SERMON III.

MOUNT SINAI AND MOUNT SION.

EXODUS iii. 12.

This shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.

IN the chapter from which these words are taken, we have the first beginning of what may be called the earthly redemption of God's Israel, as in the accounts of our Lord's birth, in the first chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke, we have the beginning of the spiritual redemption of Israel. It is very desirable to bear in mind, wherever it is possible, in reading the Old Testament, the connexion of what we there read with ourselves and our own condition, lest we should regard it merely as so much past history, and separate it too much from any direct interest of our own. Now, the deliverance of the Israelites out of Egypt was not merely a great deliverance for a particular people; here, as

in so many other instances, the Israelites were the ministers of good to us. For if we consider how they had lived in Egypt, and for how long a time, that they must have generally lost all remembrance of their fathers, the patriarchs, and have greatly forgotten the God of their fathers, we shall see how hardly the knowledge of God could have been preserved amongst men, had not the Israelites been separated from amongst the Egyptians, and settled by themselves in a land of their own. And had it not been for the knowledge of God the Israelites, and spread through them, and through their Scriptures, amongst the adjoining nations, it does not appear how there could have been any soil prepared to receive the seed of fuller truth, when the Gospel itself was in its due season revealed to mankind.

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This being considered, will give us a much deeper interest in that particular part of the Scripture history which will be read for the next two Sundays, as well as to-day. And in taking the several passages of the lesson for this morning, the words of the text seemed to me to contain much that was deserving of notice. For, first, the words may not be at first clear to every one, and so may require to be explained; and then, when we have explained them, they lead us to consider one of the most striking parts of God's dealings with the Israelites ; and thence, as his dealings with the Israelites, in

the old covenant, have almost always some analogy or resemblance to his dealings with us under the new covenant, they lead us also to consider a very striking part of the dispensation of the Gospel.

First, then, let us try to explain the words, "This shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain." How was the mere fact, that Moses should bring the people to worship God on that mountain, to be a token to him that God had sent him? because, if he led them thither in obedience to God's command, it could not be properly a token to him that that command was from God, but rather a proof to the people that he believed it to be so. But in the words, "ye shall serve God upon this mountain," there is more meant than that the Israelites should come there to offer their sacrifices. The meaning is, that God would, as it were, meet them on that mountain; that when they worshipped him there, He would be found by them; that his presence would be shown to them so manifestly, that Moses and all the people should know that He whom they worshipped, and He by whom they had been delivered out of Egypt, and who had called Moses from tending sheep to be the leader of his people, was indeed the Lord of heaven and earth, the one Eternal God.

Mount Sinai, then, was to afford the great sign of the divine mission of Moses; there God would

be revealed to him, and show that He was God indeed. Wherefore He came down with all the signs and seals of His presence, with His power, and His wisdom, and His goodness. He came with His power, with blackness and clouds, and thick darkness; with fire, and the sound of a trumpet, and with a mighty voice. Hear and think upon the solemnity of that day on Mount Sinai, when God gave the signs of his power:-" Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice." These were the signs of power; and thus we find Moses appealing to them as such, when he asks the people, "Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live?"

But there were also given the signs of God's wisdom and goodness: there was given on that same Mount Sinai, that law of which St. Paul bore true witness, when he described it as holy, just, and good. There were given all those statutes and ordinances which met so many of the worst evils of society, evils which it has been found so hard to deal with,— statutes which, while they made allowance in some respects for the hardness of the people's hearts, for their imperfect notions of right and wrong, yet had

a tendency gradually to raise those notions, and so to prepare them for the yet more perfect law that was to be revealed hereafter. So that Moses could appeal to the signs of God's wisdom and holiness shown on Mount Sinai, no less than to the signs of his power. "What nation is there so great that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?"

By what was to happen on Mount Sinai, a proof was to be given that Moses had been sent by God to deliver Israel. But this proof was not after the same manner to be given again to a future Redeemer. For the people had said, “Let us not hear again the voice of the Lord our God, neither let us see this great fire any more, that we die not. And the Lord said, They have well spoken that which they have spoken." Therefore he said unto Moses, "I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.” The next redemption given, the next law delivered, were thus not to have exactly the same sign as that which had accompanied the redemption and the law ministered by Moses.

Yet, as God had said to Moses, "This shall be a token unto thee: When thou hast brought the people out of Egypt, thou shalt serve God upon this mountain ;" so was the worshipping of God on His holy mountain to be a token, no less, that Jesus