SERMON: The Mosaic Manger

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day sermon. We pray that as we declare the word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's word and may the Lord be with you. Yesterday, I got the privilege of going to the movies, which is something that I rarely do. And with friends and family, I saw the movie David.

And there's a scene in the movie, in fact, it's a scene from the Bible itself, where two men meet on the battlefield as individuals. But yet curiously, the entire fate of their nation lies within this single battle, Royale.

One is a ruddy, rough, and tumble runt plucked out of the fields that he was tending the sheep in. And the other was a bonafide giant, standing nearly 10 feet tall by modern measure, and not the kind-hearted kind of giant like Andre the Giant in The Princess Bride, or the jolly mythical giant on your cans of peas.

He was a man who carried the unholy, half-blooded DNA of fallen angels and men, demigods according to the legends of Greece, Anakai in the Babylonian traditions, and man-eating giants in some of the most ancient texts that exist, but that's for another sermon.

The reason I'm bringing it up, and there is a reason I'm bringing it up, is because each man represented his nation. He was a representative of the whole. Each nation agreed to let their entire fate as a country be decided upon the competition of these two men.

And if Goliath won the rumble in the Middle Eastern jungle, the entire nation of Israel would become Philistine slaves. If David, the humble shepherd boy, figured out somehow a way to win, then the nation of the Philistines would be routed, becoming indentured servants of Yahweh and his host.

And it is in this arrangement that we learn much about what covenants actually are. Because in a covenant, God picks out a man from among a people, and he begins doing business with that man, and then God brokers a deal with that man that will impact the entire nation and the race of people.

So long as their representative keeps the terms of the covenant, then they will be blessed. So long as the stone lands, they will not be in slavery. But like Goliath, if those men sin against the living God, those representatives, those covenant heads that we call federal heads, if they sin against the living God, then they not only are punished, but everyone who's connected to them inherits their fate in the same way that the Philistines inherited the fate of the downfall of the mighty giant Goliath.

Because they are our representatives. Now in this, we've seen so far in this Advent series on covenant theology, which by the way, has been way better than just that sentence I just said, like, oh, what are you guys doing for Christmas?

Oh, we're doing this great series on something. So what are you guys doing? We're talking about covenant theology and Christmas. But yet it's been awesome because we've gotten to see the bones of the Bible and how it all connects to Christ.

And we've gotten to see that, that this, how this thrice holy God actually comes down into earth and creates a pocket of sacred space where he and man can dwell together in peace and blessing. And to do that work, God chooses human representatives to represent us in covenant with God.

Men who will stand in our place and God doing this enters into the solemn agreements with these men, agreements that are cut, signed, and sealed in blood so that whatever the outcome of these men are would be the outcome that we receive as well.

And we've seen that the outcome has been abysmal for the heads of covenant so far. Adam 1 .0, his name is Adam because he's man. That's what Hebrew word for man is. So hey man, he's, hey Adam, he became literally the first man.

And he's the first man that entered into covenant with God and God fashioned Adam out of the dust. We remember outside of the region of Eden, God breathed life into his nostrils and God brought him into a garden land filled with animals.

And Adam is commanded to rule over and take dominion over this land and these animals to be fruitful and to multiply and to fill it and to spread it out and subdue the entire world and make the entire world a garden.

But Adam, not very long into his covenant representation failed and he ate from the wrong tree and he ended up naked and ashamed and his son Cain inherited even deeper curses than he. And the line of men collapsed and was pulled down into pollution and they would be almost entirely destroyed by a totalizing judgment.

That's Adam 1 .0. Adam 2 .0 is who I'm calling Noah and I'm calling Noah Adam 2 .0 because if you examine the life of Noah, it looks a lot like Adam. It says that Noah was a man of the soil. Adam was made from the dirt.

You see the connection. Like Adam called, like Adam, God called Noah out of the dusty parts of the earth. Like Adam, God breathed in such a way that gave life to Noah, but he also breathed in such a way that that broke the world.

The word in Hebrew for breath Ruach means both breath and spirit. So Noah was given the breath of God in a way that made him be classified as a righteous man on earth and the rest of the world received the breath of God that broke forth the foundations of the deep and the floods of the deep and drown them under the fury of God's wrath.

