Too Close To Touch!

God doesn't open this chapter with a demand. He opens it with a memory.

I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to Myself. The Hebrew word is nesher, the bird that carries its young on its back rather than in its talons, on the very surface that takes the blow first. And the destination was never the mountain. It was Him.

Then He says segullah over a nation that three months earlier was making bricks without straw. In the ancient Near East that was the private treasure of a king, his own hoard, not the treasury of the state.

And only after all of that grace does He say, if you will obey My voice.

In this episode, Dr. Shawn Greener works through nesher and segullah and goy qadosh, why the order of grace and obedience is the whole argument of the chapter, why the boundaries around the mountain were never the goal, and why the God who carries you on His back and the God who makes the mountain tremble are one God and not two.

He did not carry you out of Egypt to leave you at the bottom of a mountain.

New here? This is a daily, chronological, verse-by-verse walk through the whole of Scripture, rooted in the Hebrew language and the Ancient Near Eastern world, centered on Yeshua. Subscribe and turn on the bell so you don't miss tomorrow, when God speaks ten words out of the fire and every person there begs Him to stop.

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The book: https://www.truewordfaithforlife.com/store/true-word-faith-for-life-the-book/ © 2026 Dr. Shawn M. Greener. All Rights Reserved.

#Exodus19 #Sinai #BibleStudy #Yeshua #Grace

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning. Welcome back to True Word Faith for Life with Dr. Sean. I'm gonna give you one guess. I'm Sean. If you haven't liked and subscribed, please like and subscribe. Hit the little bell for all notifications. The one you want is the YouTube channel True Word, Faith for Life with Dr. Sean. About just under 4,000 subscribers. Thanks. So I'm glad you're here today. Because today I come to the foot of a mountain. I love mountains. I haven't spent a lot of time in the mountains, but I love them. How about you? Good morning, everybody. Have you ever stood at the foot of a mountain? I just turned and looked up. Look, I I've I grew up on the Atlantic Ocean. And I've always been in awe of the ocean. I've seen most of the oceans of the world, most of the major bodies of water. I've seen lots of mountains, and the mountains never, ever. It just never seemed to leave my brain. But in this case, today, we stand at the foot of a mountain. And nothing after this moment is ever quite the same again. Look, I know it'd be super, super easy to just kind of blow it off. It's just a scripture. But for 74 days that we've been walking, we walked out of Egypt with the blood still on the doorpost. We walked through a sea that stood up like walls on either side of us. We walked into a wilderness where the water was bitter and the bread fell from the sky. Come on. And today, on the third new moon after leaving Egypt, the people of Israel come to a place where they were always headed. Come to Sinai. Sinai. Listen to how Exodus 19 opens. In the third month, when the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, the same day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. The same day, the same day, the same day. The text wants us to feel the arrival. And here's the first thing I want you to see today. By the way, good morning to everybody. I see everybody there. You're right. Miss Colleen Sean spelled correctly. Yeah. Yeah, hello to Dragonfly, Tammy, Susan, Linda, 2B continued. By the way, that's a great channel. It's very interesting. All kinds of different things. It's a little bit eclectic, but it's it's kind of like a travel channel on YouTube. That's my buddy. Joe runs that channel. It's phenomenal. Hey, Miss Sharon, good to see you. Miss Sharon throwing up the sunflower. I love sunflowers. So here's the first thing I want you to see today. It's early. I didn't sleep last night. There's a whole big long story behind that, but we won't get into it here. Suffice it to say, God doesn't begin this moment with a demand. He begins it with a memory. Look at verse 4. You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Come on, come on, come on, come on. Somebody. Somebody. On eagle's wings. The Hebrew there is Nesher. Nesher. The way it's spelled is three letters. Most Hebrew words are three letters. There's super rare. Super rare. Nun Shin and Esh. Those are the letters. Nun Shin and Esh. And that that's the Hebrew word for eagle. It's the great bird of prey. The one that nests in the high places, the one that carries its young, not in its talons, but those giant stunning talons. But on its back. Above. Where no arrow from beneath can reach them because back then they hunted them. Sarna points out that the picture here, that's one of my resources. Picture here is one of protective strength. The parent bird bearing the weak one on the very place that would take the blow first. Come on, somebody, somebody get that. Come on, put that in your memory. Bank. How's the sound by the way? Look, that's not how God describes the Exodus. Not I dragged you out. Not I owed you nothing and gave you everything. He says, I carried you on my own back and I brought you to