COME TO ME ON THE MOUNTAIN

A Sermon by Bill McDonald from Exodus 24:12-18

February 3, 2008

 

 

Exodus 24

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.

 

I have always loved heights.  I love the challenge of the climb to get there.  I love the expansive views from the top.  I like being someplace that most people haven’t been.  So decades ago when I was a seminary student accompanying a youth group to New York City, I couldn’t wait to get up into the Statue of Liberty.  When the park ranger on Liberty Island gave us the option of riding the elevator to the observation deck at the top of the statue’s pedestal, I just sneered at him.  Some of our more intelligent youth took the ranger’s advice and had an easy ride, a relaxed time and a great view.  But, since in those days you were allowed to climb all the way to the crown, I challenged Roy, the Senior Minister, to walk the whole way with me—22 stories, 354 steps. 

 

The first 192 steps going up the pedestal were just like any staircase, but when we reached the foot of the statue itself, we got onto a circular staircase, winding up through the body of Miss Liberty, that got narrower and steeper the higher we went.  It was such a tight staircase that I had to bend forward to keep from hitting my head on the stairs above me.  And Roy, angry that he had let me talk him into this, made me carry his heavy camera bag around my neck for the last 162 steps.  We were hot and sweaty, our chests were heaving, my neck was aching as we toiled up the seemingly endless stairs.  But I was sure that the view from the top would be worth it.  What I didn’t count on, of course, was that you only got a few seconds to look out one of the 25 dirt-covered windows before you felt obliged to move on and make way for those who were still in line on the staircase behind you pressing forward.  And, as we turned toward the down staircase, we suddenly realized that we now had 354 more steps to descend.  I cannot repeat to you the unholy things my Senior Minister called me as we inched our way back down.  All that effort and we really didn’t get to see much.

 

Shouldn’t Moses be making the same complaint?  The height gain up the slopes of Mt. Sinai is 2,083 feet, about seven times taller than the Statue of Liberty.  What a view he should have had.  The entire Hebrew nation was encamped on the plains at the foot of the mountain.  Moses would be able to see the hundreds of tents, every trail they needed to take, the vast panorama of the wilderness they had crossed.  Except that the mountain was covered by a cloud.  He was camped on the mountainside for six days before he even got the call from God to proceed and what did he proceed into?  A cloud.  It looked to the people below like a huge electrical storm, a volcano, “a devouring fire,” but for Moses there was nothing there but a cloud—and God.

 

And that is our complaint about faith, isn’t it?  There isn’t much to see.  Civilization has progressed through the Stone Age, the Iron Age and now I think we are in the Visual Age.  You can watch movies on your telephone!  It’s not enough for us to listen to the radio in our cars, we now want DVD screens.  We can’t just write down driving directions, we want to see a digital GPS map.  We are a visual people.  Back up 25 years and most movie trailers showed a lengthy clip or two from an upcoming film.  Today previews include multitudinous images shooting by in hundredths of a second.  We live by our eyes; fill ‘em up!  But faith with faith there isn’t much to see.  Faith isn’t about sight.  In fact it is just the opposite.  Faith is believing without seeing.  Or more correctly, faith is the strongest when the only thing you can see is God.

 

So we aren’t too sure about God’s invitation to “come up to me on the mountain.”  Up there we won’t be able to keep up a Britney watch.  Suppose we miss some exciting twist of pop culture?  Up there we won’t be able to watch the presidential debates.  How can we miss something that vital?  Up there we won’t be able to tell where the borders are or see the subtle shadings or shapes that distinguish between races and nationalities.  What will that do to our security or status?  But you know, I think that was God’s intention with Moses in the first place.  God wanted to get him where he wasn’t focused on the baggage that the Hebrew nation was dragging with them through the wilderness, not distracted by the mundane questions of water and shelter, not worrying about the responsibility of feeding and leading others, out of earshot of complaints about the road chosen or the tempting lure of easier paths.  God had Moses where he wanted him—all to himself.  I think possibly God wants us there as well.

 

If you had to list the top three places that you have felt the closest to God, I would bet that most of us would cite a camping trip in the mountains, a solitary watch on the beach, an evening at church camp, a quiet moment in a small chapel, places where we had cast off the daily routine, where we had shut out the clamoring crowd, where we couldn’t see anything else but God.  If you are looking to build your faith or start a faith or jumpstart a stalled faith, you have got to step out of your world long enough to climb God’s cloudy mountain.  But that’s so hard for us impatient people living in an instant society.  If our ancestors missed a stage coach, they were satisfied to wait two days for the next one.  But I have seen people jam into one section of a revolving door, stepping on the person in front of them, so they didn’t have to wait for the next section.  Recently I had a counter girl at a fast food restaurant apologize to me for taking so long to hand me my lunch.  It had been all of five minutes.  Five minutes to hand me a hot meal made to my specifications and she was apologizing for wasting my time.  Well, our faith isn’t going to be hot in five minutes of prayer.  Moses waited on the mountain for six days before the Lord was even ready to talk to him.  Then he was on the mountain with God for how many days?  Forty days and forty nights.  Get your nerve up and your impatience down.  God is not a visual blip or a sound byte God.  There is no quick fix for a broken faith.  You have to linger on the mountain.  There is no Google answer to life’s deepest questions.  You want answers—linger on the mountain.  You can’t get six-pack abs by working out for twenty minutes once a week and you can’t build a life-supporting faith by praying over your meals.  You have to go on up and linger on the mountain.

 

For those who read the chapters before and after these verses, you might remark, “Well, Bill, the people didn’t have to go up on the mountain; they just waited until Moses brought the book of rules down to them.”  And you might think therefore, “I don’t have to go into the cloudy haze of thought and prayer; I can just read the book.”  Great, read the book.  It contains power and truth.  But you can be a Ph.D. in Biblical Literature and still not know what to do with your life.  You can be a life-long preacher of the gospel and still not grasp God’s place in your existence.  You can lay out a topographical map of the mountain and take satellite imagery until you know every rock and pebble, but until you climb that mountain yourself, you are not going to encounter the God who can be found there.  Read the book, but climb the mountain.

 

And don’t be afraid.  Sure, up there is lightening and thunder up there, power and mystery, uncertainty and steps that you can’t see yet.  But the One who loves you most can see you through the fog and won’t let you fall.  God didn’t hurt Moses on the mountain; God’s not going to hurt you there either.  Don’t be afraid to climb into that cloud; God is waiting there to clear things up in your world.  Moses came back with a clear idea of how we were supposed to act and how wonderful God was going to be to us.  We will too.

 

We have a lot of places we want to go as a congregation here at Crestwood, drawing new people to Christ, deepening our trust in God, extending our reach in service, we have lots of places we are going to go.  But the starting place has to be the mountain, building on prayer and thought and private time with God.  You may be a new Christian or a struggling Christian or not a Christian at all but I would urge you to listen for the voice of God saying, “Come to me on the mountain.”  That is where it all begins.  I love heights—especially the ones to which God can take us.  The views from there are just heavenly.