Exodus 24

Bible Passage:  Exodus 24

The previous few chapters have introduced us to the commandments and laws that God gave the people of Israel to follow.  In today’s chapter, the Law was inaugurated as a Covenant…

Now He said to Moses, “Come up to the LORD, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar.  And Moses alone shall come near the LORD, but they shall not come near; nor shall the people go up with him.”
So Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the judgments. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words which the LORD has said we will do.”

Exodus 24:1-3

The people answered and said that “all the words which the LORD has said we will do.”

And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD. And he rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars according to the twelve tribes of Israel.

Exodus 24:4

Moses made an altar with twelve pillars, one for each of the twelve tribes. God had made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac and then, Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Then he sent young men of the children of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the LORD.  And Moses took half the blood and put it in basins, and half the blood he sprinkled on the altar.

Exodus 24:5-6

Remember the Covenant With Abraham?

I cannot help recalling about the Covenant God made with Abraham in Genesis 15.  A sister shared with me how touched she was with the eternal love displayed by God in that Covenant and it helped me understand that chapter properly for the first time.

Now, in this chapter, we see a Covenant being made almost in the same fashion as that of Abraham’s.

In Genesis 15, when Abraham sacrificed the animals, he cut them in two, laid them out and then God passed between the pieces.  Here, Moses took the blood of the bulls and divided it, one half in basins and the other sprinkled on the altar.  As in Abraham’s covenant, two walls of blood were created.

Exodus 24:7-11 then tells us that Moses took the book of the covenant, the Law, and read it to the people.  The Israelites once again said that they would do all that the Lord had spoken and that they would obey it for this is right.  So Moses took he blood and sprinkled it on the people.

This is a picture of an agreement made between God and the people.

God made and gave the Law.

The people heard it and accepted it and said they were going to keep this covenant.

Then we see how Moses, the other leaders and elders went up and saw God and they ate and drank. I do not believe they saw God as in they saw the form of God but rather they saw the glory of God.

This marked the covenant of the Law – later to e called the Old Covenant – that the people agreed to in obedience to the Law.  Disobedience to this has dire consequences of which God has clearly laid out.

Noticed in the making of the covenant, there was eating and drinking.  Just as when Abraham made a covenant with Abimelech, there was eating and drinking; and when Jacob made a covenant with Laban, there was eating and drinking. There was covenant meal.

We Will Obey… Someday…

Unfortunately, with the benefit of hindsight, we know for a fact that although the people said that they would obey, they did not.  They went into idolatory in a big way.

When they entered the Promised Land, they were supposed to get rid of everyone there.  But they made covenants with some of them and failed to drive them out completely.  We can read clearly what God told them in Genesis 23:20-33 how God would send His angel before them and give them instructions on how to behave with respect to the foreign gods in that land.  But they forgot and disobeyed … again and again and again.

Much like us today isn’t it?  Almost every Holy Communion, we will examine ourselves and tell ourselves and God that we would turn away from our sinful self and obey God wholeheartedly.  But… we fail and disobey time and time again… and think that maybe someday… someday we will actually keep our part of the covenant with God.

The New Covenant

This covenant that God made with Moses was obviously not kept by the people as they lurched from one idolatory cycle to the next so much so that they were finally taken into captivity by the Assyrians and Babylonians and taken away from the land that God had given them.

It was during the Babylonian captitivity that God told Jeremiah this in Jeremiah 31:31-31…

“Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

The old covenant is obsolete.  It was written on tablets of stone.  But the new one was going to be written on their hearts.

God follows by saying in Jeremiah 31:34…

No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

God said that He would forgive their sins and iniquities for breaking the Law.

But more importantly, God knows how weak we are in trying to keep His Words and so He promised to put a Helper in our hearts so that we can walk according to His laws and statutes…

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.

Ezekiel 36:26-27

The mediator between God and man was Moses in the Old Covenant. But when Jesus came, He came as the mediator of the new covenant.  He put the law on our hearts and our sins and iniquities are forgiven because of His sacrifice.

In Abraham there was a sacrifice with two walls of blood. In the Law, there was a sacrifice and the blood was divided.

John the Baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” He points us to Jesus Christ as the Lamb, a sacrificial lamb. This is the lamb that died on the same night, the Passover, as the Jews were sacrificing animals.

The Lord’s Supper was when a new covenant was made (1 Cor 11:23-25).  On the night that Jesus was betrayed He took the bread and said, “This is my body which is broken for you.” Then He took the cup and said, “This is the cup is the new covenant in My blood.”

After establishing that new Covenant, Jesus went to Calvary for us.

The sacrifice of bulls and goats was not sufficient for our sins because they had to be perpetually offered.  Instead, the Ultimate Sacrifice was made when Jesus went to the Cross in our stead.  Read the following verses slowly and meditate on what it means…. it is such a powerful statement of love from our faithful God who keeps His Word….

For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before,
“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them,” then He adds, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.
Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus,  by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh,

Hebrews 10:14-20

When we are baptised into Christ, we walk through the torn veil, the very flesh of the Son of God and enter into the covenant – the New Covenant!

In the beginning, God gave us the Law to define sin so that we might understand it and that it would protect us from ourselves and to keep us from walking in sin.  But there were problems with the old Covenant as it was not written in our hearts.

Reading these Old Testament stories makes me really thankful.  Thankful that the Holy Spirit now lives in us – helping us to remember and act on the Word of God in our lives.  Thankful that God chose to give us His only beloved Son so that we can have this new covenant.  Thankful that we have the benefit of these historical examples to serve as warnings for us so that we would be more mindful of how we behave.

That is why it is so important to always pray in the Holy Spirit and not quench the Spirit.

May God find us worthy of His supreme sacrifice for the New Covenant.