Move From This Mountain

“Then the LORD spoke to Moses, “Depart, go up from here, you, and the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, “To your descendants I will give it”” (Exod. 33:1, NASB). The children of Israel are camped in the Wilderness of Sinai near Mount Sinai. They have been here for one year. How did they get here and why are they here? In Exodus 3 we learn that God remembers His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He also hears the cry of their descendents who have been in bondage to the Egyptians for over four hundred years. God calls Moses on Mount Sinai and commissions him to go to Egypt to lead His people out of slavery in Egypt to freedom. Their destination is the land of Canaan that God has promised to give to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God tells Moses to bring the people to Mount Sinai when they are free from Egypt. So, Moses lead the people to Sinai as God had commanded him to do. At Mount Sinai God gives Moses the Ten Commandments (Exod. 20) and gives Moses details of the covenant. The people have been here for a year. There have been challenges for Moses and the people. Some of them fell into idolatry and worshipped the calf that Aaron had built for them. The people demanded this idol god because they lacked faith to wait on Moses to return from the mountain. After being at Mount Sinai for one year the Lord commands Moses and the people to leave the mountain. ‘“The LORD our God spoke to us at Horeb, saying, ‘You have stayed long enough at this mountain. ‘Turn and set your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites, and to all their neighbors in Arabah, in the hill country and in the lowland and in the Negev and by the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river Euphrates’” (Deut. 1:6-7, NASB). In this article I want to use the mountain as a metaphor to explore reasons that Christians as individual persons as well as church congregations may need to leave the place that they have been long enough and possibly for too long. In the Exodus story the Israelites have been in bondage for about 430 years. They know about the God of Abraham, their father. They know that Abraham’s God has promised to send them a deliverer. However, the Israelites are like a lot of church folk today. People have grown up in homes where parents and grandparents were active members of their church, but these children do not know God for themselves. They are viewed with high esteem because of their relationship to the revered member who has died and has gone to be with the Lord. Often, these children and the church will think that they should step in and take their loved one’s place in the church. Again, I say, they do not know God for themselves, at least in the same way that their loved ones did. So, when they come to the church or the church selects them to serve God they have to learn who God is. What is God like? What does God require of me? They must learn that their parent’s religion does not give them what God requires of them. They have to come to the mountain to learn about God. In this article the mountain represents the church. Now, it is necessary and good that we all come to the mountain. The mountain represents a place of learning about God. It represents a place where we receive from God His blessings, and we learn about His expectations of us. The mountain is a place where we become comfortable coming to Sunday school, Bible study, and worship. While this is necessary these things are not the destination that God wants us to reach. God never told Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that He was going to give them Mount Sinai. The church must ask itself, “How can we effectively carry out the great Commission found in Matthew 28:18-20? The Great Commission commands the church to make disciples for Christ. In Acts 8-9 the disciple are forced by persecution to leave Jerusalem. They are forced to leave the mountain. However, wherever they go they tell people about their God. They tell people about Jesus. People like Saul of Tarsus pursue them and put them in prison. The spread of the Gospel could not have taken place if the people had stayed at their mountain in Jerusalem. The mountain represents a place that becomes our comfort zone. In Acts 6 we read about the division between the Hellenistic (Greek) Jews and the native Hebrews. The apostles laid hands on seven men to settle the problem. The number of disciples was increasing in Jerusalem, but they were not taking the Gospel to the world as Jesus had commanded in Mark 16:15-16. We must leave our comfort zones and start out on the journey to the land of Canaan. Indeed there are challenges along the journey. We will encounter obstacles that seem too big for us to overcome (see numbers 13-14). We cannot allow these obstacles to stop us on our journey. We cannot return to Egypt. Regardless, God is not with us when we refuse to leave our mountains of comfort and lack the faith to go to the Promised Land. When the Israelites refused to go to the Promised Land God rebuked them. They had to wander in the wilderness for thirty-eight years. Because they rebelled against God, instead of reaching the Promised Land they died in the wilderness. Although we are concerned primarily with our spiritual lives, the truth is that Christians cannot separate their relationship to God from their relationship to God in the entirety of their lives. Thus, moving from our mountains enable us to make advances in all areas of our life. Today, our country is in great spiritual decline. We have large churches. The churches are engaged in multiple ministries that help people with their material needs. Yet, there is a great decline in the church’s message of Jesus as Lord and Savior. There are people who serve in ministries who know very little about the Bible. They can tell their friends about their church’s ministries, but they cannot tell the world about their Jesus. The churches have fallen for the political demand to use “politically correct” language. Thus, the church is reluctant to stand up to the world and declare the truth of the Gospel. We don’t want to offend anybody in the church or out of the church. As a result we continue to bemoan the insecurities that we feel in our daily existence. We are comfortable at the mountain, but we must leave the mountain and start on our journey to Canaan, the land that God promised to our forefathers to give to us. It is a land that flows with milk and honey. It has houses that others have built. It is there for the people of God to take. God has given this land to us, but we must leave the mountain because the mountain is limited in what it has to offer us.