Good Morning.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their clothes. And let them be ready for the third day. For on the third day the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.” (Exodus 19:10-11)
Along with the instruction to consecrate themselves before meeting with God, came the timeline — they had two full days to make the proper preparations. The command to sanctify themselves was not so that He might appear but because He would appear — that is very important to keep in mind because we are instructed to live our lives in anticipation of His return. We should not think that if we live in accordance with His will that He might return, we should live that way because His return is a certainty. And as we see in these verses, He will appear on the Third Day. The prophet Hosea hinted at this when he said, “After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up that we may live in His sight” (Hosea 6:2).
The principle of the Third Day is recurring theme throughout the Scripture and we can see it in the very beginning. It was on the Third day that God called forth the grass, the herb yielding seed and the fruit trees, which is to say, the seed for these things had already been created previously. The Bible is clear that these things were called forth out of the ground, having been concealed within the ground up until that day. The point is that, from the beginning, the Third Day speaks of things concealed being revealed and the revelation that accompanies this phenomena. Most significantly, it speaks of the Messiah’s resurrection on the Third Day because He was that grain of wheat that was buried in the ground and died.
I would also argue that this principle tells us of when He will appear again. As was mentioned earlier, through the prophet Hosea, we are told that we are to be revived “after two days” and raised on the Third Day that we may “live in His sight.” As we know, “With the LORD, one day is as a thousand years” (2 Peter 3:8), which means it has been about two days since the Messiah was executed and then resurrected. In other words, Hosea’s prophecy alerts us to the fact that we are living in the time when He will appear.
We can not be certain as to when that will be in terms of days, weeks, months or years but we can be confident that we are in that season. Therefore, let us prepare to meet Him; let us consecrate ourselves to His service that we might stand before Him guiltless at His appearing. After all, it is the Third Day!
Blessings and Shalom,
Bill
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