Israel at Mount Sinai

Story:  Israel at Mount Sinai

Passage: Exodus 19

Characters:  Moses, God, Israel

Summary:    Israel came to Mount Sinai.  The people camped out while Moses went up to God.  God came to the mountain in a thick cloud.  There was fire and the ground shook.  The people consecrated themselves and were not allowed to touch the mountain.  Aaron was allowed to go up the mountain with Moses, but no one else could.

  

Notes:  The people had been traveling for three months now.  God called to Moses from the mountain.  This was strangely not a new thing for Moses!  God made a covenant with the people through Moses there.  If they obeyed His voice and kept His covenant, they would be His treasured possession and a kingdom of priests.  The people responded by promising obedience.  I find God’s response funny.  In response to their confidence, He tells Moses that He is coming down there so the people can hear Him and believe Moses.  In other words, yeah I know they said that, but I’m going to make sure they hear me so they won’t forget.  God gave them three days to consecrate themselves.  They had to wash their dirty clothes.  Moses set up limits for the people.  If they were to even touch the mountain, they were to be killed by being stoned or shot with an arrow.  They were not allowed to be touched.  There is something about contact with holiness which is not allowed.  It is almost like by touching the mountain, the person would  become holier by association.  Then if someone else touched that person, they would repeat the process.  I don’t know if that’s what was really going on, but it does look like it.  Moses also told the men to not go near the women.  He didn’t say not to sleep with the women, he said not to go near them.  He knew human nature well enough to know that the only sure way to keep them from defiling themselves was to not even give them the opportunity.  The mountain was surrounded by smoke and covered in fire.  The whole mountain shook.  This was the display of glory that came when God showed up at the mountain.  Interestingly, He wasn’t even displaying His full glory.  If His partial glory can affect the Earth like that, can you imagine His full glory?  There was a trumpet sound and Moses spoke.  God responded with thunder.  His voice was not like thunder, His voice was thunder.  The sheer power and majesty in this passage is intimidating!  Too many times we lock God into the image of a poor helpless lamb who just wants to nuzzle us and frolic around in the grass with us.  That is not what I see here!  I’m not saying that God is not a loving lamb, but He is also a powerful holy God.  When He comes, the mountains shake and are covered in fire and smoke.  His voice is the thunder.  We need to make sure that we do not water God down and ignore this facet of His character.  God then tells Moses to go back down and warn the people to stay back.  He also tells Moses to make sure the priests consecrate themselves.  Moses responds by reminding God that God already told them not to come up.  God responds by telling Moses to go down and remind them.  This is also funny to me.  God basically says to tell the people to stay back and Moses is thinking, “No I don’t want to leave.  I already told them that they don’t need to hear again!”  God felt otherwise.  Apparently Moses has changed from the shepherd who would not obey a burning bush to a man who couldn’t comprehend people not listening to the commands of God!  God knows the people well though and sends Moses down anyway.  Apparently the priests had not consecrated themselves either.  Maybe they felt they did not need it because they were priests.  It is obvious that their status did not make them any cleaner in God’s eyes than the rest of the people.  God wanted Aaron on the mountain as well.  God knew that Aaron would soon be the high priest of Israel and He wanted Aaron up on the mountain with Moses to witness His glory.  Maybe God was trying to keep Aaron’s focus on Him because He knew Aaron’s susceptibility to idols.  Who knows?

Questions:  Were the people really going to try to go up the mountain?  Did they protest to consecrating themselves?  Why did the priests not originally consecrate themselves? 

Lessons:  We need to make sure we remember God’s holiness and power.  We don’t serve a weak God!  We are dirty and without Him washing us clean, we don’t even deserve to be in the presence of Him.  Too often we take for granted the fact that we can pray and He will listen!  We forget the price that it took to gain us this access to God.  We forget how dirty we are compared to His holiness!  We must never forget what it means that He is holy and we are not!