Sermon Notes: Exodus 34:18-28; 35:1-3

When we come to Exodus 34:18-28 and 35:1-3, including last week’s text, we find something unique. It’s a mashup of parts of God’s covenant boundaries for Israel.  

There nothing new in our Scripture today. Everything in verses 18-28 and 35:1-3 have already been preached to Israel by the Lord through Moses. We have preached on the details of what Moses shares here in detail in our past sermons.  

Moses does not intend for us to redo what has already been done.  

Moses has been invited up to see the Lord’s glory in response to his request. Moses is there with the Lord for 40 days and nights with no food and water. Moses is sustained by the presence of the Lord.  

NOTE: Moses gets to experience with Jesus on the mountain what Jesus would later teach his disciples in his incarnation when he said, “John 4:32-34 (ESV) 32 ... “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” 

Moses is nourished on God’s very presence as he fellowships with the Lord and receives his word of the covenant. And this is the essence of what it is to fast. We nourish ourselves on increased connection with the Lord.  

During Moses’ time with the Lord, he received a new copy of the covenant, and he is sent to report the Lord’s instructions to the people (see verses 27-28).  

The glaring question is: Why does Moses repeat the things he repeats and not everything since he’s repeating instructions? 

All the content from verse 10 through verse 28 is a repetition of commandments 1, 2, and 4 (No other gods, no idols, keep the Sabbath). It also contains some instructions about the feasts which are related to commandment 4, and some instructions on how to implement these covenant boundaries so as to not participate with unclean spirits and other gods.  

The answer to why these things are repeated and not others is these commandments and their applications are what will be their biggest challenges, so the Lord makes sure to prepare them. He’s installing a game plan for the upcoming physical and spiritual conflict as they advance the great commission mission.  

We are only going to read together verses 25-26 because these two verses are the summary points of what the Lord is communicating to Moses for Israel and, therefore, us. These summary points from verses 25-26 will be the backbone of the sermon this morning.  

Let’s read it. Exodus 34:25-26.  

What do we need to observe as the Lord’s game plan for Israel, and ultimately, for us? 

1. Be holy. V. 25 

God is holy. God’s holiness is his chief and overarching character trait. God’s holiness is his complete separation from sin, his seeking his own glory above and in all things, and his completely OTHER nature. There are none like him. He is completely unique.  

Our pursuit of holiness is commanded in the Bible, and that pursuit is to be free of sin, to seek his glory, and we are to pursue the full restoration of humanity in all the ways we are like him as his image as every disciple everywhere all the time.  

That’s the pursuit of holiness.  

God gave Israel three good news ways to pursue holiness as they entered the Promised Land to root out the tainted Nephilim strain in the inhabitants of Canaan and set up shop for the push to bless all nations with the good news. 

Good news way to pursue holiness 1 - Unleavened bread. V. 18  

The feast of unleavened bread reminds us of the Exodus and the price paid for the justifying work of God to passover sins, and since they have been pardoned, their new creation response is to hate sin and put it to death.  

Sin is everything from missing the mark, to stepping outside of God’s boundaries, to inviting uncleanness into what is clean and thus spoil the good, and outright overt rebellion against God with the serpent dragon.  

Unleavened bread reminds us there are things God hates and things that God loves.  

Being holy requires us to have what the Bible calls the fear of the Lord.  

The fear of the Lord is to hate what God hates, love what God loves, and see all things the way he sees all things. When we do this, we are well on our way shedding sin, seeking God’s glory above all things, and seeing to man’s good in his full restoration to God’s image through the preached good news, healing what is broken, and all the sanctifying grace available to us.  

Good news way to pursue holiness 2 - Redemption of the firstborn. V. 19-20  

Redemption of the firstborn reminds us of God’s divine order of things. The Lord is Creator and thus owner of all things. We are his image-bearing co-regents who are entrusted with ruling over creation with his care and mission in mind. We are not creators and owners.   Since we are not ex-nihilo creators and only stewards, what we create from the things entrusted to us that God created, we owe back to him the very first fruits of it all. 

Redemption of the firstborn reminds us also that we are to be generous givers not hoarders.  

Jesus told the parable of the talents about this divine order of things in Matthew 25:14-30.  

