Sermon Notes: Exodus 23:20-33
Let’s read our Scripture together. Exodus 23:20-22
1 Corinthians 10:1-13 is our “gospel of the kingdom”, Galatians 3:24, and Luke 24:44-47 framework for understanding so much of what we read in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges.
I want to read and comment a little from 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 to help set our lens for Exodus 23:20-33. I’m going to read it now. Follow along silently if you want.
These next few sentences might be the most important string of joyfully weighty sentences I’ve ever written: It’s clear from the Apostle’s first letter to the Corinthians that what the Lord is doing in the Exodus, the wilderness, and the conquest of Canaan is more than history. It is history. And what is happening is salvation history in which God weaves together history in his cosmos made up of seen and unseen realities to achieve deep and eternal theologically significant and salvation purposes. He does this to prepare people, times, and places for what Jesus accomplishes in his advent, birth, life, ministry, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. God weaves all of this together so that we can look back at it all and see Jesus in and through it, have our faith strengthened as we see it and remember it, know what to do now as followers of Jesus in the local church, and learn something of the nature and character of Father-Son-Holy Spirit that will lead us to believe, fall down in awe, and worship him.
Scriptures like Exodus 23:20-33 and their New Testament commentary allow us to marvel at and enjoy God and all he has done and is doing.
What are we to see in our text today to lead us to believe, be in awe, and worship?
The Father sends Jesus the Son before Israel to lead them to the Promised Land. 23:20-22a
The LORD tells Israel in Exodus 23:21-22a (ESV) 21 “Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him. 22 “But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say…”
NOTE: Notice the shift in verse 22 ’s personal pronouns from “his” to “I”. Jesus does this same thing with the Holy Spirit in John 14. No wonder at his consistency because it’s the same God talking. This is significant because this is God identifying himself in the One he is speaking about thus making him one in essence and yet displayed in another distinct and equal person.
In places like this as well as Exodus 3:2–6 and Judges 6:11–22, this angel of the LORD speaks as if he is Yahweh, acts as if he is Yahweh, and at the same time is distinct from Yahweh.
Similarly, the Son of Man in Daniel 7:13–14 describes “one like a Son of Man” coming with the clouds of heaven and receiving dominion over nations from the “Ancient of Days”. Some Jewish traditions interpreted the Son of Man as a second divine figure.
These Scriptures led Jewish scholars to begin thinking that Yahweh has a dual and unified nature. Some referred to this reality as a biunity in the nature of God.
NOTE: Michael Heiser is a worthy read on this subject. The Bible Project is always helpful as well.
Ancient Jewish writings, particularly in the Second Temple period (516 BC–70 AD), discussed what some rabbis called the “Two Powers”. “Two Powers” thought came from these Scriptures where Yahweh clearly has a second, distinct, and divine being associated with him.
Once Christians started preaching what Jesus told them about himself that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Jewish authorities increasingly emphasized a strict monotheism that denied any tri-unity in the nature of God. By the 2nd century AD, the “Two Powers” idea was officially condemned as heretical in rabbinic Judaism.
These Scriptures and ideas played a crucial role in the early development of the doctrine of the Trinity. The apostles, as good second temple Jews, were keenly aware of the thoughts about Yahweh being One yet having distinction in his person. God taking on flesh was not a deal breaker for them. So, when Jesus told his disciples to receive he and the Father’s presence (John 14-16) with them in and by the Person of the Holy Spirit, they believed what he said. Thus Christian Trinity is a defining part of Christian theology.
Jude 1:5 (ESV) 5 Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
Christians believe the Angel of the Lord leading God’s people is Jesus because that’s who he is.
God is with his people and thus he fights for his people. 23:22b-23, 27-28
Those who obey the Lord Jesus experience the truth that God is with us and for us!
The overwhelming emphasis that is not explicitly stated but should not be overlooked is that God is with his people. Since God is with his people, he fights for his people.
