Trinity 13
Dear friends in Christ! Our text this morning takes us to Mt. Sinai to be part of the crowd of Israelites witnessing the Lord giving the holy Ten Commandments to Moses. And what do we see and experience there? Now all the people were witnessing the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off.
Just the basic event of the scene—people gathered around the Lord; the Lord in the midst of His people proclaiming His word—sounds like what? Church! In church we come together around the Lord and His word. But there’s a huge difference between us here today at Faith and the Israelites at Sinai! Where’s the: the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking?
It is gone! But what is the same? The people gathered around the Lord and His word! The Lord in the midst of His people! That’s us today in worship! What see at Mt. Sinai that day with the Israelites—the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking–was the way that the Lord was making His holy presence known, by these great and terrifying signs. These signs pointed out to the Israelites that the Lord God is a just and holy God. He is not mocked. He and His word are to be taken seriously. He is not one to be disregarded. In fact, because His Presence calls forth such a display, by all these events at Mt. Sinai as the Lord gives Moses His holy Law, He is to be recognized as the only, true and holy God.
What is vital for us to remember is that He is the same just, holy, true and only God today—the holy Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit—into Whose presence we enter as in worship we gather around Him and His holy word.
Although we today in worship come before the same God—even though He is in our midst—He does not make Himself known in these displays. It is His grace to us that He does not come and make Himself known by fully revealing Himself in all of His glory. At Sinai, merely by these mere signs from nature showing His holiness: when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off. Then they said to Moses, "You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die".
That’s the natural reaction of sinners in the presence of the holy God. The prophet Isaiah, for example, was in the temple and he was blessed there to see the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. What does Isaiah say [Isaiah 6.1, 5]? “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” The point is this: if God would come and show Himself in all of His glory, we, too, like Isaiah would be undone; He thought he was as good as dead—a sinner in the presence of the holy God.
Let us in no way think that God is any different today—any less holy—when He comes to us today. Instead, let us learn from our text that our God, the holy Triune God, is indeed holy and as we gather in worship that’s whose Presence we are in. Then let us learn from the Israelites in our text, as well from the account of Isaiah—as they recognized that they were in the presence of the holy God, they very much felt their sin.
When we come into church may we realize we are in the presence of the holy God. May we then recognize/ feel our sin and may that drive us to repent of our sins. That’s why our service begins with the confession and absolution: as we come into the Lord’s presence in church, we recognize our sinfulness in the presence of His holiness and seek His forgiveness—and assured of His forgiveness in the absolution we then hear His holy word with joy.
That day Moses said to the people, "Do not fear; for God has come to test you, and that His fear may be before you, so that you may not sin". That day the Lord gave the people a concrete experience of His presence: the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking. What impression would/ should this have made on the people? To take seriously the Law of God, the holy 10 Commandments that He was giving them through Moses. These commandments are coming from the holy God Himself!
Not only is the holy Triune God in church but He is everywhere. That means that we are always in His presence. The purpose of that display that day, was so that the Israelites might have His fear…before them; that is, so that they might fear Him, that is, so that fulfilling the holy 10 Commandments they daily honor Him with their lives and avoid what displeases Him. By showing His holy presence that day the Lord was intending to work in their hearts a proper, holy reverence/ fear to keep them from faithlessness and disobedience.
So also for us, our text, as it places us at Sinai, teaches us that the holy God is present everywhere and because of that, we are to live our lives in His presence as we honor Him as the only true God, strive to do His will and avoid what displeases Him. Though we may not see the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, we are still in the presence of the holy God and that influences our lives and actions.
So, yes, God is a holy God and we are sinners. And yet, He wants to have a relationship with us. He doesn’t cast us aside. Far from dreading the Lord’s presence, that we live our lives always before Him, it is something we are happy about. Listen again to Moses speaking to the people: Do not fear; for God has come to test you. The testing, as they saw these signs, was to strengthen their hearts in knowledge and love of the Lord. God came that day, revealing His holy presence, to enter into a covenant with the Israelites—I will be your God and you will be My people. God’s coming was in grace, to give the people His gifts and blessings.
