Chris, could you come up here? Come closer please. Closer. Closer! Did you notice how hesitant Chris was to come close to me? The closer I asked him to come the more wary he became. That’s only natural because I never told Chris why I wanted him to come close. For all he knows I am going to scold him for something he was doing earlier during the service. If that’s why I wanted Chris up here and he knew it, he would have run the other way. On the other hand, if Chris thought that I had called him up to hang a medal around his neck for being a great guy, he would have bounded up here.
What if God stood before us this morning and said: “Come closer!” Would you do it, or would you take off running the other way? Although we can’t see him, God is urging us to come closer to him. Through an experience the prophet Moses had we’ll see that this is both a holy command that frightens, and a gracious invitation that comforts.
After leading the Israelites across the Red Sea and out of slavery in Egypt, Moses guided them to the foot of Mt. Sinai where the two million refugees spent the next eleven months. The time at Mt. Sinai was no break for Moses. He made numerous trips up the mountain to speak with God and then went back down again to tell the people what God had said. That’s the way the people wanted it because when they first arrived at Mt. Sinai God had spoken directly to them and it scared them to death (Hebrews 12:18-21). It wasn’t just God’s voice that was frightening; the way God appeared was terrifying too. God descended on the top of Mt. Sinai in fire and billowing smoke. The mountain shook. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed while the sound of a trumpet growing louder and louder could be heard (Ex. 20:18, 19). It would have been scary enough to witness any one of those things but when you put them all together it’s not surprising that Moses himself said: “I am trembling with fear” (Hebrews 12:21b).
Why did God appear in such a frightening way to the Israelites? Isn’t he a God of love? Weren’t the Israelites his chosen people? What game was God playing? Was he frightening the Israelites to get them to do what he wanted them to do - like the coach who thinks that if he screams and yells at his players he will get results? No, God wasn’t playing games. He was simply highlighting a couple of his characteristics. He appeared in fire and smoke to impress upon the Israelites his power and his holiness.
If you had been there at Mt. Sinai, how would you have felt if God said to you: “Come closer!” Would you have done it? I might as well ask whether you would run into or away from a fire because that’s what the glory of the Lord looked like (Ex. 24:17). We would run away from a fire wouldn’t we because we wouldn’t want to get burned? So when God says: “Come closer!” this is a holy command that should frighten unholy people because just as fire can’t help but burn straw, a holy God can’t help but consume sinful people.
So did you feel scared when you came to church this morning? Did you fear for your life knowing that you were approaching a holy God? Probably not and that’s too bad. The reason we don’t always fear God is because we don’t always fully appreciate our sinfulness and God’s holiness. Had we murdered someone this week, cheated on our spouse, or gotten so drunk that we couldn’t remember the things we did the night before, we may be afraid to come to church for we see those things as sins a holy God hates. But he hates just as much our dislike for our teachers, our fantasies of what we would like to do with people we’re not married to, and our lack of self-control when we gossip about one another. These sins, any sin should make us scared of stepping forward when the holy God says: “Come closer!” because doing so only brings us closer to God’s wrath over our sins.
“Come closer!” is exactly what God said to Moses and it’s just what Moses did (Ex. 24:12, 18). The Israelites who saw Moses go must have thought he was nuts. Who in their right mind would walk into a consuming fire that was the glory of the Lord? Yet Moses went and he survived to tell about it.
How was Moses able to survive so close to God? Was Moses himself without sin, and therefore holy like God? No. Remember how Moses had murdered an Egyptian. Remember how slow he was to answer God’s call to lead his people. Remember how he had failed to circumcise his sons. So why didn’t Moses die in the consuming fire that was God’s glory? Moses didn’t die because God’s call to come closer wasn’t just a holy command; it was a gracious invitation.
By allowing Moses to enter his glory without being destroyed, God revealed another one of his characteristics. He showed that he is a gracious and forgiving God who wants sinners to be able to stand in his holy presence. That truth was emphasized on another mountain covered in God’s glory 1,500 years later. On a mountain somewhere in Palestine Jesus was transfigured before his disciples. His clothes became as white as snow and his face shone like the sun. Then Moses, together with Elijah, appeared and spoke with Jesus about the work of grace he would accomplish on Calvary. There, Jesus would die for the sins of the world and through that death and his subsequent resurrection the whole world would be declared forgiven of their sins. Please don’t misunderstand. Jesus did not come to tell us that God has nothing against us. His life, death, and resurrection did not put out the fire that is God’s holiness; it protects us from the fire by clothing us in Christ’s holiness. Like a firefighter who can walk among flames because he is decked out in his protective fire suit, we can stand in the presence of God’s holiness and not be harmed because we are covered in Christ. Without Christ, however, God’s holiness is still fearsome for it continues to burn and will do so into eternity. Therefore all those who would dare expose their sins to God by throwing aside the forgiveness Jesus won for them will get burned.
Friends, don’t treat Jesus’ forgiveness like a cheap coat we can afford to toss aside. Wear it all times so that when God calls: “Come closer!” you are ready to enjoy the benefits of his gracious invitation. The elders of Israel enjoyed those benefits. After God’s first fearsome appearance, Moses offered animal sacrifices and sprinkled the blood from those animals on the people saying: “This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you” (Ex. 24:8b). Then God invited Moses and the elders to climb Mt. Sinai where they ate and drank in God’s presence. They knew God was there because they saw him and reported that under God’s feet was “something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself” (Ex. 24:10b).
Being sprinkled with blood and eating and drinking in God’s presence is something that God still invites believers to do today. I’m, of course, talking about the Lord’s Supper where Jesus said we receive “the blood of the [new] covenant…poured out…for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). Come to this meal with renewed zeal and appreciation for it clothes us with the forgiveness we need to see the holy God without fear.
After God told Moses to come closer, he spent forty days and forty nights on Mt. Sinai enveloped in God’s glory. But what brought Moses closer to God was not the fact that he had climbed Mt. Sinai, it was what he had gone there to do. Moses had gone to receive the laws and commands he was to pass on to God’s people. In other words, he got closer to God through the Word.
Starting this Wednesday evening we have the same kind of opportunity to get closer to God for this Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Just as Moses spent forty days with God’s Word on Mt. Sinai, use the forty days of Lent and our special Lenten services to hear more about your sin and what your Savior came to do about it. The more we hear God’s Word about these things the more we’ll see God’s call to “Come closer!” as a holy command that we’ll take seriously, but not one we have to fear because it comes from a gracious God who has declared us to be holy in Jesus. Amen.
