Josh King

Commanded Love (Exodus 35:1–29)

God commands a voluntary giving in Exodus 35. If you can’t make sense of that, you can’t make sense of any of God’s commands because they all deal with the heart. God always demands more than outward obedience. All of God’s commands demand all of us.

Fallen man cannot understand the beauty of God commanding, “You shall love me.” Imagine a princess being blinded to the beauty of the prince who was once her greatest love and deepest joy. Instead, she hates him, irrationally, as intensely as she once adored him. Imagine a command came from him, to love him, with a power that awakened what was commanded. So it is with God’s commands. They do not constrain, they free.

Fallen man’s darkened, authority-hating, idol-loving hearts cannot conceive of love being commanded. Which proves we understand neither love nor authority. Jesus said, “If you love me you will keep my commandments (John 14:15).” So often, we believe those who love us say things like, “Do whatever makes you happy.” God sovereignly, with all wisdom says, “Only I can make you happy, all else is an illusion.” Then, for those He has redeemed, He speaks with liberating power, “You shall love the LORD your God with all.”

And so it is, when God commands, we receive. Obeying God’s commands is like a hammer finally hitting a nail after years of having tried to unscrew a screw. God’s commands are telling the adventurous beached whale, “Go back to the sea,” or the foolish bird, “You were not made to slither. Soar!” In all true God-enabled and faith-driven obedience to God’s commands, we ever remain the beneficiaries. Obeying God’s commands isn’t like being choked, but finally breathing.

The Apologist: Start Here

Let us understand that the beginning of Christianity is not salvation: it is the existence of the Trinity. —Francis Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century

“All Christian and No Church” or “When Helium Tries to Strut Like Lead” (Exodus 34:29–35)

I’m concerned that many Christians are trying to be too Christian. When a person is all Christian and no church they’re like a single hydrogen atom strutting as though it’s lead. How often is Moses’ experience on Sinai and his subsequent radiance individualized? Visit a “Christian” bookstore if you don’t believe me. Read the titles, they’re heavy on the Christian, light on the church. Which is to say, they’re not that heavy.

The Hebrew word for “glory” carries the connotation of weight. Glory is weighty. If you believe you were meant to fly solo, you won’t have much substance, much weight, much glory. Strive to be Moses, and your complexion will be dull. Own up to being Israel, then you’ll shine.

You’re not shining Moses. You’re sinning Israel. The good news is that you have one better than Moses and in having Him, you have more than Moses. Try to be Moses, and you will see less of God. Be Israel, pleading for the better Moses, and you will see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You are not meant to be a mediator, you need one. You’re not meant to see like Moses, but like Israel, and because of Jesus, this means seeing more than Moses in the mediator Jesus Christ.

This isn’t a sight you are to strive for individualistically, aiming to outshine all the other hydrogen atoms. Such a congregating of hydrogen atoms is explosively bad. Beholding the glory of God is the collective experience of the body of Christ. We behold and we become together (2 Corinthians 3:18). The church is weapons grade plutonium, radiating with the glory of Christ as she sits under His word.

The Apologist: The Battleground

The real battle for men is in the world of ideas, rather than in that which is outward. All heresy, for example, begins in the world of ideas. That is why, when new workers come to L’Abri, we always stress to them that we are interested in ideas rather than personalities or organizations. Ideas are to be discussed, not personalities or organizations. Ideas are the stock of the thought world, and from the ideas burst forth all the external things: painting, music, buildings, the love and the hating of men in practice, and equally the results of loving God or rebellion against God, in the external world. Where a man will spend eternity depends on his reading or hearing the ideas, the propositional truth, the facts of the gospel in the external world, and these being carried thought he medium of his body into the inner old of his thought, and there, inside himself, in his thought-world, either his believing God on the basis of the content of the gospel or his calling God a liar. …

It is for this reason that the preaching of the gospel can never be primarily a matter of organization. The preaching of the gospel is ideas, flaming ideas brought to men, as God has revealed them to us in Scripture. It is not a contentless experience internally received, but it is contentful ideas internally acted upon that makes the difference. So when we state our doctrines, they must be ideas, and not just phrases. We cannot use doctrines as though they were pieces to a puzzle. True doctrine is an idea revealed by God in the Bible and an idea that fits properly into the external world as it is, and as God made it, and to man as he is, as God made him, and can be fed back through man’s body into his thought-world and there acted upon. The battle for people is centrally in the world of thought.

The third conclusion is that the Christian life, true spirituality, always begins inside, in our thought-world. All that has been said in our earlier study of being free in this present life from the bonds of sin, and also of being free in the present life from the results of the bonds of sin, is meaningless jargon, no more than a psychological pill, if is divorced from the reality that God thinks and we think, and that at each step the internal is central and first. The spiritual battle, the loss or the victory, is always in the though-world. —Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality

Don’t and Do (Exodus 34:10–28)

Exodus 34:10–28 is a representative restatement of the covenant, but it isn’t a random representative restatement. In light of their recent adultery with the golden calf, God lays down a do and a don’t. They are basically the two sides of the great commandment that sums up all others—love God with all.

Don’t: Worship Idols

Do: Worship Yahweh.

You’re not really obeying one of these commands if you’re not obeying the other. The only way to ensure that the land is empty of idols, is for it to be full of worship. Idols are like weeds. It won’t do to only spray weeds. If one has some fresh-tilled, vegetation-free soil, and they want it to keep it that way, the better attack is to cultivate a thick healthy lawn. Spray the weeds, yes, but plant, fertilize, and water the lawn. The only way to flee from idols it to pursue God, otherwise you’re only running from one idol to another.

