God told Moses that he would send an angel ahead of the Israelites to guard them and to lead them to the place He has prepared. They were to pay attention to the angel and obey him. They were to listen carefully and in return God would be an enemy to their enemies and wipe out anyone who was against them. God instructed them not to bow down to other gods but to smash and break their sacred stones to pieces. They were to worship the Lord their God only and His blessings would pour out to them like food and water to their soul. (What a promise, and what peace that promise comes with!) God would take away their sickness and bless the women so that none would be barren or miscarry. They would be blessed with a full life span. Terror would be sent ahead of them, confusion to every nation that was against them. Their enemies would run. Little by little God would drive all of them away until the Israelites have increased in number enough to take possession of the land he has promised. (Little by little because God said the wild animals would get too numerous and overtake if the land became desolate all at once.) God told them they should never make covenants with other people and to never allow them to live in their land.
Moses told the people all God had said, and they responded, "We will do everything the Lord has said." Moses then wrote everything down.
He got up early the next morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and set up twelve stone pillars to represent the twelve tribes of Israel. They all offered burnt offerings and sacrifices to the Lord. Moses read the book of the covenant, which he had just written, to all the people. He then took blood from the sacrifices and sprinkled it over the people and said, "This is the blood of the covenant, that the Lord has made with you." (This moment! This sacrifice, was a very important part of Israel's history! Moses served as priest for this dramatic personal encounter with God. Then a unique formal sacrifice followed - laying the foundation for all the sacrifices that came next. Here 'blood of the covenant' referred to the blood of the sacrifices being sprinkled over the people as they read the new covenant they were making with God. Another important note is that 'Blood of the Covenant' appears six times in the New Testament and there it refers to the death of Christ. Jesus himself used the phrase at the last supper and it became part of the ceremony of the Lord's Supper. )
God then told Moses to come up the mountain to the Lord, to bring Aaron and seventy elders of Israel. Only Moses was allowed to approach, the others were to remain at a distance. They hiked up the steep mountain and they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky.
They saw God!
And they ate and drank.
The Lord told Moses to come up to the mountain and stay. The Lord wanted to give him the tablets of stone with the law and commands He had written. Moses went up and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai for six days. On the seventh day the Lord called out to Moses from within the cloud. To the Israelites at the bottom of the mountain the glory of God looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. Then Moses entered the cloud as he went up on the mountain.
There he stayed on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights.
(Insight: People ask why, why doesn't God intervene more? Why doesn't he directly feed the hungry and heal the sick? Why doesn't he make himself more obvious? Some people believe if God would spectacularly reveal himself all doubts would vanish, everyone would line up to believe in him. But here in Exodus God makes himself perfectly obvious. The plagues on Egypt, the red sea parting, food and water supplied in the desert, and the ever-present God in the glory cloud or the pillar of fire. How could they not believe? Yet all of the proof seem to lead to even more unfaithfulness in the people. The same people who ate food and drank water sent directly to them from God, the ones who had just heard the voice of God and promised to obey His covenant, the ones to whom God showed himself as real and faithful , were the same people who soon began to melt down their gold jewelry and flagrantly ignore the first commandment. They lost faith, they saw it all and still couldn't believe! God called them 'stiff-necked' and if it weren't for Moses' plea they would have surely died. Jesus points out later that if the people with Moses didn't believe then people of his time wouldn't believe if they actually saw someone rising from the dead. People who had constant everyday proof of God demonstrated only one thing - the monotonous consistency of human nature - their ability to change their minds, quite frequently and suddenly. The offenders would pay for their acts by wondering in the wilderness for 40 years while a new generation grew up to replace them. But a pattern was beginning to emerge - if the chosen people failed God in the wilderness how would they possibly withstand the seduction of new cultures in the promised land they were about to enter? God already knew the answer to that question. )
(Life Question: How do you handle temptations around you? The Israelites were about to enter a new land around people who had new customs, beliefs and lots of shiny new temptations. After living in the desert, all those things were going to pull on them in a fierce way. God wanted them to choose not to partake. Do you pray for God to keep temptation away? )
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Transcendence 2
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