Christ - Our Mediator

Will you open your Bibles, please, to the book of Exodus. We have been thinking together about the Ten Commandments; we want now to think about the Commandments as they are related to the Cross.

Shall we bow our heads together for prayer:

We do thank Thee, our Father, that we have this opportunity of looking into the Word of God, and we do pray that Thou wouldst open the Word to us. We pray that we will be able to learn from our reading of the Word that which will encourage our hearts and remind us that our salvation lies in Christ. For we pray in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen.

A very significant thing will appear to you if you will take the time to search out the Word of God: The Commandments are never mentioned without being related to the Cross, or the values of the Cross, of Christ. The reason for that will become evident as we look at the last paragraph of Exodus, chapter 20, and then notice together some related Scriptures:

EXODUS 20

These verses of Scripture, we emphasize, relate the altar, which is the Old Testament symbol of the Cross, to the Commandments, for a very definite reason: No sincere soul can meditate upon the Ten Commandments and everything the Ten Commandments involve without feeling thoroughly undone, without feeling definitely condemned, without feeling as if there is no chance of salvation for him. That is exactly how these Israelites felt. Look at verse 18 again:

EXODUS 20

Their hearts were so filled with fear at their consciousness of sin that they felt the need that any sensible person feels when he is undone before God; they felt the need of a mediator. They felt the need of somebody to stand between them and God.

They did not always feel that way. Glance back at chapter 19 and refresh your minds about some of the things that occurred before the Ten Commandments were given. We looked at this earlier, but I think that for comparison and contrast it would be wise to look at it again. So, will you notice verse 1 of Exodus, chapter 19:

EXODUS 19

Let's stop for a moment and think about what we have read. Moses went up into the mountain, and God said to Moses, "Moses, I am going to give you a covenant (which we find later is the Ten Commandments), and I want you to tell the children of Israel that if they will obey Me, if they will keep this covenant, they will be a peculiar treasure to Me. They will be a people that is especially My own; they will be a kingdom of priest and an holy nation. You tell them what I said." And in verse 7:

EXODUS 19

The rest of the chapter describes how, in a thick cloud, with fire, thunder, and lightning, God gave the covenant, or the Ten Commandments, to Moses. Are you thinking with me? Before they knew what the Ten Commandments were, they said, "Sure, we will do anything You ask us to do. We will be glad to do it. If you want us to obey You, we will obey You." It would be a snap. There wouldn't be anything to it. "Just let us know and we will do it." That was before they knew what the covenant was.

After the Ten Commandments were given in detail, you will remember they backed off as far from that mountain as they could, and they said, "Moses, don't let God say anything else to us. We are scared Why, we haven't got a chance. If that is what God expects of us, if that is what God demands of us, we haven't got a chance. Don't let God talk to us. You talk to God and then you talk to us, and we will talk to you and you talk to God, but we can't talk directly to Him. We are too unworthy. We are too undone. We are too frightened." Any honestly-thinking man who considers these Ten Commandments and analyzes the feelings of the Israelites who heard them first hand, is a very foolish man if he does not feel condemned in the light of these Commandments, and if he does not feel that he very definitely has the need of somebody to stand between him and God.

Will you turn, please, to the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 5. This chapter is a recounting of the Ten Commandments and of the manner in which they were given. Moses is reminding the children of Israel of how the Ten Commandments were given, and in so doing he presents some information that is not included in chapter 20 of the book of Exodus. Notice chapter 5, verse 1:

DEUTERONOMY 5

He lists the Ten Commandments as we find them in chapter 20 of the book of Exodus. Then in verse 22:

DEUTERONOMY 5

This is practically what we read in Exodus, chapter 20, but with a few additional details. The people of Israel, when they heard the Commandments given and recognized the holiness of God, sensed their unworthiness and begged for a mediator. They begged for someone who could stand between them and God. They said, "If we, in all of our impurities, don't find someone who can stand between us and God, in all of His holiness, we will surely die. We have got to have a go-between."

