June 14th, 2026
Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, 2026, from Exodus 19:2-8
Pastor Peter Ziebell
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The text for our sermon today is our First Reading from before, Exodus 19:2-8:
[The people of Israel] set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness. There Israel encamped before the mountain, 3 while Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: 4 ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is Mine; 6 and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”
7 So Moses came and called the elders of the people and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him. 8 All the people answered together and said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” And Moses reported the words of the people to the Lord.
Lord God, heavenly Father, sanctify us through Your truth, Your Word is truth. Amen.
Dear friends in Christ,
For four hundred years, the Israelites had lived in Egypt, where they were enslaved by the pharaohs. For most of that time, they were oppressed and forced into hard labour. They were defiled both by the false gods of Egypt and by the abuse of their slave masters. From a human perspective, the Israelites seemed to be the most accursed people on earth, abandoned by God to rot away like thrown-out garbage.
However, God would rescue His people through Moses. Let’s refresh our memory of Moses for a moment and see how the LORD called to him.
Moses was born to Hebrew parents from the tribe of Levi during a time when the Egyptian Pharaoh had ordered all newborn Israelite boys to be drowned in the Nile River. To save him, his mother hid him for three months and then placed him in a waterproof reed basket among the river’s reeds. Pharaoh’s daughter discovered the basket, felt pity for the baby, and adopted him. She named him Moses, which means “drawn out” of the water.
Moses grew up in the Egyptian royal court, receiving a high-level education and enjoying a life of extreme privilege. Despite his royal upbringing, Moses remained deeply aware of his Hebrew heritage and the brutal enslavement of his people. Around age 40, Moses witnessed an Egyptian taskmaster brutally beating a Hebrew slave. Enraged, Moses killed the Egyptian and buried the body in the sand. When Pharaoh discovered the murder and sought to execute him, Moses fled Egypt to save his life.
Moses arrived in the desert land of Midian. At a local well, he defended the daughters of a Midianite priest named Jethro (also called Reuel) from aggressive shepherds. In gratitude, Jethro invited Moses to stay. Moses married Jethro’s daughter, Zipporah, and they had two sons, Gershom and Eliezer. Moses transitioned from a wealthy prince to a humble shepherd, spending 40 years tending his father-in-law’s livestock in the wilderness. This quiet, isolated chapter of his life came to an abrupt end when he drove his flock to Mount Horeb – the mountain of God – and noticed a nearby bush that was on fire but did not burn away. There, the LORD appeared to him in a burning bush and said, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Ex. 3:5).
After the LORD had revealed Himself to Moses as the God of his fathers, He then called Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and said, “When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain” (Ex. 3:12).
Now the time for this promise to be fulfilled had come. The LORD had indeed seen the misery of the Israelites and had heard their cries. He had compassion on them and, after punishing the Egyptians with plagues and destroying Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, had Moses lead them out of Egypt and out of slavery, leading His people to Mount Sinai, where He established His covenant with them, gave His Law to them, and instituted His Divine Service for them, reminding them, “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself.”
The Israelites had not been abandoned or rejected by God; instead, they had been made His “treasured possession.” Oppressed slaves? No, God had made them His “kingdom of priests.” Defiled people? No, God had made them His “holy nation.” They had been delivered from their slavery in Egypt so that out of all the people on earth, they would be His chosen race through whom He would send His promised Messiah to be the Saviour of the world. What a high honour!
God’s plan of salvation in the Old Testament involved establishing the ancient Israelites as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
A wonderful blessing, yes, but at the same time a great responsibility to be, first of all, a “kingdom of priests.”
Priests are mediators, go-betweens. As the consecrated priests would stand between God and His people, so the people of Israel would act as priests to the world, set aside by God for service, witness, and prayer. Israel would be a priest to all the nations of the world. They were to receive His promise of salvation and all His revelations pertaining to this. They were to protect and preserve these gifts of the LORD’s grace. They were to bear witness to all the other nations that their God was the only true God, the supreme Ruler of all, who in His mercy had planned a way of deliverance for all people. What a blessing the LORD was granting His people in this covenant established on Sinai! Through the nation of Israel, He would accomplish His plan for the salvation of all people!
In carrying out this service to God, they were to be, second, a “holy nation.”
How to live as God’s holy people would be reflected in all their laws. They were a nation set apart, different from the ungodly nations of this world, because they were to obey the rules and regulations the LORD would give them. They would be dedicated completely to the Saviour-God and His holy will in life and conduct.
As we fast-forward to the New Testament, we find in Christ Christians as kings, priests, and holy ones, for Christ is the High King of kings, the High Priest of priests, and the Most Holy of holy ones. The Apostle Peter writes, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light” (1 Peter 2:9).
