“For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them.”

Every Hebrew would relate to this passage as they had committed the entire scenario to memory. These many years afterward, the vision of that fateful day was burned into their psyche. The giving of the law was central to their entire cultural and religious experience. The mountain was made so holy that not even a domesticated animal was allowed to touch it. Fear and trembling was the order of the day. Fifteen hundred years after the event, it was a part of the national memory.

The writer wants to emphasize the difference between the giving of the first covenant and the second. What his readers have come to is significantly different in its nature and effect. It is better in every single way. That was a day of fear, but the cross is a day of hope. One has the feeling of wrath while the other the feeling of grace.

Task for Today: Today, you should hear a voice that cheerfully calls you to come and follow. A voice that pleads for your association. A voice that calls you closer and closer into the kingdom of the Son. Don’t be afraid today, the voice you hear is the voice of love, filled with forgiveness and compassion.