Title: Chaste before the Jealous God
Text: Ex 34: 10-17
Date: Nov 15, 2020
Place: SGBC, NJ
Exodus 34: 10: And he said, Behold, I make a covenant:
before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the
earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall
see the work of the LORD: for it is a terrible [amazing,
astounding] thing that I will do with thee. 11: Observe thou [do thou]
that which I command thee this day:
The LORD God
of heaven and earth is a covenant God, he deals with all men in covenant
relationship. In the day of judgment all
will be found under one of two covenants: either the covenant of works in Adam
or the covenant of grace in Christ. This
was a covenant of works. God promised
what he would do and God gave commanded what they were to do. For his side God
said:
Exodus 34: 11:…behold,
I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and
the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. [the Girgasites
also]
For their side
of the covenant, God commanded:
Exodus 34: 12:
Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the
land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:
They were not
to enter any covenant of any kind with the enemy—and the law is spiritual; it
reaches the heart; so they were not even to think about it. But it was not enough to be neutral, God
commanded:
Exodus 34: 13:
But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their
groves: 14: For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is
Jealous, is a jealous God:
God’s name is
Jealous. His bride must be chaste in
faith and love to him alone. God will allow no rivals. He alone must have all the glory, praise and
devotion. We cannot even have a curious
thought about this world’s idol gods. This
is what the Jealous God calls it if we do:
Exodus 34: 15:
Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring
after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee,
and thou eat of his sacrifice; 16: And thou take of their daughters unto thy
sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a
whoring after their gods. 17: Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
Subject: Chaste before
the Jealous God
Proposition: God’s name is Jealous: therefore we
must keep covenant with God in perfect chastity in faith and love, without even
a thought of another god.
Divisions: 1) Who is represented by these
enemy idolaters 2) Who conquers these enemies 3) What is the result
THE ENEMY
Who is represented by these enemies? We could say the devil or sin, death and
hell. But the enemy is us. Every sinner fallen in Adam is the fallen idolater,
including you and me.
We are born in the state the children of Israel were
already in when God gave this law. They
were already guilty of breaking God’s law in Adam when God made this covenant
with them. The children of Israel were already
guilty of making an idol with their own hands.
And so were we. So what was God’s
purpose in giving a law that they had already broken?
Romans 3: 19: Now we know that what things soever the
law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be
stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20: Therefore by the
deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law
is the knowledge of sin.
God says of you who believe, you are not under the law
but under grace. But to all who are under
the law, the law says you are guilty. And we see our depravity in the children
of Israel
Shouldn’t the word of God, God who cannot lie, be
enough to make men worship and obey God alone? The children of Israel had the very
promise of God. God promised he would work
unprecedented miracles never before seen in the earth, destroying all their
enemies in Canaan. Shouldn’t that be
enough to cause chastity to God? It
wasn’t enough for us either.
They had God’s word that, as they destroyed the enemy idols,
God would destroy the enemy under their feet.
Shouldn’t that be enough to make them obey God? It wasn’t enough for us either.
Like all God’s law—like every word
that comes from God—this word was for God’s glory and their good. Those were enemy combatants, idolaters, God-haters. God told them clearly that these enemies
would lead them and their children into idolatry. This word was for their good. Shouldn’t God’s word be enough to make them
obey God? It wasn’t enough for us
either.
Seeing and hearing with the carnal, sinful nature is
not enough either! They had seen God
deliver them out of Egyptian bondage through the Passover lamb and destroy
Pharaoh and his army at the Red Sea. They
had seen God’s very presence leading them in the pillar and the cloud providing
their needs the whole way to Sinai. They
saw with their own eyes as God began to drive out those nations. Shouldn’t that have made them obey God’s
covenant? It wasn’t enough for us either.
Was it enough when men saw and heard Christ? Was it
enough for us to behold all the witnesses of God’s power and Godhead in
creation? Was it enough for us to hear
the amazing wonders of God’s grace preached in his gospel? Having the covenant word of God, they broke
God’s covenant and made covenant and went whoring after their gods. So did you and me?
Romans 3: 9: What then? are we better than they?
No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are
all under sin; 10: As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 11:
There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. 12:
They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there
is none that doeth good, no, not one.
God’s name is Jealous.
We must be perfectly chaste before God in faith and love without even a
hint of covetousness in our hearts or God charges us with unfaithfulness. But by Adam and by our own sin-nature that is
all we are: base, idolatrous harlots!
THE CONQUEROR
Who must conquer the enemy for God’s elect, covenant people,
his true, spiritual Israel?
One day Christ made an unimpressive nobody cross our
path. He was just an earthen vessel. There was nothing appealing about him. But God had filled his vessel with unsearchable
riches. He came preaching the gospel of
another covenant, God’s everlasting covenant of grace.
Still, God found us enemies in our minds, unchaste,
idolaters, worshipping our idol SELF! So we heard the amazing work God has done,
which has never been done in the earth before or since, but we heard the everlasting
covenant of grace the same as the children of Israel heard the covenant of
works. We heard with natural ears, with enmity
in our hearts, which we called faithful obedience, love and tolerance.
Some of us went
on whoring after our idol self in sin and unbelief. Others boasted that we were actually
chaste to the jealous God because we imagined we kept the law of Sinai. But in reality our striving to come to God by
the law was only whoredom. We worshipped
the idol SELF. Some got a head
full of true doctrine. But our
arguing over election and predestination and limited atonement was only more whoredom-worship
of the same idol SELF. Our dead letter theology
made us imagine ourselves superior to others.
