your Bible and turn to Exodus 19. We're actually going to read all of the rest of Exodus 19. So we'll start in verse 7 and actually go to the end of the chapter. We're going to go a little deeper than your bulletin states. So Exodus 19 starting in verse 7. So Moses came and called the elders of the people and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him. All the people answered together and said, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. And Moses reported the words of the people to the Lord. And the Lord said to Moses, behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud that the people may hear when I speak with you and may also believe you forever. When Moses told the words of the people to the Lord, the Lord said to Moses, go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow and let them wash their garments and be ready for the third day. For on the third day, the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai and the sight of all the people. And you shall set limits for the people all around saying, take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death. No hand shall touch him, but he shall be stoned or shot whether beast or man, he shall not live. When the trumpet sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain. So Moses went down from the mountain to the people and consecrated the people and they washed their garments. And he said to the people, be ready for the third day. Do not go near a woman on the morning of the third day before I'm sorry, on the morning of the third day, there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him in thunder. The Lord came down on Mount Sinai to the top of the mountain and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain and Moses went up and the Lord said to Moses, go down and warn the people lest they break through to the Lord to look and many of them perish. Also let the priests who come near to the Lord, consecrate themselves. Let the Lord break out against them. And Moses said to the Lord. people cannot come up to Mount Sinai for you yourself warned us saying set limits around the mountain and consecrated and the Lord said to him go down and bring up and come up bringing Aaron with you but do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the Lord lest he break out against them so Moses went down to the people and told them so where we left off in the book of Exodus was that the people had arrived at the mountain of the Lord and The Lord is going to come down, and He's going to come down and give words to the nation just as He came down to give words to Moses on the same mountain at the burning bush back in Exodus chapter 3. And the account in Exodus 19, in the first six verses, God expresses what his view of his people is, the affection he has for his people. He really gives us an insight into his loving heart for his people. But beginning with verse 7, through the end of the chapter, we get another view of God. A view of God that is really the view throughout all of Scripture. A God of immensity. a God of greatness, a God of glory, a God of unspeakable majesty. But we also get insight on how we are to commune with such a God. How can we have any type of relationship with a God like that? And really, those are our two points this evening. The first is the God that is, and the second, the mediator we need. The God who is, and then second, the mediator we need. So first, the God who is. Really, Exodus 19 really boils down to two words. Two words that maybe we don't use a ton, but the two words are to describe God is God's eminence, his nearness, and God's transcendence, his superiority, his being a God that is beyond us, a God that is other, a God that is unapproachable, because he is so pure and glorious and holy and righteous and true. God's imminence and God's transcendence. First is imminence. Really some of this reaches back to verses four through six where God communicates these truths to his people. You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you will Indeed, obey my voice and keep my covenant. You shall be my treasured possession among all peoples for all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel. That last line talks about his transcendence or his eminence. These are the words that you are to communicate. Francis Schaeffer used to talk about God, that he was and he's not silent. He speaks, he communicates, he makes himself known. And here you have God not just making himself known, but making his affections known. Speaking tenderly about his people about how he feels about them. And he, if you see and once again, in verse seven, So Moses came and called the elders of the people and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded. God communicates, God comes down. Verse 9 talks about this reality. And the Lord said to Moses, behold, I'm coming to you. God condescends to come down and engage with his people. He doesn't have to, but he does. Now, we have to be careful that we don't make Mount Sinai his dwelling place. Mount Sinai is not a holy location. If you want, go travel there. Go spend some time there. You can even worship on Mount Sinai. But I can tell you that Mount Sinai is no more holy than Bogos Basin. Mount Sinai only becomes holy when God comes down. It's God's presence there that changes the mountain to God's holy mountain. But when God is not descending and being imminent to his people, it's just a pile of rocks. It's just like any other place in God's creation. It's not God's dwelling place. God dwells in the highest heavens. But in Exodus 19, God condescends to come to his people and to communicate to his people, to make himself known to his people, to be near. That's God's imminence. But our text is largely about God's transcendence. A God that is superior. A God that is beyond. And it really talks about it in multiple ways. The first way that it talks about God's transcendent is the thick clouds. Verse 9, verse 16 through 20. The second is through the warnings that he gives, verse 12 and 13, 21, 23, that they can't come near or come too near. And then third, a need for consecration, verse 10, verses 14, 15, verse 22. So now let's slow down and go back to those three. First, to the thick cloud. When God descends, He has to shield His glory. Because if He doesn't, they're dead. The thick cloud is a necessary protection for anybody that's remotely near. Why? Because God's glory is so incredible, that if they would try to pierce the cloud, the text says, dying they