Glorious Sinai - Part One

Extract

Glorious Sinai – Part One
A. W. Pink

Some of our readers are likely to be rather puzzled, if not actually surprised, by such a title as the above. Those accustomed to weigh words may regard the adjective as a strange or even incongruous one. “Forbidding Sinai,” “terrifying Sinai,” yes, but scarcely “glorious!” If such be the reader’s concept of Sinai, then it is certainly a most inadequate one, if not erroneous. That the solemn transactions of that mount were indeed awe-inspiring―yea, repellent to the natural man―is readily admitted; yet that is by no means all that they were. There was another side to them, a blessed and praise-inducing one, which also needs to be taken into consideration. Referring to the covenant and economy which was there established, the Holy Spirit declares that it “was glorious” (2 Cor. 3:7)―yea, “glory” in the abstract (verse 9), and “was made glorious” (verse 10). True, He likewise tells us in the same passage that it was a “ministration of condemnation and death” unto the guilty, yet that in no wise altered its blessed character. True also that “glory” pales before another covenant and economy which exceeded it in glory (verses 9 and 10); nevertheless it was―in itself and in its attendants―exceedingly splendid and impressive. At Sinai, there was vouchsafed a glorious manifestation of the majesty of Jehovah. At Sinai, there was given a glorious revelation of the divine will and moral perfections. At Sinai, there was a glorious inauguration of a most excellent economy―all of which contained a glorious typification of things to come. As another has well said, “No event in our world has been more magnificent in its circumstances of external majesty and splendour than the giving of the Law on mount Sinai.” Such a statement is fully warranted by the language of Holy Writ. Take a single specimen from the Psalms: “The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God: even Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, the God of Israel” (Psa. 68:8). When Jehovah descended to deliver the Law, He bowed the heavens, shook the earth, and made Sinai quake to its very foundations. Even more grandiloquent are the strains used by the prophet: “God came from Teman [the south], and the Holy One …