Many Christian’s religion consists mostly of don’t with little genuine desire for do. But without the proper motivation for the don’t, you can’t do the do. You might obey the don’t because you want mom and dad to like you, or because obeying makes you look good, or because you think something bad will happen if you sin—but all these motivations are an idolization of self, not a worshipping of God.

Some think their diets are good simply because obesity is bad, but there are all kinds of unrighteous reasons to diet. It won’t do to simply not eat the world’s delicacies. There must be a hunger for God. If there is no hunger for God, you might go to the same table as the saints, but it is the cup of demons that you truly relish1 Corinthians 10:14–22).

The Apologist: Penal Substitutionary Atonement

If we forget the absolute uniqueness of Christ’s death, we are in heresy. As soon as we set aside or minimize, as soon as we cut down in any way (as the liberals of all kinds do in their theology) the uniqueness and substitutionary character of Christ’s death, our teaching is no longer Christian. —Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality

Do You Really Like Grace? (Exodus 34:1–9)

“The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation (Exodus 34:6–7 ESV).’”

What Moses sees on Sinai is a revelation of God’s name (Exodus 33:19, 34:5, 6), His goodness (Exodus 33:19), and God’s ways (Exodus 33:13; cf. Psalm 103:7–8). Moses gets a glimpse into the very heart of God and what he see is this, Yahweh is a God of mercy and justice. As you read through Exodus, is this not the epic glory you are overwhelmed with? In Exodus, the immeasurable mercy and fierce wrath of Yahweh sweep over one like a colossal tidal wave.

Some would think this a contradiction. How could a just God be merciful? At best this is only a paradox, though I don’t think it even rises to that level of perplexity. For there to be grace there must be justice or grace doesn’t mean grace. Grace presumes justice. Justice must be a necessary given for grace to have opportunity to exist. Only in an atmosphere of justice does any species of grace thrive.

By grace some take God to be an indifferent, impersonal fountain of rainbow bubbles. Indifference isn’t love and only a loving God can be gracious. Also, if God loves, this means he hates, for love hates that which is opposed to the object of its love.

What really bothers people about this passage is nothing they take it to mean of grace, but what they understand it to say about justice. Which is to say, they don’t like true grace, for grace presumes not only judgment, but guilt. But for those who have really seen God, what stuns them is His mercy. His wrath, though awesome as a river of blood to behold, is expected in its coming. It is grace that surprises and amazes. If you see God, your posture isn’t one of protest, but of petition. In the light of God’s glory Moses cried out for mercy and grace. It is not astounding that at the revelation of the Holy One so many bow. What is astounding, is that so often, for those He sets His love on, there is something in the beholding that leads them to believe that mercy is something they may cry out for.

As one ponders the cross of Christ, it is clear that there can be no contradiction between grace and justice, for there we see the fullest revelation of both. The glorious harmony of grace and justice that rang out from the cross ever reverberates through all creation and will forever resound to the glory of the crucified Christ.

The Apologist: Desire or Discontentment?

If the contentment goes and the giving of thanks goes, we are not loving God as we should, and proper desire has become coveting against God. There is proper desire, and there is proper rejection of the results of a fallen, abnormal world; but when I can no longer say thank you in the midst of the battle, I have forgotten that God is God and that He is my God, and I am coveting against His proper place as God. I am to be willing for my place m the battle.

This inward area is the first place of loss of true spirituality. The outward is always just a result of it. —Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality

Mediated is Superior to Immediate (Exodus 32:12–23)

Moses’ prayer to behold God’s glory is oft bandied about in a individualistic way. Indeed, Moses’ longing is the longing of every true saint, and Paul makes this application alluding to Moses’ experience in 2 Corinthians 3:15–18.

Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Yet, note that Paul refers to this as something “we all” behold. This is the corporate experience of the church.

When you read Exodus 32–34 who do you identify with? “Show me Your glory,” we pray, but do you ever think of this as being prayed by another for your benefit? This chapter is the apex of Moses’ mediation, which runs like a mountain range through Exodus. Moses’ mediation is no small theme in this book. The theme of mediation isn’t comprised of a few foothills with a couple of snowcapped heights. Exodus contains the Old Testament Himalayas of mediation, and here stands Everest. Moses as mediator clearly is a foreshadowing of Jesus, yet, when Moses makes his boldest request, we want to insert ourselves. We’re not Moses. We’re golden-calf worshipping Israel. We need a mediator. To behold the face of God we need a Mediator who has beheld the face of God.

When Moses cries out to see God’s glory, that request cannot be separated from His pleading for His people. Moses’ beholding God’s glory speaks to the favor He has found with God, and if the Mediator has found favor, the people can take hope of God’s presence with them (Exodus 32:16).

The glory of God that the saints will forever behold is the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). This is no mere reflected glory as with Moses for Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory (Hebrews 1:3). Our great confidence of seeing God’s glory is our Mediator’s prayer, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world (John 17:24).”

The Apologist: Dethroning Jesus in the Name of Jesus

It is curious that we can do things in Christ’s name while pushing Him off the stage. I have seen this most plainly when a church has become caught up in a building project and has moved heaven and earth to complete it. One does need a roof over his head, but this is only a small portion of the church’s ministry. The building is only an instrument.

Fighting for evangelism and the salvation of souls should not become primary either; yet how often this happens! Other people, quite rightly, see the church of our generation threatened by apostasy, but then have made the purity of the visible church the center of their lives. In all of these Jesus may remain as a topic of conversation, but His real centrality has been forgotten. In the name of Christ, Christ is dethroned. When this happens, even what is right becomes wrong.

—Francis Schaeffer, No Little People