Like The Former Ones

As I started preparing, I thought, I'm going to make two points. And then as I kept preparing, I realized, I'm only going to make one point. And so the text that we're going through, we'll go through for two weeks. We'll read the whole thing each week, but we're going to focus on just the first point this morning. We're in Deuteronomy chapter 10, verses 1 through 8. And there are two things that happen in this text that are significant. The first is the remaking of the tablets. The Ten Commandments that Moses had come down the mountain and smashed. This is Moses recounting the remaking of those tablets. And the second thing has to do with Aaron. It says that Aaron died and that the Levites were appointed as priests. And that's the part we'll come to.

next time. But this week we're going to be focusing on the three tasks that Moses was given by God as pertains to the remaking of the tablets. My hope this morning is that God would soften our hearts to receive his word and to submit to it in every area of our lives. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter 10 verses 1 through 8. At that time the Lord said to me, cut out for yourselves two tablets of stone like the former ones. and come up to me on the mountain and make an ark of wood for yourself. I will write on the tablets the words which were on the former tablets, which you shattered, and you shall put them in the ark. So I made an ark of acacia wood and cut out two tablets of stone like the former ones and went up on the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. He wrote on the tablets, like the former writing, the Ten Commandments which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain in the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly, and the Lord gave them to me.

And I turned and came down the mountain and put the tablets in the ark which I had made, and there they are, as the Lord commanded me. Now the sons of Israel set out from Beroth-Bene-Jakhan to Masorah. There Aaron died, and there he was buried, and Eleazar his son ministered as priest in his place. From there they set out to Gud-goda, and from Gud-goda to Joth-bethan, a land of brooks of water. At that time, the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord, to serve him, and to bless his name until this day. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Now, I want to focus on the three things that God gives Moses to do. The first is make new tablets, come up the mountain. The second is come up the mountain. And the third is make an ark.

When the Lord says that he ought to remake those tablets, God is reestablishing his covenant with Israel. The reason they were broken, the reason Moses smashed them, was because he came down the mountain and the people were given to sin. They were worshiping this golden calf. And so Moses comes down, and in a real-life example of what the people were doing, he takes these tablets and he smashes them. shatters them into pieces to teach the people, this is what you've done. You've promised just a few weeks earlier to serve the Lord and to obey him and to do all that he says. But I've been up the mountain for 40 days and look where you've come to. Look what you've done in such a short amount of time. You've broken the terms of the covenant. And so there is a fair question to ask, will this people continue? You remember that Moses...

was said to Moses by God, I'm going to wipe these people out and I'll start over again with you. Basically, I'm going to do away with Abraham and I'll create a people after you. Moses says, no, no. If you'll be merciful and forgive these people, then do that. But if not, then blot me out. I'm with them. I am one of them. And so when God comes to them and he makes, he tells Moses, Cut out for yourselves two tablets of stone. He's reestablishing his covenant. He's promising by this command to be faithful to this people. This is mercy. And this is grace. For someone to have just, for a nation really, to have just given themselves to such sin, and then right on the heels of it, God is reestablishing his covenant with them. It's really an incredible thing. And so one of the things we learn from this is that we don't often get what we deserve. In fact, most of your life, you don't get what you deserve. You may be able to point to a few examples in your life where you got something approximating what you deserved, but most of your life, the vast majority of it, you're not getting what you deserve for your actions. And there's a danger wrapped up in that mercy. That is mercy, but there's a danger wrapped up in it. What is the danger that's wrapped up in not getting what you deserve?

One of the dangers is that you forget you deserve it. Or you come to think that the thing you're doing really isn't worthy of that level of judgment. You downgrade sin. It's just not a big deal anymore. Or you think that the reason you didn't get the punishment you deserved is because there's something special about you. I deserve good things. I get good things. And it's because of me that I get these good things. And it's something that we have to always keep in mind. You live in a world that is like built and runs on the grace of God. It really does. If things worked just how they should, if justice was always full and immediate, I don't know that you'd recognize that world. I mean, even from the beginning when Adam and Eve sinned, there was grace in the Lord's response to them.

