God’s love language is obedience

“On the first day of the third month after the Israelites left Egypt – on that very day – they came to the Desert of Sinai. After they set out from Rephidim, they entered the Desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain. Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him…” (Exodus 19:1-3a)

If you’re like me (or a lot of us on this trip), and you grew up going to Sunday school and reading children’s Bible storybooks and seeing those stories come to life on felt boards on the floor of your school classroom, you think you know what this looks like: Moses in a long robe, walking up a smooth winding path to the top of a solitary mountain. You know mountains are high, but you also know Moses traipsed up and down Mt. Sinai lots of times. He talks to God there, he goes down and talks to the people. It all seems very tame.

Today we walked nearly seven miles in the Desert of Sinai, up a mountain. We drank lots and lots of water. A lot of us got tired and lightheaded and claimed to be the hottest we’d ever been. We scrambled up a mountain, relying on each other to hoist us up, grabbing rocks for support, and finally made it to the top of a plateau. Here was a mount like Mount Sinai. In every direction we could see barren, dry sand-swept formations, gorgeous even in their deadness. The wind gave us relief from the heat and we were tired but proud of our work. This is what Moses did every time he went to talk to God on Mt. Sinai. It was not tame. It was not solitary. But it was a beautiful depiction of God’s nature.

As well as the intensity of Moses’s communion with God, the ruggedness, even misery, of the Israelites’ wanderingbecame grittily real to us in those moments.

When we got to the top we stood in Moses’ shoes, settling into the idea that here at the top of the mountain was where God chose to make his home in those earliest days of Israelite wandering in the wilderness. Rod asked us to look out over the valley and imagine 600,000 Israelites, staring up at Moses and Mt. Sinai, and then asked us to think of all the weddings we’d been to and that beautiful moment where the groom sees his bride for the first time.

This groom, this is God seeing his people in the valley. Israel is his bride, and finally, finally they are out of captivity. In the wilderness he can teach them about freedom and at long last they can say their wedding vows.

God’s love language is obedience, Rod taught us. And the Ten Commandments God delivers on Mt. Sinai aren’t trivial instruction for our lives; they’re our wedding vows. It begs the question – how have we been doing with them? We took a moment to read the Ten Commandments on our own and ask ourselves this question, then recommit -- “renew our vows” -- to God.

We took some more time after lunch to reflect on Exodus 17, when God brings water from the rock for the Israelites, and were reminded again of how much we’re like the Israelites.

It’s impossible to not see parallels between the Israelites and ourselves, and Rod has been teaching us to think this way, too.

We were all hot, weak, and totally dependent on water and electrolytes today. In Exodus 17 the Israelites were completely without water – they were probably dehydrated, maybe suffering from heat exhaustion, potentially vomiting and dizzy and definitely miserable. They want to stoneMoses they are so upset. They’re suffering from a serious case of Stockholm syndrome, wishing they could just go back into captivity, and God makes Moses walk 12 miles to Mt. Sinai, where he is, to get them water. I would be upset, too.

Then just a short time later God gives them a tiny glimpse into why they’re wandering – so that he can set them free, so that he can get them mentally out of Egypt like they are physically out of Egypt. He makes his wedding vows to them through the Ten Commandments and they emphatically say, “we do,” even though later they will let him down.

It really gave me a glimpse into the heart of God. I know the human love I have for my husband and the depth of disappointment and betrayal I would feel if he broke our vows.

Yet this is exactly what the Israelites do, and exactly what we continue to do. God lets us wander to discipline and teach us, to break us out of our Stockholm syndrome to this world, and we continue to break our vows everyday.

Each day we spend here we get a better picture what’s really happening in the Bible, but today we got a special glimpse into God’s heart, how much we have let him down, and how much he still loves us.

Written by Abby