December 8, 2006

AND THE PEOPLE TREMBLED

Exodus 19

The passage we read together a few moments ago is a unique and fascinating text. Yet, to be honest, I also find it to be a rather troubling, unsettling passage. But let’s dig into it and see if we can figure out just what is going on.

After three months of travel the Israelites have now arrived at the foot of Mt. Sinai. This is the same mountain where God appeared to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3. In fact, their arrival at the foot of the mountain is a fulfillment of God’s promise to Moses in Exodus 3:12: And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you; When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.” So we can imagine that Moses’ heart was rather full of thanksgiving and praise at God’s faithfulness to his word as the nation pitched their tents below the familiar slopes where he had so often herded his flocks.

The rest of the book of Exodus will take place right here. It is a rich and eventful time. What is happening in this chapter is extremely important in terms of the structure of the book of Exodus and really the whole Old Testament. What is taking place is the formalizing of a covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel.

The idea of a covenant may be a little less familiar to us in our cultures today, but it was a pattern that would have been very clear in the days when it took place. The ancient world relied strongly on covenants or agreements between individuals, families, clans and nations. Probably the closest synonyms we have today would be treaties or contracts:

There were various kinds of covenants, depending on the relationship, but the form that is followed in this section of Exodus is that of the suzerainty/vassal covenant. It was the agreement between a powerful king or kingdom and a lesser ruler or nation or individual. In this covenant the various responsibilities and obligations of the two parties would be clearly spelled out. For example, the powerful king might promise military protection, while the lesser king might promise in return to pay certain taxes or supply a set number of men for the army, etc.

The format for such covenants was quite formal and established and this format is clearly followed in the text in front of us. A covenant usually began with a preamble which would describe the history of the relationship between the two kingdoms or individuals. This is given in Exodus 19:4: You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. I have delivered you from the Egyptians and have brought you to myself.

The second formal part of the covenant would include the conditions or obligations of the weaker nation. This is found in Exodus 19:5: Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant…The benefits of the covenant are conditioned upon obedience to the sovereign’s will. I believe we can make a good case for the fact that the majority of the rest of the book of Exodus is given over to the details, the legal small print, of the covenant’s conditions. But the broad stroke is clearly given here. You must obey.

The third formal part of the covenant describes the benefits that the lesser nation will enjoy. This is found in the rest of Exodus 19:5-6: then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. You will have a place of special honor and respect in the world and the universe as my special nation.

This, then, represents the introduction of the covenant and its basic conditions. In terms of the formalizing of the covenant, God instructs Moses to go back to the people and speak these words to them. When he does so, the people respond in verse 8: The people all responded together. “We will do everything Yahweh has said.” So Moses brought their answer back to Yahweh.

This is followed by the days of preparation as the people made themselves ready and sanctified themselves. Then God himself descended upon the mountain for the actual covenant ceremony. This chapter and the legal literature, the giving of the Law, that follows in the rest of Exodus and Leviticus, therefore sets the legal framework or constitution by which the nation will be governed. That is why it is such a fundamentally important text of the Bible and governs how we interpret so much of what comes after.

What I want to do, however, is step away from the structure of the text and focus on what God reveals of himself in these events. Covenants may come and go. In fact the New Testament (by the way, read that “covenant”) clearly states that the old covenant has been made obsolete. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t study it. It just means we are not governed by it. But God, in his essence and in his character, does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. What can we learn about him from this chapter? I want to highlight three descriptive phrases that, I believe, capture the theological truths of this text. I am actually borrowing two of them from the great song of praise that Moses wrote after God delivered them from the Egyptians in Exodus 15. But these magnificent phrases are wonderfully fleshed out in Exodus 19.

YAHWEH IS MAJESTIC IN HOLINESS.

The concept of God as a holy God is one that we are very familiar with if we are familiar with the Bible. But the concept of God’s holiness is only beginning to emerge in this passage we are studying. I don’t know if you remember, but when we studied Exodus 3, I mentioned that the first occurrence of the word “holy” is found in Yahweh’s words to Moses, when he told him, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” That is the first occurrence of the terminology in the Bible. Now, we have come along with very few further references in the first 18 chapters of Exodus. We have God’s instruction to “sanctify” the firstborn to him after the Passover. Then we have this magnificent phrase in Exodus 15:11: Who is like you…majestic in holiness.

This concept now begins to take on very vivid and defined meaning in the chapter we are studying. First, there is God’s command to the people to “sanctify” themselves, which is the verb form of the word: to make themselves holy or ritually pure, by washing their clothes and abstaining from sexual relations. So the concept of cleansing or purity is introduced.

