Mackay, Harold G: The Dispensations 02 ~ Exodus 19;1

Exodus chapter nineteen, And we read from verse one of the chapter. In the third month, when the children of Israel gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai. For they were departed from Rephidim and were come to the desert of Sinai and had pitched in the wilderness. There Israel camped before the mount. And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the chil- to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel, You have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagle's wings and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, for all the earth is mine. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel. Chapter twenty, verse one. And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy son or thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gate. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's. The Lord add his blessing to the reading of his word. Now, I've been stressing again and again that in the dispensational study of the word of God, we have two prominent thoughts before us. One is God, the administration of God's dealings with man, and in close keeping with that, man's responsibility toward God. Both thoughts are carried in the word dispensation. And we have seen, and will continue to see, that God administers his affairs with men always in a perfectly righteous basis, always according to truth and equity, and always, of course, according to love and goodness and grace. On the other hand, we see that man has varying responsibility toward God. There is always the responsibility of obedience to him as his creator and his God. There's always the responsibility of faith and confidence. But this responsibility of man toward God is expressed in various ways. Going back to the beginning, we saw that man was responsible to abstain from partaking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was the test of his obedience. The test of his faith was, did he believe that God was telling him the truth when he declared that in the day he partook of it, he would, uh, die. And, uh, we need not retrace all our steps, but when we came in our last study to Genesis chapter twelve, we noted a very sharp distinction and change in, uh, God's dealings with man. No longer is he dealing primarily with the entire human race. Of course, as creator, he does continue to deal with them in various ways, but his dealings as recorded in the word of God now center on one individual, and that, of course, was Abram. And from Genesis chapter twelve on through the major part of our Bible, we have God's dealings with this man and his descendants. The descendants of Abraham, of course, being the nation of Israel, the Jews as we know them today. Now, it's very interesting and very important that we understand God's dealings with Israel, because today, as on many a past day, uh, there has been and there continues to be a strange unscriptural mixture of law and of grace, of Israel and of the church. And unless we understand certain basic facts, we are going to share in this confusion. We'll find that the majority of those who are wrong in their teaching of the word of God, and uh, yet, shall we say, are not of those false cults that deny the fundamentals of the word of God, that these others, they are wrong on the truth of law and grace. There is a mixture of law and of grace which is entirely unscriptural. It's not a new thing. It's just as old as the ministry of the Apostle Paul. This dogged the footsteps of Paul and undoubtedly of the other apostles as well, and Paul wrote two epistles particularly to clarify this. In the epistle to the Romans, he very clearly defined the gospel of the grace of God. In the epistle to the Galatians, he defended that gospel of the grace of God against legalism, as we call the insertion of the law into the grace of God as a principle in connection with salvation and the life of those who are saved. And if we compare what we might call Christendom, the religious world, the professing Christian church, if we compare that on the one hand with Israel and Israel's religion, which was God given and God appointed, as we'll see, and compare it on the other hand with a New Testament teaching regarding the church, we'll find that professing Christendom today, the so-called Christian church world is very much nearer to the Jewish religion than it is to the truth of the church as you have it in the New Testament. I propose to point that out as we study this dispensation and the one to follow, and we'll find that things that were given directly by God to Israel, and given alone to them, and never given to the Gentiles, as far as the revelation of the word of God is concerned, have been carried over into the present Christendom. And as a result, as I said, it's patterned very much more after Judaism than it is after the New Testament revelation of the church. But I think there are certain things we need to recall to mind. I think with most of us, at least, it will be just refreshing our minds, uh, as a background or a platform for the study of law as a dispensation, and it's the outstanding characteristics of it. I read the portions from these two chapters because here we have the commencement of