We were fault finders. We considered
ourselves chaste before the jealous God while others were beneath us.
We had an intellectual superior idol called SELF.
All of us who
sit here now rejoicing in this message were, at that time, ignorant of the
perfection of faith and love which the jealous God requires to be chaste before
him. But thankfully, God’s name is
Jealous. He chose a bride for his
Son. HE will have his Son’s bride united
to his Son through faith. So God would
not take “no” for an answer.
By his grace he made us hear with spiritual ears. We began to hear how the Son of God came down
and took flesh under this very law, this covenant of works. We heard how he served God under the law in
place of his people that he might honor the first covenant of works and take it
away that he might fulfill the second covenant of grace and give us the good
news that we are not under law but under grace!
So under the law as our Head, Christ was perfectly
chaste in faith and love to God our Father the whole time he walked this earth. As our Head, the last Adam, with us in him he
walked in perfect faith and love before God under the law.
He was perfectly chaste in faith and love to God, not only
when things were peaceful, but even when God lay our shameful iniquity
on him. He had no thought for any other
but God.
Be sure to
hear this: our Substitute was perfectly
chaste in faith and love to God even as God in holy jealousy viewed him
as the unchaste idolater and poured out fury upon him, in our place, as the one
who had broken the whole covenant of works.
As he bore separation from God he remained chaste: in perfect faith and
love he looked to the Father who had forsaken.
Just think of how easily we are turned aside and murmur and pity
ourselves when God only lays on us light affliction! Yet, our Redeemer was perfectly chaste before
the God whose name is Jealous.
He was perfectly
chaste in faith and love to God even as he suffered the wailing and
gnashing of teeth of an eternal hell which his people owed to God’s justice.
Our Savior was
perfectly chaste in faith and love even to the end when he cried, “Father, into
thy hands I commend my Spirit: and
having said thus, he gave up the ghost.”
That day as we heard this gospel preached, Christ conquered
the enemy of our sinful flesh. He created
a new man by his presence within us. For
the first time, we found ourselves believing he did it all for me!
THE RESULT
What was the result of Christ’s finished work on the
cross!
Through faith he made us know that on the cross, our whorish
idolatrous body of sin was crucified and died and was buried forever. We are dead to sin and dead to the law. At the same time, we arose to God’s right hand
perfectly, eternally chaste before the Jealous God.
We know something of the wiles of the devil. He sends his preachers as preachers of
righteousness. But they do not preach
Christ our Righteousness. They preach a
righteousness that you must add to Christ, by your obedience to the law. But the Jealous God requires his Son’s bride
be perfectly chaste. That is why Paul
declared,
2 Corinthians 11:2: For I am jealous over you with godly
jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a
chaste virgin to Christ.
In Christ we are perfectly chaste. His bride has been perfectly chaste in faith
and love by the doing of our perfect Lord Jesus Christ. One day our Husband will present his bride to
himself a chaste virgin without spot or blemish.
Oh, brethren, get this: in Christ, the Jealous God beholds
us perfectly chaste. In the new heart we
delight in every command of God, especially Christ’s command to believe on him
and trust him to present us faultless.
Christ keeps us in love to him by constantly hearing of
his love for us in his great sacrifice. By his constraining love we do not unite with
idolators. The jealous God makes us
jealous for our Husband to have all the glory due his holy name.
Christ broke down the images, altars and groves in our
sinful hearts. So we know our weapons
are not carnal. Christ is the Power of
God who came to our Jericho-heart walled up to heaven, sounded the trumpet and
broke down the stronghold. He breaks
down the images in our hearts by this gospel.
But the Lord
left some enemies in Canaan. True
believers know from painful experience, God has left an enemy in us called our
sin-nature. He did it to prove to us
that we have no righteousness but Christ at God’s right hand. We cannot put confidence in anything we do
because that would be unchaste before our jealous Husband.
He proves to
us that except Christ keep our new man pure and sanctified unto him we would
fall away in an instant. Even our sins,
he uses to keep us at his feet. We cry
out in confession to him while begging he deliver us from us—"O
wretched man that I am! Who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?
I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord!”
Our loving
Husband continues to deliver through the Spirit giving us strength to mortify
our flesh by setting our affection on him above. He makes us endeavor to keep the unity of the
Spirit in the bond of peace because by our own sin, we know we cannot claim we
have been chaste and faithful in ourselves.
We cannot exalt ourselves over anyone because, in our sinful nature, we
are the worst idolater of the lot.
Brethren, true worship has to be spiritual. It cannot be in the letter of the law by our
works from the strength of our flesh. The
letter killeth. It not only kills us but
it is also cruel to everyone around us—biting and devouring one another.
Christ must conquer all our enemies within and without. Christ alone fulfilled the old covenant law,
as well as the everlasting covenant of grace.
Oh the sweet word, ‘Ye are not under the law but under grace.”
Now, by the Spirit’s regenerating, sanctifying work we
have a fear of God in our heart born out of knowing his name is Jealous. He gave us a new will to confess that all our
so-called righteousnesses are idolatry.
We are the enemy. But all our
hope is in Christ under his everlasting covenant of grace with the full assurance
that “WE ARE MORE THAN CONQUERORS THROUGH CHRIST THAT LOVED US”
Amen!