Preparing to Enter God's Presence

Exodus 19:1–25 ESV

On the third new moon after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. They set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness. There Israel encamped before the mountain, while Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: ‘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.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.” So Moses came and called the elders of the people and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him. All the people answered together and said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” And Moses reported the words of the people to the Lord. And the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever.” When Moses told the words of the people to the Lord, the Lord said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments and be ready for the third day. For on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. And you shall set limits for the people all around, saying, ‘Take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death. No hand shall touch him, but he shall be stoned or shot; whether beast or man, he shall not live.’ When the trumpet sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain.” So Moses went down from the mountain to the people and consecrated the people; and they washed their garments. And he said to the people, “Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman.” On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people 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. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain. And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down and warn the people, lest they break through to the Lord to look and many of them perish. Also let the priests who come near to the Lord consecrate themselves, lest the Lord break out against them.” And Moses said to the Lord, “The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for you yourself warned us, saying, ‘Set limits around the mountain and consecrate it.’ ” And the Lord said to him, “Go down, and come up bringing Aaron with you. But do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the Lord, lest he break out against them.” So Moses went down to the people and told them.

Scripture: Exodus 19:1-25

Text: Exodus 19:9-20

Sermon Title: Preparing to Enter God’s Presence

Our Scripture reading this morning takes us to the preparation that God called Moses and his people to before he convenes with them in the covenant ceremony of the giving of the 10 Commandments at Mt. Sinai. As we take a look at what it means to prepare to enter God’s presence, our focus will primarily be on verses 9 through 20.           

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I’m guessing that when most of consider the idea of entering into God’s presence, we associate that with coming together for Sunday worship. Maybe your home is similar to what mine was growing up, where Sunday morning before church had a unique routine compared to the rest of the week. Your sleep schedule may be different than the days you go to school or work, the clothes you put on might be different, maybe there is a special breakfast that the whole family gathers around. For some, maybe Sunday morning is when you spend a little extra time with God in devotions; for others, you like to see how many Sabbath rest minutes you can get in before jumping out of bed, rushing to church, and making your way to your seat right on time. 

 We are always in God’s presence. He always knows what we are doing, what we are thinking, and he provides for us; we can never go anywhere where he is not as the psalmist notes in Psalm 139. But when God’s people gather together for worship, there is different type of encounter happening, whether it is the Israelites gathered at Mt. Sinai or us gathered today here at Gibson Church, we have been called and enter intentionally into God’s presence.  This time is different, the activities are set apart from all of life, and there is preparation that God’s people are called to practice.  As we go forward this morning, we will take a look at how the Israelites arrived at Mt. Sinai and what was involved in their preparations for entering God’s presence then and there, and then we will look at what kind of preparation we as new covenant believers are called to as we also enter into God’s presence and how it shapes covenant living. 

How did we get here? Genesis ended with the descendants of Jacob joining their brother, Joseph in Egypt due to a famine. Over time, their families became so numerous that the Egyptians decided they had to oppress them or risk being taken over. For at least 400 years the Egyptians enslave the Israelites, but they cried out to God, we read in Exodus 2, and God hears them, remembers the covenants he has made with their ancestors, and he has concern for them. At that point, Moses flees to Midian after he had killed an Egyptian in defense of one of his own people. This is where he marries a woman named Zipporah, and is tending sheep. One day while he is out with the sheep, he sees a bush on fire but not burning up, and chapter 3 tells us he was at “the mountain of God.” As Moses approaches to investigate the straight sight, the angel of the Lord says to him, “Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 

In this encounter, God calls him to go before Pharaoh and to lead his people out of Egypt. God promises Moses in Exodus 3:12 that he would be with him, “And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.” So as many of you may know Moses with his brother, Aaron, went back to Egypt, presented their case to their people and to Pharaoh, and after God performs the plagues, it is time to leave. God leads them to the desert, causing the Red Sea to part for them and then crashing it back on the pursuing Egyptians, providing for all of their nourishment when they grumble again and again and again. After battle and trials, God has led Moses back to where he said he would, this mountain, so Moses and the people can worship God.

           When God had sent Moses into Egypt to tell his people what he was about to do, they believed him. When God has Moses invite the people into covenant with him in verses 3-6, he speaks what they have already seen him do for them, and gives promises to make them his treasured possession, his kingdom of priests, his holy nation, if they would obey. They give their word. With a dialogue started between God and the people through Moses, we come to verse 9, “‘I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, so that the people will hear me speaking with you and will always put their trust in you…Go to the people and consecrate them, have them wash their clothes and be ready…put limits around the mountain.” Entering into the presence of God for worship involved the people preparing themselves and going forward, but it also involved God coming to them.

           What God calls the Israelites to, the preparation they are to perform comes from the Hebrew word, kadash, which we have translated “to consecrate.”  That word also can be translated to set apart, to purify, to cleanse, to make holy; God is calling for his people to see this time ahead of them as different from their everyday life, to see the encountering of God in worship as an event, a moment distinct from their normal routines, and that is to have an effect on them as persons as well as the space that it happens in. 

Their preparation of consecration involved three practical instructions as given by God through Moses. First, the Israelites were to wash their clothes and be ready. This people traveling through the desert were called to clean up for God.  The Old Testament consistently communicates a sense of bringing the best to God and getting everything right for him. When God tells them clean their clothes, it could be looked at as just getting clean, but it is more a cleansing from the internal and external filth of everyday actions. Remember too, there were no commercial size Maytag washers and dryers in the desert so a nation washing its clothes was quite the task and probably was not done casually. 

