88. Meeting at the Mountain: A (sort of) Wedding Party

G', day, Dave here.

Welcome to Stories of a Faithful God for Kids.

Have you ever been to a wedding, watched a man and woman get married?

Lots of things can happen at a wedding.

Like sometimes once the man and woman are married and have become husband and wife, they'll have a great big kiss in front of everyone like this.

Sometimes there'll be dancing and really fun music.

Sometimes people will cry happy tears.

They'll be like.

And you'll be like, what's wrong?

And they'll be like, nothing.

I'm so happy.

But the most important part of the wedding is the promises.

The time where the man and woman promise to love and care for each other because we're all sinful.

No one does that perfectly, but they are promising to try and do that.

They're committing themselves to each other.

So they're not just two people who live in the same house.

They actually now have to think about the other person kind of like they think of themselves.

In today's story, the people of God and God himself have something that's a little bit like a wedding.

An agreement between God and his people that will lead to some amazing things.

There's even going to be party food.

So get ready for our next episode of Stories of a Faithful God for kids.

At the end of our last episode.

The people of Israel had been travelling from Egypt to Mount Sinai.

This was really important because God had promised that they would come and worship him there.

And God always keeps his promises.

Now the people have arrived at the foot of the mountain, just like God said.

Moses goes up the mountain to talk to God.

And God calls out to him from the mountain.

He gives Moses a message for the people.

He reminds them about how he's used his power and kindness to save them.

He says in Exodus 19:4, every one of you has seen what I did to the people of Egypt.

You saw how I carried you out of Egypt.

I did it as an eagle carries her young on her wings.

And I brought you here to me.

An eagle is a powerful bird and it uses that power to carry its children to safety.

That's what God's done for the Israelites.

And now he makes a promise to them.

He offers an agreement between him and them.

If they agree to obey him as their God, then he'll treat them as a very special people.

In verse five, he says to them, so now obey me and keep my agreement.

Do this and you will be my own possession, chosen from all nations, even though the whole earth is mine.

You will be my kingdom of priests.

You will Be a nation that belongs to me alone.

That's a pretty awesome deal.

So Moses goes back down the mountain and and tells the Israelite leaders everything God said.

And thankfully they like what God's suggesting.

In verse 8 they say, we will do everything he has said.

Woohoo.

It's a bit like when a man asks his girlfriend to marry him.

It's pretty embarrassing if she says no.

But if she says yes, it's party time.

Now Israel has said yes to God.

Moses goes back up the mountain.

I should say in this story, Moses has to go up and down this mountain heaps of times.

He must be super fit, even though he's 80 years old.

Anyway, Moses goes up and tells God what the people have said.

And God replies with some amazing news.

He's going to come down on Mount Sinai.

All the people will see it and they'll all hear God speaking to Moses.

Here's why.

In verse nine, he says to Moses, I will come to you in a thick cloud.

I will speak to you.

The people will hear me talking to you.

I will do this so the people will always trust you.

They need to know that Moses really does work for God.

He isn't just making all this stuff up.

God tells Moses to tell the people to spend the next couple of days getting ready.

They have to get ready to meet their God.

God is so special and important and this is going to be an amazing moment.

And yet, even though in a way they'll be meeting God, they also have to keep away from God.

You see, they're sinful and God is perfect.

And if they try and go and be with him, they'll die.

God tells Moses in verse 12.

But you must set a limit around the mountain.

The people are not to cross it.

Tell the people not to go up on the mountain.

Tell them not to touch the foot of it.

Anyone who touches the mountain must be put to death.

He must be put to death with stones or shot with arrows.

No one is allowed to touch him, whether it is a person or an animal.

He will not live.

So Moses goes back down the mountain, tells the people what to do, and then the third day arrives.

On the morning of the third day, there's thunder and lightning around the mountain.

The whole mountain is covered with smoke.

There's a huge blast from a trump.

The Israelites in the camp are terrified and Moses leads them out of the camp to meet their God.

We're told this in verse 18.

Mount Sinai was covered with smoke.

This happened because the Lord came down on it in fire.

The Smoke rose from the mountain like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain shook wildly.

The sound from the trumpet became louder.

Then Moses spoke, and the voice of God answered him.

Whoa.

God calls down to Moses.

And Moses goes up the mountain again to talk with God.

When Moses gets up there, God sends him back down with the same warning he sent before.

He said to Moses in verse 21, go down and warn the people they must not force their way through to see me.

If they do, many of them will die.

Even the priests who may come near me must first prepare themselves.

If they don't, I, the Lord, will punish them.

And Moses is like, uh, God.

The people know not to come up.

You told them before not to come up.

But God wants it to be really clear.

He tells Moses to go down, bring Aaron up with him and remind the people not to come up.

God's caring for them.

He's protecting them.

So Moses heads back down the mountain.

Then God calls out ten commandments.

Ten things he wants his people to do or not do.

10 Ways to Obey him like they said they would obey him.

These are a part of their promise to him.

The first three commandments tell them specifically how to relate to him.

In chapter 20, verse 2, he says, I am the Lord your God.

I brought you out of the land of Egypt where you were slaves.

You must not have any other gods except me.

You must not make for yourselves any idols.

Don't make something that looks like anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the water below the land.

You must not worship or serve any idol.

This is because I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.

A person may sin against me and hate me.

I will punish his children, even his grandchildren and great grandchildren.

But I will be very kind to thousands who love me and obey my commands.

You must not use the name of the Lord your God thoughtlessly.

The Lord will punish anyone who is guilty and misuses his name.

In other words, don't treat God like he's unimportant or like he's just one of lots of other gods.

He's their only God.

They must honour him and treat him as their God.

Just like in a marriage.

