The task of Moses was to bring the whole nation to stand at the foot of the mountain, like a bride prepared for the coming of the bridegroom. They were to meet with this great God…Moses ascended to the top of the mountain, while God descended upon the top of the mountain. This is the meeting of heaven and earth.

In their album based on the epistle of Hebrews, Psallos has a song about the tabernacle and the old covenant that was made with Israel at Sinai. In that song, they call it a come-but-stay-away covenant, and our present text will display how true that description is. At the very heart of our passage is the reality that Israel was coming “to meet God” (v. 17); however, that is flanked by repeated warnings of the deadly consequences of coming too close. Come, but stay away.
Consecrate Them Today—Verses 9-15
Our text picks up where we previously left off. The Israelites are now encamped in the wilderness all around Mount Sinai, and God summoned Moses up to receive words for all the people. Yahweh then gave Israel a three-verse summary of the covenant that He was making with them, and all the people of Israel responded that they would be faithful to do all that God commanded them. After this, we read:
And the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever.”
When Moses told the words of the people to the LORD, the LORD said to Moses, “Go to the people, and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments and be ready for the third day. For the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. And you shall set limits for the people all around, saying, “Take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death. No hand shall touch him, but he shall be stoned or shot, whether beast or man, he shall not live.’ When the trumpet sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain.” So Moses went down from the mountain to the people and consecrated the people; and they washed their garments. And he said to the people, “Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman.”
Verse 9 is the context for the remainder of this chapter. Although Moses has already spoken a summary of the covenant to Israel on God’s behalf, Yahweh was going to descend upon the mountain in an especially glorious manner so that the people of Israel would hear Him speaking audibly to Moses. Of course, Moses would continue to be the mediator between them and God; the LORD was only going to pull back the veil of His glory that they may see the outward manifestations of God’s glory with their own eyes and hear God’s voice with their own ears and then believe Moses as God’s prophet forever.
The words that God would actually speak for all of Israel to hear are the Ten Commandments in 20:1-17, and after hearing the voice of Yahweh and seeing the storm of His glory, the people cried out to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die” (20:19). Thus, they ended up begging for Moses to be their mediator permanently.
In preparation for the LORD’s mighty descent, He commanded Moses to consecrate the people for two days, and He was speak to them on the third day. Notice that the counting of days is like Christ’s resurrection on the third day. We would probably tend today not to include today if we made plans three days out. Our thinking would be tomorrow, the next day, and the day after that is the third day. Yet God told Moses to “consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments and be ready for the third day.” Again, the counting is like the three days that Christ spent in the grave being the very end of Friday, all of Saturday, and the beginning of Sunday.
Regarding consecration, we should remember that it means to set apart someone or something for God, to make it holy. After the Passover, God gave Israel a perpetual command to consecrate their firstborn sons to Him, which was a symbol of His possession of each household in Israel. This, however, was a special consecration of the entire nation. Indeed, just as God told them that they would be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, these two days of consecrating themselves for that role.
The text gives three main actions that Israel needed to take: wash their garments, set a limit around the mountain, and abstain from sexual relations. The washing of their garments was a physical picture of their need to be cleansed of their sin before encountering the presence of the Holy One.
The command “do not go near a woman” does not mean that women are themselves unclean and men could not be in their presence for three days. No, this was a command to abstain from marital relations. Of course, this was not God condemning sex as sinful; it was His design, after all. Instead, this was essentially a corporate fast in which the entire nation set aside otherwise proper earthly pleasures in order to set their minds and hearts upon God.
Finally, the boundary that was to be set around the mountain was for the purpose of preventing the people from touching the mountain, in which case they would need to be put to death. Here is that come-but-stay-away element. The LORD was coming down to speak to Israel; however, they still needed to keep their distance from Him. Anyone who went past the designated limit would be guilty of trespassing against God’s holiness and would be sentenced to death. In order to distance themselves from the offender, no one would be allowed to touch the condemned man or animal; rather, the execution would need to be carried out by stoning or by bow and arrow.
If our response to all of this is to ask why such a big deal, then we reveal both the callousness of our own hearts as well as our ignorance of God. Back in 2015, President Obama came to give a speech in our town, and though our city is very solidly conservative and most of its residents fundamentally disagreed with every one of his policies, his visit was still a big deal. For a few hours surrounding his speech, main roads were blocked off and traffic of about half the city was rerouted. And that was all for a president, not a king, in a town where he had few active supporters.
Now consider the weight of coming into the presence of a king in the ancient world. One of the most suspenseful moments in the book of Esther is when she must go into the king’s presence unrequested. As she tells Mordecai:
All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s providences know that if any man or woman goes to the inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law–to be put to death, except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter so that he may live. But as for me, I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days.Esther 4:11
If entering a king’s presence was a fearful thing, how much more the presence of the King of kings, the Maker of heaven and earth? Establishing the reality of God’s awesome presence is precisely the point of the next few verses.
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Fathers of the faith came up against the same flavors of heresy that we do today, and to battle against these false doctrines they opened Scripture and wrote creeds to help ordinary believers understand. Thanks be to God, he has preserved these creeds, and confessions in more recent history, for us today. While the creeds don’t carry the authority of Scripture, they communicate and summarize the essential truths of Scripture. I recommend getting to know the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed, which were specifically created to summarize the teaching of Scripture and condemn trinitarian heresies.

