Covenant Renewal - Exodus 34

Good morning. All right, today I'll be reading Joel 2, 12 through 14. Give you guys a second. That's a Joel 2, 12 through 14. Yet, even now declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments.

Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and he relents over disaster. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God.

Thank you, Lord, for his word. We will continue in our Exodus series. We're in chapter 34, Exodus 34, so please turn with me to Exodus 34. And the context of this is right after the Lord finishes the instruction for the tabernacle, so that God would dwell among his people, almost like a return to the garden, the people very shortly after or even during this instruction, they commit idolatry by making a golden calf to worship.

And this breaks the covenant relationship with the Lord. And last week we saw the intercession of Moses in which he asked God to not only reveal himself, but also to reconsider, renew the broken covenant relationship.

And we are picking up here in which God is renewing the broken covenant relationship between Israel and himself. So, Exodus 34. And the Lord said to Moses, cut two tablets of stone like the first ones, and I will write on these tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke.

So be ready in the morning and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai and present yourself to me there on the top of the mountain. And no man shall come up with you and let no man be seen throughout all the mountain.

Let neither flocks nor herds feed before that mountain. So he cut two tablets of stone like the first ones. Then Moses rose early in the morning and went up Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him. And he took in his hand the two tablets of stone.

Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord, God merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation.

So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth and worshipped. Then he said, If now I have found grace in your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us as your inheritance.

And he said, Behold, I make a covenant before all your people. I will do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth nor in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.

Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I am driving out before you the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be a snare in your midst.

But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images. For you shall worship no other God, for the Lord whose name is Jealous is a jealous God. Lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods and make sacrifice to their gods, and one of them invites you and you eat of his sacrifice, and you take of his daughters for your sons and his daughters play the harlot with their gods and make your sons play the harlot with their gods.

You shall make no molded gods for yourselves. The Feast of Unleavened Bread you shall keep. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you in the appointed time of the month of Aviv, for in the month of Aviv you came out from Egypt.

All that opened the womb are mine, and every male firstborn among your livestock, whether ox or sheep. But the firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, and if you will not redeem him, then you shall break his neck.

All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem, and none shall appear before me empty-handed. Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest.

And you shall observe the feast of weeks and of the firstfruits of the wheat harvest and the feast of in-gathering at the year's end. Three times in the year all your men shall appear before the Lord, the Lord God of Israel, for I will cast out the nations before you and enlarge your borders.

Neither will any man covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year. You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven, nor shall the sacrifice of the feast of the Passover be left until morning.

The first of the firstfruits of your land you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk. Then the Lord said to Moses, write these words, for according to the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.

So he was there with the Lord for 40 days and 40 nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water and he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. Now it was so when Moses came down from Mount Sinai and the two tablets of the testimony were in Moses hand when he came down from the mountain.

Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. So when Moses and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone and they were afraid to come near him.

Then Moses called to them and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned to him. And Moses talked with them. Afterward, all the children of Israel came near and he gave them as commandments all that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai.

And the Moses had finished speaking with them. He put a veil on his face, but whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would take the veil off until he came out and he would come out and speak to the children of Israel, whatever he had been commanded.

And whenever the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses face shown that Moses would put the veil on his face again until he went to speak with him. This is the word of the Lord.

Let us pray. Father, we are so thankful that you are a God who reveals himself. And when you do reveal yourself, that your character, your attributes are so wonderful and marvelous that you would be the merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and truth.

We thank you that we can worship the true God who is truly good. Father, we pray for this week as we go out that you would protect us from all evil attacks, especially tomorrow when there are demonic activities associated with Halloween.

We pray that you would protect all of us, protect the kids, especially that they may not be corrupted and that their minds would be pure and that you would keep their eyes from seeing scary things in Jesus name.

Amen. This chapter is one of the most famous chapters in the whole of Exodus, and this is because nowhere else prior to this, God reveals himself like this. This is how God appears before Moses, a human being.

And when he does reveal himself, it's too marvelous, even for Moses, and he falls down in worship. And this is really important because that is the first part of God renewing the broken relationship between God and Israel.

