Stains of Promise (2)
Notes
Transcript
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. 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.” 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.”
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 beheld God, and ate and drank.
Scripture: Exodus 24:1-11
Text: Exodus 24:6-8
Sermon Title: Stains of Promise
Our Scripture this evening brings us back to one of the major events in the Israelite’s experience at Mt. Sinai. God had called and led the group of former slaves out of Egypt to this mountain. When they arrived there, he invited them to be in relationship with him, and not just any relationship, he proclaimed, “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” When Moses brought his message to the people, they all responded together, “We will do everything the Lord has said.”
God was entering into covenant with these people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They had agreed upon their relationship, set guidelines to be followed, and specified the blessings and curses that would come based on whether or not they lived up to their roles. Now we come this evening to the formal ceremony where God and Israel promised themselves to one another.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us can probably think of a time when we ourselves or a loved one have had a cut or some other type of injury that in addition to causing physical discomfort or harm, it also resulted in staining a piece of clothing with blood. Nowadays, in most organized sports, if an athlete has any blood on their jersey or uniform, they must come out, decontaminate the area, and sometimes even replace that article of clothing before that player can return to the game. As we have grown in our awareness of the way different diseases and infections can spread through contact with the blood of others, these types of regulations have been put in place to look out more and more for the health of athletes.
Our text brings us to a different time, a different place, and at God’s command we read, “[Moses] took the Book of the Law and read it to the people. They responded, “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey. Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.’” He took blood from the bulls which had been given as fellowship offerings and with some kind of brush or leaf, he sprinkled it over the people. Some of us probably cringe at the thought of getting blood splattered on us. While blood comes up frequently throughout the Old Testament, rarely do we find it used in the manner we find here in the formalizing of this covenant. I hope, as we go, we see the importance of this covenant and this blood for the budding relationship that this ceremony marked for God and Israel.
The first thing we want to consider this evening is what this covenant relationship looked like between God and his people. I think is the easiest and most obvious point to understand, but yet it caused the most trouble for God’s people. Verse 6 tells us, “Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls, and the other half he sprinkled on the altar.” He separated the blood, setting aside what was to be sprinkled on the community, and he sprinkled the other half on the altar. This is where the sacrifices were given and around which this ceremony took place. This altar symbolized God and his role in the covenant. The reason why Moses can put blood on it before reading the Law to the people is that God is always the first one willing to offer his relationship and remain committed to it.
The bowls that hold the other half of the blood are for the people. If the community will fully devote themselves to God, the covenant-giver, then they will be fulfilling their end of things. We read how they repeated the response that they have given several times already, “We will do everything the Lord has said,” but this time, they also add, “We will obey!” That word “obey” comes from a Hebrew word that also entails hearing or listening; the Israelites are giving their word that whatever God has spoken and will speak in the future, whatever commands are told to them, they are committing themselves to receive and live accordingly.
These two parties, God and Israel, gave their word to one another and agreed to live under the decrees God had drawn up with all of its rewards and all of its punishments. God took on a fresh identity; not only was he to be seen as the one who controlled all creation and intervening as he saw fit, but now he was in an established and purposeful relationship. The people received a new identity, too; their lives were now to be significantly different than the lives those in the nations around them. They were God’s people, meaning that the Most High God valued them, but it also meant his commands were more important than their wants.
One illustration of this relationship is what we find with parents and children. As the parent, God was claiming the Israelites as his child, telling them they are treasured, and teaching them how they are to mature. When this covenant is made, the Israelites are the obedient child on their best behavior. When they say “We will obey,” they mean, “Yes, Father,” with every intention to continue obeying him, becoming whoever he guided them to become.
In this relationship God is number 1 and Israel was to live in commitment under him. That seems really simple and really obvious, yet that is the aspect that the Israelites were so prone to mistake. Maybe they imagined that since half of the blood was sprinkled on God’s representation and half on the people’s representation that they were unspoken equals; but that was not the case, God, the Creator, is always over and above that which he has created. The people promised to obey, but how often they would go on to forget. We’ll pick this up again in a few moments.
The second thing we want to consider tonight is why the use of blood? Throughout the Old Testament, in dietary considerations, blood symbolized the very life that a living creature contains. For sacrifices, to take the blood from something meant that it had to die so that someone could be declared clean, could be alive again. In our passage, blood is a sign of the covenant. The blood symbolized how these people were moving from a state of “death,” which is the bondage they had experienced in Egypt, to “life” in this new identity and the promises that God gave to them. The writer of Hebrews looks back on this event, and in Hebrews chapter 9 we read that blood was also used for cleansing; it consecrated them as set apart for living and worshipping unto the Lord.
