Oh, right. This is an exciting lesson. We just finished with our last lesson, discussing how Israel was finally led out of slavery and their bondage to Pharaoh and to Egypt. And now God has brought them through the miraculous partings of the Red Sea.
They go through the wilderness and they're beginning to complain a little bit. And we saw that that's kind of be some pretty bad foreshadowing of a lot of what's to come in the journey through the wilderness. But God nevertheless provides for them miraculously with bread from heaven, the manna, the supernatural water from the rock, which we all pointed typologically is points to Christ as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians.
And now we are continuing our story of salvation history with the Israelites finally getting to Mount Sinai. So we are in Exodus chapter 19. And what I'd like to do, this first kind of part is rid the foraging of the covenant at Mount Sinai. They've arrived at the mountain and through the meteorship of Moses, God establishes this covenant with them.
But let's begin by reading verses one through six. They then will unpack this a little bit before the covenant is actually ratified in chapter 24. These first few chapters are really important. So let's read.
Chapter 19 verse one, on the third new moon after the sons of Israel had gone forth out of the land of Egypt. On that day, they came into the wilderness of Sinai. And when they set out from refugee, they came into the wilderness of Sinai. They encamped in the wilderness.
And their Israel encamped before the mountain. And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him out of the mountain saying, Thus you shall stay to the house of Jacob. Tell the sons of Israel, you have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples.
For all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel. All right, these verses are pretty dynamite. And if you have a Bible, I always tell my students, write underlined block off circle, whatever it is, verses five through six especially.
Now verse four, you might have caught the whole week eagles wings thing. That's definitely the origin of that song on eagles wings. I'm not gonna sing it for you. But just in case you were wondering, everyone points that out.
And yes, there is the reference of the eagles wings. It's a really beautiful image of how God takes his people and brings them out to himself. I love that I brought you to myself. There's a lot we could say about how even in first John, John says, we did not love God first.
He loved us first. You know, there's a lot we could say there, but these verses five through six are really, really important. Because back in chapter four verse 22, if you remember, this is when God said that Israel was his firstborn son. And as you shall say to Pharaoh, Israel is my firstborn son.
And we discussed that many chapter 15 chapters previously. And we discussed how the role of the firstborn son is to be a role model and a leader, a spiritual leader with a spiritual responsibility to guide all the other children into a proper worship of God, right? Because at this point in salvation history, it's the fathers and the firstborn sons who have this priestly role, this spiritual authority. Well, we see this, that concept being further developed right here in chapters 19 verses five through six.
The role of the firstborn son, what Israel is supposed to do is to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. This is how Israel is going to bring all of the nations back to God. Israel will be God's special possession among all peoples for this task. If you wanna think of it as a mission statement, I always gotta say that, it's like this Israel's mission statement, this is what they're called to do.
They're called to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, a nation set apart. That's what holy means, to be set apart from all of our nations precisely to be that spiritual role model, that spiritual leader to teach all of our nations who the true God of the universe is. So that's their mission statement. That's what it's all about.
That's what God wants to do here at Mount Sinai. Just to ratify, to forge this covenant with them. And through the vocation, through the covenant here, give them this vocation, this identity as God's special possession, and therefore they would in turn go and evangelize all nations. So that's why I say verses five through six are really, really important because this is what Israel has been called to do.
Now, of course the people I'll say in verse eight, yeah, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. And so the Lord says, I'm gonna come to you in a thick cloud, get ready, consecrate yourselves, and be prepared for this covenant ratifying ceremony. And it's pretty dynamite in verse 16 and following. On the morning of the third day, there is thunder and lightning and a thick cloud upon the mountain and trumpet blast of all the people in the camp, tremble.
And it goes on and says, Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire. And the smoke went up with the smoke of a kiln, the whole mountain quaked greatly in the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder. Moses spoke and God answered him in thunder. This is a pretty crazy theophany.
