Chapter 4
Mount Sinai
Dear reader, we now arrive at the Mount of Honor, or the Mount of Glory, described in the 19th Chapter of the Book of Exodus. I am of the opinion that no mountain has cut as great a swath through history as the mountain that we now have before us, unless it is Mount Calvary, and indeed Mount Sinai and Mount Calvary are twins, for it was at Mount Sinai that God gave the Law, and Mount Calvary is where we receive the Gospel, and on these two hang the hope of man’s eternal destiny.
Mount Sinai was on the road between the Red Sea and the Land of Promise. It was at Mt. Sinai that God gave the Law to man, where God spoke to Moses and called him from the plains to the top of the mount, and there descended in a flame of fire and talked to the man Moses face to face forty days and nights, and gave him the Ten Commandments on the tables of stone. For three thousand years men have been trying to bring their lives up to God’s beautiful standard:
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything 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 shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days shalt thou labor, and do. all thy work:
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee:
Thou shalt not kill
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.
It is equal rights of all men to live up to this standard and special rights to none.
The Law was the only man of their counsel for nearly fifteen hundred years. We see that the first law that God ever gave men was from the top of the Mount Sinai. We see Moses climbing the great old mountain, age-worn and thunder-shaken and lightning-scarred, but on that special occasion we see this holy mount all covered in fire and smoke, and it was made sacred forever on account of the presence of the Almighty God who descended and called Moses up from the congregation of Israelites and talked to him face to face, and then gave the Law and the Commandments to him.
Not only did the Lord then and there give him the Commandments, but the reader will remember that it was on the mountain that God gave Moses the pattern of the tabernacle, which was to be built by him, and from the building of the tabernacle the worship of God took on a new form. Here the Lord was to talk to men from the tabernacle; something new on earth, you see. Up till that time the Lord had used His throne in the sky as a tabernacle to talk to men out of, but after building the temple in the wilderness, we see the Lord coming very near to men and talking to them from between the Cherubim in the little tabernacle. But He gave the pattern to Moses while he was on the mountain.
I am of the opinion that the world has never seen anything that looked like the mountain on that special occasion. The Israelites at the foot of the mountain fled from the presence of God, and Moses himself said that the sight was so awful that he did exceedingly quake and tremble. It took a man of real courage to climb that mountain, all covered in fire. The glory of the Lord hung over the mountain, and we see from the appearance of Moses when he got back to the camp of Israel that the place must have been something wonderful, for his face shone and the glory of the Lord was on him in such a way that his own brethren could not talk to him, and asked that he put a veil over his face. The beauty of the whole thing was seen in the fact that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone.
Well, all of that was brought about by Moses’ keeping company with God on the mountain top. The man that will leave the folks and climb the mountain and meet God will get a shining face every time. No man can keep company with the Lord and not get a little of the presence of the Lord to rub off on himself, and the longer he stays with the Lord the greater the shine. For a man to stand and look at the face of the Lord for forty days he is going to get a glimpse of the Lord to stick to his face. The shining that Moses had was only the reflection of the Lord on his face.
Mount Sinai made an impression on Moses that he never forgot, and, in fact, never will. He will be telling us about Mount Sinai for the next million years, for it was there he met God face to face, and it was there that God gave him the Law, and it was there that God gave him the Ten
Commandments, and it was there God gave him the pattern for the tabernacle and it was there that he tarried forty days and forty nights, as far as we know without eating or drinking and without sleeping. As far as we know, he never got thirsty and never got sleepy and never got tired and never got lonesome nor homesick in the least.
So we see that Mount Sinai made an epoch in the life of Moses, such that he will never get over in all time to come. Apart from the presence of God and the burning of the mountain and the giving of the Law there is something about a great mountain that is perfectly beautiful. A man can stand in the presence of a great mountain and feel perfectly awe stricken. A kind of a feeling of greatness and adoration seems to creep over a fellow and he feels like he was in the presence of something that was not man-made. A feeling comes over him that nobody but God can make a mountain. A great mountain will stop the mouth of an infidel and put a padlock on his under jaw, for nobody can make mountains but God. He made Mount Sinai and then He made Moses, and then He gave the Law to Moses from the top of Sinai, and I believe every word of it just the same as if I had been the man that the Lord called to the top of Sinai and gave the Law to. I know He did, for the Law is not man-made; it is God-given. It was not gotten up by man; it was handed down from heaven. God Himself was the giver and Moses was the receiver, and we are the keepers and the rejoicers over the fact that God loved this old world well enough to give us a Law and the Commandments.
We are praying and planning and longing to see the day come when we may stand on the top of Mount Sinai and behold His glory with our natural eyes. If it is our Father’s will, we want to see the mountain before we go up.