Of course, the Lord is ever-present, but what God is doing for his people is more than being ever-present and detached and distant. A god that sits over something influencing it but is distant and detached is not how the Lord Jesus rules over his creation. That’s deism and some other evil entity.
The Lord is present. Jesus actively sustains his creation with his personal presence. The Lord is attached to his people. His presence is not ever-present distance. Jesus’ presence is personal and near.
God’s presence is personal and involved.
The present Lord promises to go before his people, bring them to their enemies, and then conquer their enemies.
One of the ways the Lord fights for his people is by sending “hornets” to drive out their enemies. The word “hornets” is difficult to pin down exactly what God has in mind. Maybe it’s literal, and the Lord is going to chase off some of their enemies with hornets.
Legit, one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen is my buddy Jonathan Henson when we were in 5th grade getting chased and stung in the “behooky” by some hornets from a nest we were throwing rocks at. Those suckers will chase you.
It could refer to a plague of stinging insects. It could refer to the Lord sending Pharaoh, who used a hornet as a royal symbol, to pre-attack these nations before he sent Israel in.
Either way, the Lord is fighting with and for his people and he is going to send them into the Promised Land to engage those he has been patient with since he told Abraham he would be patient with them until his patience ran out (Genesis 15:16).
When the Lord’s patience has reached its end, he will send his people, and as they go into the land in obedience to the Lord, their labor of taking the land is supernaturally enabled and made effective by the Lord’s making it happen in such a way that he is doing the work while they are participating.
Isaiah captures a little of this supernatural dynamic in Isaiah 40:30-31 (ESV) 30 Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 31 but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
Illustration: The Lord fighting for his people is like walking on the moving sidewalks in airports. When you step on the moving sidewalk and keep walking you notice that you are walking at a leisurely pace, but you are flying by folks who are doing all the work themselves off the moving sidewalk. You are walking, but you are being carried along by a power you are not supplying. That’s the Lord doing our fighting for us as we faithfully do what he has asked.
The Lord promises that if his people will hear Jesus’ voice and obey him, God will fight for them in such a way that their enemies cannot overcome them, and they won’t be worn out and defeated.
God, in his personal nearness and involvement with and in his people, becomes an adversary to those who oppose his people.
Deuteronomy 28:7 (ESV) 7 “The LORD will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.
Jesus is the only way. 23:24a, 25a
“…you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do…you shall serve the LORD your God…”
This is not our first go round with the Lord making clear his exclusive claim on worship. The exclusivity of Jesus Christ is first encountered in Genesis 1 and 2 and affirmed in Colossians 1:15-20 when we learn Jesus is the Creator, and as creator, there is no other created being deserving of worship.
Creatures worshiping creatures is the ultimate in dishonor and distrust, and thus the chief of all sin.
So, the Lord again makes it clear he alone is to be the object of our mind’s attention and our heart’s affection, as a result, there is no way to be redeemed from the curse of the rebellion than through the narrow door of Jesus.
Matthew 12:30 (ESV) 30 Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
Jesus promises good necessities for his people. 23:25b-26
“…and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.”
To have agricultural success, avoid plagues, be able to have children to carry on the family line and legacy, and be able to live long enough to see one’s family to maturity was essential to survival and thriving in the Promised Land.
God’s promises here are related to the mission, not becoming wealthy according to our westernized standards rooted in the idea that material wealth is a sign of God’s blessing.
So, don’t misunderstand the promises given here as promises of success if you just jump through the right hoops to please God. You can’t parallel the two and transfer God’s promises for mission success for obedience to some promise of accumulated stuff if we jump through the hoops of “faith”. The second one is a kind of witchcraft and is not in any way Christian.
However, if you are reading this properly and you are familiar with the whole metanarrative of the Bible, your first reaction is that God didn’t do this all the time for Israel. So, what’s up?
Well, you would be correct to note a clear reason God didn’t do that all the time is that Israel did exactly what Jesus told them NOT to do and they received the curses promised in Deuteronomy, so it’s not the Lord, but Israel’s abandoning the Lord that led to them struggling rather than getting all this good from the Lord. That would be true.
