Exodus and the Kingdom of God (3)

​“I am the LORD your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees. I am the LORD your God. Keep my decrees and laws, for the person who obeys them will live by them. I am the LORD.” (Lev 18:2-5)
 
We’ve been talking about the kingdom of God for the past several weeks. Last time, we talked about how God faithfully achieved His covenant with Abraham and the two reasons He did so.
 
When God first called Abraham, God promised to give him the land that He would show him, make him a great nation, and bless him. Even though Abraham wasn’t faithful to the covenant, God was always faithful to it. Even when Abraham complained to God because he didn’t have children, God reaffirmed the covenant by showing Him the stars in the sky and promising him that his descendants would be numerous like the stars.
 
Abraham believed God, and God credited it to him as righteousness, which is the very blessing God wanted to give him, his descendants, and ultimately all people on earth through them. Then, God affirmed the covenant by making what’s called ‘the Covenant of the Torch’.
 
God told Abraham to bring some animals, cut them in half, and arrange the halves opposite each other. Then, God alone passed between the halves in the form of a burning torch while causing Abraham to fall asleep, which shows God’s strong will of not breaking His covenant but to be faithful to it even though Abraham and his descendants would not be.
 
While making the Covenant of the Torch with Abraham, God told Abraham that his descendants would be strangers in a different country and be enslaved there for four hundred years and that after that period of time, God would bring them to the promised land.
 
So, God promised to give Abraham three things—a nation, land, and a blessing—but He didn’t give them all to him right away.
 
One of the reasons is that “the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure” (Gen 15:16), which shows that the reason God delivered the Israelites from Egypt wasn’t only to give them the promised land but also to drive out evil practices in the land and build a nation where God’s will is done and His justice and righteousness flow like a never-ending stream.
 
These are the two reasons God delivered the people of Israel from Egypt. First, He wanted to save them from their slavery and suffering. Second, He wanted to drive out evil in the land of Canaan and build His kingdom there through His people. Salvation is a wonderful gift from God, but it’s not the end. It only marks the start of our new journey to live as people of the kingdom of God with the new identity He has given us.
 
When the Israelites left Egypt, God didn’t guide them directly to the land of Canaan. Instead, He made them live in the wilderness so that they could discover their true identity as His people. So He led them to Mount Sinai first to prepare them to be His holy people.
 
On Mount Sinai
1) God Gives His People His Law
God descended on Mount Sinai and taught the Israelites the laws they were now to follow as His people.
 
Exodus 19:16 and 18 says, “On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled… Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently” (Ex 19:16, 18)
 
God descended on Mount Sinai in thunder, lightning, fire, and smoke. The whole mountain shook, a trumpet sounded, and the Israelites heard God's voice echoing throughout Mount Sinai.
 
In the next chapter, Exodus 20, God gave the Israelites 10 commands that they were to follow called the Ten Commandments. The Israelites heard for themselves God’s loud voice proclaiming the commands, and they became so afraid that they told Moses to ask God not to speak directly to them.
 
Exodus 20:18-19 says, “When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” (Ex 20:18-19)
 
Moses responded, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning” (Ex 20:20)
 
We see in this verse why God was present on Mount Sinai in such a frightening and terrifying way. It was to cause the Israelites to fear God and revere Him so that they would keep His commands and not fall into sin.
 
God certainly wants to have an intimate relationship with His people. But what’s even more important than that was for them not to sin, because sin is the primary reason for breaking their relationship with God. Therefore, in the early stages of His relationship with them, God wanted them to fear Him more than feel close to Him.
 
What we know from this is the fact that intimacy with God is predicated on fearing Him. If we feel intimacy with God without any reverence for or awe of Him, it means that something is wrong in our relationship with Him.
 
That kind of intimacy will eventually dull and desensitize our hearts and cause us not to feel any fear that we should follow God’s word. But, if our relationship with God is based on fear of Him, we’ll experience true intimacy with Him that we have never had before.
 
This is the meaning of Psalm 25:14. It says, “The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant” (Ps 25:14, ESV)
 
So, today I want us to reflect on our relationship with God. If our fear of Him is missing, our first priority in our relationship with Him is to rebuild it. We can do that by constantly reading and meditating on the Bible and remembering who God is. God is a fearsome One.
 