And although we are not Israel, the concept of God showing mercy to renew a broken relationship between him and his people is very important today because all of us who are born, we born into a broken relationship with the Lord.

No one is born as God's people. They all are born in sin and in rebellion. And it's no wonder that you don't have to teach a toddler how to rebel against authority. They know how to do it because it's in their hearts.

And because of that sinful, rebellious nature, this text is utterly important to us because we have a gracious God who restores relationships that are broken. He takes the initiative to make it right.

It's not up to you to do good things, to earn your salvation, to do good in order to stand before God in righteousness, but it's up to God and his mercy. So today's text asks the question, how does the Lord restore his relationship with his people?

How does the Lord restore his relationship with his people? First, when God restores the broken relationship, he manifests himself through his word. When God restores the broken relationship, he manifests himself through his word.

As the Lord declared previously, he begins restoring the broken covenant. The covenant is that promise or treaty that God had with Israel where God required Israel to be only faithful to him, only loyal to him, and that God will consider Israel his people.

He will take care of them. However, as we saw in the previous two chapters, Israel committed idolatry. It started worshiping another God, the golden calf. And because of that, the covenant relationship broke.

Now, the first four verses deal with the recreation of the tablets that were broken when Moses saw the horror of idolatry in person, he just dropped them, he threw them on the ground because he knew effectively that covenant relationship was broken as Israel was worshiping another God.

So God commends Moses, what must happen in the first three verses, cut two tablets of stone like the first ones. And I will write on these tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke.

So be ready in the morning and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai and present yourself to me there on the on the top of the mountain. And no man shall come up with you and let no man be seen throughout all the mountain.

Let neither flocks nor herds feed before the mountain. Now, God's glorious presence is so holy that only his chosen audience can experience it. He has the prerogative on who witnesses his presence. And there are two main differences between the first giving of the tablets and the second.

First, unlike the giving of the first tablets in chapter 24, Moses has to provide the stone tablets himself and then God will write on them. Second, Aaron will not witness God's glory this time. Unlike in Exodus 19, when God came down on Mount Sinai, Aaron was actually with Moses.

However, here Aaron is excluded from witnessing God's glory. Again, the further evidence that it was Aaron who was compromised and led Israel into that idol worship. And verses 5 to 7 describe the glory of God witnessed by Moses.

Verse 5 describes the descent of the glory of God on Mount Sinai. It is God who comes down. And that motif, that theme is found all throughout Exodus. God desires to have a relationship with his people.

And in order for God to have a relationship with his people, the holy God has to come down. And verse 6 begins by proclaiming God's attributes and characteristics. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abounding in goodness and truth.

I think it is utterly reassuring that God starts with merciful and gracious. God could have started with just and faultless, blameless and holy. Because he is all of those things, too. Instead, the Lord begins with merciful and gracious.

To Moses, who represents an adulterous and idolatrous people. God starting with mercy and grace is relieving and comforting. In the Hebrew culture, the word for mercy connotes motherly compassion. The word merciful comes from the word for the womb.

Only the organ that only mothers have. And related to childbearing. And what does it mean for the holy God to be merciful? It means he has compassion on his people as a mother would to a newborn baby.

Have you ever seen a new mother hold her newborn baby? Her comforting, caressing, her gentle and warm smile. And lately, I have even noticed that how mothers treat their babies is naturally different from how fathers treat their babies.

When I have to burp the baby after his feeding, my goal is release the gas as soon as possible in the most effective and efficient manner. I take him up, hold him, put him by my chest, and then thump, thump, thump, thump, thump until I hear that burp.

Now, I'm not beating the kid, but it is of a different nature than how my wife or even my mom, when she visited, treated the baby. The slow, delicate brushing down his back, the gentle rocking and words of comfort, that's the difference.

That's the motherly compassion that mothers have toward their babies. And I'm not saying fathers can't be gentle, but it's different. When mothers comfort their baby, it's soothing, it's smoother. There's none other like that.

You can't imitate that as a male. And what the Lord reveals to Moses is that his care for God's people is that of motherly compassion. And oftentimes when we think of God, we rightfully think of him as God the Father.

