Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!  Amen.  Nobody knows for sure the location of the Biblical Mt. Sinai, although Jabal Musa in the southern Sinai Peninsula is usually considered the traditional site.  It isn’t the tallest mountain in the area (that would be Mt. Catherine), but at 7,497 feet rising from the desert floor, it is a majestic mountain.  I have not been there yet, but I hope to go someday.

Mt. Sinai is also known as Mt. Horeb, the mountain of God (Ex. 3:1), for it is there that the LORD God, Yahweh, first revealed his name when he called Moses from the burning bush.  Moses was 80 years old when God told him to go tell Pharoah to release the Israelites from slavery so they could worship Yahweh in the wilderness.  “I will be with you,” Yahweh declared, “and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve [worship] God on this mountain” (Ex. 3:12, ESV).[1]

True to God’s Word, just a few months later, Moses returned to Mt. Sinai—this time with more than 2 million Israelites rescued by God from slavery in Egypt.  Yahweh brought his people to Mt. Sinai in order to establish his covenant with them, a collection of commandments and promises that would define the relationship between God and his people.

Yet what the people of Israel saw, heard, and smelled at Mt. Sinai terrified them completely: lightning flashing in a dark cloud and a great inferno upon the mountain’s peak; the smell of burning smoke and an electric ozone odor; the sound of booming thunder, quaking rocks, and blasting trumpet.  God was putting on quite a pyrotechnic show!  But to what end?  To show the people of Israel that God was holy and alien, completely other.  So they would do well to pay attention to what he was about to say.

And what would God tell them on Mt. Sinai?  He would reveal various ceremonial regulations governing the way in which his people would worship him.  But above all, he gave them the Ten Commandments.  The people had sworn to obey all that God commanded them, but they couldn’t even keep the First Commandment.  For while Moses was on top of the mountain receiving the stone tablets with God’s covenant, meanwhile down below they were dancing around an idol of a golden calf and engaging in all kinds of perverse forms of worship.

When Moses came down the mountain, his face burned with anger and glowed from the glory of Yahweh, who had appeared to him.  Moses unleashed the fury of God’s wrath upon the people.  They cowered from the prophet who rescued them, because they had turned against the God who sent him.  Before it began, the covenant was already broken, evident by the broken pieces of the stone tablets Moses smashed upon the ground in his righteous anger.  Moses ground down the golden calf into powder, mixed it with water, and forced the people to drink the just desserts of their idolatry.

This is the terror of God in all his glory and righteousness.  Sinful man cannot bear the sight of God.  In fact, when Moses later begged God to show him his glory, Yahweh said, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live” (Ex. 33:20).  The Israelites couldn’t even look at Moses’ shining face unless he first covered it with a veil.  How much more terrible is the glory of a holy God!  So God told Moses that he would hide him in the cleft of a rock and reveal only his backside as he passed him by.  And instead of proclaiming his glory, God proclaimed his mercy instead: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6).

Did you know that the verse I just read is the most quoted verse of the Old Testament by the Old Testament?  We’re used to hearing the Old Testament quoted by Jesus and Paul in the New Testament.  But the Old Testament also quotes itself.  And this verse, Exodus 34:6, shows up in spades throughout the Psalms and Prophets: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6).  This is the core message of the Old Testament Scriptures—that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and full of love and covenant faithfulness.

Earlier God had threatened to break out against Israel and kill the whole lot of them because of the incident with the golden calf.  He even offered to start over with Moses as a new father of the chosen people—a new Abraham.  But Moses declined and instead interceded for the people of Israel.  And in his great mercy, God relented and forgave them.

The terrible discovery on Mt. Sinai was that God cut a covenant with his people which they could not keep.  Nor can we.  “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).  None of us keeps his commandments perfectly.  We are all disobedient idol worshipers, doomed to death and destruction, if left to our own devices.  The letter of the law kills sinners like us because we are unclean sinners totally unprepared to stand in God’s presence.

But the Spirit of the Law is God’s love for us in Christ Jesus.  In the flesh of Jesus, we finally see God face to face—and can live to tell about it!  The Apostle John writes: “And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:16-18).  Jesus wears no veil.  He is God-made-flesh, God incarnate, God with us and for us.

Jesus has made God’s glory known to us not in trumpet blasts and thick darkness, but through his blood shed on the cross and his plaintive cry, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).  God relented of the disaster he planned against Israel after Moses interceded for his people.  But they still died in the desert.  Not one of that generation except Joshua would enter the Promised Land—not even Moses (but that’s a story for a different day).  Yet when Jesus interceded for us on Mt. Calvary, God not only forgave us but gave us eternal life.  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).  We do not have to die in the desert or gulp down the guilt of our sin.  Christ died to forgive you fully and freely.  In the name of the Father and of T the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

[1] All Scripture references, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.