would die. Using the noun-verb construct to emphasize this is a real threat. Your life is in danger if you try to peer and get a glimpse of the Almighty. The thick cloud. covers His glory. But it goes on to talk about that as He comes down in the thick cloud, the very mountain trembled. If a lifeless mountain trembled at God's presence, how much more us Deuteronomy 33.2 says, The Lord came from Mount Sinai and dawned from Sierra upon us. He shone forth from Mount Paran. He came from the ten thousands of holy ones with flaming fire at his right hand. We already read. from Psalm 97, we're saying from Psalm 97, that God comes with thunder and lightnings and the mountains shake. And actually Psalm 97 say that the mountains melt like wax at the presence of God. See, it's about God's immensity, his transcendence. If you are a C.S. Lewis fan and you've read the Chronicles of Narnia, this is what C.S. Lewis is capturing in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when the beavers are talking with the Provence children and describing Aslan, the great king that personifies Jesus Christ, and they find out that he's a lion. And Lucy says, well, is he safe? And the beavers say, safe. Of course he's not safe. But he's good. See, what happens is we flippantly use the word awe and awesome. But there's a moment to use it. There's a time to pull it out of your back pocket and say, this is the moment I play my awesome card. To be awesome means that you inspire awe. This is inspiring awe. God comes down. and his creation can't handle it. The mountains shake, the clouds, the thunder, the lightnings, because God is here. God is present. That's a God that is worthy to be worshiped. But safe? No, no, warnings are given. It's as if God has his yellow caution tape and he's wrapping it around the mountain. And in our society today, yellow caution tape means nothing. But it was life and death here. Calvin writing about this would say that all of these warnings are necessary because of the perversity of man's heart. that despite the warning, despite the call to say, don't go near, don't try to get a glimpse of the Almighty, because you're going to die. Calvin's going to say all of this is necessary because the sinful human heart is going to do what it's not supposed to do. How do we know that? Well, you can just take a couple of examples, can't you? Leviticus 10, Nadab and Abihu. They found out God was awesome. not to be trifled with as they offered up inappropriate fire in worship. Uzzah, helping with the ark, found out about God's awe and awesomeness as the cart stumbled that the ark was on. He reaches out and steadies the ark and dies in its tracks. Why? Because he touched the very thing that symbolized the presence of God. which he had no right to do. R.C. Sproul would say he foolishly thought that he was less sinful than the earth that the ark would have fallen upon. Sinful man must be careful before a holy God. And third, we see that God's transcendence because of the constant call to consecrate the people, to set aside for holiness. Paul writes of this in 2 Corinthians 7 or the same theme when he says, since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. An old commentator by the name of Henry Law would write, pause before Sinai and weigh well your need for cleansing before you meet God. There's a problem here, isn't there? The call is to consecrate themselves, to be set aside, to purify. It's a bugger though, isn't it? Because they're not pure. So how will they meet such a God? Maybe a better question is this. How will you meet such a God? We see God hasn't changed. This is God. This isn't God of the Old Testament, and all of a sudden He became nice in the New Testament. If you wonder about that, all you have to do is read Hebrews 12, that makes reference to this very event. And after comparing Mount Sinai to Mount Zion, it says this, therefore, Let us be grateful receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe. Why? For our God is a consuming fire. Words matter. Tenses even matter. The text doesn't say. that God was a consuming fire. If there was a different God in the Old Testament, the text would have to agree with that assessment, that God was a consuming fire in the Old Testament, but no longer. Now he's nice. Now he's domesticated. Now he's kind. No, he still is and always will be a consuming fire. So what do we do? What do we need? What we need is our second point, a mediator, the mediator that we need. As I said several weeks ago, when we enter into the Old Testament text, what we need to ask ourself is, what is this story? What is this narrative telling me about God? But more specifically, what is this story? What is this narrative telling me about Jesus Christ? And in our text, we have a type of Christ. Something that is pointing us to the person and work of Jesus Christ. And what is pointing us to the person and work of Jesus Christ is Moses. See, what our text is trying to convey is that outside of a mediator, there's only fear in approaching God. left to ourselves in our sin, we will be afraid and should be afraid to be in the presence of God. I don't want to preach next week, Sunday sermon tonight. You also don't want me to preach next week, Sunday morning sermon. tonight. However, we're getting ready to enter into Genesis chapter three with the fall of Adam and Eve. And after they eat the fruit that they were forbidden to eat, what happens to them? They're afraid. Because the Lord is coming. The Lord is coming into the garden, and they're afraid because now They have to enter into the presence of the almighty, holy, and pure God as sinners. And what do they do? They hide. Which was the most reasonable thing to do. And what we'll see is there's a mediator in Genesis 3 too, isn't there? but there's a mediator here too. It's interesting when you look at verse 16, it tells us that the people trembled. Can you picture the scene? I hope you have it right in your mind, right? They're before this mountain, thick cloud, thunder, lightning, wind, I mean, it's a storm. But then the trumpet, who's blowing the trumpet? They get louder and louder and louder. I don't think they sent, like they used to in Memorial Day services when I was growing up, a trumpet player up into the hills to play taps when the guy down here was playing, they had another guy up in the hills playing taps. I don't think they sent somebody up in the hills to blow the trumpet. I think God brought his own band. And the sound is just echoing and getting louder and