20b So Moses went up 21 and the LORD said to him, “Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see the LORD and many of them perish.
I find it funny that Moses goes up to meet with the Lord on the top of Mount Sinai and the first command he gets is to go down. I might have been tempted to ask the Lord for more than one message to bring down. I would not want to have to climb the mountain multiple times to deliver multiple messages to the people. I am about efficiency. I want to get my truth packaged in convenient doses. I don’t want to have to ‘waste time’ waiting around. The people had already been warned not to step on the mountain when the Lord was present. The Lord wanted to give them a second warning, a second chance to obey. In this case, obedience meant life and disobedience meant quick death. Moses is not a spring chicken at this point. He is probably in his 80’s at this point in time. And Mount Sinai is about 7500 feet high. Here is a link to some photos of the journey up (http://lluker.faculty.ltss.edu/mt-sinai.htm). It was not an easy trek for Moses. It would not be an easy trek for any of us. This is definitely Special Forces country. But the Lord wants His people to be safe. His care and concern is more important than Moses’ comfort. His care and concern runs deeper than our comfort as well. Comfort does not equal God’s blessing. In fact, often times when we are uncomfortable, God is very much present and ‘real’ in our lives. Jesus didn’t consider comfort as He was nailed to the Cross. He chose pain in order to gain something for us, something we could never get for ourselves. God came down to the mountain, Moses went up. Then he went down to deliver a message. God is always coming down to us and passing on a message to us, a message we are to pass on to others. How are you doing with passing that message along?
The Arnold Journey 