Exodus 19:18 - Forerunner Commentary

Exodus 19:18

Commentaries:

No entry exists in Forerunner Commentary for Exodus 19:18.

Exodus 19:16-20
Excerpted from: Jesus in the Feasts (Part Three): Divine King

I just wanted to read that to emphasize, reemphasize, that the Lord would come down upon the mount. Let us drop to verse 16.

We do not need to go any further. Now Moses here in chapter 19 describes the appearance of God or the manifestation of God as well as he can, as best he could. But think about this.

It was not necessarily what they saw, because beyond the lightning strikes that were happening all around the mountain, they actually saw very little. They saw a cloud, and they saw smoke. They did not see God Himself. And there is a reason for that. God says you cannot see Him and live.

And so when God came down, His presence scorched the whole mountain and anything that was burnable, flammable, went up in flame, and there was great smoke along with the cloud that He descended in. That is one reason, a practical reason, why He did not want anybody to come up on the mountain. The foremost reason was He did not want anybody to try to look at Him in the full force of His power that He came down the mountain on.

Now they did feel a great shaking. They were trembling from the sound of the trumpet, but there was also earthquakes that made them tremble. They felt the shaking of the mountain.

That is great power coming down from heaven onto the mountain and shaking the earth. That is why the psalmists talk about this, that the mountains melt when God comes down upon them, that the land shakes when God comes down, that there is fire and cloud and smoke and brimstone and all that stuff from God's presence because the material world is just nothing compared to His awesome power.

Now what they actually sensed more than anything was sound. They heard thunder, and they heard this trumpet or many trumpets. It just says the trumpet was very loud, and the trumpet sounded long. So it may have been just one trumpet, but it was probably a trumpet of an angel who is coming down with Him and announcing Him.

By the way, the trumpet is a shofar. It is not the silver trumpets that we saw in Numbers 10. The word trumpet in every occasion in this verse is shofar. So they heard the thunder, and they heard this blaring of the shofar. And this was, like it says, it was very loud. It was a scream of a trumpet.

And then what it says is that this trumpet blast just went on and on and on. You know, if you are a human, when you put a trumpet to your lips, you have to take a breath every once in a while. Well, this trumpet did not need one. It just kept blaring and blaring. It says there in verse 19, it sounded long and became louder and louder. If you are a human and you are going on your trumpet and you try to take it as long as possible and it suddenly goes because you have no breath to push through that trumpet. But with an angel sounding it, he does not need to take a breath, and actually it gets louder and louder and louder as he blasts on the thing. (I should ask Hunter [Swanson] to get up and blow his shofar and watch and listen to him go [funny sound].)

Exodus 19:17-20
Excerpted from: Reconciliation (Part Two): Christ's Work

This trumpet was blasting at such a volume that it made them vibrate in time to it, as it were, that they were trembling in fear because it was so loud and demonstrative and it meant something was going to happen, probably drop them to their knees.

What we see here is that on both occasions of divine descent to earth, in awesome power, that there are displays of cloud and darkness and lightning and thunder and smoke and earthquake. All elements from God's arsenal of massive natural forces at His disposal. He can do anything. He is the Creator God. He made all these things. He knows how they work and He could make a display like no one else. And of course, that display is both a warning and a triumphant response, I guess (I do not know what the right word is), about who is coming, who you are going to deal with.

Because God did this to the Israelites to impress on them the great importance of His law, that He was coming down personally to deliver the Ten Commandments to them. And not only that He came to shock them so they would realize just who their God is. He was not just this local tribal deity with minimal powers. He was very God, the Creator, who could do anything. He can make the very ground shake. And so He came down with thunder and lightning and cloud and smoke and fire, and of this blast of the trumpet, long and loud.

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