In the day that you eat of it, you'll surely die. So what would your expectation be? That in the day of you eat of it, you'll surely die. Did they die as they would have understood it? No, they didn't. Now they did die spiritually and God did withdraw from them and he did kick them out of the garden and set an angel there to keep them from the tree of life, but they didn't die. Did God cast them out and say, you're on your own now? No, what did God do? Do you remember? He killed an animal and he made covering for their nakedness. He immediately was gracious with them. They had just sinned and death had entered the world through their sin. And God's response was to rebuke them and to make a covering for their nakedness, for their sin. And this really is the nature of God. And you see it from the first pages of Genesis all through. This idea that God was harsh and mean and far off in the Old Testament, it's simply not true.

You can only believe that if you don't read the scriptures. When you see how merciful he is to them, it's incredible. More merciful than you or I would be, with far less offense given to us. And so when God tells Moses, go and cut out for yourselves two tablets of stone, he's reestablishing his covenant and his commitment to the people. He is still owning them. And they and we have to guard against this idea that it's because of something in us. Was Abraham something special? Is that why God chose him? No. Had Israel become something so special? Well, given their track record, I mean, some people, you know, you and I have a propensity to forget our failures and to just remember with glory the good parts of ourselves. I was thinking about when I played on a, when I've played sports, and when you play on a bad team, you always remember your good parts. You remember, your team could never win a game, but you'll remember how many goals you scored. And it's like, your team was terrible. But we have this ability to only remember and recall and to give priority to the things that reflect well on us. Well, look what I've done. Well, look what I did. Well, at least I did not as bad as that person on our losing team. You ever play spades?

I don't like euchre, so we play spades at my house. And spades is fun because you have a partner. And I laugh, and I do it just along with my kids. We were playing yesterday. Well, you didn't make your bid. I'm better than you. You go back through and count and say, I got what I bid. You didn't get what you bid. We're always unwilling to be associated with the person who failed. We're always like, well, I did my part, and I'm better than you. And we really do have to guard against thinking that way spiritually, that when God doesn't deal with us as our sins deserve, that we, on the one hand, not minimize our sins and forget about them, or that we not elevate ourselves and think that, well, the reason I didn't get treated that way is because I'm better than the rest. It's good medicine for Israel to remember the taste of that ground-up burned gold dust as God's remaking these tablets of stone. It was his mercy and kindness.

on display. And we as his people need to be able to read his word and to read what goes on around us and see his mercy. When justice is withheld, that's mercy and grace. It's not because the justice isn't deserved. It's because God is that gracious. Okay, now we come to the first of the three instructions. Cut out for yourselves two tablets of stone like the former ones. And twice we find that phrase in this passage, like the former ones. First in the command from the Lord and second in Moses saying, and then I did this thing. I went and cut out these stones like the former ones. And so I want to ask, what were the former stones like? Now we're not told in scripture what those stones were like exactly. If you were to read, you know, the idea that they kind of look like tombstones, that they're kind of like rectangles with the top, that's likely not what they looked like.

If you were to read back into history and into what the Jewish rabbis and stuff have to say, they were probably 18 inches square and probably about nine inches thick. And they speculate as to what they were made out of. Some special stone, some say sapphire, some say some Latin word I can't pronounce, some special kind of stone, vibrant and words that are like engraved all the way through them so you can see on both sides and there's all this mysticism around it. But I'm convinced of a few things. One, if they were that size, they were heavy. That's a big stone. That's like two or three cinder blocks each. And I'm thinking Moses was a man's man carrying these things around. But also, I think if God wrote on them, they must have been prepared to be written on, right? Moses is told, we're not told how the first ones were generated, where they came from. If Moses made them up the mountain or if God...

God produced them. We're told in both cases God wrote on them. But here Moses is told, make the second set like the former set. What was the former set like? Well, they probably were heavy. But I think the thing that's most helpful to us is that if you were going to make, if you were going to take raw stone and have to write something on it, what would you have to do to it? You'd have to be flat, right? Like the most basic elements, like it needs to be flat. Like if we just like, I don't know if you guys see the rocks that just kind of sit out there for decorations on the sidewalk. I would love if those went somewhere more appropriate. But if you were supposed to write on those, could you? No, it's just this big lopsided dirty boulder that's sitting there, right? I think that they were flat. I think that they were milled, that Moses had a particular work to do. And he had in his mind what they looked like the first time. And so he's supposed to take stone and he's supposed to...