That's right. That's how he reveals himself. But do you know that his compassion for you resembles that of a mother? It's tender, it's soft, it's warm, it's welcoming, it's gentle. Gracious signifies that God gives his people great gifts, even when they don't deserve it.

He is a giving God, not a demanding God. And to an undeserving people, this is a great news. It means God's people can never earn the blessings and gifts that God gives them. You will never be good enough for God.

But that's okay because he's gracious enough for you. Next, long suffering shows God's patience. He is slow to anger. His patience is wider than the oceans. When we sin, we often think, oh man, God will strike me down.

I'd sin again. And he could if he wanted to. But that is often the result of painting God in our own image. We would pour out wrath on ourselves if someone sinned against us like we sin against God. We would pour out wrath on anyone who crosses us.

And the question in our mind is, why wouldn't God do the same? We snap at anyone who insults us. Why wouldn't God? And that's because he is long suffering. He's not like us. He is slow to anger. And that's how we need to view God when we approach him in our sin.

You know that he's patient with you. You can go to him. Confess your sin. He will forgive you. He's not like you at all. And the last pair of God's attributes are abounding in goodness and truth. The word for goodness is sometimes translated as steadfast love, loyal love, loving kindness, and sometimes even grace.

Depending on what translation you have, you would have had any of those things. This concept, the goodness, this loyal love is a special love that God has only toward his people. It is the type of love that is deeply devoted to his people.

It is a type of love that is dependable, unchanging, loyal, a type of love that he doesn't abandon. And truth is sometimes translated as faithfulness, depending on your translation. And that is because truth is unchanging.

Truth is faithful. God's love for his people and his characters are unchanging and trustworthy. Now, what does this God do when he deals with his people? Verse seven tells us how his attributes work in motion.

Keeping mercy for thousands or thousand generations, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation.

Keeping mercy for thousands here means keeping mercy for a thousand generations. The Lord God abounding in mercy and grace, forgive iniquity, transgression and sin. Those three words are mainly used to describe wrongdoing, sin in general.

It's comprehensive. Iniquity means perversion, this moral perversion where you see something that is so distorted morally, it just sends the chill down your spine and how much more so before the holy God.

And transgression means rebellion. And before the holy king, rebellion is a capital crime and sin means missing the mark of God's glory. It's failing to be or do what God expects us to do or be. And these three words cover any offense one would commit against God.

And what does God do? He shows mercy despite them, not just for one, but for a thousand, for a thousand generations. Now, this is a figurative language because it is not that God would stop showing mercy after the thousand first generation, right?

He's not counting down the generation so he can pour down his wrath, but rather it's to show how much God's mercy extends compared to his judgment, which is to third and fourth. We're talking about hundreds of times larger than the judgment.

God is merciful at his core. Now, when we get to the judgment, God visiting the iniquity of the unrepentant to the third and fourth generation, this does not mean that sin gets passed down generationally, but rather the consequences of sin are passed down for an unrepentant family.

The consequences of sin gets passed down because they do not turn to God in repentance. Sin would be forgiven and dealt with if the faithful family actually repent and it wouldn't pass down. But for an unrepentant family, the consequences of sin do get passed down.

And it's not that God is punishing the third and fourth generation because of the father's sin as if they themselves didn't sin. It's that they do sin on their own and the consequences of their father's sin are the result of their sin, too.

They're all intermingled together. And elsewhere in the Bible, in Ezekiel and also Jeremiah, it is very clear that God punishes each individual for their own sin. To read this passage as if God holds the guilt of the father against the son would be missing the point.

This passage shows how much more merciful God is than his judgment. His mercy extends 100 times more, hundreds of times more than his judgment. And after Moses glimpses at the glory of God, he falls down in worship and requests that Israel be forgiven.

Knowing God's merciful attribute, if now I have found grace in your sight, oh, Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us as your inheritance.

Please restore the relationship. Now, when we read who God is, how merciful and gracious he is, yet he doesn't clear the guilty, there is an obvious tension there. How could the holy God show mercy to sinful people, yet not clear the guilt?

How is that even possible? Because in one hand, if he only shows mercy, yet ignores the guilt, he's a merciful God, but he's not a just God. Yet, if he holds every guilt accountable, then how can he be showing mercy?