The second aspect was the limits that were to be put around the mountain so the people could not touch it. This may have been a physical barrier like a fence that was to be constructed and put up or Moses simply may have told them to maintain a space between themselves and the mountain which God was coming to them on. When Moses had entered God’s presence on this mountain at the burning bush, he had to remove his sandals when he came because of the sacredness of God’s presence there at that time, so too we see this applied to the whole mountain now at the penalty of death. Between this consequence given by God and the trembling exhibited by the camp in verse 16, entering into the presence of God was such a powerful experience, such a holy experience, such an encounter that the might of God was on display and it struck fear into the people. 

The third instruction, which we find added by Moses in verse 15, is to abstain from sexual relations. While the explicit laws explaining what made someone clean or unclean have not come yet, there was a knowledge given by God to Moses that an uncleanness could potentially be in the camp in approaching God if sex was not abstained from under the longer law that was to be communicated at Sinai. Again, this is a matter of purity for how they would approach God recognizing his call on their lives. 

           This is the preparation which God called his people to as they came to encounter him, to worship him, to learn how they were to live in covenant relationship to him. The encounter they had can seem somewhat terrifying as we read about it today, and it was to the Israelites, but this is how God revealed himself to them as the one who is in control of all things and is so much greater than what they had seen being worshipped and practiced in Egypt and what they would see in Canaan going forward. This is the God who desired so much that his people’s hearts would fear him and keep all of his commands for their benefit! In Deuteronomy 4:8-13, God gives Moses the words which sum up all that had happened there, “Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb (at Mt. Sinai), when God said to me, ‘Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children.’ You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while it blazed with fire to the very heavens, with black clouds and deep darkness.  Then the Lord spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice.  He declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which he commanded you to follow and then wrote them on two stone tablets. And the Lord directed me at that time to teach you the decrees and laws you are to follow in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”

           Brothers and sisters, this is how the Israelites as one body were called to prepare for entering God’s presence and how they experienced him. This is how God’s people were ushered into what it means to live faithfully to God: they prepared through consecration, kadash, being set apart, but they also entered in from the emotion and mental state of fear. What about us though? Do we or should we be coming “into God’s presence,” into times of worship and teaching from a place of fear? My hope is that we might all be able to confess that we do not and should not come to this place in God’s presence, to this gathering of fellow believers, to our times of worship wherever they may be out of fear, but rather out of joy. The question then is what is different now, what changes how worship takes place with God and new covenant Christians?

           The answer to that question is that we have Christ as our mediator; we have Christ who has taken the limits that have been placed between sinful humanity and perfect God, and he invites to walk through them that we might be experience not fear but joy. When we think of Hebrews, maybe our attention is drawn to chapter 11, the “heroes of faith” chapter, but on each side of that chapter are verses speaking to new covenant worship. In chapter 10, we find these words, “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water…Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” This passage references not Mt. Sinai, but the tabernacle and the Most Holy Place, another place where God’s presence was with limitation, and the author of Hebrews speaks the beautiful good news that in Christ’s death there is a new way through for us; he is the great high priest now for all time, and we can draw near without fear because every requirement has been paid. No longer does God’s presence need to be a place entered where we worry if we are completely clean and without guilt, but rather we can walk into his presence, we can walk on the mountain of God because Jesus cleansed us.  The other chapter, chapter 12 of Hebrews, tells us this new mountain is Mount Zion, and it’s the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the assembly of angels filled with joy, the church, and God the Judge is there, as is Christ, the mediator. We are told to not refuse him who speaks, which is what the Israelites did out of fear, but his speaking gives us a kingdom, a kingdom that cannot be shaken, therefore, verses 28 and 29 say, “let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.”

           Brothers and sisters, what a beautiful image that we can touch the mountain of God, that we can go up the mountain, that we can enter into that cloud where Moses went when we take hold of the grace of Christ. Hebrews 10:10 speaks that “We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” The preparation that is needed most of all has been taken care of for us. 

While the limitations have been removed for us and we need not fear, we are still called to consecration, to being set apart and holy is preparation of coming before God. The writers of the New Testament epistles call us to come in thanks, to come with reverence and awe, to purify ourselves from those things that contaminate, to perfect ourselves. When we looked at those practical instructions that were given to the Israelites at Sinai, on the surface they are outward things: clean clothes, abstaining from sex, and not going on this mountain. Each of those related to something greater going on. When we talk about consecration continuing then today, we cannot just focus on our outsides, trying to present a good and holy image to others, but we need to have our internal being cleansed and the outside a reflection of that; to have our motivations and our desires set apart from sin to enter God’s presence. That’s an awfully high standard though, you might say, and you’re right. The beauty of it all is that we are not alone; we have the Holy Spirit working in us, doing the work of consecration and sanctification by which we can be a people of holiness and filled with awe. One of the greatest aspects of our worship is the time of confession at the beginning of a service, we do that after we have been welcomed by God and we do that not just to get things off of our chest or to try and rub off any guilt, but we have times of confession with the assurance and understanding that Christ’s forgiveness is already being applied.           

           We conclude this morning on the point that worship is never only for the worship service’s sake, the preparation should not just be for the hour-long service on Sunday morning. When we look at the Israelites, what they had prepared for and experienced upon entering God’s presence, they received the Law, they received in worship God’s desires from his people for living in relationship with him. Worship is not just bringing praise to God, but it also communicates a sense of service and submitting to the one being worshipped. When we consider what we do not just on Sunday morning but throughout the week as preparation for coming into God’s presence in worship, our mindset changes. What we do as a body and what we hear from God in Scripture hopefully goes out with us beyond the doors of this building, beyond this day of the week. Consecration, that term kadash, becomes a pattern of preparing for as well as living out of. Worship informs all areas of life, but all areas of life hopefully speak to who we worship, the one true God who invites us to enter into presence and to go out of this time being prepared and preparing for the experience of his joy and grace. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.