Exodus 24:1-11 • Glory Come Down

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

 We're about to celebrate the Lord's Supper, and in doing so, we'll prepare by thinking how the Lord prepared His people centuries ahead of time. Look in your Bibles at Exodus 24. Exodus 24. Some commentators say this is the most important chapter in the whole Bible, where God commits Himself to His people, and His people commit themselves to Him. And yet, despite the importance, you're quickly going to discover this is the most important chapter you've never heard of.



 It's strange to us. Part wedding, part treaty, part contract, all covenant.



 How is God telling us how He is wedding Himself to His people in a covenant? Let's stand as we honor God's Word.



 Exodus 24, verses 1 through 11. "Then he that is God said to Moses, Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seven of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar.



 Moses alone shall come near to the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him. Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules, and all the people answered with one voice and said, All the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do.



 And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. 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. And he sent young men of the people of Israel who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord.



 And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar.



 Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, All that the Lord has spoken, we will do, and we will be obedient.



 Then the Lord took the blood and threw it on the people and said, Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.



 Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seven 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 His goodness and His greatness.



 And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel. They beheld God and ate and drank.



 Let's pray together.



 Heavenly Father, in just a few minutes, we will eat and drink to honor You.



 Help us to behold the covenant of mercy that enables us to do so through the work of Your Son. We come to You in His name and pray for His work to be made plain to us as You were making it plain to Your people for centuries. Teach us about Jesus this day we ask, in Jesus' name, Amen.



 Please be seated.



 Will you, Brian, before God and these witnesses, take Kathy to be Your lawful wedded wife, to love her and cherish her in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, for better for worse?



 And forsaking all others, cleave only unto her.



 As long as you both shall live, will you?



 I will, and I do.



 We recognize the words of a marriage covenant.



 Being all others, I will cleave only unto you. Even though it's ancient words, they still kind of melt our hearts. And we appreciate that because we like the words that melt our hearts as we make commitments to one another.



 But because we're better at melting than we are at committing, the Lord is teaching us what it means to commit to one another beyond our performance, even by the words of this particular chapter. After all, what are we being taught in the making of this covenant?



 Blessings are experienced as conditions of a covenant are met.



 But the covenant is maintained not by keeping the conditions, but by commitment to a prior promise.



 It is the prior commitment that maintains the covenant more than the conditions themselves. And so when we talk in a wedding ceremony, even as we identify the conditions, "I will love and I will cherish you," we recognize there may be some problems.



 That they do not undo the marriage because it is not a contract.



 It is a covenant secured by a prior commitment to the conditions themselves. Where do we get the idea of such a covenant?



 This chapter.



 And others like it in the Scriptures. As odd as some of the pieces are, you should be able to discern the wedding that is in the background between God and His people. After all, there is the declaration of intent after the statement of the expectations. The statement of expectations, verse 3.



 "Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules." Not as apparent to us in this day and age. The words are the Ten Commandments that happened three chapters earlier.



 After all, each commandment can be summarized in Hebrew with just one word and a little article that's attached that means not like, not commit adultery, not break the Sabbath. Just one word. And so the words are identifying the commandments. But for the next three chapters, 21 through 23, God is giving the examples of what He's talking about. That's the law. Then He begins to give the case law. In your culture, at your time, this is what I expect of you. God gives the expectations, but now there is the declaration of intent, the middle of verse 3. "And all the people answered with one voice and said, all the words that the Lord has spoken we will do."



 Will you?



 We will.



 It is the declaration of intent. Important for our understanding is not only recognizing the declaration of intent, but how the parties express their intent. Ah do us in this wedding that only one party, the people of God, the nation of Israel, gives their vow. After all, the people answer with one voice and say, "All the words that the Lord has spoken we will."



 Where does God say, "We will" or "I will"?



 Four centuries earlier.



 Genesis 15. In words still are a little bit odd to us. The Son is going down and the father of the nation of Israel, Abraham, is going to sleep. And as He is going to sleep, animals that He has sacrificed are halved on the ground near Him. And a smoking pot and a blazing torch pass through the halves of the animals. We don't get it. Abraham did. The same God who when the Ten Commandments are given on Mount Sinai appearing in smoke and flame is passing through the halves of the animal in smoke and flame with this declaration.



 Abraham, "I will give to your offspring as I have promised all the land that is to be theirs." Which means not only am I giving you land, I'm giving you old man offspring as I have promised. Abraham believed God and it was counter to him for righteousness. But this is what God says, "I will give you the land. I will give you offspring. I will be faithful to you.



 And if I am not, may what has happened to these animals happen to me."



