't change. He's the
same from one day to the next, immutable. That word immutable
means unchanging, invariable, unwavering, constant. He's always the same. One of
the hymns we sing, Abide With Me, I like one of the verses,
it says, Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day. Earth's
joy grow dim as glories pass away. Change and decay in all
around I see." It's about change and decay. Everything's changing.
Everything's, as we go, you know, we're getting older. My father's
90 years old. He's got issues now that he didn't
used to have when he was younger. Because we change. We all kind
of slow down. We all kind of decay. The world, all the world decay. But then the next line says,
O thou who changest not. O thou who changest not, abide
with me." God, He never changes. So God is holy and He's immutable,
so He can never be changed, or altered, or amended by sin. In fact, He did interact with
mankind, and He did intermingle with mankind, and He did intermix
with mankind, and still remained holy. Hebrews 4 15 for we have
not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings
of our infirmities But was in all points tempted like as we
are yet without sin So God doesn't and he walked amongst us. He
traveled amongst us. He tabernacled amongst us if
you will still without sin without transgression without iniquity
And by the way, that's why He can be our ransom and our redeemer
and our reclaimer. But God's holiness even goes
beyond that. He can't change. So He can stay
holy, but it even goes beyond that. So we talked about holy
versus unholy, and we talked about God's holiness. Now let
me mention this. Holiness transmitted. And this
is what's really important. Holiness transmitted. Not only
is God holy and immutable and unchanging and unwavering, He's
so holy that He can transfer some of His holiness to something
else. He can transfer it to someone
else. He can make us holy. He can make
us sanctified. He can make us acceptable before
God. The actual word for it, there's
a doctrinal term, a Bible expression. It's called imputation. Imputation,
here's the definition, is used to designate any action or word
or thing as reckoned to a person, thus in doctrinal language, the
sin of Adam is imputed to all of his descendants. It is reckoned
as theirs and they are dealt with therefore as guilty. The
righteousness of Christ is imputed to them that believe in him,
or so attributed to them as to be considered their own. And
our sins are imputed to Christ. He assumed our law place undertook
to answer the demands of justice for our sins. In all these cases,
the nature of imputation is the same. So you see all that? Adam's sin was transferred unto
us, all our sin was transferred unto Jesus, and then He transferred
His righteousness to us. He's so holy. He's so holy, not
only can not iniquity change Him, He can actually make other
things around Him and other people around Him holy. His presence
makes us holy. you know 2 Corinthians 5 20 says
now then we are ambassadors for Christ as though God did beseech
you by us we pray you in Christ did be reconciled to God for
he have now that he is God have made him Jesus to be sin for
us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him there's all that imputation stuff going on So God is so holy
that he can transfer that holiness to somebody or something else.
John Gill, he's one of the old time Bible folks And it says
for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground not that there
was any inherent holiness in the spot of ground More than
in any other which ground is not capable of but a relative
holiness on account of the presence of God here at this time and
was not permanent only while a pure and holy God was there
Now here's the real blessing You see, God transfers His holiness. Now, in our passage there, talking
about taking your shoes off because the ground's holy, He was transferring
His holiness to that ground at that moment. But when a person
gets saved, God moves in. Colossians 127, to whom God would
make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery
among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. When we get saved, He moves in.
And His presence makes us holy, acceptable unto God. He transfers,
He imputes His righteousness unto us so that we look righteous
before God. 1 Thessalonians 5, 23, and the
very God of peace, sanctify, set you apart, make you holy,
sanctify you wholly, and I pray God your whole spirit and soul
and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ. 1 John 3, 9, here's an interesting
verse, whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin. For the
seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born
of God." There's a place inside of us where God resides that
never sins. Ever. Because it's holy. God
made it that way. Because he moved inside. I got this stuff you've been
wondering what this is out here for. We'll say this is sin. Brother Smith knows exactly what
I'm going to do. I was going to have him do this today. I called him,
he didn't return my call. So I had to go on the internet
and find out how to do it by myself. So here's sin, you see, and this
is me. Nice and clean, alright? So if
I put a little in there, what happens is I'm not so clean anymore. A minute ago I would have been
glad to take a drink out of that cup. I don't think so anymore
because it's no good. But now here's Jesus. Here's Jesus and when Jesus comes, look at there, not only does
he take our sin away, he makes us holy. He transfers His holiness
to us and anywhere that God resides becomes that way. So God's holiness is not just
that He's holy and He's unchanging and that He's immutable and all
that stuff. He's so holy that He has a little bit extra and
He passes it on to us. He's able to pass that holiness
onto us. So the ground where Moses was,
it wasn't holy necessarily because it was just a piece of ground.
It was holy because God was there. God was there and He transferred
His holiness temporarily to that place. And thank God, God imputes
His righteousness to us at salvation. And if you ain't never been saved
yet, you need to get that way so you can be like that. Stand
before God without sin. So we're finishing up a little
bit early. My wife says, that's okay, you finish up late all
the time. So it'd be good for them to get out early once in
a while. I got other stuff about the motivation behind the commission
that Moses gets from God, but we'll save that for next time. And I hope you got something
out of that. The holiness of God. It's not just that he's
holy. He's so holy, he has extra. And
he can pass it off to somebody else, and he does us through
the doctrine of imputation. So, let's pray and we'll be done.
Father, I ask that you bless what's been said. Help us to
appreciate and be in amazement of your holiness and how you've
given it to us through salvation. If there's someone here that's
not saved, I pray that you'd bring them to you today. Bless
these folks. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
Mosaic Covenant, part 7
| Sermon ID | 319171136410 |
| Duration | 33:41 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday School |
| Bible Text | Exodus 3 |
| Language | English |
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