After liberating Israel from slavery, God offered them a special relationship with Him, if they would obey Him and keep His covenant. Even though He had rescued them and had a plan for them, they had to meet His conditions.
The people agreed unanimously and promptly, without knowing the terms of the covenant, that they would do everything God told them to do. So God moved forward with establishing the covenant relationship. Note that it was going to be done on His terms; the people had no say in the terms of the covenant.
Even enjoying a special relationship with God, the people couldn’t meet Him too familiarly. They had to prepare by cleaning up. It’s amazing to think how difficult that would have been to wash their clothes in the desert. It took two days for them to prepare, and then the closest they got to God was standing at the foot of the mountain onto which God descended. Indeed, they didn’t want to get any closer than that, or even that close, because the fire, billowing smoke, violent shaking of the mountain, and sound of the trumpet was so terrifying to them that they trembled with fear and begged for Moses to be their intermediary. We can only imagine what it would be like to be in God’s presence, but my guess is that it will be more like this experience than the familiarity modern man commonly envisions when He thinks of God as his buddy. Based on this description, it seems like greater intimacy with God results in greater reverence for Him, because we recognize that He is fearsome. To know Him more fully is to fear Him more. As Beaver says of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, “Of course He isn’t safe. But He’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
What lessons do you learn about God from this description of man’s close encounter with Him? What feelings does that arouse in you? Can you praise God for who He is?