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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim
It stands at the very center. In some ways, you can understand it as the most egregious sin. It is the ultimate way of striking against God as creator, against those who he has made in his image, in rebellion against the creation mandate where he said, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.
And so it's a very egregious sin to murder. And now we come to Exodus, not only have we thought about it in terms of creation and God's giving of life, we've thought about Cain and Abel, the great disaster there where one brother kills the other.
We thought about God's covenant with Noah and how he stemmed the tide of the violence and he put a halt to it and said, if any man sheds man's blood by man, his blood shall.
Be shed.
And we thought about God's covenant with Abraham and the ways in which those principles played out and now we come to Mount Sinai, to the moment where Israel is gathering in the wilderness having been delivered by God from a murderous tyrant by the name of Pharaoh, who was intent on killing all of the Hebrew baby boys wanting to commit genix, genocide, whatever fancy term we have today, God simply calls it murder.
And God has delivered them up out of Egypt from the murderous Pharaoh and now they come to Mount Sinai. And we recall that in God's covenant with Noah, he said that if a beast kills a man, that beast must be destroyed, must be killed.
If that beast sheds man's blood, that beast must be killed. And then if a man sheds man's blood, well, by man, that man must be killed as well. Well, let's see what happens when they gather around Mount Sinai.
So Exodus chapter 19, Exodus chapter 19, and we'll begin in verse 10. Note that they have gathered at the mountain, they're camping before the mountain. Then the Lord said to Moses, go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow.
Let them wash their clothes and let them be ready for the third day. For on the third day, the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. You shall set bounds for the people all around saying, take heed to yourselves that you do not go up to the mountain or touch its base.
Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. Not a hand shall touch him, but he shall surely be stoned or shot with an arrow. Whether man or beast, he shall not live. When the trumpet sounds long, they shall come near the mountain.
That's interesting, if you ever get to see the archaeological video about the location of Mount Sinai, how it's all black on top and the split rock and all the place where the water flowed out of it, you know, millions and millions of gallons of water.
And a place where no water is today. There is also stone markers all the way around the mountain. You imagine Levite said, don't go across this, you'll get in trouble. When we think about this, last time we heard about man or bees dying, it was if they shed man's blood.
But now, it says if they approach the mountain, if they approach the mountain where the Lord has come down to visit his people, God coming in a personal way, when God shows up in a personal way, what do we call it?
Maybe a theophany, God appearing. But even more particularly, it is the second person, the mediator between God and man, Christ showing up. And so now we see that there is a concern, less the unholiness and the sinfulness, the lowliness, the impurity of man or beast encroaching upon the revelation of God and his glory.
What is the penalty? It's the death penalty. It's almost an exact echo of what happens if somebody were to shed the blood, in other words, take the life away from one who was made in the image of God.
This is something of an acceleration of what we hear in God's covenant with Noah, and yet it's still somewhat familiar. You know, when we think about what happens here in the book of Exodus, it was too much.
It was just too much for the people who were there. The fire upon the mountain, the noise and the rumblings, the lightnings, the fear, even.
The...
You can imagine how the commandment itself cast fear into the hearts of the people. Do not touch the mountain. Do not approach too close, lest you die. How frightening that is. And so what did they clamor for?
What did they demand in this moment?
Moses, you go up.
We can't handle this. We are moving away from this. Boy, they're in a fix, aren't they? They're full of sin and impurity, and they can't approach God. They need a mediator. And indeed, in Deuteronomy, God said that was the right attitude, and then he said to Moses, I'll give them a mediator.
A prophet like you, but one greater than you, will come from among them, from the people. I'll raise up that prophet, and he will be their mediator. We also read in Hebrews chapter 12, as the preacher to the Hebrews is reminding him of the superiority of the new covenant.
And he says in verse 18, you have not come to the mountain that may be touched. The physical mountain, the mountain of rock. The mountain that may be touched, and that burned with fire into blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the words not be spoken to them anymore, for they could not endure what was commanded.
What was commanded, and if so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow. And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I am exceedingly afraid and trembling. This very Moses, who would be before the face of God, before the second person of the Trinity, and meet with him as one would meet with a friend, and would exit his time with the Lord so that his face was glowing, and he had to cover it with a veil.
Moses said, I am exceedingly afraid. The one who encountered the Lord on the mountain with the burning bush. He said, this is too much for me. So the preacher to the Hebrews says, you've not come to that.
We're not there. We're somewhere else now. He says, but you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, he explains, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, who are registered in heaven to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect.
In other words, we're coming to who?
To Jesus.
Verse 24, you have come to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, the mediator of the old covenant was exceedingly afraid. This is not going to work. The mediator of the new covenant is Jesus, to the blood of sprinkling.
Now where was the blood sprinkled? The blood was taken into the holy of holies and sprinkled there upon the mercy seat earlier. The writer of the Hebrews has said that Christ took his own blood into the true holy of holies.