myself. The destination was never the mountain. Don't get it twisted. The destination was never the mountain. The destination was the Lord God. Now, watch what comes next, because this is the heart of the chapter. Verse 5. Now, therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people. Above all people, peculiar, peculiar treasure. That's one word in Hebrew. Peculiar treasure. And it's worth slowing down for. It's Segula. Spelled Samach Gemel Lamed. Hey. In the ancient Near East. A Sugula. I mean to tell you. It was the personal treasure of the king. Of any king. His private horde. The wealth that belonged to him directly and not to the kingdom or to the court. There are references that I use. And I include all of them in different things. I'm considering doing a blog post, not fancy, but just a blog post with the references. Nah, I shouldn't do it. It's stupid. It just would add and I it would kill me. I'll just put them all on Sunday. So you'll have all the resources that I use for the whole prior week, just as I'm doing now. So these will be in there. Don't worry. By the way, true wordfaithforlife.com, I have a it's a free blog and study guide. And the study guide is, I mean, you can use it for small groups, you can use it for personal devotionals. The only thing I ask is that when you copy it and paste it, I made it so it could be copied and pasted. Just copy the copyright, the whole copyright, if you will. I don't charge for it, but I want that on there because I pay for it. You know, copyrights are not free. Anyway, none of this is free. Not the treasury of the state. Now, look, if you buzzsawed through this and you didn't look at the ancient Near Eastern language, culture, and context, you'd miss this. This isn't a treasury of the state, a peculiar possession. Don't belong to the state, don't belong to the nation. The treasure of the king's own hand. Do you hear what God is saying to a nation of former slaves? You who three months ago made bricks without straw, you are gonna be my personal treasure. Out of all the earth, out of every people in every nation, you will be the wealth I keep close to myself. Now, I told myself I wasn't gonna do it, but I'm gonna do it because I gotta do it, because it's the right thing to do. Eh. And I'll take my lumps if people don't like it. Listen, people that say, well, the the people that are in Israel now, first of all, they're in stolen land. They're on stolen land. Uh apparently, all you got to do to uh to assuage the guilt of stolen land, the stolen land argument, as with the Obama, I don't know what that thing is. The library, is it a library? Because I don't think so. I don't know what that thing is. Way over budget. And when I weigh, I mean like quadruple. Um it's you know, Valerie Jarrett, uh President Obama, forum President Obama's, you know, she she really drove policy. And she's not a good person. And uh wasn't then, isn't now. And she begins her speech as a three-hour, three-hour thing. She begins her speech by um, you know, when they're doing the dedication of the place, uh, by acknowledging the Native Americans who uh they stole this land is stolen, that this was built on is stolen land. Well, that's pure virtue signaling because guess what? If you were that serious about it being stolen land, guess what you'd do? Stolen land. Guess what you'd do? You know what you'd do? You'd say, hey, you know what? We're not gonna build the library here. We are gonna give this land back to chief whatever his name is, or whatever council, and it'll be for any. If you really believe that, it's just virtue signaling. You say, Dr. Sean, what does that have to do with Israel? What does this have to do with what you're talking about? It has everything to do with it, and I'll tell you why. Christians, folks, I don't care what denominational name you have if you're a Christian and you somehow or another, somehow or another, I I don't I don't I don't fully get it. But if you say to me, well, the the Jews are on stolen land there in Israel. That's stolen land, that belonged to the Palestinians. Well, first of all, there weren't Palestinians. That was that was a pejorative Palestina that the Romans called the people there and called the the Jews there, and they called the Jews that. From reliable sources, and so when you tell when when a when a Christian tells me that and they say, look, you know, hi, hey, look, uh, the Jews don't belong there. They don't belong there, it's not their land. Give it to the Palestinians. Well, first of all, you give it, you give it to the people in the West Bank and and Gaza, and look what they did with it. And then they gave away more land, more land, and more land. Listen, the nation of Israel, as God. Look, if you say these things, you don't believe in God. You certainly don't believe in scripture. You don't believe in scripture, you don't believe in God? You can play at it, you can pretend at it, so you can say you're a Christian. Just like the Jews that march for Hamas, global intifada. No Jew does that. They're not a real Jew. They're not a real Jew, they're not an actual Jew. It's like LGBT plus QIA L-M-N-O-P. I don't know, whatever the letters are, uh marching in a free Palestine parade. What are you, idiots? First, first tall building. They snatch you and your purple hair and your weird, your weird