this dispensation of the law. Now, I say that we have a new dispensation beginning here because we have the introduction of something that is so completely new, that has not been met with before in the divine dealings with the human race, that it undoubtedly starts at an entirely different phase of God's dealings with man. His administration of his affairs with man is now taking on an entirely new bent. That is, never before had God spelled out, so far as we have any record in the Bible, never before had God spelled out in such explicit terms what he wanted man to do, and what he didn't want man to do. Now, there was the one initial command and prohibition in the Garden of Eden. Then we saw man left to his conscience. But now God is spelling out, in ten tremendous statements, God is spelling out his commands and his prohibitions. Nothing like that before, nor is there anything else at all in the word of God just comparable to that. But not only does God give ten commandments, which we generally think of as the law, we find that God tells them how to construct the holy building. Now there's nothing at all like that before. Nothing like that at all before these chapters in Genesis, in Exodus, rather. All through the book of Genesis, the times the patriarchs and so on, they had their altar. But there's absolutely no suggestion that God gave directions regarding a holy building, but he does. And he gives most minute directions as to how it's to be made. The materials, the dimensions, the plan and pattern of it are all given here most minutely in the book of Exodus. Not only that, but having done so, God institutes for the first time a priesthood. Now this priesthood has certain privileges in connection with the worship of God that is denied the rest of the people. And this priesthood can be known not only by their engaging in these activities, but by the garments that they wear. When they serve God, they must, on every occasion, have the prescribed garment on. On some occasions, it will be one, on other occasions, it'll be another type of garment, but they must have that, and they dare not approach God in the service connected with this holy building in any other way. And then what they do in that building and in the worship is not left to their choice, but is spelled out very carefully. They are told not only how they're to be clothed, but they're told how they're to approach and what they're to do, what they're to engage in, and what they're to bring with them. All of that is given most minutely in the chapters that follow. But not only that. God sets up a system of sacrifices, and these sacrifices are prescribed by God to meet certain needs and to be offered on certain occasions. And they are, uh, to be offered in just the way that God declares they are to be. And he declares that very carefully and very minutely. Not only that, God gives to these people a calendar of holy days. And what they're to do on these holy days and what they're not to do on these holy days is prescribed by God. And there you have a system of religious worship that is instituted by God, very carefully described by him and given to the people to carry out. Given to whom? To Israel. And there is no suggestion anywhere in the Bible that that was done for any other people, but for the Israelite nation, the descendants of Abraham, God's chosen people. Now, if we digress for just a moment, with the exception of the animal sacrifices, you can find everything that I have described in the religious world of today. You will find so-called holy buildings. And those holy buildings, particularly some of them, are divided into certain sections. The ordinary folks can go into some of them, but only the clergy can go into the others. You will find in connection with these holy buildings, a ritual, a ceremony, or many of them, that is all spelled out very carefully, not by God, but by man, and which must be followed. You will find that this is conducted by a special class of men who are set aside for this, and who alone are considered privileged to draw near and to engage in these specified activities. And these are quite distinct from the rest of God's people, and they alone can engage in these things. In certain circles, these ones can be readily recognized, not only by their activities, but by the clothes they wear. And their clothes are quite distinct from that of the ordinary Christian brother, and that marks them out as such. And that we can go on through the whole of the Jewish ritual and religion, including the holy days. And the church world, particularly certain segments of it, has its calendar of holy days. Now you find all this in the Old Testament. It's perfectly scriptural, if you want to live under the law. But when you turn over to the dispensation of the church, which we shall do next, you will find not one suggestion of a holy building. You'll find a spiritual house made of living stones. You will find no such suggestion whatsoever of a certain class of men set aside as priests, who alone are privileged to draw near to God and carry on certain spiritual activities. You'll find that all God's people are priests, and all have the privilege of coming through the great high priest into the presence of the Lord for prayer and for