The Terror of the People

SHEPHERDESS EDERMIRA CRUZ

STUDY #1183 CHURCH IN THE HOUSES SUNDAY, APRIL 18, 2021

The Terror of the People - Exodus 20:18-21 The commandments produce fear because it produces a manifestation of the glorious majesty of God. They arrived at Sinai, everything that is spiritual begins, for a people where God wants to be present. The glorious majesty of God will take them and sanctify them on the long road that awaits them. In this way, the Law was given through Moses so that there would be a humiliation of men.

I. Seeing the village, they trembled.

A. The people retreat.

1. From afar the people want to hear.

2. The people seeing Him, trembled.

3. The glory of God caused them fear, how far they had been from God.

4. Now it begins that God wants to be present, because of course, the unknown produces fear.

5. They prayed that God would not speak to them, but through Moses.

6. I don't know if this was what God wanted or God Himself wanted to be present in His voice.

7. "Do not be afraid," Moses replies, explaining to them what God wanted with this terror (20): Do not be afraid, that is: 1. To test them, so that they would understand that they had to deal directly with God, "without the intervention of a mediator."

8. To keep them "faithful to their duties" and to prevent them from sinning against God.

9. Do not be afraid, but it clarifies that God has spoken to them in this way so that "their fear may be before them."

10. Reverence (respect, admiration) for the majesty of God, to "never displease Him" and obedience to His sovereign authority; such a fear keeps us alert for the fulfillment of our duties with formality.

11. (Exodus 20:21) The people continued to stay away; "Moses approached the darkness."

12. God made him approach: Rabbis believe that God sent an angel to take him by the hand and take him upstairs.

13. (Exodus 20:22) Jehovah says to Moses: You have seen that I have "spoken from heaven with you."

14. Moses having risen into the thick darkness "where God was, where the glory of God shone."

15. To him alone and without terrorizing him.

16. God has instructions to give to the one He calls to serve Him; they are no longer our rules now is the voice of God for a people that God wanted to choose.

17. All this had to be transmitted by Moses to the people, first in word and "then in writing."

18. The laws of the other verses are for the "worship of God."

19. These commandments come here very much to the point of emphasizing that in order to "communicate with God and hear His voice they did not need these means because of the way God had just spoken to them.

20. Thus He had "made a sufficient demonstration" of His presence among them"; so that they did not need to make images of Him, "as if He were absent."

21. Although they were trying to venerate these images as representations of God, they were nevertheless "turning them into rivals of God," which He was unwilling to tolerate.

22. Then gives instructions on how to make altars for worship.

23. Make the altars very simple: of earth or of unworked stone (Exodus 20:24-25).

24. That they do not fall into the temptation of thinking of a sculpted image, they should not carve the stones from which they are going to make altars but put them as they are natural.

25. Nothing should be celebrated with external pomp.

26. "The beauty of holiness" does not need blushes.

27. They are to make the altars low (Exodus 20:26), so that they do not go up to them.

28. God, knowing them, knew what could happen, that the higher the altar and the closer to heaven, "the more acceptable the sacrifice had to be."

29. God wanted them to understand that He was around them, not in adornments.

30. The Gentiles can or could think so, but the people God revealed to them are not like that.

31. It is not in the elevation of sacrifice, but in that of the heart.

32. It was also a reason of decency: You shall not go up in steps to my altar, lest your nakedness be discovered next to it.