affect, your put on affect, and they they scooch you right on up to the top. They tie a rope that's just a little bit too short, and then poop, they pop you off of there. Their hope is that the fall, when it catches just before the ground, just before maximum rope stretch, that it tears your body in half. Okay. You don't love that? You don't love that imagery? Happens all the time. Listen, if if you if you say, well, you know, I don't I don't like Netanyahu. He's a war criminal. Let me tell you what. Let folks start lobbing missiles and blowing up buses and children and putting children in ovens alive while you're assaulting, and you know the first word, can't say it, because then I get deplatformed, while your mother's right there looking at the oven, set to 400, live baby. Happened. Happened. Oh, it's disproportionate. The response is disproportionate. Stop with all that. You know what God says to do? You don't want to mess around and and and do what God says to do. God says, take all your land back because I gave that to you. That's not for you to give away. Turn turn it to glass. Turn it to glass. You say, well, what about all the innocent people? You know what? I hate to say it. I do, I hate to say it. I'm as compassionate a person as you can find. This problem will not be fixed in that way. It will not be fixed in that way. Bronx Baumer 9448. Please do elaborate. Now, you say, Why did you bring this up? Why here? Why now? You could have been in and out of this episode in five more minutes, and here you spend all this time. If you are a Christian who wants Israel, the people of Israel, the land of Israel given to them by God. And it's not the little tiny state the size of uh of New Jersey. It's the whole thing. I say, take it all back. Take it all back. One years to give away. Get it back. Lands are won by war. You don't like it? That's how it works. They've got enemies all around them, and all they want to do is blow them up. You say, Well, I don't like this Iran war. I don't like this Iran war. How do you like being blown up? Because that's what's coming. You say, Well, I don't like Trump. Okay, you don't like Trump. The people of Israel. Well, they're not actual Jews. Make up your mind. Make up your mind. And you're going. Make up your mind. Land are won and held by those who can hold the territory. Amen. Let me tell you what. People start attacking us. Listen, we're being attacked from the inside out in the United States. And I know we have an international audience, and I don't mean to uh disconnect you from the discussion. Here we are in this country, the land of freedom. And guess what? We're being taken over from the inside out. Hard pass. Hard pass. So you see here in this passage, you see in this passage the giving of land and of wealth. Listen. Out of all the earth, out of all the earth, out of every people and every nation, you will be the wealth I keep close to myself. I said you don't believe in the Bible if you're against Israel. But I don't want to be put in that block. Okay. And you don't like it. You don't like the truth calling it. You don't believe in the Bible, and therefore you don't believe in God. If that is your contention, that's where you stand. Stand. Stand. Call it what it is, because that's what it is. So then in verse 6, the calling that flows out of the treasure. And you shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. A kingdom of priests. The Hebrew is Memlachet Koenin. A whole people set apart to stand between God and the world, to represent him, to carry his name and a holy nation. It doesn't first mean morally perfect. It means set apart. Stop applying to you say, well, they do this and they do that. Stop applying some uh standard to Israel that you don't want personally to apply to you. Morally perfect, it doesn't mean that. Separated, cut out from the common, and dedicated to God. Sarna notes that holiness in the Torah is fundamentally about belonging to a different sphere, God's sphere, and being marked off for his use. Now listen, you can debate that. You can say, I think it means perfection. We're supposed to be perfect and sinless. Well, you know, hey, by the way, uh Pick and Grin one, thank you for listening. Bronx Bomber 9448 and all of the new Harry Litzler. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Amen. Amen. Welcome. We were really uh you said salting children, and I was heating the oven to 350. Well, that's what they did. How do we know? Because it's on their GoPros that were on their helmets and on their they were proud of it. And when they went back, they bragged about it. They bragged about it. They R-worded severely injured women and children in front of hundreds of thousands of people. They did that. When they when they went back to to Gaza, Hamas, not just all Hamas people, or not should be Hamas, by the way. It was the people there who kept most of the kidnapped people. The regular citizens, those poor, innocent civilians. Well, what about the children? What about the Jewish children? I guess they don't matter. What about the Jewish women? I guess they don't matter. Because they were R-worded in front of hundreds of thousands of men and women and children, and they cheered it on. Don't tell me about blowing. Oh, it's disproportionate. Uh you don't know much about war. If that's your claim, you don't