Fire In My Veins // An Exposition Of Exodus 20.1–2

And God spoke all these words, saying: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” …Exodus 20.1–2.

“As distinctively curvy as the Beetle, dressed in retro-geeky, translucent plastic, the iMac is not only the coolest-looking computer introduced in years, but a chest-thumping statement that Silicon Valley’s original dream company is no longer somnambulant.” …Steve Jobs Unveils the iMac, Newsweek, May 1998

In 1976, two men sat in a garage in Los Altos, California arguing over components of a machine nobody cared about. People would want these specific options, argued the first. “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them,” countered the second. Two years later, in 1978, the machine they designed, the Apple II, became the first mass-marketed personal computer with impressive sales across the U.S. and Apple became a symbol of the personal computing revolution. Seven years later, in 1985, Steve Jobs was fired from the company he cofounded and started a new fledgeling computer company of his own called NeXT. A year after that, in 1986, Jobs’ mother died and he seemed lost in a desert of wandering obscurity in comparison with his life at Apple. Just over ten years later, in 1997, Jobs returned to Apple as CEO and in May 1998 launched the groundbreaking iMac that skyrocketed Apple into profitability and innovative fame. Reporting on the event, Newsweek writer Steven Levy called the unveiling of the iMac “a chest-thumping statement that Silicon Valley’s original dream company is no longer somnambulant.” In the interim years, Apple had fallen asleep at the wheel. Its innovative genius had flagged. It was going through the motions, unconscious and unaware of its receding status. It was sleepwalking.

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

Immediately preceding this Exodus 20 passage, in Exodus 19, the nation of Israel was somnambulant: asleep at the wheel, drifting and sleepwalking through life with God at the margins. To call them back to Himself, God addresses their situation and answers by fire to awaken them. This article is to help people who have gotten stuck, whose engines are in need of ignition, those who have become somnambulant and want so badly to be awoken to new life and vitality but seem limited by some invisible glass ceiling. What do we notice about Israel’s situation and God’s response? How does the Lord diagnose and prescribe a remedy to their dilemma? What is God’s answer to getting stuck? I think we can identify three stages of this movement out of stuckness here in this Exodus passage: I. Willingness and Obedience, II. Encountering God, and III. Renewed Guidance.

First, let me ask and rest on this for a minute: What’s your status? Are you sleeping? Where is your life in the Lord right now, at this very moment? Are you alive, thriving, pursuing, vibrant, radiant, on-fire … in full pursuit of Him and His purposes in all of your life? Is He at the dead center of all you do? Does your life revolve around Christ like the earth gravitates around the sun? Does the gravitational pull of your life bring everything back to Christ? Or are you stuck in the desert, uncertain of your next move, feeling listless, dull, and dry? Are you sleepwalking through life? Do you feel like a ship lost at sea, stuck in the doldrums, like your sails have no wind in them? Like you are lacking drive, propulsion, direction, momentum, lift? Where is your life in the Lord right now? Is this all real to you? Or have you forgotten? Have you neglected the most important reality in life? Hebrews reminds us …

Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? …Hebrews 2.1–3a.

Fire In My Veins

Recently I wrote on my desk notepad at home the phrase “PRAYER: One Hour Per Day” as a ready and constant reminder. I was responding to a deepening feeling that, after having experienced so much of the presence of God in my life in the past and being so overwhelmed and overjoyed by His power and direction, lately I had been neglecting His presence, giving way to distraction over deep uninterrupted fellowship and prayer. Even in the midst of pursuing and longing for more of Him, I can neglect the status of my own heart. It is, unfortunately, so easy to do isn’t it? We are tempted to allow the clutter and noise of life to wash over us and pull all of our attention and energies after other things, worthless things. As I wrote that phrase down at my desk, I felt His call to return to the deeper and quieter places tugging at my soul. It was a challenge I had to answer and respond to. I had to pray with King David, “Turn my eyes away from worthless things; revive me with Your word. Establish Your word to Your servant, to produce reverence for You.” <Psalms 119.37–38> What about you? Do you regularly remember and call to mind all that He is? What He has freed you from? Have you been guilty of neglecting or disregarding so great a salvation as well? Has your heart become a dilapidated and overgrown garden where fruit no longer grows?

