Long ago and far away, an entire nation of people prepared to meet their God.

When he came, all heaven broke loose. But it didn’t seem heavenly at all.

On the morning of the third day, thunder roared and lightning flashed, and a dense cloud came down on the mountain. There was a long, loud blast from a ram’s horn, and all the people trembled. Moses led them out from the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. All of Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the Lord had descended on it in the form of fire. The smoke billowed into the sky like smoke from a brick kiln, and the whole mountain shook violently. As the blast of the ram’s horn grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God thundered his reply.

The Lord came down on the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain.

So Moses climbed the mountain. (Ex. 19:16-20 NLT)

The mountain quaked. The people trembled. And God spoke. But whatever they expected his first words to be, instead they heard:

“Moses. Come up here.”

Trekking upward into the smoke, toward the storm, Moses may have wondered, “Now, Lord? Now, you call me up?”

Already, Moses had met with God twice atop Mount Sinai.¹

• The first time, the Lord invited the Israelites to become his covenant people.
• The second time, the Lord told the people he was coming to meet with them.

And now, God simply restated a warning he had given the last time Moses made that climb.

The Lord said to him, “Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see the Lord and many of them perish. Even the priests, who approach the Lord, must consecrate themselves, or the Lord will break out against them.”

Moses said to the Lord, “The people cannot come up Mount Sinai, because you yourself warned us, ‘Put limits around the mountain and set it apart as holy.’”

The Lord replied, “Go down and bring Aaron up with you. But the priests and the people must not force their way through to come up to the Lord, or he will break out against them.”

So Moses went down to the people and told them. (Ex. 19:21-25)

Notice: Moses dared to speak honestly to God when something did not make sense. And also, Moses did what God said when it did not make sense.

Hiking back down to where the people waited, Moses may have wondered, “What was that all about?” Yet he warned the people, again, not to go past the boundaries God had set.

The name

Then, “God spoke all these words” that we call the Ten Commandments.² Here is what he said first:

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. (Ex. 20:2)

And thus, God introduced himself by name.

Where we see “the LORD” (in all caps), God said the Name he had first called himself when an outback shepherd named Moses stood at the foot of Sinai, watching a bush that would not burn up.³

Speaking from the burning bush, God had said:

I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt. (Ex. 3:7-10)

In the conversation that followed, God told Moses the Name:

Say to the Israelites, “The LORD, the God of your fathers – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob – has sent me to you.” This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.” (Ex. 3:14-15)

Now only a few months later, the whole nation stood at Sinai’s foot, watching the fire at the mountain’s top. God spoke – and called himself by the Name he had made known the day he came to rescue them.

What’s more:

• God told them, “I am your God.” He declared his commitment to them, even before they entered covenant with him.
• God identified himself as the One who had accomplished the impossible in their behalf. True to his word, he had brought them “out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”

This LORD is paradox and mystery. But he is not contradiction:

“God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5)
He is truth; he cannot lie. (Titus 1:2)
He is upright “and there is no wickedness in him.” (Ps. 95:15)

Even when he reveals himself in ways that may seem anything but heavenly, our Deliverer has our best interests at heart. In the midst of the noise and the fury, he calls out reassuringly, “It’s me. It’s me.”

The words

After identifying himself, God began his short list of commandments. The first four set parameters for how his people are to relate to him. The last six set parameters for how people are to relate to one another.

Because these commandments warn us where not to tread, we may think of them as negative and restrictive. Yet, Israel’s singers loudly touted God’s commands as delightful and liberating.

The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. (Ps.‬ ‭19:7-8‬)

I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts. (Ps.‬ ‭119:45)

Indeed, God’s Ten Words function rather like sections of a fence surrounding a school playground. Beyond this fence lie many dangers – streets carrying high-speed traffic, predators, places where children can get lost.

Like the playground fence, God’s commandments protect us from roaming into dangerous, deadly places. “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction,” says the Lord (Deut. 30:15). Life and prosperity lie within the boundaries he sets; death and destruction, outside them.

When God introduced the Ten Commandments to Israel, he did so as a parent might introduce a small child to the playground fence. Knowing children’s propensity to go where they should not, and their inability to comprehend the dangers of doing so, the parent speaks sternly, promising punishment if the child takes the boundaries lightly.

The parent would rather have a child grudgingly stay within the boundaries, to keep from getting into trouble, than a child devastated by venturing past the fence. But the parent loves most the day the child realizes that the fence protects and frees, and that it was built in love.

The spectacle

And so the Lord couched his message in hair-raising, heart-stopping spectacle. Thunder crashed, lightning flashed, a dense cloud descended, earth quaked, mountaintop blazed, smoke billowed – while God himself came down. As if all of that were not enough, a long blast on a ram’s horn, or shofar, sounded louder and louder.

The Israelites who witnessed it all had already seen God use some of these elements to announce his presence.

• Thunder and lightning had accompanied the plague of hail that decimated Egypt, but did not touch Goshen, where the Israelites were.
• A cloud by day and fire by night had guided them from the moment they set out to leave Egypt. When Pharaoh’s army had pursued them, the cloud and fire had moved behind the Israelites, guarding them until they safely crossed the Red Sea.

