Fire on the Mountain
A Fresh Summons to Pentecost

by

Dr. John D. Garr

The Festival of Pentecost is foundational to both Judaism and Christianity. Literally the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot), it is the second and longest of God’s three annual pilgrim festivals–fifty days in duration, beginning (biblically) on the day after the weekly Sabbath after Passover and concluding on the Day of Pentecost. For the Jewish people, it celebrates the giving of the Law of God at Mount Sinai (zeman mattan toratenu–the time of the giving of our Torah). For Christians, it is the Festival of the Word and the Spirit.

Both of these foundational events occurred when there was supernatural fire on the mountain of God. In reality, it is the tale of two mountains and the story of two parallel peoples, both of whom shared in a preternatural experience of relationship with the Creator of heaven and earth.

In the case of Israel, the ancient nation that God chose because of his covenantal relationship with their ancestor Abraham, 600,000 men, plus women and children, stood before Mount Sinai. They had been delivered from an onerous slavery at the hand of the world’s then most powerful kingdom, Pharaonic Egypt, released from their bondage following an ominous night of terror. They had escaped certain death when God created a path of dry land through the Red Sea. Now, they faced an impending personal encounter with the God who had delivered them. There they saw it: "Fire on the Mountain."

Listen to the Fire

It had all begun forty years earlier when Moses, the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, had been exiled from Egypt. It had taken only one day to get Moses out of Egypt; however, it had taken forty years to get Egypt out of Moses! The once proud prince of Egypt had become a stuttering shepherd tending his father-in-law’s sheep on the backside of the desert. One fateful day Moses stood before Sinai, and there he saw it: "Fire on the Mountain!"

A bush was burning–not a profoundly unusual sight in the searing desert heat where spontaneous combustion was not an infrequent occurrence. What was different was that this bush was not consumed in the flames. When Moses turned aside to observe this phenomenon, a Voice spoke to him from within the flames: "Moses, Moses!" A shocked shepherd replied, "Here I am," to which the Voice replied, "Don’t come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground." Then, Moses was commissioned with that famous proclamation of liberty first repeated to Pharaoh but echoed through the corridors of history for countless oppressed peoples: "Let my people go!"

The reason that Pharaoh was to release the people is profoundly important. It was not so that they would be free from slavery: it was "so that they may hold a festival to me in the desert" (Exodus 5:1). Even before God

arranged the writ of habeas corpus for his people, he had already planned a party, an event that was to be more than a victory celebration. It was to be a wedding festival. For forty days after the Exodus, Israel journeyed and camped, a less than unified, organized people. The Hebrew text of Numbers 23:3 notes that Israel (singular) "journeyed and camped" (plural), a fact that tradition has suggested confirmed their divided state. When they reached Sinai, however, Exodus 19:2 observes that Israel camped (singular), a body politic that was "in one mind and one accord," tarrying, awaiting God’s revelation of himself.

Then, on the fiftieth day after Passover they faced the same mountain where Moses had seen and heard God’s voice in the fire, and, quite unknown to them at the time, they prepared to celebrate the festival that God had pre-appointed to them, Shavuot, the festival of divine revelation. Suddenly they saw it: "Fire on the Mountain!" The leitmotif of fire in this experience is so important that it is mentioned no less than seven times in Deuteronomy 5.

"On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently, and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder" (Exodus 19:16-19a, NIV).

Subsequently God thundered the words of the Decalogue, ten commandments which he personally wrote with the finger of his Shekhinah on tablets of sapphire stone. So frightful was the sight of the fire and the sound of the shofar that Israel implored Moses, "Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die."

The people were not cognizant of the fact, but they had made a serious mistake, for they would have to wait 1,500 years for another opportunity to hear God for themselves. They were little different, however, from people of all ages–including most of the Christian church–who prefer an intermediary rather than a personal encounter with God. The truth is that when one has enough of Egypt purged from his life, like Moses, he will yearn to hear from God for himself. Those who avoid God’s voice receive only an external law which can lead to legalism and bondage. Those who listen to the fire discover a cleansing that brings liberty. In view of this truth, why would anyone be content with hearsay when he can have a face-to-face, mouth-to-mouth encounter with the living God?

Tongues of Fire

But, what was this shocking display that struck so much fear in the hearts of Israel? Exodus 20:18 is more literally translated: "And all the people saw the voices and the flames, and the noise of the shofar, and the mountain smoking . . ." How does one see voices? A midrash explains that God’s voice emerged from the flames as tongues of fire! All the people saw it: "Tongues of fire on the mountain!" Philo of Alexandria (shortly before the time of Jesus) described it thus: "From the fire . . . there sounded . . . a voice, for the flame became articulate speech . . . so clearly were the words formed . . . that they seemed to see them rather than hear them."

