Exodus 24--The Covenant Confirmed

The Covenant Confirmed
24 Then 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. 2 Moses alone shall come near to the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him.”

3 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.” 4 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. 5 And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. 6 And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. 7 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.” 8 And Moses 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.”

9 Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, 10 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. 11 And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.

12 The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.” 13 So Moses rose with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. 14 And he said to the elders, “Wait here for us until we return to you. And behold, Aaron and Hur are with you. Whoever has a dispute, let him go to them.”

​15 Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. 16 The glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud. 17 Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. 18 Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

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While we've already seen God "ask the question," several times, God in His great grace seems to have said, "Perhaps you didn't understand what I was asking.  You're all in or you're out.  Are you REALLY sure that you're all in now that you know the full details of the covenant?"  For more about this, see the YouTube video lesson from The Gospel Project, Unit 23, Session 2:  Jesus Teaches About the Cost of Discipleship that I just posted.  In a similar vein, Jesus has called some to be His disciples before they some really knew what was going to be required of them and at many times during His ministry, He made people aware that it was going to get tough and may cost them everything, even their lives, and if they weren't prepared for that, now was the time to leave.

I think God is doing much the same thing here and will do so over and over again in the Old Testament as we see points where God chooses to renew His covenant with His people and ask them "are you all in, or are you out?"  The people once again affirm that they are all in, though we could judgmentally look at their lives and say that they tell a different story, but wouldn't our lives also maybe not line up with the commitment that we sincerely made when we decided we were all in and wanted to become a disciple of Jesus?

Because this commitment involved the entire nation, it was first a commitment made by its leaders--Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel.  They started their commitment by showing they had a right view of God by worshiping Him from far off, the purpose of which I think was two-fold.  First they would not come in contact with the full glory of the LORD, but second was that they were far enough away from the top of the mountain that the other people would be able to see their leaders as we know the people are going to want to follow their example and imitate them.  If we want to really effect change in our nation and culture, it starts with our leaders who say they are Christians not being afraid to publicly worship the Lord in spirit and in truth and to be a disciple every day in every way--it's not just about token lip-service and cherry-picking Bible verses that can be made to fit your political agenda to try and make it appear that the Lord is on your side--wrong question, we'll see that in the book of Joshua when Joshua asks "are you for us or for our enemy?" and the Captain of the Lord's Army (I think this again is Jesus) replies with , "No!"  So, now the question is posed again, Who Is On the Lord's Side? (See Exodus 32:  26).

Once again, an altar was made when the covenant was renewed, this time not just by a man or his family, but with all of his physical descendants-all of the 12 tribes of Israel.  Moses was careful to write down everything that they Lord had told him and to tell everything to the people, and they responded by offering sacrifices and he took half of the blood from the sacrifices they made and threw it against the altar--this was a lot of blood and I think this is an image of what was to come on the cross that our redemption, salvation, and reconciliation would be bloody and costly, but with the other half of the blood, he sprinkled it on the people and after he had read the whole Book of the Law to them and they had agreed to it.  The words here by Moses sound very familiar to the words of Jesus at the Last Supper.  Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”  Jesus would later say, "20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood." (Luke 22:20).  The covenant has always been signed and sealed in blood.  From the beginning we see that God makes the covenant with Adam and then kills some animals to provide coverings for His nakedness, we see Noah offer sacrifices to God after the Flood when the Noahic covenant was established, we see God tell Abraham to "cut a covenant" with Him by getting animals that he cut in halves and the Lord put Abraham to sleep and he passed through the halves of the animals so as to say "Let this happen to me if I fail to keep my part of the covenant," but He did not make Abraham walk hand-in-hand with Him because God put all the responsibility on Himself, we see the covenant reaffirmed at the Passover, and now once again at the Mountain of God with the giving of the Law and we will see this over, and over ,and over again--it is a covenant of blood.  I don't have time or space for all of this right now, but encourage you to read the following passages in the book of Hebrews related to the Old Covenant and the New Covenant--especially since we are about to get into the part of Exodus where we talk about the Tabernacle and all of its instruments and sacrifices.

Hebrews 9:11-28:  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+9%3A11-28&version=ESV
Hebrews 10:1-18 (read the whole chapter if you can):  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+10%3A1-18&version=ESV


Then and only then after the people had agreed to the covenant and been cleansed by the blood of the covenant could the leaders draw near to God, and we see something beautiful.  Most of them probably God as close to God as they ever would, but God put a barrier between Him and them--a layer of beautiful sapphire to protect them from His glory.  The sapphire was as clear as the sky, but it was there to prevent them from coming in contact with God and dying.

Then Moses went up the mountain to receive the tablets of the covenant that God had written for him--God was going to make sure that His Word and Law were preserved exactly!  No one would forget a single word because He had written it down for them.  In the same way, we have confidence that God has preserved all of His words through Scripture and in case we got anything wrong, He sent Jesus, the living Word of God to us and has written His Law not on tablets of stone, but on our hearts in the New Covenant (see our lessons where we talk about the New Covenant and look at the prophecies from the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the other prophets--the "new" covenant was really the covenant they had always hoped for and that the Old Covenant pointed them towards).

I do find it interesting that while God called Moses alone to go up the mountain, it appears that Moses selected Joshua to go with him.  It seems at this point that Moses had already known that Joshua would be the one to be his successor and it was important for the leader of the next generation to know and love the Law of the Lord.

Last, but not least that we approach God in His way and on His time table.  When Moses went up the mountain he went as far as God told him it was safe to go, and then stopped.  And it took six days before God was ready to have him come up the rest of the way, and then another forty days that Moses met with God in the cloud and it is no wonder that the people are going to think that Moses is dead after seeing the Lord's zeal and glory burn with fire and seeing flashes of lightning and hearing peals of thunder.  Certainly his awesome glory and majesty looked terrible to them and could easily be confused for His wrath, but God did not let any harm come to Moses and the people should have learned that no matter the apparent danger, when God calls you to go somewhere--even if it's to go through the Red Sea with enemies at your back, God will give you safe passage until all that He has willed has been accomplished.  But the people trusted in what they could and couldn't see with their physical eyes and they became anxious and would turn to the comfort of idols and their pagan religious practices that they were used to from both Egypt and Canaan.  We'll get there in chapter 32, but until then, we've got a lot of things that God is going to tell Moses.  I will agree that they may not seem extremely important to Christians today because we don't live in the system of the Levitical priesthood anymore, but Jesus has told us clearly that all the Law and the Prophets were about Him, so there is much we can learn from these passages about what God is telling His people about Himself and specifically about the coming of His Son.  Bear with me as we go through the different pieces of the Tabernacle as we just read from Hebrews that they were but images of something that really exists in heaven.  You'll notice that in the New Heaven and the New Earth, there is no Tabernacle, or Temple or House of Meeting (the Church is there as the people of God, the Bride of Christ, but there are no sanctuaries or cathedrals as all of heaven is the temple of the Lord).