worship. You will find, not find in the Old Testament any specified religious activities, even in connection with the two ordinances that the Lord left for his church, it is striking how little we are told how to carry them out. Now, actually, when you get down to your Bible, how do you baptize? You baptize forward or backward? You say, why backward? Well, how do you know? Well, we've always done it. Well, what does that prove? Maybe we've always done it wrong. Maybe it should be forward. You baptize once, or as some do, three times. Just, uh, how is this important ordinance to be carried out so far as the details? Just who is it that's to do the baptizing? Is it to be the evangelist? Is it to be the pastor? Is it to be the teacher? Or is it to be any good brother? Well, that'd be something interesting to find chapter and verse for. And then think about the Lord's Supper, that other precious ordinance that's been given to us. Just exactly how do you carry it out? Well, there are certain things that you know you do, but just how to do them, you don't know. Now, uh, in some groups of Christians who seek to go on what they believe to be perfectly scriptural run, and they seek with a sincere desire to carry out the teaching of the Word of God. In some of those groups, the brother who gives thanks for the bread always gives thanks for the wine, always, and they would feel that, uh, not doing so is quite wrong. But where's the chapter and verse? In other places, including the Forest Avenue Tabernacle, quite frequently one brother gives, uh, uh, thanks for the bread, another one gives thanks for the wine. Is that correct? Well, where's the chapter and verse for it? Now, in some places I have been with some very dear brethren in Christ, the brother who gives thanks for the bread and wine always goes up to the table. And, uh, in other groups, if he were to go up to the table, they would wonder what he was doing. I mean, before he gives thanks. They say, I don't, I think that's wrong. Well, where's your chapter and verse for? You see, my point here is this, that in the old economy, God spelt out very, very carefully everything they had to do because it was a religion. And if you were going to offer an animal, you knew what kind of an animal to offer, and it wasn't left up to you to decide. And when that animal was given to the priest, he knew exactly what to do. He knew what to do with the head of it, he knew what to do with the legs of it, he knew what to do with the height of it. He knew what to do with every part of it. And he knew where to do it, and he knew when to do it, and all of that. And so you see, this is connected with a definite dispensation. When we understand that, it makes our Old Testament very much more interesting and very much more intelligible. And then when we pass from the Old into the New and see the striking contrast, it stands out so much more clearly when we have learned the outstanding features of the old dispensation. There was a book published many years ago, and I found of great help to me when I was first saved, and it was entitled just this. It was Israel, the Church, and Christmas. And when, as a young Christian, I began to read that book, I had no idea whatsoever what was before me. But very clearly, by a most able teacher, the outstanding features of Israel were marked out. Then, with equal clarity, the outstanding characteristics of the New Testament church were shown. And then there were shown the features of Christendom. And one had only to see these things to see how much nearer to Israel Christendom was than to the true church. But I repeat, I think before we get into more detail of this, I think we might notice here the commencement. You notice it's about two months after the nation of Israel had been delivered from Egyptian bondage. But we better go back again. When I'm studying my Bible, I like to keep the thread of thought, uh, in my mind as we work our way through the Bible, and I find that doing that, it helps me to understand every portion. Now we can go back to where we were last Thursday night, or two Thursday nights ago, was it? We go back to the call of Abraham, and we were looking briefly at the promises made to him. We know that Abraham's son, to whom the promises were repeated, was Isaac, and in turn, we know that Isaac's son, to whom the promises were repeated again, was Jacob. Now, those are the fathers, and again and again, again in your Bible, you read of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You say, what about Joseph? Why, you read more about Joseph in the Genesis than you do about any of the other three. He occupies a larger portion, and it's a most tremendously interesting and instructive study. And, uh, we have here at the Tabernacle spent some months on the life of Joseph. What about Joseph? Wasn't he one of the fathers? No, he's not. He's never so referred to. But, and the promises that were first of all given to Abraham, repeated to Isaac, and reconfirmed to Jacob are never given in connection with Joseph. God never repeated his promises to Joseph. Now, Joseph was in the line of promise, and he formed a very important link. But these three are the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To them the promises were given, either