FORTY days and forty nights, or nearly six weeks! That was a long time was it not for a person to go without eating or drinking? And yet it was what Moses did when he stayed for that length of time up on Mt. Horeb.
When God called him to go up to Him into the mount, Moses rose up, and took with him his servant Joshua, and they went on the mountain side. They left the elders behind, telling them to wait until they would come back to them. And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered it. The glory of the Lord was there on Mt. Sinai and the cloud covered it for six days. We are not told what Moses did during the six days, but doubtless he waited in the presence of that glory. To the children of Israel who gazed upon the mountain top, the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire.
On the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from the cloud, and Moses went into the midst of the cloud, up into the mount and there he remained for forty days and forty nights. During that time he ate no bread and drank no water.
At the end of forty days and, forty nights, God gave to Moses two tables of stone, and on these tables, with God’s own finger, were written the ten commandments; they were not written with pencil or pen but graven in the stone.
There are those who say that God could not give a book and thus communicate His thoughts to man. How little they who thus speak, know of God’s power! Could not He who made the worlds, make tables of stone and grave upon them that which He chose? And could not He who made man, guide by His spirit, the thoughts of man, leading him to write that which He would have him write, and in the very words which the Holy Ghost would give? (1 Cor. 2:13.) It is thus God has communicated His mind to man, and woe be to him who lightly esteems it.
When the Lord delivered the two tables of stone, “written with the finger of God,” to Moses, He told him to arise and go quickly down from the mountain for the people had corrupted themselves. So Moses turned and went down the mountain side. And again we are told, “the mount burned with fire.”
God was having to do with a people whose hearts had already turned away from Him, and whose ways were corrupt. No wonder He manifested His glory before their eyes as a “devouring fire,” which would speak of unsparing judgment. It was for them the loud thunders of Sinai—not the sweet grace of Zion.
But even in this day of grace, God represents Himself to His people as a “consuming fire,” His chastening rod must fall upon those who will allow evil to go unjudged. How carefully we should walk before Him!
ML 10/11/1903