Read Exodus 19:1-6 and 1 Peter 2:9-12.

Mount Sinai. Three months have passed. The long journey began with the miraculous escape from slavery in Egypt, followed by the gift of manna, then provision of water from the rock, a battle with the Amalekites, and appointing judges to aid an overwhelmed Moses. Finally, the people have come to the mountain of God. Here, this people become “Israel”: God’s chosen ones. At Mount Sinai, the nation receives a new law, a new identity, and a new mission. In these verses, we see several important themes that reoccur throughout both the Old and New Testaments: God’s power to deliver and protect; the uniqueness of Israel; Israel’s call to holiness; and Israel’s witness to God.

God proclaims to Moses that the people of Israel have been delivered by God in miraculous fashion and with protective care (bore you on eagles’ wings). The Exodus event causes a change in relationship and status: the people have now come near to God, will enter a covenant, and be God’s “treasured possession.” However, this selection of Israel is not for Israel’s own sake. Rather, Israel’s mission is described as being for God “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” How should we understand these two roles?

First, as a holy nation, Israel is to reflect their holy deity. God will explain in the coming chapters of Exodus (and other books, too) how the nation is to live out this holiness in the realities of their world. However, living out this holiness does not mean that the people should withdraw and isolate themselves from the world or from the surrounding nations. Being a holy nation does not mean to abandon the world lest corruption sneak in (“Be in the world, but not of it” John 17).

Instead, the second term used to describe Israel is a kingdom of priests. While the tribe of Levi will be selected to serve as priests between God and the people of Israel (, this verse puts the whole nation into the role of priest. What does this mean? Israel is the one to mediate between the nations and God. They are the ones who represent God to the rest of the world. It is through them (the function of priest) that others will come to know God. This missional understanding of the entire people serving as ministers or ambassadors for God in this world is reflected in the words of Isaiah: “you [plural; Israel] shall be called priests of the LORD; you shall be named ministers of our God” (61:6).

Israel’s history consists of the people moving between these options: sometimes they emphasize holiness that looks more like withdrawal; sometimes they reach out as witnesses to the nations; sometimes they fail in one of these and sometimes they fail at both. In the New Testament, this two-fold identity of Israel as the people of God is claimed for the Church, a concept that has been identified in the Church of the Brethren as “the priesthood of all believers” (1 Peter 2:9). We, the followers of Christ, are to live in holiness and to serve as a “kingdom of priests” who help bring people into relationship with God (verses 11-12 link living holy lives and being a witness to the “Gentiles”).

May God, who is able to deliver and able to protect, empower us by the Spirit to “proclaim the mighty acts of God who called us out of darkness into God’s marvelous light” as we live in holiness and as witnesses to our world (1 Peter 2:9).