to make them look like that again. He has to work these things, and he has to prepare them to be able to receive the words of God, the law of God written onto them. It wasn't just this pile of gravel. It wasn't just this hideous stone. They would have been prepared. You could have seen that they were cut and smoothed. Now, I want to draw a correlation between those stones and our hearts, okay? Because here in the Old Testament, there's the law of God being written on stones, but scripture teaches us where also the law of God or the word of God is written. In Romans 2, 14 and 15, it says, for when the Gentiles who do not have the law do instinctively the things of the law, these, referring to the Gentiles, not having the law are a law to themselves in that they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. Colossians 3, 16 says, That we ought to let the word of Christ richly dwell within us, in our hearts. And so this idea of the stones being prepared really is an analogy or a parable for our own hearts. A stone that is rough, a stone that is unprepared, a stone that is broken, is not able to be written on. It's useless for its purpose. And our hearts come in that same condition.

Ezekiel promised that our hearts, that one of the things God would do was he would remove our hearts of stone and he would give us hearts of flesh. And we understand that in the analogy, that unbelievers don't actually have a piece of granite in their chest, right? They have a muscle like us that pumps blood. But it speaks of the condition and the preparation of their heart. And Paul teaches us in Romans that even those hearts have some inscription of the law on it so that they're without excuse. But that that type of heart is not the type of heart that we ought to want to present to God. We ought to want to present a prepared heart, a soft heart, a smooth heart. In the parable of the soils, Jesus teaches that there are four types of soil.

And that soil all receives the word of God, which is in that parable seed. So the sower goes out and he sows the seed and some of it falls along the pathway and the birds just come and they just gobble it right up, right? What kind of soil is that? Well, it's unfertile, it's sterile, it's not conducive to life. The birds just come and snatch it right up. Some of the seed, it falls amongst the rocky soil. And it grows for a short time. But having no firm root, the ground having not been prepared, it springs up and then the sun comes out and it burns it off because it has no root. It's unprepared soil. It doesn't receive the seed. The third soil is soil that receives the seed and the seed grows and it bears.

It grows up, but it never sets fruit. And they were told that thorns and thistles grow up and choke out the plant, right? And then the final soil is fertile soil. Soil that's been prepared to receive the seed such that when the seed hits it, the seed is implanted in it and the seed takes root in it. The seed grows in it and the seed produces fruit in it. Now you can think of fields. I don't know if you've noticed that This spring, and maybe you remember back, this spring was a very wet spring. And farmers couldn't get in their fields to prepare their fields. There are many fields that just weren't planted this year because they just couldn't get their equipment out there to plant the seeds. They couldn't get out there. And so what did those fields look like? They were uncultivated. And what happened is they just grew up weeds. They used to be cornfields or bean fields, but they just kind of grew up in weeds because nobody could get out there and cultivate the soil.

To receive the seed. And all of these things are given to us as an example of, and a reminder of our own hearts. We should look at this passage about Moses having to cut out these tablets and make them like the former ones and say, you know, where else does the word of God need, where else is it to be inscribed? Where else is it inscribed? Where else is it supposed to grow and produce fruit? Oh, my heart. Is my heart like a weed field? Or is my heart prepared to bear fruit? How have I cultivated it? Do I care to cultivate it? Cultivating is hard work. Do you know what farmers turn up when they go out and plow their fields? They turn up rocks. They turn up big rocks that actually, if they're big enough, damage the equipment. And they have to go out there and they have to get the big rocks out of the field.

And how it happens, I don't exactly know. Maybe Daniel could explain how the rocks move in the soil. But it's like they weren't there this year, but then they're there next year. And it's big boulders, big things. They're always having to go out and recultivate that field. And we have to be cultivating our hearts perpetually. That God's word might be written on it, implanted in it, and bear good fruit. We don't prepare our hearts in our own strength. We prepare our hearts in the grace and in the strength that God supplies. But nevertheless, this is work that must be done. And this is work that God is doing in the hearts of his people. And so one of the marks of a Christian growing and coming toward maturity is that they become more fertile for the word of God. The things that they didn't understand, or the things that they didn't appreciate, or the things they didn't know, They grow out of those things as they get older. Meaning that when someone is a young Christian, we understand that they lack maturity and there's no class or program that will teach you 20 years of serving the Lord. You do have to walk that path. You can take detours from that path and make it take longer, but you do have to walk that path. And one of the things that we ought to see in older Christians is that they're

still repenting, that they're recognizing sins in their lives that they didn't see five years ago or 10 years ago or 20 years ago. We see the same principle at work when Paul's words where he says, when I was a child, I thought like a child and I reasoned like a child and I acted like a child. But when I became a man, I did away with childish things. How is it that one moves from childhood to maturity? Does it just, they just sit there doing whatever it seems right to them and God zaps them and changes them, and all of a sudden they're different? No. It's the work of plowing the field and cultivating your heart. Proverbs tells us, keep watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life. Our hearts are something we have to be cultivating. I'm not a stonemason. I've never done it. I have no idea. You see YouTube shorts and different things of people doing amazing things on stone, turning with chisels, making stone flat and beautiful.