know much about war. Listen, this holiness in the Torah, it's it's not. We have we have made it to be perfect. It is not. Perfection doesn't mean that. In Torah, it doesn't mean that. It means fundamentally about belonging to a different sphere, God's sphere, and being marked off for his use. Now, so here's the shape of the covenant God He offers at the mountain. I carried you to myself. I will make you my treasure, and I will make you a people who belong entirely to me. Now, I want you to notice something, and it's easy to miss. Everything God has said so far is grace. He carried them, he chose them, he treasures them. And only after all of that grace does he say, if you will obey my voice. Only after all of that. The obedience isn't how they earned the rescue. The rescue already happened. Come on, you think, well, if I just be good enough, God will give me a reward. Look, I deserved every getting injured in the military and and getting injured, you know, post-military. Hey, you know, I earned it. I earned it. You say, what are you being? Self-deprecating? No. I'm telling you straight up. It's a fact. I am far from a good person. There's this thing in postmodern Western evangelical Christianity that tethers. It doesn't recognize the ancient Near Eastern language, culture, and context of scripture. It doesn't recognize what it meant in its origin. That's why I believe this is different than anything else that's out there. What we're doing here. Because you don't get that elsewhere. I'm so tired of Christians taking credit for everything. You have done nothing. Your God has done nothing. Dougal McDonald. Well. Ergo idiot. Bye-bye. Recalcitrant and corrigible. Okay. Taking credit for everything. You've done nothing. Okay. My God has done nothing. All right. Little thing called creation. Little thing called the galaxy. Alright. I don't know, raising from the dead.

unknown 24:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

What have you done? I always love to ask people, well, tell me what you've done. Let's see your resume. And then let's see God's. Let's see how consistent you have been in just the little bit of time you've been alive. What have you done? And then let's look at scripture and see what God has done. Look, the obedience isn't how they earn the rescue. And it isn't how we earn the rescue. The rescue already happened. People say, we live in the age of grace, not a law. Why are you all the time talking about Shabbat? First of all, you're not even Jewish. Why are you always talking about Shabbat? Because God commanded it. Do you believe in the Ten Commandments or do you not? Well, clearly you believe in thou shalt not murder. Sounds like he wrote the message from an unclean spirit. I hear you. We are all unclean. We are all unclean. Those otherwise who speak otherwise of themselves, they haven't looked in a mirror and they haven't been honest. Listen, you've got to understand that all of this stuff that we do to ourselves, this whole grace versus law, law versus grace, you're being legalistic, all this stuff, it is a commandment. Thank you, vegan Christianity. Vegan Christianity just liked and subscribed. Appreciate that. I really do. It makes a massive, massive difference. Straight up. People don't realize. I talked to somebody the other day, has been listening for four years, and she said, I have to subscribe. Well, don't they ask for like a credit card or something? I'm like, no, I don't ask for any of that. Well, why do I have to subscribe? Well, you don't have to, nobody's making you, but sure will be a nice thing. Look, I you know, I don't I don't want to get into all of this uh because I've done messages about this and really in-depth teaching. But suffice it to say, you we come at this with this with this false morality. We stand and worship, we raise our hands, and we, oh, you know, I'm such a worm, I'm so uh, well, Lord, you know, you're so faithful with me, and I'm so broken, I'm so broken, I'm so broken. If I hear another worship song going on and on about how broken. Enough already, enough already. We're all broken. We're broken by our sin, we're broken by our hurts, habits, and hangups. You can fancy up how you are, you can make it look good. God sees it all, sees me all. Okay, we all have unclean spirits. We keep short accounts with God. I want you to understand that that the argument that most of the time it's postmodern Western evangelical Christians that will say uh you're you're a legalist. I'm nothing of the sort. God hates us. God doesn't hate us. Good lands. Kimberly, he doesn't hate us. If he hated us, we'd be vapor. At least I would be. I can't speak for you. You may be the one perfect person listening. Not me. Tobias, send me a message at true wordfaithforlife.com. Contact, contact button at the top. Send me a message there. We'll connect. And uh, if you're sincere, or if this is just one of those messages that leads on to the next message, that will just get you banned. If you're sincere, do that. If you mean business, do that. You're listening on YouTube, true wordfaithfullife.com, contact. Anybody that's ever done it knows I'm on top of it, and I will definitely, definitely contact you. So the reason why I'm I'm saying this at this point, the reason why we're day 70, what are we, day 75? We're day 75, we're in exodus, shemot, ekchodus. It