IN the third month after Israel had left Egypt they reached Sinai. At the burning bush, Jehovah had said to Moses, "This shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: when thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain." (Exod. 3:1212And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain. (Exodus 3:12).) And now, after a succession of marvels and manifestations, such as had never been seen before, the whole nation of Israel was assembled in the valley before Horeb.
God was about to reveal Himself to the people from Sinai, but in a very different way from that in which He had revealed Himself from the burning bush. There He had shown that He was with His people in their furnace of affliction; on Sinai, He was about to make Himself known out of “the midst of the fire," in the terror of His righteousness.
The bare and rocky peaks of Sinai were the chosen places for this manifestation of the terrors of Jehovah. There is a great plain facing towards one front of the mountain, and there, it is believed, Israel was gathered together. Certainly, the whole of the people could have stood upon it, and all could from it have had the mountain in full view as Jehovah descended upon it.
The first great lesson Israel, and indeed mankind, was taught at Sinai, was the fact that God is utterly inapproachable on that mount. Bounds were set all about it, and any creature that should draw near to it, and touch it, was under the penalty of instant death. "There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be man or beast, it shall not live." (Exod. 19:1313There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount. (Exodus 19:13).) It was the highest sacrilege to touch the burning mount where God was. Even after Moses had ascended Sinai to meet God, God sent him down again to warn the people, lest they should approach to gaze upon Jehovah; and, on Moses stating, bounds had been set about it, according to the divine command, " the Lord said unto, him, Away, get thee down, and thou shalt come up, thou, and Aaron with thee; but let not the priests and the people break through to come up unto the Lord, lest He break forth upon them." (ver. 24). By word given, and measures taken, none was able to approach the place where God was. The awful surroundings of Jehovah's presence fixed the same reality into the minds of the people. Thunders and lightnings attested the power of the divine majesty on the mount, while the thick cloud, which hid Him from human gaze, witnessed to His being afar off from man. The earth itself shook, the mount trembled, and was altogether on a smoke, and the devouring fire, where God was on the mount, threatened to consume sinful man.
As the trumpet sounded long and loud, all the camp trembled, and the people removed and stood afar off at "the thunderings, and the noise of the trumpet."
Forty years after the event, when Moses was recounting to Israel the great story of Sinai, he reminded them no less than four times how Jehovah had spoken to them "out of the midst of the fire " (Deut. 5:2424And ye said, Behold, the Lord our God hath showed us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire: we have seen this day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth. (Deuteronomy 5:24)), and also what the effect had been upon them of Jehovah's speaking. They could not bear to hear the words save through the mediator—''This 'This great fire will consume us: if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, then we shall die....Go thou near, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say: and speak thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee " (vers. 25, 27).
By plain words, by signs and terrors, God showed on Sinai that man could not approach Him when He descended to the earth to demand obedience to His laws. Yet these laws, these Ten Commandments, required nothing from man, save that which ought to be rendered by man to God and man.
Let us consider the first two. God's people were to have no other gods than Jehovah. The heathen had their own special gods, and they added to these the gods of adjoining countries, as policy might demand. There can be no mixture in the service of the living God. He is God, and He alone. Every such mixture is abomination to Him. The second is: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and she wing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My commandments."
These words Israel heard, and they were told also, they should not make to God, gods, of silver, or of gold. Nevertheless, hardly had one short month elapsed, and, while Moses himself was still upon Sinai communing with God, they gathered themselves together, and said to Aaron, "Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him." (Exod. 32:11And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. (Exodus 32:1).) This appears incredible after such a revelation as they had had, and after such effects had been produced in them by it; but the ingrained love of idols in man is not to be gainsaid. So Israel mule a molten calf of gold, and worshipped it, and sacrificed unto it. They broke God's law almost as soon as they heard it, and before it came to them in written words. Shall we also, who are professing Christians, be unmindful of this sin, and of the tendency of our race that led to it? Let us not forget that in a large part of Christendom the second commandment is omitted in catechisms of Christian instruction, and that in our own land, in our present day, the Ten Commandments, which the reformers had placed prominently in churches, are being quietly removed! The words of it are so explicit, that such as bow down themselves to their graven images, or likenesses, cannot endure the plain word of God, and they find it more convenient to obliterate the words of God from before their eyes, than to give up looking at their images and pictures.
The sin of Israel awoke God's anger. He threatened to destroy the guilty people. But the mediator's prayer was heard. Then God bade Moses go down to the idolatrous people, and as he descended, accompanied by Joshua, the unwonted sound in the camp rolled up the mountain-side. There is a gap in the mount which commands a view of the plain we have mentioned; it is not improbable that, as Moses and Joshua neared this gap, the sound reached their ears. Joshua mistook it, "There is a noise of war in the camp." Moses detected it at once, "It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome; but the noise of them that sing do I hear." Then as they neared the camp, the calf and the dancing around it meet their eyes. His soul was horror-stricken at the enormity of Israel's wickedness. Ingratitude and rebellion of the worst kind were combined in their great sin.
Overcome with the sin he saw, and surely inspired by God so to do, Moses lifted up his hands and dashed down the tables of stone graven with the finger of God.
Israel had broken the law, and Moses broke the tables whereon the words were graven. How could such tables ever be kept in man's custody?
But never let us forget, God cannot break His word The Ten Commandments stand for ever. Neither Israel's idolatries nor the scissors of Christendom can mar or mutilate their truth. God demands obedience to them, and as He does so, He speaks out of the fire! He speaks out of the consuming force of His righteousness. And when He thus speaks none can draw nigh! The impiety, nay, the rebellion against His majesty which excludes one of His Ten Commandments from the tables is a sin of the deepest dye; but what shall be said of those who boast in their Bibles, and yet profess to draw near to God on the basis of their good works, in other words, on their law keeping? God speaks His law out of the fire, and on this basis none can approach His presence and live.
Eventually the law was re-written on tables of stone and brought to the camp of Israel, but the finger that wrote the eternal words of Jehovah was not that of God, but of the mediator.