Clinic, Part 2: A New Promise

By helping them escape Egypt, God had earned the Israelites’ trust, and he had removed an external threat that would have prevented them from accomplishing their mission of healing human nature and restoring human relationships. Now, it was time for Israel to continue the work that Abraham, Sarah, and their family had started: deepening partnership with God and the removal of the internal threat: the sin in their own hearts.

God led the Israelites through the desert toward Canaan, the garden land that he had promised to them, and along the way, he taught them more about himself and what it meant to be images of God. A few examples:

• God used a tree to turn bitter water sweet, showing his ability to recreate the garden land.
• Each day, God provided water and food that spoiled if kept overnight, both showing his provision and teaching the Israelites to entrust to God their desires and appetites.
• When the Israelites were attacked by the Amalekites, God gave them victory in the battle, but it required the leaders of Israel to support each other and share in a great physical burden.
• God made Moses the first Judge, a role that helped Israelites settle disputes and learn how to apply God’s restorative justice in their community.
  
  

Mount Sinai and Fire

Part of the way through the trip, the Israelites came to Mount Sinai. And there, God had something planned for them. In a special ceremony, he asked them to meet him on the mountain. Unfortunately, the Israelites were afraid to accept that invitation. At the time that God called them up, there was thunder and lightning above, and fire and smoke covered the mountain. Instead of everyone going up, they sent Moses on their behalf.

It was understandable for the Israelites to be afraid in that moment, but in the Bible, divine fire always begins as a good thing. It can be destructive, but that destructive power is the flip side of purification. Blacksmiths, for instance, use fire to melt metal in order to remove impurities. The purpose of the fire on Mount Sinai was Israel’s purification. It was another step in restoring corrupted human nature.

We can see this from the effect that the fire had on Moses. When he descended the mountain after meeting with God, Moses' face was shining. His face emanated light because he allowed God to purify him to some degree. Also note that Moses was on the mountain for forty days. That is the same number of days that it rained when the flood cleansed the Earth of evil in Noah’s time. It is the number of years that judges served, the members of Israel that helped remove injustice from the community. It is the number of years that Israel had to wander through the desert after later rejecting God at Mount Sinai and constructing their own god–a golden calf–instead.

Reversing the Exile from Eden

The biggest clue about the meaning of Mount Sinai's fire comes from remembering the story of Adam and Eve’s exile from Eden. That story starts with them in a garden land on a mountain in God’s presence. It ends with them being exiled–descending the mountain and leaving the garden land behind–with a flaming sword guarding the entrance back into Eden. We noted in Corruption, Part 2 that the flaming sword symbolized God’s desire to cut or burn the sin-disease away for humans to return to the garden land. Now, at Mount Sinai, this story was being mirrored. Israel was being led back into a garden land, and God was inviting them up onto a mountain. To meet him there, they would need to walk through a purifying fire. They needed a circumcision of their hearts. They needed to remove the corruption in their human nature that prevented them from fulfilling their responsibilities as images of God.

As we've discussed, God could not force this healing on them. God desired partnership with humans from the beginning. Humans had to want to be cured for the healing to stick. We might understand this by looking at parallels in physical health. Consider someone who is experiencing negative health effects because they are overweight. A doctor may be able to perform surgery to "fix" the problem, but while that might help in the short term, it is not a long-term solution. If the person eats and drinks the same food in the same amounts and maintains the same level of exercise as before the surgery, they will eventually gain the weight back and experience the same health problems. Some change is needed for the healing to stick.

It is the same for spiritual health. God has always been working on our restoration from his end, but for the Israelites to experience lasting healing, changes would be required from their end. Unsurprisingly, then, Mount Sinai was where Israel entered into a covenant which included God’s health regimen for the Israelites. The commands, calendar, rituals, priests, and sanctuary, which many refer to as “the Law,” or “the Jewish Law” and is detailed in Exodus through Deuteronomy - all of it was part of a system of cleansing and purification that God called the Jewish people to follow in order to cut away the corruption of sin and spiritually return to the Garden at the same time that they were physically entering into a new garden land (the parts of the system are explored further in Atonement 201).

The sanctuary system was especially interesting. Although some read the animal sacrifices and bloodshed of the book of Leviticus and conclude that God was bloodthirsty, the opposite is true: God was acting like a blood donor. As God's presence rested in the sanctuary - first the tabernacle, and later the temple - God acted like a dialysis machine. He called the Israelites to bring him their impurities, so God could give back purified life, symbolized by the animal blood. In fact, once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest went into the presence of God in the innermost holy of holies. The high priest going into the innermost place of the sanctuary reenacted Moses going up to the uppermost place of Mount Sinai. In this way, God and a representative of Israel stabilized the covenant. God could then be supernaturally present in Israel's midst and give them unusual blessing and protection.

In Deuteronomy 28, we see that if the Israelites had been able to follow this demanding health regimen, God promised them (in what is known as the Mosaic or Sinai Covenant) an abundance of life, resources, and other blessings, a true restoration of life as it was in the Garden of Eden. But if they turned from it, they would experience sickness, scarcity, and despair. This may seem harsh and/or upsetting to modern readers, but remember that ancient Israel carried the hope for the healing of all humans. If they turned away from God, human corruption would have free reign, and God’s plan for human restoration would be set back by hundreds of years, if not more (this is expanded upon in A Note on Violence in the Old Testament). Just like God’s “punishments” for Adam and Eve, these “punishments” are more like God telling the Israelites the natural consequences that their actions will lead to (think again of a child told not to touch the stove).

Sinai and Onward

Already at Sinai, the Israelites gave in to their distrust of God, and they did so again at other parts of their journey back to Canaan. As a result, they were made to wander the desert for forty years until the older, formerly distrusting generation helped instill faith and hope into a new generation. At that point, the Israelites were ready to trust God and cooperate with him as they entered into the new Garden land, ready to follow God’s health plan and work towards the healing of corruption in human nature. Israel’s time in Canaan is covered in Clinic, pt. 3: A New Garden.