Sinai and Zion.
Esau bewailed his lost birthright, and yet to what did that birthright lead the posterity of him who gained it? See the posterity of Jacob gathered round the terrible mountain in the wilderness. The posterity of Esau might perhaps congratulate themselves on having escaped the constraints of Jehovah that fell so sorely on the kindred children of Jacob. If, then, this birthright, over the foolish casting away of which Esau shed such copious and fruitless tears, led to such terrible experiences, how should we guard the privilege that brings us, not to Sinai, but Zion, with all its durable attractions and companionships? Such seems to be the thought underlying the exhibition of these two contrasted pictures.
I. THE SAME GOD MANIFESTS HIS PRESENCE IN TWO DIFFERENT WAYS. Zion is very different flora Sinai, but for all that Sinai must precede Zion. This, it may be said, is not true to every individual experience. Not true, perhaps, in strict sequence of time; but every human life must know something of Sinai if it would know Zion to the full. Every human being must know something of the Law coming by Moses, as well as the grace and truth coming by Jesus Christ. Let no complaint be made that preachers impose on the ignorant and the timid by fictitious and exaggerated terrors. Jehovah is none the less God of Sinai because since then he has become God of Zion.
II. SINAI IS MEANT FOR THE PASSING EXPERIENCE, ZION FOR THE PERMANENT ONE. The children of Israel came to Sinai for a very short time. God's anger with the wicked abides—he is angry with the wicked every day—but it would be clean against his character as a pitiful and long suffering God to have Sinai continually involved in smoking flame and roaring tempest. Sinai is God's appointed halting-place for us somewhere in the solemn and arduous journey of life. Zion is the goal of the journey. Many of those who trembled along with Moses at the literal Sinai have surely been gathered with Moses since upon the heavenly Zion.
III. NOTE POINTS IN THE CONTRAST. Sinai was in the wilderness, and there is some reason to suppose that it has now more of the wilderness than ever, that its desolation is greater than when the children of Israel camped there. Zion was in the city. Men lived about it all their lives. He who comes to Zion comes to an abiding company. The earthly Jerusalem where the ark dwells, typifies that heavenly Jerusalem where the God of the ark really dwells. Thence the messengers of God issue forth on their errands of righteousness and mercy, and thither they return to resume the service of the higher, holier sphere. At Sinai just men, struggling with their sense of sin, were made to feel their imperfection. On Zion just men are gathered in their purity of heart and spiritual completeness, enabled forever to look on the face of God. The two contrasted pictures must not be pushed too much into detail. Let the imagination rather try to group each as a whole. The passage suggests two frameworks, in one of which we may gather the peculiarities of the old covenant, and in the other the peculiarities of the new.—Y.