It's a mystery to me how it happens, how it's done. But I do know that it's hard, hard work, and I do know that it takes time. Stone's an interesting medium because with wood, if you break off a piece of wood, you can just glue it back on. But if you break off the corner of a stone that you were working on, what can you do? It's broken off. Maybe there is a way to reattach it that I'm not aware of, but not without noticing it. It takes time. It takes a lot of time to find the shape of a sculpture inside a giant piece of stone. It takes a lot of time. And it's hard, arduous work. And so Moses has this work set before him. Cut out for yourself two tablets of stone like the former ones. This is tough work. You get the idea that they're in an arid, you know, they're at the Mount Horeb and that there's this rock outcropping. And he's supposed to go over there with no Milwaukee and no DeWalt.

right? He's to go over there and he's supposed to get from it these tablets. And so he sets about doing the work. We need to do the same thing with our hearts. One of the things to demonstrate the other side of what I said earlier, I said that softness and fertility, humility and repentance are the things that mark someone who's maturing in their faith. One of the indications of one who's not maturing in his faith is hard-heartedness. They're not getting any softer. They're not becoming more tender to the word of God. They're not interested in growing. They're just like a rock. They're movable, but like a stone. That is not masculine toughness. That's spiritual immaturity.

If men are going to be firm, if they're going to lead, if they're going to be hard in the right places, they have to have their natural hardness removed from them and they have to have faith and conviction in the word of God to replace it so that they're hard in the right places and not the wrong places. And that doesn't come to us naturally. Young men tend to think old men are soft and sometimes they are. I'm not here to tell you all old men and their priorities are right. But I'm also not here to tell you that all young men and their priorities are right either. And if I had to choose who to listen to in terms of categories, I would listen to the old men as opposed to the young men. Even if I don't understand all of the details. If godly older men seem soft in an area, I'd be hesitant to judge them. When your dads are, you know, and your mom, they just don't spank your younger siblings like they're supposed to. It'd all be better if you just do this thing.

Our older kids think this sometimes. And sometimes they're right. Sometimes I'm being lazy and I should just spank my kid and solve the problem. But other times it's like, there's way more to the situation than you understand, son. And I know you think you're right. And you're very sure you're right, but you're not right. And so we should be aiming at preparing our hearts as Moses prepared these tablets to receive the word of God with gladness. rich, fertile soil, black, turned over with the work of a till. The second thing Moses was told to do was to come up the mountain. After the tablets were prepared, Moses was to go back up the mountain for God to rewrite the law of God on these new stones. Moses was a holy man, the leader in Israel. And yet even he was not allowed to write down what was on that tablet. One of the things we learn from this is that God's word derived, it comes from him and only he can write it. It's not our place to change it. It's not our place to ignore it. It's not our place to misunderstand it. Proverbs 30 verses five and six says, every word of God is tested. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words or he will reprove you and you will be proved a liar.

As holy as Moses was, he was unfit to do the work. He wasn't able to stand up and to say what God has said. And I don't have any doubt that Moses knew what was on the tablets, but it wasn't his place to speak on behalf of God. His job was to take the tablets back up the mountain so that God would write them. And so when we deal with the word of God, we're not dealing with the words of man. And I could talk a lot right now about Bible translation and the dangers of mistranslating the words of God or omitting words of God to make it more palatable to us, and that's a failure. And the reason that I've been around discussions, we use at our church the New American Standard 95, okay?

You can get a New American Standard that was published in 1977, and it's going to have more of these and those, and that type of stuff will be harder to find. But probably the most common New American Standard is probably the 2020. They released an updated version of it just a few years ago. It's not the same. And you're left being like, why did they have to release a new version? What's the deal with that? Why are there always new versions of the Bible coming out? A lot of times, it's to make it more palatable. It's to make money, for one. But secondly, it's to make it more palatable.