Again and again, God had made clear that he uses his fearsome power to protect and deliver those following him. But never had he pulled out all the stops quite like this.

God had also forewarned the Israelites of the shofar blast.⁴ If we’d been orchestrating the first visit of God with his people, we might have set it to a symphony. For background music, we might have woven together the commanding call of the trumpet, the sweet sound of the flute, the sweeping crescendo of the strings.

But when the Lord planned his entrance on Sinai, he picked the one instrument that doesn’t fit with any others. Hard to blow and extremely hard to blow well, the shofar creates a sound that is neither beautiful nor soothing. Indeed, no sound grates like a poorly blown shofar, and no sound pierces like a shofar blown with the authority of the Lord. The blast seems to bypass your ears and shoot straight into your gut, where it grips you so profoundly that you don’t know whether to cry for mercy or to cry for more.

The Israelites at Sinai knew well the sound of the ram’s horn. Yet never had they heard a shofar blast like this.

The pause

Right there, in the big middle of his big entrance, as the shofar sounded and the mountain writhed, God did what no Hollywood producer would ever have scripted: He hit the pause button. Before saying his own Name, before uttering his Ten Words, the Lord called Moses up the mountain a third time.

Though Moses was miffed, because he thought the climb pointless, his third encounter with God on Sinai reveals:

The Lord does not set limits because he enjoys catching and punishing trespassers. He sets limits, and keeps reminding us what they are, because he is holy AND he is love.

His Name reveals his holiness and his love. His rules reveal his holiness and his love. His displays of power reveal his holiness and his love.

He does not want anyone to be destroyed.
(2 Peter 3:9 NLT)

That’s why the LORD called Moses up Mount Sinai for a third time.

The risk

The day the Lord came down on Sinai and the day Jesus refused to come down from the cross have this in common: Both show how fiercely God loves.

Tragically, most of those watching and listening at Sinai’s foot did not see what the Lord was revealing.

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.” The people remained at a distance while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was. (Ex. 20:18-20)

People can respond to the fierce love of a holy Lord with two kinds of fear.

Cringing fear paints God as a bully, who makes impossible rules, then waits for you to break them so he can punish you. Cringing fear kills love. When Moses said, “Do not be afraid,” he urged the people not to let fear based on lies superimpose itself onto their encounter with their God.

Our Lord takes the risk of cringing fear in order to create reverential fear. This fear sees the truth:

The God who came down on Sinai – the God who breathes his Name into our inmost being – is holy. And he is love. Fiercely, he seeks our good.

It is sin that destroys us. “The fear of the LORD” propels us away from sin.

• It “leads to life” (Prov. 19:23).
• It “adds length to life” (Prov. 10:27).
• It is “the beginning of knowledge” (Prov 1:7) and “the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10).
• “The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life” (Prov. 14:27).

It is also a fountain of deep, pure love for the Lord our God. The fear of the Lord keeps us from getting chummy or casual with him, yet draws us inexorably toward him.

Isaiah said, “The fear of the LORD will be your treasure” (Isa. 33:6 NLT).

In spite of Moses’ reassurance, the Israelites expressed a cringing fear of God. They asked not to meet with him again. Ah, but Moses saw the same violent spectacle and, at God’s invitation, set out toward it – not just once, but again and again. The man could not get enough of the Presence of God.

The amen

And so Moses headed back up the mountain for a fourth time. Let’s pause to watch him go, as we consider this jewel, tucked into an old hymn.⁵

They love Thee little, if at all
Who do not fear Thee much;
If love is Thine attraction, Lord,
Fear is Thy very touch.

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Image by FelixMittermeier from Pixabay

Seven Encounters with God series

Moses’ encounters with God on Sinai reveal remarkable things about who God is, how he relates to his people and how to cultivate intimacy with him. Please, Lord, give us eyes to see.

• “Come be with me” – Seven encounters with God
• 1: The purpose of the wilderness
• 2: Prepare to meet with God
• 3: God who loves fiercely
• 4: When your world has changed
• 5: Mystery and life: The covenant meal
• 6, part 1: The place his glory dwells
• 6, part 2: One who stands in the gap
• 7: Radiant! A glory story

See also

• Code blue! God’s cry to the breathless
• Fighting fear with fear
• God who sees me
• Darkness, betrayal and the heartbeat of God
• God of the covenant Name

Footnotes

1. It’s easy to read Exodus 19-20 and miss the fact that 80-year-old Moses climbed and descended a mountain four times in the same week. ↩︎
2. Exodus 20:1. See verses 1-17. ↩︎
3. This Name has four Hebrew consonants, that can be transliterated, YHWH. Through the centuries, the Hebrew people counted this Name so holy they would not speak it, and would not write the vowels. So we today do not know how it was pronounced. ↩︎
4. See Exodus 19:10-13. ↩︎
5. Verse 12 of “The Fear of God,” by nineteenth-century British hymn writer, Frederick William Faber. See Faber’s Hymns, pp. 99, 100. ↩︎