This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Misc. OT Sermons” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 27, 1998.

Now, we aren’t reading Psalm 24 this evening, and I hope that that won’t discourage too many of you, but it’s not as if what we are reading isn’t related. You will recall that Psalm 24 speaks about the pillar of the Lord and asks the question, Who shall ascend it? makes the ringing affirmation in verse 5 concerning that one who does ascend the hill of the Lord, he shall receive the blessing of the Lord and receive righteousness from the God of his salvation.

We are looking this evening at a hill of the Lord. We are looking at Sinai. And we are beginning our Scripture reading this evening in Exodus chapter 19. This is Exodus 19. We are reading at verse 16. This is the Word of God. So, it came about on the third day when it was morning. that there were thunder and lightning flashes, and a thick cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke. because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently. When the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him with thunder. The Lord came down on Mount Sinai to the top of the mountain, and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went Then turning over to Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 7, beginning at verse 1.

Or do you not know, brethren, for I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives? For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress, though she is joined to another man.

Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ. so that you might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the law, having died to that by which we were bound. so that we serve in newness of the spirit and not in oldness of the letter. What shall we say, then?

Is the law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the law, for I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, You shall not covet. But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind. For apart from the law, sin is dead.

I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died. And this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me, for sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So then the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Therefore, did that which is good become the cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather, it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of flesh sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing I do not understand, for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the law, confessing that the law is good. So now no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh, for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members, wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, on the one hand, I myself, with my mind, am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh, the law of sin. Therefore, there is now no condemnation. for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.

For what the law could not do, weak as it was, through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

Father, in all of our days and through all of our experiences you have prepared us for hearing your word, and what a marvel, O God, by that word itself we are prepared. A word being itself seemingly a world in which we live. Lord, we delight in your word. and we love your law, and we meditate on it day and night. You are our strength, and you bless us with this privileged communication from glory, and that for our benefit. Truly, O God, this evening may we be benefited But may we be benefited with all of your people who profit from your word day by day. We ask it in Jesus’ name.

Amen. to argue with you about the importance of Mount Sinai. This geographical landmark to which Israel was gathered after her deliverance from Egypt, to which and from which Israel received the law of God coming to that mountain Truly, this is the great mountain in the formulation of the religious consciousness of the people of God. But being a great and significant geographical landmark, Sinai is also an historical boundary. in the story of salvation.

Before Sinai, life seems to be of one stripe. After Sinai, life seems to be, for the people of God, of another stripe altogether. Just one illustration of this for you this evening. Before Sinai, Israel’s murmuring in the wilderness go unpunished. After Sinai, Israel’s murmurings do not go unpunished. In fact, swift judgment comes. You will remember the chapters prior to the 19th in Exodus. Before Sinai, the setting, in Exodus 16, for example, we hear about Israel’s complaint because Israel has no need. Verses 2 and 3 of that 16th chapter.

In the next chapter, Israel grumbles because she has no water. In both instances, prior to Sinai, God provides Israel what she wants without judgment, without censure for her in her complaint. But after Sinai, After Sinai, Israel voices similar complaints. In Numbers chapter 11, for instance, she again grumbles about her diet, complains about the men and her lack of meat. And in Numbers chapter 20, she again contends with God at a new Meribah for water.

But unlike before Sinai, where Israel’s offenses were seemingly overlooked, now these same offenses bring God’s swift judgment. It is apparent then, is it not, before Sinai, Israel’s life was of one sort, but after Sinai, Israel’s life is of another. Sinai, we could say then, is a great transition point in the history of the Old Testament people of God. And the Apostle Paul, being of those people, racially, tersely speaks about the great transitional point. of Sinai.

He describes that great transition in Romans 7 verse 9. He speaks of it in this terminology, when the commandment came. When the commandment came. Paul, in this verse, is not reflecting upon his own personal experience when he was 7 or 14 or 24, and he had an encounter with the commandments of God that laid him low.

Rather, Paul in this verse is reflecting upon that great transition of Sinai in the history of the people of God past. He is reflecting upon the great transition of Sinai in the most powerfully personal terms. He speaks in this context in the first person singular pronoun. He speaks as if experiencing the transition himself, as if he were part of it. We find him then interjecting himself into the pre-Sinai period in this very same verse.

He says, I was once alive apart from the law. as if he were living in that period prior to Sinai. And do you see, then, how this statement from Paul in this ninth verse, now couched in the most personal terms by Paul, describes what we have already observed about the time before Sinai, when Israel grumbled, yet was not judged. I, with Israel, was once alive apart from the law, or before the law.”

