The Red Wedding

Exodus 24

Does it Have a Face?

There is a recent diet around that claims to be a throwback to our Paleolithic ancestral diet, so it is named the Paleo diet.

I learned the first rule of the Paleo diet this week in a little decision tree diagram that helps you decide if a given food is Paleo or not. The first question is: “Did it have a face?” You look at your food, did it have a face? If yes, your food is Paleo.

I like it. But I have never looked into the face of something I was about to eat.

I had a friend growing up, more my sister’s friend, but he and his family raised Turkey’s. In the middle of Pasadena, a suburb much like Thornton or Northglenn here. Not a typical “turkey” area. They named their turkey, raised it, played with it, killed it, butchered it and ate it for Thanksgiving.

Looking into the face of something you are going to eat, maybe we need to do this. Where do I buy the family a “pet” turkey?

But this is the truth of most of history, of most of human life, and certainly a fundamental law of the universe:

“In order for us to live, something has to die.”

There is an inherent cost to life. We are so isolated from this raw fact of life, we are going to dwell on it a bit today.

The Covenant

Today, in Exodus, our next passage is the Covenant Ritual between Yahweh and the people of Israel.

God has a history of dealing with His people through covenants, which are solemn relational agreements, usually sealed or enacted through ritual. Our strongest “covenant” tradition today is in marriage.

Story of the Abrahamic Covenant

There is an implied Covenant in Creation. There is a Covenant with humanity after the flood.

But the defining covenant of the people of Israel has been, to this point, the Abrahamic Covenant. God promised Abraham three things: His descendants would be numerous as the stars, He would inherit a Promised Land, and through Him all people would be blessed.

And with Abraham, Abram at the time, actually, God draws on the Covenant ritual of the surrounding Mesopotamic culture. A cow, a goat, a ram, a dove and a pigeon (all walk into a bar). They cut the big animals in half and as a blazing torch, God passes in between all the halves. This symbolizes his willingness to be torn apart if He breaks the Covenant. It also sets the tone, sets the stage, that the Covenant must be drenched in blood, must cost something, must in fact, cost life.

Story of the Mosaic Covenant

Generations later, more than 400 years later, God makes another covenant with His people.

Again, we might think of this covenant like a marriage and, in fact, God sometimes refers to Israel as His bride.

The people of Israel gave their consent to the covenant based on the simple relationship with the God who rescued them from Egypt. “I will be your God, you will be my people.” This is almost like the engagement.

Then come the details. How are we going to live together? How are we going to behave and interact? Who is going to do the worshipping and who will not be doing the lying and murdering? Okay, the metaphor breaks down a bit.

But most of the details have now been communicated. Really summarized in the 10 commandments, a bit more detail in the Covenant Code, even more detail to follow in dictation to Moses to be written in scrolls.

But now, informed as to the details of the Covenant, it is time to actually enter into the Covenant, to have the Covenant ceremony.

The Setup

So the LORD, Yahweh, invites them to a Covenant ceremony. They set a date. God invites seventy elders to represent the people, Aaron and his sons as future priests, and Moses. Moses alone will ultimately approach Him.

Moses told the people and wrote down all the Covenant Code stuff they hadn’t heard yet. And again the people said “Everything Yahweh has said, we will do.”

Then Moses built an altar, and twelve pillars to represent the twelve tribes.

The Sacrifice and Blood

Then Moses sent young men to gather bulls. So maybe change your image of the Exodus: people walking through the wilderness, hiking forever, also add a train of cattle, livestock, maybe goats.

They offered some of these bulls, we don’t know how many, as burnt offerings. That is BBQ gone wrong. You burn it until there is nothing left, that is an offering to God alone. This is the highest kind of sacrifice, often it is an act of atonement for sins.

They offered the rest of these bulls as fellowship offerings. This is BBQ gone right. You sacrifice the bull on the altar, cooking it on the fire, then sharing the meal. Someone gets to eat God’s share, usually the priests, maybe Moses in this case, we’ll get there.