Not the copy of the holy of holies down on earth, but he had came into the true holy of holies, offering up his own blood as the propitiation for our sins. To the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.
Well, there's the issue, isn't it? When you go back to the fall, you go back to Adam and Eve's sin, where God said, in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. And Satan was labeled correctly by Christ as a murderer from the beginning.
One who separated by sinful deceit. And so Adam and Eve are separated from God, separated from each other, death has come upon them. And the first story we have after they're out of the garden is what?
This covetousness and idolatry of Cain, which is at the bookends of the Ten Commandments, quickly accelerates to the heart of sinning against the image, which is murder. He murders his brother. And so, when God confronted Cain, he said, the blood of your brother is crying out from the ground.
What would that cry be? Justice. Where's justice? Where is the vengeance of God? Well, Israel saw the vengeance of God on Mount Sinai. You want to see the holiness of God, the ruling, offended holiness of God?
Don't you dare approach. If you touch it, you will die. Oh, there's justice. But it's too much. Now the blood cries, there has to be justice. And in a sense, we agree, but it's just too much. But now the blood of Christ speaks of better things than the blood of Abel.
Abel cries, how long, O Lord? And the blood of Christ says, it is finished. So, when we come to this mountain, we come to a far better covenant than to the old. And so, that's a good reminder of the situation.
We go back and you think about the old covenant that God made with Israel, and how he takes up the Ten Commandments, and in many different ways explains the particular applications of the Ten Commandments.
Remember that the Ten Commandments do not encapsulate or stand in for the entirety of the old covenant, but they are a good representation of it. So, they are the quintessential testimony of the old covenant.
How do we know that? Well, in Exodus chapter 34, we are told about the significance of the Ten Commandments. When you read through Exodus and Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, in general, you can find your way back to one of the Ten Commandments, whatever one of the laws are, whatever the instructions are that God gave to Israel through Moses.
You're going to be able to kind of wind your way back from the peculiarness of that one instruction, and you're going to be able to wind your way back to one of the Ten Commandments, or a couple of them.
So, you can kind of see how the ten can summarize what the whole 613, how many were there. So the importance of the Ten Commandments is emphasized here in Exodus 34, beginning in verse 27. Then the Lord said to Moses, write these words, now this is interesting, 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 forty days and forty nights, he neither ate bread nor drank water, and he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, which were what? The Ten Commandments. So the Ten Commandments are the quintessential testimony, according to the tenor of those words, those ten words, is the covenant God made with Israel.
So what are the Ten Commandments? The Ten Commandments are representative of the whole covenant God made with Israel. That's what the Ten Commandments are. Now boy, are they packed full of good things, right?
Right standards, truth, they are packed full of wisdom. In some way, every single one of the Ten Commandments points to Jesus Christ and foretells about his righteousness and how he's going to do things.
So they are extremely valuable, and yet they are also very particular to the covenant that God made with Israel. And why do we connect with them so? Because they are given, as all the other covenants that God made, whether it's Noah or Israel or Abraham or David, the covenants that God makes in the Old Testament are all in the shape of the image of God.
We connect with the Ten Commandments because we're made in the image of God. They're concerned how to love God supremely, how to treat others rightly, and how to steward everything that God entrusts to us in a righteous way.
That's why they connect so well with it, because they're in the shape of the image of God. We don't connect with other things in the Ten Commandments because they were specific to the old covenant that God made with Israel, such as the particulars about, as we've read in the Ten Commandments, there's not just the ten little short blurbs.
There's a lot of context there that is particular to Israel alone. But we'll continue reading here. In verse 29 we read,. And 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, that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him.
So when Aaron 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 them, and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned to him, and Moses talked with them.
And 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 when 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 shone, then Moses would put the veil on his face again until he went in to speak with.
Him.
At the time Moses is in there talking with the second person of the Trinity, Christ, before his incarnation, he'd come out his face glowing, shining all bright and scaring everybody to death. Well you can understand, the same glory that frightened them away from Mount Sinai was on the face of Moses.
He was like a walking Mount Sinai, oh we can't get close. They were scared of him, so he had to put the veil over his face. This is where we find again Christ is a superior mediator. We remember in Corinthians where now with unveiled face, we read the scriptures in the new covenant by the gift of the Spirit.
With unveiled face we can read the scriptures and we see that what was spoken to Moses is ultimately about Christ. Now let's think a little bit about how this commandment, thou shalt not murder, how does that actually play out in the life of Israel?
Well again, it's in agreement with the way that God dealt with Abraham, the way that God dealt with Noah because of how God made us in his image. The supreme value of human life in terms of the created order.
When God made all things, he worked his way up till the moment he created male and female, he created them in his own likeness, in his own image, and then God said, very good, and then he rested. So the pinnacle of his created order was mankind.