Christ is a king, and in Him, we, too, are royalty, but Christ is not like the oppressive kings of the earth. He is a heavenly King who has come to establish His eternal kingdom. In the Old Testament, the kingdom of ancient Israel pointed ahead to the kingdom of Christ. Just as the people of Israel were God’s royal people who participated in the high priest’s kingship, so also we share in the royalty of Christ. The Son of God was not incarnate and did not become man merely to rule over us as His subjects. Rather, He united our human nature with His divine nature so that in Him we would reign together with Him. In his revelation, the Apostle John hears Jesus saying, “The one who conquers, I shall grant him to sit with Me on My throne, as I also conquered and sat down with My Father on His throne” (Rev. 3:21). Here, Jesus pictures Himself sharing a throne with His Father, and Jesus’ promise that His people will sit down beside Him and His Father is another way of saying that they will share in His reign.
Christ is the King of kings, and we Christians are the kings whom He is the King of! Just as the Old Testament high priest carried the people of Israel into the presence of God, so Christ bears us into the divine presence and seats us together with Him on His own throne. His kingdom does not oppress us; it exalts us!
Christ is our High Priest, and He is far greater than all the high priests of the Old Testament. Whereas the priests of old were limited in their service to a number of years, Christ’s priesthood is an eternal one. In the Old Testament, the high priest would offer incense and animal sacrifices for the benefit of the people. The blood of the animals atoned for the sins of the Israelites, especially and most comprehensively on the Day of Atonement. The remainder of the blood, which was sprinkled on the Mercy Seat of the ark of the covenant, was brought out of the Most Holy Place with the power to sanctify and reconsecrate the temple.
In the New Testament, Christ entered not into an earthly sanctuary but into the heavenly Most Holy Place, “not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12). Christ entered heaven to present His sacrificed blood to the Father. Through His sacrifice, He has freed us from our imprisonment, and because it is eternal, it needs no repetition, unlike the Old Testament sacrifices.
Now, in the Lord’s Supper, Christ offers His heavenly divine blood to sanctify the temple of our body and life. Moreover, Christ makes us one with His body as He gives us His body to eat. As we receive His body and blood, Christ unites us to His priesthood in which we offer the incense of prayer and the sacrifice of praise to God on behalf of our fellow human beings. Although the priesthood of ancient Israel was temporary, the priesthood that we Christians have in Christ is eternal, and it gives us daily access—not merely once per year—to God on His throne in the heavenly Most Holy Place.
In the Old Testament, God instituted offerings and sacrifices in ancient Israel’s Divine Service to accomplish two things for His people. On the one hand, the specific offerings that were called holy had the power to cleanse or purify. In fact, the blood of all animal offerings was used to make atonement and purify from ritual uncleanness. People who had been defiled through their own sins or who had come into contact with some unclean thing were made ritually pure by the atoning blood and the holy offerings. On the other hand, some offerings were called most holy, and these had the power to sanctify. People who had been desecrated were sanctified and reconsecrated by contact with the most holy things. The most holy offerings sanctified the Israelites so that the Most Holy God could dwell in their midst without destroying them because of their sins.
All of the holy and most holy offerings in the Old Testament pointed to Christ, who came to offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice. Through His cross, we are purified from our uncleanness and sanctified to share in His holiness. His most holy blood has made complete atonement for our sins in the heavenly Most Holy Place, and in the New Testament, Christ instituted not sacrifices but sacraments, which both purify us and sanctify us at the same time. The most holy Christ gives us His most holy Word, most holy baptism, most holy absolution, and most holy body and blood to cleanse us continually from the filth of our sins and to sanctify us continually to share in His own holiness. In the most holy Christ, we Christians are made holy so that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will dwell among us and us with Him in the Divine Service now and hereafter for all eternity.
God the Father has conceived us into Christ by His Word. He has given us new birth into Christ and made us His children in Baptism. Our heavenly Father continues to feed and nourish us in our eternal life with the body and blood of Christ.
As God’s children in Christ, we are royal heirs of His kingdom and reign together with Christ already now by faith. What’s more, we shall forever reign with Him as a king on His throne in our resurrected and glorified bodies. As God’s children in Christ, we are high priests, not in the Old Testament order of Aaron but in the eternal order of Christ, the Melchizedek of the New Testament, who has opened the way for us to have daily access to our triune God in the heavenly Most Holy Place.
As God’s children in Christ, we have been sanctified and continue to be made holy by the Most Holy One through His most holy Word and Sacraments. In Christ, we are God’s most “treasured possession among all peoples.” We are kings and priests – “a holy nation,” so that now and forever we share in God’s holiness, have access to Him in His heavenly sanctuary, and reign with Him on His glorious throne in heaven. Amen!
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.