initially or by repetition. But Joseph, you remember, out of envy, was sold into Egypt. Carried down into Egypt there, he was used of God to be the savior of his father and his brethren. And in due course, old Jacob, with all of his family clan, they move on down to Egypt, and things go well with them. Why shouldn't they? Uh, his youngest son is there, his second youngest son is there in the position of power and prestige at the court of the Pharaohs. Why should not go well? But then there arose a king which knew not Joseph. There was a change in the dynasties of Egypt at that time, and there came another king, not one who hadn't heard about Joseph. I think it'd be quite impossible to believe that this king had never heard of Joseph, but he did not know him in the sense that he belong- he had been a favorite under that hated dynasty of the foreigners, shall we say, who had swept over and conquered Egypt. And that's the interesting thing that archaeology has proven, that while the Egyptians were most careful and correct in recording their history, the names of their kings to be traced one after another, the outstanding events, there is a great blank in the archaeological record of Egypt. And for many years, historians asked themselves, and archaeologists asked themselves, now why would this be? A nation preserved its history so carefully, up to a point, then stopped. Then it starts over here, several hundred years later, and begins again with equal precision and detail to record the history. Why that? Well, so often the spade has, uh, confirmed the record of scripture. And as they kept digging, they discovered that that blank in the history of the Egyptian nation was at this time when, uh, foreign, foreign power, the hated shepherd kings, as they're called, came in, overthrew the old Egyptian dynasty and ruled for quite some time. There was succession of them. But eventually, the old original Egyptian dynasties came into power again. Not the same individuals, of course. They came into power again, and everything connected with the old original Egyptian dynasties came into power again. Not the same individuals, of course. They came into power again, and everything connected with old, the uh, these intruders, everything connected with that was just completely wiped out of the records, wiped off. There were a few traces, uh, left that confirmed this, but it's a very interesting study. But Joseph, now having passed on his descendants, the people of Israel, their fortunes completely change. And you remember that instead of being the favorites of the king, they now become his slaves. And you and I are well familiar with the opening chapters of the book of Exodus, where we find the nation of Israel down there in Egyptian bondage. And then God moves. Just as he had wrought beforehand by send- allowing Joseph to be taken down there as a young slave, just as God had preserved them through that, God raises up Moses and Aaron, and through them, in the familiar story of the Passover and the Exodus, God delivers the descendants of Abraham out of Egypt. No need of us going to the details of that story. I'm quite sure it's familiar to all of you. But for two months now, they have traveled from Egypt through the wilderness, and we've traced that journey, and you remember what interesting things befell them and how many important lessons they learned. They were given guidance by the pillar cloud and the pillar of fire at night. They proved the faithfulness of God, not only opening up the Red Sea that they might pass through, but in providing them with manna, giving this corn of heaven daily for them. Not only that, but in giving them the water from the smitten rock, and the so on. Now we find them at Mount Sinai. And, uh, uh, time has passed, about two months, as we're reading here, have passed. Now they come to Mount Mount Sinai, and they stay there about a year. Now, all the rest of the time you're reading through Exodus, you're at Mount Sinai. All the rest of the time you're reading through Leviticus, you're at Mount Sinai. And all the time you're reading through Numbers over to chapter ten, m you're at Mount. You're staying there with Israel just about a year. Now, what's God doing? God has promised that he's going to make the descendants of Abraham a nation. Now, you couldn't call a clan that moved on down to Egypt with the old patriarch at the head, you couldn't call that a nation. And while they increased greatly, even under the persecution of Egypt, while they were there, they were scarcely a nation in any sense of organization. Moses was their spokesman, Moses and Aaron. Uh, there seemed to have been some elders, but uh, that's about all there was. And when they came out of Egypt and through the Red Sea, there is very, very little of order. Now, I don't mean they were disorderly. There's an expression there, they went up out of Egypt harnessed. And for a long time, I used to wonder what in the world kind of harnesses they had on. Well, I thought maybe it referred to some sort of weapons. And I thought, well, where'd they get their weapons? You don't generally hand the slaves some weapons, or you get yourself in trouble. But there are those who believe and translate that expression harness by force, by force. And