I think there is another reason for using blood, though, and that is taking into account what happens when blood gets on something else. A deeper consideration of using blood as a sign is its staining quality. Most of us know blood is hard, if not impossible to erase. Now some of you, especially moms and grandmas, probably have plenty of bleach and washing solutions to get blood out, but even when you can remove the visible stain, it tends to leave an invisible trace. There are different thoughts about Moses sprinkling blood on all the people—did he really sprinkle it onto the clothes or skin of every single Israelite, or was it a group of delegates from each tribe or their leaders. I think he was probably in view of all the people and had a means to splatter it out over the assembly, and whoever it got on it got on, no matter how few or how many, it was a sign for everyone.
The blood would have left visible stains throughout the camp, stains that would not disappear. Because of this ceremony, as people made their way throughout the camp for work and worship and fellowship, they would run into others who had these blood stains on them, these stains of promise. It would have reminded them, not how cringe-worthy of a ceremony that had been, but rather of how God had made them holy, how he was making them a kingdom of priests, calling them to be his holy nation—those stains would have been stains to cherish.
So blood signified the cleansing of the people as they come from that old, lifeless bondage of Egypt to new life as God’s people, a cleansing that changed how they would live from now on. It also stains them, gives them a reminder of God’s promises to them. The third thing we consider this evening is what happens if this covenant is broken? I already mentioned they were prone to mess things up, and it did not take very long. Just over a month later God’s people turned their backs on obeying his law and followed their own wishes. They built an idol in the form of a calf. They wanted an image to worship this God who they could not see. Moses was forced to call upon God to show mercy and to continue the covenant.
This is what makes God’s relationship and promises with his people so much different and greater than the promises that we so often make. We might make promises but they come with a limited number of chances, a limited number of times before we declare our trust to be broken and put an end to the covenants we have made with others. But God’s covenants last no matter how many times they are broken; he remains present and willing to help all who turn to him. God stuck with Israel through years of grumbling with leaders like Moses, through centuries by giving them judges, kings, and prophets. God stuck with them even when they went into captivity. That experience was not God letting them go, rather that was a curse that was part of the covenant. Remember how the blood of the covenant stains. When God’s people sinned, it was like they were trying to get rid of that stain, trying to scrub it off, but the blood can never be removed! The stains were permanent when things went well and blessings were experienced, as well as when the people had to experience the curses brought about by their actions and choices.
Blood and covenant were central to the religious practice and faith of the Israelites, but do they still matter for God’s people today? Another way to get at this question is by asking, do we still think about blood getting sprinkled on us as Moses sprinkled it on the Israelites? This is the fourth and final thing we consider in our time together. The answer and the truth is that we should see ourselves as a people to whom blood and covenant definitely still matter, and I hope we can truly hold onto that.
Let’s first think about how we are still a people under blood. We are just not talking about the blood of an animal, but rather we are under the blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ gave himself up the cross, shedding his blood, for us. He died that we might have true life, eternal life. When we come together around the table of the Lord’s Supper, we remember that as we take the wine or grape juice. The blood of the covenant in the Old Testament was a stain that set the people apart and formalized their relationship with the one true God. But that blood and its stain could not redeem them; like us, they needed the blood of one who fulfilled every obligation and purpose of the law.
Jesus came giving that blood with his own—that whoever believes unto him can and will receive life. Going back to Hebrews again, we find these words, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when Christ came into this world, he said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—I have come to do your will, O God.’” Jesus Christ came in a once and for all sacrifice.
We are a covenant people and that is also through Jesus Christ. When he was born, it was into this lineage that we find starting in Genesis and carried throughout the Old Testament in the family tribes of Israel, but when he came, he opened up God’s redemptive mission to all of humanity so that not just those ancient families but you and I can be saved and purified as well! Just like the Israelites, we ourselves cannot live up to each and every standard of the covenant; we cannot even always live up to the simplest commands to “Love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves.” But Christ has paved the way that we can live in the assurance of redemption because of what he has done! As the stains of the blood of the covenant which testified to God’s faithfulness never washed out, so too the stains of Jesus’ blood providing life to all who repent—no matter the tribe or nation—will never disappear.
I would love to take some type of brush with red paint and splatter it over us to help cement this in our minds, but I doubt that would go over well in my first week here and I am sure that most of us probably do not want red paint on our clothes. The truth is this message is already something that you have covering you. Not just that, but brothers and sisters, if you have received the Holy Spirit, then you have the stain of Jesus’ promises in you already. If we truly take this message seriously, let us be confident that we cannot get rid of this stain, praise God, but may we also want others to see it and be stained themselves. This is a stain that can only come by believing in what Jesus has already accomplished. Let’s not hide our stains and let’s not try to get rid of our stains! As God’s people, loved and cared for in ways we do not even realize and with grace we cannot comprehend, may we cherish and submit to the love of the God, seeking to give all praise, glory, and obedience to him alone. Amen.