The Perfect, Enduring Word

Grace Covenant Reformed Church

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In John chapter 1, the very beginning of John's prologue to his gospel, we find these words.

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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the

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Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him, nothing came into being that has come into being.

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In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

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A little further down in verse 14, John wrote, And the

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Word became flesh and dwelt among us as we beheld

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His glory. Glory as of the only begotten from the

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Father, full of grace and truth.

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The purpose for John writing his gospel is revealed to us later in his account, when he instructs us regarding the fact that his gospel was written for the purpose that we may know and believe in the

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Lord Jesus. The words that John chose to open up his gospel account are words that have become a part of who we are as believers, as we understand that Christ Himself is the incarnate

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Word. But there is more to what John wrote than just the understanding that Christ is the incarnate

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Word, and that that Word is just a book or a collection of books that impact our life.

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The word that we translate into the English here, the Greek word behind the word

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Word, is the word Logos. The word is a literal translation.

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When we move from the Greek into the English, oftentimes there's not a 100 % literal translation, but Logos is about as close as you can get to becoming a one -for -one translation.

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The issue is that when we read the word Word, and we see the word

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Word in this passage, we lose what John is also adding in with our simple translation.

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The first known concept of Logos came from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. He was born a little over 500 years before Christ, and he described the concept of Logos as a fundamental law of the cosmos, a principle that brought order and form to all things.

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Through the years, this term Logos would be taken by different philosophers, and it would be applied in different ways.

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Many of us know the word logic. It derives from this term. It was coined by Plato and his approach to understanding reality.

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But by the time that John would have written his gospel, in fact, several years before Christ was even born,

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Hellenistic Jews took the word Logos, and it began to mean something a little bit different to them.

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What they saw was the bond of everything. It was the thing that holds all things together, that binds all the parts, and then prevents them from being dissolved and separated.

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It is this understanding, it is this truth that John points to, and that is that the word, that the gospel, that Christ is the one who holds all things together.

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Paul later, writing in Colossians 1, verse 17, wrote, and he is before all things, and in him, being

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Christ, all things hold together. Now, in our study through the book of Exodus, we encountered in Exodus chapter 24, verse 12, a command by God given to Moses to come up to him on the mountain and remain there, and that he would give the stone tablets with the law and the commandment, which

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God himself had written for their instruction. Now, historically, as the events unfold,

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Moses would spend 40 days and 40 nights at the top of Sinai.

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During that 40 days and 40 nights, he was given the law, he was given the instructions regarding the tabernacle, the installation of the priesthood, all of these things that we have been looking at over the past several weeks and a few months.

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We've seen how the law given by God was to be used by his people for his glory, for their good.

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And all of these things are occurring in the backdrop of God calling

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Moses up onto the mountain for the singular purpose of receiving the testimony, these stone tablets.

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And so where we find ourselves today is at the completion of those words as we move back into the historical narrative.

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Cecil B. DeMille, the famous director of the movie The Ten Commandments, who actually made a 1923 and a more famous 1956 version, quipped at one point that man has made 32 million laws since the commandments were handed down to Moses on Sinai, but he has never improved on God's law.

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To which I will add, he never will, because it is simply not possible to improve upon perfection.

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And we know that God's law, God's word, is perfection.

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So our text for this morning is actually one verse. It's the final verse in chapter 31 where we have been studying through.

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And just for emphasis, I'm actually going to read verses 15 and 16 of the next chapter.

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Now we'll study those verses when we come to them in their order, but prior to that I just want to make sure that we get a couple of truths out of 31 in chapter 31 verse 18 that are restated for emphasis in verse 18.

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Now as we know, this is a very short passage, but even the shortest passages contain truth for God's people, both in teaching us about God's written word and what it points forward to in the incarnate word.

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So if you will, and have not already, open your Bibles, make your way to Exodus chapter 31, and having found your spot, please stand for the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative, complete, and sufficient word.

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Exodus chapter 31 verse 18, we find these words, When he had finished speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, he gave

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Moses the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone written by the finger of God.

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If you'll look down in chapter 32 verses 15 and 16, it says, Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the testimony were in his hand, tablets which were written on both sides.

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They were written on the one side and the other. Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.