But you may have also read in the Bible that sometimes God’s people do exactly like they are supposed to. They hear and understand. They obey. They obey from the heart. They are faithful, and God lets them take a beating for no wrong they have done, and they wrestle with the incongruity of what God has said to them and what has happened.
Psalm 44 is one such example of God’s people wrestling with this incongruity. It’s this Psalm, 44:22, that Paul quotes in Romans 8:36. Paul begins that section of Romans 8 in verse 18 to help the church make sense of their sufferings.
If they are in Christ, then Jesus’ obedience is counted to them. God is not judging them for unbelief. It’s not even that they are receiving natural consequences of bad decisions. So, how are they to make sense of their sufferings when there is nothing for which they should suffer? How are they to reconcile the promise with God seemingly not keeping up his end of the deal?
How are we to reconcile God’s word that tells us that sins are not counted against us and the Psalm 103:10-14 and Psalm 84:11 promises that God will only do us good because he has counted us righteous? How are we to reconcile the Exodus 23:25b-26 promises of good things being supplied for us as we are faithful to hear and obey, and we are faithful, yet we are getting smacked around and it feels like God didn’t do what he said he’d do?
It is true that if we are in Christ, there is no condemnation on us. Jesus’ obedience is counted as our obedience. That doesn’t mean that I don’t get natural consequences if I do something stupid, but it does mean that God is not punishing me for sin.
What do we do? We must be aware that we do not adopt Satan’s Bible study methods.
Luke 4 records for us Jesus’ temptation at the launch of his public earthly ministry. Led into this by the Holy Spirit, the Serpent takes Jesus on this tour and quotes to him Psalm 91 just like Jesus inspired it to be written down. The problem is that Satan makes application of Psalm 91’s promises like they have no qualifications in God’s eternal purposes.
In the Serpent’s Bible application, since God promises to not let Jesus strike his foot against a stone, he should just jump off the pinnacle of the temple, the Father will send angels to keep his word, the world will see, and the mission will be accomplished with no cross! What’s not to like about that plan? That’s what the Bible says God is supposed to do, right?
We’ll, not quite. God gives us examples of faithful people who follow the Lord, and they don’t get what they deserve or are promised because there is more at stake than a crop or good health for now, or a paycheck.
God gives qualifications to some material promises. One of those qualifications is that sometimes there is more and better good for those who remain faithful under trial when they have done nothing to receive that trial.
See Job. See Jesus, the Son of God.
Sometimes, and mostly for reasons we may never see, the good Father allows us to suffer for doing good.
So, don’t take the promises of the Bible for material supply as absolute above the eternal purposes of God for our sanctification and eternal joy.
If you are called on to endure a hard time for nothing you’ve done wrong, lift up your head, look to the cross, remember the resurrection, stay faithful, don’t let the Serpent successfully tempt you to distrust God, know that God will make it plain in time.
“You fearful saints, fresh courage take, the clouds you so much dread, are big with mercy and will break in blessing on your head. His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour. The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.” – William Cowper.
Kingdom advance and growth in Christ are measured and slow. 23:27-30
The Lord’s reason for not making them take possession of the land quickly is that in the transition of such a fast defeat of, exit of a nation, and assimilation of new people the land and animals would be a problem. So, the Lord solves that natural result of transition by making a slow advance for his people.
We trust the Lord’s reasons, and since we observed at the beginning of this sermon the Lord was also setting a pattern for us to learn from in our growth in Christ, we trust that the advance of his kingdom and our sanctification are likewise going to be measured and slow for good and glorious purposes.
I say measured because the kingdom is advancing and will culminate in new creation, and that, like the Lord’s Sabbath rhythm, involves processes and actual advancement from one state or place to another.
We are the first fruits of new creation. First fruits imply future fruit. Measured. 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV) 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
And Philippians 1:6 (ESV) 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 3:18 (ESV) 18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
Our growth in Christ is measured, and if it is measured it will take time.
