SHOW NOTES

🙌Welcome friends, it’s another exciting week in the Old Testament.  I’m Tammy Becker and this is the Almighty God and Gospel Girl Podcast.  This week’s readings are Exodus chapters 13 through chapter 35.  Buckle up because it’s going to be two parts today as the Lord has given me a few things to talk about, but don’t you worry your rabbit trails are at the end for deep diving later.   So, let’s get deep diving into what the Lord wants me to share with you this week from our readings.  We begin with:

The Exodus from Egypt - Exodus 13-14

🙌Our story opens with Moses and the children of Israel, probably about two million in strength, heading out of Egypt on their way to the Promised Land. Through a series of plagues, God not only demonstrated His sovereignty over all of creation and His superiority over the false gods of the land of Egypt, but He literally broke Pharaoh’s will and changed his heart. The tenth plague, the death of the firstborn of Egypt, was the final blow that caused Pharaoh to cave in and let the Israelites go.  Just to give you a little perspective on number, take a look at the picture on my website to the accompany study for this podcast of the State Farm Stadium, home of the Arizona Cardinals, it holds a whopping 63,400 fans and it is packed, now let me say again, probably about two million people headed out of Egypt on their way to the Promised Land, wow!

🙌For the purposes of our study this morning, there are three basic things I want you to see on the Exodus of Egypt.

1. God is with His people

One of the great lessons we learn from the book of Exodus as a whole, and a message reiterated throughout the scripture, is that God is present with His people. God is a person who created us as persons in His image. He wants to be in relationship with us and one of the ways He makes this known is through His presence.

1. God directs His people

One of the most obvious things we see in this text is that God is clearly in charge. Through His presence in the pillars of cloud and fire He is giving His people direction and their deliverance depended upon their following His direction.

Notice three specific things we can learn about God’s guidance as we consider His guidance of Israel out of Egypt.

God positions us where He wants us, not where we want to be.

He wanted to position them to where He was their only hope, to where if He did not deliver them, they would not be delivered.

God’s direction is not always the easiest way.

If we are following God’s direction, we must go where He tells us and do as He says.

God’s direction always requires faith.  How else could that many people file out of Egypt?  Right!

No doubt after a reversal in directions the people began to question whether Moses knew what he was doing. Make no mistake about it, whenever you are trying to follow God there will always be those who are more than ready to offer their advice. There will always be those who think they know a better way than the one God has given you.

III. God delivers His people

The central theological truth of this passage is that God is that God is the Deliverer. The God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob is a God of deliverance.

In his response to the people’s lack of faith, Moses tells encourages the Israelites to trust God. Notice five things this tells us about God.  Look at Exodus14:13-14.

1. He does not want them to fear – He comforts us “Do not fear” 13
2. He does not leave us to die – He delivers us “You will see the salvation of the Lord.” 13
3. He invites us to faith – He expects us to trust Him “Stand firm…keep silent.” 13-14
4. He removes danger from us – He protects us “you will never see them again forever.”
5. He fights for us – He is victorious “The Lord will fight for you.”

The finished work of Jesus demonstrates for us the same truths that our text today tells us about God’s working in the lives of His people.

God does not want us to fear.
He is our Deliverer.
He invites us to trust Him.
He removes danger from us
He is victorious

Walking by Faith in the Wilderness - Exodus 15-17

As we observe the leadership of the Lord and His working in the lives of Israel, and as we observe the response of the Children of Israel, there are five things I want us to consider, specifically as they relate to our walk as Christians.

1. God calls us to walk by faith, in Exodus 18:7 we see Moses had great faith and was a humble man as in of YHWH’s chosen leaders
2. God’s direction always has purpose

In the midst of trials which seem meaningless to us at the time, God has a purpose.  How many times do we look back after the fact and say, oh I see the purpose now, so glad it didn’t go the other way!

III. God provides for us along the way

He provides in accordance to what we need, not necessarily according to what we want.  YHWH always knows best.