If you remember from the burning bush of theophany as a manifestation or an appearance of God in some form. And here God is descending upon Mount Sinai and there's the cloud and the trumpet blast, the smoke, the fire, earthquakes, and the people really tremble, they swelled themselves. In fact, later on at the end of chapter 20, verse 18 and 19, it says, when all the people perceive the thunder and the lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled instead of far off. And they said, you speak to us, we will hear you, but do not let God speak to us unless we die.
So you can imagine how tremendous, how powerful impactful this whole moment is. God is again, he's not some distant God. He's coming down in the midst of his people. And he is all powerful, but he's all powerful and he's all loving.
He wants to bring the people into a covenant with him. So this is chapter 19, everyone getting ready that the priests are beginning to serve at the end of chapter 19. And now they're going to start to dictate the terms of the covenant. And I'll summarize a little bit later when we get to chapter 24, after we talk about these 10 commandments, I'll summarize just kind of the steps of the covenant by way of reminder.
But suffice it to say right now, chapter 20 through 23, really become the terms of the covenant between God and Israel. This is like the agreement clause, right? What each party swears to do. God on his part swears to make Israel his own special possession and make the kingdom of priests and the holy nation.
That's what he promises, right? That's what he agrees to. Now what about Israel? Israel now is going to swear and promise to uphold the law.
They're going to promise to live virtuous holy lives. And this is expressed through obedience to the 10 commandments first. So that's what we have, that's what we find in chapter 20. We find the 10 commandments, the 10 commandments forming the agreement, what Israel says and swears they're going to uphold really because they become God, the family rules.
And so a common way that in which they're described, the commandments are a response to God in his covenant and make up the family rules. No family on the face of the planet. If it is a family that is trying to bring peace in order and love, every family has rules. Okay, I have rules as a husband that I have to follow, my wife, the children have rules, and when we all come together, there's peace and there's harmony.
Well, that's a good way to kind of look at the 10 commandments. They are the family rules that God gives to us in order that there would be peace and there would be harmony. Because today culture hates rules, right? The culture hates the commandments.
The commandments are just a bunch of, that shall not, that shall not. God is like a big kill joy, right? He doesn't want us to have any fun and he restricts our actions arbitrarily. And that's certainly not the truth.
Anybody with an ounce of honesty realizes when you look at the 10 commandments, they're there to bring us peace and fulfillment and joy because the reality is we do not want to fall back into slavery to sin. And when we observe the 10 commandments, we remain free to worship God. Because if we're shackled by sin, then we are not free to love as we were created to love. So observing the commandments maintains the relationship that we have with God.
Observing the commandments keeps the covenant that we have with God healthy. And in fact, this is exactly how the church teaches the commandments in paragraph 2061, it says the commandments take on their full meaning within the covenant. According to scripture, man's moral life has all its meaning in and through the covenant. That's really important.
If we taught morality in the context of a covenant relationship, a family bond that we have with God, as opposed to a bunch of arbitrary laws, it's going to make a lot more sense. Because sin is not just breaking a rule. Sin is breaking a relationship, as we're going to see later on with Israel at the end of this lesson. Sin breaks a relationship.
So when we understand the commandments that God gives to us, so we could uphold the covenant of love that we have with him, then it makes a lot more sense. And it would ideally motivate us to observe the commandments because we don't wanna hurt the person that we love. We don't wanna hurt God. And that's what contrition really is.
When we're sorry for sin, we're sorry because we hurt God or we hurt someone else through our words, our deeds, our actions. So I think that's really, really important to keep in mind that's why the 10 commandments are taught here in the context of the covenant. Cool. So moving on then, the 10 commandments are often known as the decalogue or literally means the 10 words.
And it's binding on everyone everywhere. This is really important because a lot of people say, oh, God gave the Israelites the 10 commandments and we at least in America kind of have a Judeo-Christian tradition, but they're not binding on other people else where other religions. And that's just a bunch of hogwash. The 10 commandments, the 10 words, basically summarize the natural law that we are all born with.
When we are born on our spiritual DNA, if you wanna call it that, we have these 10 commandments inscribed on our hearts, on our beings, because the 10 commandments summarize perfectly. Thus 10 is the number of perfection, totality, completion. So the 10 commandments perfectly summarize how we are to act and behave in regards to God who created us in regards to each other as siblings. If we're gonna see, think of God as our heavenly Father, we think of each other as siblings in our Lord, right?