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Our prayer this morning is adapted once again from the Valley of Vision, a prayer entitled

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Christ the Word. Let us pray. Our great and merciful

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Father, in a world of created, changeable things, we are thankful that Christ and your written word are immutable, and they can never be shaken.

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Father, grant us the strength to abide, to forsake all created things, to rest on Christ as a sure foundation, to be upheld by him alone.

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Lord, we know that all our mercies come through Christ, those mercies that were designed, purchased, promised, and effected by him.

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Oh, how sweet to draw near the precious lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, to be filled with holy affections for Christ alone.

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Father, we know that when we sin against you, oh Lord, we have crossed your will, your love, your life, and we have nowhere and no creature to turn to in which to find comfort.

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Lord, our sins are not so much a particular evil, but rather a continual separation, a disunion, a distance from you, and even an attitude of apathy.

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Father, even our sinful state, while we were yet sinners, you have given us the greatest gift in Christ Jesus, your

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Son, who serves as a mediator between you and us, spanning the chasm created by our sin and satisfying your divine justice.

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Father, may we always lay hold of this mediator as a realized object of faith, that we are worthy only through his love to cross that bridge into your holy presence.

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Remind us of how precious he is by the word. Grant us greater faith in him.

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Father, we know that if we oppose the word, we oppose our Lord. But if we receive the word, we also receive our

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Lord and draw closer to him in all things. Father, you who have the hearts of all men in your hand, form our hearts according to your word, according to the image of your

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Son, so shall Christ's word and his word by our strength and our comfort.

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These things we ask in the blessed name of Jesus Christ.

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Amen. You may be seated. As I mentioned a few moments ago, our text picks up in the historical narrative that was left off in Exodus chapter 24 in the 18th verse, when

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Moses entered the midst of the cloud and went up into the mountain. Now Exodus chapter 25, if you will recall, begins with God speaking directly to Moses, giving him the instructions regarding the tabernacle.

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And you should recall after our time of study in the tabernacle that at the very center of the entire compound was a place known as the

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Holy of Holies. It was inside of the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the

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Testimony or the Ark of the Covenant was to be housed. The very throne of God at the very center of all things.

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The Ark was called the Ark of the Covenant or the Ark of the Testimony because of God's command that we find in the 21st verse of chapter 25 and it says,

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And in the Ark you shall put the testimony which I will give to you.

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From the outset of his instructions regarding the tabernacle, it was

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God's plan and God's desire that the very word that he give his people be central to them in their lives.

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That in giving these instructions, he is just displaying this centrality of his word among his people, defining for them and for us how we should view his word.

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Now we have made no bones, we don't hide our love for the word of God here at Christ Reformed.

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In fact, we would say that the expectation of anyone who is a part of our church, that they not just give lip service to the fact that the word of God is central in our lives but that we wholeheartedly would believe it and pursue our study of scripture in light of this reality.

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It is truly God's word and it is truly all we need for life and godliness.

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For 30 years, a gentleman, a minister named A .W.

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Pink, edited a monthly magazine entitled Studies in the Scripture. And as he edited this monthly magazine, he actually contributed as well and during the time he wrote a series of articles that spoke how the believer was to profit from the word of God.

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Later, these different writings, these series of articles was put together in a book and the book was entitled

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Profiting from the Word. And in that, Pink writes, the holy scriptures are wholly supernatural.

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They are a divine revelation. All scripture is given by inspiration of God.

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It is not merely that God elevated men's minds but that he directed their thoughts.

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It is not simply that he communicated concepts to them but that he dictated the very words that they used.

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The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the

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Holy Spirit. The divine image is stamped upon every page.

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Writings so holy, so heavenly, so all -inspiring could not have been created by man.

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In between being called up onto the mountain and coming down from the mountain, we know that God was given much instruction.

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But that instruction began with the law of God. And so it is fitting that this verse opens with the statement when he had finished speaking, the testament, the word that God had given to Moses was to be a perpetual nature.

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God engraved these words in stone, setting them down in a permanent manner so that the people of God could be reminded always of his commands.

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Matthew Henry wrote in his commentary on this verse, the law was written in tables of stone to denote the hardness of our hearts.

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One that might more easily write in stone than write anything that is good in our corrupt and sinful hearts.

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This statement, this reality should give us pause to think through not just the past 40 days and 40 nights that Moses has dwelt on the mountain, but all the way back further to creation itself.