 The God of creation, the God of the universe makes a vow. He says to Abraham, "I will forfeit my very existence if I am not faithful to you. I promise at the stake of my own life that I will fulfill this commitment." Now there have been no commandments yet. The people of the nation do not even exist yet. And yet God by a prior commitment is saying, "I will fulfill my covenant and may I be destroyed if I do not fulfill my covenant." It's a very special thing when you think about it, that God is basing our marriages on a covenant whose nature he has established long, long ago. It is a covenant that is not secured by us meeting conditions.



 It is a covenant secured by a prior commitment. So that we recognize even in our marriages we are not saying, "This is a contract. You keep your part, I'll keep my part. And if you mess up, we're done."



 No, it's a marriage covenant.



 It's not a marriage contract. What's the difference? Does it make?



 Some time ago in a Valentine's Day piece on this American life, the reporter Ira Glass talked about a young man who believed that his marriage would be stronger if each person could opt out if the other did not meet their expectations.



 He explained, "What I think I want to do is to have an agreement that at the end of seven years we have to get remarried in order for the marriage to continue."



 Ira Glass, the usually objective reporter, could not contain himself.



 He said, "I think actually one of the things that is a comfort in marriage is that there is not a door at seven years.



 And so if something is messed up in the short term, there's a comfort of knowing, "Well, we made this commitment, and so we're going to work this out. And even if tonight we're not getting along or there's something between us that doesn't feel right, you have the comfort of knowing.



 We're going to figure this out."



 And that makes the relationship so much easier because you go through times in which you hate each other's guts, but there is no escape clause.



 And that is a bigger comfort to being married, says Ira Glass, than I ever thought before I got married.



 No escape clause.



 And the one who is setting the example is God Himself.



 I'm not going to opt out after seven years or 70 or 700 or ever.



 I will love my people.



 In their imperfections, in their difficulties, "I will not opt out," says God. I will love you. And the response of God's people is that we begin to recognize in our weakness and our frailty and our sin that we can keep going back to God. You have to renew what we ourselves have broken. You have to make it right again. And what we will celebrate in just a few minutes is God saying, "In perpetuity in the church of Jesus Christ, I have not opted out. I know your weakness. I know your sin. Come to me."



 Let's have dinner together. Let's celebrate together. I have not opted out knowing everything that I know about you. In that way it is God saying, "Let's have a wedding.



 Let's be together." But there's more than just a wedding that's going to maintain a marriage long-term.



 God begins to also establish in the same chapter what is going to maintain the relationship beyond just as it were the wedding vows. There's another sense in which this covenant is not just a wedding, it is a treaty.



 And as you hear aspects of it, you'll recognize there are echoes of a contract even though it is not entirely that.



 God sets the standards of this treaty in verse 3. "Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules." And that itself is significant. There's not a negotiation.



 The people are not saying, "God, well, you do this and we'll do this." No, God is saying, "I will establish the rules." Now for an ancient people, no mystery. This is actually what is known as a suzerainty treaty. A king who has conquered a people establishes the rules of how they can live under his rule.



 What is so strange is that this sovereign Lord is establishing rules that are not just about his honor and his good, "You pay me tribute, you pay lots of taxes to me, you give me your children." No.



 Instead, as this sovereign proclaims the treaty, he establishes things that are good for his people.



 And that's what the rules involve and the standards that God has expressed.



 After all, people are being taken care of by the Ten Commandments from the least to the greatest in the kingdom of God. We don't often think of it that way. Women, for instance, are protected against abuse and being used and betrayal by the command you shall not commit adultery.



 Your words to us, strange in its time and maybe strange in all times. Some of you may have become aware just a few weeks ago, PCA pastor Tim Keller had an opportunity to address the Parliament of Great Britain, a nation with a Christian heritage, to remind the leaders of Great Britain what's good about Christianity at all.



 And as he spoke, he said, "You must recognize that by the time of Jesus in Roman rule, women had no rights at all. In fact, any woman had to do whatever was required of any man of a higher rank in the culture. There were no protections for women. A husband could discard, somebody else could require whatever he wanted. And here comes Christianity saying, "I will protect the marriage. The marriage must be protected. Man and woman committed to one another." And not only are women being protected, and we might think, can we explain this in a me-too moment in this culture, why this becomes so important that we commit to one another the care and nurture of one another as God himself was instructing so long ago. But children are also being protected against being disregarded or discarded. A child shall honor father and mother, which presumes there is a father and mother, in the equation with responsibility, and the children being held accountable for their responsibilities as well.



 Servants and slaves, hard words for our ears to hear in this culture, are also being protected in those intervening chapters that are not reading to you. If you injured a slave, you had to free the slave.