But this is key. Moses collects the blood from these sacrifices. So this is slaughterhouse / BBQ and Moses is just filling bowls and bowls full of Bull Blood. Bowls of Bull Blood.

Then, this is so great. He takes half of those bulls and throws them on the altar. Half the blood is yours, God, enjoy.

Then, this is gross, he takes the other half of the blood and just starts tossing it all over the gathered people of Israel. I picture him spraying it out like Gallagher. Or maybe like a Shamu show at Sea World?

So… we are going to reenact this, I have brought a bowl of blood, Levi has been wringing out prairie dogs, and each of you line up and get a little spritz of fresh blood in the face. This is exactly as gross as that sounds. Gruesome!

But this splitting of the blood in half… it echoes Abraham’s splitting of the animals in half and God walking through the split sections. The Covenant is made, and both parties have made commitments, they have responsibilities in this covenant. And the gruesome-ness, the bloody aspect of the Covenant, it is necessary to indicate the gravity, the intensity of the commitment, and the consequence of failure. That together with the burnt atonement sacrifices.

Something had to die in order that the Covenant might be made. Many things, in fact, a bunch of bulls (with their blood in bowls).

The Fellowship Meal

Then, still sprinkled with blood (and they didn’t have Tide or bleach then, those blood stains must have lasted as long as the clothes) they had the Reception dinner, the after party, the Fellowship meal. Now they get to eat the BBQ.

Exodus 24:9-11

9 Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up 10 and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky. 11 But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.

They “saw” God on a slab of sapphire.

Sometimes you can dig in to the original language and discover nuance and additional meaning that helps paint the picture of what was going on. Not so much here.

How much did they see? God appeared to them… partially, somehow, sort of. Not that they saw Him fully, they couldn’t have, we find out later. Even this verse here, they know that to see God would be inherently dangerous. Like God is spiritually radioactive, you have to have all sorts of filter and protections in place to see Him even partially.

What does it say that the one detail they apparently remember was the floor? What were they staring at?

Have you ever had a dream, and everything was so clear or amazing or funny in the dream… and then you tried to explain it to someone else in the morning, and it sounds so lame? I imagine those 70 elders trying to explain to their families. It was like… there was… well okay, the floor was like Sapphires, right? Like God stands on the most valuable thing we can imagine… and it was like the sky, so like He wasn’t exactly standing on the mountain with us… but He was with us.

In a new way. This was the payoff, this was the purpose of the Covenant, the reward. This was God being With the People.

Covenant: Free but not Cheap

Real quick, I want to point out three things about the Mosaic Covenant.

Free but not Cheap

The covenant with God was free, but it was not cheap. It was free in that God simply chose them and offered it to them. But it was drenched in blood, it was not a cheap “wedding ritual.”

The covenant was free, but it was not cheap!

In fact, something had to die. The Mosaic Covenant was drenched in blood… as was the Abrahamic Covenant before, and even the Covenant with Noah before.

Intrusive

Further, the covenant would require a new way of life, extending to the way the people worshipped, ate, dressed, lived, procreated, worked and lived with one another.

The covenant was intrusive and invasive, taking over their lives. It was free… but in another sense it cost them the rest of their lives.

The covenant was free, but it was not cheap

For fellowship

But the purpose of the covenant was for fellowship with God.

The covenant achieved fellowship with God. They got to eat with him, they got to see his sweet sapphire flooring!

The Mosaic Covenant achieved fellowship with God… partially

Partial

And that is the final and crucial thing we need to recognize about this Covenant. Even at the start, when it is all shiny and new and the people are full of intention, the Mosaic Covenant is partial.

Only the elders are invited up, the future priests, and Moses. 74 from the whole nation. Part of this was practical, but again we have the representatives standing on behalf of the nation. For the guy in the front row that got drenched but missed out on the feast part, maybe this day wasn’t quite so awesome.

Then, it gets more exclusive. Moses is invited up the mountain. It seems to take a week to get up there, and he brings Joshua up with him part way, but into the cloud and fire at the top of Mount Sinai, Moses alone is welcomed in. And at the very beginning of our passage, this is made sadly specific.

