Monday, Holy Week: Go Up on the Mountain

“Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” – Exodus 33:11a (ESV)

This Lesson is two of eight compiled for Holy Week 2019. Eight individual stories where God used inanimate rocks or stones to further His Kingdom for His Glory. Inanimate Objects. Rocks, water, bread. All things which are dead or at least NOT living. All things that without action upon it by something living remain sedentary, unchanged, lifeless. Enter Jesus.

When the Jews were in the wilderness, they often had to wait anxiously at the feet of Mount Sinai for weeks before Moses descended to bring them a message and the ordinances of God. At that time, Moses was their primary connection to God. The people benefited from Moses’s friendship with God even though they did not have face to face contact with God the way that he did.

Now, because of Jesus’s death and resurrection, we have direct access to God. Christ became our intermediary and brought us to God and God to us. We no longer have to wait at the foot of a stony mountain for someone to bring us the word and ordinances of God. As Francis Chan once shared, “We can go up the mountain ourselves. God wants to meet with us daily.”

In our age of technology many of us are tempted to let others go up on the mountain and bring us something back from God. We download devotions, podcasts, and sermons. We read books, blogs, and articles. From these different resources we glean insights from other people who have spent time on the mountain and at Christ’s feet.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but the Lord has given us His words in the Bible, and He desires to spend time with each of us individually each day. This is truly extraordinary. Christ once told His disciples, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15, ESV). It’s amazing that the Son of God calls us His “friends.”

Friends don’t require an intermediary for fellowship. They simply meet and enjoy one another’s company. By God’s grace we have a daily invitation to spend some time on the mountain with our Savior and Friend.