Let us digress for a moment, although it is not actually a digression, and remind you that what we have been reading is repeated over and over again in the Word of God. There is never an instance when man got a full view of God that he did not recognize his own unworthiness. Any time you hear a person talking about how good he is, any time you hear a person talking about how spiritual he is, any time you hear a person talking about how righteous he is, you mark it down in your little book that he has not been very close to God, because any individual who gets a glimpse of God is conscious of his own unworthiness.

Look at verse 28. This is really the reason why we turned to this chapter, because here Moses tells us what God said when He heard what these people said. You see, these people said, "You go back and tell God we want somebody to stand between us." Exodus 20 does not tell us what God said, but Deuteronomy 5 does.

DEUTERONOMY 5

You see what God said about them? "I am glad they want a mediator. I am glad they want somebody to stand between Me and them. I am glad they have that much enlightenment about the need." The next verse expressed the deep desire of God concerning every one of us, regardless of the Age in which we live, and it also represents a commentary on the condition of the human heart:

DEUTERONOMY 5

"Oh, I wish," God said, "I wish they had a heart that would do everything that I want them to do. But they don't have a heart like that." You don't, either. The Bible says about your heart what is said about their heart and what it says about mine. It is that your heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, and no man is capable of fully understanding it or knowing it (Jeremiah 17:9). That is why you have to have a mediator. That is why you have to have a go-between. That is why you have to have somebody to stand between you and God.

Will you turn now to chapter 18 of the book of Deuteronomy, because here we have an addition to this conversation that we did not find in Exodus 20 and that we did not find in Deuteronomy 5. You say, "Why is that?" Well, after all, the Word of God, although it is inspired, is the record of the conversations as they were actually held. Have you not sometimes spoken about an occurrence several times? When you speak about it the second time, maybe somebody will say, "You didn't tell that before." and you didn't. It wasn't that it didn't happen but you enlarged on the story because that particular thing came to mind. Maybe you tell it the third time, and someone says, "I have heard you tell that twice, and you never did tell that." Well, no, you didn't It wasn't that it was not true; it was just that you had not included that particular detail. I say reverently that this is the case here. Notice verse 15:

DEUTERONOMY 18

You realize what we have been reading? Moses said, "You know, when you people said, 'We want somebody to stand between us; we want a go-between; we want a mediator,' God said, 'I like to hear you say that. So, I will tell you what I am going to do. Sometime in the future I am going to raise a Prophet who will stand between the whole human race and Me just as Moses has stood between Israel and me. I am going to raise up a Prophet like unto Moses.'"

From the day when God said that, down to what we generally refer to as New Testament days, that was an expectant hope in the heart of every person who knew God.

Will you turn with me, please, to the Gospel of John, chapter 1, to see an illustration of what I am thinking about along this line. In this chapter we find a description of the ministry of John the Baptist, of how some of the folk felt about him, of how they wondered who he was. Notice verse 19:

JOHN 1

Do you get the picture? They knew that John was an unusual person. They did not understand everything about him, and they said, "Do you suppose he could be that Prophet?" No informed Israelites would answer, "What are you talking about, 'that Prophet'? Whom do you mean?" Everyone knew whom they meant. They were looking for that Prophet who was to stand some day between God and the whole world as Moses had stood between God and Israel.

Look at chapter 6 of the Gospel of John, verse 14, for further emphasis of the fact that what we are saying is true--that this thought occupied the minds of men. In verse 13, after the miracle of the feeding of the multitudes with five barley loaves and two small fishes was performed, they gathered up 12 baskets of the fragments that remained over and above what they had eaten. That was a tremendous miracle. Then, in verse 14:

JOHN 6

When they saw Jesus Christ perform this miracle, people said, "Who is He?" "Why," others said, "He is that Prophet--that Prophet that God told Moses would come into the world some day to stand between a sinful world and a holy God."