And so a lot of modern Bible translations are failing us at the points of the Jews and their culpability with their hatred of and murder of Jesus Christ and the issue of manhood. All the male inclusives are out. Brothers doesn't exist. It's brothers and sisters. But the word, just as an example, Adelphoi is the Greek word. It doesn't mean sisters. It doesn't. It means brothers. But we all understand that brothers includes women. It's called a male inclusive. And so when a girl leaves a group of women and she says, hey, I'll see you guys later. She's using a male word. She didn't say, I'll see you girls later. I'll see you gals later. She said, I'll see you guys later. But she's referring to women. And so why do we have to make the change? Is it because we don't understand that as a society? No, it's because it's offensive to a certain section of our society. And after all, we need scripture to not do that. But when we change the words of God,

Do what Moses was forbidden from doing here, which is writing down what God said. Probably one of the most common places in the Old Testament that I've noticed, that I use Blue Letter Bible, the website, and it's very helpful. It was created by a guy that you know. He was just here last week. This guy that went to Christ the Word. Andrew Dion Church, I'm sorry. And he, years ago, he was in the right place at the right time and had the money, and he... helped get Blue Letter Bible off the ground. And they have footnotes for everything, like what the literal word is just a hyperlink. And one of the words that's always changed in the Old Testament, and it may not seem like a big deal, is descendant. Pretty much wherever you see the word descendant, the actual word is seed. Seed, yeah. What's the difference between a descendant and a seed? One of them I think is sterile and one of them is like fertile. And when it refers to people, it has to do with like sex and marriage and...

and love and all these things. But descendants, just like a cleaned up version. So we don't use the word seed anymore. And that's in the New American, that it's that way. The King James uses seed. And so you have to be aware of these things. You have to know. I'm not telling you you have to go study Greek and Hebrew and you have to become a Greek and Hebrew scholar, but you just have to be careful. And if you see that in your Bible, and you should get one that has footnotes in it. If you don't have a Bible that has footnotes, you should go get one that has footnotes. And then you should read the footnotes. And every time you come across it, you should go, why'd they change that word? Sometimes it makes sense. The language in the Hebrew just, it doesn't, it's like if you wrote that in English, people would be like, what the heck is that? But many times that's not the case. It's just meant to make it a little easier for us to understand. But there are things that are lost. And we ought to desire and seek after the true word of God, not some,

watered down or trimmed up or cleaned up version of it. There are things in the Bible that are hard to stomach, that cut across the grains of our sensibilities that we don't like. We need those points. We need that skewer stuck right into us. We don't need some translator to come and say, well, that's not really what it meant. If God said it, we need to know it. And so Moses is supposed to take these tablets up onto the mountain. that God could write on them again. I read to you Proverbs 30 already, that every word of God is tested and that he who adds to his words will be reproved and shown to be a liar. In Revelation 22, John says, I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city which are written in this book. Now, first and foremost, that refers to the book of Revelation.

But that is also appropriately understood to apply to all of the word of God. That we're not to add to or to take away, but to receive as fertile soil the word from the mouth of God. It's God's prerogative to write his own word. It's not ours to judge it. It's not ours to disregard it. It's our prerogative to receive it and to obey it. Now the final thing he's supposed to do, and it seems like it's... just logistical, but it's more than that. You're to make for yourself an ark, a box of acacia wood. Make an ark for yourself. This is the third task that God gives Moses, make a box. And so Moses makes a box. And that box is to carry the new tablets. When you think about the ark, what story pops into your mind about the ark?

Grace, what story pops into your mind? You may not know his name, but tell the story. Say the story. Noah's, okay. Moses didn't build Noah's Ark. Not that Ark. Wrong. The Ark of the Covenant. What? No? Scriptural. Uzzah. Uzzah. Who is Uzzah? Well, Uzzah was a Levite, a Kohathite. Uzzah was the guy who reached out to study the Ark when it was on the cart. and was struck down dead for touching it. That's probably the most incredible story regarding the ark. I mean, there's other things that go on, but I want to tease that story out a little bit and tell you what's going on. The Philistines had taken the ark of God, right? They had it. And then David went and he got it and he's bringing it back and this thing happens. And so he sends it away. David is the king. He's been out to battle and he's...