But then Paul continues in the verse. When the commandment came, you see, he sees himself at Sinai. Paul speaks here, then, as or the corporate Jew, and concludes that with Sinai and the advent of the commandment, sin came to life and he died. The remainder of the verse.

With the latter part of that ninth verse, Paul means, again speaking as that corporate Jew, to summarize now Israel’s post-Sinai experience, when Israel grumbled and was judged. And here is Israel’s life ever since. Once more captured by Paul in the most compelling fashion, with the most compelling language, he is speaking in the first-person singular and encapsulating the entirety of Israel’s struggle since the commandment came. As the King James Version puts it so succinctly, “‘For the good that I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do.'” To be sure, Paul with Israel has experienced the great deliverance of the Exodus from Egypt.

Only now, in this Old Testament shadow world, to be delivered at Sinai into what Paul calls the captivity of the law of sin. Free, he is still bound. delivered if he is still in bondage. But is this the fault of Sinai? Is this the fault of the law given upon Sinai?

In keeping with the questions now that Paul is putting to us in the seventh chapter, is the law evil because it brings to light such evil in me? asks Paul. Or is the law bad because it brings death upon me? Paul asks. And as is his custom when he sets before us these rhetorical questions, God forbid! Quite to the contrary, the law is holy and the commandment is holy, just and good, verse 12 of the seventh chapter. we asking our own question now.

Wasn’t Israel better off without the law? Having been alive at one point without the law and apart from the law, wasn’t Israel better off indeed? Wasn’t Israel alive once apart from the law, just as Paul says? But that life You see, apart from the law and before Sinai, was not that life for which the children of God were predestined. you see where we’re going. Romans 7 will pull us into Romans 8. Now, it’s very important that you grasp this point That life, apart from the law, before Sinai, in the experience of Israel, was not the life for which the children of God were predestined. As nice in some ways as it was, why, we can grumble and get away with it. We can complain. God says nothing. In fact, he doesn’t judge us. He blesses us. This is wonderful.

But you see, Even in this state for Israel, prior to Sinai and apart from the over-condemnation of Israel’s sin, the children of God were losing from life to life, from a life which was inherently lower to a life that was inherently higher. They were moving from a life in which even the desperate nature of their condition yet remained somewhat obscure to them, and the true nature of their hope somewhat dimly perceived. Moving from that life to a life that Paul can describe in no other way than life in the Spirit. The movement, then, will be from that life, as advantageous as it may appear, that that life presently is, from a life which is under the dominion of the flesh to a life that is of the Spirit. That life that is of the Spirit, because it comes from the Spirit and belongs to the realm and the order of the Spirit.

That realm in which the children of God then finally and fully come into possession of their true inheritance. which is nothing other than God himself, and into the final full freedom of that glory that belongs to them because they are the sons of God.

But now for the wisdom of God. How, you might ask, how if Paul, together with Israel, was once alive apart from the law? How if Paul, together with Israel, was once alive in that pre-Sinai world? in which there appears to be no judgment for sin, will Paul and Israel with him ever be brought to see themselves for what they are, or be made to long with all the intensity of their soul for that true life in the Spirit to which the sons of God are predestined?” How would it happen? God has an answer.

Only by the law. Only by Sinai. Sinai becomes a necessity. What happens at Sinai? Open your eyes. Read it again. Read Exodus 19. What happens at Sinai? Set yourself there, if you will. I know you’re no Jew. You’re not of the tribe of Paul. But set yourself there momentarily. What transpires at Sinai, see it again.

When God comes to Sinai bringing his law with him, it is as if the end of the world has come. It’s pure apocalypse. thunder, lightning, earthquake, fire, the fierce fire of a furnace, it’s the end of the world. It is like the coming of the Last Judgment and the administration of that scrutinizing through which the Paul of Israel must pass in order to enter glory. Sinai is a preliminary end of the world.

It is the judgment in miniature, in it that to which Paul and all Israel are liable is now opened up before their eyes. If they are seeing things aright, if they are seeing things truly, and in this revelation, what do they see? Paul, in speaking for Israel now, is made to see in the coming of Allah the complete and utter impossibility of life in and from himself, of that life for which the children of God were predestined. He is made to see, if he reads Sinai and the law rightly, his own vile wretchedness, his flesh captive to the body of death, bound over to God’s everlasting judgment. When God comes to Sinai, bringing his law with him, is revealed and in Paul’s own language, sin becomes utterly sinful. Something happens to sin itself. Now you see it. Now you see it. And you remember the reaction of the people? And would you have responded any differently?