The people seeing these signs indicating they were in the presence of the holy God said to Moses, "You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die". So yes, Moses was the go-between between the people and God. But in grace, God gave a better go-between, Mediator—Jesus Christ, true God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son, and also true man. God came to the Israelites that day to enter into a relationship with them, but seeing His glory, they feared; so in grace upon grace, God again came to His people, this time in the person of Jesus Christ, the God-man. When Jesus came, born of the virgin, His divine glory was covered with the cloak of His humanity. As the God-man, Jesus placed Himself under God’s Law for us and fulfilled it perfectly, never once sinning; He took our sins upon Himself, paid the price for each of them by His suffering and death on the cross, and so reconciled sinful humanity with the holy God. His resurrection and ascension so gloriously proclaim it! In Jesus, sin has been dealt with once for all. It is precisely this forgiveness of sins that we now receive as we gather together before our Lord in church, in the Divine Service.
2. That’s why our Sunday morning service is rightly called the Divine Service: it is God, the Divine, coming to us to serve us. The simple fact of the matter is—as the Israelites discovered that day at Sinai—we are sinners. As sinners, we cannot approach the holy God; we cannot start back to Him. Instead, He must come to us first. He began that relationship with the Israelites; it came from God’s side first. The same thing with each one of us! The Lord has come to us first. For some of us it was as infants in the waters of holy Baptism; for others it was later in life when the Lord came to us in the word. But in whichever case, God began the relationship; He came to us first. The very fact that we are Christians means that God has come to us first; He has served us.
We get a hint of that already in our text when the Lord tells the Israelites: An altar of earth you shall make for Me, and you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. God tells them, yes, you are sinners but there is help and rescue out of your sin and damnation; let Me tell you how: an altar for sacrifice. The purpose of an altar is for dealing with sin. Here the sacrifices of the OT point ahead to that once for all perfect sacrifice for sin that Jesus offered up on the cross—for us. Jesus, the coming Messiah, dying on the cross, is God serving us; the holy God serving sinners.
As God has first served us by creating faith in our hearts, He doesn’t stop there but He has called us/ placed us into a Christian congregation where He may come to us to serve us, to give us every heavenly and spiritual blessing that Jesus won for us on the cross—forgiveness of sin, life, salvation, peace, joy, that perfect reconciliation. But unlike that day—in fact opposite of that day—the Lord coming to serve us in church doesn’t make His presence known to us with the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, these great and terrifying signs, but He comes in the gentle, quiet instruments of the Gospel word, of the absolution, of the water of Holy Baptism, in the bread and wine of holy communion. These are the markers of God’s presence, that He has come to us, and precisely here in them He serves us—in the Divine Service!
Although our holy Triune God is omnipresent, present everywhere, only where He gathers us around His holy Word and Sacrament is He serving us, giving us the gifts Christ Jesus won for us on the cross. We see that in our text: although He is the almighty God, ruling all things and present everywhere, He makes Himself known and comes to His people to enter into a relationship with them at Sinai. Our Lord has promised to meet us, and to serve us with every heavenly and spiritual blessing, in His holy word and sacraments—and that is normally in His house, church. To receive the blessings God wants to give us, to be served by Him in word and sacrament, we need to be where He is with His gifts and blessings. No we can’t just as well be served by God by walking in the woods or being on the lake. Where has God promised to meet and serve us there? He hasn’t. To be sure one can have godly thoughts and think about God almighty while enjoying time outdoors—there is a good and right time for that—but can a person hear the absolution? Receive the body and blood of our Lord? Hardly! In church is the Divine Service, where God comes and serves us!
In our text the Lord promises the Israelites and us: In every place where I cause My name to be remembered I will come to you, and I will bless you. That’s church! That’s the divine service! God’s house is where He dwells, and where He dwells is where His word and sacrament are. By His word and the proclamation of that word He causes His name to be remembered. What does it mean that the Lord’s name is remembered? It means that as the Lord God comes to us in word and sacrament, as He serves us here in church, that we in faith receive the gifts and blessings He is serving us. As the Lord serves us as He proclaims to us the work of Christ—His life, suffering and death—as He gives us in word and sacrament the forgiveness, life and reconciliation He brought about, by His Holy Spirit He leads us in faith to receive once again and to apply these blessings to ourselves. To remember the Lord’s name is to receive His blessings as He comes.
That’s exactly what we do each Sunday and holy day as our Lord gathers us around His word and Sacrament and serves us. What a blessing it is for us to be here Sundays in church. INJ Amen