Sinai: Where a Nation Became a Kingdom of Priests
Come Follow Me 2026 — Week 16 (Apr 20–26) — Exodus 19–20; 24; 31–34
The Sinai Invitation: A Kingdom of Priests
Three months after leaving Egypt, Israel came to Mount Sinai, and God extended one of the most remarkable invitations in all of Scripture: “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation” (Exodus 19:5–6).
The phrase “kingdom of priests” is staggering. In every ancient Near Eastern civilization, priests were a special caste — an elite minority who had access to the divine. Common people could not enter the temple's holy precincts; only the trained and consecrated few. God was proposing something unprecedented: an entire nation of priests, a whole people with direct access to the divine presence.
Peter, writing to the scattered saints, uses this exact language for the new covenant community: “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” and “ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:5, 9). Revelation carries the same promise: Christ “hath made us kings and priests unto God” (Revelation 1:6). The Sinai vision was not abandoned; it was extended to all who come to Christ.
Exodus 19:5–6
“Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.”
The Ten Commandments: Covenant Terms, Not Mere Rules
The Ten Commandments are typically presented to the world as a moral code — a list of rules by which society should order itself. This is not wrong, but it is a diminishment of what they actually are. In the ancient Near East, formal covenants between a great king and his subject peoples always began with a preamble identifying the great king, followed by a historical prologue rehearsing what the king had done for the vassal, followed by the covenant stipulations.
The Decalogue follows exactly this pattern. It begins: “I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2). This is not a command. This is the preamble and historical prologue: I am the great King; I have already redeemed you. The commandments that follow are the stipulations of the covenant between the redeemed people and their Redeemer. Obedience is not the basis of salvation — it is the response to salvation already received.
This order matters theologically. God did not say: keep these commandments and I will bring you out of Egypt. He brought them out first, and then gave them the covenant law as the shape of a redeemed life. The same sequence defines the New Covenant. We are not saved by keeping commandments; we are saved by grace through faith, and the commandments describe the texture of a life lived in covenant with the God who saved us (Ephesians 2:8–10).
Exodus 20:2
“I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
The Higher Law and the Lower Law
Latter-day revelation clarifies something implicit in the text of Exodus: God had intended to give Israel something greater than what they ultimately received at Sinai. The Joseph Smith Translation and Doctrine & Covenants 84 indicate that Moses went up to receive the higher priesthood and the fullness of the covenant, but Israel proved unwilling. They feared the voice of God and pleaded with Moses to be their intermediary (Exodus 20:18–19). As a result, they received the lower law — the Law of Moses with its detailed ordinances — in place of the higher law they had been offered.
This is not a critique of the Law of Moses; Paul calls it “holy, and just, and good” (Romans 7:12). But it was given for a specific pedagogical purpose: “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ” (Galatians 3:24). Every ordinance pointed forward; every sacrifice was a rehearsal. The law was not the destination; it was the road. Jesus came not to destroy this road but to complete the journey it described: “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).
The Golden Calf: Apostasy Within Sight of the Mountain
Moses went up into the mountain to receive the tablets of the covenant. He was there forty days. Below, Aaron made a golden calf from the people's earrings. The people declared: “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4). And they sat down to eat and rose up to play.
The audacity of this apostasy is almost incomprehensible. Israel was camped at the foot of the mountain from which God had spoken ten commands in their hearing. The cloud and fire were visible. They had witnessed ten plagues and the Red Sea. They had eaten manna from heaven and drunk from the rock. Within weeks of all of this, they made a statue and said it was responsible for the Exodus.
The episode does not reflect badly only on ancient Israel. Paul cites it as a warning to the Corinthian church: “Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted” (1 Corinthians 10:6). The capacity to have extraordinary spiritual experience and then revert to idolatry is not a peculiar ancient defect — it is a persistent human tendency. The golden calf is what the human heart reaches for when it grows impatient with an invisible God.
Exodus 32:4
“And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.”
Moses Intercedes: The Most Powerful Prayer in the Old Testament
God told Moses to stand aside: “Let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation” (Exodus 32:10). Moses could have accepted this offer. His lineage would become the foundation of a new Israel. Instead, he refused to stand aside and prayed with breathtaking boldness:
Exodus 32:11–12
“LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains?”
Moses interceded on the basis of God's own character, his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and his reputation among the nations. And then he went further: “Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written” (Exodus 32:32). Moses was willing to be cut off himself if it would secure Israel's redemption.
This is the most transparent type of Christ's atonement in the Mosaic period. Moses placed himself between a sinful people and divine judgment, offering his own destruction as the price of their forgiveness. Paul would echo this almost verbatim: “For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh” (Romans 9:3). The difference is that Moses' offer was not accepted — Moses could not actually pay this price. But Christ's offer was accepted. He was not merely willing to be blotted out; he was. And because he was, we need not be.
Moses' Shining Face: What Sustained Encounter Does
When Moses came down from the renewed communion with God on the mountain — after receiving the second set of tablets — “the skin of his face shone” (Exodus 34:29). He did not know it. Aaron and the people were afraid to come near him. Moses had to veil his face in their presence.
Paul uses this episode in 2 Corinthians 3 to make a remarkable argument about the difference between the Old and New Covenants. The glory on Moses' face was fading, which is why he wore a veil — to conceal its diminishment. But those who have turned to the Lord through the New Covenant have the veil taken away and behold “with open face...the glory of the Lord” and “are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18). The promise is transformative and permanent: sustained encounter with Christ changes us into his likeness, not temporarily, but progressively and permanently.
Moses' face shining was the outward sign of inward transformation from divine encounter. This is what the covenant promises: not merely forgiveness, not merely escape from judgment, but transformation — the kind of holiness that begins to shine from within.
Key Study Passages
- Exodus 19–20 — Sinai covenant and Ten Commandments
- Exodus 32 — The golden calf and Moses' intercession
- Exodus 34 — Covenant renewal; Moses' shining face
- D&C 84:23–27 — The higher and lower priesthood at Sinai
- Galatians 3:24 — The law as schoolmaster pointing to Christ
- 2 Corinthians 3:12–18 — Moses' veil and the transforming glory of the New Covenant
- 1 Peter 2:5, 9 — The royal priesthood fulfilled in Christ's covenant people