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What we see instituted there at the very beginning as God created man and woman, that he originally wrote his law on their hearts.

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Now there are theologians and people who would argue, but I would say that we see this reflected in the very command that God gave

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Adam regarding the garden. If you back up just a little bit before God gives

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Adam the command, we find these words in Genesis 2, verses 8 through 9. And Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden toward the east, and there he planted the man whom he had formed.

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And out of the ground Yahweh God calls to grow every tree that is desirable in appearance and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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And then as we come down to verses 16 and 17, we read, and Yahweh God commanded the man saying, from any tree of the garden you may surely eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat from it, for in that day you eat from it you will surely die.

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Most people who read these words, and in fact most of scripture or think about God's word or think about the actions of God in his word, typically have a reaction that focuses on the negative, and they tend to say, how dare

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God set a limitation on Adam and Eve? How dare he draw a line and say this far but no further?

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When asked what commandment was the greatest, Jesus replied, to love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, your might, your soul, and your strength.

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This was not a new law. This was the law that was instilled at creation.

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This was the law that was written on the tablets by the very finger of God.

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But it also reminds us that in the very beginning it was written on the heart of men.

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The truth was that God loved his people so much that he set them in a garden that literally supplied all that they could ever need or want or desire.

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And yet in the midst of that, because of Adam's disobedience, the heart that had so lovingly been crafted and engraved by God became corrupt.

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The engraving became incomprehensible and foolishness to all of humanity.

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These stones were engraved so that the statues could be recalled from generation to generation.

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Later, God promises his people that there would be a transformation that would take place that would remove that corrupted, hardened heart and replace it with one of flesh.

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Ezekiel prophesying in Ezekiel 36, verse 26, Moreover I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

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It is this heart of flesh that Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 31, verses 31 through 33, speaks of when he says,

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Behold, days are coming, declares Yahweh, when I will cut a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which

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I cut with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant, which they broke, but I was a husband to them, declares

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Yahweh. But this is the covenant which I will cut with the house of Israel after those days.

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I will put my law within them and on their heart I will write it and I will be their

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God and they shall be my people.

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It's this heart. It's this heart that was promised in both

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Ezekiel and Jeremiah that we receive by grace through faith in the

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Lord Jesus. It is there on this heart that the commands have been written on the hearts of men since the foundation of the world are once again legible.

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The corruption that had filled in the engraving has been removed and God's law can now be understood by his people once more.

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As a kid, I recall being involved in a gathering of our

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Sunday school class at one of our teachers' homes to watch the movie that I referenced earlier,

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The Ten Commandments. And while the movie is certainly not biblical, certainly not accurate in a lot of ways, it does contain scenes that stick in your mind.

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One such scene of vivid imagery that made an impression on a young boy was at the moment in the film where Moses, having been up on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights, begins to descend with the two stone tablets.

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Now, one of the theatrical effects that DeMille used during the filming had to do with changes that occurred in Moses' hair and beard.

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And so if you watch the film, he begins with a nice black head of hair and full black beard. And his first encounter with God at the burning bush, he gains some white streaks in his beard.

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And at the end, as he begins to descend from Sinai, his hair and his beard have become snowy white.

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He moves down the mountain with great care, carrying these two tablets, the tablets of the testimony that contain the

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Word of God. The idea is that there was this understanding that this very

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Word of God was the most valuable, most precious thing that had been gifted, that it pointed forward to the real most valuable, most precious gift in Christ Jesus.

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These tablets, the tablets of the testimony, were called such because they testify to God's people.

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In the first place, they testify to God's people regarding God's will.

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Not only to ancient Israel, but also to us here today. The first four commandments that we find contain the way in which

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God should be approached and worshipped. In all four of these, that there is recognition that there is but one

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God and that nothing and no one is to come between him and his people before him in the hearts and minds of his people.

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And to ensure that they understood exactly who he was speaking of and exactly what he meant, he opens up Exodus chapter 20 when we get the first account of the ten commandments with these words.

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Then God spoke all these words saying, I am Yahweh, your

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God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

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To ensure that there was no mistaking. To clarify that the one who is speaking before beginning to detail the ways in which

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God, Yahweh, the one true God, the author, the creator, the sustainer, the almighty, the eternal, the self -existing

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God of all things was to be approached and worshipped.