I want to be so much more fruitful than I have been lately. So I have to remember, in the fullest measure, the reality and welcome of His presence. To return to Him, you have to remember not only the empty things you used to do or the places you used to haunt, but also the atmosphere and environment that saturated your life then. Recall the emptiness and barrenness and sense of abandonment and utter despair that came from living life apart from and in rebellion against God. “Therefore, remember,” says Ephesians 2.11–12, “that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth … remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.” Think back upon that feeling of lostness, pervasive darkness, and the hopelessness that drenched your soul. Remember.

God in my life in the past and being so overwhelmed and overjoyed by His power and direction, lately I had been neglecting His presence, giving way to distraction over deep uninterrupted fellowship and prayer. Even in the midst of pursuing and longing for more of Him, I can neglect the status of my own heart. It is, unfortunately, so easy to do isn’t it? We are tempted to allow the clutter and noise of life to wash over us and pull all of our attention and energies after other things, worthless things. As I wrote that phrase down at my desk, I felt His call to return to the deeper and quieter places tugging at my soul. It was a challenge I had to answer and respond to. I had to pray with King David, “Turn my eyes away from worthless things; revive me with Your word. Establish Your word to Your servant, to produce reverence for You.” <Psalms 119.37–38> What about you? Do you regularly remember and call to mind all that He is? What He has freed you from? Have you been guilty of neglecting or disregarding so great a salvation as well? Has your heart become a dilapidated and overgrown garden where fruit no longer grows? I want to be so much more fruitful than I have been lately. So I have to remember, in the fullest measure, the reality and welcome of His presence. To return to Him, you have to remember not only the empty things you used to do or the places you used to haunt, but also the atmosphere and environment that saturated your life then. Recall the emptiness and barrenness and sense of abandonment and utter despair that came from living life apart from and in rebellion against God. “Therefore, remember,” says Ephesians 2.11–12, “that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth … remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.” Think back upon that feeling of lostness, pervasive darkness, and the hopelessness that drenched your soul. Remember.

Here’s the good news: the God who answered Moses and the Israelite people at the base of the mountain by fire still answers today. He still speaks, responds, calls, and renews. The prophet Elijah tells the worshipers of the false god Baal that “the God who answers by fire, He is God.” <I Kings 18.24> In Matthew 3.11, John the Baptist promises that Christ “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” John Mark McMillan says it this way: “Let the King of my heart, be the fire inside my veins, the echo of my days.”

If I am a fully-devoted follower, an absolutely surrendered disciple, a full-fledged believer in all that Christ speaks, His truth will burn like fire in my veins. It will light up the course of my life from start to finish.

Does His presence burn in your heart like a glowing ember? For me, His presence, His Lordship, the knowledge of His Kingship and Supremacy over all peoples in the whole world for all times burns like a fire in my heart! And so it should be for every believer. Normative Biblical Christianity should and will set you on fire with a passion and desire to experience and know all of Him! Think about this: what was the burning bush for Moses? It was invitation into a life defined by an all-consuming but non-destructive fire! And God will meet with you in a burning bush experience that will change the way you think, but you have to turn aside to see it! Are you keeping Christ at arms length or are you letting Him speak to you? Is He the fire inside your veins or a fading flicker taking up residence in the back alleys of your life? If He isn’t everything to you, you are missing out. Him being everything, all-in-all, is the heart of getting unstuck. When we are fully-surrendered to Christ, or at the very least aware that we are not and wanting to be, our engines are started and we are ready to venture out. As we proceed into the three stages of this movement out of stuckness found here in this Exodus passage (I. Willingness and Obedience, II. Encountering God, and III. Renewed Guidance) take a look at how Hebrews admonishes believers to…

See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth ... Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire. …Hebrews 12.25–29.