would take three years at this pace to get through the Bible in a year. Here's a news flash. It ain't all gonna go this slow, but if you don't get the foundation, you gotta build the foundation wide and deep. Because if you don't understand all of this, you will fall for all this mess that's out there that's just untrue. It is untrue. Replacement theology, a tool of the devil. Is that and you say, Well, but my church does it, my church believes in it. Okay, I can't tell you to leave your church, but not preaching the truth. The church has not replaced Israel, it is a part of it. We're a wild branch. But listen, I need you to understand that your rescue has already happened. Have you been perfect one day in your life? I'm not saying do good. I'm not saying work aggressively on your sin, your hurts, your habits, and your hangups. I'm not saying that at all. I'm not saying that at all. That's not my contention at all here. What I'm saying is stop with the pretending that if if I just be perfect long enough, this disease will go away. Well, I got this disease because I'm not perfect. I got this disease because I I sinned in my hurt habit or hang up. Uh I was in this car crash that made me this way. Uh I was injured in the military because I I'm not perfect. We're not none of us are perfect. None of us. Go back. If you missed it, go back to um go back to uh where I where I talked about um what Torah actually says. What it actually says. Oh, I don't, I'm not Jewish, I don't listen to Torah. Torah is the old testament, man. Come on. Seriously. Makes me crazy. Short trip, I know. The obedience isn't how they earned rescue. The rescue came before the obedience. The obedience is how they live inside of relationships that they've already been given. People say, I don't have a close relationship with the Lord. If he's real, I want him to feel real to me. Then stop feeling like everything, everything depends on you being perfect. It doesn't. People that will take the word perfect from scripture and say, you'd be perfect like I'm perfect. Understand what it meant in context, what the words in Hebrew and Aramaic actually meant. What did they mean? What were the actual words? Listen, that order, that order matters more than anything I could tell you today. I could tell you a billion things. The rescue and obedience, trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. The obedience is how you live inside a relationship if you want a real one. Amen. Only Jesus Christ, Yeshua Hamashiach, was perfect. The rescue already happened. We didn't earn it then. We don't earn it now. We don't. You do your dead level best to model after Christ. Every day, every minute of every day, you do the dead level best that you can do. The obedience is how you have that relationship. You live inside that relationship, and then you go to him when you have failed him and failed yourself, quite frankly. Keep short accounts with God. Look, God rescued first and asked for obedience second. He always has, he still does. We'd have no hope. Otherwise, do you understand this? We would have no hope. The blood on the doorpost came before the law on the mountain. Grace walks in front. It always walks in front. So Moses comes down and he lays these words before the elders and the people. And the people answered together in verse 8, all that the Lord hath spoken, we will do. All of it, every word, we're in. We're all in. I have a text uh that shows up in the that I put in there every day. I try to remember every day. All in. Are you all in? There's a reason I do that. All that the Lord hath spoken, we will do. All of it, every word. We're in. All in. And I have to be honest with you this morning. You might say, man, you're really fired up today. I didn't sleep last night. Not a wink. Well, actually, my watch says I slept four minutes. Sheer exhaustion. But listen, I love, you may you might think I don't, but I do. I would not do this if I, this is the absolute wrong thing for me to do in the situation that I'm in physically. A hundred percent wrong thing. I wouldn't do it if I didn't love the Lord and I didn't love you. You say, how can you love me? You don't even know me. Many of you I do know. I know how this story goes. That's a beautiful promise. And these people, I love these people. Those that said it all that the Lord has spoken in verse 8. All that the Lord has spoken, we will do all of it, every word. We're in, we're all in. I love those people. I understand to the extent that I can. I've studied this for decades. In their original language, I've studied it. I've read it till my face fell off. Don't you wish it fell off and stayed off? I love these people, and I know how the story goes, and I know how it goes in my life. And if you're being honest, you know how it goes in yours as well. Look, that's a beautiful promise, and they mean it with their whole hearts, but they can't keep it. They can't keep it. Not because they're worse than us, but because nobody can keep a covenant like that in their own strength. Hold on to that. We'll need it by the end of the week. Listen, this is not going to be the easiest week you have ever done here. I told you that we're going to ratchet up the pace, we're going to ratchet up the intensity because it ratchets up. I've come to understand that you all are capable of