It took them twenty days to travel three hundred and four miles to the Red Sea, and they spent eight days camped there until Pharaoh’s armies arrived, and they crossed the Red Sea.
It took them another twenty days to travel one hundred and sixty-one miles to Sinai after crossing the Red Sea, including seven days camping in the wilderness of Sin and two days battling the Amalekites at Rephidim.
Therefore, they left Goshen on Passover, on the 14th day of the first month, arrived at the Wilderness of Sin on the 15th day of the second month and arrived at the Desert of Sinai on the 1st day of the third month, Exodus 19:1-2.
So all in all, the Bible tells us that it was a forty-four-day journey, covering around four hundred and sixty-five miles in distance from Goshen to Sinai, which is roughly the same distance from London to Scotland.
It has taken them three months of trusting God to get to this place, but they are finally here. They have seen God’s deliverance from Egypt, received His guidance on the way to go, seen His glorious victory at the Red Sea, seen God provide food and water miraculously, and have seen a prayerful victory won over the Amalekites.
Israel will stay here until Numbers 10, which is more than fifty-seven chapters of Scripture which are devoted to what happened to Israel in the year they camped out at Mount Sinai.
In one sense, all that has gone before has meant to bring them to this place. God said this shall be a sign to you that I have sent you, when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain, Exodus 3:12.
Sinai was the place where Moses had his ‘burning bush’ experience with God; now the people will experience some of what Moses had before. If the people are going to meet God at this mountain, it can only happen because Moses had already been there.
The people can’t go further than their leader. If Mount Sinai looks like anything, it looks like a huge pulpit, a sudden, steep outcropping of mountains out in the wilderness. Here, God would preach the most dramatic sermon ever heard!
Moses, led by God, goes up on the mountain to meet with God, Exodus 3:12, and the Lord speaks to Moses again. God associates the nation with the weakest and most carnal of the patriarchs; they are more like Jacob than Abraham or Isaac, Exodus 19:3 / Jeremiah 31:31.
God gave a message to the people through Moses, a message regarding the purpose and destiny He had for Israel, a destiny based on what God had already done for them.
God’s love and care were shown for Israel already, as He bore them on eagle’s wings, Exodus 19:4. This implies He brought them with a view to having fellowship with Him. God didn’t deliver Israel so they could ‘do their own thing,’ but so they could be God’s people.
It is said that an eagle does not carry her young in her claws like other birds; the young eagles attach themselves to the back of the mother eagle and are protected as they are carried. An arrow from a hunter must pass through the mother eagle before it can touch the young eagle on her back.
Notice the terms and conditions are laid down with a choice; the word ‘if’ tells us it’s a choice, Exodus 19:5 / Joshua 24:15. If they fully obey God and if they keep His covenant.
He says, Keep My covenant, the covenant was greater than the law itself, the covenant God would make with Israel involved law, sacrifice, and the choice to obey and be blessed or disobey and be cursed, Exodus 19:5.
God intended for Israel to be a special treasure unto Him, a people with a unique place in God’s great plan, a people of great value and concern to God. And so if they meet this requirement, then God will choose them to be His treasured possession, His kingdom of priests and His holy nation, Exodus 19:6.
All this could only be fulfilled if Israel would stay in God’s Word, if they would obey God’s voice and keep His covenant, then. Apart from knowing and doing God’s Word, God’s destiny for the nation would never be fulfilled.
Dummelow, in his commentary, says the following.
‘The Jewish nation fulfilled its destiny, through its rejection of the Messiah; however, the sacred function of Israel passed over to the Christian church, to which St. Peter transferred the titles given to Israel in these two verses, Exodus 19:5-6 / 1 Peter 2:9 / Revelation 1:6.’
Paul longed for Christians to know how great a treasure they were to God; he prayed they would know what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, Ephesians 1:18.
God intended for Israel to be a kingdom of priests, where every believer could come before God themselves, and everyone could represent God to the nations. Peter reminds us we are a royal priesthood, those who serve God as both kings and priests, and He has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, Revelation 1:6.
God’s original plan was for all of the Israelites to be these things, not just a select few. And their task was to reconcile the world back to God, and that task still applies to Christians today. In contrast to those who did not believe, as the Israel of the Old Testament, Peter says that Christians are four things, 1 Peter 2:9.
1. All Christians are a chosen people or a chosen generation, as some translations have it.
We didn’t choose God; God chose us, Ephesians 1:4. All Christians are a part of the family of God with whom God has established a covenant relationship according to Matthew 26:26-29.
2. All Christians are a part of a royal priesthood.
All Christians are now the priests of God, and we all offer up spiritual sacrifices and the service of our lives in service to the world according to Romans 12:1. And so the church is God’s royal priesthood to minister to the world of unbelievers.