So what would happen in the old covenant with Israel, what would happen if you did something to harm somebody else's life?
What would happen?
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. Where do you get that idea from? From the sixth commandment. Think about the principles involved, thou shalt not murder. What did God say about murder?
Back in the Noahic covenant, he said, if a man kills somebody, murders somebody, by man, that man's blood shall be shed. Life for life. That principle of life for life extends all the way down to the particulars.
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, that was the standard that God gave and explained to his people Israel, and what is he testifying to? He's testifying to the value of human life. Now, let's say something happened, and let's say the axe head was not secure on your axe handle, and you had no idea.
You weren't being negligent necessarily, you just didn't know. Off comes the axe head, flies across the workspace, and kills your neighbor who was there to help you or something.
What happens now?
You're going to die.
Life for life. Somebody's related to your neighbor, it's called the kinsman redeemer, and he's going to come and make sure, life for life. And the kind of redeeming, he's got a ticket he's going to come redeem, he's going to have it punched, and it's your life.
So, as soon as this happens, you better run. Where do you have to run? City of refuge. And cities of refuge were the place where the Levites would also have cities, that cities of refuge were always a Levitical city.
And you would run there, and then everybody would find out what happened. If it was a real accident, you could stay in the city of refuge until the high priest died, and when a new high priest came about, and then everything was, slate was cleaned, and then you'd be able to leave, and the kinsman redeemer would no longer be under obligation to come take you out.
But you had to stay there within the confines of that city if you ever left, then you'd be subject to the judgment. Isn't that strange? I was like, well, I didn't mean to. Well, that's why there's the city of refuge.
Hopefully you can run fast. There are also other regulations. If you happen to kill somebody's daughter, or son, or slave, somebody died, there are other provisions made about the value of a life, and the value of the life had to be paid for to the full extent.
All these considerations are within the covenant that God made with Israel, extrapolations of thou shalt not murder. What does that prepare us for? Prepares us for the fact that a life must be given for a life, that those who have defiled the image of God, that those who have defiled the glory of God, those who are deserving of death, the price must be paid for them.
And what price is necessary then? Without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins. And all throughout the sacrificial system that was hinted at in the garden, and just outside of the garden, and in the life of Noah, and so forth, that animals were shedding their blood in the place of the sinner, leading forward until finally John points over there and says, there is the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world.
And then Christ dies in our place and for our sake. His life, for our life, life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, life for life, the whole price must be paid to exactitude.
And one of the things that we were assured of this morning by Brother Dean and encouraged about was that that full price has been paid, right, so that we can trust that there's nothing lacking, you know.
God's not waiting around to smite me. You know, there's not some pocket, some over here, over here that hasn't been paid for by Christ, and I'm going to end up failing in the end. So we are reminded of the intense value of those who are made in the image of God and reminded of the value of Christ.
Here's a little bit of a trivia question. Why did King David, we're talking about the Davidic covenant now, why did King David not get to build the temple? He wanted to. He was a man of blood, wasn't he?
Isn't that interesting? David, David, we read, wanted to build God a house. And Nathan the prophet hadn't heard anything otherwise, so he said, do what's in your heart until God said, actually, no. So Nathan had to come back and say, no, God's going to build you a house, a royal house, a household, and you're going to have a descendant who's going to reign on an everlasting throne in God's city.
Of course, we read about that in Hebrews 12, didn't we? And we have this, this denial of David, you are not allowed to build a temple. Now we don't hear in 2 Samuel 7 that God says to David, now you don't, you can't build the temple because you're a man of blood.
We don't find that out until later when David is in his latter years and he is explaining why he didn't build the temple. And so in 1 Chronicles 28, 1 Chronicles 28 verses 2 and 3, he says, the Lord said I couldn't build the temple because he said to me, you are a man of blood.
Now it's not simply about going to war. He did go to war and he did a lot of battles. When Solomon was consolidating power before he built the temple, even though his name means man of peace, a lot of people died in the process of Solomon becoming king and Solomon did call for the execution of some and the conquering of others.
So it's not just about war, it's not just about executing justice. What was David's grave sin? In the case of Uriah, this was something that lasted, that gets mentioned more than once about the situation with David and Uriah.
And so David having murdered, God says, we're not going to let you be the builder of the temple for this reason. Of course, in the providence of God, it is prophetic that the son of David, reflect on the name, the son of David is the one who builds the temple.
Okay, so next time what we're going to do is we're going to go to the New Testament and we're going to think about this sixth commandment in a couple of ways. These are actually words about Christ, thou shalt not murder.
So we want to think about what Jesus does with his Old Testament commandment, with his Old Covenant commandment. How does he take that up? How does he teach it? How does he apply it? How does he go beyond it?
How does he bring a superior righteousness, a more brighter revelation than what was before? And then to think about how to make application of that as we live under his reign. Okay, so that'll be our goal next time.
But let's close now by singing the doxology together. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