understanding these things. The depth of it. The majority of you listening, I get I get almost every day comments direct to me, emails through contact me at on uh on true wordfaithforlife.com. And I love it. I love it because it's people being honest with themselves first. Some of the things people type out on there, I never talk about here. I never talk about it because it took so much for them to just say what they're dealing with. I'm living this life. I'm right there with you. You're saying, man, you you're pulling the ripcord. Cheap grace. No. Save that bumper sticker for another jalopy you might have in the garage because it doesn't work on this one. Doesn't work. This is by no means cheap grace. It is the opposite. I have come to understand through comments, really vulnerable comments. Beautiful, beautiful comments. Yeah, his name is Yeshua. Yeshua Hamashiach. Let's read scripture. Says Jesus is a pagan name. It's not pagan, but it's there's a whole etymology of the name. I I teach about why. All of all of them are free, by the way. All of them. All the lessons are free. I I have a a a massive library of teaching. Massive. It's free. It's free. Look. Somebody recently contacted me and they said, I am devastated. I keep trying. All the people at my church are so much better than me. They look the part, they sound the part. Hi, daughter of the king, good to see you. Good morning. Listen, this person was literally devastated. Not just because they said they were devastated. They were devastated because they had come to the realization, they thought that everyone else in the church, they look the part, they sound the part, they know words to say, they know buzz phrases and catchphrases. And she said, I will never ever make it. First of all, I'll never, the way I look, I'll never look like them. I'll never look like them. I just want to be as good as them. And I said, hey, here's my phone number. Let's chat. And I said, oh dear sister, don't compare yourself to them because they aren't what you think they are. And you aren't what you think you are. And God isn't what you think He is. Judgment comes. Judgment comes. You'll see it here in a second. Judgment comes. And it is powerful. Lest you think that God is only about love. Sometimes the justice is wild. We don't change when we see the light, we change when we feel the heat of the torch. God whispers to us in our pleasures, and he shouts to us in our pain. I said to this dear sister, listen, you know your sin. The reason why you think you're so unworthy. We're all unworthy. But the reason why, by comparison, you think to these people, you think that you'll never measure up to them is because you don't see their private life. You don't see when they get in the car and they drive home. You don't see the life they live. You see yours. You have this imagination of the image they put out. Very effective. Humility. Now look, the tone of this chapter shifts hard. It shifts hard. Because a holy God, the holy God, is about to come down onto a mountain in front of an entire nation. And the text spends the rest of the chapter telling us how dangerous that is. Verse 10 God tells Moses to consecrate the people today and tomorrow and to have them wash their garments and be ready for the third day. Set boundaries around the mountain, he says. Don't let the people or even the animals touch it. Anyone who touches the mountain will surely die. Why? Why so severe? Because holiness isn't a metaphor. We've gotten so comfortable with the idea of a God, the God, who is safe and tame and mostly agreeable, that we've lost the thing that every person in the Bible feels when God actually shows up. They fall down, they cover their faces. They think they're gonna die. The word kodush has weight to be near the holy God, unprepared, unclean, unready, as not a small thing. And then the third day comes. Verse 16 and it came to pass on the third day in the morning that there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the Trumpet exceeding loud, so that all the people that were in the camp trembled. They trembled. The whole camp. Verse 18. The mountain is wrapped in smoke because the Lord descended on it in fire, and the smoke goes up like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quakes. Verse 19. The trumpet sounds long and grows louder and louder, and Moses speaks, and God answers him by a voice. Sit in that for just a moment. Sit in that for just a moment. Because far too often we rush past it, we rush right on past it. This isn't some quiet devotional moment. This is fire and smoke and thunder and a mountain shaking under the feet of two million people and a trumpet blast that keeps getting louder with no human lips to blow it. The God who carried them on eagle's wings is the same God who makes the mountain tremble, tender enough to bear them on its back, holy enough to shake the earth. And both of those are true at once. That's the thing I don't want you to lose today. The gentleness and the fire, they're not two different gods. They are the one God. The one God who loves you enough to carry you is the same one before whom the mountain quakes. Listen, if we only keep the tenderness, we make them small. If we only keep the fire, we make them cruel. The truth is that the God who wants to bring you to himself is holy, genuinely holy. And