Exodus 19-20: Mt. Sinai and the Ten Commandments

"And God spoke all these words, saying, 'I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.'" Exodus 20:1-3

What characterizes the people of a holy God? This is our question for this morning. Let me ask it again: what characterizes the people of a holy God? Some religions wear funny hats, some pray five times a day facing the same direction, and some do nothing at all, but what do Christians do in order to show that they have complete allegiance to Jesus, and nothing else? Well, stick around, and we'll find out together.

In Genesis 19, we see God bringing the people to the great and famous Mt. Sinai where the Ten Commandments were given. On approaching this mountain, God calls out to Moses and gives him a conditional promise to proclaim to the Israelites: "You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." (Ex. 19:4-6, emphasis mine). God's promise to the Israelite's here is rather simple: keep the covenant, and God will keep you. In other words, if the Israelites obeyed all of the commands and statutes of the Lord, God would make them a treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. If Israel yearned after the Lord their God, God promised to make them great. Sounds like a good deal to me, eh?

Well, the story continues, as God commands his people not to come up to Mt. Sinai, lest they die. Many flannelgraph pictures of Mt. Sinai make the mountain look peaceful, happy, and full of rainbows and dandelions, but that was not the case. When God descended to Mt. Sinai, the mountain was consumed with thunder, lightning, smoke, and fire. In other words, Mt. Sinai was terrifying. God even said that if any man or beast even touches the foot of the mountain, he would die (Ex. 19:20). This is extremely important, as we see here in Exodus that God is a God whose presence cannot be approached by sinful men. He is God, and we are not, and we cannot come near to him nor see his glory without perishing because of our sin.

Yet by the grace of God, Moses is allowed to ascend up the mountain to the presence of the Lord, where he is given the law. The law starts out with the Ten Commandments, which begin with a prelude that we often miss: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery" (Ex. 20:2). Before giving the law, God points to the Israelites how he has already done this work to save them. Thus we find something very, very important about these commands, that if we miss we will surely miss the point of these Ten Commandments as well as the rest of scripture. The point of this prelude is the following, that God has already saved his people, and they now must live for him. Note the pattern here: the Ten Commandments are not set up in a "you do these, and then I will accept you" type of pattern. Rather, the Ten Commandments are an "I've already saved you, now do these things" type of pattern. In other words, the pattern of salvation when it is spoken of in scripture (whether that is the Israelites being saved from slavery or us being saved from sin) is a pattern that starts with God's grace and then moves to our obedience. God did not save us nor the Israelites because we did something; he saved us because he did something, and now commands us to himself.

Furthermore, let us note how in Jesus Christ, all of these Ten Commandments have been fulfilled. Jesus said it for himself, that "until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished" (Matt. 5:18). Neither the Israelites nor you and I could fulfill all of the Ten Commandments, nevertheless all of the other hundreds of laws that were given at Mt. Sinai and afterwards, so why did God give them? Ultimately, he gave them to show the great standard of righteousness that is required if we are to be the people of God. He gave the law that it might characterize us and show us how we can stand apart from the rest of the world (that is, to be holy or other-worldly, set apart). Yet, God knew that we nor the Israelites could fulfill the law, thus he sent Jesus so that the heart of the law could be fulfilled on our behalf, lest we continue to fear at the judgment of Mt. Sinai.

Through all of this, we find that what characterizes the people of a holy God is holiness. These laws were ways of showing us how that holiness could be lived out so that God's people might be set apart from the world. However, the Israelites could not fulfill them, nor could we have fulfilled them, and thus we find that their ultimate purpose was not to give us a reason to justify ourselves (as the Pharisees did), but rather to use them as a mirror to see into our own hearts that we cannot love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, but we need someone else to do it for us, that is, Jesus Christ.