louder, and they're afraid of trembling. And it's interesting, it's not as if Moses was fine with the moment. Hebrews 12.21 says, Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I tremble with fear. But what happens? Even though they're afraid, what does Moses do? He brings them to the foot of the mountain because his trust and his faith is greater than his fear. But the text is establishing how can a sinful people engage with a holy God? Through a mediator. Did you notice in the text that every time God speaks to Moses, Moses speaks to the people, the people speak to Moses, Moses speaks to God. God speaks to Moses, Moses speaks to the people, the people speak to Moses, Moses speaks to God. God and the people are not communicating directly. Why? Because there has to be a mediator. And the mediator in this case is Moses pointing us forward to Jesus Christ. It's interesting that twice in the text it says that God commanded Moses to consecrate the people. Wait, Moses is consecrating the people? How is that happening? What does that even mean? I think we know based upon where we've been. So if you flip back to Exodus chapter 13, verse 1, God has given this directive to Moses before about consecrating something. In verse one, it says, the Lord said to Moses, consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the wound among the people of Israel, both a man and a beast is mine. Well, how did Moses consecrate to God all of the firstborn? Well, skip down to verse 11. When the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, As He swore to you and your fathers and shall give it to you, you shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb. All the firstborn of your animals that are male shall be to the Lord's. Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with the lamb, or if you not redeem it, you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem. And when it's your time to come, And when in time to come your son asks, what does this mean? You shall say to him by a strong hand, the Lord brought us up out of Egypt from the house of slavery for when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of animals. Therefore, I sacrifice the Lord, all the males that first opened the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons, I redeemed. What does it mean to consecrate the people? It means to offer sacrifices for them. Not only were we introduced to a mediator, we were introduced to a sacrifice that provides propitiation for a holy God. Isn't it beautiful? See, what the modern church is doing is they want to lower God. They want to hide the God that is. They want to make him more marketable. They want to make him kinder and nicer and more gentle and domesticated. That's their answer to the issue of how can I as a sinful person be in the presence of a holy God? And so what you do is you diminish God's transcendence. You bring him down. You lower his holiness and our tax and what Hebrew 12 is saying, don't touch who God is. God is who he is. Never changing, never compromise in his glory and majesty and holiness. Let God be God. But let Jesus Christ be Jesus Christ. When we uphold God's holiness, what it means is that we begin to truly embrace the wonder of the work of Jesus Christ on behalf of lost sinners. We don't have a prayer to be able to come into the presence of God on our own, but in and through Jesus Christ, we're brought near. We can have fellowship. We can have communion with that God. It's amazing. It's the gospel. And we get a picture of it here. And we'll get another picture next week. When we begin working through the fall of man. And what it takes for God to reconcile rebellious sinners. It's not just lost sinners. It's rebellious sinners. And God's saying, I can make a way in and through my son. Through the mediator. I want to just close by reading through Hebrews 12, which is really the New Testament commentary on our passage. So if you turn to Hebrews 12, earlier in chapters 8, hand, it speaks of the work of Christ. Christ's work as a mediator, giving of his body to provide for the forgiveness of sins for his people. Then in chapter 12, starting in verse 18, it says, For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them, for they could not endure the order that was given. If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned. Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses says, I tremble with fear, but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and to immeasurable angels in festal gatherings and to the assemblies of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven and to God. the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. 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. And at that time, his voice shook the earth. But now he has promised yet once more, I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens. This phrase yet once more indicates the removal of all things that are shaken. That is things that have been made in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. And thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe. For our God is a consuming fire. What the author of Hebrews is saying is God shook a mountain once long ago, a mountain we call Mount Sinai. But to borrow a phrase, we ain't seen nothing yet. There's a day when He's coming again, when He will actually unveil all of His glory. And it won't just be the earth that shakes. The very heavens will shake as the Lord unveils His glory. But our text tells us that there's a place of safety. A place that won't be touched. A place that won't shake. And that is those that are in Jesus Christ, the mediator. Those that are covered with his precious blood. Those that are near to God. Exodus 19 wants you to move towards that mediator and be found in him so that you can be near to God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for who you are and who you've revealed yourself to be. We thank you that you are a God that is immense and incredible and majestic and glorious and holy and righteous and true. That also draws sinners to yourself that purchases them with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. so that we don't have to encounter God in all of His awe and glory, but that we come to Him in His tenderness and love and grace and mercy, because we have a mediator, and that we're found in Him and safe in Him. May that be true for all that are here, that they're safe in Jesus Christ. Father, we ask and pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen.