He was nearing his 81st birthday, but was still pretty fit and strong. He’d climbed the mountain several times in the last few months. It was not a long trek to the summit – not quite 3kms - but it was a very, very steep and rocky. It was a dangerous 3 kms. He’d been up and down the mountain three times in this last year, spending 40 days at a time there, just being with and talking to, Yahweh, the great “I Am”.
Yaweh had again called to him this very morning saying, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets - which you broke, Moses.” … God said, “Be ready in the morning … and them come up on Mount Sinai. Present yourself to me there on top of the mountain.”
Mt Sinai is almost exactly the same height as Mt Macedon over in the Macedon ranges. Mt Macedon is a quite easy 2.9-kilometre climb that can be achieved in well under an hour. Mt Sinai is a very, very difficult 2.9-kilometre climb that takes quite bit of care and effort – and nearly four hours of slow slog. That morning, Moses chiselled out two new stone tablets and then, hoisting them on his back in straps and thongs the next day, he begins the arduous climb … alone. After several hours, he makes it to the flat summit, sweating and aching and almost before he can draw breath, the Lord of hosts came down in the cloud, and the cloud just hovered there … and the Lord proclaimed his name there … the Lord. The cloud passes in front of Moses and within the cloud God is. And the Lord begins to speak, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, Moses.” And the sound of the voice of God causes the mountain and the rocks to vibrate and tremble …
Moses immediately bows down to the ground and worships … and Exodus 34 tells us that Moses was there with the Lord listening to all that the LORD said … He prays, he enquires of the Lord … and the conversation, what little we know of it, continues for 40 days … without Moses eating bread, or drinking water. And the Lord instructed Moses to write on the tablets of stone the words of the covenant … the Ten Commandments, as we know them today … The 40 days having ended, Moses began the tricky trek down the mountainside with the two new tablets of the law on his back. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses coming, his face was just so incredibly radiant they couldn’t look at him - because he had spoken with the Lord face to face. Moses, of course, didn’t realise that his face was so supernaturally radiant - and they were all afraid to come near him.
I love this narrative from the Book of Exodus. It causes me to wonder about so many things.
Moses spent 40 days in prayer and fasting with the Lord. He took no food. He was just with the Lord and waiting upon Him – it wasn’t 40 days of non-stop talk, there was much communion time, “being with” time. The result was that Moses’ whole countenance became visibly radiant with the glory of the Lord. Now, that must have been quite something to behold!
This incident points forward to so many things in both Old and New Testaments, doesn’t it? Isaiah would say some 600 years later to a tired and dispirited Israel …
Isaiah 40:29-31
“He [God] gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
Jesus would say another 600 years on from Isaiah to His disciples …
John 15:5 (NRSV)
“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in Me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from Me you can do nothing.”
There is very clearly a thread that runs the length of Scripture related to humans spending time in communion with God and what happens to them. The life of God is imparted, and with that a deposit of His glory that God fully intends should increase. But how much time do we spend in communion with God – which is not entirely about prayer, either – such that we are waiting upon Him for such a wonderful impartation? And we receive it. It is amazingly, powerfully sustaining to our physical bodies! This, says the apostle Paul, should be an increasing thing, not a decreasing thing … we need more resurrection life impartation!, not less.
2 Corinthians 3:18 (NIV)
“And we all, [us Christians] who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory [wait upon the Lord], are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
“are being”, it’s an ongoing process … so, here’s the point (or question): is there sufficient communion constancy with God whereby there is cumulative increase upon the impartation received from my last communion with Him? Or, has it been too long between communion times, and the glory is fading? Whenever we spend unhurried, undistracted rich rest time in communion with our divine Father, there is always impartation of His divine life to us, as Jesus said, and the glory is the visible evidence of it.
John 1:4 (NIV)
“In Him [Jesus] was life, and that life was the light of all humanity.”
When was the last time you had such a deep experience of life with God?
How is your communion constancy?
Think on these things.
Ps Milton