Moses: God comes down

Having received his instructions from God, Moses goes back down the mountain to carry them out:

14 So Moses went down from the mountain to the people and consecrated the people; and they washed their garments. 15 And he said to the people, “Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman.”

He consecrates the people, they wash their clothes, and he warns them to be ready for the third day. “Do not go near a woman” is referring to sexual relations. The idea of abstaining from sexual relations as part of consecration occurs reasonably often in the Old Testament – so it seems like it could have been part of Moses’ instructions, even if we aren’t explicitly told in this chapter that God did command it.

Then we get to the event itself:

16 On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. 17 Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. 18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly.

This event becomes the defining event in the Old Testament for describing how God appears, and so other times when God appears in the Old Testament often have similar signs of God appearing: thunder, lightning, dark cloud and the blast of trumpets. Imagine standing among the people of Israel as this happened. Imagine that sense of growing anticipation and danger as the cloud comes down on the mountain.

If you’ve been walking in the hills as a storm approaches you’ll know something of that sense of gathering anticipation of danger to come. How much more, when you have been warned that God is going to come down on the mountain? So the people tremble.

Then Moses leads them out of the camp to meet God. It would be easy to rush past those words. But stop and pause for a minute. To meet God. To meet this God who descends in cloud and fire and thunder. This is no ordinary meeting. This is where an entire nation gets to meet God.

And everything in this passage is designed to underline just how dramatic, how awe-inspiring (awesome in the true sense of the word), how terrifying and how dangerous such a meeting is. The people take their stand, almost as if bracing themselves for what will happen next.

Then they see Mount Sinai covered in smoke, because God is coming down in fire on the mountain top. If the imagery at the start of the verses is a thunder storm, this seems more like a volcanic eruption. The language is vivid and stretching for images to convey the danger and peril of the moment.

“Your God is a consuming fire” Moses will say reflecting on this incident in Deuteronomy. But as if fire and thunder and smoke and lightning are not enough, now we are told that the whole mountain trembled. The earth shook as God came down. As well as this visual impact we also are told about the impact on the ears.

19 And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. 20 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 up.

The trumpet sound gets louder, and louder. Moses speaks and God answers him ‘in thunder’ – but it could equally be ‘in a voice’. Thunder makes sense of the context. But a voice would equally be true. How do we decide? I wonder if we have to. Is it possible that John 12 gives us a clue to this verse. In John 12:27 Jesus is speaking:

27 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.”

Some hear thunder. Some hear a voice. Is it possible that the same thing happens at Sinai. That some people, Moses, and maybe others, hear a voice, while other people ‘just’ hear thunder. Whether that is the case or not, the impact of the scene is dramatic. The LORD comes down to the mountain top, and calls Moses up.

And then we get a slightly odd section of conversation:

21 And the LORD said to Moses, “Go down and warn the people, lest they break through to the LORD to look and many of them perish. 22 Also let the priests who come near to the LORD consecrate themselves, lest the Lord break out against them.” 23 And Moses said to the LORD, “The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for you yourself warned us, saying, ‘Set limits around the mountain and consecrate it.’” 24 And the LORD said to him, “Go down, and come up bringing Aaron with you. But do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the Lord, lest he break out against them.” 25 So Moses went down to the people and told them.

We probably share Moses’ sense of puzzlement at why God would warn the people. But in context the warning is to heighten the sense of what is to come (which we’ll get to over the next couple of days), and to underline once more that God is dangerous. The people are not to break through to the LORD, lest they perish, and even the priests who can draw near are to be consecrated lest the LORD break out against them.

When Moses protests, he is told that only Aaron may come up with him – no one else is to ‘break through’ to come up, lest God ‘break out’ against them. The word for ‘break out’ is the same word used in 2 Samuel 6 when God’s anger ‘breaks out’ against Uzzah for touching the ark of God. This is no idle warning. When the tabernacle is built the most holy place will only be able to be entered by the high priest once a year after many sacrifices. God’s presence is dangerous – especially to those who are not consecrated. So Moses conveys the warning to the people in readiness for the next part of the scene.

The danger as we reflect on this passage for us as Christians is that we jump too quickly to the idea that since Jesus has died for us so that we have free access to God, we can therefore skip the sense of fear and awe in these passages. One of the scholars I read in my PhD research, Brevard Childs, gives a helpful corrective to this in his commentary on Exodus:

“The new covenant is not a substitution of a friendly God for the terror of Sinai, but rather a gracious message of an open access to the same God whose presence still calls forth awe and reverence”

As Hebrews 12 puts it:

18 For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest 19 and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. 20 For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” 21 Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.” 22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. 25 See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? 26 At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” 27 The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire.

Or, as I’m unable to resist putting in, think of CS Lewis, and the children’s anticipation of meeting Aslan in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

“You’ll understand when you see him.”
“But shall we see him?” asked Susan.
“Why, Daughter of Eve, that’s what I brought you here for. I’m to lead you where you shall meet him,” said Mr Beaver.
“Is-is he a man?” asked Lucy.
“Aslan a man!” said Mr Beaver sternly. “Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion—the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion. ”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you. ”
“I’m longing to see him,” said Peter, “even if I do feel frightened when it comes to the point.”

We need passages like this Exodus 19 passage to remind us that our God is – in the fullest sense – ‘an awesome God’. The God who shakes the earth will give us a kingdom that cannot be shaken. So let us worship him in our lives, remembering that he is indeed a consuming fire.