I. Willingness and Obedience

Exodus 19 shows how God led the Israelites to the foot of the mountain to awaken them to a profound consciousness of their own unholiness and call them further. The unholiness of the nation had caused a rift, a separation, between them and the Almighty. Because of their sin, their complaining and murmuring, and their general state of self-reliance over and above dependence on God, they were feeling dry, stuck, listless, lacking motivation and momentum. Immediately preceding the giving of the Law, here in this chapter, we see a stubborn and wandering nation coming face-to-face with God as “Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain.” <v.17> We know from verses 21–24 that Israel was in a state of sinful disregard and negligence against God’s commands. One minute they were saying yes to His instructions and call <v.8> and a short time after they were blatantly ignoring and dismissing them. Later, in Exodus 32, while waiting for Moses at the foot of the mountain these same Israelites fashion the infamous Golden Calf. This was selfish, repetitious, headstrong, and resiliently obstinate behavior for them. We also have further evidence and details of this state from Ezekiel and Amos. The prophet Ezekiel recounted that while in Egypt, Israel had become subject to slavery and bondage because they “rebelled against Me and refused to listen to Me; no one got rid of their detestable idols, nor did they abandon the idols of Egypt.” <Ezekiel 20.8>. The prophet Amos adds that this idol worship and sinful behavior continued into the period in the desert. “Did you offer Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? You also carried … your idols, the star of your gods, which you made for yourselves.” <Amos 5.26–27> Now at Sinai, the mountain of God is ablaze with fire and smoke as God calls Moses into His presence right in the midst of the fire. “Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly.” <v.18> The people draw near to God at the base of the mountain, fearful and full of trepidation, but willing and ready to lay down their sinfulness. Their previous slavery had soaked into their souls and they were constantly waffling back and forth between godliness and rebellion. Even at the foot of the mountain, they waver in disobedience to the point that God has to say to Moses, “‘Away! Get down and then come up, you and Aaron with you. But do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the Lord, lest He break out against them.’ So Moses went down to the people and spoke to them.” <v.24–25> The glory and grace of God Almighty, even here in this Old Testament moment, is covering the people’s waywardness and keeping the way to repentance and restoration open. It is curious that, even though they veered over into sinfulness, they remained there at the meeting place with God at the base of Sinai. Even in our sinfulness and waywardness, our soul’s cry out and thirst for the all-satisfying reality of the living God in all His splendor, grace, patience, and beauty. So the people wait and listen and obey as Moses speaks to them.

II. Encounter

As Moses calms the people and holds them back from the destructiveness and devastation that their selfishness acting out and sinful disregard would precipitate. There in that moment, God speaks to them and draws them into an encounter with Himself, with Truth and divine Reality.

And God spoke all these words, saying: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” …Exodus 20.1–2.

God reminded the Israelite children that their past in Egypt was, quite literally, a house of bondage and misery. In His grace, the Lord deals with their dryness and rebellion by reminding them of who He is and what He has done. In this heated and intense meeting with God, the Israelites begin to see their way through the fog of selfishness and their need for gratification that is hampered and tainted by sinful longing. They see and understand the God they are dealing with, and it humbles them. Right here at the outset of the giving of the Old Testament Law, when God explicitly defines His relationship with Israel as a nation and then humankind after them, God does not speak to them about who they are, He speaks to them about who He is. This is huge, because it works the same with us today.

Every substantial, life-altering encounter with God has as its immediate prelude and preface an all-consuming recognition of who God is and what He does: His power and His person are the only true foundation of human freedom and transformation! The unchangeable prelude to the fullness of life in God is always this.

Our knowledge of His person, power, and work, gained from real experience and salted by obedience, is the anchor of the Christian life. Here, at the base of Mount Sinai, the Israelites discover again how their conception of who God is and how He acts is the basis for their whole life. Understand this clearly: what you think about God is the most important thing about you! In this Exodus moment, as the people draw near to God and open their ears to listen and ready their hearts to receive, God is ending one chapter of the Israelite story and starting another. God is speaking to them, saying, “Recognize and call to mind who I am. Look what I brought you out of! Remember the creeping darkness, despair, and desperation I freed you from! But don’t stop there, realize your freedom is just the prelude to the promise! It is the starting point for all that I want to do in you and through you. The real story, the real adventure, is only just beginning. You are at the start of a journey that will change the course of history. Realize all that I am and all that I do. Because that is the reality that will enable you to stay free and inherit the promise. I am the Lord who is manifested as the Spirit of truth in your midst, and where I am there is liberty and freedom! <II Corinthians 3.17> It is for freedom that I have set you free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. <Galatians 5.1> The promised land is ahead, the house of slavery is behind you, and I am your guide. Follow me!” During this forty-day encounter of experiencing and getting to know God, the Israelites learn repentance and obedience as they understand the power and magnificence of God Almighty. Everything changes at Mount Sinai, for them and for us.