Husbands shouldn't have five wives and wives shouldn't have five husbands.

They commit themselves to each other.

Then God gives them a law about resting on every seventh day, what they call the Sabbath day.

In verse eight, he says to them, remember to keep the Sabbath as a holy day.

You may work and get everything done during six days each week.

But the seventh day is A day of rest to honour the Lord your God.

On that day, no one may do any work.

Not you, your son or daughter, or your men or women slaves.

Neither your animals nor the foreigners living in your cities may work.

The reason is that in six days the Lord made everything.

He made the sky, earth, sea and everything in them.

And on the seventh day he rested.

So the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

The last six commandments.

Tell them how to treat each other.

In verse 12, God says, Honour your father and your mother.

Then you will live a long time in the land.

The Lord your God is going to give you this land.

You must not murder anyone.

You must not be guilty of adultery.

You must not steal.

You must not tell lies about your neighbour in court.

You must not want to take your neighbour's house.

You must not want his wife or his men or women slaves.

You must not want his ox or his donkey.

You must not want to take anything that belongs to your neighbour.

Even as all these words are being said, the people are looking up at the mountain.

They hear the thunder and the loud trumpet.

They see the lightning and the thick smoke covering the mountain.

And they are terrified.

They're shaking with fear.

They say to Moses in verse 19, oh, speak to us yourself, then we will listen, but don't let God speak to us or we will die.

And Moses replies, don't be afraid.

God has come to test you.

He wants you to respect him so that you will not sin.

God doesn't want them treating him like they've been treating him on the way from Egypt, grumbling about him, saying he doesn't care about them.

They need to know the power and majesty of their God.

In verse 21, we read, the people stood far away from the mountain.

And while Moses went near the dark cloud where God was up on the mountain.

God tells Moses lots of other laws.

They can be summed up in what Jesus says are the two greatest commandments.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.

And love your neighbour like you love yourself.

This is what Israel is promising to do.

Then God gives the Israelites a promise.

He says he'll send an angel ahead of them to lead them to the land he's promised to give them.

He reminds them to obey him.

And if they do, God will give them the land and make it a kind of heaven on earth.

In chapter 23, verse 25, he says, you must worship the Lord your God.

If you do, I will bless your bread.

And your water.

I will take away sickness from you.

None of your women will have her baby die before it is born.

All women will have children.

I will allow you to live long lives.

He tells them that he'll drive their enemies away and warns them not to make agreements with them.

Those enemies worship fake gods.

And if the Israelites make agreements with them, they'll be tempted to worship those fake gods too.

Then it comes time for the agreement ceremony, kind of like the wedding between God and his people.

Moses tells the people all the laws and promises God's given him.

It's time for them to make the final decision.

Are they going to promise to obey God or not?

In chapter 24, verse 3, all the people shout out, together, we will do all the things that the Lord has said.

So Moses writes down all the laws and then builds an altar at the base of the mountain.

He gets some young men to sacrifice some animals.

He takes half of the blood from the animals and puts it on the altar.

The other half he puts in bowls.

And then he reads aloud all the words of the law that God's given.

And again, the people all shout in verse seven, we will do everything that the Lord has said.

We will obey.

The promises have been made.

Moses takes the blood that's in the bowls and sprinkles it on the people.

Ooh, I know.

Gross, right?

He says, this is the blood that begins the agreement.

This is the agreement which the Lord has made with you about all these things.

And then it's a bit like they're married.

God and the Israelites are bound together, united.

That's worth a celebration feast.

God invites Moses and a bunch of other leaders up the mountain, and amazingly, they get to eat with God.

In verse 10, we read, they saw the God of Israel.

Under his feet was a surface, and it looked as if it was paved with blue sapphire stones, and it was as clear as the sky.

These leaders of the Israelites saw God, but God did not destroy them.

Then they ate and drank together the blood that was sprinkled on the people.

That was kind of like a reminder.

It said, if you break the agreement with God, then you'll become like these animals that died.

You'll die because you disobeyed the God who gives you life.

Unfortunately, the Israelites did break the agreement time and time and time again over more than a thousand years.

They didn't keep their promises.

In fact, there was never a time when they did fully keep the agreement.

And if we'd been there, we wouldn't have kept it.

Either our sin is just too strong.

We would all want to disobey God.

And God could have killed his people for it.

He could have spilled their blood just like the animals blood was spilled.

But do you know the most amazing thing in the world?

God made a new agreement with his people.

An agreement where instead of the people perfectly keeping their promises, God would perfectly keep the promises for both of them.

And instead of the people dying for their sin, God the Son would die in their place.

God sent his own Son, Jesus, to live the perfect life we could never live.

And then he shed his blood so his people could have life instead of death.

On the night before he died, when he was eating with his disciples, he gave them a cup with red wine in it and he called it his blood.

It wasn't actually his blood, but it was a reminder of the blood that he was about to spill.

The next day.

In Mark 14:22, we read, while they were eating, Jesus took some bread.

He thanked God for it and broke it.

Then he gave it to his followers and said, take it, this bread is my body.

Then Jesus took a cup, he thanked God for it and gave it to the followers.

All the followers drank from the cup.

Then Jesus said, this is my blood.

Which begins the new agreement that God makes with his people.

This blood is poured out for many.

So now you don't have to be an Israelite to be in that special relationship with God.

Anyone who trusts Jesus can be a part of the new agreement.

We still want to obey God, but we also know that he's done everything we need to stay in the agreement.

Back at Mount Sinai, Moses is about to go back up the mountain to get more laws from God.

When he does, though, something horrible is going to happen at the bottom of the mountain.

But that's a story for next.

Thanks for listening, everyone.

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Bye for now.