In 2011, I sat down to start the e-column that has now become this post. I wrote:

Today, I don’t have words.
I’m asking God for words.
Surely they’ll come.

But first I sit, carrying in my spirit the weightiness – the wonder, solemnity and astounding implications – of Moses’ sixth mountaintop encounter with God.

---

Surely Moses felt exhilarated. Surely he felt exhausted.

In Egypt, the man had confronted Pharaoh again and again. Faithfully, he had delivered God’s message: “Let my people go.” Faithfully, he had watched, and participated, as the Lord set Israel free.

At Sinai, the man had climbed a mountain again and again. Faithfully, he had met with God. He’d told the people what God said. He’d told God what the people said.

Then, Moses had led the people to enter covenant with the Lord – to become his people, to receive him as their God. And then the man had led 73 other leaders partway up Sinai, to commune with the Lord their God and to see HIM.

Meanwhile, urgent, overwhelming needs had cried for Moses’ attention: the newly freed people’s lack of infrastructure, their constant disagreements, threats from hostile nations, life-threatening conditions. Just finding another day’s food and water was itself a fulltime job.

Surely now, with the covenant accomplished, the Lord would send Moses back to the camp, to tend to the enormous tasks at hand.

Except: God’s ways are not ours.

A consuming fire

The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction.”

Moses went up on the mountain of God. (Ex. 24:12, 13)

The summons

When Moses heard, “Come up to me. And stay here,” he did not hesitate. He did not complain. He designated who would lead the people in his absence. Then, he set out, taking Joshua with him partway. Ultimately, Moses went on alone, to meet with God for a sixth time.¹

When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai.

To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. (Ex. 24:15-17)

Imagine that God summoned you to climb to a place of treacherous cliffs, where a massive cloud blazed like a consuming fire. Imagine he did not tell you how long you would stay. He said only: Be prepared to remain.

What people, what responsibilities would you feel you simply could not leave? What fears and doubts would hold you back?

Moses had an array of compelling reasons for telling God, “Thank you for asking, but I simply cannot do it. You know, Lord. You’ve called me to lead hundreds of thousands of traumatized, uprooted and vulnerable people. I cannot just take off indefinitely. Would you, perhaps, allow me to send a proxy to wait for those tablets? Or maybe you could call to me again when you have them ready to send down.”

Yet Moses didn’t say any of that.

Instead, Moses’ heart cried, “I love the place where your glory dwells.”

The silence

So Moses went, and Moses stayed. You know what God did next?

Nothing.

For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from within the cloud. (Ex. 24:16)

Six long days, God did not speak at all. I wonder if – on the second day, or the fourth, or the sixth – Moses thought about all he wasn’t getting done, and considered leaving. I wonder if Moses wondered whether he had heard God right.

Whatever he thought, whatever he felt, Moses waited before the Lord in the silence.

For the Lord had said, “Come up to Me … and be there” (NKJV), “and remain there” (NET), “and wait there” (CEB), “and stay there.”

For six days Moses stayed just outside that intense cloud – knowing his unseen Lord was there.

A puzzling plan

On the seventh day, God called to Moses from within the cloud.

Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. (Ex. 24:18)

Moses entered the cloud and was enveloped by it. And the Lord, who had not said one word for six days, spent the rest of those 40 days talking. The record of that revelation occupies Exodus 25-31.

When we read those chapters, we learn: God spent five weeks spelling out extremely precise plans that seem to have nothing to do with protecting or providing for the people, or getting them out of the desert and into the land he had promised them.

Instead, all those minute details have to do with building and furnishing a portable worship tent and readying worship leaders.

Even more puzzling, the Lord gave these plans in what may seem a random order.

And so, the mountaintop visit with God that started as mystery and wonder may, in the end, seem more tedious than glorious. And God may seem out of touch with his people’s needs.

Did all that planning offer any practical help to the people he had brought out of Egypt, into a desert? And what importance could the specs for an ancient worship tent hold for his people today?

A remarkable thing

To answer that, let’s notice this: The Lord ended those five weeks of instruction by doing the one thing he had promised when he told Moses to make that climb.

The tablets

[The promise:] I’ll give you the stone tablets with the instructions and the commandments that I’ve written in order to teach them. (Ex. 24:12 CEB)

[The fulfillment:] When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God. (Ex. 31:18)

God did not hand Moses a transcript of all the tabernacle instructions he had just uttered. Nor did God hand Moses a copy of the laws he had announced when he called Moses up Sinai the fourth time.²

Rather, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, written in stone. The same Words the Lord had spoken aloud to all the people, the day he came down to invite them to be his people, he had written out with his own hand.

The ark

Between the promise and the presentation of the handwritten tablets – when the Lord started speaking after six days of silence – the first thing he described was the ark that would hold the tablets.

