Two Mountains: One Mandate

0 · Announces the sermon series on the Ten Commandments and frames the day's focus: not the commandments themselves yet, but the setting in which they were given

Our kids to children's ministry. And if you'll open your Bibles to the book of Exodus, we're in chapter 19 today. Exodus, chapter 19. We are beginning this sort of miniseries in which we'll focus on the Ten Commandments over the next 10 weeks. And what we'll do today is look a little bit at the first commandment, but we really need to pay kids careful attention to the setting in which the law is given, in which the Ten Commandments are given. There's a lot of attention in the text, actually, not just to the Ten Commandments themselves, but to the environment in which they were given, the scenery in which the Ten Commandments were given.

1 · Describes the terrifying theophany at Sinai — smoke, fire, lightning, trumpet, and a divine warning not to approach or die

I read one part of that to you as we were standing together. This idea that the mountain was full of smoke. It said it smoked like a kiln. The fire of the Lord had descended on this mountain, and it was just this. There was lightning. Have y' all seen those videos of a volcano where there's lightning coming out of the volcano? It's something like that comes to mind. Something terrible, something gloomy, something very frightening, but also just glorious at the same time. And the great concern of the text is, tell the people not to draw near because the Lord has descended on this mountain and. And if they draw near, they'll die. We see again after the Ten Commandments are given. In verse 18 of Exodus 20, we see this. This is right after the Commandments are given. Now, when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, you speak to us, and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us, lest we die. Moses said to the people, do not fear, for God has come to test you that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin. The people stood far off while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.

2 · Introduces Hebrews 12:18-24 as the interpretive key to Exodus 19

And so I don't want to go too far into this conversation about the Ten Commandments without doing a bunch of work that sort of lays out sort of the fundamental scenery that's involved here. We've got this terrible, smoky, fiery, dangerous, deadly trembling kind of scene set before us. And what do we do with that? Why does the Bible tell us about this? What do we do with it? What are we supposed to think about this? And so on and so forth. Well, we have a text, just like we did last week. We have a text in the New Testament that tells us how to think about this. Stuff. And we can look there in Hebrews 12:18. If you'll turn in your Bibles to Hebrews 12:18, we've got a New Testament text that tells us how to think about this scenery that we're told about in Exodus 19:20. So look at Hebrews 12:18, 24. In Hebrews 12:18 24, we have 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. So here we have a New Testament commentary on this Old Testament moment that we read about just a moment ago. You have not come to the same kind of mountain that you came to before that the Hebrews came to in the Exodus. You've 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 heavens beg that no further message 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 said, I tremble with fear. So that's how the writer of Hebrews is summarizing what we just read in Exodus. Seems fair, seems accurate. It's the same thing we just read. But he says, you haven't come to that mountain if you're in Christ. You've come to a different mountain. Look at verse 22 of Hebrews chapter 12. But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly 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.

3 · Proposes the sermon's controlling typology: two mountains across redemptive history (Sinai/Horeb and Zion/Jerusalem), both sites of divine descent but representing two fundamentally different covenant experiences

So what we've got here is throughout all of redemptive history, we've got two mountains put before us. And one is called Sinai. It is also sometimes called Horeb. And then the other mountain is called Zion, or sometimes called Jerusalem. So we've got two mountains, and they're both mountains that God has descended upon. All right? And we want to get a sense for why we're given the data we're given in Exodus 19. Why are we told about the smoke and the thunder and the lightning and everything else? And one of the answers to that is so that the writer of Hebrews could later say, there's a different mountain in this different covenant. And unlike the old mountain, this one is not terrifying. Okay, so do you see that? You've got two mountains in biblical history, Sinai. And you've got Zion, two mountains.

4 · Word study on Sinai/Horeb (thorny, hateful, dried up, devastated) versus Zion/Salem (permanence, peace)

Now, let's look just at the meaning of these words. Okay, first of all, so we've got the Old Covenant, which is the law represented with this one mountain, Mount Sinai. And the word Sinai means thorny. It can even mean hateful. It carries the idea of harshness. Okay, so Sinai means harshness, thorniness, hardness. The word horeb, which is also sometimes used to describe this particular mountain where the Ten Commandments was given, is the word that means to be dried up, to lay waste, to devastate, something like that. So that's what Sinai means. Thorny, hateful, dried up, devastated. Well, that's kind of what we just read. It was this terrible kind of experience for the people that were there. When they heard the voice of the Lord, they immediately said, no more. Please just talk to Moses and he'll let us know what you had to say. We can't even bear to hear what you're saying. And that's representative of the Old Covenant, the law. And what does the New Covenant have for us? Well, the word Zion means permanence, marker, monument. And then Jerusalem, the word Salem, it means peace. And so you've got these two different pictures of the program that God has set before the world. The first is the Law, which is the place of trembling. It's the place of harshness. It's the place, place of trial and difficulty, where you stand before God's righteous requirements and you don't pass, you don't measure up. And then the second mountain, Mount Zion or Mount Salem, is the place of permanence and peace. It can't be shaken because everything's been satisfied. The second covenant is the covenant of satisfaction.

5 · Asserts the necessity of passing through Sinai to reach Zion — both geographically in the Exodus narrative and spiritually in Christian conversion

Now, one of the things that we should understand is that you have to move from one mountain to the other. If you are a Christian, if you think you're a Christian and you've never actually been undone and utterly kind of stripped away of all of your righteousness and really trembled before the Lord and realized, I am not a good person and I have to. I cannot stand in the day of judgment on my own accord, then you haven't been to Mount Sinai. And of course, in the story, which is a theological principle carrying through the story, you have to go through Sinai to get to Zion. Does that make sense. You have to. Like in the story, you have to go. God's leading them home to the promised land, to the place of grace. The promised land is typified by vineyards you did not plant, cities you did not build, so on and so forth. It's a place of unmerited favor. It's a place of peace. But to get to that place, you have to stop at Sinai and get your face peeled off with the law, right? Like there's really no other way to do this.