Yet let us remember too, that this God who is dangerous, who cannot just be approached in any way we like, is the God who invites us to come to him, who invites us into relationship with Him. Let us remember that he is good, and be like Peter, and like Moses, longing to see him and to know him more – knowing the joy of intimacy and awe combined.

Moses: God’s Freedom Fighter

Before we get to Moses’ interaction with God we need to look at Moses’ early life. He certainly is no ordinary child, and his mother is no ordinary mother. Exodus 2 tells the story of how Moses was placed on the Nile in a basket and eventually adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter – yet also nursed by his own mother.

Moses grows up, in Pharaoh’s palace, yet also aware that he was not one of the Egyptians. He was different, and clearly knows it, because he grows up, and chooses to be identified as one of the Hebrews. The story is told in Exodus 2:11-15 and, as is typical of OT narrative, is told without much commentary on Moses’ actions.

Moses is described as growing up, going out and seeing an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. Moses looks both ways, and then strikes the Egyptian and hides his body in the sand. The next day he goes out, and seeing two Hebrews fighting he tries to mediate. His action is rejected by the Hebrew, with the words “who appointed you ruler and judge over us?” and the question “Will you kill me like you did the Egyptian?”

Moses is afraid because he sees that his action has become known. This supposition is confirmed in the next verse which tells us that Pharaoh now knows of his action, so Moses flees to Midian.

It is easy to leap to the conclusion that Moses must have gone wrong. He has murdered an Egyptian and then fled for his life. Perhaps he had the right idea, but he got the timing wrong and leapt ahead of God’s plan. Then he needs to go to Midian to learn to slow down and wait for God’s time.

That is a possible way to read the story, but it is interesting that both Stephen in Acts 7 and the writer of Hebrews 11 have a different perspective. For both of them Moses’ action in Exodus 2 is praiseworthy, for Stephen the Hebrews rejection of Moses in Exodus 2 is symptomatic of the way the Israelite people kept on rejecting God’s provision over their history. For the writer of Hebrews Moses gave up the treasures of Egypt to identify with his own people.

There is also some evidence in the text of Exodus 2 that we shouldn’t leap to the conclusion that Moses got it wrong. Some commentators point out that Moses’ sight and actions in Exodus 2 mirror God’s action in Exodus 3 – that Moses sees the plight of the Hebrews, and just as God promises to strike the Egyptians so Moses strikes the Egyptian. Moses’ murder of the Egyptian can be interpreted as the action of a freedom fighter, fighting on behalf of his people – and certainly the writer of Hebrews sees the episode as illustrating Moses’ faith.

Maybe we leap to the conclusion that Moses got it wrong in this brief episode because Moses’ actions don’t lead to a good result. Maybe we’ve bought into the idea that doing the right thing will lead to the right results – and so, if the results are wrong then we must have done the wrong thing.

But real life is a bit more messy than that, and the Bible is a bit more messy than that. Plenty of times doing the right thing leads to long periods of uncertainty and confusion. Sometimes for reasons that we are told about and sometimes we are not given any explanation.

Such storytelling mirrors real life. Most of the time we don’t get the explanation at the same time as the event. Sometimes we never really make sense of the episode. In this chapter of Exodus God does not feature until the end of the chapter, and so we, like Moses, and like the Hebrews are left with a sense of wondering what the purpose of this event is.

It tells us that Moses has a burning sense of justice, and a desire to liberate his people, as well as a desire that they should be living rightly. It tells us that he is rejected from any position of leadership, and it tells us that he cannot fight Pharaoh. We learn of Moses’ desire to put things right, and of his ultimate powerlessness to achieve those aims.

Perhaps that too is an important lesson to learn. Human efforts cannot liberate, they are often rejected and they often meet with enemies that are too strong for them. And yet that is not the end of the story.

Moses does manage to save some Midianite shepherdesses, and even marries one of them. God is still at work in Moses’ story, and in Israel’s. Moses may be a stranger in a strange land, but there is still a God who hears his people’s cries, remembers his promise to them, sees them and knows.

That is how the chapter ends. With the word “know”. God knows. Whatever the confusion of the rest of the chapter. However Moses’ motivations and leadership abilities should be assessed there is a God who hears, remembers, sees and knows.

And isn’t that exactly what we need to hear in our stories. In the middle of whatever confusion we find ourselves. However mixed up the motives and actions that have led to where we are now there is still a God who hears, who remembers, who sees and who knows.

Think of how rich that language is, and of how reassuring it is against some of our deepest fears:

God hears: your voice counts, no matter who you think hasn’t heard it.
God remembers: he is a God who makes and keeps his promises – even when it looks like he has forgotten, or others have forgotten you.
God sees you: you are not forgotten, not alone, not abandoned, not insignificant – he sees you.
God knows: he knows when you do not, and when it seems like no one else knows you.
You are heard. God has not forgotten his promises. He sees all you are going through and he knows.

So we can trust. We often don’t hear clearly. We forget so quickly. We don’t see all that we should in any given situation. We don’t know everything about the situation – we don’t even know what we don’t know, and we don’t know what we do know completely. But we do know someone who hears, remembers, sees and knows, and so we can trust his loving care and wait, with Moses for the next stage in the story.