“The Lord came down on Mount Sinai at the top of the mountain. Then the Lord summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and he went up” (Exodus 19:20). “The appearance of the Lord’s glory to the Israelites was like a consuming fire on the mountaintop. Moses entered the cloud as he went up the mountain, and he remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights” (Exodus 24:17–18).
Think about that. How would you react if the President of the United States invited you into the Oval Office? I would be amazed and humbled! The King of kings “summoned Moses,” the Almighty invited Moses to visit on the majestic Mountain of God. How amazing! How humbling!
Now remember, we’ve been invited to meet with God. “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Jesus has extended an official invitation to each of us to “approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
Two things are most noteworthy about Moses’s forty-day pilgrimage to the rocky and rugged peak of the eight-thousand-foot Mount Sinai. First, recorded in chapters twenty through thirty-one in Exodus are God’s blueprints for the construction of the Tabernacle. God gave intricate details concerning the tent, about every piece of furniture, and about the service of the priests who were commissioned to minister there. Although these passages may seem archaic and antiquated, these timeless words have great meaning and importance to the twenty-first-century Christian. In this inspired passage of Scripture, we learn the significance of worship and of gathering with fellow-believers to meet God. God said, “follow my detailed plans, and I will reside in your company. Obey me, and I will be near and accessible to you.” In these pages of Scripture, God revealed His plan for Israel to abide in the presence of the Living God.
When the construction of the Tabernacle was complete, “the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle... the cloud rested on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle... For the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and there was a fire inside the cloud by night, visible to the entire house of Israel throughout all the stages of their journey” (Exodus 40:34–35, 38). For forty-years, God dwelt in the center of the Israelites camp. Today, the Glorious Spirit of the Eternal and Almighty God makes his dwelling in you!
The second item of primary importance is related to the Law itself. God gave Moses the Law. As God dictated, “Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord” (Exodus 24:4). God gave to Moses and the Children of Israel the written Word! A generation later when Joshua led Israel into Canaan, God said, “this book of instruction must not depart from your mouth; you are to meditate on it day and night so that you may carefully observe everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in whatever you do” (Joshua 1:8). We mustn’t take the Bible for granted. When we hold a copy of God’s Written Word in our hands, we hold a priceless gift, a mighty miracle.
Most of us have never been to Mount Sinai, the Mountain of God. We don’t have access to an old Tabernacle, so where can we go to meet God? We can seek Him at the kitchen table or in the corner of the bedroom or any other quiet place. The Glorious and Abiding God can be found anywhere we seek Him, anywhere we reverently and obediently open a copy of His Timeless Truth, His Living Word. He promised, “you will search for the Lord your God, and you will find him when you seek him with all your heart and all your soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29).