III. Guidance

At Mount Sinai the Israelites are brought face-to-face with their failures in the desert, encounter a loving yet lofty and holy God and, through the giving of the Law that follows, are freed to live a different life. This is a substantial turning point in redemptive history. One wonders how they could have slipped so far away from His presence and purposes in the brief interim between the Red Sea and Sinai. Just twenty-five days after they left Egypt, they crossed the Red Sea on dry ground and watched the Egyptian forces be destroyed and wiped out as the Lord defended them. And only twenty-eight days after that, they were here at Mount Sinai with Moses in this encounter with a holy God. How, in the 125 mile journey from the Red Sea to Mount Sinai, had the people forgotten so much and fallen so far? That feeling of the dry sand under their feet, running through their toes, as they walked across the exposed basin of the Red Sea should have been unforgettable. How could you forget such a thing? Wouldn’t you remember it and call it to mind all the rest of your life? Yet because of their neglect and selfishness, they were fighting against Moses, resisting God Himself, murmuring and complaining …. and as a result, losing direction and purpose by the minute. Their rebellion put them at risk to overlook and resist God’s guidance, which could have left them stranded and wandering in the desert indefinitely. In the first chapter of Deuteronomy, Moses remembers here God’s leadership and guidance was restored for the nation. It was here, he recalls Moses, that…

The Lord our God spoke to us in Horeb, saying: "You have stayed at this mountain long enough. It is time to break camp and move on ... I have set the land before you; go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to your fathers — to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — to give to them and their descendants after them." …Deuteronomy 1.6-8.

When The Wind Blows

Have you lost track of His counsel, purpose, and direction for your life? Do you want it, do you long for it, to be restored? I have experienced seasons like this, most assuredly. A few years after I graduated from college, though I had experienced so much of Christ and His presence up to that point, I felt like my life was drifting, lackluster, and off-track. I had been excited to return to my church home back in Saint Joseph, Missouri after I graduated. My church had been experiencing uncommon spiritual growth, vitality, and even a measure of revival for some time. People were coming to Christ weekly in our Friday night and Sunday morning services and the church had grown from 1,000 to 3,000 and was bursting at the seams. When I arrived back home, with my surrender to a call to ministry in focus, I dove headlong into serving, leading, and volunteering in every corner of the church that I could. Before long I was serving and teaching in the college and young adult ministries, leading worship in a variety of places in the church, and pouring out my life in ministry and service. But I was unprepared for and unsettled by the void of real community and friendship at the center of it all. My work at the church was all volunteer at that point, so I took a part time job as a Youth Pastor at a church in North Kansas City, about an hour away. I was also working a second part-time job at a health club. So much was happening, the Lord was present in power and I was surrounded by leaders I respected and loved. But in the midst of it, real friendship, community, and let down-your-hair, hang-out-on-the-deck fellowship was conspicuously absent. In the crowd of activities, I felt an unanswerable void of relationships at the center and I didn’t know what to do. Two years of this left me feeling dull, inwardly numb, and confused. Inside I felt like Keith Green described…

My eyes are dry
My faith is old
My heart is hard
My prayers are cold
And I know how
I ought to be
Alive to You
And dead to me

Oh, what can be done
For an old heart like mine?
Soften it up
With oil and wine
The oil is You, Your Spirit of love
Please wash me anew
In the wine of Your blood
..My Eyes Are Dry, Keith Green, 1978

To get away from it all, I enrolled in a five-week long language-immersion experience in France. The class spent a week in Paris and then each of us lived with a French family in Annecy for four weeks as we attended an international language school. While I was there in France, so far removed from all the usual things in my life, I had a lot of time to be alone with the Lord. A lot of things in my heart began coming out as I spent time with Him. Built up walls of confusion, frustration, uncertainty, and maybe even some laziness came down. I think this spiritual movement in my heart probably cleared the way for me to hear the deeper call that came. It was one night as I sat on the dock down at the lake there in Annecy, in the beautiful mountain valleys of the French Alps, that the wind began to blow through my soul and the Spirit of God led my thoughts back to my first couple years at college. It was almost painful for me to remember, but there amidst the very earthy and real things of which my life and world were made up, I distinctly and unmistakeable heard the voice of the Lord calling me onward. It was time. But, I understood, this would mean leaving my job in Saint Joseph and all of my involvements there. It would mean me leaving my Youth Pastor position at North Woods Christian Church in Kansas City. It would mean potentially alienating myself from my friends because how would they understand? And how would I explain? I was afloat and distracted in the midst of so much uncertainty, yet there was that distinct and unmistakable voice of God calling me softly and clearly. I would go. I had to. With all that He had accomplished to bring me this far, I would be a fool not to. But, oh man, there was so much unanswered! What about this? What about that? My prayers ended there that night on the dock in France. Yet, by no stretch of the imagination was that the end of it. Rather, it was very much the beginning. Jesus described it to Nicodemus as the blowing of the wind, the internal guidance and direction that only His children could hear. “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” <John 3.8> There in that moment, my purpose and direction and His leadership over my life was restored. His guidance came flooding in and every step after that was an unspeakable adventure, truly.