He provides as we need – He wants us to trust Him for our Daily Bread – This builds faith.

He provides in unique and often miraculous ways

1. God calls us to gratitude

In all their doings, the most glaring sin of the Israelites was the sin of ingratitude. Their attitude was one of ungratefulness and thanklessness. Instead of continuing to praise God for His deliverance from Egypt, instead of worshiping Him and acknowledging His continued presence with them, all they could do was murmur and complain that He had not done enough. Complaining is the opposite of gratitude. The very fact that you are complaining says you don’t appreciate what you’ve been given, that you think you deserve better.

When we gripe rather than give thanks, when we protest rather than praise, we are telling the Lord several things:

• That we deserve better than He has given us – This is the sin of pride – we think we are better than the station to which He has assigned us.
• That He does not know what we really need – that we know better – This is arrogance – we think we are more aware of our own needs than the One who created us.
• That He does not really love us, or He would have given us what we wanted – This is immaturity. Like children we whine and complain that we didn’t get what we wanted.

Finally, we tell Him that are unappreciative, are not mindful of all that He has done for us in the past and that nothing done for us in the past matters- only what we want now: This is forgetfulness

1. God calls us to obedience

At the end of the day obedience is nothing more than faith in action. It is saying, “God I trust you enough to do what you say.”

For the Israelites, obedience was the ultimate test of faith. God did not ask them to reason with Him. He did not tell them that He would rationalize His directions with them, He did not invite them to dialogue or to a question and answer time. He simply called them to obey. To go where He said go, to do what He said do and to trust Him to be there before them and meet their needs.

• We are called to walk by faith, not by sight
• We follow a God of purpose, we may not always be able to see His purpose, but it is ever there.
• Ours is a God who promises to provide, and He has never once failed us.
• His provision calls us to gratitude.

Let me suggest three ways we can live lives of gratitude:

1. Trust God to do His best for you – He is good and He loves you – trust Him to give you what is best for you.
2. Praise God for all He has given you – Count your blessings instead of your burdens. Look at all He has done and give Him thanks.
3. Respond to what God has done for you – look for a tangible way to express your gratitude to God. One way is through obedience in the area of financial stewardship. If you are not tithing, if you’re not giving back at least ten percent of what God has given you, how can you say you are grateful to God for what He has done for you? Gratitude necessitates obedience, and that’s the final think I want you to see in our text today.

He calls us to obedience. He is God we are not.

 Now in Exodus 19 we see that the Israelites Prepare to Meet God

Holy God, Holy People

This text deals specifically with this subject of approaching God. I want you to notice several things about coming into the presence of God.

1. Approaching God requires consecration

This speaks to how God views us.

In verse 10 God tells Moses to consecrate the people, to set them apart, to purify them, so they will be qualified to meet God. The Hebrew word employed here is from the same root as the word Holy. It means to be ceremonial clean or pure, to be set apart from that which is profane and dedicated or consecrated to that which is holy. One of the New Testament words which carries the same meaning is “sanctify,” or “sanctification.”

As God prepares to meet His people, as He prepares to speak with them and give them the Law, He tells Moses that they must be prepared and Moses is given the task of consecrating or sanctifying them.

We do not know in great detail exactly what it was Moses did to consecrate them, what is of importance is that we note they had to be set apart before they were ready to meet with God.

There were two things God told them to do.

1. They were to wash their clothes. By washing their clothes, the Israelites were demonstrating their understanding that God was Holy and that to meet with Him required holiness.
2. They were to refrain from sexual activity. Not that sexual activity within the bonds of marriage was in anyway unclean, but as they prepared to meet God, as they prepared themselves spiritually, they were to abstain from any personal indulgence which would take their heart and mind off of God.

The lesson here is that meeting with God requires personal preparation. It means seeking Him with an undivided heart and mind. It means not allowing anything else, no matter how blessed or wonderful it may be, to distract us from preparing to hear from God.

If we want to experience God as believers did in days of old, we must be prepared to meet Him. We must be consecrated.