3. All Christians are part of a holy nation.
The church of God’s people has been separated from the world because we voluntarily submit to our King Jesus. And as John 17:14-17 reminds us, Christians are in the world, but not of the world.
4. All Christians are God’s special possession.
Now, if we were around during New Testament times, the chances are you would have encountered someone who was demon-possessed. And how would you know that they were demon-possessed? Because of their behaviour and the way they live and talk.
How is the world going to know we belong to God? Well, to put it simply, the world should know we belong to God because we should be people who are possessed by God. And that possession is shown in the way we act, the way we think, live and talk, Galatians 5:22-23.
And so God’s plan for Israel here at Sinai was that every single one of them should be His treasured possession, a part of His kingdom of priests and His holy nation. And their task was the same as our task today, to proclaim that good news, which we call the Gospel.
God intended for Israel to be a holy nation, a nation and people set apart from the rest of the world, the particular possession of God, fit for His purposes. As God’s people, we must be set apart, thinking, and doing differently from others in this world.
Moses goes back and summons the elders and sets before them all the words the LORD had commanded him to speak, Exodus 19:7. Before God lays out His covenant with Israel, He desires to know their state of heart, will they accept it or reject it? Deuteronomy 5:29.
The people agree to obey the covenant, and Moses returns to the LORD, Exodus 19:8 / Deuteronomy 5:27-28. The people will later be challenged to receive the covenant again, after they have heard its terms, and they do, Exodus 24:1-8.
Moses here is acting as a true priest, as an intermedium between God and the people, yet God spoke audibly to Moses, that the people may hear when God speak with him, so everyone would know that it was really God speaking, Exodus 19:9.
Clarke, in his commentary, says the following.
‘The Jews consider this as the fullest evidence their fathers had of the Divine mission of Moses; themselves were permitted to see this awfully glorious sight, and to hear God himself speak out of the thick darkness: for before this, as Rabbi Maymon remarks, they might have thought that Moses wrought his miracles by sorcery or enchantment; but now, hearing the voice of God himself, they could no longer disbelieve nor even doubt.’
God may refuse to speak to the resisting heart if there is not an initial openness to the things of God; God may honour that person’s hardness and refuse to bring His life-giving Word. Are we playing games and resisting God’s word?
God commands that His holy presence on Sinai be respected. God was going to appear to Israel in a spectacular fashion, and before this could happen, the people had to prepare themselves. They had to be consecrated, Exodus 13:2, for two days and wash their clothes, Exodus 19:10 / Hebrews 4:16.
Coffman, in his commentary, says the following.
‘A customary element of consecration or sanctification was that of changing to clean clothes, as when Jacob ordered his family so to do in Genesis 35:2.’
They had to be ready by the third day because God was going to come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people, Exodus 19:11. The coming of God to Mount Sinai did not mean the people were free to go to the mountain and fellowship with God. They had to keep their distance behind a barrier, and the penalty for failing to keep their distance was death, Exodus 19:12.
Clarke, in his commentary, says the following.
‘Whether this was a line marked out on the ground, beyond which they were not to go, or whether a fence was actually made to keep them off, we cannot tell; or whether this fence was made all round the mountain, or only at that part to which one wing of the camp extended, is not evident.’
Any person or animal killed for getting too close would be regarded as so unholy they could not even be touched, they had to be executed with stones or arrows, Exodus 19:13 / Hebrews 12:20.
The people could only come near at God’s invitation when the trumpet sounds long, Exodus 19:13 / Exodus 19:16 / Exodus 19:19. When the signal was given, Moses, with the priests and elders, could come up the mountain, but only Moses was to approach God, Exodus 24:1-2.
If there is anything basic to human nature, it is that we need boundaries. In setting these boundaries and providing the death penalty for breaching them, God is showing Israel that obedience is more important than their feelings. We don’t doubt that some bold Israelites felt like going beyond the boundaries, but they were to submit their feelings to obedience.
The people had to demonstrate their desire for purity by putting on clean clothes, Exodus 19:14, and restraining their flesh. That is not having sexual relations with their wives, Exodus 19:15.
The meeting with God could only come on the third day, Exodus 19:15; anyone who tried to meet with God before this would be coming before God had opened the way.
On the morning of the third day, notice there was thunder, lightning, a thick cloud over the mountain, Exodus 19:16. The presence of God was signalled by signs of His power and glory, the thunderings and lightnings, and a thick cloud must have seemed terrifying to the people, Hebrews 12:21.
Beyond all one could see, hear, and feel there, then came along a loud blast of a trumpet, a trumpet coming not from the camp but from heaven itself, no wonder all the people who were in the camp trembled! Exodus 19:16.
