Celebrating the Solemn Covenant
Notes
Transcript
The Ratifying of the Covenant, 24:1-8
The Ratifying of the Covenant, 24:1-8
The great event {here} in chapter 24 is the climax of the Book of Exodus - Ramm
God’s command to come up includes not just Moses, but Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the elders of the people . Is this the total number of the elders of Israel or is a few of the total. Numbers 11:16 seems to point to men who were well-respected and recognized by the Israelite clans and by the officers, who may or may not been in leadership positions(?).
Aaron has served as the speaker for Moses; Nadab and Abihu are two of Aaron’s sons, the others being Eleazar and Ithamar (Exodus 6:23). They will be set apart by the LORD to minister as priests to the LORD (Exodus 28:1), but this privilege was abused by disobedience. These two sons did not treat the LORD as holy and God immediately brought His judgment upon them by fire, and they died before the LORD (Lev. 10:1-3).
The command to come up is an invitation/command. This speaks of God’s grace and His holiness. God could only be approached on His terms. That any were invited to come near was because of His marvelous grace. Whereas before only Moses could go up , now this select group could come closer, where they will worship God at a distance. Worship here meant literally, "bowed down to the earth.” The people could not come closer than the boundary at the foot of the mountain, and only Moses could approach even closer. Aaron, his sons, and the seventy could only come so close.
Moses returns to the people, verbally recounting all the words of the LORD and the ordinances that were spoken to him by the LORD. The people’s response was a good response: “All the words which the LORD has spoken we will do! So Moses will write out all the words of the LORD to which the people had promised to do, a written, permanent record which they would be able to refer to and check (first part of Exodus 24:4).
Early the next morning, Moses builds an altar, following the instructions given by the LORD in Exodus 20:24-26. The altar was built where it could be accessed by the people, but the people were not involved in the building or the offerings. For each tribe, a pillar was raised which represented that tribe. So there was the prescribed altar, representing the glory of the LORD, and 12 pillars representing the tribes of Israel, facing each other at the foot of the mountain, in plain sight of the children of Israel.
Afterwards, these 12 pillars may have served as memorial standing stones to commemorate the occasion.
Moses did not make an offering on the altar by himself; he sent young men of the sons of Israel (possibly first-born sons?) and they offered two different offerings: burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as peace offerings to the LORD. The priesthood had not been established yet.
Burnt offerings seem to have two main aspects of meaning: it was both a consecration of the whole person of the offerer to God in an act of thanksgiving and worship, and also a means of atonement, because there was a need to deal with sin in order for there to be acceptable worship and acceptable worshippers. The burnt offerings were incinerated in their entirety on the altar (Leviticus 1).
Peace offerings were the prelude to a great, celebratory meal before the LORD (Leviticus 3). They spoke of renewed covenant fellowship betwen God and the worshipper and between the worshipper and his family or colleagues. It was an offering which expressed harmony and goodwill or restored relationship, the meat of which was to be enjoyed by the worshippers. Both these offerings together spoke of the consecration of a cleansed people to God and of their mutual covenant commitment of loving fellowship with God and each other.
From these offerings Moses took the the blood and halved it. One half he put in basins to keep it; the other half he sprinkled on the altar. By doing this, He confirmed the LORD’s part of the covenant, as well as emphasizing God’s priority in the whole story.
This must have been an awe-inspiring ceremony. The blood of the OT sacrifice anticipated, of course, the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. The sacrifice of bulls and goats was an imperfect system that would be superceded by Christ’s work.
Exodus 12:7; Romans 3:23-26; Hebrews 10:4, 10.
‘Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.
Romans 3:23-26.
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;
whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed;
for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Hebrews 10:4, 10.
For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Moses now takes the Book ( more precisely, the scroll) of the Covenant, in which he has written all that the LORD said and read it in the hearing of the people. They again responded well with an additional promise to the LORD: “We will be obedient!” There is now a physical record of the covenant and an affirmation of it by the children of Israel.
God acts and offers and calls. Israel responds, accepts and agrees.
Just as in all such ceremonies, this oath of obedience implied that the children of Israel were willing to suffer the fate of the sacrificial animals if the covenant stipulations were violated by those who took the oath.
Moses now takes the blood that was kept in the basins, and sprinkles it on the people (Hebrews 9:19-20). This covenant was between the LORD and the children of Israel, which promised blessings for obedience. It may also speak of their “ordination” as a kingdom of priests before God in the midst of the nations.
They were now under the blood of the covenant of the Lord, resembling now the Christian’s own relationship to God, made possible by the blood of the Lamb of God (1 Peter 1:2).
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood: May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure.
Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord,
This benediction of Hebrews 13:20 speaks of an eternal covenant made through the blood of Jesus our Lord, which promised blessings to all who are His because of His complete obedience even unto the death on the cross, and who was brought up from the dead by the God of peace.
This new covenant is spoken of in all four gospels as well as in 1 Corinthians 11. Was it a unilateral or bilateral covenant?
The Celebration confirming the Covenant, 24:9-11.
The Celebration confirming the Covenant, 24:9-11.
It was only after the covenant was ratified by the people and Moses had sprinkled the blood that Moses and those whom God told him to bring up with him left the foot of the mountain to climb higher up on the mountain.
What did they see higher up on the mountain? They saw the God of Israel; in the NT John 1:18 says that no man has seen God at any time, but the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained Him and John 6:46, the only one who has seen the Father is the One who is from God, i.e., Jesus. What Moses and those with him saw perhaps was the preincarnate Son of God in His glorified form; they saw enough to know they were in the presence of deity. This verse emphasizes what was under His feet, the appearance of pavement of a clear, beautiful deepest sky blue, probably like lapis lazuli (Hebrew word of this gem stone and sapphire sound the same),widely used in ancient Near East temples as an appropriately colored stone to represent the heavenly abode of the gods. . This may very likely be the viewpoint of those who were bowed down to the earth in worship! The lack of details here reminds us that any attempt to describe the glory of God is always inadequate. For a short season heaven came down to earth, God came down to His people; soon to dwell among His people.
The nobles mentioned here are the others who came up with Moses. “So they saw God” is emphasized here, an indescribable reality. This appears to be a covenant meal, a festive occasion, a grand celebration in the presence of the living God. It likely included meat from the peace offerings as well as bread and wine.
This was also a prophetic glimpse of the supper that the Lord Jesus shared with His disciples, where He transformed the ancient symbols of deliverance from Egypt (bread and wine) into the new symbols of His impending death and resurrection (Matthew 26:17-30).