James 4:8-10 tells us four things to do as we prepare to draw near to God.

1. Cleanse your hands – stop sinning.
2. Purify your heart – The heart is the realm of feelings and attitudes.
3. Be wretched, mourn and weep – This speaks to taking your sin seriously, of understanding that it was our sin that nailed Jesus on the cross and that to save us from our sins was the reason He died on the cross.
4. Humble yourselves – this brings us to the heart of the matter. To be right with God demands humility.
   Approaching God requires consecration. It requires that we be set apart from all that profanes us and set apart unto the One who makes us Holy.
5. Approaching God requires veneration

This speaks to how we view God.

In verses 12 and 21-25 we find God telling the Israelites to keep their distance from the mountain. In verse 12 God told Moses to set limits all around so that the people would not go up and touch the mountain, lest they incur the death penalty.

There are two things which can be said here about God setting boundaries around the mountain.

1. First, it was to teach the people that God was different from them as was not to be approached lightly.
2. Secondly, the boundaries told them that He could only be approached on His terms.

III. Approaching God requires mediation

This speaks to how we get to God.

The message is clear. The only way we can get to God is through Jesus. He is the mediator, the one who makes it possible for us to get to God. And the reason we have access to God through Him is because His blood consecrates us, it sanctifies us or makes us holy so that we can be cleansed of our sin and enter the presence of a holy God.

Ok I’m going to give you a, Interesting Tammy Tidbit

I love music. It is a gift from God that captures and carries that which cannot be adequately expressed by words alone. "Music," said Plato, "gives wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything." Music sets forth what is important to us, what moves us, what changes us, what we long for. So do you know what the first recorded song in the Bible is about? I will give you a hint: the last song recorded in the Bible is about the same thing.

The first song in Scripture appears in Ex. 15; the last song can be found in Rev. 15. And both have as their shared focus the holiness of God. After God demolished any notion that Egypt's false gods were anything other than the projections of the men who worshipped them; after God delivered over 1 million Israeli slaves from the grip of Egypt through 10 awesome plagues and a parted Red Sea, Moses led the whole nation in a song celebrating God's holiness. One verse captures the gist of the entire song: "Lord, who is like You among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, revered with praises, performing wonders?"

🙌Let’s talk about the Apostle John for a moment…

🙌When the 90-year old Apostle John was granted by God to look into the future, he saw a moment when the final outpouring of the wrath of God was about to take place. Gathered in heaven were those whose faith and allegiance to God in defiance of the rule of AntiChrist had cost them their lives. And John tells us that "they sang the song of God's servant Moses, and the song of the Lamb: Great and awe-inspiring are Your works, Lord God, the Almighty; righteous and true are Your ways, King of the Nations. Lord, who will not fear and glorify Your name? Because You alone are holy, because all the nations will come and worship before You, because Your righteous acts have been revealed." (Rev. 15:3-4)

In between Ex. 15 and Rev. 15, God's holiness comes up over and over again. Holy is used more often as a prefix to God's name than any other adjective. Two men in Scripture who were permitted to see into the throne room of heaven and write about it; both reported hearing one continuous refrain, spoken day and night: "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty." (Isaiah 6:3; Rev. 4:8) This is the only thing said about God in this fashion. No other attribute of His is repeated three times.

🙌This morning, I come to present to you truths about God that are so mysterious, so disquieting, and so awesome that it makes me tremble. If you dare to come with me in these next few moments, you will understand why righteous Job would say to God, "I had heard rumors about You, but now my eyes have seen You. Therefore I take back [my words] and repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:5-6)

🙌 If you turn aside from other distractions and draw near to the common things God sets on fire by His presence, you will understand why Moses feared to get too close and took the sandals off his feet before the bush that burned with God's presence. (Exodus 3:5)

🙌If you will look intently at this truth about God, you will join Isaiah, a man of God who studied and thought about and proclaimed God's holiness for years before having a personal encounter with this holy God, and was left saying, " Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips, [and] because my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts." (Isaiah 6:5) Let's ask a question in this day when God is the subject of stand-up comedians and bumper stickers:

I. What does it mean to say 'God is holy'?  Yes…sorry for the extended podcast today, however…this is so important that the Lord would have me include it before I give you your Rabbit trails.

