Mediator of the Covenant
Deuteronomy 5: 22-33
The Great Covenant
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . Max
A Forsythe
Introduction:
Meredith Kline outlines the section opening up before us in these words.
“The covenant’s first and great
commandment, the requirement of perfect consecration to the Lord is enunciated
in chapters 5-7 and enforced by divine claims and sanctions in chapters 8-11.
These subject divisions are not, however, rigid; the exhortative strand
is pervasive.”
So while there is easily
analytical detail in the context of the text, the overriding purpose is focused
on admonition, exhortation and encouragement.
Further, two of my commentators, which I have been saving for this
context, would have us to understand that portions of the Covenant ahead of us
are an expanded commentary upon one or more of the ten great principles
established in this chapter and earlier in Exodus at Mount Horeb.
Raymond Brown tells us: “There
is a sense in which the teaching of this passage (Deuteronomy 5:22
through 6:25) is a more detailed application of the
first two commandments. Rich truth
about their unique (5:6-7) and
jealous (5:8)
God is communicated both visually and vocally, as God’s people are taught to
honour, (5:23-6:3)
love, (6: 4-5)
confess,
(6:6-9)
remember, (6:10-12)
and serve (6:
13-25) the
one and only Lord.”
Christopher J H Wright also
describes an expanded Decalogue: “The
clearest feature of Deuteronomy is its call for total loyalty to Yahweh as sole
God. This, of course, is also the
fundamental demand of the first and second commandments of the Decalogue.
The great didactic section in chapters 4-11 is designed to inculcate by
every means possible the importance of these opening commandments.
Several scholars, however, have gone beyond this observation to suggest
that the arrangement of the laws in the central section, chapters 12-26, is also
governed by the Decalogue.”
Now, while we can agree in
context, there is much discussion over the specific substance and the
organizational relationship of particular chapters and verses to specific
commandments. In the weeks to come,
we will connect the dots when they are obvious and leave the sermonizing of
Moses in place. After all, there
are indeed different purposes in legal writing where the party of the first part
must be carefully defined from other parties, and the personal advice of the
lawyer sitting next to you. There
is also a profound difference between the legal documents of our day and time
and the preaching of the Word of God. Moses’
task in this portion is to convey the realities of all these different aspects,
leaving us sometimes to apply the underlying principles to our own unique
situation.
After all, we cannot afford to
live day by day with specific legal advice from the experts! We must learn to internalize the general principles of law
and accomplish them mostly by habit and good sense. And if you will notice in verses twenty-three to twenty-seven
the people of Israel realize the true economy of their relationship to the Lord
God Almighty. If they were to live
in His immediate presence in their current sinful state, they realized that they
could easily be consumed by the utter holiness of the Creator God.
Several times over the years in
public education, students have asked another adult to serve as a go between on
their behalf with me. Never mind
that I have always been open to hear honest questions, some of them are so
afraid of any adult who actually knows the facts of the subject being considered
– that they are so intimidated by their ignorance that they are afraid to
admit it by asking even simple questions. Multiply
that frustration by an infinite expanse and we can begin to get a grip on the
reaction of Israel to the Divine Presence on the mountain and in the Pillar of
Cloud of Something that went before them in the desert.
Old
Covenant Milieu:
Thus we get to the first point of our scriptural portion today.
There must be a mediator between the people and their awesome Creator God
of heaven and earth. Kline observes
carefully: “Such
was their fear of God in the presence of his glory on the mount that they had
desired Moses to receive the further revelations of the divine voice for them:
‘You go near and hear all that the Lord our
God may say, and tell us all that the Lord our God says to you, and we will hear
and do it.’”
Now, there is something important
going on in this mediation process, and that concept we are grasping at is to be
found in the sense of how far from the throne of God we understand ourselves to
be. Certainly, there is no one
living today who has stood with the people of God before Mount Horeb.
Neither are there any alive today that have stood with the disciples and
the multitudes and heard first hand the teachings of our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. Moses, Isaiah, the Apostle
John and others have experienced close encounters with the God of heaven to
which we have not been providentially called.
In fact, if the truth were to be known, we are much like the people of
Israel in preferring some distance in our experiential relationship.
I can still remember in my early twenties a prayer encounter with the
Almighty, which was hair-raising enough that I have not sought a repeat
engagement.
Like the Israelites – we all
need a good dose of reverence before His awesome and holy throne. Raymond Brown exhorts us in this sense by saying:
God “chose to convey the sense of his holy
and righteous presence by an awesome physical manifestation which would convince
them beyond all doubt of the closeness, greatness and glory of God.
They needed an outward and visible sign that God himself was speaking to
them and that their only appropriate response was to fear or reverence him.”
What we see being reported here
by Moses is the awesome event witnessed by the crowd before him, when they were
still children. Certainly, the
memory was burned into many of their minds, and so were the various trials of
the journey and the punishments of those who were swallowed up by the earth, the
plagues and all the experiential considerations for the holiness of the nation
that God was shaping for His own purpose.
How much we need in our time to
learn this essential fear of the Lord that Israel knew better than they probably
wanted. I remember a student, who
when confronted with a sin, did not want to discuss it as such. He preferred to have it administratively dealt with because
the humanist approach was ever so much more gentle and understanding.
If he really truly understood his behavior as sinful before a holy God,
he would have to quite the activity! Certainly,
he understood the correctness of my approach, but he also knew he had a
“constitutional” right to be dealt with otherwise!