That's a heavy tension, and that tension does not get resolved in Exodus 34. Thousands of years later, the glory of God descends again, and he manifests himself through his word, and the purpose is the same.

He descends into the world that he's created to restore the broken relationship. And this time, it's not with just Israel, but with the whole world. And the apostle John, in his gospel, the first chapter is saturated with the reference back to the Exodus.

When the Lord came back to his people as Jesus Christ, it intensified, it has escalated, and perhaps the clearest connection to Exodus is found in John 114. And the word became flesh and tabernacled among us, he dwelt among us, he tented among us, and we beheld his glory, just as Moses beheld the glimpse of God's glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

While Moses got a glimpse of God's glory on Mount Sinai when the Lord came down and passed by and proclaimed with words who he is, God's people saw his glory fully. Now, how can we be sure that John is thinking about Exodus 34 here when describing the incarnation of the Son of God, when Jesus became man?

Well, it says we beheld his glory, just like Moses, he beheld his glory, the glory of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth, abounding in grace and truth, abounding in goodness and truth.

When Christ came down and manifested his glory, the apostle John connects it to the fulfillment, the ultimate fulfillment of Exodus 34, when the glory of God came down to proclaim his name, and John sees the proclamation of the Lord's name here, abounding in goodness and truth, and in Christ, goodness and truth are fully proclaimed in the person of Jesus Christ.

Now, how does the Word of God restore the broken relationship with the Word? Jesus Christ, the very Word of God himself, actually deals with the tension of God's justice and mercy. How can the just God forgive sinners without ignoring their sin?

How can God remain just when he shows mercy to his people who cannot possibly earn forgiveness? And it's the cross. On the cross, God's mercy and justice intersect, and the tension of how can God do both gets resolved.

God does not pardon the guilty by fiat, as if he can just wish it away. That's like any other religion. Well, if you're good enough, God can just ignore the bad things you've done, but then God would be clearing the guilty without dealing with the guilt.

How can he do that? Can a murderer's murder record just go away just because he served a certain amount of community service hours? Or however much money he donates to a good cause? No, the guilt remains.

Now, God actually deals with guilt himself. How does the just God show mercy to sinful people? God himself becomes man, and Jesus Christ takes on our guilt and sin and shame. He bears it on the cross, and he faces the punishment deserved for that guilt and sin.

So only in Christ can God show mercy to sinful people without ignoring their guilt, because he bears it himself. How can God not account our guilt to ourselves? Because it's been paid for. It's been dealt with.

He bore it himself. Jesus bore it on the cross. That's why he can pour out his mercy from the core of his being. Not that we deserve mercy. There is no way we deserve his mercy. It's that Christ earned it for us.

And in Christ, God again restores the broken relationship by manifesting himself through his word. Now, how do God's people maintain their relationship with the Lord? When God restores the broken relationship, his people must exclusively devote themselves to the Lord of salvation.

When God restores the broken relationship, his people must exclusively devote themselves to the Lord of salvation. After manifesting himself, the Lord renews the covenant with Israel. Behold, I make a covenant before all your people.

I will do marvels such as I have not been done, such as that have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation, and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.

Now, God renews his covenant and promises again full deliverance of Israel to the promised land. And after renewing the covenant, the Lord lists out how God's people must remain faithful to him. After all, these people do not have a great track record.

So, God spells it out with details. First, verses 11 to 17 set up warnings for Israel so that they would be exclusively loyal to the Lord God himself. And this is important because these warnings, if they heeded these warnings, they would not have made the golden calf in the first place.

Second, verses 18 to 26 go over how Israel must devote themselves fully to the Lord. What they must do to show their full devotion to the Lord. The warnings for Israel start with prohibitions of making covenants with other nations.

Take heed to yourself lest you make covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you're going, lest it be a snare in your midst. They must be exclusively loyal to the Lord by not trusting any other nations, but only trusting in the Lord himself.

And this is important because the Lord does not want to be just first place among many. It's not that he wants to be prioritized among other gods. No, he wants exclusive allegiance. He wants to be the one and only.