if that be so, instead of just a rabble crowd marching along, want to get out here as quick as they can, they apparently marched out by force or abreast. Now, if that be so, there was a measure of order there, but it was a very simple order. But now at Mount Sinai, and we'll leave them there for a while, and they'll stay there if they stayed a year, they'll stay there till next Thursday. Uh, the, uh, at Mount Sinai, God puts things in order in his nation. And when you pick them up again on the move, in Numbers eleven, I think it is, either ten or eleven, things are in order. They have their building for worship because they're an itinerant people on the march. It's a portable building, but they have their building. That's where their worship's conducted. They have their priesthood. They have their religious service. They have their sacrifices. And not only that, but every tribe in E- in Israel has his place. The tabernacle is always in the center, whether on the march or camp. And every tribe camps, not where they like to, not in the best part that they think, but right where God says they should be. And around that camp, and it would must have been a beautiful sight, around the tabernacle, each tribe was in his place. And each tribe had his standard lying there at the door of the prince of that tribe. Everything was in perfect order. Every tribe knew where it was to go. Judah was to be at the head. Dan was to be at the last, the rearward, and every tribe knew exactly where to be. And the Levites and the priests who were connected with the service of God in the tabernacle, they knew where to pitch. And when they moved out, they marched in perfect order. And when they camped, they were in perfect order. All that was settled at Sinai. And we'll pick up their journeys from there on. We'll just take a little resume of the, the course of this dispensation, and then go back and try and find some of its characteristics. But I say these things are important. If God stopped his people Israel for one year on their way to the promised land so that they might learn what he wanted them to do, surely divine order is important. According to the reasoning of today, so many would say, well, it actually doesn't matter where you camp. Dear me, there's nothing to that. Let's get on with the job. We're on our way to Canaan. We have no time for this order business. There's no time for all these details. So let's get on, get to Canaan. God says, I've got some lessons to teach you. I want, first of all, to teach you how to live. I want to teach you how to worship. I want to teach you how to work, and I want to teach you how to conduct the warfare that's ahead of you. And when they left Sinai, they knew how God intended them to walk, how God intended them to work, and he knew, they knew how God intended them to worship. That was their responsibility, it was their privilege. We'll see a parallel today, not in the detail, but God wants us to learn how to walk. God wants us to learn how to work. Above all, God wants us to learn how to worship. And it's as we learn these things according not to human standards or human thinking, but according to divine guidebook, that we can carry on for God in a way that we can be assured of his reward in a coming day, as well as the smile of approval now. Shall we pray? Our Father in heaven, we thank thee that thou, the great God of heaven and earth, art, uh, concerned with every detail of thy people's lives. Thou are concerned about us as individuals, and thou are concerned about us in our corporate capacity as the church. Our Father, we thank you for this. When we think of thy greatness and the vastness of thy workings, how we bless thee that the individual is precious to thee. And we can look up to thee, and we can rejoice that our Lord Jesus Christ taught the very hairs of our head are all numbered. Nothing could be more particular, nothing could be more personal than this. We thank thee. This is the God that our Lord revealed. And so we pray that in the consciousness of thy personal interest in us, we may go into and through each day. And then our Father is a corporate company of thy people here, seeking to carry on for thee, we pray may realize that thou hast indicated thy will. Thou hast not done so in just the way thou didst in a past dispensation, but thou hast with equal clarity marked out for us the way that thou wouldst have us to go. And thou hast given to us that great boon and blessing of the indwelling, inspiring, invigorating Spirit of God. May we individually and collectively be more under his control. Separate us now thy blessing. Take us to our homes in safety. Grant to each one of us the rest of the night that is needed in preparation for what the morrow may hold. And our fathers, we close another day, may we do so in the realization that we're one day march nearer home, that we are nearer now to the coming of our blessed Lord Jesus than the church in our long history ever has been. And it may be we stand on the very threshold of that blessed event, here today, gone tomorrow, with our beloved ones here today, with our beloved Lord before the day. We commit ourselves to thy protection and care, physically, morally, spiritually, in every way, in our Savior's precious name. Amen.