coming near to him is the most wonderful and most serious thing a human being can ever do. Here's where this lands for you and me today. We live on the other side of another mountain. The book of Hebrews says, We have not come to a mountain that can be touched, that burned with fire to blackness and darkness and tempest. We have come instead to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the living God, and to Yeshua, the mediator of a new covenant and to his blood. That speaks. Do you see it? Did you catch that? At Sinai, the people had to stay back, boundaries around the mountain. Don't touch or you'll die. But the whole reason God said in verse 4 that he carried them to myself is that he wanted them near. The distance at Sinai was never the goal. It was the problem the rest of the Bible is going to spend itself solving. Why? Why, Dr. Sean? Why have you spent all of this time 75 days for Pete's sake, Dr. Sean? Bible in a year. We are walking the story of God. And this first part, oh, if you don't get it, you will not understand the weight and the beauty of the rest of it. It gets solved. This conundrum, so it seems. It gets solved in Yeshua. The one who stands on the mountain in the fire is the one who would one day stand on a hill outside Jerusalem and take the fire of our sin, our hurts, our habits, our hangups upon himself. They murdered the one perfect person. And when I say they, I mean me. Why did he do that? So that you could be brought near and I could be brought near, all the way near, near enough to be called not just treasure, but child. So today, if you're far off, hear the invitation underneath the fire. God isn't shaking the mountain to keep you away. He shook the mountain to show you how holy the love is that wants you close. And he made a way. He made a way, the way. I am a follower of the way. He made a way to bring you close that cost you nothing and cost him everything. He did not carry you out of Egypt to leave you at the bottom of a mountain. Heavenly Father. Heavenly Father. Thank you that you started with a memory instead of a demand. Thank you that before you asked us for anything, you reminded us of what you had already done. You already did it. That you carried us on your own back where the arrows land first. You were safe, and I am safe. Father, thank you for shielding us from the arrows. Thank you that the destination was never well, it was never a place. It was you. We confess we get the order backwards. We try to earn what you already gave us, and then we wonder why we're exhausted. We work for a seat we were carried to. And Father, we confess that we've made you smaller than you are. We've kept the tenderness and lost the fire, or we've kept the fire and lost the tenderness. And either way, we ended up with a God who is in you. Father, teach us to hold both. Let us tremble and come close in the same breath. For everyone listening who has never once believed they could be anybody's treasure. Father, say suggula over them today. In the name of Yeshua, we pray. Amen. Maybe you've spent your whole life, your whole life certain that you're just some common person. You're ordinary, you're interchangeable, the kind of person God might tolerate but would never keep close. That would never actually love. He said, Segulah over a nation of slaves who three months earlier were making bricks without straw. Not the treasury of a kingdom, the treasure of the king's own hand. And he shook the mountain. He shook a mountain that he created to show you how serious the love is that wants you near. And then he sent his son to stand in the fire so you could come all the way in. If you've never come near, come near today. Right where you are, I want you to pray this with me right now. Don't put it off another moment. I think I'm a relatively decent communicator, but I'll tell you, I fall short on this. I don't know how to convince or persuade you. This is up to you. This is a choice that you make. And the consequences and the blessings are eternal. I wish I could do it for you. But I can't. So if you're ready, if you're tired of waiting, I want you to pray with me. Pray this. Yeshua, I need you. I believe you died for me and rose from the grave, and I surrender my life to you today. Forgive me. Fill me. Lead me. I'm yours. My life is yours. In your heavenly name. Amen. If you pray that prayer, all of heaven is rejoicing. They are singing hallelujah. Child has come home. If you prayed that with me today, tell someone. Doesn't matter how they respond. Tell someone. And then find a believer. Send me a message through true word, faithforlife.com. Contact. Don't carry this alone. I you look, you've just become in the truest sense his sagula, his treasure, brought near. Let this carry into your day, into your tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day. I'm happy to help you. I'm sure you have a million questions. The God who carried you on eagle's wings is holy, and he is bringing you to himself. And now I want you to receive this in his heavenly name and in Leshon Hakodesh. Are you ready? I'll translate it at the end, but I want you to hear it. In Lashon Hakadesh, the language of God. Are you ready? May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Until tomorrow at 7 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Shalom Bishem Yeshua.