Where We Go To See God
Welcome back everyone to Torah Today Ministries as we continue our series called The Hebrew Key, where we take a concept, a word, something that you find only in the Hebrew that helps open up a passage and give new insight.
Whenever I do one of these, I’m reminded of David’s words in Psalm 119, where he says:
Adonai (אֲדֹנָי), unveil my eyes, that I may behold wonders from your Torah (תּוֹרָה). — Psalm 119:18
And I sometimes wonder if this passage we’re about to look at is not one of those that David pondered over — and maybe inspired him to write that verse in Psalm 119.
So the name of this episode is “Where We Go to See God.” I know people who make pilgrimages to distant places — to a mountain, to the Holy Land — and I do not discourage this. Sometimes it’s important to change our location and just to get away from the familiar, to really be alone with God, or to experience historically some of the things that we read about in the scriptures. But we don’t have to get on a plane or travel miles to see God. Whenever we want to truly see him, there’s a place we can go. And this is illustrated for us in a passage in the book of Exodus. It’s a very odd passage — one people have pondered over forever. And I don’t claim to fully understand it. But it’s there, so I believe it.
The passage we’re going to look at is Exodus 24, verse 7 — and then two verses later.
Exodus 24:7 says:
Then Moses took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that Adonai (אֲדֹנָי) has spoken, we will do and we will hear.” — Exodus 24:7
Now, this is at Mount Sinai. God has spoken, and Moses has written down the words. And he reads the book of the covenant to the people. And they say, “We’ll do it. Count us in. We’re going to be part of this covenant.”
Now, that word there for “book” is the word sefer (סֵפֶר). This is why a Torah (תּוֹרָה) scroll is referred to as a Sefer Torah (סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה) — the book of the Torah (תּוֹרָה). And a man who writes a Torah (תּוֹרָה) scroll is called a sofer (סוֹפֵר), because he writes a sefer (סֵפֶר).
So there’s our book — our word: samech, peh, resh (ספר) — sefer (סֵפֶר), “book.”
All right, now just a few verses later, we come to this passage:
Then Moses and Aaron, Nadav (נָדָב) and Avihu (אֲבִיהוּא), and seventy of the elders of Israel went up. And they saw the God of Israel. — Exodus 24:9–10a
This is the first place we find the phrase “God of Israel” in the scriptures. They saw the God of Israel. I know you’re all thinking, “No man has seen God and lived.” Well, here it says they saw the God of Israel. Maybe it was a diminished vision of him — something that their human eyes could tolerate. But they saw him.
It says:
There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. — Exodus 24:10b
So it was blue, like the heavens. Most sapphires are blue — they don’t have to be, but in this case it was blue. But it was clear. Even though the sky is blue, you can see through it.
And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they gazed upon God and ate and drank. — Exodus 24:11
Now, why do I have the word “sapphire” highlighted? Let’s look at the word sapir (סַפִּיר) — spelled samech, peh, yud, resh (ספיר).
Look a little familiar to you? It should. Because it’s basically the same word as the word sefer (סֵפֶר) — “book.” The only addition is this letter yud (י) right here — the third letter.
And yud (י) is one of the most intriguing letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Because it’s the smallest of the letters. It’s the letter Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) refers to in the Greek scriptures, referred to as “iota.” Iota is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet. And so when Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) talks about “not one iota or one tittle — one jot or one tittle — will pass from the Torah (תּוֹרָה),” he’s talking about the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet — the letter yud (י).
The letter yud (י) is like an apostrophe. You basically take the quill pen, you touch it to the parchment — you’ve got a yud (י). It’s the only one of the letters that is suspended up above the line — it doesn’t come all the way down and touch bottom. It is considered to be one of the most spiritual of the 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Because it’s so small — it’s so close to being nothing — and it’s suspended up above. And it’s also the first letter of God’s name — yud-hey-vav-hey (יהוה).
So when you see a yud (י), it in many ways represents God’s Spirit.
So we have the word sefer (סֵפֶר) — “book.” But with the addition of the letter yud (י), it becomes sapir (סַפִּיר) — “sapphire.” The paving stones upon which God stood when he revealed himself to the men at the top of Mount Sinai.
Think about that for a moment. It’s not that God says, “Well, I need to stand up here, so I think I’ll put some sapphire stones under my feet.” It’s almost as if God’s saying: wherever you find sapphire paving stones, that’s where you’ll find me standing. Because the sapphire paving stones are a picture of the book that God has given us.
Where do we go to see God? We go to his book. The words of that book are God-breathed. That’s where we can breathe — we breathe the same air.
I want us to make a few observations on this passage. And these are some that came to me — and I encourage you to look into this passage deeply and see what additional ones come to you.
They were not required to remove their shoes. Back in Exodus chapter 3, verse 5, when Moses comes to the burning bush, God speaks to him from the bush and says, “Moses, take your shoes off your feet, because where you’re standing is holy ground.” Well, that was holy ground. How much holier must this ground have been — on Mount Sinai, where God had descended, where he had spoken, and where they are actually seeing God? Not a burning bush — they’re seeing the God of Israel. And he didn’t ask them to take their shoes off.
I wonder why that is. Maybe because these sapphire stones are a way of God saying, “This is where I make myself accessible to you. You keep your shoes on. You can be at home. Be comfortable. And you don’t have to stand on pretense. You’re here as friends.”