Back At The Burning Bush

As an uncompromising and fully-devoted follower of Jesus Christ, the knowledge of all that He has done for me and in me — matched by the revelation that this is only the beginning, that there is so much more than this — quickly becomes fire in my veins! It should for you as well. It will. The knowledge of what He has saved you from, if you give Him your attention and heart, will become fire inside your veins. The revelation of who He has created you to be and the awareness that He has so much more than this for you, that the promised land, the real destination, is still ahead of you will become fire inside your veins. The recognition that although you have failed again and again and that His mercy has covered you to the degree that His plans, His promised land for you, will not falter or fail if you keep pressing into Him should produce a fire of gratitude and longing after Him in your veins! But sometimes we get distracted, pulled away from His purposes for us. The giving of the Law was meant to fundamentally alter the lives of the Israelite nation, but it became an external exercise because of the hardness and distractedness of their hearts. At such times it is imperative that we willingly return to the foot of the cross, press in to encounter Him, and wait for His guidance to become clear.

Now, are you ready for the real clincher? Did you notice how in Deuteronomy Moses calls the mountain Horeb, but in Exodus he calls it Mount Sinai? They are the same place. Do you recall what happened in Moses’ life at Mount Horeb? At Mount Sinai, Moses is returning to the place of His initial fire-filled encounter with God that dramatically changed the course of his life! He is back at the burning bush where the presence and glory of God first rejuvenated and redirected His life. And it is here in this place of intimacy and encounter that the Lord spends forty days and nights speaking to Moses and laying out the blueprint for covenant living. Revelations describes our need to return to Him when we have wandered away on our own. It prescribes the answer as well.

To the angel of the church of Ephesus write,
"These things says He who holds the seven stars in His right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands: 'I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent ... He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.'" …Revelation 2.1-7

I am here to plead with you today to return to Him. To go back to that place of encounter. To go all in. To pursue Him until the work is done. To beg you to repent, to go on the journey, to give God everything not just some things, to stop playing games with Him and give your whole life over into His hands. Nothing else will produce the fire and enjoyment of His presence that will change your life from the inside out. To the stuck and lukewarm Laodicean church, the Apostle John writes…

These things says the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God: “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. …Revelation 3.14b-16

Lukewarm Christianity will never get you there. Lukewarm Christianity hinders the truth. Lukewarm Christianity nauseates Jesus, bores the world, and amuses the devil. Reformation theologian John Calvin said that his initial encounter with God, “this mere taste and knowledge of true godliness that I received immediately set me on fire with so intense a desire to progress” that it defined the course of His whole life (from Commentary on the Psalms, 1557).

Fire-fueled Christianity looks and acts differently. It is chock-full of passionate and unstoppable pursuit. Giving, serving, being spiritually transformed in the midst of overfull prayer meetings, vibrant worship, worn out Bibles, expansive mission, all-consuming spiritual pursuits, leaders being raised up for His cause, and churches filled to overflowing.

When Isaiah was touched by the hot coal from the altar, he cried out, “Here I am. Send me!” <Isaiah 6.8> It will be the same for us when we willingly surrender and pursue Him until we encounter Christ, have our hearts humbled and transformed, and our lives set ablaze with His direction, calling, and amazing love. Jesus says in John 15.2 that “every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” It’s up to us to listen and willingly obey, to allow Him to prune us until we are ready to abide in Him, hearing and ready to follow His guidance with our whole hearts. Then He will come and lead us back to our mount of encounter. Return to that place, find your Mount Horeb again, until His presence burns like a fire and lights up the course of your life all over. “The One who calls you is faithful, and He will do it.” <I Thessalonians 5.24> Amen and Amen.

Note: This article is the supplementary blog version of the message linked here above.