 Whether or not you freed the slave at any given time, at the end of a period of time, you had to free your slaves.



 We look at things that were servanthood or apprenticeships, and they don't make sense in our modern terms, but God was saying to anybody, "If you damage any one of my people, those made in the image of God, you must pay the price as a master or even as a family member. I will protect my people because the law against murder applied to insignificant as well as significant. All people made in the image of God and therefore all dignified and all to be protected." Even slaves had to be given worship privileges. Even slaves had to be given sensitive care.



 God was saying, "I will protect my people and I call my people to the protection of one another powerful or weak. Do not lie about them. Do not hurt them. In no way shall you take advantage of others."



 Three chapters of explanation and a whole book of Leviticus will follow with more explanation. Lots to understand, and therefore God wants to make sure that people are agreeing with understanding.



 What next follows as God has said, "This is what you're agreeing to and I will maintain my side," is God wants to make sure that the people who are saying, "I will," understand what they are agreeing to. First, remember what happens? Verse 3 again, right at the beginning, "Moses came and told the people all the words." Now if you're even in this day and age, if you're signing a contract about the purchase of a car, if the nations are agreeing to some new treaty, it all begins verbally, right?



 You dicker for a bit, you come to a verbal agreement and then what does the salesman say?



 Let's go write it down.



 That's verse 4. "After Moses has spoken the words," verse 4, "and Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord." Not only are the words made clear, now they are written down, you have to make sure that the parties signing the contract are qualified and represented. Are the people represented in this contract? The end of verse 4, "Moses rose early in the morning, built an altar at the foot of the mountain."



 That's God's interest being represented. The altar is there. Who else is represented? "And twelve pillars according to the twelve tribes of Israel." Oh, the parties to the contract are being represented.



 Are they qualified?



 Can they sign the document? You know that. Do you have collateral?



 Adequate capital to make this agreement?



 Criminal record? Are you qualified to sign the agreement? So what else happens?



 Verse 5, "Moses sent young men of the people of Israel." Very interesting. Not just the present generation, but the future generation that is being represented by the covenant is also got representation at the table.



 These young men offered burnt offerings. That's a sin offering for past sins. Is there demerit? Do you have debt? That means you cannot fulfill this contract. And so the debt is canceled of sin by a sin burnt offering. But additionally, the young men sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. Because sometimes you have to know, do you have adequate capital to carry out the contract? Because you shouldn't sign if you don't. And so God is saying to His people, "I want you to know that the past has been pardoned, but the future is being taken care of. You have pardoned for past sin and peace for the future with the God of the universe. You are qualified to sign." And having the qualifications, it is now time to sign.



 Verse 6, "And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins. And half of the blood he threw against the altar." Now if anything sounds strange to us, it's that line. He took half the blood from the sacrifices that had been made and he throws it against the altar.



 What's being made?



 Somebody is signing in blood.



 It's a blood oath.



 Now whether you're talking about pirates or you're talking about some sort of religious brotherhood that is signing an oath in blood, you get it. What is God saying as the blood of sacrifice comes against His interest? He is saying, "Should I not keep my end of the bargain, I forfeit my own life."



 God is renewing His covenant. He is renewing His signature. He takes an oath in blood to be faithful to these people. And then what happens?



 Verse 8, oh excuse me, we need to go to verse 6. Moses re-explains. "Moses took half the blood, put it in basins. Half of the blood he threw against the altar." Verse 7, "He took the book of the covenant and read it." He's written it. Now he needs to make sure they read it. Any fine print that you don't like? Have you read the whole thing?



 "He took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people and they said,



 all that the Lord has spoken we will do." And there it is again, "And we will be obedient."



 They're taking their vow.



 After your wedding, you've said the words, "We will."



 And then the minister comes and he says, "Here's the license. You need to do what?



 You need to sign."



 Verse 8, "And Moses took the blood," the other half, "and threw it on the people and said, Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words." Now technically we know what happens. Hebrews, the ninth chapter describes it. "Moses takes a branch of hyssop, a leafy branch, and he dips the branch in the blood and he sprinkles it on the people." You're now talking about millions of people. But the writer of Hebrews saying they are being baptized.



 Wait, you can't get that on that many people. There's not enough blood to do that because baptism is a ceremonial cleansing.



 The amount of fluid is not the issue in view. There is a ceremonial cleansing that's going on. Here in this church we still conduct baptisms. And for those who come out of baptismic traditions and they feel like it's not valid if they're not immersed, we are happy about that. We make no objection to that. But we understand the amount of fluid is not the issue. And if you're from Methodist or Lutheran or Catholic or Presbyterian backgrounds, you recognize that baptizing occurred in the Bible as here by sprinkling. And at times by pouring. And at times by immersion. It was not the amount of water that was in effect. But you're saying, "But this isn't water at all. This is blood."



