Weekly Passages: Exodus 18:1-20:26; Isaiah 6:1–7:6; 9:5-7; Matthew 5:8-20.
What emotion does the thought of meeting with God bring to our hearts? Fear? Terror? Intrigue? Longing? Or 'How?' (at the impossibility of it)? This week's Torah portion reflects on this meeting, but turns the thought of its impossibility on its head. For God desires to meet with you!
Meetings on Mount Sinai
He met Moses at a bush that seemed to be on fire but was not consumed, and commissioned him to bring the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and into the desert, specifically to meet with him (Ex 19:17). Later, God instructed Moses to build a Tabernacle in the desert according to a specific pattern, which he called the Tent of Meeting (ohel meod, Lev 9:23). It was where he would dwell among them. It is interesting that God called his people into the desert to meet with him.
God called his people into the desert to meet with him.
Moses himself had spent 40 years in the desert in Midian before God called him to lead the Children of Israel to the land he had searched out for them - the most beautiful of all lands (Ezek 20:6). Now at Mount Sinai, God chooses to meet with his people. He calls to them through Moses to show them his glory and power, and he establishes his awesome holy nature before them.
Chosen and Called
He then presents them with the requirements for a chosen people to be in covenant relationship with him - the Ten Words (Commandments) - and encourages them to obey his voice and keep his covenant, so they could be a peculiar treasure to him, above all other peoples, living under his protection and blessings. In this, he chooses Israel as a husband chooses his bride, with the joys and responsibilities that this brings.
On Mount Sinai, God affirms that he has chosen Israel as a husband chooses his bride – with all the joys and responsibilities that this brings.
Their calling is to be a kingdom of priests (who serve God) and a holy nation (to be separate from other nations), to carry the word and the knowledge of God to all the earth and especially to reflect God's Name and character to the nations around them. This is the calling of Gentiles too - those who have met the God of Israel through his Son Jesus.
Ultimately Israel will (through Messiah) be a light to all nations (Isa 49:6), because it is God's redemptive plan for all mankind, instituted through the covenant he made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Israel). God is faithful to his covenant - he doesn't have a Plan B. All who will respond, Jew and Gentile, God promises to bring to his holy mountain, and "make them joyful in My House of prayer...for My House shall be called a House of prayer for all peoples" (Isa 56:6-7).
Prayer indicates the essential and intimate nature of this relationship - the product of this desert meeting. Paul encourages us to rejoice, pray and thank God continually (1 Thess 5:16-18).
Prayer indicates the purpose and nature of this desert meeting - relationship.
Intimacy Born in the Desert Place
The holy nature of this intimacy is born out of a desert experience. Like God who is holy and separated from worldly values, Israel was (and is still) called to be "separated from all people that are on the face of the earth" (Ex 33:16). So God calls them into the desert for this, to learn two lessons:
- They find out who they were: vulnerable, complaining, wanting to go back to the comforts of Egypt, thirsty, hungry, dependent on God's provision. For us, too, the world distracts us from our dependency on and longing for God – our experience of his provision.
- They encounter God's faithfulness. He leads them into the desert to free them from the false gods of this world's false security. For us too, deserts are places and times of transition in our spiritual journey – to meet with God, and learn to trust him. The world offers many alternatives, but does not make us thirsty for him (Ps 42:1, 63:1).
Other Biblical Examples
Both John the Baptist and Jesus (our model) went to desert places to meet with God, and Jesus took his disciples to solitary places to meet with his Father (Mark 6:31, 46). We need the silence, solitude and holiness of a desert place where we can hear the still small voice of God above the clamour of the world. Prayer and fasting, abstinence from entertainment, and laying down our works to find vulnerability and dependence, are responses to the invitation to meet with him.
We need the silence, solitude and holiness of a desert place where we can hear the still small voice of God above the clamour of the world.
Isaiah found this in his normal priestly work in the quiet of the Temple, in his awesome encounter with the God of Israel, and he quickly recognised his need for cleansing in the presence of the One who is Holy, Holy, Holy (Isa 6:3). Mankind too is unclean, and needs iniquity (avon, perversity, moral evil) taken away and sin (missing the mark that God sets) purged (Isa 6:7).
A New and Living Way
Through Jesus' sacrifice upon the cross, he has opened the way for you and me to meet with God. For Jesus, this was a desert place where we cannot go - being made sin for us, he was forsaken by his Father (Matt 27:46). His crucified body became the means by which the veil separating Israel (and Gentiles too) from God was torn open. We now have boldness to enter into the presence of God by the blood of Jesus - a new and living way (Heb 10:10, 19).
Through this encounter with the Living God, and by engaging with his teaching on the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt 5:5-20), we may choose a lifestyle that brings blessing – humility, meekness, righteousness, mercy, peace-making, purity of heart - that will enable us to stay in his presence and fulfil our calling to be witnesses to him, to the ends of the earth.
The desert is a doorway to much blessing and wonder, because it leads us into the arms of the God who loves us, and gave his Son to die for us, that we might live – in him.
Author: Greg Stevenson