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But it also testifies to us of how God's good will exists towards us giving commands to us on how to rightly interact with him and with each other.

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Instructions that form a perfect foundation.

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The way in which we interact with God, the strength of our relationship with him first and foremost will determine the way in which we approach others.

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If we do not have a good understanding of what it means and what scripture defines for us as the way in which we approach him and how we come into relationship with him and how we interact with him then we will never understand what it means to deal with each other.

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The understanding that we have towards this law whether it is an understanding of the goodness or whether we focus on the negative aspects on the ways in which we think that these are bad.

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In which we think that they're not what they ought to be. In which we think we could improve upon.

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Both of these change the way we interact with not only brothers and sisters in Christ but all of humanity.

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As Christians as believers as those who have been saved by grace through faith.

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We live in such a way that our standard of life, our understanding of truth our morality all stem from the first four commandments.

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Quite honestly they could stem from the very first commandment. The understanding that the

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Lord God is the Lord God. That there is no other. That he alone is God.

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There are so many people who profess to be Christians yet don't have a proper foundation a proper understanding of scripture and the fact that this finds its foundation in the law of God and all its fulfillment in the person of Christ.

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The words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount begin to take on a much greater weight when we consider the truth behind them.

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In Matthew's Gospel the 5th chapter verses 17 through 20 Matthew records the words of Christ In this way do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets.

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I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly

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I say to you until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until all is accomplished.

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Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

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But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of even the scribes and the

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Pharisees you will not enter the kingdom of God.

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Our confession that document that we turn to that defines what we believe based on the

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Word of God says in the 19th chapter in the 5th paragraph of the 1689

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London Baptist Confession the moral law forever forever requires obedience of everyone, both those who are justified as well as others.

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This obligation arises not only because of its content, but also because of the authority of God the creator who gave it.

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Nor does Christ in any way dissolve this obligation in the gospel. Instead he gratefully strengthens it.

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Sam Waldron summarizes an introductory teaching on this passage with these words.

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What is the underlying theme of this passage? What is sitting behind these things?

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It concerns Jesus' relationship to the Old Testament scriptures. Those scriptures are described in the way typical of the

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New Testament as the Law and the Prophets. Jesus' relation to them is described both negatively and positively.

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In the negative it is not to abolish, and in the positive it is to fulfill these words.

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Jesus comes to bring the scriptures to their intended goal or predestined destination.

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The truth that Christ is the fulfillment of this law shows us

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God's abounding love and goodwill towards his people. And that even when there was not a way for our righteousness to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, God himself provided the way.

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The words of John the Baptist Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world who was and is and ever shall be

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King of kings and Lord of lords, granting to us by grace through faith his righteousness so that we might be reconciled to the

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Father. Thirdly, these tablets are a tablet of testimony because they testify against the people of God in the event of their disobedience.

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In other words, they testify against you and I in the event that we sin.

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I know sin is a strong word in churches today. I know many churches don't want to talk about sin.

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They don't want to talk about death. They don't want to talk about hell. They don't want to talk about any of these things. They just want to give you 12 ways to make yourself have a better week.

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But here's the reality. The law testifies to how greatly we have fallen and how desperate we are in need of the

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Savior. Not just a Savior. Not just any old person to do. There is only one who will suffice and that is the perfect, spotless, unblemished sacrifice the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Last week, as you gathered, Daniel spoke to you about rejoicing and repentance.

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But there is no repentance without understanding the need.

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And there is no rejoicing without understanding the need and then understanding what has been done and by whom it has been done.

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Ephesians chapter 2 beginning in the first verse. And you were dead in your transgressions and sins.

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Verse 4 But God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our transgressions made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved and raised up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not of yourselves it is a gift of God, not of works so that no man could boast.

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This is the purpose that we see for this final statement in verse 18.

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You notice back in Exodus chapter 31 verse 18 it says that these two tablets of the testimony these two tablets of stone contained the words that were written by the finger of God.

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Now this is an anthropomorphic description, again one of those descriptions that uses human terms to help us with our understanding of what's happening this is not a declaration that God has a physical finger in the sense that we think, but it is that that makes it no less the very word of God wrought by God.

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How this occurred would be a matter of speculation, but the statement this finger of God this is not the first time we've encountered this statement in the book of Exodus.

