Imagine seeing these two slabs of stone, supernaturally engraved with the finger of God!
Again Moses is called up to meet God in Mount Sinai, this time with “his assistant Joshua” (Ex 24:13). Interestingly, the Lord says, “Come up to Me on the mountain and be there” (v 12). We know what He meant, don’t we? How often have we had the experience of going to worship the Lord, to pray or hear His Word taught, and we show up all right, but for some reason we aren’t really there. Preoccupied with other things, when we return home, it’s as if we never went anywhere. So when we’re on the Lord’s business, let’s be all there! As Moses headed up the mountain, he didn’t know how long he might be gone, so he told the elders, “Aaron and Hur are with you. If any man has a difficulty, let him go to them” (v 14). His arrival at the peak coincided with a dense cloud cover. For six days he waited. Then, on the seventh, he was invited into God’s presence. In all, he was there for 40 days and nights. You would find it profitable to look up the many Bible events that occurred over a 40-day period. But what was the purpose of this trek to the summit? The Lord said, “I will give you tablets of stone, and the law and commandments which I have written” (v 12). The apostle Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 3 that these stone tables are a graphic illustration of the law—perfect in their message but, because of our moral weakness, incapable of saving us: brittle, heavy, lifeless, and in fact weighing us down. The law was never intended to be the means of our salvation. Instead, like a thermometer, it was designed to show us how sick we were, and how much we need a Redeemer. In fact, “the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal 3:24). These two tablets would never cure our spiritual sickness!