The second aspect that is introduced is that of separation. God sets very distinct limits, borders or boundaries around the mountain. “Don’t come near it, don’t touch it. If you touch the mountain you will die.” The concept of God as a holy being, who is both pure and separated from his creatures, is given concrete expression. God does not want this to be missed. In fact, after God appears to the nation and Moses is once again ascending to speak with him, he sends Moses down to warn the people again, in verse 21: Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see Yahweh and many of them perish. Moses protests at that point: “You already told them that. We’ve already set the boundaries. They won’t dare approach the mountain.” But God was not satisfied, and sends Moses down. “Go down and make sure,” he says. This is no small or insignificant matter. As God makes himself known to his people, he makes himself known as the Holy One.

The second descriptive phrase is also borrowed from Exodus 15:11: YAHWEH IS AWESOME IN GLORY. The description of the scene of God’s appearance to the nation is one of the most awe-inspiring in the Bible. First of all there was thunder and lightening, as a thick cloud covered the mountain. This was accompanied by a very loud blast on a trumpet. This was clearly no earthly trumpet and no human trumpeter, although the word for trumpet is that for a ram’s horn trumpet. Personally, I think it is a simile to describe the sound that came from an invisible source. Then, in the midst of the thick cloud, Yahweh descended on the mountain in fire. As he did, the mountain billowed with smoke like a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled as in a mighty earthquake. Meanwhile, the sound of the trumpet, already described as “very loud”, grew louder and louder. It was an awesome scene, involving their physical senses as they saw the lightening and the fire and cloud and smelled the smoke and heard the thunder roar and the trumpet blast and felt the mountain shake.

And then, remarkably, in the midst of that awe-inspiring scene, we are told in verse 19, Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him. We are not told in what form the voice of God came. We don’t know exactly what he said. One interpretation is that he actually spoke the Ten Commandments that are recorded in Exodus 20. We don’t even know if the Israelites could understand his voice. But we do know what the overall effect was upon them. We find it in Exodus 20:18: 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.”

God came down to meet with his people and they were terrified. I would have been, too. Yahweh is awesome in glory. And when his people saw his glory they trembled with fear. This is the part of the story that I find unsettling. And I’ll tell you why it troubles me. It doesn’t trouble me that the Israelites trembled with fear. I understand that. What troubles me is how seldom people today tremble with the same fear. And I include myself in that. My uneasiness is the suspicion that many of us today believe in a domesticated God; a politically correct deity who never offends anyone. God on a leash! We have hacked off all the inconvenient bits and fit God into our box. And we keep him in that box until we need him. Then we get him out, let him do his bit, then we cram him back in the box and put him back on the shelf until the next time we need him.

Friends, the God of Sinai won’t be contained in any box! He will not be domesticated! He is dangerous! The thunder growled, the lightning flashed, the mountain trembled!! If the people break through, I will break out against them. He meant every word he said. We forget that to our peril! How often do we tremble before the God of the universe: majestic in holiness, awesome in glory?

But there is one other theme of truth that runs through this chapter that stands in splendid tension to what I have just been saying, and we must keep the tension tight and the bow well bent if we would keep our theology thoroughly Biblical. The third truth about God from this chapter is this: YAHWEH IS TENDER IN LOVE.

Here is the balance and the counter-chord of Biblical truth. Look at the language in Exodus 19:4: I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. God had been waiting for this day! He had waited with anticipation to meet with his people at Sinai. He delivered them from Egypt for this very purpose, to carry them on eagles’ wings and bring them to himself. Do you hear the love and the tenderness and the longing in that phrase? And what was his purpose? That out of all the nations of the earth, you might be my treasured possession; My special treasure, my crown jewels, my unique property. What love! What tenderness! You will be for me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. He redeemed them because of his unfailing love, and now he was entering into a special covenant relationship with them and putting his special seal and mark of identity upon them.

This may be my own over active imagination, but as the chapter unfolds, I am reminded very clearly of a wedding. First there is God’s own declaration in Exodus 19:4, that  I have brought you to myself. Then there are the elaborate preparations spelled out in 19:10: Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes, and be ready by the third day, because on that day Yahweh will come down… And finally there is the vivid description in Exodus 19:17: Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Somehow, the image of a wedding ceremony comes very clearly to my mind throughout this chapter. I can easily see adapting God’s words into the form of wedding vows: I have looked forward to this day. Out of all the women/men in the world I have chosen you, to be my precious, treasured one.

What a God we serve! Majestic in holiness! Awesome in glory! Tender in love!

How shall we respond? To answer that question, I would direct our thoughts to a New Testament passage in Hebrews 12.

In this text, the writer actually goes back and describes the events of God’s appearance on Mt. Sinai to make his point. We don’t have the time to go into all that now, but I just want to jump ahead to his conclusion to New Covenant believers in Hebrews 12:28-29: Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

How shall we respond? Let us be thankful. Why? In the context it is because we have escaped the judgment of this dangerous, powerful God whose voice shook the mountain. And then, let us worship God acceptably with reverence and awe.