After the flood, Noah plants a garden. Who does that remind you of? After the flood, he rules over the animals. Who does that remind you of? After the flood, he gets off the boat, plants the garden, drinks from the fruit, becomes naked and ashamed, and his son Canaan is more cursed than he.

Who does that remind you of? And like Adam, whose descendants descended deeper into pollution and received this totalizing judgment, the descendants of Noah did the same and they all ended up in the plains of Shinar at the Tower of Babel and all of them were judged with confusion and language and spreading out.

So you have Noah basically walking through every aspect of the life of Adam because he's a covenant representative and God cuts him from the same kind of cloth as his father Adam, and he, like his father Adam, does the same things.

And we receive the punishment. We receive the representation. Now so far, the story of the human race is not going so well, and we're only in Genesis.

9.

We have two Adam figures, two very similar men. Both of them are fallen. Both of them are failed representatives, and God would have been just if he would have abandoned the redemption project in Adam.

He would have been just if he abandoned the redemption project in the flood. He would have been just if Noah, who was said to be a righteous man, but we know that there's no one righteous. We know that in comparison to the evil that was on the world in the days of Noah, Noah was righteous.

But Noah also deserved to be drowned in the waters of the flood and his family as well. So God would have been just if he washed the world away of humans, and yet God raises up a third representative, a third covenant head that we called last week Adam 3 .0, which is Abraham.

And we call him Adam 3 .0 because he has roughly the same story as Adam. It's fascinating when you look at the details of it because there's so many similarities between Abraham and Adam. Like Adam, Abraham was chosen out of a dusty place called Ur.

Like Adam, the breath of God calls him up and out of the dust and gives him glorious covenantal life. Like Adam, he's placed in a garden land that is said to flow with milk and honey. When it says that the land of Canaan is a land flowing with milk and honey, you're meant to see, oh, that's a garden.

Oh, that's a new Eden. Like Adam, he is blessed and he has promised offspring so much that would number the stars. He's fruitful and he multiplies. That would eventually fill the world with worshipers just like it's promised to Adam.

Like Adam, he's given ownership and dominion over the entire world. Like Adam, he's put into a deep sleep we talked about last week. The word that Adam was put into a deep sleep and Eve was cut out of him through his rib, Abraham was put into a deep sleep.

But unlike Adam who was cut, Abraham would not be cut. But God would promise that he would be cut if the covenant did not come true. In every way, Adam and Abraham are connected. Like Adam, Abraham eventually did have a child, a child named Isaac, a child of the promise who like Abel was in constant conflict with his brother.

One of them, Ishmael, was cursed to wander like Cain. One of them, Isaac, was given the blessing of the land like Seth. Just like Adam, two angels show up in Abraham's life with swords and they make war against sin, like the cherubim who guard the way to the garden.

And like Adam, Abraham's descendants end up enslaved to the serpent because they end up in Egypt under the rule of Pharaoh who, oh, by the way, wears a serpent on his headdress. So here you have three covenants that are basically telling us the same story.

God raises up a covenant head and they represent us poorly and people end up in slavery and human representation fails. So today, instead of a human representative, today we're going to look at a national representative.

We're going to look at a corporate representative and we're going to look at how Israel is brought into covenant with God as a nation. And oh, by the way, the pattern continues. Israel is a type of Adam, but we'll save that for a moment.

Let us now begin. I'm not going to ask you to turn with me because I'm going to read several passages to show you what the Mosaic covenant looks like. I call it the covenant with Israel because Moses was a mediator.

Israel was the one who was responsible for stewarding the covenant. So I'll read some passages to you, we'll pray, and then we will dive in. Exodus 19, five through six. This is the Israel being placed as head over the entire world.

Now that if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples for all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel. So Israel's called to be head. Here's the stipulations of the covenant. Some of them, I'm not going to read the 600 plus that show up in the covenant.

Then God spoke all these words saying you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.

Honor your father and mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness and you shall not covet. We know that as the 10 commandments. Those are the stipulations of the covenant.

Now there's also signs, seals, and meals in this covenant. Exodus 24, four through 11, Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord, the stipulations. Then he arose early in the morning and he built an altar at the foot of the mountain with 12 pillars for the 12 tribes of Israel signs.

He sent young men of the sons of Israel and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as peace offerings to the Lord seals. Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins and the other half of the bloody sprinkled on the altar.