He's bringing back the ark of God to his city. And there's a lot of rejoicing. There's a lot of celebrating going on. And they're pulling the ark on a cart drawn by oxen, right? Did you know they weren't supposed to do that? How are they supposed to transport the ark? They were supposed to carry it with poles. And who was supposed to carry it? The priests, the Levites, the Kohathites, the clan or the family. That was their job. Other... Clans of the Levites, they carried other parts of the stuff. But the Kohathites, of which Uzzah was one, were to carry the ark. They were to carry the holy things. And they were to carry all the holy things by poles on their shoulders. And so when David says, hey, bring it, and they built a new cart, and they put it on the cart, they were failing to do what God had told them to do.

In Numbers 4.15, it says, So basically, Aaron and his sons, they're like the packers. They're to pack up all the stuff and cover it with porpoise skins and tortoise skins or badger skins, depending on what it is. They're supposed to make it weathertight. And so when Aaron and his sons had finished covering the holy objects and all the furnishings of the sanctuary, when the camp set out, after that the sons of Kohath shall come to carry them so that they will not touch the holy things. and die. These are the things in the tent of meeting which the sons of Kohath are to carry. The Ark of the Covenant was one of those things. There was an altar and a lampstand, all these other things that they were to carry, but they were all to be carried by these big giant poles that were to be on their shoulders. They failed to do it. Should Uzzah have known that? I think he should have known that. And he didn't do it. He didn't have any reverence for the holiness of God or the word of God, and it cost him his life. What's interesting in scripture,

is that I said earlier that we're in danger of thinking that because justice doesn't come to us, that we somehow don't deserve it. But we're often quite offended when justice comes immediately to people. Like that's what happened to Uzzah. He had failed. It said that he was struck down because of his irreverence. And we're like, what did he do? Well, many things. Worthy of death. What do we learn about there being an ark? To carry the Ten Commandments, to carry these tablets. Well, first, as we learned in Numbers and by Uzzah's example, the Word of God is holy and not to be trifled with and messed around with. It's not to be held in disregard. It's not to be ignored, right? The other thing we learn about it is that it's supposed to travel with the people of God. That's what the box is. It's a transportation vehicle, right? It doesn't stay in the box. Well, actually, it does stay in the box in the temple.

but it's put in its place, and it's to travel with them. And it is representative of God's presence with them. So if we think of those tablets, and then we remember that our hearts are similar to those tablets, then one of the things we learn from the box is that his word is supposed to travel with us in our hearts that have been prepared. It's not something that we're supposed to come and interact with it here or there and then go away from and forget about. We're not supposed to behave like Christians on Sunday and then when Monday comes, we just go back to our jobs and leave the ark, the word of God, back there and disregard our heart's condition. No, the ark had to go everywhere they went. God's word had to go everywhere they went. So do we handle the word of God like Uzzah handled the ark? Are we so ignorant?

Of what God's word says that we sin without even knowing or caring. That's what Uzzah did. He'd been taking care of the ark and been around it. And David comes and says, we're going to take this thing back. And so they come to take this thing back. Uzzah should have known. But Uzzah didn't know or didn't care. And it cost him his life. So if he didn't care, then maybe he got some of what he deserved. But if he didn't know, what do we say? He can't be held accountable for what he didn't know? No, he was held very accountable for his failure, even if he didn't know. And so we find that we don't have an excuse or a protection in ignorance. As I was preparing, I was thinking, what I hope someday for our church is that God brings us or raises up one of you to know more about something in the Bible than Eric and I do.

Someone who loves church history or loves the Reformation or loves this theology or loves something, the martyrs, or loves something. And that they can teach Sunday school. And we can all benefit from it because they've given themselves to learning and to immersing themselves in it. That's not just Eric and my job. It is our job. And we do it, but we're not the best at it. And there would be no shame in having someone in the church who knew more about something, than we did, and then we could all benefit from. But if we accept that knowing as little as possible or interacting with the word only on Sundays is sufficient, then we will never become that man, and we will be in danger of being Uzzah, being held accountable for sins that we didn't even know were failures. There may have been many things Uzzah didn't know, but what his job was as a priest and a Kohathite, does not fall into the category of things he shouldn't have known. And so then I come to you and I say, okay, well, you're not a priest and your job's not to carry the Ark of the Covenant through the wilderness. But if you're a husband, do you know what God says to you? Not generally in the Bible, but like, do you know what God says to husbands? You wives, do you know? Do you know what God says to you? You children, do you know?