And that's the only way to worship the Lord. And verses 13 through 15 detail how, how the covenants with the pagan nations would break this covenant with the Lord because they would prostitute themselves by worshiping other gods.

The figurative language of prostitution shows this husband and wife relationship between God and his people. God is like a jealous husband. God wants an exclusive relationship with his people. He does not want his people to prostitute themselves with other gods.

And in our culture, the emotion of jealousy has a negative connotation and many times it's rightfully so because jealousy is a passionate desire for what belongs to you rightfully. Now, oftentimes jealousy gets taken and it's, it leads to sinful actions such as harming someone else, abusing another person, killing, right?

But when God is jealous, it's perfect and pure. When God is jealous for his people, it's holy. It's jealousy because his people do rightfully belong to him and he deserves their exclusive faithfulness.

And human jealousy gets corrupted because we take jealousy into our own hands and we get consumed by that. And we commit sinful actions that lead to that. Well, for the perfect and holy God, that's not a problem.

Now, why is it important that Israel does not make treaties with other nations? And this is because around the promised land, there were many advanced nations that were far more technologically superior than Israel.

After all, consider what Israel is. They were newly created nation full of slaves, former slaves. They don't have technology. They don't have education. They don't have weaponry, right? They're pretty subpar compared to the rest of the nations around who have been thriving in the promised land for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Now, what's the temptation? Well, let's make a treaty with you so you won't attack us. We'll trust you instead of the Lord. But not only that, the temptation goes farther. Well, I wonder why you're so advanced here and we're not.

Huh, maybe maybe you're worshiping the right gods. You're doing something right. Maybe we will incorporate this into our worship of the Lord. Maybe we'll incorporate this statue into the worship of the Lord.

After all, your land's doing great. Your harvest is plentiful. Your technology is superb. Your gods must have blessed you well. That's the temptation. And over time, even though these people might start out faithful when they're first making treaties with the other nations, their hearts slowly and slowly creep towards idolatry.

We want to do what the other nations are doing because they are powerful and they're doing well. And in fact, that is going to be the temptation that Israel struggles with for all its existence. We want a human king just like the other nations, right?

And verse 16, rather, takes it a step further. And you take of his daughters for your sons and his daughters play the harlot with their gods and make your sons play the harlot with their gods. God bans intermarriage in Israel.

Now, this does not mean God is racist. Because after all, there are examples in the Bible in which Israelites marry, converted pagans, right? For example, Rahab of the Canaanite land. She starts believing in the Lord and his deliverance of Israel.

She joins the people of Israel and she gets married. And we do find her in the genealogy of Christ. And also Ruth. Ruth was a Moabite woman. Moabites couldn't set their foot in the temple of God. But Ruth is also a converted woman.

And she herself is also found in the genealogy of Christ. So, it's not that God is against intermarriage. The point of verse 16 is to prevent the all too common general trend of God's men or women to marry pagans and they themselves become paganized rather than the pagans become Christianized.

And this is so too common, right? It happens all the time. And in fact, their kids become paganized too. It's really rare for a believing spouse to remain faithful all his life, all her life. And that's why in the New Testament, Paul applies this concept as you need to be equally yoked.

Do not marry an unbelieving spouse. Because it will be trouble for you. It will affect your faith. Verse 17 finalizes the warnings of exclusive loyalty to the Lord by prohibiting exactly what Israel did when they worshiped the golden calf.

You shall make no molded gods for yourselves. Israel must not make a physical idol to attempt to control the Lord. When there is an idol, the worshipers offer food to the idol and they expect a blessing back.

In fact, it is up to the worshiper what happens to the idol. The worshiper decides where the gods are located. The worshipers decide how the gods look like. The worshipers decide what they're offered.

It's up to the worshiper, not God. The created order is flipped. It's no longer the creator who's worshipped according to his way, but it's the created who worships according to his way. And it's all about controlling the divine.

And the Lord will not have any of it. The creator will not be manipulated by the created. Now, verses 18 to 26 go over how Israel must devote themselves to the Lord who has saved them. The context of all these rituals actually deal with the deliverance of Exodus, how Israel has been freed from the bondage of Egypt.

