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- What attributes of God’s character does this passage reveal?
- How does the passage point to Jesus?
- How should the truth of this passage change me?
- How do the events of today’s reading help you better understand the grand narrative of Scripture?
Ex. 19
God told the Israelites that if they would keep His covenant, they would be His possession, His kingdom of priests and His holy nation. He tells us the same thing. The difference is that we don’t need to keep the old covenant of the law, which He gave to the Israelites in the wilderness. He made a new covenant with the whole world, including the Israelites, in the person of Jesus Christ. So now, instead of adhering to a strict set of laws, we keep God’s covenant by keeping Christ at the center of our lives. John put it well when he said, “What you have heard from the beginning is to remain in you. If what you have heard from the beginning remains in you, then you will remain in the Son and in the Father.” (1 Jn. 2:24).
Ex. 20
What an awesome experience – thunder, lightning, smoke, and a ram’s horn that sounded out of nowhere! No wonder the people were terrified! Such an experience would be enough to make anyone’s knees go weak and their spine tingle. It is quite the contrast from God’s appearance to Elijah in 1 Kings. For Elijah, God was not in the mighty wind, the earthquake, or the fire. He was in the soft whisper. That makes me think that God has a way of revealing what we need to see of Him. Elijah needed a gentle touch at that time. The Israelites needed the fear of God.
But there’s something else I see here as well. I find it very curious that God was in the total darkness. God is light; darkness is the absence of light. How, then, could the very source of light and its complete absence be in the same place at the same time? While I don’t have an answer to that question, I find it interesting that this situation existed when God gave His people the Law. Thus, I’d say that God’s appearance to the people here is a depiction of the nature of that Law. It induces fear and trembling because it is filled with God’s holiness, righteousness, and justice. However, there is no light in it because there is no life in it. We don’t come to God through the Law. Because we are not righteous as God is, His Law holds only death, destruction and darkness for us.
Ex. 21
If an ox gored a slave, the owner of the ox had to pay the slave owner 30 shekels of silver. Hmmm…that’s a very familiar number! So Jesus was betrayed for the price of a gored slave. How very fitting, since He died a servant of God serving us.