And then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people and said all that the Lord has spoken, we will do and we will be obedient. So Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people and said, behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.

Then Moses and Nadab and Abihu and the 70 elders of Israel went up with Aaron and they saw the God of Israel and under his feet there appeared to be pavement of Sapphire as clear as the sky itself. And he, yet he, God did not stretch out his hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel and they saw God and they ate and they drink signs, seals, and meals.

Then you have the blessings and the curses. I'm not going to get into all of these. You should read Leviticus 26. You should read Deuteronomy 28. You should look at these because they're so fascinating, but I'm going to give you a smattering Leviticus 26, three through 13 and 14 through 39.

If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments so as to carry them out, then I will give you rains in their season so that the land will yield its produce. Your thriving will last for you. You will thus eat your food to the full and live securely in the land.

Verse six, I shall also grant peace in the land. I shall also eliminate the harmful beasts from the land and no sword will pass through your land. Verse seven, but you will chase your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword.

Verse nine, so I will turn toward you and make you fruitful and multiply you. There's Adamic language again, and I will confirm my covenant with you. Verse 11, I will make my dwelling place among you.

There's Eden language and my soul will not reject you and I will walk among you. There's Eden language and be your God and you shall be my people. Here's the curses. But if you do not obey me and you do not carry out all of these commandments, if instead you reject my statutes and if your soul abhors my ordinances, then I in turn will do this to you and it is rough.

It comes in sequential periods of increase in intensity. Here's how it begins. I will point over you a sudden terror. This is how it begins. Consumption and fever that will waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pine away and will sow your seed.

You will sow your seed uselessly for your enemy will eat it up. I will set my face against you so that you will be struck down before your enemies and those who hate you will rule over you and you will flee when no one is pursuing you and I will punish you seven times more for your sins.

Verse 19, I will also break down your pride of power. I will make your sky like iron and your earth like bronze. It doesn't rain, nothing grows. Verse 20, your strength will be spent uselessly. Your land will not yield its produce and the trees of the land will not yield their fruit.

If then you are still unwilling to obey me, I will increase the plague on you seven times according to your sins. I will let loose among you the beast of the field which will bereave you of your children and destroy your cattle and reduce your numbers so that your roads lie deserted.

I will act with hostility against you and I, even I will strike you seven times for your sins and I will bring upon you a sword which will execute vengeance for the covenant. And when you gather together into your cities, I will send pestilence among you so that you shall be delivered into the hands of your enemies.

I will act with wrathful hostility against you. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters you will eat. I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars and heap your remains on the remains of your idols.

I will lay waste your cities as well. I will make your sanctuaries desolate and I will not smell your soothing aromas. I will make the land desolated so that your enemies who settle in it will be appalled by it.

You, however, I will scatter among the nations and will draw out a sword after you as your land becomes a desolation and your cities become a waste. And those of you who may be left will rot away because of their iniquity in the lands of your enemies and also because of the iniquity of their forefathers.

You will rot with them. It's unbelievable. It's almost hard now to transition because the covenant also doesn't just have curses, it has a legacy. So it's a hard transition here from that. That's the covenant curses if you don't obey, but if you do obey, you get a legacy and here's the legacy Deuteronomy 30 verses one through six.

So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you and you call them to mind in all nations where the Lord your God has banished you and you return to the Lord your God and obey him with all of your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons, then the Lord your God will restore you from your captivity and have compassion on you and will gather you again from all of the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you.

If you're outcaster at the ends of the earth from there, the Lord will gather you and from there he will bring you back. The Lord your God will bring you into the land which your father's possessed and you shall possess it and he will prosper you and multiply you more than your father's.

Moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul so that you may live by obeying the terms of the covenant.

Look at all that God is doing to bless his people. Let us, let us pray and let us examine Israel as covenant head. Lord, we thank you that even in the depths and the, the deeps of what we're calling covenant theology, this attempt by us to understand multi thousand year arrangements and covenants and agreements that you made with representatives to rescue the human race.

You went with Adam to rescue the human race and yet it descended into ruin. You entered into a covenant with Noah and yet it ended in confusion. You entered into a covenant with Abraham and yet it ended in slavery.

And today we're going to examine how you entered into a covenant with national Israel in the old Testament to be the head over all the nations to produce for yourself that which you had purposed in the garden of Eden, that the entire earth would be filled with worshipers and with the glory of God.