🙌There are basically two strands of meaning for the word holy:

A. To be holy is to be distinct, separate, unique

The basic meaning of holy in the Bible is to cut away or to separate. R. C. Sproul suggests that this word conveys the same idea we express when we find a garment or a golf club or some piece of merchandise that is outstanding, that has superior excellence, and we might say that it is "a cut above the rest." (R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God [Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1985], p. 40)

So when we say God is holy, we're not talking about one characteristic out of many about God; we're talking about the character of God Himself. Holiness, when applied to God, means that He is utterly unique, incomparable, matchless, without parallel and without peer. In Isaiah 40:25, God Himself issues the challenge: "Who will you compare Me to, or who is My equal?" asks the Holy One." And we must answer, "There is no comparison." God is not just a super-sized version of you or me. He is transcendently separate, in a class by Himself. He is subject to nothing. He answers to no one. This is who our Holy God is.

When Hannah rejoiced in God for answering her prayer for a son, she prayed, " There is no one holy like the Lord. There is no one besides You! And there is no rock like our God." (1 Sam. 2:2).

David's confidence in God was fortified by considering His holiness: "Lord, there is no one like You among the gods, and there are no works like Yours. All the nations You have made will come and bow down before You, Lord, and will honor Your name. For You are great and perform wonders; You alone are God.." (Ps. 86:8-10)

Even the name God gave to His mighty archangel Michael testifies to this truth. The name is translated, "Who is like God?"

Here's the first strand of meaning in the Bible about the holiness of God: He is not like anything or anyone we can come up with. He is above us. He is beyond us. He is so different and so rare that no one in the Bible, regardless of how devout or learned, failed to crumble in fear and humility and repentance when they caught a glimpse of this holy God. When God met with Habakkuk the prophet, he described his reaction like this: "I heard, and I trembled within; my lips quivered at the sound. Rottenness entered my bones; I trembled where I stood . . . " (Hab. 3:16) He was shattered by what he saw. When we see Him as He is, it traumatizes us because we immediately see ourselves for who we really are, and the incongruence is overwhelming.

Brothers and sisters, there's a lot of religious technicians out there today whose goal is to make you feel comfortable with God at almost any level. They want you to feel like God is someone we can hang out with, confide in, and call on when the going gets tough, regardless of your relationship with Him or what kind of life you're leading. Last week, I heard a prominent pastor refer to God as Jesus' "Old Man."

Contrast that trivializing, bumper sticker, next-door neighbor view of God to what God Himself said to Israel in Ps. 50:21-22: " . . . you thought I was just like you. But I will rebuke you and lay out the case before you. 'Understand this, you who forget God, or I will tear you apart, and there will be no rescuer.'!" It is a dangerous thing to forget that God is holy. We trifle with the living God to our own peril. He is not our Buddy. "Our God is a consuming fire," friends (Heb. 12:29). Let the mystery of Who He is strike you today. He will not fit into our neat theological formulations. He cannot be defined in finite minds. That's part of what it means to say He is holy.

🙌A secondary strand of meaning has a distinctly moral focus:

B. To be holy is to be absolutely pure

Holiness is being set apart from anything impure in order to be completely given over to what God says is pure. When you apply this meaning to God, His holiness points to what 1 John 1:5 says: "there is absolutely no darkness at all." James tells us that "God is not tempted by evil, and He Himself doesn't tempt anyone." (James 1:13). Habakkuk 1:13 adds that God's eyes "are too pure to look on evil, and [He] cannot tolerate wrongdoing." In a word, God is perfect, without sin, flawless.