Could you? whatever self-serving, lazy self-sufficiency, self-righteousness, whatever complacency, resides in Paul or in Israelites, is now shattered. Now, because of Sinai, the life of the people of God will be a life lived perpetually in the final judgment. under the law, in the judgment itself, as if that judgment were so long stretched out now, moving from Sinai throughout the entirety of Israel’s subsequent life. Or, as Paul himself so magnificently expresses it, compressed into the life of one single Jewish man, Paul himself, who speaks so comprehensively and conclusively about his own condemnation. But where now are matters left for Paul? Is he left and all Israel with him, exclaiming his total vile wretchedness, crying out to be set free from the body of this death, facing only condemnation under the law, forever barred from the true life of the Spirit, to which the sons of God are predestined. Not at all.

And aren’t you relieved God came to Sinai bringing the Last Judgment, but he also comes in Jesus Christ. God comes to Sinai, but God also comes to Calvary, and by way of resurrection in his Son to Mount Zion itself, bringing to the unworthy, but thanks, cries out Paul.

But thanks, Paul exclaims, be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. The last judgment has come in the law, but eternal life in glory has come in Jesus Christ. The law brings condemnation, but you know there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.

The monumental transformation signaled for Israel in Sinai gives way to the even more significant transformation resident in Christ and in his work. And the Apostle who, as it were, leads Israel in a corporate confession of condemnation, he speaking in the first person singular pronoun, now leads us, Christ’s own, as it were, in a corporate explosion of praise for God’s grace in Christ. This explosion of praise, the result of a new personal participation, not in Sinai, but in Calvary and in the empty tomb. we are crucified with Christ, and we are raised up with him, made alive in him and through him. And the result of that?

Just the continuation of life in this world under the domination of the flesh? but introduction into the life of glory to which the sons of God are predestined.” The marvelous wisdom of God. Still, that wisdom continues to amaze us, and Paul gives intimation of the ways in which it amazes us, even here in the seventh chapter of Romans, as he speaks about our deliverance from Sinai and the law. For in this context, he will also speak very well and highly of the law.

You must not think, therefore, that Sinai itself is devoid of the semblance of glory. Surely the ascent of Moses up that mountain means something. Does it forecast another ascent yet coming? I say it again, you must not think Sinai itself devoid of the semblance of glory and even the intimations of the gospel. Jesus will say, Moses spoke of me.

In its own way, then, Sinai, the law, communicates life. The positive rings out, even communicates, speaks of that life to which the people of God are predestined. The law is, after all, as Paul says, spiritual. He connects the law with the life in the Spirit by that very statement, and in this poem means then that the law finally promotes the life in the Spirit, the life of glory, eternal life with God, for it too preaches Christ in its own way, in a way appropriate to itself. But in this respect, remember, as Paul finishes out his argument, sets it before you, yes, while serving that movement from life to life, from life in this age to life in the age to come, the law remains old.

It is made old by the new. And it becomes powerless, utterly powerless, in light of the power that is now manifest in the Gospel, and specifically in God’s transaction on behalf of sinners, whereby he forgives sinners their sins and grants to them eternal life through the resurrection of his Son. When all is said and done, you see, the law remains preliminary, anticipatory.

It remains shadow. It remains, in Paul’s language, an administration of the letter, while what comes in Christ is newness of life in the spirit, to which the administration of the law itself portrays. Appropriately then, Sinai as that geographical landmark is lost. No one presently can positively identify it. They can only guess where it was.

And this, you see, not outside the providence of God, as that old mountain fades, in the interests of the new, in itself finding its significance only in light of God’s new mountain, in which righteousness, liberty, and life No, even God himself is enjoyed by all of God’s true sons. A marvelous final contrast, for while the people of God at Sinai remain at the foot of the mountain, in the new administration, all of God’s children ascend the mountain and see God. Are you among the sons of God, who even now, by faith, see Him? And are you able to confess that about yourself, truly?

I hope so. Let’s pray. We thank you, our God, and praise you for the work of your law. And Lord, even in our narrow consideration of that law, we are delighted to meditate on it. And Lord, we do that even as we meditate upon the full and complete compost of your word, the entirety of it. But bless us, Father, with proper eyes, good heart, to see things rightly, even as the Apostle Paul saw them. We might delight in what has transpired in that according to your ordination, that by root of your dealings with Israel and now with your church, your sons, through Christ, are brought to that predestined end, namely, life in the Spirit with you in glory. Truly, thanks be to our God, to our Lord Jesus Christ, for now the condemnation that had come upon Israel And if on Israel, then upon all men has been removed. And we, Lord, are delighted in your vindication, which has come to us through the just.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.