The third day the Lord will come down.
Lessons
1. The Mediator willingly cometh from God to impart His will to His people.
2. The true Mediator is as ready to sanctify His people as God would have Him.
3. Souls must follow their Mediator’s command for sanctification (Exodus 19:14).
4. It is the Mediator’s care to prepare a people for God at His time, to whom He is sent.
5. Lawful enjoyments in the flesh sometimes must be denied for better attendance on God.
6. Great is the fitness required in souls for receiving rightly the law from God (Exodus 19:15). (G. Hughes, B. D.)
Getting ready for worship
What was the signification of this Divine command? God gets at the mind through the senses; and He doubtless intended to instruct the people by this act that their minds should be purified, and their hearts prepared for His service. And to us it points out the necessity of our hearts being cleansed from sin, from the defilement and the love of it, before we can serve the Lord acceptably; it teaches us also that we must not rush heedlessly into the presence of God, even in private prayer. This becoming reverence for the presence of the Divine Majesty will likewise show itself in our demeanour in the house of God. “Let them wash their clothes, and be ready against the third day.” This will bring a man in time to the house of God. He will feel with David, “I was glad when they said, Let us go to the house of the Lord”; and if by any unavoidable circumstance he is later than he ought to be, his very step will testify his concern that it should be so, and a solicitude lest he disturb the solemnity of the worship of others. In the man who fulfils the spirit of this command there will be no wandering eye, but that general decorum of manner which shows that he has put off his shoes from his feet, for the place whereon he stands is holy ground. (George Breay, B. A.)
Salutary bounds
A traveller relates that, when passing through an Austrian town, his attention was directed to a forest on a slope near the road, and he was told that death was the penalty of cutting down one of those trees. He was incredulous until he was further informed that they were the protection of the city, breaking the force of the descending avalanche which, without this natural barrier, would sweep over the homes of thousands. When a Russian army was there and began to cut away the fence for fuel, the inhabitants besought them to take their dwellings instead, which was done. Such, he well thought, are the sanctions of God’s moral law. On the integrity and support of that law depends the safety of the universe. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die,” is a merciful proclamation. “He that offends in one point is guilty of all,” is equally just and benevolent. To transgress once is to lay the axe at the root of the tree which represents the security and peace of every loyal soul in the wide dominions of the Almighty. (Family Treasury.)
Importance of holiness
God has no ultimate use for a man that is not holy. A rose-tree that does not blossom is of no use in a garden. A vine that bears no grapes is of no use in a vineyard. A criminal has no place in the State. In that everlasting kingdom in which the glory of God and the perfection of man will be at last revealed, there can be no place for those that have not an intense passion for holiness, and who do not themselves illustrate its dignity and beauty. (R. W. Dale.)
Purity of soul essential
“My son,” said Nushirvan, king of Persia, in the directions of his last will to his successor, “present yourself often at the gate of heaven to implore its succour in your need, but purify your soul beforehand.”