And this is an answer to what Aaron declared after he made the golden calf, right? In chapter 32, this is your God of Israel that brought you out of the land of Egypt. He's talking about the golden calf.

This is the one. And God answers back here, well, now you're going to be doing all these festivals and rituals to remember who truly brought you out of Egypt. And this is why it starts with the Feast of the Unleavened Bread.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread is the week of Passover during spring, where Israelites, for the seven days, get rid of all the leavening to reproduce what their ancestors did when they had to make a rush out of Egypt, right?

The Feast of the Unleavened Bread during the Passover week commemorated how the Lord miraculously saved Israel out of Egypt. And for them to practice this over and over again was a boundary to show it's not the golden calf.

You didn't have the golden calf during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and you better be practicing this. And verses 19 through 20 also show the buying back of the firstborn, redeeming the firstborn. Remember, in Egypt, the last plague was the death of the firstborn.

However, for Israel, if they could redeem the firstborn with a young lamb, their firstborn wouldn't die. It was a reminder. Well, how were we delivered from Egypt? Oh yeah, God killed all the firstborn except ours.

Because we had the chance of redeeming our firstborn. And verse 21 re-institutes the Sabbath. We've seen the Sabbath over and over again here. Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest.

In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest. However, unlike the previous mentions of the Sabbath, this time the Sabbath is not grounded in creation, but exodus. Former slaves are commanded to rest because God graciously freed them.

Slaves did not get to rest. They didn't get days off. But God actually commands them, you must rest now. Trust me. Trust me during this time of rest. During the plowing time, it's okay. If you rest one day a week, I will still provide.

During the harvest time, it's okay. You'll still have time to harvest. I will be providing. And this again is linked to exodus. Because God wants to emphasize, He is the God who delivered them. He's the Savior, not the golden calf.

And verses 22 through 24 command two other feasts. The Feast of the Weeks and Feast of Engathering. The Feast of Weeks happened after the wheat harvest. And they were to devote the first fruits to the Lord.

They were to give their very best to the Lord. And it was a physical reminder that God deserved what is best. And the Feast of Engathering was the thanksgiving to the Lord. A joyous celebration of thanksgiving to the Lord after a bountiful harvest.

And verses 23 to 24 guarantee God's provision and protection during this time. Three times in the year, all your men shall appear before the Lord, the Lord God of Israel. For I will cast out the nations before you and enlarge your borders.

Neither will any man covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord, your God, three times in the year. What the Lord is guaranteeing is when you are obeying my commands to remember whom the true God is who saved you, you'll be protected.

Yeah, when all the men are gathered, is the nation vulnerable? Yes, it's when it's most vulnerable. But celebrating the Lord will not make Israel more vulnerable, but the Lord will see to it that they're utterly protected.

And this required full trust and full devotion to the Lord. And verses 25 to 26 command the proper way of worshiping the Lord. Verse 25 returns back to the context of Passover. You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifices with leaven, nor shall the sacrifice of the feast of the Passover be left until morning.

The temptation is there to, well, let's get rid of the leavened bread anyway and give it to God. We do have to get rid of it in the land. Let's just sacrifice it to him early on. That's not how you worship the Lord.

You've got to do it according to his way. And in the same way, you must not keep it after the Passover. Keep the sacrifice. And that's a warning against practicality. All too often, God's people want to take the shortcut and not go according to what God has commanded.

Well, it sounds practical. Why not? We'll just eat the Passover meal after. Well, that's not how you did it on the first Passover day. You must not do that. And verse 26 commands Israel to give the very best to the Lord.

And the second half prevents the boiling of the young goat in its mother's milk. And this was a pagan ritual for fertility. Young goat, boil it in the milk. It was supposed to, they believed, would make the land more fertile.

But the Lord said, you're not going to do it that way because I will be making the land fertile, not through the young goat in the milk. And for 40 days and 40 nights, Moses wrote down these words of the renewed covenant without drinking or eating.

It was a supernatural event to renew the old covenant, both for Moses and for the writing process. And this is important for us today because how the new covenant people, us, we commit to the Lord. Although it's different from the old covenant, we are not celebrating these festivals, but we actually celebrate what is true, what these festivals point to, right?