A chest of acacia wood, overlaid with gold, the ark of the covenant alone would rest in the Most Holy Place. Its solid gold cover would include two winged angelic creatures, or cherubim, one on each end. God told Moses:

The cherubim are to have their wings spread upward, overshadowing the cover with them. The cherubim are to face each other, looking toward the cover. Place the cover on top of the ark and put in the ark the tablets of the covenant law that I will give you.

Then the Lord said a remarkable thing:

There, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the covenant law, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites. (Ex. 25:20-22)

There, I will meet with you.³

A dwelling place

The repeated treks up Sinai, the 40 days on the mountaintop, God’s silence, his revelations, the seemingly endless details – all had this immediate purpose: to prepare for holy God to inhabit a tent, a wooden frame covered with animal skins.

The Lord their God was making a way to dwell in their midst.⁴

He made his purpose even more clear when he said to Moses later in that 40-day visit:

There I will meet you and speak to you;
there also I will meet with the Israelites,
and the place will be consecrated by my glory …

Then I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God.
They will know that I am the Lord their God,
who brought them out of Egypt
so that I might dwell among them.
I am the Lord their God. (Ex. 29:42-46)

God’s heart is to nourish his people, to cause us to flourish, that we may join him in his holy outpouring of life and love.⁵

God’s way to accomplish that? Shattering every barrier, he comes near.

For when the Lord comes near to us – to make covenant and to dwell – he makes all that he is available to us. All that he is, in its essence, its radiance, is glory.

No wonder David’s psalm said, and Moses’ life showed:

Lord, I love the house where you live,
the place where your glory dwells. (Ps. 26:8)

In heaven and on the new earth

Scripture shows us that every detail of the plan God gave on Sinai was crucial.

For one thing, the tabernacle was “a copy and shadow of what is in heaven.”⁶ How amazing is that?

Also, the tent that stood in ancient Israel points us to glory yet to come. For what God described to Moses in Exodus foreshadows what God showed John in Revelation:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among people, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be among them.” (Rev. 21:1, 3 NASB)

When the Word became flesh

There’s more. The details of the tabernacle – where God lived in the midst of his people and made his glory seen – can offer us a wealth of insight into the earthly life and mission of the Lord Jesus himself.

“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). (Matt. 1:23, quoting Isa. 7:14)

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

By the Spirit living within

At Mt. Sinai, the Lord inaugurated a covenant that he invited the Israelites to enter. Immediately afterward, he made a way to dwell among his people.

At Mt. Calvary, the Lord Jesus inaugurated a new covenant that he invites all who will to enter. His death and resurrection made the way for God to dwell in his people.

The night before his crucifixion, Jesus promised his followers:

I will ask the Father to send you another Helper,
the Spirit of truth, who will remain constantly with you …
He will dwell in you.
(John 14:16, 17 Voice)

Since Pentecost, God lives in people – not structures. We are his dwelling place. Yielding to the Spirit, we are filled with, and live by, the Spirit. That’s when the glory shines through.⁷

The last night Jesus lived on this earth, he prayed for the very human men and women who had faithfully followed him, and for all who would do so down through time. In that prayer, Jesus said to his Father:

All Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine,
and I am glorified in them. (John 17:10 NKJV)

My life is on display in them. (MSG)
My glory is shown through them. (NCV)

Then the Son laid down his life, and rose, and ascended to the Father. So the Spirit could come to abide. So all whose lips and lives confess Jesus Christ as Lord can be the place where his glory dwells.

Benediction

Lord, I love the place where your glory dwells. May my life be a place where your glory dwells.

---

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. 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

Footnotes

1. Exodus 24:13-14. ↩︎
2. In Exodus 21-23, God announced the laws crucial to covenant relationship with him. Those laws may seem to be random teachings about how the people were to get along with each other and with God. And like the plans for the tabernacle, those laws may seem quite unrelated to the very real challenges the nation faced. But when we look closer, we realize God’s laws teach God’s people to love. See the post, When your world has changed. ↩︎
3. See the glorious consummation of this promise in Exodus 40 and the post, “Come be with me” – Seven encounters with God. ↩︎
4. As a reminder just how holy God is, and how impossible it seemed for him to dwell in the midst of his people, see the post, God who loves fiercely. ↩︎
5. As to how flourishing looks, do not think prosperity gospel or celebrity Christianity. Think of the faithful in the early church. Also, see and delight in Isaiah 55 and Ephesians 1. ↩︎
6. Hebrews 8:5, which continues: “This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: ‘See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.’” ↩︎
7. For a detailed look at what Scripture says about “The Church as God’s Dwelling Place,” see the linked post by Robert L. Deffinbaugh. ↩︎