Now, a word of caution here
encouraged by my commentator Raymond Brown:
“There must be some balance between that
cowering type of awe which so heightens the sense of God’s ‘otherness’
that he becomes remote, detached, and distant, and the opposite kind of error,
an insulting casualness or patronizing familiarity.”
Yes, me must affirm the ongoing
familiarity of the love of God in Jesus Christ, but we must also remember the
great distance that Christ has come to accomplish our salvation.
The Lord God Creator of the universe
laid His glory by and came down to earth to reveal Himself, His love and His
mercy before those whom He was and still is calling to Himself.
We must understand that while the Creator God would have us hold Him and
His absolute holiness in awe as we tremble before Him, still He deigned to send
a Mediator greater than Moses to tent among us for a time.
Thus, we can see the beginning of that providential plan in the type of
role that Moses was asked to serve by the people of Israel.
In the same sense that Christ
became the great Mediator, Moses was called to establish the principle and act
for the people in this regard until Christ should come. This mediation is more common than we ordinarily think.
Lawyers mediate for their clients, parents mediate for their children,
husbands often mediate for their wives, elders and deacons for their
congregations, and in so doing we all imitate the greater mediation of our Lord
and Savior.
Yet throughout that whole
process, the obligations of the ones needing mediation must remain in focus. And
that obligation is seen in the last phrase of verse twenty-seven:
“tell us all that the Lord our God says to
you, and we will hear and do it.”
Here we see that the awesome fear that the people have for the God of
heaven has induced them to be responsible in their obedience to His revealed
ordinances. Moses’ task in this
section is to remind them of that commitment and to admonish them to continue in
the way of obedience.
Dr Craigie warns us “the
people had not literally heard God pronounce al the statutes and judgments and
the temptation to disobedience could take the form of assuming that the law was,
after all, only the word of Moses. The
wrongness and impossibility of such an assumption has been emphasized by Moses
in the previous verses; hence the words he has spoken and will be speaking are
words from God and as such they require obedience.”
The real authority for the Great Covenant revelation resides in God alone
not in the thought process of this mediator.
New
Covenant Continuum: It remained
for the greater Mediator to come, in another renewing of the Covenant, and speak
straight from the heart of God in words that cannot be belittled by any who
possess the Spirit of the Triune God of heaven and earth.
Sadly, the world is too much with
the Church and the words of Moses are often assumed as such and a higher, better
attention is paid to the Mediator of the New Covenant which is wrongly assumed
to have set aside the whole of the Covenant before us.
Meredith Kline points us to the New Covenant to better understand the
Old. In the printing process of his
commentary, somehow the references to Hebrews was corrupted to point to verses
that do not exist. I am glad that others beside myself are imperfect in this
regard. However, I was able to
discern the point that was being made and would ask you to turn with me to the
book of Hebrews, chapter twelve, verses eighteen to twenty-nine.
“For
you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire,
and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the
voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be
spoken to them anymore. (For they
could not endure what was commanded: ‘And if so much as a beast touches the
mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow.’
And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I am exceedingly
afraid and trembling.’)
But
you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly
Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and
church of the first-born who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all,
to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new
covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of
Abel.
See
that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For
if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we
not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then
shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying ‘Yet once more I shake not
only the earth, but also heaven.’ Now
this, ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal of all those things that are
being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken
may remain.
Therefore,
since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by
which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.
Four our God is a consuming fire.”
Just as the author of Hebrews
noted, it is not to Mount Horeb that we have come, but to Mount Zion.
And there we have come because of the leading of Christ and the Spirit.
But, be warned brethren, the same Almighty God of heaven and earth is
still present. John Owen in his
incomparable commentary on Hebrews advises us further:
“the stated purpose of all the rest of this letter is to propose to and
press on the Hebrews the various duties the truths he has explained insist on.
In all his exhortations he blends in the reasons for them, namely, the
privilege they have in entering into these duties.
Everything stems from the priesthood and sacrifice of Christ, which
affects it all and benefits those who receive God’s grace in this way.
Three things come
in these verses. First, the reason
for the duty they are exhorted to carry out is given, with its foundation being
the special privilege of the Gospel (verses 19-21).
Second, the way to
use this privilege unto the end is stated (verse 22). Third, the special
duty to persevere is commanded (verse 23).”
Contemporary
Application: The
same Owen further admonishes us: “The
Israelites at Mount Sinai were sinners under the sentence of the law.
Many individuals may have been justified through faith in the promise,
but as they stood and heard and received the law, they represented sinners under
sentence who had not yet received the Gospel.. This is what the apostle intends
to show.”
This is a purpose of the law –
to melt our hearts and cause us to know our precarious position before the Holy
God whose voice was heard in the desert of Horeb.
Like the people assembled in that place, we must fully comprehend, like
they, our utter need for a Mediator. And
as the Lord has given us grace to know, that Mediator must be greater than
Moses! And Him we know in Christ
through the Spirit. To Him, we must
listen even as the ancient Israelites were commanded to listen to and obey the
voice of God the Father. And like
the ancient Israelites – we are beholden to study and learn the law of God so
that the Spirit that is in us may prove His possession through hearts that love
to show the spiritual fruits expected of everyone who belongs to Jesus Christ.
May the Lord give us grace to know Him and the power to obey Him today
and every day. Amen.
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