And Lord, today we examine just how tremendously you have extended grace to these representatives and just how tremendously they have failed and just how tremendously we need you, Jesus. It's in your name we pray, amen.

So Adam 4 .0, the nation of Israel. How is the nation of Israel a type of Adam? Well, there's lots of parallels in the story. The pattern that began in Eden does not disappear after Adam falls, Noah stumbles, or Abraham.

Wanders.

It expands, it intensifies, and now in the covenant with Israel, it becomes corporate, it becomes a collective, it becomes nationalized. Israel is not merely another covenant partner. Israel is Adam reenacted, Adam enlarged, Adam expanded, Adam placed as the head over all the nations.

For instance, like Adam, Israel was called out of the dust. Where did God call Israel? Out of Egypt, the dust. Adam was formed in the ground, animated by the breath of God in the same way Israel was called by the breath of God out of Egypt through the word of his messenger Moses.

Like the first creation, this is fascinating. This is not Adamic typology, this is creation typology. I'm a nerd, so you're just gonna have to deal with it. But like the first creation, the spirit hovered over the waters of chaos in Genesis, the spirit hovers over the waters of the Red Sea in the Exodus.

The same God who spoke creation into existence in Genesis 1 is the same God who speaks over the people in the book of Exodus. The same son who walked with Adam in the garden is now showing up in the book of Exodus as the angel of the Lord, and what is he doing but walking his people through the water?

So you have God speaking, spirit hovering, son walking, it's Genesis 1 all over again. And when the waters are separated from the dry land, what does that remind you of? The first week of creation, day two, waters and dry land are separated.

Red Sea, water and dry land are separated. The boundary between water and earth is eliminated, just like it was in the first creation. So should we be surprised that God is gonna draw out of this creative moment an Adam to put into a garden, land?

And like Adam, God calls Israel his firstborn son. That's why he says out of Egypt I called my firstborn son, that passage was not first applied to Jesus, it was applied first to Israel. Like Adam stood in the world as God's son and image bearer, Israel is explicitly named God's son and heir, which is entirely federal.

What Adam was to the garden, now Israel is supposed to be to the nations, that's what we should see here. Like Adam, Israel encounters a serpentine enemy, which is a fancy way of saying someone who's of the serpent.

Pharaoh is not merely an ancient tyrant, he's a theological antagonist and a representative of evil. He enslaves, he deceives, he hardens, and he questions the word of God, just like his father Satan.

And he seeks the destruction of the seed of God, the seed of the woman, throwing the babies into the Nile River. He's just like the serpent. So what you have is the same old serpent that we met in Eden, this time using a Pharaoh as a proxy to do his bidding against the plans of God.

Like the original creation, the chaotic waters are restrained by the breath of God through ten successive acts of judgment in the book of Exodus. The waters are also restrained by God, holding them back so that the people of God could walk through and become new creation, new people, a new nation, birthed in that moment.

Like Adam, Israel is placed into a garden land. Canaan was not just their territory, it was a sacred space where they would interact with and worship this God, a land that's described in Edenic terms, where it took two men to carry one bushel of grapes.

They were so big. It flowed with milk and honey. This is a land that looks a lot like the Garden of Eden, where their temple is decorated like the Garden of Eden, where the tabernacle is decorated like the Garden of Eden.

As you walk through the tabernacle and the temple, you walk past the tree of life, you walk past the cherubim, you walk to the place where God and man dwell. It's all Edenic language. Like Adam, Israel was given a priestly, kingly vocation.

The same word that is used of Adam to keep and to till, to keep and to work the garden is used of the Levitical priest who served in the tabernacle, which as we've said is decorated like a garden. So they're little Adams, working and serving their God in a garden space.

Their calling like Adam is mediatorial. They're to bring God's presence to the world through their faithfulness and worship. Like Adam, Israel is commanded to drive out the serpent and his seed. Think about this.

Adam is commanded to keep and to work the garden so that when the serpent comes in, he was supposed to cast it out. Israel is called to cast out the Canaanites who worshiped the serpentine gods. The conquest narrative of Joshua is not random.

It is Adam being commanded to redo what he should have done originally in the garden.

Land.

