10 And the LORD said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes 11 and be ready by the third day, because on that day the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.
Spending time with the Lord was going to require some preparation. The people couldn’t just ‘show up’ and expect to be accepted. The Lord wanted to teach the people a very important lesson about Himself. He is a Holy God. Impurities are not acceptable in His presence. You must be consecrated, set apart, if you want to visit with Him. At that time the preparations were outward focused. Take a bath and wash your clothes. Comb your hair and brush your teeth. When I was a kid it included polishing your shoes and keeping quiet! God apparently didn’t like people, especially young boys, talking in His house when He was trying to talk to us! Now we often come to meet together in our worship experiences with little or no preparation. We walk in and expect God to show up, or at least have some particular feeling we associate with God’s presence. And when that doesn’t happen we blame everyone and everything else. Perhaps we should look at ourselves. Maybe we weren’t prepared to visit with the Lord. Maybe we are taking spending time in fellowship with Him and with each other too lightly. The Israelites had to take two days to prepare for this first face to face meeting with the Lord. And even then, the Lord was going to show up in a cloud. Maybe we could spend a little bit of time getting our spirits ready for His presence prior to walking into church. Would that be too much to ask? Maybe we could come in expecting Him to show up. Maybe we could be prepared for Him to use us to meet the needs of someone else.