On His Own Terms

The mountain trembled, the earth shook. Great cracks of thunder rumbled and lightning pierced the fog. Acrid smoke burned in their nostrils as the ever-louder trumpet blast rang within their ears.

They’d been prepared for this – washing their garments, abstaining from marital relations.

They huddled at the foot of the mountain, terrified. The mountain itself was fenced off and they’d been solemnly warned not to approach.

Moses went up and came back down. He took the priests back up and they ate and drank. They came back down and God spoke from the trembling mountain such that all the people trembled too.

It’s easy, when thinking of the main events of Exodus, to think only of the plagues and of the Exodus out of Egypt. We think of God revealed as the deliverer, redeemer, maybe as hardener of Pharaoh’s heart. And then we move on to Numbers in our minds.

That’s why I’m so glad our ladies’ Bible study is studying Exodus – and that I joined mid-year, just as we were reading through the second half of the book, from Exodus 19 onward.

Here we see God as terrible, inspiring fear and awe in His people in scenes like the one described. Lest the Israelites become cavalier, assuming that the God who rescued them and terrified the Egyptians was no one to be feared, God showed His great power to them not in conquering their enemies but in making a mountain quake and thundering down His stipulations for His people’s behavior.

What strikes me, though, about the laws given in Exodus, is that, while some are civil rules about how to live together, the bulk are something else entirely.

First, God tells Moses what to tell the people about approaching the mountain where God was. Then God gives some general rules. Then He describes in minute detail how the tabernacle was to be constructed, emphasizing again and again that it must be “according to the pattern given to Moses on the mountain.”

Moses comes down from the mountain to find the people worshiping in a way not prescribed by God. Moses’ wrath breaks out against the people – but it is nothing compared to God’s wrath. Moses returns to the mountain to intercede and to receive a new set of the law, and then he returns to the camp, where the people build the tabernacle according to the pattern given to Moses on the mountain.

In the second half of Exodus, we see a God who must be approached on His own terms.

His terms are minute and absolute – nothing short of perfection is acceptable.

Yet Moses and Joshua ascend the mountain and return unscathed. Had they met God’s impossibly high standards for how He must be approached?

No.

The second half of Exodus reveals an unapproachable God approached. It looks forward to the One who would perfectly approach the Living God on His own terms, who would pave the way for sinful humans to approach God and live.

We must approach God on His own terms, Exodus tells us.

The rest of Scripture agrees.

And His terms are Christ.