I remember going with my father to watch The Ten Commandments movie in 1956. It starred Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as the Egyptian Pharaoh. By today’s film-making standards, that movie was pretty simple. However, the effects had a powerful effect on an eight-year-old boy at the time. It was amazing to see stories from the Bible come to life on a giant movie screen.

You can read part one of The Family of Moses here and the Introduction to the Old Testament Prophets series here.

God Saves His People

God delivered His people out of hands of the Egyptians – “to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8). God also delivered His people to “serve” Him. God told Moses – “When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain” (Exodus 3:12). Moses continually told Pharaoh to let the Israelites go free so they could “serve” God (e.g. Exodus 7:16; 8:1, 20; 9:1, 13; 10:3, 7-8). Pharaoh finally relented and freed the Israelites. That was the beginning of the great Exodus.

Then he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, ‘Rise, go out from among my people, both you and the children of Israel. And go, serve the Lord as you have said. Also take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone; and bless me also.’ Exodus 12:31-32

According to Exodus 12:37, Israel left Egypt with “about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children.” That’s a huge number of people, which is one of the main reasons an Egyptian king put the Israelites into slavery many years before.

Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, ‘Look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land. Exodus 1:8-10

The king feared the large number of Israelites might fight against him some day, so he made their lives miserable and did his best to minimize their number. The king commanded the Hebrew midwives to kill Israelite boys as soon as they were born, but not kill the newborn girls (Exodus 1:15-22). The life of Moses was saved from that fate through the providence of God 80 years before God freed His people (Exodus 2). Moses grew up in the palace as the adopted son of an Egyptian princess. However, at the age of 40, he had to flee for his life to the mountains of Midian. Moses built a new life for himself and spent 40 years there.

Then the Egyptian king died and the children of Israel cried out to God for help because of their bondage.

So God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them. Exodus 2:24-25

That’s when God called Moses from the burning bush and sent him back to Egypt to free His people (Exodus 3). That’s also when God told Moses His Holy Name —

And God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ Exodus 3:14

God told Moses that it was safe for him to return to Egypt – “for all the men who sought your life are dead” (Exodus 4:19). Moses took his wife and sons and returned to Egypt.

We don’t know how much, if anything, the new Egyptian king knew about Moses, but we do know the king did not have Moses arrested for the crime he had committed 40 years before. What we do know is that the king would not do what Moses requested of him. He would not let the people of Israel leave Egypt. However, God had other plans.

Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. For with a strong hand he will let them go, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land. Exodus 6:1

God demonstrated His Superiority over all the gods of Egypt through a powerful series of plagues on the land and the people. Exodus chapters 7 – 12 detail the ten plagues that eventually led pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt. However, the king reneged on the plan and sent his army to destroy the Israelites before they crossed the Red Sea. Exodus 14 is the account of how God saved His people from pharaoh’s army.

So the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Thus Israel saw the great work which the Lord had done in Egypt; so the people feared the Lord, and believed the Lord and His servant Moses. Exodus 14:30-31

You can read about the adventures of the Israelites after the Red Sea crossing in Exodus chapters 15 – 18.

God Commands His People

That brings us to the time of God giving Israel the commandments by which they would live their lives as His special people. What we find in Exodus 19 is the children of Israel arriving at Mount Sinai where Moses prepared the people to hear directly from God.

In the third month after the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on the same day, they came to the Wilderness of Sinai. For they had departed from Rephidim, had come to the Wilderness of Sinai, and camped in the wilderness. So Israel camped there before the mountain. Exodus 19:1-2

That preparation included special cleansing, washing of clothing, and personal consecration on the part of the people. The preparation took two days because the people would hear from God on the third day.

Then it came to pass on the third day, in the morning, that there were thunderings and lightnings, and a thick cloud on the mountain; and the sound of the trumpet was very loud, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was completely in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire. Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. And when the blast of the trumpet sounded long and became louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by voice. Then the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mountain. And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. Exodus 19:16-20

Take a moment to imagine that scene – “about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children” camped in front of Mount Sinai. Depending on the number of women and children who were with the men, the size of the camped Israelites might have been as large as the city of Nashville, Tennessee! How did this immense crowd of people react to hearing from God? They trembled in fear.

Remember that they had seen the plagues God had brought on the Egyptians. They had seen God open the Red Sea to let them cross on dry ground. They had seen God bring the great waters crash on top of the Egyptian army drowning them and their horses. They had seen the Lord go before them by day in a pillar of cloud and in a pillar of fire at night. They were eyewitnesses of the power and majesty of the Almighty God.

When the time came for them to meet their God and hear Him speak to them, they trembled with fear. They saw lightning and a thick cloud on the mountain. They heard thunderings and the sound of a very loud trumpet. God descended on the mountain in fire and smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace. The whole mountain quaked “greatly.”

The people had good reason to be afraid. Though there were hundreds of thousands of Israelites, they knew they were witnessing something no one had seen before. The God of Heaven had descended on a mountain on earth. What would the people do? Would they run away? Would they get closer to the mountain for a better look at this amazing God? God loved His people, so He sent them a warning.

And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go down and warn the people, lest they break through to gaze at the Lord, and many of them perish. Also let the priests who come near the Lord consecrate themselves, lest the Lord break out against them. Exodus 19:21-22

Next Time

What happened next was that God gave special commandments to His special people. Those commandments, if followed, would make them different than every other people group on the planet. We’ll look at those commandments in the next part of our special series. 

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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