Turn, please, to the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 3, and you will see the climax to what I have suggested thus far. We will begin to read with verse 19. This is a sermon which Peter preached long after the day when God gave this promise to Moses, and after the Lord Jesus Christ had come, had been crucified, had been raised again from the dead, and had ascended back to Heaven to sit on the right hand of God:

ACTS 3

Here was Peter addressing a group of people who were conscious of their sins, and he said, "Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out." He went on to say, "The One you need to turn to is the One that Moses spoke about: the Prophet who would be raised up like unto your brethren, the Prophet whom all men should hear." He identified the Prophet with the Lord Jesus Christ beyond all question. So you see the Mediator the children of Israel thought they needed was none other than the Lord Jesus Christ.

Should there be any doubt in your mind about that, may I suggest that you turn to Paul's first letter to Timothy and notice in chapter 2 a statement which should settle once and for all any suggestion that any other than the Lord Jesus Christ is the Mediator whom each one of us needs. He stands between us and God:

I TIMOTHY 2

You see what Paul is saying? He is saying to Timothy, "Our main interest in life should be maintaing those conditions that will enable us to get the message of the Gospel out to the whole world, because there is only one message. That message is that the Lord Jesus Christ is the only Mediator, the only go-between God and man." If people don't find that out, they have no way to approach God. If people don't find that out, they don't have any way to get in touch with God. The only go-between is Jesus Christ. That is what the Word of God says. That is what the Law declares.

Will you turn with me, please, to the book of Galatians. You should be able to recognize the purpose of the Law--the reason why the Ten commandments were given; we have been touching on that ever since we began our discussion. It is all summed up in Galatians, chapter 3, verse 24:

GALATIANS 3

The Law was our schoolmaster to bring us into a conscious need of a mediator, into a conscious need of Christ. You see how inseparably related the Law is with the Cross, how inseparably related the Ten Commandments are with Christ. You cannot have one without the other. If you take the Commandments by themselves, you are as good as dead, for they sentence you to death. But if you recognize that on the Cross the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled the demands of those Commandments, you live.

Let us go back to Exodus, chapter 20, because we want you to see how provision was made for the Cross in relation to the Commandments. Keep in mind that in verse 19 the people had expressed their need of a Mediator. They had recognized their utter incapability of keeping the Ten Commandments. They knew that they were under the sentence of death. They realized that if they had to face God in this condition they would die. God knew it, so He made the provision beginning with verse 22:

EXODUS 20

Keep in mind what we are talking about: the safe approach to God, the only way that is safe to get in touch with God. The first thing He suggested is from a negative standpoint. He said, "Don't try to do it with silver idols and gold idols. Don't make images of gold and silver and put them on the same level with Me and say you are going to get in touch with Me that way. That is not the way to do it."

EXODUS 20

"The only way to get in touch with Me is through an altar upon which there is a sacrifice"; that is what God said. "The only way to get in touch with Me is through the sacrifice on the altar." He even mentioned in verse 25 that that altar has to have absolutely nothing to do with human effort. If it does, God cannot accept the sacrifice:

EXODUS 20

He said, "You can make it out of earth if you want to, but if you make it out of stone, be sure that you don't make it out of hewn stone, for if you lift up your tool upon it, you have polluted it." That does not sound very good for the human race, does it? It does not sound as if anybody can add anything for his salvation, does it? It does not sound as if anybody's effort to obtain salvation for himself in his own strength is of the slightest value, does it? He said, "It has got to be an altar. Make it out of earth if you want to. But if you make it out of stone, don't you decide you want to make it pretty. Don't you decide you want to do a little chiseling and a little sanding and a little smoothing so you will have a nice, pretty altar. If you do that, you have ruined it. It you do that, you have polluted it. If you do that, you have added your effort, and I cannot accept it." In verse 26 He adds something else:

EXODUS 20

You cannot even have steps, because steps are a symbol of man's efforts to ascend, and there cannot be anything about this altar that would bear evidence of human effort. It has to be all of grace, all of sacrifice; it cannot be otherwise.