We must not make the mistake of thinking and treating Him too easily by being deceived by the sense of closeness we feel with Him. It is good for us to have intimacy with God, but it must be based on our fear of Him.
 
That’s what we need to remember when we read His word. The reason God descended on the mountain in such a frightening way was to make the people of Israel fear Him and obey His word and not fall into sin.
 
On the mountain, God gave the Israelites many laws, but they can be summed up into loving God and loving their neighbors. The laws God gave the Israelites were very different from the practices of the surrounding nations.
 
The other nations worshiped many idols, but God required His people to worship and love Him only because He is the only true God. Those nations were sexually corrupt and that was an abomination to God.  So God told His people not to follow their evil ways but to follow the laws He was giving them.
 
Those nations had no laws to defend, protect, and provide for the weak and the marginalized, such as slaves, foreigners, orphans, and widows. But God asked His people to care for them and treat them well, remembering how He had delivered them out of Egypt where they were slaves.
 
God wanted to drive out evil practices and show His holiness through the lives of the Israelites. And that was only possible when they followed God’s holy commands. That’s the reason God continued to ask them to remember who He is and the laws they were to follow as His people.
 
God said on Mount Sinai through Moses, “I am the LORD your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees. I am the LORD your God. Keep my decrees and laws, for the person who obeys them will live by them. I am the LORD.” (Lev 18:2-5)
 
This was the first thing God did to make the Israelites His holy people. God wanted them to live lives that would set them apart from the Egyptians they had left and the Canaanites they would encounter by giving them laws to follow as His people.
 
This principle is applied in the same way in our lives of faith. Ephesians 2:1-3 describes the spiritual status we were once in before we believed in Jesus. We were dead in our sins and we followed the ways of the world and thus the ruler of the kingdom of the air, Satan. We were by nature deserving of the wrath of God because of our sins.
 
But God saved us through the sacrifice of His one and only Son out of His great love for us. And the purpose of His salvation is written in verse 10, in which Paul said, “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph 2:10)
 
We once followed the ways of the world without knowing that we were following the devil and heading to eternal death as a result. But God delivered us from our sins and gave us new laws and new principles to follow as His people. They are all written in the Bible.
 
In the Bible, we encounter new ways of life that we were never interested in before. They are what we need to make an effort to know and follow. No matter what we claim to be, we can never truly live as His people if we don’t try to know or follow His commands. As Jesus said, to love God is to keep His commands. His word is life for Christians. Keeping His commands is the only way we receive the life and blessings He has prepared for us.
 
As Moses said, “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed.” (Dt 30:15-18)
 
So, we shouldn’t be deceived by the devil’s sweet whispers telling us that we can still keep our faith without making an effort to know and obey God’s word. That’s just not true.
 
We should remember that the reason God saved us through Jesus Christ is for the greater purpose He wants to achieve through us. That purpose is to build His kingdom on earth where His will is done as it is heaven. The kingdom of God is wherever His people are, following His will under His sovereignty, which means that we can’t truly live as people of the kingdom of God if we ignore the importance of knowing and obeying His word.
 
But I’m not trying to say that our salvation depends on our obedience to God’s word. We’re not saved by our works, but by our faith in Jesus Christ alone. If it were possible for us to save ourselves by our good deeds, God wouldn’t have had to send His Son into the world and have Him die on the cross.
 
But God did send Jesus to the world because that was the only way for us to be saved from our sins and death. We’re only saved by our faith in Jesus Christ. That’s the most important principle that underlies Christianity.
 
At the same time, however, we must know that the doctrine of justification by faith alone doesn’t diminish or eliminate the importance of obedience to God’s word in any way. In fact, the opposite is true. The doctrine reinforces the responsibility or duty we have as His people to obey His law because that’s the foundation that truly enables us to obey God’s word, by overcoming our weaknesses and sinful natures.
 
The apostle Paul clearly demonstrates this truth in the book of Romans. As you may know, one of the reasons Paul wrote the letter to the church in Rome was because of the conflict between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians over the issue of observing the law as a critical condition for salvation.
 
