trembling

Mount Sinai must have been quite an experience. It certainly wasn’t like the pictures in the children’s story bibles.

Far from a beautiful experience, Exodus 19 describes a dangerous situation. God warned his people that if they tried to come up the mountain to see what was going on, he would destroy them. Then came the cloud and the noise.

The overwhelmingly forbidding atmosphere is captured in Exodus 20:18-19: “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’s presence seems in scripture always to evoke fear, maybe because any person who encountered God was forced also to face their own sin. It’s as if meeting God always carried with it a gut-felt reminder that our relationship with this Being has been shattered by our own waywardness.

I’m reminded of another passage about Mount Sinai, in Hebrews 12. There, this mountain is contrasted in with Mount Zion. On Mount Zion, instead of being kept away, God’s elect sing in the streets, mingling with the angels and living forever in the presence of God. No more fear.

But Mount Zion isn’t anything special unless I, like the Israelites, can feel in the pit of my stomach the unworthiness exposed at Mount Sinai. God’s perfect law, his Ten Commandments, were given that day, and since then every man and woman has failed to obey them. God’s law showed the Israelites, and Jesus showed me, what Godly living looks like. But it also set a standard that I can never meet.

Once again, I’m reminded to be grateful for Jesus’ act of salvation. This time, it’s the fearful spectacle of Mount Sinai, whose rumbling, thunderous, fiery aspect shows the latent power of God’s anger. Anger, praise Jesus, that I won’t have to face.