Exodus 24:1-2

1 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. You are to worship at a distance, 2 but Moses alone is to approach the Lord; the others must not come near. And the people may not come up with him.”

The people may not come up with him. You and I may not come up with. This echoes back to immediately after hearing the 10 commandments and the people were terrified and said to Moses “You go!” And they retreated. The people probably weren’t eager to go up any way, still terrified. But they miss out on the presence of God.

Even the vision, whatever the elders and Aaron and his sons saw on the mountain, it was temporary. It was probably this amazing spiritual experience, a high point of their lives, all of that! A vision they will never forget.

And we could imagine someone’s testimony. “I saw God that day, like standing on a slab of sapphire, and I ate a meal in His presence. My life was forever changed that day, I committed the rest of my life to keeping His covenant.”

Guess how long their commitment actually lasted? Even just counting the Big 10 words of the Covenant, the 10 commandments? Not even the 40 days Moses was up the mountain. And it may not even have been 40 days, 40 days is a Hebrew idiom that can just mean “many days” or “quite a while”.

The sacrifice of a bull was never going to be enough. Not enough blood. Not enough “life” given that we all might live. Feasting on the meat of those bulls was never going to be enough for the Marriage dinner.

The New Covenant

And Jesus says “I give you a new covenant. This is my body, broken for you. Sacrificed for you. Eat of me. This is my blood, poured out for you, drink it in Remembrance.”

And we use these phrases: “washed in the blood.” Drenched in the blood of Jesus.

But put that in reference to our story this morning, that is a gruesome image. He had a face. He was alive… and then He wasn’t. And that blood pooled up in the tank.

Imagine if I had that tank here, and every Sabbath morning I splashed it on you. You would wear different clothes, probably. We would have a whole different cleaning situation with our carpet and chairs! But this is the messy, gruesome, graphic, incredibly expensive truth of the New Covenant:

Something must die in order that I should live.

Someone had to die in order that I should live.

In order to have a fellowship meal, a meal of sharing, with God. In order to become allies, to become friends, even, to become something more intimate than that. In order to have the “With God” life… someone had to die in order that I should live.

Life in the New Covenant

So the grace and Christian freedom, our everyday life with the presence of God is free to us. But it is not cheap.

Jesus had to die to purchase, to redeem, to substitute, to save, rescue and clean us. Our life, now, like the Mosaic covenant, is drenched in blood.

And like the Mosaic covenant, the New Covenant is intrusive. It changes everything. It is a new life and our old life dies.

But it is complete! Through Jesus Christ we have full fellowship with God. We all get to go up the mountain. For a lifetime, for an eternity. And we get more than to see just a glimpse of God, we get the fullness of God.

Baptism

This morning in just a few minutes, we get to enact a powerful symbol of that. We are going to baptize Logan Cabanaw, and as he descends into the water, that symbolizes his death, dying in Christ, drenched in His blood.

But when I finally let him come up from the water, that is His new life. A new life in Christ. This is a life radically altered, completely invaded by the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit inhabits him. His every choice, his every habit, his every moment is now altered and shaped by this Covenant.

But, like the Mosaic covenant, the whole point of all of this is fellowship with God. Life with God. Forever. And completely in a way the Mosaic covenant wasn’t and could never be. That was always partial. Jesus came to fulfill Moses, to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, to fulfill all the Covenants, to complete the Plan of God from the birth of Creation.

So I invite you to consider. As the worship team comes up and we worship together. As we enact this powerful symbol, God’s symbol of baptism, with Logan. Consider the Covenant. The covenant we have with God, so like a marriage.

Maybe you have never entered into that covenant. It is free to you, Jesus paid it all… but that doesn’t make it cheap. In fact, count the cost, it will cost you everything you have and are. But the gain is life with God, life abundant, life as it was meant to be, you as you were created to be and that forever.

If you are interested, if you want to hear more, please come chat with me or Pastor Rod after the service. We will literally drop everything to have that conversation with you!