They could look, but they could not touch. I think too many times, people come to the scriptures hoping they can somehow touch God — they can experience something tangible. And God says, “No, that’s not now. That’s for later. That’s for the honeymoon, after the marriage supper of the Lamb.” But right now, we can talk. We can see each other. We can communicate. We can have very intimate fellowship. But the tangible touching comes later. Be patient. Wait.
Only God’s feet are described. I mean, don’t you wish they described his face? What he was wearing? What he looked like? His gestures? What his voice sounded like? They describe his feet. The lowest part. The place where he and the world come together.
But see — that’s what the Bible is. We have this extraterrestrial book, printed on paper with ink, and we can have it. It’s the place where spirit and the physical realm come into complete and total contact. Because when you stand — that is where all the pressure and weight of your body presses against the physical realm, against the earth beneath you. This is where God’s weight pressed against the physical realm — on these stones of sapphire, in his Sefer Torah (סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה).
Where he stood, there was clarity. It says that these stones of sapphire were as clear as the heavens — the shamayim (שָׁמַיִם), which could be the spiritual heavens or the physical heavens. And I think it applies to both in this case. They brought great clarity — the paving stones brought clarity. We’re told to seek God’s face, but when we do, I think we have to start with the feet and work our way up. We must start with the place where God has told us to start — the place where he stands. And the stones of sapphire upon which he stands is the sefer (סֵפֶר), the book which he has given. And when we come to the word of God seeking to know him better, we find clarity — like looking into the skies. Think about it — you look down into the book; if you look at it with your soul and spirit, you’re actually seeing a reflection of something far above us and beyond us.
They were richly fed. They ate and drank. They had a feast. And as God tells us — man does not live by bread alone, not just this physical body with physical food, but by everything that proceeds from the mouth of God. And when we spend time in his sefer (סֵפֶר), his book, we will be fed. We will eat and we will drink. We’ll be nourished spiritually to do whatever work God has for us to do. But God have mercy on us if we’re trying to serve him and do his work without feeding on his food and working in his strength.
When did this feast occur? It occurred after they made a commitment to keep his covenant — “Everything that God has said, we will do and we will hear.” The word “hear” — shema (שְׁמַע) — is the only word in Hebrew for “obey.” To hear is to obey. If you’re not obeying, you’re not really hearing. And they’ve said, “Okay, God’s commandments to us — we will do them, we will obey them.” And too many people want to see God without committing their lives to obeying him and doing what he asks of them.
If you want to see God, you need to enter into covenant with him. Commit yourself to him. And then look in the sapir (סַפִּיר) — the sefer (סֵפֶר) — the place where he stands.
Now, remember — I put in bold that word, the pavement of sapphire stones. We find sapphire other places in Scripture — not too often, but several places. We’ll look at two others.
Isaiah 54, verses 10 and 11:
“For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,” says Adonai (אֲדֹנָי), who has compassion on you. “O afflicted one, storm-tossed and not comforted, behold, I will set your stones in antimony and lay your foundations with sapphires (sapirim / סַפִּירִים).” — Isaiah 54:10–11
Now let’s look at this passage realizing the word sapir (סַפִּיר) contains the word sefer (סֵפֶר), and make the connection: if the paving stones upon which God stands is the sefer (סֵפֶר) — the word of God — then the foundation of our lives should be the same. Our foundation, our rock that we build our lives and faith on, should be God’s word.
One more passage — Ezekiel 1, verses 26 and 28:
And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne in appearance like sapphire (sapir / סַפִּיר). — Ezekiel 1:26
God’s throne — again — is sapphire. What I want to show from these three passages is: the paving stones upon which God stood when they saw him, the foundation for our own lives, and the throne upon which God sits — are all sapir (סַפִּיר). All pictures of God’s word. This is where he dwells.
We need to quit looking at the sefer (סֵפֶר) as just a religious book. It is alive. It is active. And it’s sharper than any two-edged sword, the writer of Hebrews tells us in chapter 4, verse 12. It has work it wants to do. And God is wanting to reveal himself to us. But if we come to the book just as a book, we won’t see God — just like going to the mountain just as a mountain, they wouldn’t have seen God either. They went to the top of the mountain because God called them there, to have a covenant meal. We should go to this book expectant. And we should be looking to meet with our God. And though we won’t see him with our eyes the way they did, we can see him in a much deeper way.
So I encourage you — don’t ever underestimate the power and the importance of spending time in the sapphire stones of God’s sefer (סֵפֶר), his word.
I hope this is a blessing to you. I hope you follow the advice here. And I hope you’ll think more deeply about this scene on Mount Sinai that we just read in Exodus 24. It’s an amazing, amazing encounter. But it’s an encounter you and I can have — in many ways, and even deeper ones than they did.
So until next time, I wish you shalom (שָׁלוֹם) and God bless.
Open All Scripture in Bible Gateway
Exodus 24:7 Then [Moses] took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that Adonai has spoken we will do, and we will be hear.”
ספר (sepher) = “book”
Exodus 24:9-11 Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under His feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And He did not lay His hand on the chief men of the people of Israel. They gazed upon God, and ate and drank.
ספיר (saphir) = “sapphire”
Observations on Exodus 24:9-11
Isaiah 54:10-11 “For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but My steadfast love shall not depart from you, and My covenant of peace shall not be removed,” says Adonai, who has compassion on you. “O afflicted one, storm-tossed and not comforted, behold, I will set your stones in antimony, and lay your foundations with sapphires.”
Ezekiel 1:26,28 And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire. And seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance… Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of Adonai. And when I saw it, I fell on my face …
REFERENCES:
Exodus 3:5 Then He said, “Do not come near. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