So, one of the ways we pursue holiness is remembering our place in God’s order as image-bearing stewards who are to cultivate creation and our lives toward God’s appointed ends not our own, and to give back to God as our sacrifice of praise a portion of all things.  

This kind of sacrificial giving makes us ask ultimate questions about who God is, who we are, and what God’s purposes are that inform our daily work on mission. Forgetting this truth will become a bridge to rebellion.  

We fight for holiness by remembering who God is and our place as his image-bearing co-regent stewards.  

Good news way to pursue holiness 3 - Sabbath. V. 21 and 35:1-3  

The Sabbath reminds us that we don’t earn anything in covenant relationship with God, rather it is a free gift of God’s power, his grace to us through faith.  

Israel is going to be enticed by unclean spirits and their lacky godlings to work for them to earn food and water and children in a constant rat race of survival.  

The Lord Jesus offers rest and the opportunity to receive his gift of life.  

Sabbath is one of God’s chief means of teaching us how to pursue holiness.  

The tension of doing things God’s way that seems so contrary to a production mindset is indeed a sanctifying pursuit of holiness, and it is a test of who we worship: Jesus or the serpent dragon.  

2. Be devoted to the Lord through corporate worship. V. 26  

Moses lists three of the feasts connected to commandment number 4, the Sabbath, in their yearly cycle of worship.  

He lists the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost), the Feast of First Fruits, and the Feast of Ingathering (Booths).  

Interestingly Moses lists the first two out of order as First Fruits is before Weeks. I’m not sure there is anything to that. Just an observation.  

I’ll refer you back to the sermon on Exodus 23:13-19 for the full details of these feasts.   However, it is worth noting that with Moses referring to the Feast of Unleavened Bread and these three feasts, he is reminding Israel of the call to drop what they were doing when it was time to worship the Lord together in order to travel to his appointed place of worship.  

Part of Sabbath was to stop labor for mission and enter the labor of worship.  

Remember from the sermon on Exodus 23:13-19 how we learned about the Hebrew wording and how they were to “feet themselves” to the place God chose for them to meet him.  

What we have here is the Lord reminding his people they are to be devoted to him in their corporate gathering by not neglecting the necessity of their corporate worship.  

Let me quote from the sermon on Exodus 23:13-19:  “We worship by physically leaving our homes to travel to another location set apart as holy as part of the rhythm of worship. 23:14  “Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me.” 23:14 

It seems that the Lord designated three of his seven feasts as celebrations they were to physically travel to another place to observe. 

Physical travel to a place for worship is one of God’s Sabbath rhythms. 

“Times” in verse 14 is translated from the Hebrew word for “feet”. Literally Exodus 23:14 says, “Three feet in the year you shall keep a feast to me.” 

These feasts were to be traveled to. God’s people were to leave their homes and go to Jerusalem to worship by these fests. They had to travel if they didn’t live in Jerusalem. 

The implication is that three times a year they were to get on their feet and travel to Jerusalem for worship. 

Worship is never to be isolated to a house or a single family. Worship that lines up with Sabbath life giving rhythm requires us to travel to a common place and meet with common people who are not our immediate families and worship the Lord together. 

This is one of the reasons you’ll see all over the Bible people traveling to meet together in places designated for worship with others who worship God. 

The fact that getting to worship is hard should clue us in to the fact there is more going on than meets the eye. The fact that we find ourselves opposed so often when it comes to worship proves that we wrestle not against flesh and blood. 

God calls us to travel to meet in all the rhythms of worship as living sacrifices. 

When you make Sunday worship a Saturday night decision, and you prepare yourself and your family for the pilgrimage to worship, you are entering a Sabbath rhythm that will be opposed, and you do yourself great benefit and you disciple deeply when you fight like life depends on it to get here. 

Sometimes Sabbath rhythm requires us making war on the forces that are opposing us entering the rest of Jesus. Don’t sleep on the effort to get up and travel to worship.” 

Israel was to pursue holiness by pursuing the corporate worship of Jesus because these godlings and their unclean spirits would entice them to come over to team serpent dragon, and by engaging in the rhythms of corporate worship they were resisting evil and proactively waging spiritual war.  