Do you have a deep and growing understanding of what God has said to you specifically in the station to which he's called you? As a man, as a woman, as a husband, as a father, as a wife, as a mother, as a brother, as a sister, as a son, as a daughter, as a citizen, do you know what God has called you to? I don't care what other people think your responsibilities are, and you shouldn't either. You should know what God calls you to, and if it's unpopular or if it's uncomfortable, so be it. Don't be like Uzzah, because you don't want to end up like Uzzah. Do we as Christians reverence and honor God's word, particularly at the places where it applies directly and specifically to us, calls us out as if by name? You husband, you wife, you son, you daughter. Or do we neglect his word and follow our own desires? These are questions we ought to ask ourselves. Why did they need a box to carry the tablets around? I mean, they were heavy. But his word is holy, and to travel with them.

and to be protected. And so Uzzah, through negligence, demonstrates to us the danger that we face if we don't carry along with us the word of God. Then I come to the thing, and I'm heading right toward the end here, where Moses says simply, after God gives him the command and says, do these things, Moses says, so I made an ark of acacia wood, and I cut out the two tablets of stone like the former ones, and I went up on the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. And it seems like a throwaway verse. But it's not. Moses did exactly what was required of him. Exactly. He's like, okay, I have to have a box. When I get the tablets, I have to have the box. So I made the box. Then I made the stones. Then I went up the mountain. How many times have you told your kids to do something and they didn't do it in order? In fact, the way Moses did it was not the order he was told to do it in. He was told to make the stones and come up the mountain and make a box. But he went, oh, I'll need a box when I get back down, so I'll make the box first.

So he makes the box and he makes the stones and he goes up the mountain. Moses was commanded to do these things and he did them just exactly as he was told to do them. And this is what God requires of us. Yet we spend so much time and energy trying to break free from simple obedience. We have our reasons and our justifications and our excuses as to why we couldn't or haven't done what was required of us. But Moses sets us a good example. Moses. make new stones, bring them up here and make a box to transport them. Yes, sir. So I made a box and I made stones and I brought them up to you. Our lives would be much simpler if we obeyed. I'll end by reading to you 1 Samuel 15. Samuel is, well, verses 22 and 23, not the whole chapter. Samuel is rebuking Saul for his going to the mediums and the divinations for basically not trusting God.

for taking matters into his own hands and then saying he's sorry later. And it's not long after this that Samuel tells Saul, the kingdom is going to be stripped from you because of your disobedience. This is what he says. This is 1 Samuel 15, 22 and 23. Samuel said, has the Lord as much delight in burnt offering and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king. The Christian life is not meant to be a hard, difficult, confusing life. Maybe I shouldn't say it's not meant to be a hard life. It is often a hard life. But it's not meant to be a miserable life. That's what I meant by hard, is miserable. It's not supposed to be miserable.

And when we see in Scripture people suffering and going through trials and even being killed, we find that they weren't miserable as they went through it. And it's extraordinary to us. Like, seriously? How did they do that? But the Christian life is to be a life of rest, a life of contentment, a life of service, a life of love. But those things will only come to us if it's also a life of simple obedience. How many times have you had your parents tell you something, you kids, and you're just like, I just don't want to do that. I just don't know. I just don't want to do it. It's not because what they're telling you you can't do. It's not because what they're telling you is unreasonable. It's just a thing, and you're just like, I don't want to do that. Those are good opportunities for you to practice simple obedience, to say, you know what? God has told me to honor my parents. I am going to do what I was told fully and immediately. That is what Moses did, and that's the example to us.

I want you to obey God. If it doesn't make sense to you, that's okay. That's okay. I trust that you'll learn the wisdom of obedience as you pursue it. Jesus said to us in Matthew, I think it was Matthew 11, he says, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. What were they weary and heavy laden from? All of the machinations and all of the web they've spun. All of the work and excuses to avoid the simple obedience. They're like, instead of preparing my heart to receive God's word, I'm going to do 10 other things so I don't have to do that one thing. And that's foolish. And so if we think it's foolish when our kids don't obey us, we ought also to look in the mirror and be like, I think I know where they got it. And I want to set them a better example of repentance and faith because the Lord loves obedience rather than sacrifice. Let's pray.