So the natural law is written on our hearts, but because of sin, so it's what sin does is it darkens our intellects and weakens our will, as St. Thomas Aquinas says. So it's really hard to sometimes understand perfectly what the law requires of us so that we can be happy and fulfilled and peaceful. And even if we do understand it in part, our wills are so weak that we're not able to follow it.
So what God does here is he inscribes it on stone to kind of reemphasize the law that we're all born with. And it has a couple of other symbolic reasons as well. Number one, since scribing, when Lord writes the 10 commandments with his own finger description says, right? He writes the commandments himself.
It symbolizes the permanence of the natural law for all eternity. That's what the stone conveys to us. The law inscribed into stone symbolizes the permanence of the natural law forever and ever. Like I said, it's binding on everyone and everywhere.
It doesn't matter if it was 5000 years ago or today, if you're in the continents of the east or the west or north or south, it doesn't even matter. They're binding on everyone. And then it also symbolizes, however, the hard-heartedness of the Israelites and by extension, all nations. Like I said, sin has darkened our intellects.
It's weakened our wills and we have become hard-hearted. And God is trying to inscribe into our hard hearts. Here's the law that will make us truly happy and fulfilled. So there's a lot we could say about the commandments.
Believe you me, we have the whole section, a whole quarter of the catechism on the natural law in the 10 commandments. But suffice it to say right now, if this is God's family rules, then we can think of the first three commandments that in reference to our love and our duty to God. The first three commandments reflect how we are to love God as our heavenly Father. Commandments four through 10 reflect and refer to our love and duty to our neighbors, or you can think of each other as siblings.
If we're part of the family of God, then in Christ, we are all siblings. So this is actually really important because if you remember in Matthew 22, verses 37 through 39, Jesus said the two greatest commandments were quoting Deuteronomy six, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength. And then you also quoted Leviticus 19 as the love your neighbor as yourself. So if someone were to say, okay, well, that makes sense.
Well, how do I love God? Well, that's commandments one through three. And I go, okay, well, how do I love my neighbor as myself? Well, that's commandments four through 10.
And in loving our neighbor, in loving our spiritual siblings, we love God. We love God in them. So the greatest commandments loving God, loving neighbor, are really summarized here in these commandments, giving us specificity on how we're supposed to do that. All right.
So chapter 20 is super important. Forms the first part of the terms of the covenant, how the people are to live lives of harmony and peace with God with each other. And then chapters 21 through 23 are a whole slew of different temporary laws that really are given, they're meant to govern Israel as a nation, then and there. All right, these laws are temporary.
So the 10 commandments are binding on everyone everywhere, whether you lived in Israel during this period of history, or whether you were a Gentile, your Babylon, or your later on your Greek or an American or whatever, they're binding everywhere. However, these laws in 21 through 23 are temporary. They govern Israel as a nation, so long as it exists as a nation. And keep that in mind as well, because as we go on in the next couple of lectures and we discussed additional laws that are given to Israel, they're gonna have to understand them in that context.
Their temporary laws are given to Israel to govern them then and there for specific pedagogical reasons. So stay tuned and we're gonna of course, I'll be looking at all of that in great detail. All right, so in summary here, as I say in the notes, chapter 20 is known as the words, right, the 10 words, the decalogue, the 10 commandments, chapters 21 through 23 are known as the ordinances of the Lord. Both of them together form, as I was saying, the terms of the covenant oath that Israel will swear to uphold.
So again, I repeat, God swears on his part, he will make Israel his own special possession and make of the Meccino priests and the holy nation. And Israel, the people swear that they're gonna uphold chapters 23 through 23, the words and the ordinances. And they say this multiple times. Yes, everything that the Lord says, we will do that, chapter 24, verse three in another context as well.
Whatever the Lord says, we're gonna do. So they freely choose to uphold it. All right, and that brings us to this next section here, the ratification of the covenant itself. Shh.