Imagine that you are on Mount Sinai, the mountain of the Lord, in the desert of modern-day Saudi Arabia. You are south of Israel, south even of modern-day Jordan. The year is about 12 or 1300 BC, and you are on the mountain with Moses where God would one day give his Ten Commandments to Moses—and to the world—giving meaning and direction to the gracious covenant he had made with his people. This was several months earlier, however, and the circumstances were very different.

You hear the voice of God, full of power, speak his name: “Moses! Moses!”

“Here am I,” Moses replies.

“Put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

A burning bush had brought the aging shepherd to this high place of revelation.

And God continues, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

Imagine how you would feel? At this point, Moses had not yet confronted one of the world’s greatest powers, Egypt’s Pharaoh. He still hadn’t led the Hebrew people through the waters of the Red Sea just before the waters crashed back down to the seabed and destroyed Pharoah’s Army. You look over at Moses and one of history’s greatest leaders of all time hides his face, for he was afraid to look at God. It occurs to you that he looks so … human.

“I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt,” God continues, “and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”

Tentatively, Moses replies: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”

God’s voice of power suddenly changes, and the compassion you hear in the tone sends a chill down your spine as your heart leaps with joy: “But I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain.”

The stage is therefore set for the journey to begin, a journey that would lead Moses FROM Sinai to Egypt, and back TO Sinai. The unfolding drama of Israel’s salvation would involve frequent confrontation and rejection.

“When you go back to Egypt,” God continued, “see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.”

As this sinks in, Moses starts to shake. And God continues, “Thus says the Lord, “Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, ‘Let my son go that he may serve me; and if you refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay YOUR firstborn son!”’

That word of God came true, of course, in an event which the people of God would forever recall and celebrate as a mighty demonstration of the saving grace of God – the Passover.

God speaks again, and this time you feel His power. It’s almost as if the ground beneath your feet, in fact, Mt. Sinai itself, is shaking like a tree in the wind. But the ground isn’t moving; it just feels that way. “Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month they shall take every man a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for each household. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old; you shall take it from the sheep or from the goats; and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs in the evening. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two posts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat them. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. In this manner you shall eat it, your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.

“For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will smite all the firstborn of the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments; I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you, upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.”

Suddenly you are transported across time and space to Egypt. It is midnight. Your head is spinning, as you realize that it is the night of the Passover. As you begin to realize what is happening, you are filled at once with dread, sadness … and awe at God’s power. It’s horrifying, yet there’s and even greater feeling that, despite it all, justice is being done. You whisper a prayer thanking God that you are alive. Slowly, lights appear, and you hear the cries in the night as the people of Egypt realize that the Lord has smitten all the firstborn in the land of Egypt … from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon. Even the firstborn of the cattle are gone. They are just … gone.

You look to your left, and there is a doorway with fresh blood painted above it. You enter to find Moses standing in the room, and you hear God speak again: “Rise up, go forth from among my people, both you and the people of Israel, and go, serve the Lord, as you have said. Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone!”

You’re reminded of your childhood Sunday School class, where you learned that on that very day the Lord brought the people of Israel out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and into the wilderness of Sinai. Suddenly the night melts into day, and you are standing beside Moses, looking west, beside the Red Sea. The Hebrew people are running, scared, trying to get away from Pharoah’s army who is only a few hundred yards behind them. You look up at the towering walls of water, and just as the last one of God’s chosen people reaches the shore, suddenly the water crashes down and Pharaoh’s army vanishes in the tumult.

You look to your right, and there is Moses. With a tear of joy in his eye, he speaks, almost in a whisper, and the pitch of his voice rises and falls as you hear him sing, with a quiet, raspy voice, that grows in strength and volume: “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and its rider he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. Who is like thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like thee, majestic in holiness, terrible in glorious deeds, doing wonders? Thou didst stretch out thy right hand, the earth swallowed them. Thou hast led in thy steadfast love the people whom thou hast redeemed; thou hast guided them by thy strength to thy holy abode.”

As you turn to look back at the churning waters of the Red Sea, suddenly you are back on Mount Sinai, where you began, alone with God and Moses.

“Go to the people,” God is saying, “and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments and be ready by the third day; for on the third day the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. Take heed that you do not go up into the mountain or touch the border of it; whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death—he shall not live. When the trumpet sounds a long blast, you shall come up to the mountain. Be ready by the third day!”

On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, and a thick cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God; and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and the smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder that transcended sound such that you could feel it to the marrow in your bones. And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain; and when the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, Moses went up.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me.”

The first word that we hear from God on Mount Sinai, you realize, is a word of grace. Why had this never occurred to you before? You recognize that it is spoken by the One who proved himself to Israel—and to us—as God our Savior, the God who made us, who redeemed us, who called us out of our bondage into the freedom of the children of God, who joins us in our need and saves us from it. Whatever else the Lord may say upon these sacred heights flows from that saving love, his directives for our life and worship, his concern for the sanctity of human life, of marriage and property and reputation—all of these are the good words of a good God, who seeks only good for those he calls and saves to be his own, to live under him in righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.

Suddenly, you awaken, and as you rub the sleep from your eyes, you stare ahead into the silent darkness. What have you just seen? Excitedly, you turn on the light, pull the Bible from your nightstand, turn to Exodus 20, and reread the Ten Commandments. Looking up, you have so many thoughts, so many questions!

Where do we go from Mount Sinai? For ancient Israel, the answer to that question was: The Promised Land! And you realize that for us, the answer is the same. For us, the background is the same as well, except that it is now enriched, fulfilled, made clear by One whom this same God has sent to be in person what the ancient sacrifice of Passover foretold … the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. For the law was given through Moses; grace and the truth came through Jesus Christ.

Another mountain calls us on our Lenten journey, another hill where God himself descends to speak his saving word.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace.

For there we may behold the Lamb of God himself endure for us the punishment which we, instead, deserve—the death of God the Father’s firstborn Son.

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

And so, we journey from Mount Sinai, assured as Moses was so long ago: God’s presence will go with us, and He will give us rest.