So blazing is God's purity that the sinless seraphim who serve Him in heaven cover their faces with their wings (Is. 6:2). Job 4:18 declares, "God puts no trust in His servants and He charges His angels with error . . . ." Stephen Charnock was right when he said, "As there is no darkness in His understanding, so there is no spot in His will; as His mind is possessed with all truth, so there is no deviation in His will from it. He loves all truth and goodness; He hates all falsity and evil." (Stephen Charnock, quoted by David Hall, online at http://www.apocalypsesoon.org/xfile-35.html)

With the concepts of purpose and purity in God established, how does that relate to us? The leap from those heights is terrible to consider.

The reflex of His holiness against sin is unmistakable, which raises up the final point:

C. Only holy people can see God

"Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness - without it no one will see the Lord." (Heb. 12:14) Holy people see the holy God. Unholy people will never lay eyes on Him. "Your iniquities have built barriers between you and your God, and your sins have made Him hide [His] face from you so that He does not listen." (Isaiah 59:2).

So what hope have I? Because fundamentally, essentially, by nature and by choice, I am a sinner! "Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not set his mind on what is false, and who has not sworn deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation." (Ps. 24:3-5)

But my hands aren't clean. And my heart is not pure. Sometimes I offer up my time and energy to be entertained by things I know are based on lies. I will never climb to the holy heights where God dwells!

I Peter 1:14-16 makes it even more blunt: "As obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires of your former ignorance but, as the One who called you is holy, you also are to be holy in all your conduct; for it is written, Be holy, because I am holy."

But my life is not holy. My days are riddled with sin. My heart is attracted to sin. My mind tends to justify sin. I am so bent toward sin and its ways that Jeremiah tells me that I struggle just to identify in myself: "The heart is more deceitful than anything else and desperately sick - who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9)

Conclusion

Let me close with this one question: What difference does God's holiness make in my life?

A. Saving holiness

Do you have the holiness of God working for you in Christ, or is His holiness set against you? Have you fled to Christ, deliberately, personally trusting that what He did on the cross is your only hope of being right with God? Or are you still carrying your sin and an appointment with the fierce wrath of God?

B. Serving holiness

What is the evidence in your daily life that the Holy Spirit of God indwells you? Does your behavior, your choices, your habits, your language show that you are, in the language of I Peter 2:9, "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the One who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light"?

Alright and for the finale…your Rabbit trails:

In order for the two million Israelites to get out of Egypt there had to be some sort of order, that order was Tribes>Clans>Households

• See Exodus 1:1-5 for the listing of these tribes that had gone to Egypt.
• Exodus 6:19-25 goes a little deeper into some clans.
• Exodus 12:1-4 is another small reference to households.
• Exodus 24:9 tells us that Moses went up with about 70 elders from the tribes of Israel.
• Elders and Scribes were very important in this structure.

There is more than enough deep diving here to keep you busy well past a week charting out these tribes…but it is fun.  Please send me a copy of your chart to [email protected].

And as always I must remind you of the DISACLAIMER:

This study is in no way to take the place of studying the entire Bible in fact if you haven't studied the entire Bible from book to book, cover to cover I suggest doing that first before you dive into this study. This study is a study, an investigative deep dive if you will, for those of you that have read the Bible and Studied God’s Word cover to cover and want to do a little deeper diving into some “rabbit trails” in the Bible.

I will be providing questions, scriptures, and points of interest, if you will, that you can look up on your own, investigate, and deep dive asking God to help you discern and come to your thoughts. In no way am I trying to influence you one way or another period! My entire goal of doing this series this year is so that you get into your Bibles even more and discover all the treasures that God has placed there for us.

You will hear me mention over and over on my podcasts, don’t take my word for it, get in your Bible, and look it up yourself! I challenge you to challenge me and find the answers for yourself. That’s right, I will bring you a message, I will back it up with scripture, I will give you prompts I will put some questions out there that will make you go or I never thought of that or wow that's something new…but, let me make this very clear….it is your job, that’s right, your job to be in Yahweh’s Word daily.