 Important to recognize the significance.



 There will come a time in which the people do not keep their word.



 They will be required to forfeit their life that they have now signed in blood by going through this ceremony.



 So someone else provides his blood.



 Who is that?



 That is the Lord Jesus. Do you remember what God said all the way from the beginning?



 I will forfeit my own life rather than forsake this covenant.



 And now when the people of God abandon the covenant, when you and I sin, what did God do? For the very people who had broken the covenant, he maintains the covenant by giving his life for the people who have not kept the covenant. He maintains it when we have broken the conditions. What God is ultimately saying to those people and to us is we have to understand the nature of his gospel covenant for all times. What is the nature of this covenant? Verse 8 right at the beginning, God makes it. "Moses took the blood and threw it on the people, said, Behold, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you."



 The ancient language, God cut a covenant just as those animals were divided so long ago, four centuries before. God cut a covenant. And now Moses is saying, "The Lord cut a covenant with you." And when he did so, he say, "May I so be sawn into if this covenant is maintained." And God not only makes the covenant, he shapes the covenant.



 "Behold, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words." He says, "This is how you'll know blessing. This is how you will experience the safety and the security and the goodness that I intend for your lives if you keep the conditions of this covenant."



 But ultimately understand that God not only makes the covenant and shapes the covenant, he blesses the covenant.



 Even when others do not keep their end. How do we know? Verse 9, "Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel went up." Remember, they couldn't even touch the mountain last time. Now they're going up at least midway on the mountain.



 Verse 10, "And they saw the God of Israel."



 What's the consequences of seeing God?



 You look on God and what happens?



 You die.



 But what happens?



 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 beheld God and ate and drank."



 There are so many commentators who will look at this and say, "There's got to be some mistake here. I mean, we know now, they knew then. You cannot look on God and live."



 And yet it says right here, "After they have signed their word and he has signed his word," and nobody's broken their word yet, God lets them look on him in all his glory.



 The words are actually repeated in Revelation, the 21st chapter, where the foundations of the kingdom of God in heaven are described as of sapphire.



 And here it is from the beginning, "As though God is giving them vision into his very kingdom and the glory of himself and lets them live because he is securing the blessings of a covenant for people who will not be able to do it themselves." And what is the great evidence that God is making peace with his people by securing the covenant in their behalf?



 He gives them a meal.



 And it says, "Come, eat with me, drink with me, and you will live."



 It's an old message that we renew week after week after week in the celebration of the Lord's Supper. What are we celebrating? We are celebrating a God who has said, "My son came and lived among you, and you see in his life and his righteousness and his mercy, you see me." That's what the Apostle Paul said, "We gain knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus." We're able to look on him, and Jesus gives us his representation of his great love and mercy in these elements again. "My body broken for you, my blood shed for you."



 Surely God's going to take it out on us.



 No, he says.



 We're at peace now. We sign the treaty.



 I will maintain it. Therefore come all who labor, all who are lepyladen, all who sin in our distress. But let's have a meal together.



 Let's eat and drink together, because that is the assurance that we have peace with God when we partake of these elements in Christ's name. Why so regular?



 Honestly, why so regular?



 Because you will celebrate in this service, this meal, and it will be minutes for some of us, hours for some of us, that we'll get that email, or we'll have that argument, or somebody will criticize us in such a way that we will doubt that there's any value in us at all that God is maintaining.



 And so in another few weeks we'll do this again, and we'll remind ourselves the past is forgiven, the future is secure. How do I know?



 God lets me eat with Him and still live.



 I'm at peace with Him. Praise God.



 Listen to these words with new meaning.



 As the Apostle Paul was explaining what this supper meant, he said it this simply, "As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes, for this cup said, "Jesus is the new covenant in my blood."



 What did God do so long ago?



 He shed His blood so that our baptism now is clear water and our meal is pure peace. Those who could not keep the covenant, He forgave. And to show it, He says, "I will cleanse you and make you whole in the evidence.



 You can eat with me." Father, I pray that You would bless us now.



 We prepare for this meal, and we do so with the recognition that what You have provided is a great expression of the peace that we can have with You. For in these elements we are looking at what Christ has done, who He is in fact, the one who sacrificed for us, gave His body, shed His blood, and where You could hold it against us, You instead invite us to come and eat of a meal that declares we are at peace with You.



 Father, help each of us now to say it's not because of what we have done. We've not kept those conditions, but because of what Christ has done that we can come. Teach us Your way, Your will, and Your mercy. By this meal we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.