Israel fails. Israel is commanded to be fruitful and multiply. Actually, it's spoken over them at the very beginning of the book of Exodus. And they were fruitful and they multiplied. God is laying these crumbs down that lead us through the forest and he's being lavish.

With it.

Like Adam, they're given a dominion mandate. Like Adam, they're given a territory. Like Adam, they're told to fill the world with the light of God. They were being light to the Gentiles. Like Adam, Israel sins and the law is violated.

Like Adam, trust gives way to presumption. Worship gives way to idolatry and the gifts are despised. Like Adam, Israel is barred from the garden land and they die in the dust. Remember the first generation?

We're barred from entering into the garden. We're cursed to wander and die in the dust. Adam was told you will return to the dust from where you were made. It's Adam language. Like Adam, the sanctuary is defiled.

God's presence withdraws and the land vomits them out. Like Adam, Israel is exiled eastward. Did you know that Adam was cast in an easterly direction out of Eden and so the people of Israel were cast to the east to go to Babylon, which by the way, was a place where the serpent was worshipped.

Like Adam, Israel's mission collapses. Instead of ruling the world under God, they became like all of the nations and instead of the head, they became the tail. Like Adam, their offspring came to a calamitous end.

Adam's offspring came to an end at the flood. Israel's offspring came to an end as we read in Deuteronomy or Leviticus 26 in the flood of God's wrath in AD 70, where they ate the flesh of their children and where they died desolated and their house was abandoned and everything that's, that's why it's so important to read these chapters.

Everything in Leviticus 26 and 28 happened to Judah and Israel in AD 70 because they rejected the Christ. And that's the point that we're watching all of this. There's nothing random about this. There's no way that all of this is accidental.

There's no way that all of these things, Israel being called out of the dust, brought to a garden land, water being separated from dry land. There's no way that all of this is random. We're watching God raise up another Adam.

And this is apparently the way that God raises up an Adam. He raises him up from the dust, brings him into the garden, puts his breath into him, gives him the stipulations, the commands, promises blessings if he obeys, promises curses if he disobeys and cuts him out and cast him out if he fails.

This is just the way that God raises up his federal heads, Adam, Noah, Abraham, and now.

Israel.

And in this way, Israel, the nation is what you would call, if you want to sound fancy at dinner parties, a corporate singularity of Adam. They enter into a similar kind of covenant that Adam entered into, which we call the Mosaic covenant, which I like to call the covenant with Israel.

So with that, now that you can see that Israel is a second Adam, I think you can see that,.

Right?

I just want to make sure it's pretty obvious to me. Now that we've seen that, let's see how God enters into covenant with Israel. We've been talking about the last three weeks that there's seven aspects of a covenant, seven elements of a covenant.

So we're going to look at those seven elements of the of the Mosaic covenant. And just so you know, Mosaic covenant starts in Exodus and it ends at Calvary. So you're looking at a massive portion of the Bible.

Almost 75 of the Bible occurs under the banner of the Mosaic covenant. So we ought to understand it so that we can understand his word so that we can understand what Christ has done. So number one, every covenant has a head that's appointed.

Israel is appointed head over God's covenant with them. The Mosaic covenant does not treat Israel as if they're just one nation among the many nations. It treats Israel as if they are God's appointed means by which he's going to reach the entire world, that they're going to be a kingdom of priests.

They're going to be a holy nation that's going to serve in a capacity by which to bring the entire world under the dominion of God. So when Israel in the old Testament thinks that they're kind of special, they have warrant, but they're not special because of themselves.

God did not choose them because they were the greatest or the biggest. He chose them to showcase his greatness and his glory. They're special because he chose them, not because intrinsically they are special.

Just as Adam was head over all humanity, Israel was placed as head over all the nations. So long as she would have been obedient. God says it plainly in Exodus 19, before the stipulations are given, before the law is given, God places Israel as head over the world.

If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, he tells them verse six, my possession among you will be my own possession among all the peoples of the earth, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

That's headship language, not headship in the sense of Israel being divine or somehow special or sinless or above critique. Headship in the covenantal sense that they are placed as a representative over the world with a unique calling and a unique accountability before God for the health and the life of the nations.

And notice what's embedded into the text. God says for all the earth is mine. We get this idea that God chooses Israel because he lost the world and he's going to regain it back by picking this small, piddly little place in the Levant.