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The first time we encountered this word we actually encounter it coming from the

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Egyptian magicians. You may recall in the midst of the plague that time after time

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Moses would perform what God had given him to perform, the

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Egyptian magicians would turn around and do something very similar. But then we come to verse chapter 8 verses 16 through 19.

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Moses says Yahweh says to Moses, say to Aaron stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the earth that it may become gnats through all the land of Egypt.

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And he did so. And Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the earth and there were gnats on man and beast.

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All the dust of the earth became gnats throughout all the land of Egypt. Then the magicians did the same with their secret arts in order to bring forth gnats but they could not.

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So there were gnats on man and beast. And the magicians said to Pharaoh this is the finger of God.

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But Pharaoh's heart was hardened with strength and he did not listen to them as Yahweh had spoken.

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These Egyptians who otherwise had no faith who otherwise certainly did not serve or worship

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Yahweh recognized that they could not do this work and that it was only accomplished by the work of the

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Almighty God alone. That it was His power,

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His might, His will on display and nothing of theirs. It should come as no shock to us that we as humans tend to think of ourselves as the main character.

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The one for whom all credit should be given and usually none of the blame. We see this demonstrated repeatedly in men as arrogance leads us to the opinion that we are somehow in control, that we can overrule

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God. In most churches God's sovereignty is quickly acknowledged but only so far as it does not overrule our sovereignty.

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We color it in words that demonstrate how God cannot act without our permission unless He be invited and somehow

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His unlimited power is limited when it comes to us.

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Paul writing to the church at Corinth had this to say to a group of people who actually had begun to have this impression of themselves.

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2 Corinthians chapter 3 beginning in the first verse. Are we beginning to commend ourselves again or do we need as some letters of commendation to you or from you?

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You are our letter having been written on our hearts known and read by all men being manifested that you are a letter of Christ ministered to by us having been written not with ink but with the spirit of the living

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God not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh. And such confidence we have through Christ toward God.

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Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves but our sufficiency is from God who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant not of the letter but of the spirit.

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For the letter kills but the spirit gives life.

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So as we reflect on that first question that Paul asked here, are we beginning to commend ourselves?

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Paul had just previously been writing in chapter 2 of 2 Corinthians of the success that had been happening, the triumphs that had been happening as he went about and ministered.

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He wrote these things. But thanks be to God who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and manifests through us the aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.

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For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing to one an aroma from death to death to the other an aroma from life to life and who is sufficient for these things for we are not like many peddling the word of God but as from sincerity but as from God in the sight of God we speak in Christ.

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His point was that in that first question that he is not bragging on anything that he has done but what

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God has done. The Corinthians had a bad habit of seeing the value of themselves greater than the value of anything else.

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In the 5th verse 5 of chapter 3 he says they are all sufficient. He comes not from himself but from God by the

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Spirit according to the word of the new covenant. The word written not on stones but on a heart of flesh.

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Verses 7 and following in 2nd Corinthians. But if the ministry of death in letters having been engraved on stones came with glory so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face which was being wrought to an end, how would the ministry of the

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Spirit not be even more in glory? For the ministry of condemnation has glory much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory for indeed what had been glorious in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it.

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For that which was being wrought to an end was with glory much more that which remains is in glory.

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Then when you come down a little further he writes but to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their heart but whenever a person turns to the

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Lord the veil is taken away. As that veil is taken away we behold the glory of God.

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This image of being transformed into that same glory. The ministry of death was engraved in stones but it still held glory.

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If you're confused about that term the ministry of death in Paul's writing here that he's referring to is the law as contrasted to what happens when the veil is removed from the heart the new heart is given on that heart is written the perfect word of God.

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In tying our thoughts together we are reminded that the living

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God the word of the living God is not merely words on a page or symbols carved into stone but a living testimony of the almighty written by his own hand given from the very beginning

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God inscribed his law on the hearts of Adam and though sin marred that engraving his word remained sure it remained steadfast tablets given to Moses were more than just commandments they were the testimonies of God's holiness his will his covenant with his people he testified his righteousness they exposed the depth of our sin and they point us forward to the incarnate word

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Christ Jesus who would fulfill every jot and tittle of the law we cannot miss the continuity that we find in God's revelation from Sinai to Calvary the same truth resounds