“The Lord said to Moses, ‘I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, so that the people will hear when I speak with you and will always believe you.’ Moses reported the people’s words to the Lord, and the Lord told Moses, ‘Go to the people and consecrate them tomorrow. They must wash their clothes and be prepared by the third day, for on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. Put boundaries for the people all around the mountain and say: Be careful that you don’t go up on the mountain or touch its base. Anyone who touches the mountain must be put to death. No hand may touch him; instead he will be stoned or shot with arrows and not live, whether animal or human. When the ram’s horn sounds a long blast, they may go up the mountain.’ Then Moses came down from the mountain to the people and consecrated them, and they washed their clothes. He said to the people, ‘Be prepared by the third day. Do not have sexual relations with women.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

As a parent, one of the things you learn pretty naturally (mostly because you experienced it with your own parents) is that different circumstances require a different tone of voice in order to communicate their relative seriousness. If you’re playing a game or having a casual conversation, you’ll choose a tone of voice that is light and gentle. If your kid is about to run into the street, you are going to use a loud and stern tone. It is vital that they understand how important it is to not run into the road. As God prepared to deliver some incredibly important commands to the people of Israel, He used the equivalent of a really stern voice. Let’s talk about what’s going on here.

I know, I know: this is a big section of long verses. But there wasn’t a good way to break this up. This was the smallest unit I could manage because there’s a lot going on here. Have no fear, though. There may be a lot going on here, but there is a very simple idea I think we need to understand behind the whole thing. Let me tell you that here, we’ll talk about some of the details of this passage, and then we’ll come back to it. Lying right at the heart of these verses, and what we need to understand about what’s going on here from our perch on this side of the cross and living under the new covenant is that we need to take getting into God’s presence seriously. It’s a really big deal to be in the presence of a holy God.

The people would have understood this point generally because of their familiarity with the character and expectations of other gods that were worshiped by the Egyptians and the neighboring peoples. But the God who had brought them out of Egypt was different. He was holy in a way all those other gods were not. For starters, He was real and they were not. If you were flippant in the presence of a god that didn’t actually exist, nothing was going to happen to you. At least, that god wasn’t going to do anything to you. Perhaps one of his followers who took him seriously might come after you, but that’s about it. And while the people then were a whole lot more superstitious than we generally are today (because the Christian worldview naturally drives out superstitions as all such beliefs are substitutes for believing in a God who is good and who created and controls the universe), it didn’t take very long for them to get tired of the one god or another not really showing any concern for them.

The God who had led them out of Egypt and who was gradually revealing His nature and character to them, though, was different. He was holy. He really did take His character seriously. He was not willing to tolerate sin in even the slightest amount. In fact, because of His holiness, sin could not exist in His presence at all. His holiness would (and will) simply burn away all sin and unrighteousness in those who thought to approach Him. Because of this, when He came down and His presence settled on Mount Sinai – something He was going to do in part in order to puff up Moses’ reputation among the people – the people were going to have to be careful. They were going to have to take it seriously. Very seriously. Deadly seriously.

There were several ways He conveyed this. They were to start by washing their clothes. Have you ever had to go a longer period without bathing than you usually do? After a while you start to feel dirty. Or perhaps think about the last time you spent a long day working outside in the hot sun. You sweated and got dirty and you just felt gross. There are few things quite as refreshing as a long, hot shower in times like that. Well, bathing was not something people back then did very often at all. There wasn’t the ability to bathe very often for the Israelites while they wandered through the desert. God wanted them to understand they had to be clean in order to get into His presence. And while their moral and spiritual cleanness was a much greater concern to Him, being clean on the outside was going to help them feel cleaner over all. So they had to wash their clothes and take a bath.

They were to do all of the preparations Moses was telling them about for three days, and on the third day God would arrive among them. I hope the significance of that timing is not lost on you. I am fully convinced it is not at all coincidental that this just happens to be the same amount of time Jesus was in the grave. Generally speaking, the whole Exodus story arc provides a pattern that is repeated in many times and in many ways in Jesus’ life, ministry, death, burial, and resurrection. The people were going to experience God on the third day. He was going to make this new covenant with them on the third day. The new covenant was made on the third day when Jesus rose from the grave. History may not ever repeat itself, but because there is one God who is composing a great symphony across human history, it often rhymes. Themes get introduced, developed, and repeated in new, richer, fuller ways later on in the song.

Making themselves physically clean, however, still would not leave them fit for God’s presence. As a result, when He came down, they had to be careful not to get too close to Him. They were to stay away from the mountain. In fact, they were to put boundaries around the base of the mountain that the people were not to cross. These were to be clear and obvious guardrails to prevent the people from accidentally taking God lightly. And they were to enforce these boundaries ruthlessly. If a person even touched the mountain he had to be put to death. God’s terrifying holiness was so great, though, that the person wasn’t even to be apprehended and dealt with. No one was to even touch him. They were to stone him or shoot him with arrows and then leave him.

This sounds radical and terrifying and we thankfully don’t have any evidence that this command had to be enforced. The reason for it, though, was that they didn’t want to come into contact with God’s holiness. It was so great that it was a threat to them even through another person. If I came into contact with God’s holiness and touched you, the holiness would spread to you as well. It was almost like a virus in this way. They were not fit to be in God’s presence. He was going to come near, but He was going to protect them from Himself by giving them these boundaries. As long as they honored them, they were going to be okay.

There’s just one other thing that jumps out in this passage. They were not to have sexual relations. Now, why on earth would this be included? Because they were to be more dedicated to God even than to their own spouses. Their love (that is, commitment to) Him was to completely overwhelm their commitment to anything or anyone else. Like a bride was to be abstinent in preparation for being united with her husband on their wedding day, the people were to be abstinent in preparation for being with God spiritually on the third day when He arrived among them. And, I should note, the assumption here was that the people were only having sexual relations with their spouse. No other kind of sexual contact was being considered here because no other kind of sexual contact was considered morally permissible.

Okay, but why go through all of this in the first place? Why not just give the commands and not even risk someone (a child?) wandering up to the mountain, accidentally making contact with it, and having to be put to death for it? Because God wanted for them and indeed they needed to take what He was about to say seriously. They needed to understand just what they were entering into. They needed to understand with whom they were entering into it. This was a matter of not just life and death, but of eternal life and death. God was putting in place a foundation that He was building to last for centuries until the time arrived for Him to send His Son to make a new covenant whose foundation would be new, but nonetheless influenced by this old one.

If the people were given leave to think that none of this really mattered all that much, they were going to treat it with contempt, and that wasn’t going to go well for anybody. As we will eventually see, they had all of this pomp and circumstance put around the covenant God was making, and they still turned away from it at the first chance they got. If God did anything less than this, the whole thing would crumble into dust before they even got a chance to give it a real try. So, He used the divine version of His stern voice. All of this show wasn’t devoid of substance, but it was more about making the point than not. Sometimes, though, making the point is worth all the show we can give to it because the substance is that important.

As for what any of this means for us today, we still serve this same God who is just as terrifyingly holy today as He was then. He hasn’t changed any. The difference is that we have Jesus standing in between us and Him. We don’t have to worry about accidentally setting foot on a mountain and getting an arrow in our back. We don’t have to worry about making ourselves pure because Jesus did that for us, and on the third day He came back from the grave to make the new covenant live. He is our purity now. We can go to Him in faith, and He will make us fit to actually be in God’s presence. What this story in Exodus 19 does is to give us reason for gratitude for the grace He won for us on the cross. Offer Him a prayer of thanks today, but don’t forget that God is still holy. He does still deserve your best. In Christ, you can give it to Him. So do.