Why tongues of fire? Noting Psalm 68:11, "The Lord announced the word; great was the company of those who proclaimed it," Rabbi Yohanan explained that every fiery word was divided into seventy languages, just as God said, "Is not my word like fire . . . and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?" (Jeremiah 23:29). Why were there seventy languages? Just as Moses ordained seventy prophets from Israel and Jesus commissioned seventy prophetic voices to preach the good news of the Kingdom of God, apparently God considers the nations of the world to be divided into seventy groupings. The midrash says that when God spoke the Decalogue, his voice was heard throughout the earth in seventy languages, giving every nation an opportunity to accept the Torah of Divine Instruction. And, in a measure, God’s law was even written in the consciences of the Gentile nations (Romans 2:14). Only Israel, however, promised: "All that the Lord hath said, we will do, and we will hear [intelligently]" (Exodus 24:7). Israel agreed to obey God’s commandments even before they understood them!

A Fiery Law

In this Pentecost "Fire on the Mountain" experience, Israel received God’s Torah, the revelation of his Word. "From God’s right hand went forth a fiery law" (Deuteronomy 33:2). What they experienced was a tangible prelude to an event centuries later which John the Baptizer predicted concerning Jesus the Messiah: "He shall immerse you in the fiery Holy Spirit" (Matthew 3:11). The Torah was God’s fatherly instruction, a guardian assigned to teach his people proper human conduct and ethics and to escort them to the Messiah so that they might be fully justified by grace through faith (Galatians 3:24). The Hebrew word Torah is an derivative of yarah, an archery term meaning to aim at a target. Other derivatives of this word are moreh (teacher) and horeh (parent). The Torah was instruction, not a mere juridical code. Even the Greek word which was chosen by the scholars who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into the lingua franca of the Mediterranean Basin for the Greek Septuagint Version conveyed a similar meaning. Nomos is likely a loan word from the Hebrew nemus, which means to civilize or to be polite. It was not until the Latin versions used lex to translate nomos that the idea of Torah as "Law" came to be prominent.

The Torah was advanced in three stages. First, there was the Shema, the pivotal commandment on which all other ordinances are contingent: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One." The monotheism that this commandment encapsulates is foundational to all biblical religion. Second, there was the Decalogue, the perfect delineation of God’s instruction for proper relationship with the Divine and with man. Finally, there was the corpus of mitzvot, 613 commandments, of which 365 were negative (the "thou shalt not’s") and 248 were positive (the "thou shalt’s). These commandments were foundational to David’s proclamation: "Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee" (Psalm 119:11). Understanding God’s Word revealed in the Torah equips one so that he is "not ignorant of Satan’s devices" (II Corinthians 2:11).

God’s commandments were designed to equip every believer for maturity and good works: "All scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for instruction in righteousness so that a man of God may be mature, completely equipped to all good works" (II Timothy 3:16). Jesus emphatically declared: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil" (Matthew 5:17). And, no amount of exegetical gymnastics can make God’s law illegal! It stands forever as God’s instruction for his children.

A Wedding Anniversary

Pentecost, then, is for all believers in the God of the Bible, the festival of the giving of the law. But, there’s more, for God also summoned Israel to Sinai to join in covenant with him. A wedding occurred under the chupah (canopy) of cloud and fire. The assembled Qahal carry the fire into all the world. And the voice that shook the earth at Sinai now thundered through the church the wonderful works of God, empowering them to be witnesses of the Kingdom’s good news into all the world.

Without the Mount Zion Pentecost, Passover might have faded into obscurity except for some intervention of divine purpose. The "Fire on the Mountain," however, brought God, the "consuming fire" into the lives of men so that they could be the light of the world.

A Fresh Summons

God is ever issuing a fresh summons to Pentecost, saying, "Be ye being filled with the Holy Spirit." Just as the Jews remember deliverance at Passover and receive the Torah anew each year at Pentecost, so believers should memorialize their redemption at Passover each year and then at Pentecost, celebrate both the giving of the Torah and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We together should receive a fresh summons to renewal and revitalization, a fresh summons to walk in the Spirit, a fresh summons to manifest the fruit of the Spirit, a fresh summons to manifest the fire of God, a fresh summons to witness the gospel of the Kingdom to the nations. In this fresh summons to Pentecost, may we always see "Fire on the Mountain."

Dr. John D. Garr, founder and executive director of Restoration Foundation, has pioneered research, writing, and teaching on the Hebrew foundations of Christian faith for more than thirty years. His international ministry has enlightened believers of various communions, teaching them the historical and theological emergence of Christianity from the matrix of biblical Judaism. John and his wife Pat, with the support of their sons, John, Timothy, and Stephen, are working to promote Restoration Foundation.