Have you ever found yourself trying to explain the Trinity to a child? Or perhaps even a teen or adult who has never heard of the concept? I have three little ones, one of whom is a four-year-old bubbling with questions. Here is an example of a recent bedtime conversation we had:
“Mommy, what is the Trinity?”
“The Trinity is God. Three Persons, one God.”
His face scrunched up. “How can God be three Persons but one God?”
This is where I should be able to tell you I gave the most perfect, theologically sound answer to my child and tell you how you can do the same.
I did no such thing.
“Um… well… he just is.”
“But how did Jesus come to earth and the Father remain in heaven?”
“Well, I… um…”
“How is God a Father and a Son?”
Many Christians struggle with how to give a sound explanation of the Trinity.
As I grappled and hummed, my four-year-old kept listing off question after question—none for which I had an answer. I was tempted to use one of those explanations I had heard in church growing up: God is like an egg, God is like the three forms of water, God is like a flower… but I knew that all those fell flat because, in one way or another, they all promoted a trinitarian heresy.
For years, I’ve prided myself on my passion for theology and biblical literacy, and my shelves sagged with heavy academic books. But as I tucked my child in that night, I was humbled by my lack of a basic understanding of the Trinity.
I have a feeling I’m not alone. You don’t have to be a mother to be faced with the dilemma of explaining the Trinity. You could be a Sunday school teacher (for any age) being asked to further explain, or reclining at a family meal where the conversation of religion comes up. Or maybe you’ve stood in your doorway with someone evangelizing to you about their religion that seems to mirror Christianity but smells of tritheism. Or perhaps you’re alone studying your Bible and wondering how God can possibly be three Persons and one God. Let’s open our Bibles and get to know the Trinity together. But first, in case you’re still not fully convinced you need to know this, let’s dive into why the Trinity matters.
Our theology of the Trinity affects our fundamental understanding of what Christianity means.
Because of how convoluted and confusing this doctrine can appear, we may be tempted to push it to the side. We loop it in with doctrines such as the end times and say, “It’s something we just won’t be able to grasp this side of heaven.” But the doctrine of the Trinity is essential to Christian theology. When we get the Trinity wrong, we get all of Christianity wrong. That’s what makes first-order Christian doctrines so vital to our faith: Everything that we believe is rooted in them, and once you alter those ground-level doctrines it changes how the entire tree grows. The Trinity is no different.
If we don’t emphasize the oneness of the Trinity correctly, we move towards tritheism—the worship of three gods rather than one. This breaks the first commandment (Exod. 20:2–3) and goes against God’s clear revelation of him: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one,” (Deut. 6:4; cf. Mark 12:29; John 17:3; Rom. 3:30). But if we blend them too much together, we get another heresy that goes against the clear revelation of the three distinct Persons (Gen. 1:1–27; Matt. 3:13–17; John 1:1–5).
Getting the Trinity wrong likewise skews the gospel message by which we are saved. Did one of our gods die for our sins after the greater god told him to? Or did the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, die in our place because of a covenant made in eternity past between the three perfect, eternal Persons of the Godhead? Does a lower, lesser god indwell us, or does God himself indwell us through the Third Person of the Trinity? These questions matter, and they change the whole of our salvation when answered wrongly.
Even if we aren’t the ones falling for these false doctrines, we need to be prepared to give the right answer to those who ask (1 Pet. 3:15). These people might come into your classroom, bump into you at church, sit in your small group, or knock on your front door. Will you give them biblical truth? Will you be able to defend what you believe?
Inconspicuous Trinity “drifts” can still be found around us.
The examples I gave above are a bit on the further end of the spectrum, and likely you won’t encounter them to that extreme in your church, books, podcasts, blogs, or social media feed. But that doesn’t mean the Trinity isn’t still skewed in evangelical theology.
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Written by R.C. Sproul |
Sunday, August 13, 2023
When we close our eyes in death, we do not cease to be alive; rather, we experience a continuation of personal consciousness. No person is more conscious, more aware, and more alert than when he passes through the veil from this world into the next. 

The guns of secular naturalism, when aimed at the Christian faith, resemble not so much shotguns as carefully aimed rifles. The chief target of the naturalist is the biblical doctrine of creation. If the doctrine of creation falls, all of Judeo-Christianity falls with it. Every skeptic understands that. Thus the constant shooting at Genesis 1.
But along with the assault against divine creation comes an assault against the biblical teaching of a historical Adam who is involved in a historical fall, the result of which is the entrance of death into the world. If Adam can be confined to the genre of mythology and the fall set aside with him, then we see death as a purely natural phenomenon with no relationship to sin.
Much is at stake with the biblical teaching of the fall because this doctrine is linked to the doctrine of redemption. The historical function of the first Adam is matched and conquered by the historical life of the last Adam, Jesus Christ.
In the eighteenth century, when Jonathan Edwards wrote his lengthy treatise on original sin, he argued not simply from biblical teaching. He also maintained that if the Bible itself were completely silent about a historical fall, natural reason would have to suggest that idea based on the reality of the universal presence of sin. If sin is simply a result of bad decisions that some people make, we would assume that at least 50 percent of the people born in this world would choose the right path rather than the sinful one that is so damaging to our humanity. The fact that 100 percent of the human race falls into sin indicates that there must be an inherent moral defect in the race. Of course, Edwards points to the fall, a historical event, to account for this universal fatal flaw.
In the Genesis account, we are told that the soul that sins will die. In His warning to our original parents with respect to disobedience, God declared that “the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17). But the record goes on to say that the day Adam and Eve disobeyed their Maker, they did not experience the fullness of what the Greek translation of the Old Testament calls thanatos—physical death. Because of this, some have argued that the death that God promised was not physical death but rather spiritual death.
To be sure, spiritual death set in the very day that Adam and Eve sinned.
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