Personally, I want God to get some things done yesterday. However, in hurry I don’t learn to hear the Spirit, I don’t learn God’s Sabbath rhythm to life, and I don’t learn that obedience has a fragrant aroma and produces the fruit of patience.
I would argue measured and slow is how the Lord designed all things to work. From eternity the Lord designed the times from Genesis 1 to the cross, from the cross to resurrection and ascension, and from ascension to the second coming and restoration of all things. The Lord says many times, “In the fullness of time…”. We are to live by that.
Our growth in Christ is measured with God’s metrics and it is designed to be slow, and in that we get to know Jesus in the power of his resurrection and fellowship with him in suffering as the Lord determines.
Philippians 3:10 “…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
Don’t miss getting to know the Lord in this way by wishing he would just hurry up.
We are to take possession of all ground Jesus takes and make no peace with evil. 23:31-33
Chapter 23 is the end of the requirement of God’s covenant with Israel. Chapter 24 begins working the covenant out.
So, it’s fitting the Lord would remind Israel to not make any covenant with any of the evil they are to be driving out.
Ezekiel 5:5 (ESV) 5 “Thus says the Lord GOD: This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries all around her.
The Lord Jesus placed his redeemed people at the center of civilization in a land bridge between ancient activity with roads that traversed this land between these civilizations. Israel was to take that ground and set up the missionary outpost of the kingdom of God, and from there they were to see that the Lord was known and worshiped among the nations.
Israel had the work of getting rid of the descendants of the Nephilim and the nations they had inspired to worship the Serpent, and this work was going to be challenging. They were to make no peace with evil
They were to take ground, redeem it, and steward it for God’s fame among all nations.
In Christ, our mission has not changed. We were given all of creation to take dominion over, maximize it, and see that Jesus is worshiped as we multiply and fill all the earth.
We no longer have to wipe out the descendants of the giants, but we do have an earth and the domains of creation that organize the nations of the earth to heal and steward as we preach the good news and invite all people to repent and enter the kingdom of God.
We are to preach the good news, take authority over all Jesus has given us, and set outposts of the kingdom of God in local churches.
We are to neglect none of it.
If we neglect the call of the Great Commission by making a covenant of peace with even the most benign idea that mutes our zeal for Jesus’ fame in healing creation and saving the lost, we have been snared by the Serpent, and destruction is not far off.
Three Rivers Church, for God’s glory, disciple the nations. Do that work by being and producing radical followers of Jesus.
Take every square inch of your vocational domain. Make disciples. Baptize them into the local church. Multiply local churches. Engage global domains by disrupting evil systems and replacing them with Sabbath systems and preaching Jesus Christ and him crucified. Disrupt local domains with the same strategy of healing and preaching the good news.
How will it work out? At some point Jesus will return and complete this work while we have our hands to the plow of this work, and we will see the kingdom come in its fullness and reign together with him forever!
Application:
Don’t let the fog of battle cloud your faith and lose sight of kingdom come. Keep the faith. Lift up your head. Remember the cross and resurrection. Worship.
The Serpent wants to cloud your remembrance because of the difficulty of the call to stay on point and faithful.
We get disoriented. We may begin to get bitter. We may begin to question God’s good design and purpose and are tempted to take short cuts or quit or throw our faith away.
In The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis, Puddleglum, the brave and “wet blanket” of a Marsh-wiggle, gives a powerful speech to the Witch of the Underworld when she tries to convince him, Eustace, Jill, and Rilian that the overworld, the Sun, and even Aslan himself are just fantasies, and they should just submit to her rule and her way and stay in the gloom. She’s casting a spell over them, and they are getting sleepy and beginning to repeat her words that there really is nothing more than her realm and the way it is. Puddleglum fights the spell, and this old “negative Nelly” says this: Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real-world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”
You may not be able to see clearly today because of the fog of the conflict. Hear me! He’s real. The kingdom is coming. Live like it today. Hold the faith. Take ground. Worship!