Then, Moses could lead the people right up to the barrier, to the very foot of Mount Sinai, where they could see, smell, hear, and virtually taste the fire which engulfed the mountain, as well as feel the earth shake under their feet when the whole mountain quaked greatly, Exodus 19:17-18.
Crake, in his commentary, says the following.
‘For though they might not touch the mount till they had permission, yet when the trumpet sounded long, it appears they might come up to the nether part of the mount, Exodus 19:13 / Deuteronomy 4:11, and when the trumpet had ceased to sound, they might then go up unto the mountain, as to any other place.’
When God comes down, Mount Sinai is completely enveloped in smoke, because the LORD descended on it in fire, Exodus 19:18. There was thunder, lightning, and thick smoke, and the entire mountain was shaken. God then descends upon Mount Sinai in fire; the smoke was like the smoke of a furnace because of the way it was ascending off of the mountain, Exodus 19:18.
Constable, in his commentary, says the following.
‘God again used the symbol of fire to reveal Himself on this mountain, Exodus 3:2-5. Fire is a symbol of His holiness that enlightens, purges, and refines.’
In the midst of all this, the sound of the trumpet blast becomes longer and louder and longer and louder, until Moses speaks to God, Exodus 19:19, perhaps asking Him to stop!
What Israel heard from the cloud was a sound that they recognised was from God, Exodus 20:1 / Deuteronomy 4:11-12. They did not actually hear the audible words that Moses heard.
Moses goes up on Mount Sinai to the immediate presence of God, Hebrews 12:28-29. As the people trembled in terror at the foot of the mountain, Moses needed the courage to go to the top and meet with God.
We can imagine all the people of Israel thinking Moses was crazy for going up there! Yet, of all people, Moses could have such courage because he knew God not only in terms of this awesome power but also in terms of His gracious kindness.
God tells Moses to go back down and warn the people again about respecting the holiness of His presence on Sinai, Exodus 19:21. Those who through rebellion, curiosity, or raw daring who would presume to go up on the mountain would perish, Exodus 19:21.
The glory and greatness of God weren’t to be a matter subjected to scientific inquiry or a way to prove one’s own manhood. Even the priests, who approach the LORD, need to be consecrated, or the LORD will break out against them, Exodus 19:22. No one ones who these priests are but we do know they are Levitical priests because that didn’t existence at this time, Exodus 28:1.
Moses says to the LORD that the people cannot come up Mount Sinai, because God Himself warned them to put limits around the mountain and set it apart as holy, Exodus 19:23.
Just because God called Moses and Aaron up did not mean there was an open invitation for the whole nation to meet with God on Mount Sinai; the barrier was still to stand, God would break out against them, Exodus 19:24 / 2 Corinthians 3:7. Moses went down to the people and told them what God had said, Exodus 19:25.
Try to imagine being there, imagine that God the Father Himself is descending from His throne in heaven to visit these people with His manifest presence. What a sight and sound this must have been, and so God calls Moses to come to the top of the mountain to meet and talk with Him; no one else was allowed to go up.
Exodus 19 gives a powerful picture of the awesome fear each Israelite must have felt at Mount Sinai; surely this would have inspired them to a holy walk! In fact, many today feel we need to get more of the thunder and fire and trembling of Mount Sinai into people as a way of keeping them from sin.
Yet, not forty days from this event, the whole nation will be practising an orgy around a golden calf, praising it as the god which brought them out of Egypt! Israel had awe, but little submission of their will.
Chadwick, in his commentary, says the following.
‘Awe is one thing: the submission of the will is another.’
Hebrews 12 tells us loud and clear that we have come to a different mountain, that our salvation and relationship with God is centred at Mount Zion, not Mount Sinai, Hebrews 12:18-24.
Sinai speaks of fear and terror, but Zion speaks of love and forgiveness. Sinai is in a dry desert, but Zion is the city of the Living God. Sinai, with all its tears and power, is earthly, but the Mount Zion we come to is heavenly and spiritual.
At Sinai, only Moses could come and meet God, but at Zion, there is an innumerable company, a general assembly. Sinai had guilty men in fear, but Zion has just men made perfect.
At Sinai, Moses is the mediator, but at Zion, Jesus is the mediator. Sinai put forth an old covenant, ratified by the blood of animals, but Zion has a New Covenant, ratified by the blood of God’s precious Son. Sinai was about barriers and exclusion, but Zion is all about the invitation. Sinai is Law, Zion is grace.
Therefore, we shouldn’t come to Zion as if we were coming to Sinai, put away your hesitation and get bold in coming to God! However, there is much for us to learn at Mount Sinai.
We learn of God’s holy requirements and what we must do before we can come to Him. We must be willing to receive God’s word, we must be set apart, and we must be cleansed. We can only come after the third day; we must respect God’s boundary; we must restrain the flesh, and we must know that we come to a holy God.