Some radical Jewish Christians claimed that Gentile Christians had to observe all the laws including festival laws, ritual laws, food laws, and circumcision in order to be saved. On the other hand, some radical Gentile Christians likely insisted that they didn’t have to observe any law because they were saved only by their faith in Jesus.
 
It seems that Paul initially supports the latter view. He said, “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law” (Rm 3:28)
 
But a few verses later, Paul makes it clear that this principle does not mean that Christians don't have to keep God's laws at all. He said, “Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law” (Rm 3:31)
 
So, the point Paul is making is clear. Even though we’re saved by faith alone, the genuineness of our faith must be proven by our observance of the law because making us holy people who keep His commands is the purpose for which God saved us by sacrificing His Son.
 
God freely justified us through Jesus Christ to enable us to truly uphold the law, which means that if we don’t make any effort to know and obey God’s word as Christians, our claim that we are Christians turns out to be false.
 
As John said in 1 John 2:3-4, “We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.” (1Jn 2:3-4)
 
This principle becomes clearer in Romans 8. Paul said, “For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Rom 8:3-4)
 
Paul said that the law was weakened by the flesh, which means that we were unable to keep God’s word through our own efforts because of the sinful nature inside of us. We know what to do and what not to do, but we often find ourselves doing what we shouldn’t do and not doing what we should do. That’s how the people of Israel lived. They knew what they had to obey and follow, but they constantly rebelled against God by disobeying Him because of their sinful nature.
 
To solve this problem, God did two things. First, He sent His own Son in human flesh to be a sin offering for all our sins. Second, God sent the Holy Spirit who empowers us to follow His will. And the reason God did these two things is so that “the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us”.
 
It means that the reason God freely justified us through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ was to set us free from the huge influence of sin that we couldn’t resist on our own so that we may truly and fully meet the righteous requirement of His law by obeying His word. It means that, if we claim to be saved from our sins through Jesus’ sacrifice but neglect to know and obey God’s word, we make His sacrifice meaningless and we have false and dead faith, which can’t lead us to true salvation.
 
So, even though we all know this, I want us to be reminded of the importance of knowing and obeying God’s word one more time. We’re called not only to be saved, but to be people of the kingdom of God justified by Jesus’ precious blood and sanctified and empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring His kingdom on earth by obeying God’s word and following His will.
 
We sang the song ‘Made For More’ today. I listened to the song while I was driving to church for morning prayer and the lyrics just hit my heart. It says, “The cross of salvation was only the start.”
 
That’s true. Many Christians live their lives satisfied with the fact that they are saved, as if salvation is the end goal of their faith. But in the Bible, salvation rather marks the start of our new journey as people of God.
 
Just like how God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt where they had been enslaved to guide them to the promised land to drive out evil practices and build His kingdom there, God saved us with the purpose of making us His holy priests who build His kingdom on earth by following His way, not the ways of the world, and obeying His word.
 
As the lyrics say, we were made for more. We were chosen and set apart for more. That’s the purpose we’re to recover to truly live as people of the kingdom of God.
 
I hope and pray that all of us here in this room may realize this great purpose that God has for us so that we can be true kingdom makers on earth who are eager to know what God’s will is and follow it. Let’s pray.
 
 
[Prayer]
Dear Lord, thank You for giving us this opportunity to know about Your plan and Your will for us.
 
We thank You for Your wonderful salvation achieved by sacrificing Your one and only Son for us. You’ve set us free from our sins so that we no longer live in darkness but in Your kingdom of light.
 
But Lord, please remind us that the cross of salvation is not the end but only the start of the new life that You want us to live as Your people. Let us not be satisfied with the fact that we’re saved, but help us remember the purpose for which You saved us and called us so that we may live lives worthy of Your calling to be kingdom makers in the world.
 
Please fill us with the Holy Spirit so that we may have the desire to love Your word, the wisdom to understand it, and the willingness to follow it so that we may see and experience Your kingdom come in our lives.
 
We pray all these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
 
[Reflection Questions]
1) What do you think “the cross of salvation was only the start” means? What do you think God wants you to accomplish in the world by saving you through Jesus Christ?
 
2) What do you think is the relationship between keeping God’s word and being saved? Are they separate or are they connected? What is your attitude toward God's word nowadays?