Today's Meditation
Read Exodus 24:1-18
Then he said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship at a distance. 2Moses alone shall come near the Lord; but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him.” 3Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice, and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.” 4And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and set up twelve pillars, corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel. 5He sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed oxen as offerings of well-being to the Lord. 6Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he dashed against the altar. 7Then he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” 8Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, “See the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
9Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, 10and they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet there was something like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. 11God did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; also they beheld God, and they ate and drank.
12The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.” 13So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. 14To the elders he had said, “Wait here for us, until we come to you again; for Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them.” 15Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. 16The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud. 17Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. 18Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.
It has been uncanny how the daily lectionary passages have spoken to so many of our needs and issues happening around us today. I have not used all of them in these public devotions, but have been thunderstruck by the daily Word of God. Of course, we read into the Word and interpret it based on our current situations and find deeper or different meaning in passages we've read many times based on what is happening in our lives and about what the Spirit of God, working in our lives at that particular moment, is showing us.
This morning, as I read this passage from Exodus, I focused on two things. The first that God called Moses to bring the elders of Israel and for them to "worship at a distance" - really? That's almost too funny and sad at the same time. We are definitely worshipping God "at a distance" right now. Until they had prepared themselves in worship, they were not yet ready to see God. Again, perhaps this is a time for our preparation to see what God is doing or is going to do; to take a step back and center ourselves on God.
The other focus is about Moses, for the second time, and the elders, for the first time, seeing God face-to-face. When that preparation time was over, Moses and the Elders were able to go to God and see God face to face. May our own preparations allow us to see God, others and ourselves in a new and different way - may the glory of who we are deep down inside reflect and shine forth from us.
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