3. Absolutely no serpent dragon activity. V. 26  

Verse 26 is a repeat of Exodus 23:19.  

I’m going to quote again from my own sermon on Exodus 23:13-19:   “This was something the Canaanites would practice. The Canaanites were a blend of nations, and many of those nations are descendants from the Nephilim, and these nations worshiped Molech and a host of other dark elohim. 

They lived in and delighted in a culture of death, and the very thing God designed to give life, the mother animal’s milk, would be used as a means of cooking the little one that momma goat gave life to. What was created for life was perverted into something deadly. 

God explicitly tells his people not to participate in anything of the culture of death."

As I stated a couple of weeks ago in response to the murder of Charlie Kirk, there are two teams: serpent dragon and Jesus. That’s it.  

There is no room for serpent dragon stuff in God’s kingdom.  

We are to be able to discern what is good from what is evil, and sometimes it requires a greater trained discernment.  

Listen to Hebrews 5:14: (ESV) 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. 

This implies that discernment is trained by constant practice, and the result is the ability to distinguish good from evil. 

Sometimes the distinguishing characteristics between good and evil are not so evident and require us to strain to see and understand by training our discernment with granular thinking and a robust download of the right information. 

Israel is going to face deeply deceptive issues, and they need a granular and robust discernment.  

We must likewise learn to do the same. Not all things with a Christian t-shirt on it belong to Jesus.  

Application 

We are not just in some rat race to accumulate all we can and have some undefined expectation of “success”.  

Don’t let the serpent dragon and his prophets disguised as your own accusatory thoughts of who you are dictate how you hear and understand who you are and thus dictate to you how you hear and obey God’s word.  

We are image-bearing co-regents of Jesus Christ on mission to see God glorified in the discipling of the nations.  

That vision requires some different tactics. The Bible is full of applicable tactics to pursue God’s vision for his church. 

Our text has given us three the Lord wants us to give attention to.  

1. Pursue holiness.  

Like Israel had to rid themselves of leaven in every part of their lives, we are called to rid ourselves of every form of sin that is so sticky.  

Hebrews 12:1-2 (ESV) 1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. 

Lay aside every weight and sin.  

Lay aside is middle voice, meaning it is something we actively do and something that is passively happening in us by God’s power as we remember those who have lived by faith before us from Hebrews 11, and we imitate their faith.  

So, by remembering Hebrews 11, God supplies the power to lay aside, and then we appropriate that power into practice.  

What do we lay aside?  

We lay aside the weight and sin.  

Weight is a word for “tumor”, and sin is the word for “missing the mark”.  

So, with God’s help as we look back to those who lived by faith and imitate their faith, we lay aside the cancer of sin and run toward the kingdom of God. 

That’s how we can pursue holiness today.  

2. Build your life around the corporate worship of Jesus.   

The bottom line is that gathering with the covenanted local body of followers of Jesus is an absolute necessity if you are going to grow into spiritual maturity and stay on mission.  

“Sunday worship is a Saturday night decision.” – Dean Inserra  

So, as you plan your year, make gathering for this time a priority.  

Miss very little. Make attendance a given and part of your weekly rhythm.  

3. Train your discernment.  

There nothing God can’t do. He can overcome the absolute worst you can imagine, so don’t hear what I’m about to say as some lack of faith.  

Your discernment will be rooted in the information you feed yourself, and that information you feed yourself becomes influence that trains your spiritual sight. This is how the Wise Creator Jesus put us together.  

As image-bearers, we have a powerful ability to intake creation, natural law and a host of other disciplines and integrate that knowledge into our thinking. And with this powerfully downloaded information, we create a grid that Holy Spirit will either work within for growing discernment or have to combat to correct us.  

There is no room for ignorance due to lack of effort.  

It is in knowing as much as we can of God’s creation with the fear of the Lord that we will train our discernment and either work with the Spirit to know how to navigate the times or find ourselves lost in the times.  

The more quality knowledge you acquire, the more you will learn to notice the deeply deceptive work of the serpent dragon and that will make you and me and us formidable adversaries against the enemy.  

4. Pray.   

Increase us.   Cause us to be holy.   Send us.