Exodus 19:24, commentary and pictures

Soon after the encampment at Sinai, Moses alone climbed the steep and rugged path to the cloud marking the divine presence, for the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai before the mighty host of Israel to give His law. The meeting took place at the foot of Sinai amid created works, where God drew near in a thick cloud that mercifully hid His glory and shielded the people while they heard His voice. That setting impressed upon them the sacredness of His law and their own insignificance before Him. The law there was pronounced in awe-inspiring grandeur.

The command sent Moses down to see that the boundary and holiness of the mountain were kept, and then to come back up with Aaron. The priests and the people were forbidden to break through to come up to the Lord. The restriction maintained the boundary around the mount as God prepared to give the Ten Commandments. It guarded them from the danger of approaching His holy presence and terrible majesty without permission, lest He break forth upon them, and from violating the sacredness of His law.

At this meeting Israel was to be taken into a close and peculiar relation to the Most High and incorporated as a church and a nation under God's government. The wonderful promise was made that if they obeyed His voice and kept His covenant and observed His commandments they would be a peculiar treasure above all people, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. Moses repeated this to the elders, and the people accepted it by answering that they would do all that the Lord had spoken. Thus they entered a solemn covenant to accept Him as ruler and became in a special sense the subjects of His authority. God was talking with the people through Moses, and He wants all to understand what He was telling Israel there as He went on to speak the words recorded in Exodus 20:1. His descent at Sinai gave Israel evidence that He was God who would not tolerate iniquity.

The instruction of Exodus 19 and 20 is of great importance and should be often repeated and sacredly observed. It shows that the Lord is the only true God who demands obedience to His Word. His law is the highest education for humanity, so that obedience is learning from God rather than from unsanctified human teachers. In the time when Satan uses every device to draw people away from truth and righteousness, it calls all who would stand on the Lord's side to keep holy the memorial of creation, the seventh day appointed as a day of rest and blessed and sanctified after the work of creation in six days.