Fancy word for that area of Israel. No, all the earth belongs to God. The redemption plan is going to start with Israel. God does not say this little strip of land is mine and everything else belongs to the.

Devil.

He doesn't say that. He says all the earth is mine. And then he places Israel right in the middle of that claim as his covenant people and the covenant head over his redemption project to save the world.

In other words, Israel's calling was never meant to end with Israel. It was always meant to end with a world worshiping God. That's why they're called a kingdom of priests because priests bring people into relationship.

With God.

And it says that they're a kingdom of priests, which means that all of them were priests, which means that they were not supposed to be focused on themselves, but focused on how do we serve the world and bring the entire world into relationship with this God.

And they were to do that by bringing people into clean and unclean or helping them become clean when they've become unclean, helping guard them in their holiness, helping them enter into God's dwelling place, helping preserve the worship of the one true God in the middle of a world full of lies.

If Israel is a priestly nation, that meant that their function, their job, their role was a priest of God to the nations. They were to hold forth the law of God, guard the worship of God, and stand in the presence of God as a living testimony that Yahweh is the only God.

And that right there is precisely why the Old Testament reads the way that it does. That is precisely why you see Joshua, Judges, Ruth, first and second Samuel, and all the prophets hearkening back to this.

Because if Israel is the covenant head, then Israel's failures are not small occasions. In the same way that if Goliath loses, the Philistines lose. In the same way that if Adam loses, we all lose. If Israel loses, the world loses.

If Israel loses, there is no light on earth. If Israel doesn't do what God has called them to do, there is no pathway to God. At least in the Old Testament, we see. When their kings rule unjustly, it's not just local politics, they're destroying the earth.

When the people chase down idols, it's not just a religious preference, a tip of the hat to ancient pluralism, it is treason and it is pollution of the earth. And this is why so much of Exodus through Malachi, as you're getting ready to find out for yourself in January, as we read through the Bible together, so much of Exodus through Malachi is God prosecuting them, bringing them up on charges like an attorney, and bringing them ultimately to the point, not just of warning, but of conviction for their sins and their crimes.

You are watching headship playing out across a nation in the nation of Israel in the covenant that God gave to Moses and the people of Israel. They are head over the world. That's the point. Number two, there's stipulations in every covenant.

Every covenant has stipulations. If the headship falls, everyone who's connected to that head falls with it in the same way that if your head is cut off, your body doesn't go very far. In the Mosaic covenant, God does not leave Israel to guess on what he wants them to do.

He speaks clearly, publicly, loudly from a mountain, just like he did in Eden. Ezekiel says that the garden of Eden was a mountain garden, which is fascinating. God meets with Adam on a mountain and gives him his commandments, just like he does with.

Moses.

And when you think about the stipulations of the Mosaic covenant, we're talking about the entire law, or maybe you would call it the Torah, or you maybe would call it the first five books of the Old Testament.

It is a very specific legal system that God installs for the people to follow. And it is the most detailed and in depth of all of the covenant stipulations and all of the other covenants. And it's the one that everybody gets tripped up on, because you'll have conversations with atheists and they'll say, oh yeah, you're God, he doesn't want me to eat shrimp.

Loser, that's not what that means. My wife just shook her head at me, I'm sorry, forgive me. We have to understand what this law is. We have to understand what these stipulations are because they're very specific and they're broken into three categories of laws.

So the stipulations with Adam are simple. There's one category, do it, obey and live, don't you die. But the covenant with Moses in Israel is very specific. First, there's the moral law of God. There's the moral stipulations that they need to follow.

You must be holy for I am holy. If I'm going to live in your presence, you must be holy. So at the center of all of this is the 10 commandments. The 10 commandments are for every person on earth. The 10 commandments are not just for the Old Testament folks.

When you hear men like Andy Stanley say that we need to unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament, he's throwing out the moral law of God. That's for all people. The moral law is not just a Jewish rule book.

It's the eternal word of God for all people at all times so that they will know who this God is and why we worship him. That's why in this church you may wonder why do we go through the law of God every week because it tells us who God is and it tells us who we are.

And these commands are not suggestions, they're rooted in the character of God. You shall not murder because he's life giver. You shall not commit adultery because he's ever faithful. You shall not have no other gods before me because he's ever dedicated to his own triune beauty and glory.