Will you turn to chapter 24 of the book of Exodus, that we may notice how Moses built just such an altar as this after he was through discussing the Commandments in full. In chapter 20 the Ten Commandments are given, and in chapters 21, 22, and 23 those Commandments are elaborated upon, explained, and amplified, so there can be no mistake in the mind of anyone as to what God actually meant. We will bypass those chapters for the moment; for the moment we want to follow this theme of the altar in relation to the Commandments:

EXODUS 24

In chapter 20 God said, "Moses, build an altar. Get ready to make a sacrifice, because these people who are condemned by the Law can never come into my presence in their present state. There has to be a sacrifice." So, in Exodus 24 we find Moses building the altar, identifying it particularly with the nation of Israel because it was that group with whom he was dealing. Then you will notice that he took the various animals designated for sacrifice and slew them there on the altar. Then he took the blood and sprinkled some of it on the altar, some of it on the people, and some of it on the book of the Covenant (Hebrews 9:19), indicating that blood is absolutely essential to meet the demands of God. "Well," you say, "we are not offering animal sacrifices today. Surely nobody would do a thing like that." That's right; there is no need for animal sacrifices today. They were but a preview of the complete sacrifice. They were but a picture of a sacrifice that was finished.

How do we know that? We have told you repeatedly that the best commentary

on the Scripture is another Scripture. So will you turn, please, to the book of Hebrews, chapter 9, where you will find mentioned this very passage of Scripture at which we have been looking in Exodus, chapter 24

HEBREWS 9

This is God's eternal principle. It was illustrated in the Old Testament by the shedding of the blood of animals. It was fulfilled when the Lord Jesus Christ died upon the Cross and shed His blood as a sacrifice for your sins and for mine.

I would like for you to go back to Exodus, chapter 24, and notice what is to me a beautiful illustration of the peace of God--a beautiful illustration of how fear can be dispelled, and peace can take hold of the human heart, when God's demands are met. The animals had been sacrificed, the blood had been sprinkled, and in verse 9 we read:

EXODUS 24

That is a most amazing thing. In chapter 20 of the book of Exodus, before the blood was shed, before the demands of God were met, they were scared to death. They said, "Moses, don't let God talk to us any more. You talk to Him and then you talk to us." They moved as far back from the mountain as they could get because they were so afraid. But after the blood was shed and God's demands were met, where do we find them? Right at the foot of the mountain in the presence of God, eating and drinking, indicating that they were perfectly at peace. You see, when God's demands in relation to sin are met, there is peace. That is the reason why the Spirit of God says, "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:1).

Will you notice the application of this truth which the Spirit of God makes in Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 11:

HEBREWS 10

Do you have the assurance that you can go directly into the presence of God on the basis of the goodness of Jesus Christ, and not be afraid as you go? Do you have the assurance that when you come to God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, He is going to receive you? If you do not have that assurance, you may have it, because the Lord Jesus Christ has shed His blood once and for all to pave the way directly to the Throne of God. Any person who recognizes that he is a sinner and that he cannot save himself, who places his faith and his trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for complete salvation, can have that peace that these Israelites had when they sat down at the foot of the mountain and ate and drank in the presence of God. I hope you have that peace now.

Shall we bow our heads together for prayer:

Father, we thank Thee for this time in the Word. We thank Thee for the clear picture presented in the Word of God that when man stands condemned before a Holy God there is a provision made. We thank Thee that as the Israelites felt the need of someone to stand between them and God, we have felt that need too. We thank Thee that one day we asked the Lord Jesus Christ to be our Mediator. We asked the Lord Jesus Christ to be our go-between. We thank Thee that we have the assurance that He accepted the task for us, and that today in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, on the merit of His shed blood, we stand uncondemned. We thank Thee for that as we remember that there is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.